Gospel Conversations podcast

Tony Golsby-Smith
  • 4.6 (24)
  • CHRISTIANITY
  • UPDATED MONTHLY

Gospel Conversations takes a creative approach to attaining a deeper understanding of the gospel and what it means to us today. Our speakers are not ministers, but range from a diverse community of Christian thinkers who lead their various fields of knowledge in history, design thinking, theology, philosophy, and organisational leadership—among others. Each month we host a live event in Sydney, then publish it as a podcast. gospelconversations.substack.com

  1. Maximus - the Mt Everest of Patristic Theology

    4D AGO

    Maximus - the Mt Everest of Patristic Theology

    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. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

    32 min

  2. FEB 11

    The Creation Gospel - So What & What Next?

    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 Gospel Conversations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

    32 min
  3. John Behr on Gregory's Stunning Vision of Humanity and the Divine

    JAN 13

    John Behr on Gregory's Stunning Vision of Humanity and the Divine

    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). Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 29m
  4. A New Conception of Humanity: Introducing Gregory of Nyssa

    12/08/2025

    A New Conception of Humanity: Introducing Gregory of Nyssa

    This is an introduction that became a stand alone little talk. Why? Because John’s talk on Gregory at our conference was mind- bending - but hard to follow. No fault of John’s - he was trying to condense two profound thinkers (Plato and Gregory) into a one hour talk! So I worked hard to crystallise the main themes in ‘simple Plain English’ terms - so that it can provide a runway for you into John’s actual talk which we will publish shortly. First up I explain simply just why Gregory used Plato as a platform to communicate the ‘imago dei’ gospel - and what we can learn from that. He and his colleagues had very open minds and were able to recognise the ‘eternity’ in the hearts of ‘pagan’ philosophers like Plato, much like Paul did on Mars Hill in Acts 17. I think that is a big lesson for the church today. Then I dive into the major theme of Gregory’s work according to John. Gregory’s question is the profound Psalm 8 question - ‘What is a human being?’ His answer takes up the whole of his majestic work, ‘On the Making of Man’, and John’s talk unpacks that answer. It is an answer, according to both John and David Hart, that is ‘mind-blowing’ and that offered the world a new conception of humanity ‘in the image of God’. I try to give you the big picture of that answer in this talk. I finish off with a summary of the flow of John’s talk - how he has arranged the talk and the sequence he follows. John is an old finished ‘literature’ teacher so he uses the text (which he translated) a lot - and when we publish John’s actual talk in coming days we will also upload a copy of his handouts for everybody to download. Gospel Conversations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

    42 min
  5. John Behr - Why didn't God create us perfect?

    11/05/2025

    John Behr - Why didn't God create us perfect?

    This is our second talk in John Behr’s series on the Church Fathers. This talk outlines the ‘wild’ world of how Irenaeus of Lyon (around 170 AD) saw the Gospel - not as a rescue mission but as a plan for humanity to share in the ‘uncreated’ life of God. In case you don’t know already, Irenaeus was Bishop of Lyons in France, just after it suffered terrible persecutions. He was a disciple of Polycarp, who was in turn a disciple of John. So that makes Irenaeus a ‘grandson’ of John. Some of my theological friends rate him the greatest theologian of all…. at least he is in the top ten!! This talk is a bit mind-bending, but then again so is the topic of ‘God’ and ‘creation’ and that is where Irenaeus starts his thinking. He begins with time - and why God created time as a necessary framework for us humans to dwell in. Along the way, he confronts really modern questions such as our title - Why did God not just create us all perfect and skip over the problems of sin and conflict? Why allow all this mess to happen? The big idea that will organise all of Irenaeus’ theology is GROWTH. And not just any kind of growth but growth on the part of humanity towards participation in the divine and uncreated life of God. Clearly we are not just getting an academic summary from John here - we are getting a meeting of minds across two thousand years, with John Behr in dialogue with Irenaeus. And John is inviting us to join the dialogue. As before I have crafted an introduction that gives a short overview of the big ideas as a coat hanger to help you absorb the sheer profundity of these ideas. Gospel Conversations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

    53 min
  6. John Behr - Was Adam created 'perfect'?

    10/20/2025

    John Behr - Was Adam created 'perfect'?

    I can remember lots of times when Christians have speculated about whether salvation means returning to the ‘perfect’ state of Adam before the Fall - or do we go one better and somehow improve on the first Adam? This talk by John Behr demolishes that whole worldview…. It is the first in a series of four talks that John Behr gave at our recent Gospel Conversations conference. In this talk John introduces us to the radical way the Church Fathers thought about the gospel - and how they read the Scriptures. Of course for them, the ‘Scriptures’ meant what we call the Old Testament. John’s stuff is paradigm shifting - that means it is clearly explained but conceptually challenging. He is inviting us to stand on the shoulders of these early church fathers and think like them. So I have added a short ten minute introduction to this talk to give you an overview of the big idea in summary. I think that will help you absorb the guts of what John has to say. As you know, John and David Bentley Hart, admire each other’s thinking - and they are both very innovative. But they have something else in common - both of them have had their OWN paradigms shifted by the deep translation work they have done on early Christian literature. David translated the New Testament, and John has translated the Church Fathers. Both of them have told me how that task has changed the way they think, because they had to get inside the minds and paradigms of the early church writers. And in so doing they found that they thought rather differently to how we do about the gospel. And, unsurprisingly, they thought in rather larger terms than we do about the gospel. All of that makes these talks very expansionary of both our faith and our understanding. Gospel Conversations is a reader-supported publication. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 7m
  7. David Bentley Hart on his Revolutionary Translation of Romans 5:12

    09/24/2025

    David Bentley Hart on his Revolutionary Translation of Romans 5:12

    As promised here is the concluding section of my conversation with David exploring the meaning of the word ‘sin’. In this conclusion we do a deep dive into the text of Romans 5:12 - a pivotal verse for the concept of ‘original sin’ - and David explains how his completely different translation changes the traditional meaning significantly. The traditional meaning is that we all sinned ‘in Adam’ and as a result of that death followed. David’s translation turns that around and implies that it was death that initiated the contagion of sin. It is a good idea to have the text open as you listen, as the discussion is detailed and grammatical. It is not really that difficult as it all hinges on how you translate the Greek preposition ‘epi’ in this context. Talk about a pivot! David explains how the Latin text misled people for centuries, and cemented a distorted interpretation of original sin. Along the way I ask David about one of my bugbears with most translations - including the NIV - which is the gratuitous translation ‘wrath of God’ a few verses earlier. Some of you may know that there is NO ‘of God’ in the Greek - it was just stuffed in to make the point clear!?! It is a crystal clear case of retro-fitting a modern theology back onto the original text. Simply indefensible as far as I am concerned - so I was interested to hear David’s view. I think this series is David at his best. Taken together it is a very coherent and biblical picture of what ‘sin’ means - how to take it seriously but also how to position the specifics of the Christian argument. ‘Sin’ is a crucial aspect of the Christian worldview - and a very necessary one - as it addresses the problem of evil in the world which everyone is concerned about. So it is vital that we get our thinking clear on this matter and not let stereotypes overtake our thoughts. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

    45 min

  8. 09/04/2025

    David Bentley Hart on 'Original sin' Part 1

    “Original sin” is - apparently - one of the bedrock doctrines of Christianity. But what exactly does it mean? This is how I began this discussion with David. Our main focus was Romans 5 and in particular verse 12 - the main ‘proof text’ for the doctrine of original sin. But before we got down into the details of that verse - we started with the big picture. What does ‘original sin’ mean? And in particular in what ways has it veered off into a rather dark and guilt-ridden picture of the human condition? This discussion is so important that I decided to split the discussion in two. This one is the first half and covers the big picture. The next one will dive down into the radically different translation that David has offered of this verse - a translation that shifts the game significantly. Frankly most Christians have no real ‘theory’ of sin and instead just rely on murky ideas that make them susceptible to manipulation and fears. This talk really clears the ground of this murkiness. David lays out two competing ideas of ‘original sin’ - and we discuss how the 'dark’ view prevailed to become the dominant - but wrong - view. A couple of points that we mention in this discussion that you might want to look up. At one point we mention some of our favourite Thomas Hardy poems but we both struggled to remember their titles. One was ‘The Man He Killed’ and the other was the group of poignant poems Hardy wrote in memory of his dead wife Emma. They are called simply ‘Poems 1912-1913; Veteris Vestigia flammae’ or vestiges of an old flame. She died suddenly and they were slightly estranged when she died - so he had had no opportunity to say goodbye - hence he said goodbye in these heart wrenching poems. We also reference the esteemed Greek classical dictionary by Liddell and Scott - but I got confused for a moment with the epic histories of the First and Second World Wars by Sir Basil Liddel Hart…. and finally we both confessed our admiration for George Eliot’s Middlemarch - surely a candidate for greatest English language novel of all time - and in particular the agonising scene where the idealist young doctor, Lydgate, sells his soul and votes for the dark forces of commerce that he has spent his life contesting. All part of our discussion of the ‘system of sin and death’ in which we are all encumbered. As you will find in this talk, David and I focus on ‘death’ as the great enemy of humanity not just ‘sin’. Hardy’s poems on the death of his wife, capture the emptiness of death and how it robs us of relationship. If you have never read them, try this poignant opening verse from ‘The Going’… “Why did you give no hint that nightThat quickly after the morrow’s dawn,And calmly, as if indifferent quite,You would close your term here, up and be goneWhere I could not followWith wing of swallowTo gain one glimpse of you ever anon!” _  In a few days time, we'll post the second half of this interview. We'll dive down into the text of Romans five, verse 12 in particular. Gospel Conversations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

    29 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
24 Ratings

About

Gospel Conversations takes a creative approach to attaining a deeper understanding of the gospel and what it means to us today. Our speakers are not ministers, but range from a diverse community of Christian thinkers who lead their various fields of knowledge in history, design thinking, theology, philosophy, and organisational leadership—among others. Each month we host a live event in Sydney, then publish it as a podcast. gospelconversations.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Tony Golsby-Smith
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2026
  • Episodes
    213
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Tony Golsby-Smith
  • Show Website
    Gospel Conversations podcast

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