Mere Fidelity
by Mere Fidelity
From the Mere Orthodoxy Podcast Network: The Podcast reflecting on God's Word and our world. Thoughtful weekly conversations about theology, the culture, and the church, hosted by Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts. Featuring Andrew Wilson, Brad East, James Wood, and Joseph Minich.
Episodes
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The Old Testament's Fingerprints on Acts
Send Us A Message Derek and Alistair discuss the ways in which the Old Testament is used in the book of Acts: by the author in structuring the narrative, and also by the apostles to shape the identity and mission of the early church. Christ is the center of it all. Mere Fidelity is a podcast from...
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Replay: Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith, with Dr. Todd Hains
Send Us A Message For generations of evangelicals lacking good catechesis, Martin Luther is often seen as a primitive, unsophisticated, or backwards reformer. Into this negative environment, Dr. Todd Hains is bringing forth the richness of Luther’s thought and Lutheranism’s tradition. There is so...
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How to Handle Difficult Bible Passages
Send Us A Message Have you ever encountered a passage of the Bible that confused you? Sometimes we get hung up on a book's origin, wrestle with its meaning, question its relevance, or simply dislike what it teaches. In this episode, Alastair and Derek discuss approaching complex passages…
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Resisting Therapy Culture, with Matthew Loftus
Send Us A Message Therapy culture (not therapy itself) has gotten way out of hand. Too many of life's normal vicissitudes are treated as mental illnesses. How do we avoid the extremes of medicalizing morality or moralizing medicine? How's a pastor to navigate this issue? Matthew Loftus, M.D.…
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Finding Happiness That Lasts
Send Us A Message Andrew Wilson returns to the podcast! He joins Brad and Alastair to discuss the idea of Christian happiness, not only in the world to come, but in this world also. His latest book is entitled Happiness: What It Is, Where to Find It, and How to Make It Last Forever. Mere Fidelity...
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Why Is The Gospel of John So Unique?
Send Us A Message Derek and Alastair unpack just what makes the Gospel of John so unique and different from the other gospels. They identify major structures, hidden themes, and huge overlap with the very beginning and the very ending of the Bible. Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy…
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Remembering Wendell Berry
Send Us A Message Brad East and a panel of special guests gather to remember the life, work, and unique legacy of Wendell Berry, who recently passed away at the age of 92. Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a…
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The Four Senses of Scripture, with Dr. Patrick Schreiner
Send Us A Message Dr. Patrick Schreiner joins Derek and Alastair to discuss the four ways that the church fathers read Scripture and how we read it today. Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy…
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In Defense of Evangelicalism with Bonnie Kristian
Send Us A Message Bonnie Kristian, deputy editor at Christianity Today, joins Derek, Brad, and Alastair to talk about why evangelicals are so uniquely hated in contemporary society, whether it is deserved, and what we should do about it. Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is...
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Postliberal Theology, Explained
Send Us A Message Derek, James, Brad, and Alastair discuss the major and minor figures of the very influential Yale School in post-liberal theology. These are the voices that called for the church to speak in its native language and not to accommodate to the culture. Is their influence over, or...
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What Is A Man?
Send Us A Message Is there any hope of recovering real masculinity? Not the toxic type you hear about or the shallow performative type of manhood you see online. Real, Biblical, virtuous manhood. The Mere Fidelity cast and crew flip the script, so to speak, in this episode. Mere Fidelity is a...
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Examining Nolan’s Odyssey
Send Us A Message In what may be a Mere Fidelity first, the guys discuss a current popular movie--The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan. It's said that art holds up a mirror to culture. What do Derek, Brad, and Alastair see when they look into this post-Christian, pre-pagan, ambiguous adaptation? Mere...
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Replay: The Struggle of Prayer
Send Us A Message Matt, Derek, and Alastair discuss the struggles and misconceptions surrounding prayer: how prayer becomes burdensome, prayer has experiencing God in a veiled way, and what petitions in prayer should we not ask for? Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is...
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Replay: Conservatism, with Dr. Yoram Hazony
Send Us A Message What hath Enlightenment Liberalism wrought? According to Dr. Yoram Hazony, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, it has led us to the place we are today where Neo-Marxism is ascendant and we cannot conceive a higher good than consent. What’s the alternative? National...
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Measuring Wealth
Send Us A Message How can each subsequent generation both be making more money and be considerably less wealthy? The answer is obvious. The solution may not be. Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere…
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Replay: The Fractured Republic with Yuval Levin
Send Us A Message One of conservatism's brightest policy minds, Yuval Levin, joins us to talk about his book *The Fractured Republic.* — Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at...
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Divided We Stand: On Denominations
Send Us A Message How often do you think about denominations? Is this the way Jesus meant for the church to be? Are we actually united without realizing it? Derek, Brad, and Alastair examine the pros and cons of denominations, poke at Rome a little, and pursue authentic catholicity. — Mere…
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How to Read Outside Your Tradition
Send Us A Message If you only read what you know you'll agree with, how will you learn? But if you read something from another theological tradition, do you risk weakening your faith? In this episode, James Wood and Joseph Minich explore the importance of reading widely across Christian…
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How Theology Nerds Are Made
Send Us A Message Derek and Brad interview each other about their foundational theological influences. Which thinkers gave them that spark? How did looking at footnotes lead to unexpected discoveries? What surprising influences led to drastic decisions? By looking at twists and turns that God…
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Magnifica Humanitas with Brad Littlejohn
Send Us A Message Last month Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, which addresses generative AI and the challenges it raises for human dignity, education, just war, good work, and much more. On this episode guest Brad Littlejohn joins regular co-hosts Derek...
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Online And Outside the Institutions
Send Us A Message A lot of us want institutions to be clean, brave, and instantly fixed and then we join one, try to lead, and discover the painful math of limited power, limited time, and real people. We take that tension head-on by talking about what we’re calling the “Elijah syndrome”: the...
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Replay: How 1776 Remade The World with Andrew Wilson (Fixed Audio)
Send Us A Message 1776 gets treated like a patriotic shorthand, but it also works like a master key for the modern world. We sit down with Andrew Wilson to talk about Remaking the World and why one crowded year can illuminate the rise of the post-Christian West better than a thousand hot takes...
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Idolatry And The Shape Of Worship
Send Us A Message Idolatry is one of those Bible words that can feel obvious until you try to use it carefully. We live far from Baal temples, yet we still talk about idols constantly and sometimes we label everything as an idol until the word loses its bite. Derek and Alastair slow down and...
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The Christian Life with Kelly Kapic
Send Us A Message Kelly Kapic's The Christian Life — the newest volume in the New Studies in Dogmatics series — frames Christian living as a response to divine love, arguing that human agency is always Christological and ecclesial before it is personal. With Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and...
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The Desecration of Man with Dr. Carl Trueman
Send Us A Message Carl Trueman joins Mere Fidelity to discuss his book The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. They examine why "desecration" captures something "disenchantment" misses — the frenzied, ecstatic violation of what is still recognized as sacred — and...
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Virtues For Living Well with Dr. Alan Noble
Send Us A Message What does it mean to live well in morally incoherent times? Alan Noble joins the show to discuss his new book To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, which uses the four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues as a framework for navigating choice...
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On Paul and The Law
Send Us A Message Was the Apostle Paul Torah-observant — not just before the Damascus road, but throughout his apostleship to the nations? Brad East stakes out a thesis drawn from Messianic Judaism and the Paul Within Judaism school: that Acts 21 should be read straight, that James is telling the...
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How To Approach God
Send Us A Message How do we hold together confidence before God and a proper sense of his holiness? Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Joe Minich take up a pastoral question at the heart of Christian worship and prayer. Working from the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, Job, and John 8, they discuss...
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Replay: Protestants & History with Paul Gutacker
Send Us A Message On this episode of Mere Fidelity, historian of history Paul Gutacker joins Matt, Derek, and Alastair to talk about the changing and sometimes fraught relationship that Protestants have had with the notions of "history" and "tradition." Paul's book, The Old Faith in a New Nation,...
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Between Nature and Grace
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Joseph Minich trace the nature-grace debate from de Lubac's challenge to neoscholastic "pure nature" through Blondel, Bavinck, and Betz's Christ the Logos of Creation — asking what's actually at stake: the gratuity of grace, the coherence of...
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Replay: The Age of AI with Jason Thacker
Send Us A Message When students started turning in papers written by artificial intelligence, educators were caught flat-footed. We knew that machines would replace many human tasks, but we thought the humanities were immune to that. Have our writing standards fallen so low that we can no longer...
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The Fall Before The Fall with Philip G. Porter
Send Us A Message What if death's presence in the cosmos is not native to creation but a wound running all the way down to its foundations, inflicted before Adam ever reached for the fruit? Philip Porter joins Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East to discuss his new book, which…
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What 'Headship' Really Means with Dr. Lyndon Jost
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Alastair Roberts welcome Dr. Lyndon Jost, author of Transfiguring Headship: A Figural Theology of Gender. Jost argues that headship is rooted in Old Testament figural theology rather than Greco-Roman culture, that it fundamentally means...
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Delighting In The Ten Commandments
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts explore the Ten Commandments — their structure, their two tables, the bookending parallel between the first and tenth commandments, and how the law is always oriented toward delight rather than mere prohibition. The law shapes the Christian...
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The Spirituality of Aliens
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East consider what Christian theology actually has to say about aliens — from the populated Christian cosmos to the angelic fall, demonic deception, and the Christological anthropocentrism that runs through Lewis, Edwards, and Aquinas....
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Resisting Doomerism and Cultivating Hope
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts take up the problem of Christian doomerism in an age of AI development, geopolitical instability, and algorithmic anxiety — diagnosing why our moment feels uniquely threatening, then building a theology and practice of realistic hope from the...
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Replay: Put Social Media In Its Place with Andy Crouch
Send Us A Message In this Replay episode, Matthew Lee Anderson, Derek Rishmawy, and Alastair Roberts are joined by Andy Crouch — Partner for Theology and Culture at Praxis — to examine what the data on social media and video games reveals about the diverging formation of young men and women. The...
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The Great Evangelical Hand-Off (That Never Happened) with Jake Meador
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts host Jake Meador for a wide-ranging conversation on why evangelical institutions struggle with leadership transitions and long-term succession. They explore how evangelicalism's emphasis on discontinuity, charismatic personality-driven...
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Spiritual Formation: A Close Examination
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, Brad East, and James Wood trace the evangelical spiritual formation movement from Richard Foster through Dallas Willard to John Mark Comer. They explore why disciplines resonate today amid technological distraction and desire for embodied faith,...
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A Generous Ecclesiology with Myles Werntz
Send Us A Message Hosts Derek Rishmawy and Brad East are joined by Myles Werntz to discuss his Christianity Today Award of Merit-winning book, Contesting the Body of Christ: Ecclesiology's Revolutionary Century. Rather than systematic argument, Werntz uses narrative case studies examining how...
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Paul and the Resurrection of Israel with Dr. Jason Staples
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts and Brad East talk with Dr. Jason Staples about his book 'Paul and the Resurrection of Israel.' The discussion explores the themes of restoration eschatology, the role of Gentiles in Paul's theology, and the nature of Israel's restoration.…
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The World Is The Wrong Shape For Women with Leah Sargeant
Send Us A Message Derek, Brad, and Alastair talk with Leah Sargeant about her book The Dignity of Dependence. They discuss why the world is built for male bodies, how pregnancy exposes universal human dependence, whether artificial wombs would help anyone, what's wrong with workplace dynamics…
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Post-Liberalism: RETVRN, Retrieval, or Revolution?
Send Us A Message Post-liberalism has escaped the internet and entered mainstream politics—but what does it actually mean? Derek, James, and Alastair map three competing visions: nostalgic return to pre-modern order, retrieval of Christian liberalism, or genuine revolution forward. Retry Mere...
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What Is A Sermon, Anyway?
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East discuss the nature of preaching, exploring its purpose, context, and the role of the preacher. They discuss the importance of engaging the heart and conscience of the audience, the need for contextualization in sermons, and the...
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How Do We Change Our Minds?
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts discuss how minds actually change—through paradigm shifts, careful arguments, or accumulated experience. They explore why steel-manning opponents and engaging charitably with the strongest versions of opposing views is more persuasive than...
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Jesus and The Law of Moses with Paul T. Sloan
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy and Brad East engage with Paul T. Sloan, an expert in early Christianity, to discuss his book 'Jesus and the Law of Moses.' The conversation explores the relationship between Jesus, the law, and the restoration of Israel, challenging popular views on legalism and...
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Replay: Reading Advice
Send Us A Message Most of what we talk about on Mere Fidelity presupposes a lot of reading. What is the real use of reading? Is what we read more important than how we read? Why do some people who read for years never develop the habits of reading well? Alastair, Matt, and Derek discuss these...
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Welcome, Reality Respecters
Send Us A Message In this episode of Mere Fidelity, Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and James Wood engage in a deep conversation about the evolving landscape of evangelism and contextualization, particularly focusing on the concept of 'reality respecters'—individuals who are open to the gospel...
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The Bible: A Technology
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts explore the Bible as a technological medium, discussing its historical context, the impact of the Reformation on biblical engagement, and the shift from oral to written culture. They delve into the implications of modern technology on…
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Do You Need Penal Substitution?
Send Us A Message Derek Rishmawy and Brad East engage in a conversation about the complexities of atonement, particularly focusing on penal substitution. They explore the historical context, personal experiences, and theological implications surrounding the topic, emphasizing the need for clarity...
About this show
From the Mere Orthodoxy Podcast Network: The Podcast reflecting on God's Word and our world. Thoughtful weekly conversations about theology, the culture, and the church, hosted by Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts. Featuring Andrew Wilson, Brad East, James Wood, and Joseph Minich.
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Mere Fidelity
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