Three forces, two conditions, and how the church's vision gets narrowed.
Narrowing occurs when God's self-disclosure is not recognized as authoritative, so that a community lives according to incomplete stories that claim to be complete. It happens beneath doctrine and belief, which is what makes it difficult to see. Across seven conversations, James Spencer and Ashish Varma work through the three forces that capture the church inside a story claiming more completeness than it has, and the two conditions that make those forces harder to recognize and harder to resist.
The Series
A seven-episode arc on the long-form Thinking Christian podcast
James Spencer and Ashish Varma work through the diagnosis in sequence: three forces that narrow the church's vision, two conditions that compound the difficulty, and the contrast that makes the alternative visible. Each episode treats one piece of the diagnosis at length, building toward a cumulative account of what narrowing is, why it is hard to see, and what the church needs in order to resist it.
Episodes
The Diagnosis
5 episodes
- 01
Force I: Assimilation
The Fear of Syncretism Is Making the Church Assimilate - 02
Force II: Fragmentation
When Doctrine Divides Christians Who Aren't Wrong - 03
Force III: Transaction
Why Do Christian Institutions Compromise to Stay Alive? - 04
Condition I: Inversion
When Your Interpretation Becomes the Authority | The Diagnosis - 05
Condition II: Amplification
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