

Gospel Conversations podcast
Tony Golsby-Smith
Gospel Conversations takes a creative approach to attaining a deeper understanding of the gospel and what it means to us today. Our speakers are not ministers, but range from a diverse community of Christian thinkers who lead their various fields of knowledge in history, design thinking, theology, philosophy, and organisational leadership—among others. Each month we host a live event in Sydney, then publish it as a podcast. gospelconversations.substack.com
Episodes
Mentioned books

Oct 8, 2022 • 44min
2022 Conference - Mark Strom - Paul on Faith, Hope & Love as ways of Knowing
Where do we put Jesus into our philosophy of knowledge? This talk by Mark is a compacted, brilliant answer to this question. He takes Jesus out of the religious box (which limits his Lordship to morality and ritual) and positions him as Lord of the cosmos – including politics and history. To make this real for us, he takes us on a whirlwind tour of Paul and his apprehension of how Jesus had turned the world, and its categories of knowing, upside down. Mark draws deeply on the social and culture of both first century Judaism and first century Graeco-Roman thought to make all of this grounded. This talk is really about five talks in one – but put beside Esther’s talks it establishes Jesus as Lord of all knowledge and all ways of knowing. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Sep 27, 2022 • 31min
BWJ #6 - What is the worst translation in the bible?
Tony argues that the word ‘hell’ is not only a mistranslation – which nobody can deny – but he goes on to explain how the medieval choice of this word has distorted the gospel and its impact. He takes us to Jeremiah to get closer to the real meanings of what Jesus may have meant by his use of the original word (Gehenna) that was mistranslated as ‘hell’. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Sep 12, 2022 • 26min
Breakfast with Jesus - #5 - What God Really Wants
In this latest BWJ talk Tony looks at an intriguing mistranslation by the NIV of a key verse in Jeremiah 7 – and unpacks how that ‘mistranslation’ actually shines a light on the big current debate over the ‘holiness’ of God versus the ‘mercy of God’. He puts forward this controversial claim: “if you start with the ‘holiness’ of God as his primary attribute, you can’t find your way to the true gospel.” So where do we start? Listen and enjoy. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Aug 29, 2022 • 23min
Breakfast with Jesus - #4 - Jeremiah and Homer; a Surprising contrast
Tony takes us on an intriguing literary journey in this short talk. He compares Old Testament literature to Homer and Greek literature and explains how they offer contrasting views of reality. He then turns this contrast onto Jeremiah and explains how Jeremiah offers the climax and the resolution to much of Kings and the anger of God in the histories. In all of this he uses the great literary text Mimesis by Eric Auerbach, who famously compared Homer and the Old Testament Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Aug 11, 2022 • 22min
Breakfast with Jesus - #3 - Jeremiah and the Angry God?
In this latest Breakfast with Jesus talk Tony addresses the question of the ‘angry’ God. No prophet captured God’s wrath quite as eloquently as Jeremiah – so we would expect the themes of retribution and judgment to dominate his views. But Tony looks closely at the text and finds a very different view to this…. A God made vulnerable by love. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Jul 29, 2022 • 1h 8min
Habbakkuk: Exodus as an alternative paradigm on redemption
This is the third talk in our Habakkuk series, and in it Tony dives into the Exodus as an alternative paradigm on redemption. He contrasts the very significant differences in emphasis that the Exodus paradigm of redemption introduces when compared to the Penal Substitution model. Then he opens up the grand cosmic sweep that the Exodus model opens up – and he finishes with a very different picture of God’s wrath that Habakkuk leaves with us. In the contemporary debate over the meaning of the cross, this topic is timely and quite exciting. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Jun 27, 2022 • 20min
BWJ #2 - The Social Impacts of Evangelical theology on modern America
In this second talk for Breakfast with Jesus Tony summarises the devastating critique by Michael Sandel on the way that Calvinism has laid the groundwork for inequality and a ‘winner/loser’ society in modern America.Tony connects this idea to the prophet Jeremiah – strangely enough – and to the previous talk on the ‘first fruits’ model as an alternative to the included/excluded model implicit in Calvinism. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Jun 13, 2022 • 28min
Breakfast with Jesus - #1 - First Fruits in Jeremiah
This is the first talk on our new ‘Breakfast with Jesus’ channel. We have decided to publish the first few talks on our regular channel so that you can get a feel for what Tony is intending to deliver. In due course we will move these talks to a separate podcast channel and to a separate section of the Gospel Conversations website. In this very first talk Tony dwells on the significance of the phrase "firstfruits of his harvest" in Jeremiah. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

May 24, 2022 • 58min
Habakkuk- Hope in Dark Times
This is our latest talk from Gospel conversations. it was also our first face to face forum in a couple of years. Tony took us through the great minor prophet Habakkuk whom he calls the ‘Hamlet’ of the Old Testament. Habakkuk is like Hamlet, because the whole book, all three chapters, is an extended inner dialogue between the prophet and God. It is thus not so much a book about prophecies, but a book about the mind of the prophet. In particular it is a book about hope – and hope in dark times since Habakkuk was commenting in the dark last days of the Jewish experiment. Tony shows how the literary structure of the book, can teach us a lot about how to meditate, and how to reflect on our version of ‘dark times’, whatever they may be for us as individuals. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Sep 17, 2021 • 1h 29min
David Bentley Hart in conversation with Tony Golsby-Smith - Part 3, Why did the wrong guy win?
Why did the wrong guy win? The Disastrous results of the rivalry between two visions of GodGospel Conversations welcomes you to the third talk on Gregory of Nyssa between Tony Golsby-Smith and David Bentley Hart. The towering genius of Augustine casts a long and too often dark shadow over western Christianity. What would Christianity have looked like if the equal genius of Gregory had achieved such dominance? Why did the wrong guy win? Tony and David rove over these questions in a riveting conversation.Don't forget to engage with us through our website or with our new social media platformsWebsite - www.gospel.conversations.com Twitter - https://twitter.com/gospelconv Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/gospelconversations/ Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe


