released 6/19/2024
What does it mean to be lawful in a society undergoing a crisis of authority? This is the question Dr. Douglas Farrow explores in a lecture at the Touchstone conference in October 2023. Farrow examines the relation between “the kings of the earth” and the law of Christ, particularly when governmental law is exercised without reference to natural or divine law. When a totalitarian regime arises that does not recognize any sphere as outside its authority, it must be resisted, he argues. Farrow is the author of Desiring a Better Country: Forays in Political Theology and Nation of Bastards: Essays on the End of Marriage.
This lecture is provided by Touchstone magazine.
49 minutes
PREVIEW
The audio player for this program is restricted to MHA members and friends of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. Log in or sign up now to listen to it.
Related reading and listening
- When language is weaponized —
FROM VOL. 52 Jeffrey Meyers explains George Orwell‘s understanding of how language can be used as a weapon in totalitarian movements and regimes. (10 minutes) - The Decline of Formal Speech and Why It Matters — John McWhorter examines the reasons behind the decline in articulate speech and writing in the late 20th century, and the implications of this change across many areas of culture. (55 minutes)
- The recovery of true authority for societal flourishing — Michael Hanby addresses a confusion at the heart of our current cultural crisis: a conflation of the concepts of authority and power. (52 minutes)
- The political wisdom of Edmund Burke —
FROM VOL. 28 Daniel Ritchie discusses the enduring political wisdom of British statesman and political thinker Edmund Burke (1729–1797). (13 minutes) - Confronting the supremacy of science — Augusto Del Noce on the belief that science is the only true form of knowledge
- The roots of American disorder — In this reading of an article from 2021 by Michael Hanby, the critique of Marxism in Augusto del Noce’s work is compared with texts from the American Founders. (79 minutes)
- Faith as the pathway to knowledge — Lesslie Newbigin on authority and the Author of all being
- Our bodies, our selves — Douglas Farrow on the insistence of St. Irenaeus that the Ascension of Christ means that our bodies — not just our souls — are beneficiaries of redemption
- The gift of objective reality — Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan makes an argument for the consistency of the idea of law when it is conceived in a theological context. (40 minutes)
- Power and paranoia — From our cassette tape archives, Daniel Chirot talks about political tyranny, and Daniel Pipes explains how conspiracy theories flourish. (31 minutes)
- Freedom as conformity to reality — W. Bradford Littlejohn summarizes the definitions of liberty offered by Richard Bauckham and Oliver O’Donovan
- Renewal of authentic political authority — Brad Littlejohn builds a case for the idea that authority makes free action possible, illustrating how that occurs within the forms of political and epistemic authority, properly understood and wisely practiced. (45 minutes)
- Education, reason, and the Good — Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson on C. S. Lewis’s argument about natural law
- The negation of transcendence — Michael Hanby argues that our current civilizational crisis can be understood as a “new totalitarianism” that negates or disallows every form of transcendence. (32 minutes)
- The dance of law and freedom — Calvin Stapert on the experience of joyous order in Bach’s music
- The Symbol of Authority — In the second of two lectures given by D. C. Schindler, he explores the nature of authority with reference to the transcendental dance of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. (60 minutes)
- The Authority of the Symbol — In this lecture presented at the CiRCE Institute national conference, D. C. Schindler presents a metaphysical description of what symbols are. (54 Minutes)
- Music without emotivism — Julian Johnson discusses how novel, historically speaking, is the idea of complete relativism in musical judgment. (33 minutes)
- Rehabilitating authority — Authority, argues David Koyzis, is an aspect of the image of God, exercised to fulfill human vocations. (30 minutes)
- Common good(s) and authority — Victor Lee Austin describes the ways in which human action is free and flourishing when authority is active and honored. (26 minutes)
- With Eastern eyes — Paul Valliere and Vigen Guroian discuss questions of law, politics, and human nature from the Orthodox tradition. (34 minutes)
- Power to the people — Nathan O. Hatch on the DIY spirit of early American Christianity
- The purpose of government and God’s eternal purpose — Philip Turner on understanding the state in light of the eschatological reality of the Church
- The meaning of the modern eclipse of authority — Augusto Del Noce on the greatest modern reversal
- Politics in light of the Ascension — Oliver O’Donovan on the necessity of situating all political authority within redemptive history
- Democratic Authority at Century’s End — Jean Bethke Elshtain summarizes mid-twentieth-century concerns of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) about the growing suspicion about the very idea of authority. (41 minutes)
- The problem of authority is the problem of unbelief — John Patrick Diggins on Max Weber’s struggle to imagine social order without authority
- Equality and the (modern) dilemma of authority — Sociologist Richard Stivers explains the confused understanding in modern culture about equality, individualism, and authority. (16 minutes)
- The abolition of men and women — Douglas Farrow on the anti-humanist logic of “gender”
- Totalitarianism in a new mode — John Milbank on how liberalism has a marked tendency to become illiberal
- Freed from the burden of choice — Writing in the mid-1990s, Alan Ehrenhalt reflects on the relationship between authority and community
- What authorizes authority? — Victor Lee Austin: “All authority comes from God and no thing, no being, no realm is outside his dominion.”
- Why communities need authority — Alan Ehrenhalt argues that real community can only be sustained when three things are assumed: the goodness of limits, the necessity of authority, and the reality of personal sin. (13 minutes)
- The first virtue of citizenship: Taking the law seriously — Oliver O’Donovan reflects on how the reality of the Kingship of Christ must be affirmed as a present reality
- Liberalism’s totalitarian logic — Antonio López on the logic of liberalism’s totalitarian tendencies
- Justice and gender, round 2 — Margaret Harper McCarthy, one of the authors of a brief on gender submitted to the Supreme Court, discusses the philosophical and practical implications of fashionable notions of the meaning of gender. (33 minutes)
- Learning about the meaning of government — In a telephone conversation during COVID-19 lockdowns, Oliver O’Donovan talks about lessons we can learn about the proper role of government from our experience of pandemics and quarantine. (51 minutes)
- On the meaning of gender and the truth of human nature — Margaret Harper McCarthy, one of the authors of a brief on gender submitted to the Supreme Court, discusses the philosophical and practical implications of fashionable notions of the meaning of gender. (29 minutes)
- Creation, natural law, and ecological concerns — Christopher Thompson discusses our need to grow in wisdom and humility, that we might flourish in this ordered cosmos in which we live. (16 minutes)
- The leaning tower of gabble — Oliver O’Donovan on how authority and language connect us with reality and thus sustain community
- Skepticism and totalitarian drift — John Paul II on how a loss of confidence in the reality of truth accentuates the will to power
- Culture as legacy — Hannah Arendt on the place of authority and tradition in education
- Learning to live within a hierarchy of goods — Richard M. Weaver on the ends of education
- Command and liberation — Oliver O’Donovan on the freedom of living under authority
- Leaders with management skills (but no virtues) — Philip Turner on viewing authority as mere conflict management
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 125 — FEATURED GUESTS: Brent Hull, David Koyzis, Steve Wilkens, Roger Lundin, Craig Bernthal, and Kerry McCarthy
- Principles have to be discovered, not chosen — Alasdair MacIntyre on the problem of natural law and contemporary culture
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 124 — FEATURED GUESTS: John Fea, Robert F. Rea, John C. Pinheiro, R. J. Snell, Duncan G. Stroik, Kate Tamarkin, and Fiona Hughes
- How the Church promotes the cause of freedom — Oliver O’Donovan: “We discover we are free when we are commanded by that authority which commands us according to the law of our being, disclosing the secrets of the heart.”
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 108 — FEATURED GUESTS: Thomas Albert Howard, Jean Porter, Peter Augustine Lawler, Hans Boersma, Felicia Wu Song, and Elias Aboujaoude