Mark Strom: Knowledge as Faith, Hope and Love – not data & information

Gospel Conversations

We are excited to welcome back to Gospel Conversations one of our old friends, Mark Strom. Mark has blessed all of us over the years with his unique grasp of big picture holistic thinking coupled with his easy accessible way of explaining all of that: in particular Mark has been a leader in taking the gospel out of its religious box and putting it into the whole framework of reality – particularly in his work on Paul where he argues that Paul was not just a great theologian but a great philosopher who changed the way the world thinks whether they are Christians or not.

In continuing our COVID style of Zoom interviews, we have arranged this series as a dialogue between Mark and Tony – not as a presentation. Our topic continues the broad theme of ‘knowledge’ which we have been pursuing. Mark gives us a big idea – that the famous description of ‘faith, hope and love’ in 1 Corinthians 13 are aspects of true knowing not merely moral qualities. With that fresh perspective he does two revolutionary things: for Christians, he gives us a new take on discipleship and for the wider world, he gives us a new take on knowledge.

The first talk sets the scene for this big idea – as Mark and Tony explore some of the limitations of the way we modern people/Christians think about knowledge, and then the reasons why ‘knowledge’ is so central to God’s purposes for the whole of humanity, including Christians.