Gospel Conversations

Anyone who is not shocked by Quantum Theory has not understood it.—Niels Bohr, father of Quantum TheoryRon gives us a crash course in Quantum Theory and explains why it has profound implications for our understanding of reality and Creation's everlasting significance.Slides:https://www.slideshare.net/gospelconversations/how-to-design-an-eternal-universequantum-theory-implications Video:https://youtu.be/N1Mg2yzeGQkiTunes:https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/gospel-conversations/id878549160Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2GBc4WgSRu75WDiJLM2NGhWebsite:https://www.gospelconversations.com/topicsFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/GospelConversationsTwitter:https://twitter.com/GospelConvers

This is the second talk on the incarnation in which Tony develops the expansive picture of how the incarnation defines and secures the ultimate destiny of humanity. This expansive vision only makes sense in a big picture of the cosmos so that is where Tony begins. He finishes with a summary of probably the most sophisticated framework of the incarnation that the church has developed—Irenaeus' theory of recapitulation.

Tony’s latest series of talks will position Ron’s talks on Mind over Matter in a biblical context. Ron’s talks have humanised creation and reintroduced mystery to nature. In this talk, Tony's asks how does this apply to our theology of: Creation?The relationship between man and God?God and the natural world?All of these questions come to a head in our view of the Incarnation—was it a ‘detour’ or was it actually necessary as defining the destiny of all creation? Was Irenaeus right when he said that the Incarnation was necessary even without sin? This debate has been pivotal in the Christian tradition and has vast implications. Tony will overview some of the history of the debate, and then move to its implications for the Incarnation, and for the Incarnation’s implications for our topic of Mind over Matter.

In this talk, Ron puts humanity back at the centre of the cosmos. He begins by admitting that the cosmos seems to dwarf us human beings. We are intimidated by the scale of the universe and thus we can feel small. The universe’s immensity is framed by space and time: these are the dimensions that make the cosmos ‘big’ and us humans ‘small’. But then Ron explains how Einstein’s theory of relativity turned that world upside down. It turns out that light is the only constant, and space and time shrink the faster we approach the speed of light. All the time that Ron speaks, we were thinking about Jesus when he said, ‘I am the light of the world’…

Ron takes the debate over to mind vs. matter into language—which is where the mystery of mind is best revealed. He gives us a crash course in philosophy in ten minutes—and uses the colour 'red' to reveal the immense complexity in simply naming the world. The highlight though belongs to his one-year-old grandson, Levi—and he uses Levi's early experiments with words to celebrate the wonders of the mind at work through language and how we acquire it.

Is the mind a machine, or is it a soul? This is the fast emerging modern debate—which began slowly with the materialist world view but has accelerated in the era of Artificial Intelligence. At the end of this road, lies Jesus - who has set the archetype for what it means to be human—fully human. It is immensely helpful to consider this debate over the course of its history—and in this talk, this history is what Ron lays out.

This short talk climaxes our investigation of apokatastasis from a very unusual source—the book of James. James is not noted for his audacity or profundity as. theologian compared to Paul or John, but here we find possibly the most succinct summary of both the doctrine—and its consequences. Tony connects the passage to our psychology—and he does this by telling a story of his visit to the dark historical site of Port Arthur in Tasmania.

Our Hope & Hell series has raised a lot of interest; people like the ideas a lot but everyone has questions. We created a panel of three to address eight of these questions that our listeners sent in. In this talk, Ron, Andrew, and Tony give their responses in a free-flowing, exploratory, and honest dialogue. Mark Ridgway facilitates the dialogue.

As we continue to ponder the hope of 'apokatastasis', we confront some of the 'so what's' beginning with evangelism. At face value, it looks like a doctrine of 'universal salvation' makes evangelism unnecessary—why preach if everybody gets saved eventually anyway? Tony addresses this question by first changing the question—and then building a far bigger picture of 'salvation' into which we can place 'evangelism'.

Tony finally confronts the scary verses in this talk—the passages that at face value talk about hell, judgment, and wrath. Traditionally they have so gripped the dark imaginations of the church that they have totally overshadowed the even clearer verses that declare universal hope. But we need to answer the question—What do the 'Bad News' verses really say about eternal hell? What do they really tell us?

St Augustine laid the foundations for the doctrine of Hell in his epic tome the City of God. But did he get it right? Tony gives a penetrating diagnosis of where Augustine's thinking had 'code errors' that distorted the gospel and predisposed him to the idea of hell as never-ending torment. Unfortunately, the church of Rome validated his thinking and excluded the broader eschatology that we are now beginning to realise was the orthodoxy of the Patristic Fathers.

In this talk, Tony advances Gregory of Nyssa's picture of the Restitution of all things. The question of 'universal salvation' needs to fall onto a big eschatological landscape not onto a narrow one. Only then does it make sense. That is what Gregory does. Tony gives us a detailed summary of his epic eschatological vision of creation in 'On the Making of Man', which explores the profound implications of being made in the image of God.

Our second talk builds a richer view of 'judgment'. What house is God building? is a better question—and it immediately opens up a new view of judgment. Architects judge as part of their creative process. This positions 'judgment' out of the penal system and inside a creation system. Tony explores this new perspective in this talk.

We recorded the questions and discussions that followed Tony's first talk. We have not done this before, so we hope that some of you will find it valuable to hear the inquiries and comments that followed the talk.

Hell is the question we all avoid but it is the corollary of hope. How do we fit the two together? Is the traditional model of hell right? Or scriptural? Could everyone get saved in the end? Tony begins to address these vexed questions by first examining the landscape of the debate—the language and assumptions, the possibilities, the history and the problems of all the usual positions. He ends by suggesting a better question to frame our thinking.

Rikk finishes his series on Design as the new Theology in this talk. He spends time synthesising his argument thus far—that the language of design offers a fruitful lens to view the gospel because it makes sense of some of the deep paradoxes of creation like change and agency—in fact, more sense than traditional theology does. Then he concludes with a breathtaking reading of Genesis through the lens of design—which leaves us with the picture of God as the original designer.

Rikk lays out the groundwork for why 'design' is a richer angle to understand God and His work than 'theology'. Design opens up a messier world and a world where change is a good thing—which in turn challenges our traditional picture of the omnipotent and unmoving God. Instead, we find a God who is dynamic and involved in life's dramas—in fact, an incarnate God.

This series is deliberately provocative. Rikk takes us on a journey to rid ourselves of the prison of religious language and open up a broader, more accessible and more comprehensive vocabulary to both explore and express the wonders of our God and his working. He calls this 'the grammar of life'. Rikk has been on this journey personally—with great effect and he begins his talk with that personal experience.

Coleridge famously defined imagination as the human mind's replication of the divine creation of the world. In this pyrotechnic talk, Sarah unfolds Coleridge's extraordinary grasp of human creativity—and how we mirror the divine—through his touching introspective poem 'Frost at Midnight'. This poem is both a theological tour-de-force, as well as one of the great pieces of literature on the creative dynamic. Sarah completes the picture with her dynamic and passionate delivery.