Theology Nerd Throwdown

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. Today Tripp is joined by Scott Paeth, professor and ethicist at DePaul University, to help answer your questions, including: how would you make the best possible case, as a Christian, for supporting Donald Trump? Scott explains under what circumstances it is preferable to support Trump, discusses how an ethicist look at questions about truth, goodness, justice in our divided religious and political landscape, and why political norms are important. Tripp shares some of the reasons some people on the extreme Left gave for voting for Trump, and Scott explains why he thinks they are problematic. Plus, Scott and Tripp make a case for continued investment and engagement in the democratic process. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@homebrewedchristianity.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. Today, Tripp is joined by Brian McLaren to help answer your questions, including: what are the 3 best and worst theological ideas you’re thinking about today? Brian shares his three (total depravity/original sin; literal/inerrant interpretations of scripture; that humans are separate from creation) and asks Tripp an important question. Plus, Tripp rants about the importance of a constructive, articulate description of the Christian faith, and how the church has internalized Kant. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. Today, Tripp is joined by Brian McLaren to help answer your questions, including: How do you share your faith with your children with less baggage then you had? What is the role of the community and extended family in this process? Brian and Tripp talk about figuring out a curriculum of love, the opportunities and challenges that comes with being a parent who wants to share their faith, and the problematic assumptions about Christian formation. Brain also mentions his recent book, The Great Spiritual Migration. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com           Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. Today, Tripp is joined by Brian McLaren to help answer your questions, including: In the past 3 years I’ve become more committed as a christian and more progressive politically. I just don’t understand the outrage cultural online among progressive Christians where we eat our own. How can we do better? and What is the point of Christianity (assuming you don’t really believe people go to hell)? Brian and Tripp discuss politics, social science, what issues are ok to be pushy on, the disease of the internet and how the desire for retweets can be destructive, salvation and how we’ve twisted it’s meaning, rediscovering the Jewish meaning of salvation, the challenge for people to move past their inherited relationship to Christianity, and the truth at the heart of the gospel. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. In this episode, Tripp picks up where he left off last time and addresses some more questions surrounding evil: doesn’t the problem of evil change throughout scripture? aren’t there different answers to it? how does the move towards monotheism in Judaism (not to mention Christian monotheism) change our understanding of evil? Tripp explains the problem of evil for monotheism compared to polytheism, how the question for a henotheistic concept of God is not can you do anything about evil, but will you, and how a monotheistic concept of God widens the scope of the problem of evil to a cosmic scale. Plus, what do you do with all the different answers the Bible gives? and what are we saying ‘no’ to when we affirm platitudes like, ‘God is in control’? There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. We got lot of questions about evil, suffering, and divine power. There is the classic philosophical question about evil, and then there is the theological question about evil. How do you even begin to answer these questions? do you deny the goodness of God? do you deny the reality of evil? or do we reject God’s divine omnipotence? But before he even gets to those questions, Tripp address the two trajectories in the questions asked: What is scripture’s actual answer to question of evil and suffering? Does doing theodicy even make sense when you look at the history of slavery and racism in America? Sometimes we answer theological questions in a way that abstracts our lived experience. So Tripp, in this Q&A, wants to affirm the experiences that generate these questions, while also trying to situate them in the broader context of the theological and philosophical questions about evil. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. Today’s question: is the canon open or closed? how would communities decide what new texts should be considered to be part of an ongoing living bible or canon? In this episode, Tripp explains what the the canon is, and gives 3 reasons to open the canon, and 3 reasons to keep it closed. Plus, Tripp shares what he would add to the canon. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. Today’s question: did the early Christians believe the Bible was inerrant? The short answer is no. But it’s a little more complicated than that. Tripp explains what is even meant by inerrancy, how inerrancy is a product of the Enlightenment, the fights the early church had about the authority of scripture, the challenges the early church faced in interpreting scripture, and the tension between the limited Hebrew response and the Gnostic tendency to decontextualize Jesus. Plus, three rules for interpreting scripture from some early church fathers. If you’re interested in learning more, check out this book. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. This week’s question: What do I do with 4 different, contradictory, gospel stories? In answering, Tripp wants to convince you that you should be glad the gospels don’t line up. He shares about that time he discovered his bible was broken, the gifts that allowing the gospels to be different brings, the heresy of Tatian and where it creeps up today, and why it is significant that we have canonized four different gospels. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Theology Nerd Podcast with the Dr. Tripp Fuller. This is a shorter Q&A episode, where your friendly, local internet theologian answers questions submitted by you. In this episode Tripp tries to tackle two questions: How did the early church see the relationship between religion/faith and reason/science? How has contemporary science impacted the way Christians read scripture? Learn about Augustine’s 4 rules for negotiating faith and reason, the multiple layers of meaning in scripture, and how this battle between faith and reason has been internalized. There are lots of ways you can submit a question for Tripp to answer: go to trippfuller.com and click the “send voicemail” button on the right (near the scroll bar); you can also leave us a 5-star review on iTunes with your question as the review; you can tweet @trippfuller; or you can send an email with your question to mediaguru@trippfuller.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices