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Failure and the Holy Ghost with Ephraim Radner and Wesley Hill
In the words of the old Pentecost hymn, where does "the Holy Spirit make a dwelling"? This is the question of our episode today.
The Spirit is the person of the Trinity who conceives and animates the flesh of Christ and his body, the Church. How are these realities related, and how do we recognize them?
In 1998, the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College, published a book called The End of the Church, a spicy title that refers to the egregious reality of disunity and failure in Christ's body. Given that, the book asks, doesn't death in the body indicate the Spirit's absence?
In 2019, Dr. Radner published another book on what he sees as our contemporary misreadings and misunderstandings of the Spirit's work in the world and our lives, and that book is called A Profound Ignorance: Modern Pneumatology and Its Anti-Modern Redemption.
Are we given the gift of the Holy Spirit in order to fix, or even alleviate, the world's problems and sufferings?
How do we know what the Holy Spirit is up to, when faced with vague or conflicting claims of the Spirit's work?
Where is the Holy Spirit in our failure?
The Rev Dr. Wesley Hill and I sat down for a conversation with the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner about just these questions. We were delighted and challenged. Enjoy listening in!
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