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Close your eyes and picture God. What you see shapes how you pray, how you handle guilt, and whether you run toward God or away from him. This episode trades small pictures of God for the one Scripture gives. We explore the qualities God alone possesses, such as needing nothing, having no beginning, and never changing, alongside the ones he shares with us: love, holiness, justice, and mercy. The episode moves from the burning bush to Exodus 34's portrait of a God "merciful and gracious," then to Isaiah's "holy, holy, holy" and Psalm 139. We meet Augustine, who once imagined God as an infinite sea and later confessed that our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Finally, we see why God's attributes always hold together. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit start2finish.substack.com

When a family gathers to hear a will read, they ask three questions: Is this really his? Is this all of it? Do we have to do what it says? Christians have asked the same questions about Scripture for two thousand years. This episode follows God's written word from the tablets at Sinai to Josiah's rediscovered scroll and the one King Jehoiakim burned. We explore what it means that Scripture is "breathed out by God" and that its authors were "carried along" by the Spirit. Then we tell how the church recognized the New Testament, from Marcion and Irenaeus to Athanasius's list of 367, the earliest that exactly matches our twenty-seven books. We also take on the myth that a council voted on the Bible and the question of lost original manuscripts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit start2finish.substack.com

How can finite people know an infinite God? Only if he chooses to make himself known. Using the picture of a cabin in the woods, a letter tucked in the door, and the builder himself walking up the path, this episode explores general revelation through creation and conscience, and special revelation through Scripture and, above all, Jesus. We walk through Psalm 19, Romans 1, Paul's sermon in Athens, and Hebrews 1. We meet Thomas Aquinas, the "Dumb Ox" who argued that God revealed himself so that ordinary people, not just philosophers, could know him. And we hear Alexander Campbell tell a famous skeptic that even the idea of God comes from revelation. We also take up a question many Christians ask: does God still give new revelation today? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit start2finish.substack.com

A twelve-year-old in a hospital waiting room asks why we pray if God already knows what will happen, and every adult in the room answers with theology. Some of it is good, and some of it isn't. In this pilot episode, Michael makes the case that every Christian is already a theologian, so the real question is whether we're good ones. We trace Scripture's call to know God, from the kitchen-table theology of Deuteronomy 6 to Peter's charge to "grow in the grace and knowledge" of Christ. We meet Anselm of Canterbury, who defined theology as faith seeking understanding and wrote it as a prayer, and we find that Thomas Campbell's famous slogan is itself a theological claim. Along the way, we introduce the three lenses this show uses (biblical, historical, and systematic theology) and answer three common objections to doing theology at all. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit start2finish.substack.com