Is "Cultural Christianity" a bridge to the gospel — or a counterfeit that replaces it? In this episode, Dr. James Spencer (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) and Dr. Ashish Varma respond to James Wood's widely-discussed First Things article, In Defense of Cultural Christianity. Together they unpack why calling a civilisation "Christian" when Christ is not its governing authority is not just imprecise — it's theologically catastrophic.

From the Christendom narrative and American civil religion to the habituation of virtue, abortion statistics, and a profound meditation on Pentecost in Acts 2, this episode models what serious Christian thinking looks like when it refuses to foreclose on the full authority of Jesus Christ too soon.

If you've wrestled with Christian nationalism, the "good, true, and beautiful" in culture, or what it means to vote as a follower of Jesus, this conversation is essential listening.

Key Takeaways:
Why "a culture influenced by Christianity" is an insufficient — and potentially dangerous — definition of "Christian culture"
The concept of "inappropriate foreclosure": closing off our understanding of the good too soon and using that partial view as if it were complete
How Robert Bellah's concept of American civil religion explains why Christian language gets co-opted by government without actually conforming people to Christ
Why the Book of Acts — specifically Pentecost and the Gentile inclusion — fundamentally disrupts any vision of Christianity as a singular cultural program
The Light Bright metaphor: God is the light source; culture is the peg pattern. Christians must point people behind the pegs to the light itself
Why policy-driven virtue formation (habituation) has measurable real-world limits — and what the abortion statistics during different administrations actually reveal
How Dr. Varma's personal experiences — from campus life on 9/11 to being randomly selected in airports — illustrate why Wood's "civilisational benefit" narrative forecloses on the experiences of many believers

Get early access and a bonus with aPatreon membership.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on Christianity.com.

📢 Stay Connected & Keep Growing!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian, so you never miss an insightful conversation!

Is "Cultural Christianity" a bridge to the gospel &mdash; or a counterfeit that replaces it? In this episode, Dr. James Spencer (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) and Dr. Ashish Varma respond to James Wood's widely-discussed First Things article, In Defense of Cultural Christianity. Together they unpack why calling a civilisation "Christian" when Christ is not its governing authority is not just imprecise &mdash; it's theologically catastrophic.
From the Christendom narrative and American civil religion to the habituation of virtue, abortion statistics, and a profound meditation on Pentecost in Acts 2, this episode models what serious Christian thinking looks like when it refuses to foreclose on the full authority of Jesus Christ too soon.
If you've wrestled with Christian nationalism, the "good, true, and beautiful" in culture, or what it means to vote as a follower of Jesus, this conversation is essential listening.
Key Takeaways:
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Why "a culture influenced by Christianity" is an insufficient &mdash; and potentially dangerous &mdash; definition of "Christian culture"</li>
<li aria-level="1">The concept of "inappropriate foreclosure": closing off our understanding of the good too soon and using that partial view as if it were complete</li>
<li aria-level="1">How Robert Bellah's concept of American civil religion explains why Christian language gets co-opted by government without actually conforming people to Christ</li>
<li aria-level="1">Why the Book of Acts &mdash; specifically Pentecost and the Gentile inclusion &mdash; fundamentally disrupts any vision of Christianity as a singular cultural program</li>
<li aria-level="1">The Light Bright metaphor: God is the light source; culture is the peg pattern. Christians must point people behind the pegs to the light itself</li>
<li aria-level="1">Why policy-driven virtue formation (habituation) has measurable real-world limits &mdash; and what the abortion statistics during different administrations actually reveal</li>
<li aria-level="1">How Dr. Varma's personal experiences &mdash; from campus life on 9/11 to being randomly selected in airports &mdash; illustrate why Wood's "civilisational benefit" narrative forecloses on the experiences of many believers</li>
</ul>
Get early access and a bonus with a <a href="https://www.patreon.com/c/thinkingchristian/membership">Patreon membership</a>.
Subscribe to our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Useful_toGod">YouTube channel</a>
To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on <a href="https://www.christianity.com/author/james-spencer/">Christianity.com</a>.
📢 Stay Connected &amp; Keep Growing!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian, so you never miss an insightful conversation!

Christians shouldn’t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.

Find more from James at https://www.thinkingchristian.org/.

Christians shouldn&rsquo;t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.
Find more from James at <a href="https://www.thinkingchristian.org/">https://www.thinkingchristian.org/</a>.

Christians shouldn’t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.

Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World

Christians shouldn&rsquo;t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.
Find more from James at <a href="https://www.thinkingchristian.org/">https://www.thinkingchristian.org/</a>.

Can a nation be "Christian" without Christ?

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/5e27a451-e6e6-4c51-aa03-a7370003783c/clips/f3b9f3ed-e23c-42e7-be25-b46500aa21e6/transcript

The fear of losing the faith to another culture is producing the very thing it fears. Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma open a series on three forces pressing on the church, beginning with assimilation, and Varma's argument is that syncretism functions mostly as a fear discourse. The word gets aimed outward, at newer expressions of Christian faith in other places, by people whose own expression is so culturally saturated that they have stopped noticing it. He points out that "essence," the thing we say we are protecting, is a Greek philosophical category rather than a biblical one.

His illustration is an apple. American students arriving in Germany recognize the fruit and still find it strange, because the apple in their heads is large, waxed, and unblemished, and a German student had the same reaction in reverse. The dandelion has a flower and we call it a weed. Every category came from somewhere. Spencer supplies the Old Testament counterweight: what scholars call syncretism there is specific and it is always about Yahweh. Israel does not swap gods so much as limit the one they have, keeping him for agriculture and hiring another for war, and the distortion becomes a denial.

That distinction lets the conversation move without collapsing. Acts 2 puts the gospel into every dialect at once, and Acts 15 declines to make Gentiles into Jews. Varma, whose family is Indian, describes a mission history in which merchant, soldier, and missionary arrived together and in which becoming Christian meant becoming less Indian. He asks what an Indian Christian should do with Diwali, a festival about light overcoming darkness in which a god enters a demon's kingdom to rescue his bride, and offers the reception of Christmas in the Roman world as his analogy. His word for the move is not conform but transfigure. Spencer's is relocation under a different authority. Both insist on a constraint: Jesus the Jewish Messiah, which they argue is what makes the openness possible rather than what limits it.

Chapters

0:00 Three forces on the church

1:33 Syncretism as a fear discourse

4:26 A German breakfast

6:09 What an apple looks like

7:51 Where the image came from

8:48 Why is that a weed?

9:43 Essence is not a biblical word

10:40 Syncretism in the Old Testament

13:04 Naming it in someone else

16:10 Acts 2 and every dialect

18:11 What was actually at stake

20:00 Mission history in India

21:42 Diwali and light over darkness

22:41 How Christmas landed on the 25th

24:14 Distortion becomes denial

26:11 Relocated under Christ

29:58 Transfigured, not conformed

30:12 Distinction through proximity

34:28 Were Israel's laws more just?

38:13 What actually made Israel different

42:18 Assimilation as the result of fear

45:03 The Jerusalem council

46:31 Glitter and what we miss

51:04 The litmus test

55:22 Constraints that enable

Resources

Download the Study Guide at https://www.thinkingchristian.org/about/framework 

Varma's essays on Diwali and Indian Christian identity: Substack 

The Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology

Passages referenced: Deuteronomy 4 and 6, Daniel 1, Acts 2 and 7 and 15, Philippians 1

Follow and subscribe

Subscribe to Thinking Christian: https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org 

Website: www.thinkingchristian.org 

 

The fear of losing the faith to another culture is producing the very thing it fears. Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma open a series on three forces pressing on the church, beginning with assimilation, and Varma's argument is that syncretism functions mostly as a fear discourse. The word gets aimed outward, at newer expressions of Christian faith in other places, by people whose own expression is so culturally saturated that they have stopped noticing it. He points out that "essence," the thing we say we are protecting, is a Greek philosophical category rather than a biblical one.
His illustration is an apple. American students arriving in Germany recognize the fruit and still find it strange, because the apple in their heads is large, waxed, and unblemished, and a German student had the same reaction in reverse. The dandelion has a flower and we call it a weed. Every category came from somewhere. Spencer supplies the Old Testament counterweight: what scholars call syncretism there is specific and it is always about Yahweh. Israel does not swap gods so much as limit the one they have, keeping him for agriculture and hiring another for war, and the distortion becomes a denial.
That distinction lets the conversation move without collapsing. Acts 2 puts the gospel into every dialect at once, and Acts 15 declines to make Gentiles into Jews. Varma, whose family is Indian, describes a mission history in which merchant, soldier, and missionary arrived together and in which becoming Christian meant becoming less Indian. He asks what an Indian Christian should do with Diwali, a festival about light overcoming darkness in which a god enters a demon's kingdom to rescue his bride, and offers the reception of Christmas in the Roman world as his analogy. His word for the move is not conform but transfigure. Spencer's is relocation under a different authority. Both insist on a constraint: Jesus the Jewish Messiah, which they argue is what makes the openness possible rather than what limits it.
Chapters
0:00 Three forces on the church
1:33 Syncretism as a fear discourse
4:26 A German breakfast
6:09 What an apple looks like
7:51 Where the image came from
8:48 Why is that a weed?
9:43 Essence is not a biblical word
10:40 Syncretism in the Old Testament
13:04 Naming it in someone else
16:10 Acts 2 and every dialect
18:11 What was actually at stake
20:00 Mission history in India
21:42 Diwali and light over darkness
22:41 How Christmas landed on the 25th
24:14 Distortion becomes denial
26:11 Relocated under Christ
29:58 Transfigured, not conformed
30:12 Distinction through proximity
34:28 Were Israel's laws more just?
38:13 What actually made Israel different
42:18 Assimilation as the result of fear
45:03 The Jerusalem council
46:31 Glitter and what we miss
51:04 The litmus test
55:22 Constraints that enable
Resources
Download the Study Guide at <a href="https://www.thinkingchristian.org/about/framework">https://www.thinkingchristian.org/about/framework</a>&nbsp;
Varma's essays on Diwali and Indian Christian identity: <a href="https://caacptsem.substack.com/p/festival-of-lights">Substack</a>&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.spostst.org">The Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology</a>
Passages referenced: Deuteronomy 4 and 6, Daniel 1, Acts 2 and 7 and 15, Philippians 1
Follow and subscribe
Subscribe to Thinking Christian: <a href="https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org">https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org</a>&nbsp;
Website: <a href="https://www.thinkingchristian.org">www.thinkingchristian.org</a>&nbsp;
&nbsp;

The Fear Of Syncretism Is Making The Church Assimilate

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/5e27a451-e6e6-4c51-aa03-a7370003783c/clips/20b7bc1e-af73-4751-94a5-b49e014602bd/transcript

The usual complaint about the New Testament's use of the Old is that the apostles play fast and loose. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer thinks the problem runs the other direction. The Old Testament has gone missing from the research, and once you cut it off, ordinary exegetical moves start looking bizarre. Second Temple interpreters and the New Testament authors resemble each other because they were both apprenticed to the same thousand years of Old Testament authors interpreting earlier Old Testament texts.

In this episode, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Schnittjer work through what he calls vertical context. Scholarship attends to the paragraph and chapter around a quoted verse. What gets skipped is the depth beneath it. More than eighty times, the New Testament cites an Old Testament text that is already citing something older. Zechariah's king on a donkey reaches back to the blessing of Judah in Genesis 49, blended with Isaiah 62, and by the time the gospel writers use it, the donkey is carrying a great deal more than a rider. Hebrews turns out to be interested in Torah almost everywhere while quoting Torah almost nowhere, working instead through Psalm 8, Psalm 95, Psalm 110, and Jeremiah.

They also take up fulfillment, which in English carries a prediction-and-payoff sense the Hebrew does not require. Matthew's formula comes off the same plane as 2 Chronicles 36, where fulfilling a word means enacting it into reality rather than clocking a duration. That reframes the hard cases. Hosea 11 contains no prediction at all, but Hosea himself reads Jacob's life forward typologically, so Matthew is reading Hosea the way Hosea reads Scripture. The conversation closes on why this is not a license for interpretive improvisation. Dr. Schnittjer argues for plain sense exegesis throughout, which means reading each author with the grain rather than imposing a modern logic and calling it faithfulness.

Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at Carpenter's Student.

This is the final episode in our four-part conversation and the second of two on the parallel layout project.

Purchase Old Testament Use of Old Testament in Parallel Layout Volume 1: Torah and Prophets at amazon.com

Carpenter's Student (Substack)
https://CarpentersStudent.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on Christianity.com.

📢 Stay Connected & Keep Growing!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian so you never miss an insightful conversation!

The usual complaint about the New Testament's use of the Old is that the apostles play fast and loose. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer thinks the problem runs the other direction. The Old Testament has gone missing from the research, and once you cut it off, ordinary exegetical moves start looking bizarre. Second Temple interpreters and the New Testament authors resemble each other because they were both apprenticed to the same thousand years of Old Testament authors interpreting earlier Old Testament texts.
In this episode, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Schnittjer work through what he calls vertical context. Scholarship attends to the paragraph and chapter around a quoted verse. What gets skipped is the depth beneath it. More than eighty times, the New Testament cites an Old Testament text that is already citing something older. Zechariah's king on a donkey reaches back to the blessing of Judah in Genesis 49, blended with Isaiah 62, and by the time the gospel writers use it, the donkey is carrying a great deal more than a rider. Hebrews turns out to be interested in Torah almost everywhere while quoting Torah almost nowhere, working instead through Psalm 8, Psalm 95, Psalm 110, and Jeremiah.
They also take up fulfillment, which in English carries a prediction-and-payoff sense the Hebrew does not require. Matthew's formula comes off the same plane as 2 Chronicles 36, where fulfilling a word means enacting it into reality rather than clocking a duration. That reframes the hard cases. Hosea 11 contains no prediction at all, but Hosea himself reads Jacob's life forward typologically, so Matthew is reading Hosea the way Hosea reads Scripture. The conversation closes on why this is not a license for interpretive improvisation. Dr. Schnittjer argues for plain sense exegesis throughout, which means reading each author with the grain rather than imposing a modern logic and calling it faithfulness.
Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at Carpenter's Student.
This is the final episode in our four-part conversation and the second of two on the parallel layout project.
Purchase Old Testament Use of Old Testament in Parallel Layout Volume 1: Torah and Prophets at <a href="https://amzn.to/4yVNS7O">amazon.com</a>
Carpenter's Student (Substack) <a href="https://CarpentersStudent.com">https://CarpentersStudent.com</a>
Subscribe to our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Useful_toGod">YouTube channel</a>
To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on <a href="https://www.christianity.com/author/james-spencer/">Christianity.com</a>.
📢 Stay Connected &amp; Keep Growing!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian so you never miss an insightful conversation!

Grandparent Texts: Gary Edward Schnittjer on How the New Testament Reads the Old

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/5e27a451-e6e6-4c51-aa03-a7370003783c/clips/45ee46a0-40ad-41b3-a80a-b49b01307d53/transcript

Most readers hear "Old Testament use of the Old Testament" and picture quotations. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer says quotation is the small end of it. An interpretive allusion needs three things: a donor text that gives the language, a receptor text that takes it up, and an identifiable interpretive outcome. That third item is what separates an allusion from an echo, and it is also why later biblical authors so often change the wording. Saying the same thing again was never the point. Moving it forward was.

In this episode, Dr. James Spencer talks with Dr. Schnittjer about his forthcoming Old Testament Use of Old Testament in Parallel Layout from Zondervan Academic, a full-color, side-by-side presentation of the evidence built as an inductive tool rather than an argument. They work through Genesis 5 as an interpretive blend of Genesis 1 and 2, where the image of God turns out to mean son of God. Amos taunting his congregation about bringing sacrifices every three days. The Sabbath command, which stops being a capital matter by the time Nehemiah is arguing with merchants at the gates, and which had already been adjusted once inside the Ten Commandments themselves.

The long middle of the conversation is Ruth. Levirate marriage, land redemption, the rights of gleaning, and the Deuteronomic exclusion of Moabites all pressing on one another at the city gate, with the Davidic covenant hanging on how the exclusion gets read. Dr. Schnittjer will not let his students say kinsman redeemer. He makes them say financially responsible near relative, because the plain term forces you to stay in the moment instead of leaping past it. The gospel is already here, he argues. We do not have to smuggle it in.

Content note: the conversation includes a brief discussion of the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13 and the rape laws of Deuteronomy 22.

Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at Carpenter's Student.

This is part three of our conversation, and the first of two on the parallel layout project. In the next episode we turn to the New Testament use of the Old Testament.

Purchase Old Testament Use of Old Testament in Parallel Layout Volume 1: Torah and Prophets at amazon.com

Carpenter's Student (Substack)
https://CarpentersStudent.com

Most readers hear "Old Testament use of the Old Testament" and picture quotations. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer says quotation is the small end of it. An interpretive allusion needs three things: a donor text that gives the language, a receptor text that takes it up, and an identifiable interpretive outcome. That third item is what separates an allusion from an echo, and it is also why later biblical authors so often change the wording. Saying the same thing again was never the point. Moving it forward was.
In this episode, Dr. James Spencer talks with Dr. Schnittjer about his forthcoming Old Testament Use of Old Testament in Parallel Layout from Zondervan Academic, a full-color, side-by-side presentation of the evidence built as an inductive tool rather than an argument. They work through Genesis 5 as an interpretive blend of Genesis 1 and 2, where the image of God turns out to mean son of God. Amos taunting his congregation about bringing sacrifices every three days. The Sabbath command, which stops being a capital matter by the time Nehemiah is arguing with merchants at the gates, and which had already been adjusted once inside the Ten Commandments themselves.
The long middle of the conversation is Ruth. Levirate marriage, land redemption, the rights of gleaning, and the Deuteronomic exclusion of Moabites all pressing on one another at the city gate, with the Davidic covenant hanging on how the exclusion gets read. Dr. Schnittjer will not let his students say kinsman redeemer. He makes them say financially responsible near relative, because the plain term forces you to stay in the moment instead of leaping past it. The gospel is already here, he argues. We do not have to smuggle it in.
Content note: the conversation includes a brief discussion of the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13 and the rape laws of Deuteronomy 22.
Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at Carpenter's Student.
This is part three of our conversation, and the first of two on the parallel layout project. In the next episode we turn to the New Testament use of the Old Testament.
Purchase Old Testament Use of Old Testament in Parallel Layout Volume 1: Torah and Prophets at <a href="https://amzn.to/4yVNS7O">amazon.com</a>
Carpenter's Student (Substack) <a href="https://carpentersstudent.com/">https://CarpentersStudent.com</a>

Not All Moabites Are Moabites: Gary Edward Schnittjer on How the Old Testament Uses the Old Testament

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/5e27a451-e6e6-4c51-aa03-a7370003783c/clips/522b6180-5d30-4faa-9208-b49b01307550/transcript

Can a nation be "Christian" without Christ?

In 1 playlist(s)

Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World

Social links

Follow podcast

Recent clips