Mere Fidelity

Send us Fan Mail
Kelly Kapic's The Christian Life — the newest volume in the New Studies in Dogmatics series — frames Christian living as a response to divine love, arguing that human agency is always Christological and ecclesial before it is personal. With Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and James Wood.
—
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
—
00:48
A Summit Work
04:01
False Dichotomies in Evangelical Thought
08:19
Anthropology and Life
11:33
A Little Summa
12:32
What's New About the Christian Life?
14:35
Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation
15:42
The Response to the Love of God
19:20
Christ's Vicarious Love and Agency
24:44
Understanding the Law and Gospel Distinction
29:58
Capital 'S' Sin
37:11
Obedience to the law
41:38
The Role of Liturgy in Corporate Worship
49:42
Living Out the Christian Life in Community

Send us Fan Mail
Carl Trueman joins Mere Fidelity to discuss his book The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. They examine why "desecration" captures something "disenchantment" misses — the frenzied, ecstatic violation of what is still recognized as sacred — and trace its implications for abortion, gender, technology, and end-of-life ethics. Trueman argues the church's answer is consecration: creed, worship, and a code of hospitality that restores genuine personhood. With Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts.
—
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
—
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:10 - Why "Desecration" and Not Just "Disenchantment"
06:16 - The Pleasure of Desecration and Alternative Sacralizing
10:07 - Is This a Perennial Problem or Something New?
14:27 - Power, Impotence, and Promethean Shame
17:35 - Dizziness, AI, and the Nothingness of Radical Freedom
22:41 - Nietzsche, Nature, and the Denial of the Given
28:42 - Consecration as Response: Creed, Cult, and Code
33:14 - The Church and End-of-Life Ethics
39:18 - Vitalism, False Friends, and the Logic of the Cross
45:38 - Two Cheers for Christianity and the Opportunity Before Us
48:51 - Freedom, Belonging, and the Gospel

Send us Fan Mail
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.
—
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
—
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

Send us Fan Mail
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.
—
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
—
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

Send us Fan Mail
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
—
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