Mere Fidelity

Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Joe Minick trace the nature-grace debate from de Lubac's challenge to neoscholastic "pure nature" through Blondel, Bavinck, and Betz's Christ the Logos of Creation — asking what's actually at stake: the gratuity of grace, the coherence of theological anthropology, and the twin dangers of secular dualism and pantheist collapse.
—
Get Spiritual Formation for the Family ebook for free at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.
Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonPhD
—
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction: Why Nature and Grace?
02:30 - The Debate in Context: Neo-Calvinism, Catholic-Protestant Dialogue, and David Bentley Hart
05:00 - James on De Lubac: Challenging Pure Nature and Extrinsicism
08:30 - Blondel, Desire, and the Political Consequences of Separation
11:30 - Derek's Five-Year-Old Explanation: What Is Actually at Issue
13:30 - Joe: Natural Ends, Supernatural Ends, and the Beatific Vision
16:00 - Steel-Manning the Two-Tier View: Gratuity of Grace
18:30 - Bavinck, the Donum Superadditum, and Terminological Convergence
22:00 - The Neo-Calvinist Peril: Immanentizing the Eschaton
24:00 - Reception History: Did De Lubac Get Thomas Right?
27:00 - Betz, Chavarra, and Philosophy's Openness to Theology
31:00 - Participatory Metaphysics and Non-Competitive Freedom
33:30 - Derek's Worry: The Pantheist Ditch
36:00 - Horton's Trilogy and the Irenaean/Origenist Distinction
39:00 - The Two Ditches: Extrinsic Dualism vs. Pantheistic Monism
43:00 - Desire, Idolatry, and the Hook Into the Real
47:00 - Was the Incarnation Part of the Plan? Creation in Christ
50:00 - Closing Thoughts: Bavinck's Affirmations and Where to Go Next

When students started turning in papers written by artificial intelligence, educators were caught flat-footed. We knew that machines would replace many human tasks, but we thought the humanities were immune to that. Have our writing standards fallen so low that we can no longer write better than computers? Or are we about to experience the awakening of Artificial Consciousness? Matt and Alastair discuss this situation with Jason Thacker, the Chair of Research in Technology Ethics at the ERLC.
—
Get the ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.
Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
—
Timestamps:
Written by a Bot [0:00]
The ChatGPT Panic [2:45]
What is human? [6:48]
Is intelligence important? [11:09]
Going Full Hobbit [20:57]
Did we do this on purpose? [28:00]
Inevitable Arms Race [34:44]
Covid Tech-lash [45:20]
AI(dolatry) [52:34]

What if death's presence in the cosmos is not native to creation but a wound running all the way down to its foundations, inflicted before Adam ever reached for the fruit? Philip Porter joins Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East to discuss his new book, which retrieves Augustine, Aquinas, Milton, and Tolkien to argue that the angelic fall precedes and precipitates every other form of evil, and that contemporary theology has been too quick to make peace with death.
——
Hosts: Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, Brad East
Guest: Philip Porter, assistant professor of theology at Saint Louis University (Madrid) and author of Unnatural Death: Creation, Sin, and the Angelic Fall. He completed his doctoral work under Paul Griffiths at Duke Divinity School.
——
Get the free ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.
Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonPhD
——
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro
3:50 - Porter's thesis: why death as enemy matters and what contemporary theology gets wrong
8:40 - Augustine's rationes seminales: the seed-like reasons at the heart of creation
10:15 - Angels as administrators of creation and how their fall wounds the cosmos
13:30 - Tolkien's Silmarillion, Melkor's discord, and the felix culpa logic
17:30 - The conditio and administratio: God's atemporal creation vs. its unfolding in time
20:00 - Three false paths: Kelsey, McCabe, and Darwin
27:00 - Does scripture naturalize death? The grain of wheat, 1 Corinthians 15, and Alastair's question
39:10 - The double fall: Romans 5, the angelic fall, and how they fit together
42:00 - Satan's envy of the hypostatic union: what Lucifer saw and why he turned
52:00 - Refracted and diffracted light: a metaphor for holy and fallen angels
1:01:40 - Deep time, hominins, and what it means for Adam to be unfallen in a devastated cosmos
1:05:05 - The Johannine thread: destroying the works of the devil and what the devil actually wants
1:12:30 - Universalism, David Bentley Hart, and the problem the angelic fall poses for it
1:20:35 - Supralapsarianism and the incarnation-anyway position
Books Mentioned
Philip Porter, Unnatural Death: Creation, Sin, and the Angelic Fall
Paul Griffiths, Decreation
David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Well
Ambrose of Milan, On the Good of Death

Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Alastair Roberts welcome Dr. Lyndon Jost, author of Transfiguring Headship: A Figural Theology of Gender. Jost argues that headship is rooted in Old Testament figural theology rather than Greco-Roman culture, that it fundamentally means representation rather than authority, and that this reframes debates between complementarians and egalitarians alike. 
—
Get your copy of our free ebook, Spiritual Formation for the Family, at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.
Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonPhD
—
Chapters
01:15 - Overview of Transfiguring Headship
03:06 - Headship as Representation, Not Authority
06:09 - Critiquing Complementarian and Egalitarian Readings
10:32 - Figural Theology and the Fourfold Senses of Scripture
17:05 - Against Greco-Roman Readings of Headship
20:13 - 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Trinitarian Headship
25:35 - Ivan Illich, Gender vs. Sex, and Vernacular Gender
32:48 - Headship, Marriage, and the One-Flesh Union
43:23 - Essentialism, Gender Realism, and Minimalist Claims
50:36 - Headship as Unity, Not Opposition
55:59 - Male Responsibility and the Final Account
58:28 - Headship, Creation Order, and External Representation
01:02:14 - Closing Remarks

div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts explore the Ten Commandments — their structure, their two tables, the bookending parallel between the first and tenth commandments, and how the law is always oriented toward delight rather than mere prohibition. The law shapes the Christian life, testifies to Christ, and reflects the character of God.









—
Get the free ebook, Spiritual Formation for the Family, at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.
Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship.: https://bit.ly/OurRisenLord
 
—
 
Chapters
00:00 Exploring the Ten Commandments
04:48 The Structure and Order of the Commandments
08:35 The Heart of the Commandments: Internal Motivation
12:38 Positive and Negative Aspects of the Law
18:08 The Law as a Source of Delight
23:03 The Law in the Context of Freedom
29:51 Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in Ministry
32:10 Understanding the Nature of God's Law
36:07 The Role of the Ten Commandments
40:20 The Law as a Reflection of Christ
44:45 The Law and Holiness in Christian Life
46:50 Delighting in the Law of God