The Fall: Bad actor theory, a malevolent voice in the Garden, Total Depravity and Original Sin, and the ‘Christian heresy’ of liberal humanism
Playback speed
Creation. Fall. Redemption. New Creation. This is the grand narrative of scripture and the theological foundation we use to try to probe into the ethical challenges thrown up by advances in science and technology. We looked at creation in September, and now we’ve come to the Fall. What is the uniquely Christian approach to the nature of evil in our world, and how does it stand in sharp contrast to our secular society’s presumptions? Are people really fundamentally just good or all bad, and what are the shortcomings of that reductionist approach? And how does the Christian story about evil lead us to be both more pessimistic and more optimistic than the world is about humanity?
- Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
- If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
- For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
Released on 1 Nov 2023
Coming up next
Friendship 3: Ruth and Naomi, ‘chesed’, trips to the theatre with John Stott, and an unorthodox rabbi
We last tackled the idea of friendship when we explored the so-called ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ – that cloud of concern that today hangs over any close relationship between two people. But friendship in the Bible was not inevitably corrupted by sex,...
Q&A: The ‘myths’ leading women to choose abortion, and is digital slavery underpinning breakthroughs in AI?
This week we dip back into the postbag to look at some more listener questions. First up we return to our episode looking at recent shifts in abortion rates – is the narrative of ‘it’s my body and I’ll do what I want’ what is truly driving increase...
Science and religion 1: The myth of conflict, Charles Darwin’s beetle research, epistemic humility, and English country churchyard or Californian fridge?
This week’s guest is Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the faith thinktank Theos, and recent author of Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and religion. Nick joins us to discuss the complicated backstory to how we all came to believe science...