Mere Fidelity

What does it mean to live well in morally incoherent times? Alan Noble joins the show to discuss his new book To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, which uses the four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues as a framework for navigating choice paralysis, the loneliness epidemic, and contemporary anxiety. The conversation covers why courage and temperance feel especially urgent today, the difficulty of writing on justice, hoping all things for political opponents, the sunk cost fallacy in vocational discernment, and why friendship requires intentional cultivation. Grace, not optimization, grounds the virtuous life. Hosted by Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and James Wood.
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Get the 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, Classical Theism: A Christian Introduction, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
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Chapter Markers
00:00 - Welcome and introductions
00:52 - The pitch for To Live Well
03:30 - Diagnosis: alienation or anomie?
06:30 - The four cardinal and three theological virtues
08:14 - What is a virtue?
10:11 - Office hours and the paradox of choice
14:54 - Fortitude in an anxious age
18:41 - The sunk cost fallacy and pivoting well
21:40 - The heap of broken images and Christian wholeness
25:07 - Hoping all things for political opponents
29:36 - The hardest chapter to write: justice
32:17 - What pastors and churches can do
34:40 - Grace, virtue, and the Protestant hesitation
38:55 - Friendship as the practice of love
44:31 - Closing thoughts

Was the Apostle Paul Torah-observant — not just before the Damascus road, but throughout his apostleship to the nations? Brad East stakes out a thesis drawn from Messianic Judaism and the Paul Within Judaism school: that Acts 21 should be read straight, that James is telling the truth about Paul, and that Genesis 12 and 17 still bind Jewish believers. Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts push back hard, working through Galatians 2, 1 Corinthians 9, and the question of whether the law's force after Christ is divine command or Hookerian adiaphora — with the future of Jewish identity in the church in view.
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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/beesonscholarships
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Chapters
00:00 - Welcome and the Disclaimer
01:00 - The Thesis: Paul Remained Torah-Observant
01:34 - Messianic Judaism and Paul Within Judaism
04:29 - Acts 21: Is Paul Lying or Walking the Law?
08:04 - Alastair's First Move: Affirming, Not Practicing
10:33 - A Law You Need Not Obey Is Not a Law
12:17 - Law as Covenant vs. Law as Instruction
15:34 - Circumcision as the Test Case
16:13 - Adiaphora, Hooker, and Binding Authority
17:40 - 1 Corinthians 9 Enters the Conversation
18:08 - The Halakhic Question: Should Elders Discipline?
21:11 - Acts 15 and Internally Differentiated Norms
23:13 - Alastair on Existing Authorities and Custom
26:36 - The Canonical Vision: Revelation 7
29:50 - Adiaphora's Sociological Problem
33:22 - Galatians 2: What Was Peter Doing?
38:18 - Permission vs. Prohibition
41:04 - Why Reduce Genesis 12–17 to Local Custom?
44:02 - Baptism, Circumcision, and Covenant Signs
47:55 - Does God Want Jews in the World?
50:10 - Providence and the Future Conversion
56:42 - One Body in Christ and the Complementarian Parallel
57:08 - Reinterpreting "Under the Law"
1:01:18 - Difference Without Division
1:04:13 - The Empirical Problem for Both Views
1:07:51 - Reading Our Situation Back into Paul
1:10:46 - Closing

How do we hold together confidence before God and a proper sense of his holiness? Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Joe Minich take up a pastoral question at the heart of Christian worship and prayer. Working from the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, Job, and John 8, they discuss the dangers of both presumption and paralyzing anxiety, the relationship between knowledge of God and knowledge of self, and why assurance is less a fact we verify than a relation we inhabit. Along the way: Isaiah's vision, Calvin on "stupid" prayer, and what Alcoholics Anonymous teaches about showing up.
—
Spiritual Formation for the Family ebook: 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/beesonscholarships
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00:00 - Introduction
01:17 - Confidence and holiness: the central tension
02:52 - The Lord's Prayer and the dynamic of approach
04:48 - The honesty of the Psalms and Job
09:16 - Boldness in prayer: the unjust judge and friend at midnight
11:11 - Hebrews and the two mountains
13:45 - Name-it-and-claim-it vs. petitionary prayer
14:45 - Being seen by God rather than seeing God
16:50 - John 8 and the woman caught in adultery
19:50 - Owen, Calvin, and "hard thoughts about God"
23:51 - "There is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared"
24:34 - Judgment and absolution in forgiveness
29:13 - The joy of approach and the glory of God
31:13 - Calvin, Isaiah, and the knowledge of God and self
33:58 - The erasure of sin in Waugh and Eliot
36:25 - Assurance as relation, not calculation
39:13 - Adoption, marriage, and secure identity
41:11 - Two kinds of self-absorption
45:48 - Alcoholics Anonymous and staying in the game
50:10 - Distorting the game itself: Jeremiah and the den of thieves
52:30 - Pastoral wisdom: who needs what
55:05 - Closing

On this episode of Mere Fidelity, historian of history Paul Gutacker joins Matt, Derek, and Alastair to talk about the changing and sometimes fraught relationship that Protestants have had with the notions of "history" and "tradition." Paul's book, The Old Faith in a New Nation, particularly examines how nineteenth century debates about slavery, etc., influenced our ideas about the roles of Scripture and Church in regard to history. 
—
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/beesonscholarships
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Timestamps:
Neo-Calvinism [0:30]
My Fellow Subjects [2:08]
Meta-history [3:22]
What is Biblicism? [4:37]
Misusing History [9:54]
Scripture's Changing Role [14:42]
Tradition or History [18:41]
Church Disputes [23:36]
Foreigners [27:06]
Spirit and Letter [29:35]
Hermeneutical Precedent [42:42]
How should pastors use history? [46:05]

Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Joseph Minich 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
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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