Give And Take

My guest is Michael Horton. His newest book Justification (https://www.amazon.com/Justification-Two-Set-Studies-Dogmatics/dp/0310597250), is a comprehensive study of the historic Christian doctrine. The doctrine of justification stands at the center of Christian theological reflection on the meaning of salvation as well as our piety, mission, and life together. In his two-volume work on the doctrine of justification, Michael Horton seeks not simply to repeat noble doctrinal formulas and traditional proof texts, but to encounter the remarkable biblical justification texts in conversation with the provocative proposals that, despite a wide range of differences, have reignited the contemporary debates around justification. Volume 1 engages in a descriptive task - an exercise in historical theology exploring the doctrine of justification from the patristic era to the Reformation. Broadening the scope, Horton explores patristic discussions of justification under the rubric of the "great exchange." He provides a ma

My guest is Angela Himsel. Her new book is a memoir entitled A River Could Be a Tree (https://www.amazon.com/River-Could-Be-Tree-Memoir/dp/1941493246). From the time she was a young girl, Himsel believed that the Bible was the guidebook to being saved, and only strict adherence to the church's tenets could allow her to escape a certain, gruesome death, receive the Holy Spirit, and live forever in the Kingdom of God. With self-preservation in mind, she decided, at nineteen, to study at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. But instead of strengthening her faith, Himsel was introduced to a whole new world—one with different people and perspectives. Her eyes were slowly opened to the church's shortcomings, even dangers, and fueled her natural tendency to question everything she had been taught, including the guiding principles of the church and the words of the Bible itself. Ultimately, the connection to God she so relentlessly pursued was found in the most unexpected place: a mikvah on Manhattan's Upper West Side

My guest is Luke Norsworthy. His new book is God Over Good (https://www.amazon.com/God-over-Good-Saving-Expectations/dp/0801093325). It's hard to say that God is good when God isn't always what we expect good to be. A good father wouldn't make it so difficult to get to know him, would he? And if God is all-powerful, wouldn't he ensure that we never suffered? Either our understanding of God is incorrect, or our definition of good is inadequate. In a world that is messy and a church that is imperfect, it's easy to let our faith be lost. But that doesn't mean we have to lose God. It means we must consider the fact that perhaps our idealized expectations are just plain wrong. With transparency about his own struggles with cynicism and doubt, pastor Luke Norsworthy helps frustrated Christians and skeptics trade their confinement of God in an anemic definition of good for confidence in the God who is present in everything, including our suffering. Luke Norsworthy (MDiv, Abilene Christian University) is the senior m

My guest is Chaim Saiman. His newest book is Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (https://www.amazon.com/Rabbinic-Idea-Law-Introduction-Halakhah/dp/069115211X). What does it mean for legal analysis to connect humans to God? Can spiritual teachings remain meaningful and at the same time rigidly codified? Can a modern state be governed by such law? Guiding readers across two millennia of richly illuminating perspectives, this book shows how halakhah is not just “law” but an entire way of thinking, being, and knowing. Though typically translated as “Jewish law,” the term halakhah is not an easy match for what is usually thought of as law. This is because the rabbinic legal system has rarely wielded the political power to enforce its many detailed rules, nor has it ever been the law of any state. Even more idiosyncratically, the talmudic rabbis claim that the study of halakhah is a holy endeavor that brings a person closer to God―a claim no country makes of its law. In this panoramic book, Chaim Saiman traces how

My guest is Joseph D. Small. How can we reconcile the ideal church described by theology with the broken church that we see in the world? In his newest book Joseph Small argues that the church’s true identity is known somewhere in the tension between the two. Small revisits familiar ecclesiological concepts—including the body of Christ, communion of saints, and people of God— but rather than focusing on theological abstractions or worldly cynicism, he evaluates the church in its scriptural, historical, theological, and social contexts. After stripping away the marketing and shallowness that characterizes much of contemporary church life, Small finds hope that the church’s faith, nature, and mission can be lived out within God’s calling. Both sociologically honest and theologically discerning, Flawed Church, Faithful God (https://www.amazon.com/Flawed-Church-Faithful-God-Ecclesiology/dp/0802876129) offers a constructive Reformed yet ecumenical ecclesiology for the real world. Special Guest: Joseph D. Small.

My guest is Martin Cohen. Doctors and nutritionists often disagree with each other, while celebrities and scientists keep pitching us new recipes and special diets. No one thought to ask the philosophers—those rational souls devoted to truth, ethics, and reason—what they think. Until now. That's the subject of Martin Cohen's newest book I Think, Therefore I Eat: The World's Greatest Minds Tackle The Food Question. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=books&linkCode=ur2&tag=turnepubli-20&keywords=9781684421985) Martin Cohen, BA, PGCE, PhD is a writer, editor and reviewer with an international reputation for explaining complex issues which cut across subject boundaries in a clear and entertaining way. He is a Visiting Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire (UK) as well as Editor of The Philosopher, one of the world’s oldest philosophical magazines with a tradition of writing "philosophy for all." He has also been a contributing writer for The Guardian

My guest is Andrew Bomback. His new book is Doctor (https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Object-Lessons-Andrew-Bomback/dp/150133817X). It begins with a 3-year-old who asks her physician father about his job, and his inability to provide a succinct and accurate answer inspires a critical look at the profession of modern medicine. In sorting through how patients, insurance companies, advertising agencies, filmmakers, and comedians misconstrue a doctor's role, Andrew Bomback, M.D., realizes that even doctors struggle to define their profession. As the author attempts to unravel how much of doctoring is role-playing, artifice, and bluffing, he examines the career of his father, a legendary pediatrician on the verge of retirement, and the health of his infant son, who is suffering from a vague assortment of gastrointestinal symptoms. At turns serious, comedic, analytical, and confessional, Doctor (https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Object-Lessons-Andrew-Bomback/dp/150133817X) offers an unflinching look at what it means to be

My guest is Brian VanDemark. His newest book Road to Disaster (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074SGPRZ4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)draws upon decades of archival research, his own interviews with many of those involved, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, who served as Defense Secretaries for Kennedy and Johnson. Yet beyond that, Road to Disaster (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074SGPRZ4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)is also the first history of the war to look at the cataclysmic decisions of those in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations through the prism of recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and organizational theory to explain why the "Best and the Brightest" became trapped in situations that suffocated creative thinking and willingness to dissent, why they found change so hard, and why they were so blind to their own errors. An epic history of America’s march to quagmire, Road to Disaster (https://www.amazon.com/d

My guest is Amy Julia Becker. Her new book White Picket Fences: Turning Toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B7R8ZB8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)welcomes us into her life, from the charm of her privileged southern childhood to her adult experience in the northeast, and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She shows how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects, and how it can prevent us from loving our neighbors well. White Picket Fences (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B7R8ZB8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) invites us to respond to privilege with generosity, humility, and hope. It opens us to questions we are afraid to ask, so that we can walk further from fear and closer to love, in all its fragile and mysterious possibilities. Special Guest: Amy Julia Becker.

My guests are Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley. They are the co-hosts of Why Theory (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/why-theory/id1299863834?mt=2), a podcast that brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomenon. Special Guests: Ryan Engley and Todd McGowan.

My guest is Jackson MacKenzie. Jackson MacKenzie has helped millions of people in their struggle to understand the experience of toxic relationships. His first book, Psychopath Free (https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Free-Expanded-Emotionally-Relationships/dp/0425279995/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0/144-8048193-9032432?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EZ5WWJ9YFJNZVV9QW85P), explained how to identify and survive the immediate situation. In Whole Again (https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Again-Rediscovering-Relationships-Emotional/dp/0143133314) he guides readers on what to do next–how to fully heal from abuse in order to find love and acceptance for the self and others. Through his close work with–and deep connection to–thousands of survivors of abusive relationships Jackson discovered that most survivors have symptoms of trauma long after the relationship is over. These range from feelings of numbness and emptiness to depression, perfectionism, substance abuse, and many more. But he’s also found that it is possible to work th

My guest is Simeon Zahl. He is University Lecturer in Christian Theology at the University of Cambridge. He recently wrote a piece in the Scottish Journal of Theology on the "use" of tradition in theology and what it reveals about the subjective life of the theologian (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/scottish-journal-of-theology/article/tradition-and-its-use-the-ethics-of-theological-retrieval/CD350251CF326E5A591AED6694FA8BC8/share/5817ecc6c7c844236ef8227b920756297aad46f5). Building on a close analysis of Martin Luther's distinction between the ‘substance’ of a thing and its ‘use’, the article makes a theological case for the importance of attending not just to what we retrieve from tradition, but also to how and why we retrieve it. Analysis of Luther's distinction suggests (1) that the meaning of theological claims remains unexpectedly fluid until such claims have been located within the ethical drama of ‘use’, and (2) that one of the best ways to get theological traction on the dynamics of ‘use’ is

My guest is Bradley W. Hart. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250148952/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0) exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250148952/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0) exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of these friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führ

My guest is David Shields. His new book Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention (https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Hates-Trump-More-Than/dp/1945796995), is perhaps the only genuinely original thing you have read yet about Donald Trump. It can be read in a variety of ways: as a psychological investigation of Trump, as a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power, as a satirical compilation of the “collected wit and wisdom of Donald Trump,” and above all as a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse—a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and sustains Trump. The book’s central thesis is that we have met the enemy and he is us. Who else but David Shields would make such an argument, let alone pull it off with such intelligence, brio, and wit, not to mention leaked off-air transcripts from Fox News? Special Guest: David Shields.

My guest is Cai Emmons. Her newest book, Weather Woman (https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Woman-Cai-Emmons/dp/1597096008/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537539428&sr=1-1&keywords=weather+women), is the story of meteorologist Bronwyn Artair who discovers she has the power to change the weather. Feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, 30-year-old Bronwyn drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist in Southern New Hampshire, much to the dismay of her female mentor, Diane Fenwick. When, after a year of living alone by the Swampscott River, enduring the indignities of her job, first neglected by her Boston boyfriend, then dumped, she discovers that her deep connection to the natural world has led her to an ability to affect natural forces. When she finally accepts that she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? How can she keep herself from being seen as a kook? And, most imp

My guest is Austin Fischer. Too often, our honest questions about faith are met with cold confidence and easy answers. But false certitude doesn't result in strong faith—it results in disillusionment, or worse, in a dogmatic, overweening faith unable to see itself or its object clearly. Even as a pastor, Austin Fischer has experienced the shadows of doubt and disillusionment. In Faith in the Shadows (https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Shadows-Finding-Christ-Midst/dp/0830845437), he leans into perennial questions about Christianity with raw and fearless integrity. He addresses contemporary science, the problem of evil, hell, God's silence, and other issues, offering not only fresh treatments of these questions but also a fresh paradigm for thinking about doubt itself. Doubt, Fischer contends, is no reason to leave the faith. Instead, it's an invitation to a more honest faith—a faith that's not in control, but that trusts more fully in its Lord. Austin Fischer is the lead pastor at Vista Community Church in Temple, T

My guest is David Quammen. In his new book The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life (https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Tree-Radical-History-Life/dp/1476776628), this nonpareil science writer explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature. In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field—the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level—is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection—a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen, “one of that rare breed of science journ

My guest is Alyshia Gálvez. In her gripping new book, Eating NAFTA: Trade Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico (https://www.amazon.com/Eating-NAFTA-Policies-Destruction-Mexico/dp/0520291816), Alyshia Gálvez exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico – sustenance. Mexicans are faced with a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participation over social welfare, and ideologies of self-care over public health. Trade agreements negotiated to improve lives have sometimes failed, resulting in unintended consequences for people’s everyday lives. Alyshia Gálvez is Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College of the City University of New York. She is the author of Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Immigrants _and _Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers: Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care, and t

For millennia, idleness and laziness have been regarded as vices. We're all expected to work to survive and get ahead, and devoting energy to anything but labor and self-improvement can seem like a luxury or a moral failure. Far from questioning this conventional wisdom, modern philosophers have worked hard to develop new reasons to denigrate idleness. In Idleness (https://www.amazon.com/Idleness-Philosophical-Essay-Brian-OConnor/dp/0691167524), the first book to challenge modern philosophy's portrayal of inactivity, Brian O'Connor argues that the case against an indifference to work and effort is flawed--and that idle aimlessness may instead allow for the highest form of freedom. O'Connor throws doubt on all these arguments, presenting a sympathetic vision of the inactive and unserious that draws on more productive ideas about idleness, from ancient Greece through Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Schiller and Marcuse's thoughts about the importance of play, and recent critiques of the cult of work. A t

My guest is Arjun Sethi. In his new book American Hate: Survivors Speak Out (https://www.amazon.com/American-Hate-Survivors-Speak-Out/dp/1620973715), he chronicles the stories of individuals affected by hate. In a series of powerful, unfiltered testimonials, survivors tell their stories in their own words and describe how the bigoted rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration have intensified bullying, discrimination, and even violence toward them and their communities. Arjun Singh Sethi is a community activist, civil rights lawyer, writer, and law professor based in Washington, DC. He works closely with Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh communities and advocates for racial justice, equity, and social change at both the local and the national levels. His writing has appeared in CNN Opinion, The Guardian, Politico magazine, USA Today, and the Washington Post, and he is featured regularly on national radio and television. He holds faculty appointments at Georgetown University Law Center and Vanderbilt