About Thinking Christian
Unsettling Convention. Cultivating Conviction.
Reading the Bible as the final authority for life and faith means questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers. We engage serious questions in the Christian life slowly, theologically, and in conversation with serious scholars and pastors. We don’t react with “hot takes,” allow the news cycle to set our agenda, or accept that the standard positions in a debate are the only positions.
Philosophy
Why we work the way we do
Thinking Christian works differently because the body of Christ is governed and guided by the Scriptures, the final authority for life and faith. We privilege substantive, rigorous conversation over knee-jerk comments or default positions. We talk about challenging topics, including politics, technology, mental health, suffering, Christian nationalism, and cultural pressure; but we talk about them as theologians rather than as Christian commentators.
Scholarship belongs to the church. The serious academic work done in seminaries, divinity schools, and research universities is not the exclusive property of those institutions. It belongs to God's people. Thinking Christian exists to translate that work faithfully, accessibly, and without dumbing it down, so the depth of the tradition becomes useful where it is most needed: in the daily life of the believer.
Who Thinking Christian is for
Thinking Christian is for believers committed to the work of building the body of Christ even when doing so requires us to unsettle the conventions we've inherited. If you want Scripture to endorse the right or the left without qualification, Thinking Christian will frustrate you. If you want to consider how God's word exposes the patterns keeping us from being conformed to the image of his Son, Thinking Christian is for you.
The Team
A team built to bridge scholarship and the church.
Hosted by James Spencer
James Spencer, PhD is a theologian and the author of Thinking Christian, Serpents and Doves, Christian Resistance, A Praying People, and Digital Discernment: Thinking Rightly in an Age of Misinformation (InterVarsity Press). An Associate Research Fellow with the Kirby Laing Centre, James works publicly on contested questions in the life of the church.
Resident scholar: Ashish Varma
Ashish Varma is the resident scholar of Thinking Christian. He holds a doctorate in Theological Studies from Wheaton College and has taught theology, philosophy, and history at the college and graduate levels for nearly 20 years.
Ashish is an adjunct faculty member at Wheaton College, teaching theology for the Litfin Divinity School and the Marriage and Family Therapy program. He is co-editor of the book A Praying People and was a contracted contributor for the God Here and Now online journal of Princeton Theological Seminary's Center for Barth Studies. He has written chapters, articles, and reviews for academic books and journals, presented at academic conferences, and contributed to popular level publications for the Center for Asian American Christianity, Interfaith America, and World Outspoken.
Recurring contributors and guests
Thinking Christian works in collaboration with a wider circle of theologians, biblical scholars, and pastors who appear on specific series arcs and on Asked and Answered. Each is introduced specifically when their work is featured.
What We Believe
Confessionally Orthodox
Thinking Christian is confessionally orthodox. We hold to the Nicene Creed, and recognize the Scriptures to be the inspired and authoritative Word of God. We believe the church is called to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord over every area of life, to make disciples of all nations, and to bear witness to the coming kingdom of God.
Where to start
Start with one of these episodes: