The Protestant Libertarian Podcast

In this episode I explore an easily-overlooked text with surprising political implications. In Romans 8:29-30, Paul claims that we were “predestined to become conformed to the Image of His Son” and that because of this will have been “glorified”. What does Paul mean? In her book Conformed to the Image of His Son, Dr. Haley Goranson Jacob argues that Paul is claiming believers are conformed to Jesus’s status and  function as the Son of God who rules over creation, and that our glorification denotes a sharing in that rule. She explains how ‘glory’ when applied to humans in the Greek Old Testament regularly denotes power, authority, and dominion, that the restoration of human glory is an important subtheme in Romans 5-8, and that the sharing in Christ’s inheritance which Paul articulates in Romans 8:12-17 is a participation in his rule. The language of ‘image’ in Romans 8:29 is evocative of Genesis 1 and Psalm 8, where humans are, as God’s image-bearers, given dominion over His creation, and since Jesus now rules are king over all creation his family, defined by faith and the Spirit, participate in that rule. The political implications are significant; I discuss how the church is God’s set-apart family and that we are given the task of and empowered to rule over creation, which we must do in conformity with the crucified Messiah. The church exercises political power, but the political power must be cruciform and congruent with Christ’s Messianic reign. I also discuss how passages like this should be brought into the conversation about the Bible and politics. 
 
Media Referenced:            
Ephesians 1 Episode: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-248-far-above-all-rule-and-authority-ephesians-115-23/
 
Philippians 2 Episode: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-248-far-above-all-rule-and-authority-ephesians-115-23/
 
Galatians 4 w/ Cody Cook: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-245-galatians-41-7-and-deliverance-from-this-evil-age-with-cody-cook/
 
Liberty and Authority: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-184-liberty-authority-and-the-political-spectrum/
 
 
The Protestant Libertarian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a part of the Christians For Liberty Network. The Libertarian Christian Institute can be found at www.libertarianchristians.com.
Questions, comments, suggestions? Please reach out to me at [email protected].  You can also follow the podcast on Twitter: @prolibertypod, and YouTube, @ProLibertyPod, where you will get shorts and other exclusive video content. For more about the show, you can go to theprotestantlibertarianpodcast.com. If you like the show and want to support it, you can! Go to libertarianchristians.com, where you can donate to LCI and buy The Protestant Libertarian Podcast Merch! Also, please consider giving me a star rating and leaving me a review, it really helps expand the show’s profile! Thanks!

In this first (official) installment of my semi-weekly ‘Theology Thursday’ series, I discuss how God enables us to overcome sin through the power of His Spirit. Reflecting on a recent sermon I heard from Matthew 5:27-30, in which Jesus equates lust with adultery and then instructs his audience to gouge out an eye or cut off a hand if it causes them to sin. While Jesus is obviously using hyperbole, he doesn’t in this passage explain precisely how one is to over the temptation of adultery (or any other sin). Fortunately, Paul fills in the gaps. Drawing on Romans 8, particularly 8:12-14, Paul says that it is the Spirit which enables us to put to death the deeds of the flesh. All throughout Romans Paul has drawn a parallel between sin and death, a Biblical theme reaching back to the Garden of Eden and paralleled in the covenant between God and Israel outlined in Deuteronomy 27-32. Sin necessarily leads to corruption and death, a point Paul repeatedly makes in Romans and necessitating, as Jesus implies, a surgical removal. Fortunately, those who place their faith in God’s Messiah Jesus are given the Spirit, which allows us to begin the process of resurrection in the present and overcome our sin-which-leads-to-death through the gracious, Spirit-enabled process of sanctification. We can and should work to overcome the corruption of sin and are, by God’s grace, enabled to do so through the power of the Spirit. 

The Protestant Libertarian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a part of the Christians For Liberty Network. The Libertarian Christian Institute can be found at www.libertarianchristians.com.
Questions, comments, suggestions? Please reach out to me at [email protected].  You can also follow the podcast on Twitter: @prolibertypod, and YouTube, @ProLibertyPod, where you will get shorts and other exclusive video content. For more about the show, you can go to theprotestantlibertarianpodcast.com. If you like the show and want to support it, you can! Go to libertarianchristians.com, where you can donate to LCI and buy The Protestant Libertarian Podcast Merch! Also, please consider giving me a st

In this episode I talk with economist Eric Schansberg about how Christians should think critically about public policy. We discuss how Christians often fail to reflect on their support for particular public policies and how our faith aligns with political and economic systems in the modern world. Schansberg explains how the Bible should shape our understanding of public policy, why there is often a discrepancy between political theory and practice, how Christians must always pursue Godly ends with Godly means, and how the function of secular law. He talks about how Christians should avoid legislating social morality and economic justice, the difference between those concepts and the poorly-defined ‘legislating morality’, how economic redistribution doesn’t work and welfare programs hurt the poor, and how believers can avoid the trap of falling into the left-right spectrum. 
 
Media Referenced:
Buy Turn Neither to the Left nor to the Right: https://furtherstillministries.org/product/turn-neither-to-the-right-nor-to-the-left/?v=0b3b97fa6688 
Gen Men Interview: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-234-biblical-masculinity-and-the-men-of-genesis-with-eric-schansberg/
College 101 Book: https://www.amazon.com/College-101-Students-Parents-Universities-ebook/dp/B0FLW6KB83
 
The Protestant Libertarian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a part of the Christians For Liberty Network. The Libertarian Christian Institute can be found at www.libertarianchristians.com.
Questions, comments, suggestions? Please reach out to me at [email protected].  You can also follow the podcast on Twitter: @prolibertypod, and YouTube, @ProLibertyPod, where you will get shorts and other exclusive video content. For more about the show, you can go to theprotestantlibertarianpodcast.com. If you like the show and want to support it, you can! Go to libertarianchristians.com, where you can donate to LCI and buy The Protestant Libertarian Podcast Merch! Also, please consider giving me a star rating and leaving me a review, it really helps expand the show’s profile! Thanks!

In this episode I address the popular misconception that the apostle Paul, formerly Saul, was personally responsible for the killing of Christians before his Damascus Road experience. In popular Christian imagination, Paul was the ‘persecutor and killer’ of Christians before his dramatic encounter with the risen Jesus. While Paul did indeed viciously persecute the church, there is no New Testament evidence that any believer actually died by Paul’s hand. I look at all the New Testament texts which address Paul’s pre-Damascus attitude towards believers. In Acts, he endorses the killing of Stephen, binds and imprisons Christians, and even breathes threats of murder against them, but is never portrayed as doing the deed himself. The Roman provincial system left capital punishment, known as the ‘imperium’, in the hands of Roman rulers, and extrajudicial lynchings such as happened to Stephen were dangerous for local political leaders because they could draw the ire of Rome. Paul was too smart to play into that trap. Paul refers to himself as a zealous defender of Judaism in Galatians 1 and Philippians 3, and I explore the traditions of ‘zeal’ and “Judaism’ as a willingness to commit violence to defend Israel’s ancestral traditions, demonstrating that while Paul fit into that framework it did not result in the direct murder of believers by his hand before Damascus. I hope this episode helps dispel a popular myth about Paul and sets the record straight. 
 
Media Referenced:
Biography of Paul with Frank Thielman interview: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-202-paul-apostle-of-grace-with-frank-thielman/
 
 
The Protestant Libertarian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a part of the Christians For Liberty Network. The Libertarian Christian Institute can be found at www.libertarianchristians.com.
 
Questions, comments, suggestions? Please reach out to me at [email protected].  You can also follow the podcast on Twitter: @prolibertypod, and YouTube, @ProLibertyPod, where you will get shorts and other exclusive video content. For more about the show, you can go to theprotestantlibertarianpodcast.com. If you like the show and want to support it, you can! Go to libertarianchristians.com, where you can donate to LCI and buy The Protestant Libertarian Podcast Merch! Also, please consider giving me a star rating and leaving me a review, it really helps expand the show’s profile! Thanks!

In this episode I discuss how the covenant God made with Israel in the Old Testament was a form of an ancient Near Eastern suzerain-vassal treaty. Building from the fantastic work of Sandra Richter’s ‘Epic of Eden’ book, a suzerain vassal treaty is one in which a king or imperial power, the suzerain, makes a treaty with a lesser kingdom or people, the vassal. They are asymmetrical in the sense that the suzerain clearly holds the power but also reciprocal in that both parties are contractually obligated to one another. Generally, the vassal offers loyalty and taxes to the suzerain while the suzerain grants military protection in peace. Seen in this light, the covenant God makes with Israel depicts him as the rightful king, and in the climax of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy 27-32, the blessings and curses of covenant faithfulness are laid out clearly. If vassal Israel honors suzerain YHWH by obeying His Law, God will bless Israel, keep them safe and well-fed in the land, protect them from outsiders, and allow them to be a light to the pagan nations. If Israel breaks covenant, God will withhold his protection. This logic, found already in the giving of the Decalogue in Exodus 19-24 and Leviticus 26, can be understood through the framework of suzerain-vassal treaty, depicting God as the true king. For Christians seeking to derive political principles from the Old Testament, this is one important aspect of ancient thought to consider. 
 
Media Referenced:
Epic of Eden: https://a.co/d/0hZfe5ZZ
Dru Johnson on OT Politics: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-263-the-torah-the-old-testament-and-christian-politics-with-dru-johnson/
 
The Protestant Libertarian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a part of the Christians For Liberty Network. The Libertarian Christian Institute can be found at www.libertarianchristians.com.
Questions, comments, suggestions? Please reach out to me at [email protected].  You can also follow the podcast on Twitter: @prolibertypod, and YouTube, @ProLibertyPod, where you will get shorts and other exclusive video content. For more about the show, you can go to theprotestantlibertarianpodcast.com. If you like the show and want to support it, you can! Go to libertarianchristians.com, where you can donate to LCI and buy The Protestant Libertarian Podcast Merch! Also, please consider giving me a star rating and leaving me a review, it really helps expand the show’s profile! Thanks!