Merry Christmas from The Christian Humanist Podcast! Our introductory narration is, as you may have guessed, from the 1977 Rankin-Bass Christmas classic Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. The song is Bill Mallonee’s “Sing Angel Choirs,” as world-weary but pious a Christmas carol as you’re likely ever to hear. It plays through at the end, and I encourage you to listen.

General Introduction
– Christmas makes Nathan sick
– The semester is over
– The Revelation of the Magi
– Feedback on Christian rock

Our Christmas Tradition
– A completely improvised Christmas poem from David Grubbs

The Hebrew Scriptures and the Incarnation
– God Is One
– Shocking Isaiah’s argument
– Genesis 1 and the Queen’s We
– If you understand this conversation, slap a rhetorician
– The value of sensus plenum
– Authors and the Author

Pagan Sons of God
– Holy Herc, man!
– Why God is better than Zeus
– Greco-Roman incarnation stories
– Christ as fulfillment of all myths
– Hebrew notions of the “son of God”
– (Technical difficulties notice)
– Why sustained meditation is important

We Let the Carols Do the Talking
– “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and its list of Christological titles
– The bizarre origins of “Do You Hear What I Hear”
– Henry VIII, king of Victorian England
– An ex cathedra pronouncement that is so deep
– The forgotten verse in “O Come All Ye Faithful”
– Hark! The theology in Wesleyan hymns!
– A modern Christmas carol
– Katie Grubbs wages war on elision
– And now we take shots at stupid Christmas carols (You know you were waiting for it!)
– A New Kind of Response to Arius
– “O Magnum Mysterium”: inspiration for Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey

John Milton and the Incarnation
– Defend thy idols, Nathan Gilmour!
– Do we grade rough drafts?
– Satan’s Arianism
– The danger of sola scriptura
– On “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”

Christmas Without Easter
– Stevie Wonder makes an abomination out of the holiday
– “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”
– Incomplete, not bad, theology
– Specificity and incarnation