Welcome to Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture, the

podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. I'm your host

Scott Ray, Dean of Faculty and Professor of Christian Ethics. And I'm your co-host, Sean McDow, professor of Christian apologetics.

We're here today with our long-time good friend, Dr. John Marriott, who is a research director at the Center for Christian

Thought here at Biola and has been an adjunct faculty member in the

philosophy departments, both the undergrad and graduate level at Biola and

at Talbot for some time.

He's the author of a brand new book that comes out of his PhD dissertation,

entitled The Anatomy of D Conversion.

So John, welcome. We are so delighted to have you with us and are very pleased to see your

book come out. So welcome.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with both of you guys. I've learned a lot from you, especially you Scott, over the years. I appreciate working with you and the doors that you've opened for me. And so if I can help you guys out on this podcast by

being a guest it is it's my pleasure. So, John tell us first of all what

motivated you to write this because these are you know these are some high profile

stories and you have the your book is full of these stories of people high profile

leaders who have given up their faith but it's also kind of a depressing topic.

And I'm not, you know, I think it probably takes a special person to spend a good bit of his or

her life for the last few years in this subject and you've dug deeply into this.

But why work on this and why write your book on this?

Yeah, that's a good question and it really comes out of an experience that I had with somebody who had made a real impact in my life and ended up walking away from the faith.

A number of years ago, I tell the story in the book of the British

Triple Jump Olympic World Record and world champion Jonathan Edwards who was a

...