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Extra Credit Podcast
Midweek Bible study at Colonial Heights Church. Artwork by Scott Erickson (scottericksonart.com)
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Episodes
Extra Credit PodcastOn Self-Love
The Garden of the Heart Ep. 6 This week we turn to the difficult question of self-love. Does the gospel call us to love ourselves? The answer to the question…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Erotic Love of God
The Garden of the Heart Ep. 5 This week we turn to discuss Eros—both its terror and its grandeur—and the way in which it reveals the depths of God’s heart for…
Extra Credit PodcastEquality With God
The Garden of the Heart Ep. 4 After letting C.S. Lewis take us on a tour of the glories and dangers of friendship, we look at the heart of the scandalous…
Extra Credit PodcastJesus Is (Not) Pro-Family
The Garden of the Heart Ep. 3 This week we discuss both the glories and the dangers of storgē—or the familial affections—ending with Jesus’ odd teaching that…
Extra Credit PodcastGod Is Love
The Garden of the Heart Ep. 2— 1 John tells us that God is love. But does he really mean that literally? Or is this hyperbolic speech? This week we discuss the…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Garden of the Heart
The Garden of the Heart Ep. 1— This week we begin a new study on the heart and mapping out the terrain of its loves. Our tour guides include C.S. Lewis (and…
Extra Credit PodcastWe (Don’t) Believe in the Church
Summenary Ep. 8 Robert Jenson on the church… Theological reflection about the church is in many ways a modern development. For most of history, Christian…
Extra Credit PodcastAtonement Theories
Summenary Ep. 7 Robert Jenson on the doctrine of the atonement… By a “doctrine of atonement” we conventionally understand an account of why Jesus’ death on a…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Image of God
Summenary Ep. 6 Robert Jenson on the Image of God… Theology has used the word “freedom” as a slogan for this distinction between humankind and nature. That…
Extra Credit PodcastBecause Salvation, Therefore Creation
Summenary Ep. 5 Genesis 1:3-4 And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good… The Hebrew word “tov” is like our…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Trinity for Dummies
Summenary Ep. 4 Jenson on the doctrine of the Trinity… [This] is the root and substance and heart of the so-called doctrine of the Trinity. God has a history…
Extra Credit PodcastWhat Is Resurrection?
Summenary Ep. 3. NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline, you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below…
Extra Credit PodcastGod Is Not Timeless: The Story of Israel
Summenary Ep. 2. NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline, you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below: We…
Extra Credit PodcastWhat Is Theology For?
Summenary Ep. 1. NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline, you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below…
Extra Credit PodcastBecoming Guilty for Christ’s Sake
The Will of God Ep. 7. NOTE: We will be starting a new study next week through a short book by Robert Jenson called A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones…
Extra Credit PodcastAnxiety, Identity, and Reality
The Will of God Ep. 6. This week we try to think through the reasons for the anxiety that seems constituent of modern life and seeking to do the will of God…
Extra Credit PodcastStop Applying the Bible
The Will of God Ep. 5 “Whoever accuses or judges a brother or sister, accuses the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the…
Extra Credit PodcastHow to Hear the Voice of God
The Will of God Ep. 4. This week we discuss how we can hear the voice of God. Bonhoeffer is convinced that the primary and the orienting way God speaks…
Extra Credit PodcastKnowing the Will of God for Your Life
The Will of God Ep. 3. This week we discuss knowing the will of God for our lives. God’s will is not a secret. God has revealed it and wants us to know it and…
Extra Credit PodcastBecoming a Mother of God
The Will of God Ep. 2. A catena on the birth of God in each person: Meister Eckhart: Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father…
Extra Credit PodcastGod Is (Not) in Control
The Will of God Ep. 1 Here is an excerpt from Chris Green’s Surprised by God that not only cuts to the heart of what we discussed in class, but is the genesis…
Extra Credit PodcastJesus and the God of the Old Testament
The Joseph Story Ep. 7. In lieu of a write-up of the class I’ll leave you with a couple of quotations. The first, from St. Maximus the Confessor, which framed…
Extra Credit PodcastAll Israel Will Be Saved
The Joseph Story Ep. 6. Jewish scholar Yair Zakovitch says that the book of Genesis is the Table of Contents for the Bible. Everything is contained Genesis in…
Extra Credit PodcastJudah the Lion-King
The Joseph Story Ep. 5 The Roaring Lion At the end of the Joseph story the elderly patriarch Jacob gathers his sons around him to deliver last words to each of…
Extra Credit PodcastThe (Hellish) Judgment of God
The Joseph Story Ep. 4 This week we take a close look at Joseph’s scheme (dissembling) that he puts his brothers through. The scheme serves the purpose of…
Extra Credit PodcastTrauma and Re-membering the Dismembered
The Joseph Story Ep. 3 A preliminary remark: One of the gifts of Scripture is that its stories allow us to process our deep-seated personal pain in a safe way…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Lance of His Compassion (Good Friday 2026)
A Sermon for Good Friday 2026 A Good Friday sermon on Psalm 22 9 Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.10 On you I…
Extra Credit PodcastFamily Wounds
The Joseph Story Ep. 2 Because of the additional “duties” that Holy Week brings, I was unable to write up an overview of this week’s class. I’m sure that with…
Extra Credit PodcastJoseph the Dreamer
The Joseph Story Ep. 1 The Jewish scholar Jon Levenson has said that the Joseph story in Genesis “is arguably the most sophisticated narrative in the Jewish or…
Extra Credit PodcastC.S. Lewis: Magic vs. Miracles
Paul pens both his letters to Timothy to encourage him to continue his struggle against the false teachers in the congregation at Ephesus. Paul planted this…
Extra Credit PodcastWomen in Ministry?
As we close our study of 1 & 2 Timothy we come to the most notorious lines in either book: “11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Powerlessness of God
Suffering and Power 2 Timothy is a tender letter. It is written from a jail cell by a man who knows he is not long for this world. Paul’s heart is opened wide…
Extra Credit PodcastElection and Predestination (in Christ)
Last week we looked at the non-rivalrous, non-competitive posture the church is to have to the world. The church is called to be for the world not against it…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Church: Being-for-the-World
What relationship is the church to have with the world? Many versions of Christianity assume that the church and world are locked in a metaphysical fight to…
Extra Credit PodcastAuthority and the Problem of Power
Pillars That Make Shared Life Possible We are moving outward in concentric circles from the center of the church (the eucharist), to ordained ministry, to…
Extra Credit PodcastBetween Me and You: Christ the Mediator
Perhaps the most famous line in either First or Second Timothy comes in 1 Timothy 2:5, “There is one God, and so there is one mediator between God and man…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Everyday, Humdrum, Holy Work of God
In 1 Timothy 4 Paul reminds Timothy that he was commissions into ministry “by Spirit-filled utterance [prophecy] and with the laying on of hands by the council…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Eucharistic Life
Paul writes to his young protégé Timothy to “command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer.” Paul does not ever clearly explain what these…
Extra Credit PodcastHow To Spot a False Teacher
“Sound teaching strengthens, while sick teaching weakens…sick teaching leads to sick holiness.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer Sick Teaching, Sick Holiness Gordon Fee…
Extra Credit PodcastAdvent from Prison (2)
“By the way, a prison cell like this is a good analogy for Advent; one waits, hopes, does this or that—ultimately negligible things—the door is locked and can…
Extra Credit PodcastAdvent from Prison (1)
I. Fleming Rutledge says that “Advent begins in the dark.” She writes, We live in a world where the season of Advent is simply relegated to the “frenzy of…
Extra Credit PodcastHopeful but Not Optimistic
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:5) Psalm 42 is a…
Extra Credit PodcastBiblical Inerrancy?
The superscription of Psalm 34 contains an oddity. It reads: “A Psalm of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Sabbath Sleep
What hard travail God does in death! He strives in sleep, in our despair, And all flesh shudders underneath The nightmare of His sepulcher. The earth shakes…
Extra Credit PodcastThe God Who Has a Face
Psalm 27 7 “Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me! 8 “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!” Your face, LORD, do I seek. 9 Do not…
Extra Credit PodcastGod Is Not Useful
In his book A Religion Against Itself Robert Jenson makes the case that the Christianity is an anti-religious religion and that the Bible is an anti-religious…
Extra Credit PodcastJesus Is the Wrath of God
Messianic Psalms The psalms are filled with promise—particularly the promise that God will put an end to evil and injustice. The so-called “messianic psalms”…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Poverty of God
One of the primary themes of the psalms is God’s care for the poor. He is their judge and defender. But the bond between God and the poor is extends beyond…
Extra Credit PodcastBecoming a Home for God
God Is Our Home Psalm 46 begins with one of the more memorable lines in scripture: “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble.” The…
Extra Credit PodcastBreakthrough in Confession: Psalm 51 with Augustine and Bonhoeffer
Psalm 51: Superscription Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to…
Extra Credit PodcastHiding in (Not from) God
Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. (Psalm 32:1) The Covering (Up?) of Sin In a memorable phrase (not least because…
Extra Credit PodcastHow To Get Along With One Another (Re-Release)
We did not meet for our typical midweek Bible study this week, so I figured I would repost an old teaching that I know I need to return to often. This teaching…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Lamb Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want
Psalm 23 (KJV) 1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 3 He restoreth…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Unmaking of All Wounds
This week we continue our discussion of forgiveness and the psalms. The Soldiers that Pierced Him The soldiers are not the principally guilty party in the…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Impossibility of Forgiveness
Psalm 130:1-4 1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. 2 Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy! 3 If you, O Lord, should mark…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Psalms as Spiritual Therapy
Last week we concluded discussing the difficulty of Scripture. The Scriptures are like the music of God and they are filled with strange, unexpected, and…
Extra Credit PodcastPsalms: The Prayerbook of Jesus
The Prayerbook of the Bible The Psalms are a prayerbook, the prayerbook of the Scriptures. They contain multitudes. Athanasius of Alexandria said that the…
Extra Credit PodcastFinding Your Voice in the Pit
Are the Psalms Coherent? Most of us have a favorite Psalm the way we have a favorite song. The psalms have been a great source of comfort, a balm to weary…
Extra Credit PodcastBecoming God
Ends or Means? Why did God become human? This is an old question and it is deceptively simple. The way we answer it will fill in answers to a lot of other…
Extra Credit PodcastThe Hiddenness of God
A Hidden God? In the early 2nd century a Greek opponent of Christianity named Celsus argued that Jesus could not be God because there was nothing visibly…