Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World
by James Spencer - Christian Theology Author and Speaker
Christians shouldn’t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.Find more from James at https://www.thinkingchristian.org/.
Episodes
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Norman Wirzba on Land, Life, and Dominion | Faith & Politics #15
Norman Wirzba — Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke and author of This Sacred Life and Love's Braided Dance — joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma for the tenth episode in the faith and politics series. Wirzba grew up farming and wanted to be a farmer, then went through...
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Suicide Prevention in the Church: A Biblical Guide for Pastors (David Gilleland)
Suicide prevention in the church: David Gilleland, author of Holding Hope, explains how pastors can recognize warning signs, ask directly, and walk with people toward hope. David Gilleland spent nearly a decade managing suicide prevention programs for the National Guard and Army Reserves before...
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Johnson Amendment Lawsuit: Can Pastors Endorse Candidates? (Troy Miller)
Can pastors endorse political candidates? Troy Miller, president and CEO of National Religious Broadcasters, explains NRB’s Johnson Amendment lawsuit against the IRS. The Johnson Amendment was added to the tax code in 1954 by then Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. It bars 501(c)(3) organizations,...
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Why Should Christians Engage Politics? (Vincent Bacote) | Faith & Politics #13
Why should Christians engage politics? Vincent Bacote of Wheaton College argues that political engagement needs a theological foundation, not an ad hoc approach. Vincent Bacote, professor of theology and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College, joins James Spencer…
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Michael Rhodes on What the Bible Says About Politics | #12
Michael Rhodes — lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in New Zealand, former pastor, and author of Practicing the King's Economy and Just Discipleship — returns to discuss his new book, Reimagining Biblical Politics: What Scripture Says About Public Life and Why It Matters. Rhodes...
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Who Pays for the Data Center? AI, Politics, and Faith: Politics and Faith #14
Continuing the faith and politics series, James Spencer and Ashish Varma turn to artificial intelligence — starting with the data centers going up across the country, which consume enormous land, power, and water while generating far fewer local jobs than the factories and mills they're often...
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Karl Barth on Church and Politics: Is the Church at War? | Faith & Politics #10
American Christians with his answer: the church’s task is to preach the word of God. Asked whether churches should urge members to enlist, buy war bonds, and preach the issues of the war, Barth answers with a counter-question: does the church know its mission is to preach the word of God…
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Be Afraid: Horror, Trauma, and What Our Fears Are Discipling Us Into (Kutter Callaway)
Horror is one of the few genres that refuses to let you look away, and it is one of the few that got people back into theaters after COVID. Dr. Kutter Callaway of Fuller Theological Seminary joins Dr. James Spencer to talk about his new book, Be Afraid: What Horror Reveals About Facing the...
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Karl Barth on War as God’s Judgment: Romans 13 and Degrees of Guilt | Faith & Politics #9
Is war the judgment of God? James Spencer and Ashish Varma take up the second question in Karl Barth’s wartime letter to American Christians, and whether some are more guilty than others. Barth answers yes, and James argues that judgment is part of how humans, as God’s image, reflect God after…
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Revelation and Empire: Shane Wood | Faith & Politics #11
Shane J. Wood, professor of New Testament and its origins at Ozark Christian College and author of Thinning the Veil, returns for the eighth episode in the faith and politics series — this time on Revelation. Wood argues that the question the series has been circling is the question Revelation...
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Karl Barth's Letter to American Christians (1942) | Faith and Politics #8
In 1942, Karl Barth was asked to write to Christians in the United States. He didn't know the American context well, so he asked his hosts to send him the questions they were actually wrestling with. James Spencer and Ashish Varma work through the first of them: how can a Christian be a loyal...
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The Secular Was a Strategy | Faith & Politics #7
Michael McDuffee — formerly professor of historical theology at Moody Bible Institute, now living in Germany — joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma for the seventh episode in the faith and politics series. The conversation starts with an essay by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas, a lifelong child of the...
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Politics as an Art, Not a Science | Faith & Politics #6
James Spencer and Ashish Varma debrief their conversation with William Cavanaugh, and work out what he was and wasn't saying. They start with a tension: Cavanaugh sounded gentler in conversation than his books read, and both men try to account for it. The answer they land on has to do with…
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William Cavanaugh on Idolatry and Power | Faith & Politics #5
William T. Cavanaugh — professor of Catholic studies at DePaul, director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, and author of The Uses of Idolatry, Torture and Eucharist, Migrations of the Holy, and Being Consumed — joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma for the fifth…
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No Nation Can Be the City of God | Faith & Politics #4
James Spencer and Ashish Varma reflect on the previous episode's conversation with Veronica Roberts Ogle — and on what happens when Augustine gets recruited for arguments he was writing against. The starting point is a claim James has encountered in political speeches: that the two cities can be...
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AI and the Church: Tools, Teammates, and Human Flourishing (Troy Miller)
AI is already cutting the audio, designing the graphics, and answering questions people used to bring to their pastors. Troy Miller, president and CEO of National Religious Broadcasters, joins Dr. James Spencer to talk about what happens when a productivity tool starts getting marketed as a...
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Augustine's Two Cities: Veronica Ogle | Faith & Politics #3
Veronica Roberts Ogle teaches at Villanova and wrote Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God. She joins James Spencer for the third episode in the faith and politics series. She begins with why the book exists. Rome was sacked in 410, the first breach of the city's walls in...
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David Koyzis on Divided Loyalties | Faith & Politics #2
David Koyzis returns to the show for the second episode in the faith and politics series. He's a member of Global Scholars Canada and the author of Political Visions and Illusions, We Answer to Another, and Citizenship Without Illusions — and he spent his first thirty years in the Chicago area...
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Politics Is Bigger Than Voting | Faith & Politics #1
The first episode in a series on faith and politics running through the midterms. James Spencer and Ashish Varma set the terms before the guests arrive. Ashish starts with the word itself: polis, the city — the shared life of a community, of which party politics is only a narrow slice. That opens...
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Liberalism Isn't Cruciform. Neither Is Conservatism.
A Billy Graham Center survey of Gen Z reported that nearly half of respondents agreed that Christian support for Trump has made them less likely to attend church. The survey offers no follow-up on why — whether the objection is to a candidate, to partisanship generally, or to something deeper…
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When Doctrine Divides Christians Who Aren't Wrong
James Spencer and Ashish Varma return to the diagnoses that narrow the church's vision, this time with fragmentation — the way faithful Christians end up separated from one another not by heresy but by tradition, idiom, and the slow drift of communities that no longer talk across their…
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Marx and Moody: What the Church Left Undone (Gregg Quiggle)
Karl Marx and D.L. Moody lived at the same time, watched the same cities industrialize, and asked the same question about the poor. One had a doctorate, wealthy patrons, and a theory of history. The other had about five years of formal schooling and a Bible. Dr. James Spencer talks with Dr. Gregg...
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Is Technology Neutral? Grok, AI Deepfakes, and Discipleship
James Spencer and Ashish Varma close out the series on narrowing with amplification — Marshall McLuhan's insight that technology extends human capacity, and what that means when the capacity being extended is our tendency to forget God. The conversation runs from forks and chopsticks to John…
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When Your Interpretation Becomes the Authority | The Diagnosis
James Spencer and Ashish Varma continue the series on what narrows the church's vision with a look at inversion — what happens when an interpretive grid quietly takes over the authority that belongs to Scripture itself. The conversation moves from the hermeneutical spiral (nobody comes to the…
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AI With Guardrails: Scott Lindsey on Logos and the Future of Bible Study
More than half of American Christians now say they trust AI with their spiritual life. That is a problem worth taking seriously, and it is also the reason Logos built its AI the way it did. Dr. James Spencer talks with Scott Lindsey, an executive director at Logos, about what happens when a Bible...
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Why Do Christian Institutions Compromise to Stay Alive?
Institutions confuse their own survival with the work of God. Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma close the diagnostic arc of this series with transaction, meaning the trade a person or an organization makes when preserving the platform becomes more important than the faithfulness the platform...
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The Fear of Syncretism Is Making the Church Assimilate
The fear of losing the faith to another culture is producing the very thing it fears. Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma open a series on three forces pressing on the church, beginning with assimilation, and Varma's argument is that syncretism functions mostly as a fear discourse. The word…
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Grandparent Texts: How the New Testament Reads the Old (Gary Edward Schnittjer)
The usual complaint about the New Testament's use of the Old is that the apostles play fast and loose. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer thinks the problem runs the other direction. The Old Testament has gone missing from the research, and once you cut it off, ordinary exegetical moves start looking...
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Not All Moabites Are Moabites (Gary Edward Schnittjer)
Most readers hear "Old Testament use of the Old Testament" and picture quotations. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer says quotation is the small end of it. An interpretive allusion needs three things: a donor text that gives the language, a receptor text that takes it up, and an identifiable…
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Why Ezra-Nehemiah Ends Badly (Gary Edward Schnittjer)
Ezra-Nehemiah opens on a high note. Yahweh keeps the word he spoke through Jeremiah, Cyrus issues the edict, and the exiles go home. By the last chapter, Nehemiah is walking the city alone, pulling out men's hair and cursing them, and the collective repentances that filled the middle of the book...
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Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion (Tamar Oostrom)
What does repealing Sunday shopping laws have to do with rising rates of suicide, alcohol deaths, and drug overdoses? More than you might expect. In this episode of Thinking Christian, I sit down with Dr. Tamar Oostrom, health economist at The Ohio State University, to walk through her research…
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Why Study the Old Testament? (Gary Edward Schnittjer)
Christians have inherited a strange habit of treating the Old Testament as optional. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer argues that Jesus and the apostles would not have understood the question. There was a gospel, a Messiah, and a church before there was a New Testament, and none of it was possible...
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Decolonial Theology and the Holy Spirit: Is God Moving Outside Our Gates? (Oscar Garcia-Johnson)
Can the church learn to follow the Spirit into places it hasn't been looking? In this episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma sit down with Dr. Oscar Garcia-Johnson — Professor of Theology and Decolonial Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Spirit...
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What Did Western Modernity Make Us Forget About God? (Kevin Flatt)
Is modern life quietly replacing God with something else? In Episode 60 of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma welcome back historian and theologian Dr. Kevin Flatt (Associate Dean of Humanities, Redeemer University) to explore one of the most urgent and underexamined ideas...
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Is "Secular" Really Neutral? Secularism and the Christian West (Kevin Flatt)
What if secularization isn't the decline of religion — but the replacement of one social order with another? In this episode, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma sit down with Dr. Kevin Flatt, professor of history at Redeemer University and author of Secularization, Social Order, and World...
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Can a nation be "Christian" without Christ?
Is "Cultural Christianity" a bridge to the gospel — or a counterfeit that replaces it? In this episode, Dr. James Spencer (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) and Dr. Ashish Varma respond to James Wood's widely-discussed First Things article, In Defense of Cultural Christianity. Together…
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What does it actually mean to be human? (Marc Cortez)
What does it mean to be human — really? In an age of AI, transhumanism, and relentless technological "progress," Christians are making confident claims about humanity without a solid theological foundation underneath them. In this episode, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma sit down with Dr....
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Systems, Virtue & the Body of Christ
What if the church is trapped in the same invisible loop as an addict — and doesn't know it? What does addiction science have to do with the body of Christ? More than you'd think. In this follow-up conversation, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma build on their interview with Dr. David Van…
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Family Systems and the Church: Is the Problem a Person or a System? (David J. Van Dyke)
Most people think of mental health as an individual problem. Dr. David J. Van Dyke — professor, marriage and family therapist, and co-host of the With You podcast — thinks that's exactly the wrong frame. In this episode, Dr. Spencer and Ashish sit down with David to unpack how family systems...
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Christian Parenting Beyond the Checklist: What Scripture Offers Instead
Is Christian parenting a strict formula to execute, or an art form to practice? In a culture that bombards Christian parents with exhaustive 10-step checklists and uniform blueprints for family life, it is remarkably easy to accidentally provoke or exasperate our children. This week, Dr. James...
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Women in Ministry: History, Stakes, and What Comes Next (Beth Allison Barr)
The Southern Baptist Convention just passed a constitutional amendment restricting women in ministry — and the implications reach far beyond the SBC. In this episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and co-host Ashish Varma sit down with Dr. Beth Allison Barr, historian, Baylor professor,...
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Discipleship, Not Dominance: Rethinking Biblical Masculinity (Kutter Callaway)
What does it actually mean to be a male disciple of Jesus? And why does so much of what gets called "biblical masculinity" look more like cultural bravado than anything Jesus modeled or taught? In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Kutter Callaway, associate professor of theology and psychology at...
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Shadow vs. Substance: How the Book of Hebrews Unlocks Old Testament Law (Rebekah Josberger and Renee Duffy)
What if Old Testament laws aren’t outdated rules to follow, but a deep, tangible story we are invited to practice? In this episode of Thinking Christian, host James Spencer is joined once again by Rebekah Josberger and Renee Duffy from the Bible Unbranded podcast to tackle one of the most debated...
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Is the Sabbath a Restriction or a Gift? Sabbath as Trust in God's Provision (Rebekah Josberger and Renee Duffy)
Is the Old Testament Law a heavy burden to be avoided, or a guide to the heart of the Lawgiver? In this installment of our crossover series with the Bible Unbranded podcast, Dr. James Spencer, Renee Duffy, and Dr. Rebekah Josberger tackle the common misconceptions surrounding Biblical Law. Far…
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More Than Rules: Deuteronomy and the Heart of God's Provision (Rebekah Josberger and Renee Duffy)
For many Christians, the Book of Deuteronomy feels like a dense wilderness of repetitive laws and ancient regulations that seem disconnected from a vibrant relationship with Jesus. 📜📉 In this episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer sits down with Renee Duffy and Dr. Rebekah Josberger...
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Christian Parenting by Wisdom, Not Checklists
Is there a "secret recipe" for biblical fatherhood, or have we been looking at the wrong map? In this special Father's Day episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma sit down to discuss the weight and wonder of Christian fatherhood. Moving beyond cultural stereotypes,...
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Redefining Toughness: How Ancient Philosophy and Scripture Shape the Male Soul
Is our modern definition of "toughness" actually biblical, or is it just a shadow of the ancient world? In this intellectually stimulating episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma explore the intersection of virtue ethics and theology. They look back at how the…
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Beyond the Biblical Manhood Checklist: Overseer and Deacon Traits for Every Disciple
Is 1 Timothy 3 a list of "manly" traits, or a calling for the entire Body of Christ? In this episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma dive into one of the most cited texts in the "biblical manhood" debate: 1 Timothy 3. They challenge the common assumption that the...
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Filling the Void: What Comes After "Biblical Manhood"?
If we move past the confusing labels of "biblical manhood," what are we actually left with? In the final visionary installment of this series on Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma address the "void" left behind when we deconstruct faulty masculinity frameworks. If…
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Patterns Over Principles: A New Framework for Biblical Manhood
Are we following Jesus, or just a "masculine" version of ourselves? pa In this episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma dismantle the common "mapping" errors in the biblical manhood conversation. They argue that many modern frameworks for masculinity are actually...
About this show
Christians shouldn’t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.Find more from James at https://www.thinkingchristian.org/.
Hosted by
James Spencer - Christian Theology Author and Speaker
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