Comparing 2 Baruch and Galatians
A preview of my ETS presentation via creepy AI podcast
By this time next week, I’ll be joining Evangelical scholars from around the world in San Diego for the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. On Thursday morning, I’ll be presenting a paper in the Pauline Studies session titled, “Why Do God’s People Suffer?: Comparing the Theodicies of 2 Baruch and Galatians.”
As my wife says, “Total nerd stuff.”
The gist of my paper is this: Second Baruch and Galatians both discuss promise, law, and fulfillment, but they understand these three theological topics differently. Each book then builds a different theodicy (explanation for evil and suffering) on the resulting theological architecture.
Second Baruch has a disciplinary theodicy that teaches since Israel must obey the law to receive the fulfillment of God’s promises, God had to discipline Israel in order to bring about Israels obedience and thus the fulfillment of his promise. Galatians, on the other hand, has a cosmic conflict theodicy. Christians are persecuted because the world is split into two domains—the domain of the flesh and of the Spirit, which are at war with one another. Persecution shows that Christians belong to the people of God.
If all of that intrigues you, then I’ve done something that is really weird and kind of creepy. I uploaded my ETS paper to Google’s AI NotebookLM, and the mysterious AI genie turned it into a podcast that is strangely good. The main beef I have with it is that they say “Two Baruch” instead of “Second Baruch,” but also the AI takes some liberties and says things that I wouldn’t say. Nevertheless, it’s eerily accurate.
So if listening to creepily-good AI podcasts about 2 Baruch and Galatians is your thing, have at it below:
“Two Baruch” offered a great laugh this morning. Found the morning school commute listen, thanks Josh!
That's a nice deepfake podcast you got there, good sir!
If only there were more tech bros involved in something useful, like making the federal government more efficient.
Oh, and Stacy is a wise woman.