Gospel Conversations podcast

This is the third in Ben Myer’s wonderful series on the thinking of the early church fathers. This talk examines their view on the burning question of discipleship - what does it mean to follow Christ in how we live particularly in the public square? Ben’s first talk covered their view of salvation - and how they did not have a ‘penal substitution’ model of redemption. His second talk covered their view of the inner life - how we live righteously in our souls and thoughts. So this talk moves to the vexed place of the public square - how do Christians participate in the ‘world’ (or not).
This talk is in a sense ‘unfinished’ - as Ben says, they never got to a simple clear position and there were conflicting positions on this question. What I found illuminating and relevant to us, is that how they confronted this question varied according to the changing circumstances in which they found themselves. So our lesson would be that we have the same task - understand our circumstances and then work out how our faith should work out in today’s world.
Ben finishes with St Augustine’s ‘City of God’ where Augustine developed the theory of our ‘double citizenship’ in two very different kingdoms. And Ben laments how later centuries turned some of this thinking into forms of ‘Christian nationalism’. Finding God or the echoes of the divine in the public square is a vital concern for us all - and particularly relevant as we realise the Christ is Lord of the cosmos not just individual lives. In fact, his Lordship was expressed in very political terms for the first century church - something that Edwin Judge and Mark Strom have stressed in previous talks.
So this is challenging topic and one for which there are probably no easy answers. But Ben’s talk gives us a great perspective to think it through. This year we will be following a ‘so what’ theme in Gospel Conversations - ie what are the ‘so what's for the Creation Gospel so this talk is a great door opener for our year.
Our next talk will address the question of evangelism and how we frame the ‘creation gospel’. I will give this talk and it will focus on our ‘theory of sin’ - a vital topic. I will critique the dominant mental model of sin (or at least the one I grew up with as an evangelical) and offer what I think is a much richer and more biblical model of what this critical thing called ‘sin’ means.



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Welcome to our final conversation with John Behr on Maximus. Alongside this episode you’ll find the handouts John distributed — well worth having open as you listen, as he works through them closely and the text repays careful attention.
If you haven’t already, we’d also recommend starting with the recent introductory episode, where the grand themes of this series are laid out.

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If you are about to embark on an important meal, it is nice to begin with some antipasto. Well this talk is my ‘antipasto’ for John Behr’s final talk on Maximus, the third of the great Church Fathers whose theology he has summarised for us. This talk is about thirty minutes long, and is my attempt to offer a ‘Plain English’ paraphrase of both John and Maximus. Make no mistake - we have two great minds at work here - John Behr and Maximus, and we are watching them in dialogue with each other.
I just want to say what a privilege it has been to have John join us on Gospel Conversations as he is the leading scholar on the Church Fathers - but he is more than a scholar, he is a philosopher and a theologian. And more than that he is pastoral - as challenging as his material is, he always wants it to change our lives. And studying these profound thinkers has certainly had that effect on me.
You see, I think we need a big God and a big story to confront the modern world - and by that I include the modern world in our hearts and minds. We are really stuck in a materialist paradigm courtesy of the Enlightenment which has systematically robbed creation of its mystery and its magic. In a very real way, Maximus puts all the mystery back and he goes further, he reimagines all of creation as the ‘big idea’ of God. If you read Maximus through the lens of the new physics, he actually appears very modern.
But Maximus does something else - he puts ‘humanity’ right back at the centre of creation, and the model of humanity he takes is Christ. (By the way, ‘humanity’ or imago dei is the theme of my current doctorate - and John suggested to me that I make the final chapter on the text of Maximus that he discusses in this talk - ie Ambiguum 41).
So my summary will help you absorb John’s talk. Make no mistake, it is a paradigm shifting talk, and that is why a summary to get your mind ready, or an ‘antipasto’ to whet your appetite is helpful for the ‘digestion’. You will see that I centre my introduction around a comparison of how Maximus’ gospel reframes and contrasts with the way we often hear the gospel today. Basically he moves it from a law court scenario to a cosmic scenario.
Enjoy, and thanks for your support. We will post John’s talk in a week or so after my introduction.


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In this talk I give an overview of our upcoming topics for the year.
The ‘creation gospel’ is exciting - but what are the ‘so what's’? This is the theme we want to explore together in 2026, and in this short talk I give a snapshot of our agenda and topics. The monthly talks will come in ‘couplets’ - one at the St James Institute in the city of Sydney, and the second one more intimately at our home. Both will be ‘salons’ or ‘forums’ where we EXPLORE rather than pontificate.
There are six main topics. Here they are ….

* Creation gospel - core principles (including ‘new’ evangelism)
* AI and the ‘image of God’ - what does it mean to be a human being?
* Voice of women in theology through the centuries
* How to read the Bible? “Inerrant” or ‘Inspired’?
* Mental health and religion - why we need dialogue not dogma
* Violence in the OT (Greg Boyd)
And like an informal domestic drumbeat underneath, we will revive the ‘Breakfast with Jesus’ channel - reflections on books of the Bible based on the morning conversations between Anne and I. And in keeping with our theme of honouring women - Anne might join in to keep me honest… and tie my philosophy to the real world.
God bless you,
Tony
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Welcome to 2026 and as promised here is John Behr’s talk on Gregory of Nyssa and his view of what it means to be a human being. I gave an extended introduction to this talk at the end of year, and sorry there has been a lapse of time between that and this talk I was introducing…. a thing called ‘Christmas’ intervened.
Anyway, to refresh our minds. This is the third talk John gave at our Gospel Conversations conference in 2025. The theme of them all is the Patristic vision of what it means to be a human being (the last talk was on Irenaeus). Both Irenaeus and Gregory thought about humanity not just in terms of salvation from sin, but more broadly in terms of what is the role of humanity in the creation? One of the problems with the sin-based view of redemption is that it begs this question - why did God create humanity in the first place? That is where Gregory’s mind goes, and thankfully Gregory had a profound and godly mind to help us answer that question!
When I interviewed David Bentley Hart on Gregory, he claimed that he was the most innovative theologian of the Patristics world (a big prize given the competition!!) and it was around exactly the point of this talk that David made that claim. It takes a bit to wrap your head around… (or at least that is my experience) largely because in our modern theology we don’t ponder the problem that they pondered. For us the problem is the problem of sin - how can a holy God save sinners? But that was not the primary problem of the Patristic thinkers - rather it was the ‘creational’ problem of how can a divine - ie unchanging - God relate to a created - ie changing - creation? This is not just a philosophical problem - it gets to the angst of life today. We are bound on a wheel of change and this change makes meaning hard to find. Where is the ‘still point of the turning world’??? Hopkins captures the poignancy of the problem best in his painful lines on the ephemeral nature of beauty…. (‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’)
‘How to keep - is there any, any, is there none'Such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keepBack beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty …from vanishing away?
Gregory’s stunning answer to this dilemma, according to David, was to see in humanity’s very ‘changeability’ the terms of our ultimate destiny with the divine. Somehow we are called to link the changing with the unchanging - and to take changing ‘nature’ with us! It is this paradox that John untangles in this talk. so it is a golden treasure of a talk. I know of no-one more qualified than John to help us dive into this.
And to tease you further, I think this is theme of Ecclesiastes… (Anne and I are studying it at present using Iain Provan’s profound commentary - so I may include a talk or two on this later in the year).


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