When he’s not making videos, Austin works in content marketing and public relations.
Austin is married to his best friend and all around better half, Eliza.
After working full-time at a large non-denominational church, Austin Suggs fell in love with teaching people to love and live out the message of the Bible, and this drove him to attend Moody Bible Institute where he majored in theology. This love for teaching also led to the start of his YouTube channel, Gospel Simplicity, where he has conversations about biblical and theological topics with people from across the Christian tradition. His channel is known for its ecumenical outlook and the diversity of views represented. Gospel Simplicity is centered around the conviction that the gospel is really good news, and the goal is that through interviews, church tours, bible studies and more people would encounter and experience the beautiful simplicity and transformative power of the gospel.
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Research Interests
Union with Christ
This was one of my first areas of academic exploration at Moody. My main conclusions deal with union with Christ as the source and context for all the blessings of salvation. I am greatly indebted to the work of Dr. Marcus Peter Johnson for showing me the centrality of this theme in Scripture. Perhaps no other research project has so influenced how I think about faith.
The Incarnation as Atoning
Building off of my work on Union with Christ, I worked on a soteriological view of the incarnation with the thesis that salvation began in the womb and encompasses all of Christ’s life, not just his death and resurrection. In writing this paper, I was introduced to the work of T. F. Torrance, for which I am deeply grateful.
Christ’s Priestly Office
This may sound like a bit of a niche topic, and in some ways this is, but it’s connected to my other work in Christology. When studying Calvin, I wrote on his conception of Christ’s priestly office. Fascinatingly, much of this comes from Calvin’s Mosaic Harmony, and his typological interpretations are incredibly deep. I am indebted to Dr. John C. Clark for his guidance and his dissertation on this topic.
The Church as Sacrament
Influenced by my ecumenical work on YouTube, when I chose this topic I decided to branch away from my usual conversation partners of Calvin, Torrance, etc. and engage instead with the brilliant minds of De Lubac, Congar, Dulles, and others. The paper’s aim was to argue for a revival of higher Protestant ecclesiology using the Church as a sacrament as a framework for doing so.
Biblical Theology of the Environment
This is one of my most recent works at Moody. Though I spend more times in the worlds of Systematic and Historical Theology, I really enjoy biblical theology as well. My research was on biodiversity loss as a result of animal agriculture and how the Bible’s ecological vision promotes an ethic of sustainability, stewardship, and creation care.
Ecumenism
I don’t have much written work on this subject, though this is the focus of my popular work on YouTube. Ecumenism is a passion of mine, and something I’ve had the privilege of discussing on many podcasts as well as conducting my own interviews on the subject. I would like to thank Dr. Jonathan Armstrong for his influence on my academic formation on the topic of Ecumenism.