Podcast · Devotional & Spiritual

Gospel Conversations podcast

by Tony Golsby-Smith · English · Devotional & Spiritual

Gospel Conversations takes a creative approach to attaining a deeper understanding of the gospel and what it means to us today. Our speakers are not ministers, but range from a diverse community of Christian thinkers who lead their various fields of knowledge in history, design thinking, theology, p

New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 53 min
Latest: 12 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

12 Oct 2026 · 45 minNew

Interview with Rev Dr Joanna Collicutt McGrath

This interview, hosted by Leisa Aitken, is part of our series, ‘Women as thought leaders in theology.’ It is with the brilliant and deeply pastoral Oxford based clinical psychologist, Anglican priest and theologian Reverend Dr Joanna Collicutt McGrath. We discuss her recent book, So Longeth my soul: A reader in Christian spirituality . Joanna wrote it for those needing an accessible introduction to reading the primary sources of spiritual writings through history, with excerpts from a range of profound Christian writers from 2nd to 19th century. Joanna’s interdisciplinary thinking and…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

7 Oct 2026 · 28 min
Breakfast with Jesus: Psalm 8 & the Image of God
This is our second Breakfast with Jesus on our Camino walk - now over 600kms into it! This chat was recorded after we had climbed into the Galicia mountains and saw the awe-inspiring views from the high point of the ancient village of O Cebreiro. So it was fitting that we discussed Psalm 8 in this context - the succinct mandate for a human centred cosmos! Our first chat covered creation-as-providence in Psalm 145 - but Psalm 8 takes this providential view of creation one huge step further and charts the role of humanity in this created order. And it is a breathtaking calling as mini-gods -…
25 Sep 2026 · 31 min
Breakfast with Jesus: Walking the Camino
Anne and I are walking the vast Camino path - about 800km from St Jean in France to Santiago in Spain. We thought it would be a good time to revive our ‘Breakfast with Jesus’ channel in Gospel Conversations. And rather than just me doing the talking, we have recorded this as a conversation to try to capture the reality of how we are walking and talking. This chat is about Psalm 145. But it begins with Anne talking about some of her spiritual journey over the last few years - and how some significant physical suffering has (mysteriously) precipitated a deeper faith journey in her spirit. We…
2 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
How to read Scripture as a living document
Inspiration and Scripture is a two way process - it includes our reading of scripture not just its delivery through authors. That is the fascinating perspective that Ben Myers offers in this thought provoking interview I did with him recently. It builds on Mark Strom’s recent talk on his journey through a widening perspective on what ‘Scripture’ means. Ben begins with the opening of Erich Auerbach’s famous book on Western Literature, Mimesis. Auerbach contrasts Homer and Moses - in particular the story of Abraham in Genesis 22. He says that Moses’ narrative is deep and mysterious, in…
15 Aug 2026 · 53 min
Theology and Mental Health
This is a talk by our beloved colleague Leisa Aitken. You will be familiar with her work on hope from previous talks. Here is her introduction to the talk. This Talk is adapted from a paper entitled, “Responding to a crisis of hope- Gregory of Nyssa in dialogue with contemporary psychology” presented at the John Behr conference at Alphacrucis College last year. Ben Myers and I co-wrote the original paper, and I am grateful for Ben’s theological input. This version also reflects some of my further reading and thinking. I offer it as an example in my life of the ‘So What’ question we are…
20 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
Changing ways to read the Bible
In churches around the world, Christians will affirm that ‘the Bible is the word of God’. But what do they mean by this? Whether they realise it or not, they are making a claim about a genre - a certain class of literature that is special and ‘inspired’. But this claim has been a stumbling block for Christians and onlookers alike. Do we really claim that all 66 books are literally true? And what does ‘true’ even mean? This is the huge topic that we asked Mark Strom to address for us. It really is one of the ‘so what’ questions for our day and age. Mark is uniquely qualified to give us some…
6 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 20 min
AI and the Image of God
A recent (Christian) book puts up the white flag of surrender before the insurgent world of Artificial Intelligence; ‘Intelligence is no longer a quality that marks out human beings from the rest of the world…’ So - machines can think and think better than us? Or can they? And what does this say about what it means to be a human being and what the vast Christian vision of being ‘made in the image of God’ means? That is what I address in this talk. This year we are taking a ‘so what’ view for the Creation gospel… in other words, what are its consequences and how does it help us see the world…
3 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
Do we need a new theory of sin?
Nothing is more foundational to the traditional gospel than a ‘theory of sin’. But for most of us, it is a messy topic that we have not thought about enough. Hence Christianity has all too often suggested a dark anthropology that defines humanity as ‘totally depraved’ or incapable of ‘any good thing’. This is not exactly a good place to start an evangelistic conversation! So we need a better model of what we mean by ‘sin’. In this interview with Rob, Tony develops a different ‘theory of sin and evil’ - one that emerged years ago mainly in conversations with Mark Strom. Mark and Tony both…
20 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 5 min
Do Christians withdraw or engage??
This is the third in Ben Myer’s wonderful series on the thinking of the early church fathers. This talk examines their view on the burning question of discipleship - what does it mean to follow Christ in how we live particularly in the public square? Ben’s first talk covered their view of salvation - and how they did not have a ‘penal substitution’ model of redemption. His second talk covered their view of the inner life - how we live righteously in our souls and thoughts. So this talk moves to the vexed place of the public square - how do Christians participate in the ‘world’ (or not). This…
24 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
John Behr on Maximus
Welcome to our final conversation with John Behr on Maximus. Alongside this episode you’ll find the handouts John distributed — well worth having open as you listen, as he works through them closely and the text repays careful attention. If you haven’t already, we’d also recommend starting with the recent introductory episode , where the grand themes of this series are laid out. Gospel Conversations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at…
9 Mar 2026 · 32 min
Maximus - the Mt Everest of Patristic Theology
If you are about to embark on an important meal, it is nice to begin with some antipasto. Well this talk is my ‘antipasto’ for John Behr’s final talk on Maximus, the third of the great Church Fathers whose theology he has summarised for us. This talk is about thirty minutes long, and is my attempt to offer a ‘Plain English’ paraphrase of both John and Maximus. Make no mistake - we have two great minds at work here - John Behr and Maximus, and we are watching them in dialogue with each other. I just want to say what a privilege it has been to have John join us on Gospel Conversations as he is…
11 Feb 2026 · 32 min
The Creation Gospel - So What & What Next?
In this talk I give an overview of our upcoming topics for the year. The ‘creation gospel’ is exciting - but what are the ‘so what's’? This is the theme we want to explore together in 2026, and in this short talk I give a snapshot of our agenda and topics. The monthly talks will come in ‘couplets’ - one at the St James Institute in the city of Sydney, and the second one more intimately at our home. Both will be ‘salons’ or ‘forums’ where we EXPLORE rather than pontificate. There are six main topics. Here they are …. * Creation gospel - core principles (including ‘new’ evangelism) * AI and…
13 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 29 min
John Behr on Gregory's Stunning Vision of Humanity and the Divine
Welcome to 2026 and as promised here is John Behr’s talk on Gregory of Nyssa and his view of what it means to be a human being. I gave an extended introduction to this talk at the end of year, and sorry there has been a lapse of time between that and this talk I was introducing…. a thing called ‘Christmas’ intervened. Anyway, to refresh our minds. This is the third talk John gave at our Gospel Conversations conference in 2025. The theme of them all is the Patristic vision of what it means to be a human being (the last talk was on Irenaeus). Both Irenaeus and Gregory thought about humanity…
8 Dec 2025 · 42 min
A New Conception of Humanity: Introducing Gregory of Nyssa
This is an introduction that became a stand alone little talk. Why? Because John’s talk on Gregory at our conference was mind- bending - but hard to follow. No fault of John’s - he was trying to condense two profound thinkers (Plato and Gregory) into a one hour talk! So I worked hard to crystallise the main themes in ‘simple Plain English’ terms - so that it can provide a runway for you into John’s actual talk which we will publish shortly. First up I explain simply just why Gregory used Plato as a platform to communicate the ‘imago dei’ gospel - and what we can learn from that. He and his…
5 Nov 2025 · 53 min
John Behr - Why didn't God create us perfect?
This is our second talk in John Behr’s series on the Church Fathers. This talk outlines the ‘wild’ world of how Irenaeus of Lyon (around 170 AD) saw the Gospel - not as a rescue mission but as a plan for humanity to share in the ‘uncreated’ life of God. In case you don’t know already, Irenaeus was Bishop of Lyons in France, just after it suffered terrible persecutions. He was a disciple of Polycarp, who was in turn a disciple of John. So that makes Irenaeus a ‘grandson’ of John. Some of my theological friends rate him the greatest theologian of all…. at least he is in the top ten!! This talk…
20 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 7 min
John Behr - Was Adam created 'perfect'?
I can remember lots of times when Christians have speculated about whether salvation means returning to the ‘perfect’ state of Adam before the Fall - or do we go one better and somehow improve on the first Adam? This talk by John Behr demolishes that whole worldview…. It is the first in a series of four talks that John Behr gave at our recent Gospel Conversations conference. In this talk John introduces us to the radical way the Church Fathers thought about the gospel - and how they read the Scriptures. Of course for them, the ‘Scriptures’ meant what we call the Old Testament. John’s stuff…
24 Sep 2025 · 45 min
David Bentley Hart on his Revolutionary Translation of Romans 5:12
As promised here is the concluding section of my conversation with David exploring the meaning of the word ‘sin’. In this conclusion we do a deep dive into the text of Romans 5:12 - a pivotal verse for the concept of ‘original sin’ - and David explains how his completely different translation changes the traditional meaning significantly. The traditional meaning is that we all sinned ‘in Adam’ and as a result of that death followed. David’s translation turns that around and implies that it was death that initiated the contagion of sin. It is a good idea to have the text open as you listen,…
4 Sep 2025 · 29 min
David Bentley Hart on 'Original sin' Part 1
“Original sin” is - apparently - one of the bedrock doctrines of Christianity. But what exactly does it mean? This is how I began this discussion with David. Our main focus was Romans 5 and in particular verse 12 - the main ‘proof text’ for the doctrine of original sin. But before we got down into the details of that verse - we started with the big picture. What does ‘original sin’ mean? And in particular in what ways has it veered off into a rather dark and guilt-ridden picture of the human condition? This discussion is so important that I decided to split the discussion in two. This one is…
4 Aug 2025 · 35 min
Macrina: The Forgotten Woman Who Helped Shape Early Christian Theology
One of the critiques of Christian theology is that it has been largely framed by men - and thus is susceptible to masculine views of God and humanity. I can only speculate on this, but I have often privately thought that behind the Cappadocian Fathers’ generous theology lay the influence of women. It began with their grandmother, who was a martyr and continued through their wealthy but pious parents. Macrina was the elder sister and she never married. She was apparently beautiful and intelligent but her betrothed died young and she remained ‘married to Christ’ for the rest of her life. She…
14 Jul 2025 · 39 min
John Behr on the 'mind blowing' theology of the Church Fathers
Fr John Behr’s visit to Australia is just over a month away. I interviewed him recently to get a foretaste of what he will be talking to us about. John is clearly a major thought leader in modern theology. I got a taste of this recently from a post I read by Brad Jersak. Brad had just been to a retreat on the remote Scottish island of Iona led by Rowan Williams and John Behr (made me jealous!!). He recounts how a conversation with John (and Chris Green) was very significant for him - and helped him unravel some questions that had blocked him for years. This just confirms what a treasure John…
23 Jun 2025 · 53 min
David Bentley Hart on the real meaning of 'sin'
What exactly does the word ‘harmatia’ (usually translated as ‘sin’) mean in the New Testament? This is where my conversation with David begins in this podcast. I asked him this question because when he was in Australia, David told me that he was uncomfortable using the modern word ‘sin’ to translate ‘harmatia’. This is obviously pretty important as the idea of ‘sin’ is at the foundation of the. gospel. What was going to be a limited conversation about translation soon developed into a fascinating tour through the thinking of the early church about the ‘gospel’ and what it means - all built…
29 May 2025 · 54 min
The Patristic model of growth; we are 'mini Christs'...
Ben’s talks on the Patristic model of atonement led to the obvious question - what about their views on growth ? This is the first of two talks by Ben on this topic. In this talk he focuses on the individual and morality and in the next talk he focuses on society and politics and how they viewed Christian contributions there. Patristic views on growth are built on their views of atonement; and that is where Ben begins - with a reminder of the ground he covered in his early talks. Unlike us, they did not struggle with a model of ‘penal substitution’ and its associated picture of an angry God.…
12 May 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
Power, patriarchy and the cross
Well … this interview was unexpected. David Artman runs a podcast (Grace Saves All) dedicated to the topic of universal salvation. But he is very disturbed by the rise of Trump and what he sees as the ‘first stage of facism’ taking root in his country. So he wanted to interview me - to get an international comment and also a ‘systems’ perspective on what is going on. I am not an expert in US politics but like all of us I am fascinated (horrified) by what is going on - and in particular the role of white evangelicals in supporting Trump. (David Hart has stressed that it is white evangelicals…
23 Apr 2025 · 1 hr 14 min
Hope and Hell; how I came to a larger vision of redemption
As promised here is the talk that I gave last Sunday at the St James Institute in Sydney. It was well received, and I was surprised by the audience and their reaction. Most were older people - not young radicals - and they were clearly bothered by this doctrine of hell but had no alternative ways to think about it. So for many the talk was a relief that there was a viable alternative to having to believe that eternal conscious torment is an essential part of the gospel. People also appreciated the journey idea. They liked me sharing about my experience, and the situations that provoked me to…
31 Mar 2025 · 35 min
Beyond 'easy grace': Universalism and the Call to Discipleship
One of the main objections to universalism is that it opens the door for spiritual laziness. It is the easy way out. Why bother with the hard work of discipleship if everybody gets saved and there are no consequences for bad behaviour? Ilaria confronts this challenge in her final interview with Robin Parry. Of course this is the tip of a big iceberg - what do we mean by growth? How are human beings motivated to grow? As I have done before I bookend Ilaria’s talk with an introduction to give you the coat hanger to absorb her rather dense material, and then I add a postscript that builds on…
12 Mar 2025 · 36 min
Is hell a pagan concept?
The answer is ‘yes’ - hell was a concept deeply ingrained in the pagan mind. And that is the surprising landscape that Ilaria opens up for us in this next episode in Robin Parry’s interviews with her on apokatastasis. In this interview, Robin asks her about a recent accusation that belief in '‘apokatastasis” was actually a pagan idea that crept into Christianity. Of course, that kind of accusation works well to stigmatise apokatastasis and condemn it to the heresy corner! This critique assumes that such a benevolent view of destiny must have its origins in human optimism not in any…
20 Feb 2025 · 32 min
The breathtaking Patristic vision of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15
If the scripture is like a land of hills and valleys, then 1 Corinthians 15: 22-28 was the Mount Everest of the terrain. Or so thought Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, according to Ilaria Ramelli. In this short nugget of a talk Ilaria explains with her typically profound mix of big picture and detail, just why the claim that in the end “God will be all and in all” was treated so seriously by Patristic theologians. It is no ordinary claim. By this I mean that it simply does not fit into our normal conceptual landscape of reality - it redraws the whole map of reality. That is how the great minds…
29 Jan 2025 · 1 hr 8 min
Robin Parry's journey to universal salvation
After a slow start we are ready to get going in Gospel Conversations for 2026. We will kick off with this fascinating interview I did with Robin Parry about his personal journal to universal salvation. Robin has led the vanguard for universal salvation since the publication of his landmark book in 2006 “The Evangelical Universalist” which probably did what no other book had quite done in the modern era - it put universalism on the table as a genuine option in the gospel not as a heresy. So it is really intriguing to get the story behind the book, and his journey. I have always been…
24 Dec 2024 · 13 min
A Christmas gift from Sarah on teaching and the incarnation
This is our last podcast for the year and it is almost Christmas. It is a short piece by our daughter Sarah which has just been published on the ABC website - in the Religion and Ethics section. Here is the link https://www.abc.net.au/religion/sarah-golsby-smith-teaching-incarnation-christmas-end-of-school/104758846 In this piece, Sarah reflects on her year of teaching and finds in that experience a touch of wonder - wonder at the privilege of helping young human beings flourish. She sees these young students as vessels of grace, made in God’s image and at Christmas, as echoes of the…
10 Dec 2024 · 52 min
Different journeys to universal salvation
Welcome to our next Gospel Conversations podcast and apologies that there has been a bit of a lag. We try to keep up a regular feed but life intervenes as I am sure you all would know… grandparenting and sickness etc. Anyway here we are. This is a little unplanned diversion from our Ilaria Ramelli series - but a pretty connected one. On our last episode Ilaria explained her half of the twin books on A Larger Hope which was the early church. Robin Parry wrote the other half which was about more recent history. Fortuitously we found a great video Robin did highlighting some of these…

About Gospel Conversations podcast

Gospel Conversations podcast is a English devotional & spiritual podcast from Tony Golsby-Smith. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Tony Golsby-Smith
Language: English
Category: Devotional & Spiritual
New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 53 min
Latest episode: 12 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id878549160
Rights: Tony Golsby-Smith

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