How Deep Is Your Love! In this episode, we continue our reading of the Smalcald Articles, focusing our attention on sin and the law. What is sin? What does it do to us? What are its effects? And, in following, what is the relationship of the law to sin? Does the law empower us to sin less? Can the law produce good works and good fruits? What is the function of pastoral care in relation to sin and the law? All this and much, much more on this episode of the podcast.

Don’t Look Back in Anger. In this episode, we continue reading Martin Luther’s Smalcald Articles, focusing on contrition, repentance, and freedom. Why does the law need to terrify and leave us hopeless? How does attention to the self lead us into death and hell? What happens when belief is preached as something “we do” rather than something “done to” us? Likewise, when repentance is self-activated and self-actuated, what are the consequences for our daily lives? This and much, much more on this episode of the show.

Mass Effect. In this episode, we continue our reading of The Smalcald Articles, focusing on Luther’s critique of the Roman Mass and all its consequences for the churches and Christian life. We discuss mimetic desire, sacrificial religion, the exclusive work of Jesus.

An Arm-Twisting Confession. In this episode, we read Martin Luther’s Smalcald Articles on the gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Why did he have to have “his arm twisted” to write them? What is he trying to teach the churches about the gospel? How does the gospel circumscribe and define the Church, worship, and Christian life? Why does something written in the 1530s matter today? We look to answer all these questions and more on this episode of the Banned Books podcast.

He has freed you from a selfish fixation on gifts. He has freed you to look to the Giver.

The Nicene Creed is the gospel distilled—a refined and concentrated byproduct of Scripture’s own witness to the grace and power of God in Jesus Christ.

Can we then honor Mary without falling into error? I believe we can by focusing on four things Scripture does teach about her.

Today on the Christian History Almanac, we remember the Council of Nicaea in 325 and what did, and didn’t, happen there.

The celebration of Trinity Sunday–the only church festival specifically dedicated to a doctrine–reminds us of the necessity of confessing that the one God exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Over And Done With. In this episode, we read Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope and discuss the validity of the papacy’s claims to divine authority, the response of Lutherans and Protestants to the death of Pope Francis, how to love one’s neighbor while disagreeing them, the distinction between heterodoxy and heresy, and much much more.

Apart from the confession that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God who suffered and died for the forgiveness of sins and rose again to justify the ungodly, there is no Christian faith.

We are called to believe in the church even when we don’t believe in the church.