List I'll continually update with theology/philosophy/lit/music YouTube videos

Skeptical critics like Bart Ehrman argue that Luke wasn't a traveling companion with Paul. Here Testify draws from James Smith's book The Voyage and Shipwreck of Saint Paul.

NT Wright & Tom Holland • How St Paul changed the world (Full Show)

Do We Need Ethical Principles? Richard Rorty (1994)

Response to Richard Rorty: Actually moral intuitions are universal. Think of the Japanese Christians: why do they find solace in Christ? Furthermore, the idea that we produce as many or more exceptions to our moral principles is true enough but all that follows this observation is a new principle, viz., that we seek exceptions to our own rules—and this is called sin according to the Christian understanding. Christ teaches us that the whole Law is to be followed if we are to be righteous in the sight of God (allowing no exceptions). Rorty’s critique of absolute and unconditional moral duties as being somehow inferior to or at least in need of a feminine principle betrays his ignorance of the atonement. We don’t need to bend rules in order to be merciful. Finally, at every point where Rorty brings up Christian ethics, he criticizes what individual Christians have done, conflating them with their guiding principles which always stand above them, not beneath them.

Arguments for atheism by appeal to the greater explanatory power of psychology: bending truth | how adults get indoctrinated [cc] ; creating sickness | recovering from religion [cc] : Here’s my response, as I wrote it directly to the creator of these videos:

You know that "taster's choice moment" scene in Good Will Hunting that leaves Robin Williams' character restless until he realizes something about Will's knowledge that puts him into a deep and restful sleep? Yeah, that sort of thing happened to me with TheraminTrees’ videos. Here's the thing. Nearly everything he says about social dynamics and the internal struggles of decision-making seem mostly true; they match my own experiences and they make logical sense. Does that mean however that I think as he'd predict me to think? To borrow his term, he has set up his own double-bind by preempting any defenses of whatever set of beliefs with a description of all the sorts of reactions people typically have—as if identifying these behaviors is enough to dispel the truth of the ideas they defend. If I agree with him, I'm gullible; if I react as he predicted, I'm puddy in his hands.

As for Christianity, let's go to the source, to the Bible itself, to know whether psychological sciences explain it away. When reading Scripture, it's clear he hasn't learned to divide law and gospel, which means he certainly doesn’t account for the gospel word that all of those commands have correlate promises of their having already been fulfilled by God himself. In other words, he doesn’t take the meaning of the story on its own terms, even hypothetically. Who separates the pure from the impure? In one video he accuses JW’s of doing just that, where the greater context is an analysis of religious thought broadly; yet according to the Christian tradition—not JWs—with which he seems to only have familiarity through its malignant little squabbling factions of anti-intellectual and mean-spirited denominations, it’s God who does all of the sifting and separating. So, again, the problem at hand is a matter of not taking the belief system on its own terms.

On that last point, it’s worth noting that he seems to imagine himself as having broken free from something which had bound him—and it sounds like he did—but where is this vacant space above the fray, giving him such a clear view of all of us below? I want to know more about this sort of view-from-nowhere. If I’m not mistaken, this imagined neutrality is a source of comfort. It is to acknowledge, like Kant, the limitlessness of the universe and the limits of not only our minds but of the data we can take in and categorize. But notice the move he makes in his videos by doing this: as stated by one of his characters, he himself has “traded one tyrant for another”. The comfort he derives from a supposedly-neutral stance is grounded in an apophatic resignation to the mysteriousness of the universe—only this time with less woo. It is all too easy to ease into this comfortable throne above hoi polloi and our petty ‘systems’ that we’re so bound-up with and about which we’re all so confused.

It shouldn’t need mentioning at this point, however, that he hasn’t actually abandoned all a priori categories (or foundational moral principles for that matter)—so why the focus on religious beliefs? I’ll even go one step further and ask why he isn't skeptical that there should be a category called “religions” which he so carelessly throws around in his videos. If he'd only climb down and get in the weeds with the rest of us, he’d see that, not only do religions have specific claims about history, but Christianity accounts for our incompleteness, our wickedness, abusiveness, etc. (i.e., all of what troubles him about Christians).

Has this guy read much on the historicity of the gospel accounts? I'd encourage him to check those out and then, setting aside all the explanatory power of psychology and of his own experiences in Christian fundamentalist groups, to reconsider whether the gospel accounts have that same ring of truth to them as whatever else he feels alright believing. I’d suggest reading something like "The Mirror or the Mask" by Lydia McGrew. That seems like a random pick, I know, but I’m trying to hone-in on something that I think he’s missing—and that’s the main point of my little speech here: He’s mostly right in what he says, but he’s just missing so damn much information.

Finally, in this video, when he says that anyone who’s honest admits he doesn’t feel God’s love, he means they haven’t had God give them a hug and send warm fuzzy vibes. Does he believe love of any sort doesn’t exist because we fail to adequately describe the sensations it gives us? Of course not. So he goes very wrong by reducing something as complex as love to a feeling. Moreover, his deeper mistake is to reduce experience to a one-sided phenomenon; apparently to him there is only the recipient of inputs (never mind the cause). In the second part of his series on divine love, he also blunders the motives for defending religious views. For Christians, at least, we don’t defend the attributes of God by denying ourselves; we defend the attributes of God because we believe they’re true.

Dr. Erik Hermann - Luther’s Exegetical Journey to the Distinction of Law and Gospel

Dr. Gavin Ortlund - Does Hell Make Sense? (Evangelical Reformed)

Christology as Basis for Lutheran Theology (Lutheran) - The last 25 minutes are crucial to understanding where the Roman Church goes wrong.

Merrie Gresham: Stepdaughter-in-law to CS Lewis - Rejection and Restoration

Pr. Bryan Wolfmueller - How Can I Be Sure I'm A Christian? (Lutheran)

Pr. Bryan Wolfmueller - Repentance = Enlightenment (Lutheran)

Dr. Simeon Zahl - The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience (Episcopalian)

DA Carson - On Revelation 12-14 (Reformed)

Pr. Bryan Wolfmueller - Sola Scriptura, three things about it (Martin Luther on Genesis 25:24-26) (Lutheran)

James Nestingen - "I will..." / "He has..." - The grammar of the Gospel (Lutheran)

John Kleinig - The Ongoing Reception of the Holy Spirit (Lutheran)

Chad Bird - Sea Monsters, French Art, and Jesus Walking on Water: Unearthing Four Layers of Intertextual Meaning (Lutheran)

Fascinating description of original sin at around 6:45 as the original fracturing of an organic, united body of humanity that continues to fracture if we refuse the grace to be reunited in the whole Body of Christ. (Roman Catholic)

"Live Not By Lies" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Reformed Forum - Comfort in the Living Christ (Reformed)

Dr. Cornelius Van Til - The Bible (Reformed)

Chad Bird - The Old Testament Background of the Transfiguration (Lutheran)

Chad Bird - The Most Misunderstood Word in the Old Testament (Lutheran)

Reformed Forum - The Critics, The Prophets, and the Old Testament (Reformed)

Reformed Forum - Blood and Sanctification in Covenant Theology (Reformed)

Bryan Wolfmueller - Why the Lutheran view of Baptism is so difficult for Evangelicals (Lutheran)

Bryan Wolfmueller and Dr. Schultz - Success vs Suffering (Lutheran)

Dr. Jordan Cooper - Does Regeneration Precede Faith? (Lutheran)

Matthew Levering, "How We Die: From Sherwin Nuland to the Early Christians and Back Again" (Roman Catholic) Nothing about substitution or vicarious satisfaction? What is backward-looking gratitude for? The second half of this paper has so much to speak to Levering’s brilliance and breadth of knowledge—there’s clearly a lot I need to grapple with here, but I don’t understand the reverence he has for those who live in near-paralyzing fear of death. “‘I have nailed my flesh out of reverence for you and I have feared your judgments … so as to share in the blessings of the gospel … she does not presume on this relationship … her own dying will seal her ultimate destiny … dying is a fearful thing … charity is what determines our eternal life … the strength of our own charity does not suffice to make this crossing by our own power … mercy is at the very center … looking forward to the fearful journey of death … embracing Christ’s cross is impossible without true repentance … she cannot fully know her own heart … even though that she knows that her own life has been devoted to Christ, she prays, ‘let not my sin be discovered before your eyes’ … she implores God to turn her dying into a pleasing offering in union with Christ’s fulfillment of all the old covenant sacrifices … her bodily union with the cross, her interior union with the cross … asking God to conform her completely to Christ…” These are all awful reflections. Terrible reflections. Hopeless reflections. She doesn’t know where she stands.

Douglas Wilson - The False Gospel of Rome (Doug Wilson’s idea of Rome being wrong because justification cannot be a “work in progress” is an example of being right for the wrong reasons. Wilson is right on imputation, but Rome is not wrong for the reason stated. Rome actually teaches that we do not need to be perfect before we die, but in a perfectly loving and therefore justifying relationship with God the Father in Christ before we die, and that our remaining imperfections will be purged after death.) Wilson’s points at 23 min. and at 27:45 are excellent, however.

Bryan Wolfmueller - Elected for Comfort

A challenging Lutheran critique of the Reformed view of limited atonement (38 min. mark)

Heartcry Films - For the Gospel

John Bunyan - Pilgrim's Progress

Natural Theology, Experience, and Reason (Reformed)

B.B. Warfield - The Alien Righteousness (Reformed)

Bryan Wolfmueller - Free From Slavery (Lutheran)

Sam Wells: The Difference Christ Makes <—This is all well and good but Wells and Hauerwas sound a bit like Roman Catholics in apparently waving-away the assurance of faith that has not just sanctification and eternal life as object but also the substitutionary sacrificial atonement that attained our adoption into such life for us. It’s not one or the other, and it sounds as though Wells at least is setting it up that way.

Sinclair Ferguson - Finding Peace with God (Reformed)

Sinclair Ferguson - Rejoice in Suffering? (Reformed)

Camden Bucey - Nature, Grace, and Covenant (then here is an old but useful summary from Dr. Cooper with Lutheran distinctions: http://justandsinner.blogspot.com/2009/09/lutheranism-and-covenant-theology.html?m=1 )

C. John Collins - What Is the Creation Story There to Do for Us?

Voddie Baucham - Zeal Without Knowledge (Reformed)

Douglas Wilson - Assurance (Reformed)

Dr. Lane Tipton - What is the gospel? (Reformed)

Dave Zahl - Freedom and Why We’re Afraid of It (Episcopalian)

John Piper - You Don’t Need More Self-Love (Reformed Baptist)

R.C. Sproul - The Trauma of Holiness (Reformed)

Dr. C. John Collins - On Reading Genesis Well

Dr. C. John Collins - The Place of the Fall in the Overall Vision of the Hebrew Bible

Table Talks: Law and Gospel (Lutheran)

Dr. Gavin Ortlund - An Introduction to the Ontological Argument

Doug Wilson - The Offense of the Gospel (Reformed)

Reformed Forum course - Union with Christ (Reformed)

R.C. Sproul - Paul vs. James? (Reformed)

Leonard Ravenhill - What Is Your Life? (Arminian)

Kenneth Stewart - A Cure for Anxiety (esp. 41’-end)

Chad Bird - Worms, Fire, and Eye-Gouging: What Does Jesus Mean by the Violent Language in Mark 9 (Lutheran)

Chad Bird - Can a Camel Go Through the Eye of a Needle? (Lutheran)

Sinclair Ferguson - Which Comes First: Repentance or Faith? (Reformed)

Sinclair Ferguson - The Nature of Saving Faith (Reformed)

Tim Keller - How To Change Deeply (Reformed)

J.I. Packer - What is Repentance? (Anglican)

Dr. John Murray - Origin of Man (Reformed)

Dr. John Murray - The Nature of Man (Reformed)

Dr. John Murray - Man in the Image of God (Reformed)

Albert Mohler - Why is God Not the Author of Evil, if it Exists for his Glory? (Southern Baptist)

Dr. Lydia McGrew - What I Think About the Synoptic Problem

Alistair Begg - “What a Tangled Web” (Reformed)

Dr. Michael Heiser - What Do The Magi and The Dead Sea Scrolls Have In Common? (Old Testament scholar)

Dr. Jordan Cooper - Are Works of the Law Only Ceremonial Works? (Lutheran)

Dr. Jordan Cooper - Sola Fide in the Church Fathers (Lutheran)

Dr. Jordan Cooper - Does Regeneration Precede Faith? (Lutheran)

Dr. Jordan Cooper - A Study on the Great Exchange (Lutheran)

Who Is Jesus Christ? - Gerald Bray (Anglican)

Nimrod Workman: Oh Death (1983)

Alan Torrance, "Where is God? The Continuing Priesthood..." (Reformedish)

The Charms of Unavailable People

The Saint Must Walk Alone - A. W. Tozer (Arminian)

"Le bug de la tergiversation"

The Great Justification Debate - Robert C. Koons & Jordan B. Cooper (Roman Catholic and Lutheran)

Viktor Frankl: collective guilt does not exist

A handful of Lutheran (LCMS) lectures: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Dr. Gavin Ortlund - A Protestant Take on Ignatius (Lutheran)

Pr. Bryan Wolfmueller - How did the Believers in the Old Testament have faith? (Lutheran)

Dr. Naomichi Masaki: 32:30-end (Lutheran)

Dr. Gavin Ortlund - Sola Scriptura (Baptist)

Dr. Naomichi Masaki - Simul (Lutheran)

Dallas Willard - An Invitation to a "With God Life" in Jesus

Stephen RL Clark brilliance (Anglican)

S.-Th. Bonino #34: What is predestination? (English Subtitles) Brief note: Whether he knows it or not, as far as predestination itself is concerned, this is also the Lutheran view, and it only differs from the Calvinism he calls a “monstrosity” in the ability to fall away from salvation. Where he departs from all Protestant theology is by awkwardly shoehorning in the Church and sacraments as the medium or great filter through which we must access the super-added grace that draws us into eternal life.

F.-X. Putallaz #24 : What is memory? (English Subtitles) [I, 79, 6-7] (Roman Catholic)

Evan Thompson takes apart Robert Wright on the wrongheaded seduction of Buddhism

Good video for a Tavener piece

Dr. Christopher Southgate on Evolution

Gerald Bray - Justification by Faith (Anglican)

Trent Dialogues - Sorrow for sin? (Baptist)

Gilbert Meilaender (Lutheran Augustine scholar) - Virtuous Evildoers

Christopher Seitz (Anglican) - "Canon and Conquest: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible" - Christopher Seitz: “If it’s true that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, then such wisdom is as much a function of being grasped by God’s holiness as it is weighing accounts of his activity and deciding for or against Him. If God were to belong to this latter frame of reference, He would not be the biblical God—He would be a god of moral projection and the question would be “whose morality? whose justice?” The Scriptures of Israel therefore make no distinction between mercy and justice when it comes to fearing God. It belongs to God’s character as God that mystery lies at the heart of mercy and justice. So the psalmist can conclude: “with thee is mercy and forgiveness; therefore you are to be feared.””

Dr. John Kleinig (Lutheran) - The Holiness of God in Sacrificial Worship in Leviticus pt 19 Worship

Dr. John Kleinig (Lutheran) - The Practice of Receptive Piety: Paul & Luther

William Lane Craig Doctrine of Salvation (Penal Substitution theory) - Part 1: Doctrine of Election (Baptist, Arminian)

trinities 047 - Dr. Alan Padgett, "Informal Reason and the Idea of a Christian Philosophy"

Susannah Black discussion about authority, based around Oliver O'Donovan's 'The Ways of Judgment'

Knowing The Father – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

Christopher Anadale - Bridging Hume's Gap (Lecture) (Roman Catholic)

2. Yahweh is our God - I Am Who I Am - Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

The Kingdom of God - Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Faces His Own Death

Michael Ramsden - Courage, Christ, and Finishing the Mission

Michael Ramsden on Jonah 1: 1-16, "God speaks"

Plato's dialogue, the Republic, book 1 - Introduction to Philosophy

Michael Ramsden - "Reconcilation In A Divided Culture"

Prof Christopher Anadale - Piety is No Substitute for Technique (Gilson)

Alexander Pruss - Does God Exist?

Fr. John Welch - The Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Avila (Roman Catholic)

Allan Bloom interview

Spirit of Place Lawrence Durrell's Greece

Prof Christopher Anadale videos on philosophy and theology

Gabriel Marcel lectures (my favorite explanation!)

Malcolm Muggeridge interviews Lawrence Durrell

Anthony Esolen - Dante lectures (Roman Catholic)

Michael Ramsden - One God, Many Paths

Anthony Esolen - The Boethius Option (Roman Catholic)

Fr. Stephen Freeman - The Modern Challenge (Eastern Orthodox)

Curtis Leins - Law and Gospel (Lutheran)

Curtis Leins - God's Victory: The Means of Grace (Lutheran)

Ryan Reeves - Pilgrims and the New World

Albert Camus - Discours de réception du prix Nobel, 1957

F.-X. Putallaz #15 : Dieu et la cause du péché (mal moral) (I, 49 ; I-II, 79) (Roman Catholic) : This is speculation from within a system of thought I don’t always find useful (Thomism), but it’s useful in that it at least demonstrates the plausibility of goodness from God though there’s evil from us. Sometimes we simply need to know that it’s possible that something is true (in this case, that God is in control, that He is good, and that we still sin).

Eric Voegelin - Man in the Cosmos

On Plato's Republic: Allan Bloom, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Eric Voegelin, and Frederick Lawrence (1978)

Eric Voegelin - Marx's refusal of the ground question

Eric Voegelin - The University and the Order of Society

Eric Voegelin - Structures in Consciousness

Albert Camus - The Madness of Sincerity (atheist)

G. Emery #8: How can we approach the mystery of the Trinity? (Roman Catholic)

0:00 / 7:13 GE & BDLS #2: How does the justification of a sinner take place with his cooperation? (Roman Catholic)

Prof. J Budziszewski, University of Texas at Austin, "Why Is There Sex?" (Roman Catholic)

What do we really know about right and wrong? | J. Budziszewski at Veritas Texas A&M (Roman Catholic)

Luke Timothy Johnson - "How Is the Bible True?", Danforth Lecture (Roman Catholic lite)

Dr. Voddie Baucham - Racial Reconciliation - Ephesians 2:10-11 (Reformed)