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A letter from Ken Myers
December 12, 2025
Ken Myers examines the cultural implications of the Incarnation and the deep-seated dualism of modernity that divorces spirituality from our material experience. (22 minutes)
Publicity and representative images in society
November 5, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan describes the nature of publicity as the force that mediates our communication with one another, creating common interests and then rapidly subsuming them into newer ones.(Lecture 3 of 3; 57 minutes)
How common loves shape communities
November 5, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan discusses how communities mediate love and knowledge to their members and what challenges arise as a community’s traditions are confronted by sin, error, and plurality. (Lecture 2 of 3; 49 minutes)
The “sovereign uselessness of moral reflection”
November 5, 2025
Calling on the wisdom of St. Augustine, Oliver O’Donovan reminds his listeners that all knowledge participates in the eternal Logos of God and is rooted in love, not disinterested moral judgement.(Lecture 1 of 3; 52 minutes)
University or “utiliversity”?
August 29, 2025
In this essay, Reinhard Hütter examines in depth John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University and argues that its insights and prescriptions are urgently relevant to the current status of higher education. (87 minutes)
“The search for shared ends”
July 2, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan examines whether and to what extent there might be the possibility of a unifying Christian perspective on political doctrine or policy. (59 minutes)
Thinking coherently about politics
June 27, 2025
Ken Myers gives an introduction to political theologian Oliver O’Donovan, whose work has been instrumental in teaching many how to think about social and political life in light of the gospel of Christ. (57 minutes)
The law of faith and of love
June 27, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan compares St. Augustine’s interpretation of Psalm 119 with that of others, revealing Augustine’s more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the life of faith that the psalmist explores. (64 minutes)
“Only a real world can save us”
June 4, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan explores how the “religion” of modernity lacks a coherent world in which one may participate with full human agency and moral purpose. (Lecture 3 of 3; 61 minutes)
Christian unity and civil society
June 4, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan introduces listeners to Dutch lay theologian Hugo Grotius, arguing that the questions he tackled relate to perennial concerns about the relationship between divine and human agency, and between civil and ecclesiastical authority. (Lecture 2 of 3; 57 minutes)
The demoralizing effect of pagan Roman religion
June 4, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan examines St. Augustine’s critique of pagan Roman religion in Book II of his treatise City of God and asks his audience to consider what insights Augustine’s critique has for us today. (Lecture 1 of 3; 51 minutes)
Knowing and doing the good
June 3, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan raises several key questions and complications involved in the task of taking concrete and practical action toward a recognized moral good. (Lecture 3 of 3; 63 minutes)
Moral knowledge of reality
June 3, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan argues that admiration is the fundamental form of knowing the world, as we cannot know fully those elements of reality (“bare facts”) that contain no significance for us. (Lecture 2 of 3; 55 minutes)
Attentiveness to the world, the self, and time
June 3, 2025
Oliver O’Donovan uses the metaphor of waking to discuss the concept of moral sensibility as attention to the world, the self, and time. (Lecture 1 of 3; 60 minutes)
The downward spiral of all technocracies
April 9, 2025
Andrew Willard Jones explains the two paths that exist with the development of new technologies: one which leads to an expansion of the humane world and one which exploits and truncates both Creation and humanity. (65 minutes)
From culture war to culture care
March 19, 2025
In this 2016 lecture, artist Makoto Fujimura asks what would it look like for Christians to be stewards of beauty and human flourishing in all areas of life and culture. (48 minutes)
The need to recollect ourselves as whole persons
February 21, 2025
In this 2016 lecture, John F. Crosby explores key personalist insights found in the thinking of John Henry Newman and Romano Guardini. (60 minutes)
Education that counters alienation
January 15, 2025
In this lecture, Jeanne Schindler explores how digital technologies warp not only education but our experience of being human. (30 minutes)
St. Irenaeus against the Gnostics
June 28, 2024
In this reading of an essay by theologian Khaled Anatolios, St. Irenaeus is remembered for his synthesis of faith and reason. (52 minutes)
Friendship and life together
June 6, 2024
In a lecture at Providence College, Ken Myers explores how the concept of friendship, which used to be central to political philosophy, was banished from considerations of public life as the state was exalted over society. (53 minutes)
How music reflects and continues the created order
June 6, 2024
Musician, composer, and teacher Greg Wilbur explores how music reflects the created order of the cosmos. (55 minutes)
A prophetic pilgrim
May 3, 2024
Historian Eric Miller charts Christopher Lasch’s intellectual journey in search of a vision that could direct Americans toward the higher hopes and nobler purposes that might lead to a flourishing common life. (57 minutes)
Light is more powerful than darkness
December 1, 2023
An essay by medieval scholar Nicholas Babich explores works by priest and novelist Robert Hugh Benson that have been eclipsed by his more popular Lord of the World. Ken Myers presents an unabridged reading of Babich’s essay. (30 minutes)
Conscience and its counterfeits
October 20, 2023
A 2014 lecture by theologian Reinhard Hütter examines “Freedom of Conscience as Freedom in the Truth: Conscience according to Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman.” (64 minutes)
Everything about everything comes from God
October 5, 2023
Theologian Andrew Davison discusses how the idea of participation informs our understanding of God, of Creation, of being, of knowing, of loving, of law, of economics, etc. (28 minutes)
Light from Neither the East nor the West
June 30, 2023
John Betz distinguishes a Christian understanding of freedom from the conventional modern definitions. (41 minutes; Part 3 of 3)
Music without emotivism
February 10, 2023
Julian Johnson discusses how novel, historically speaking, is the idea of complete relativism in musical judgment. (33 minutes)
A remedy for relativism
January 27, 2023
Geoffrey Wainwright analyzes Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s thought on how the crisis of relativism in the West manifests in society and the arts, showing how Ratzinger grounded his response in a deep theology of worship and liturgy. (78 minutes)
The music and the notes are precious
November 25, 2022
Ken Myers encourages an understanding of the Church as a particular culture that should be nourished and sustained, and then describes the history of an Advent hymn written by St. Ambrose. (27 minutes)
Freedom on Holiday: The Genealogy of a Cultural Revolution
September 2, 2022
John Betz argues that freedom for the sake of conforming to the Good has been replaced by freedom as the space to choose whatever we want. (52 minutes; Part 2 of 3)
We Hold These Freedoms: Modern, Postmodern, Christian
July 8, 2022
John Betz explores the theological grounding of real freedom and argues that human freedom cannot be understood apart from divine freedom. (36 minutes; Part 1 of 3)
Religion within the bounds of citizenship
May 6, 2022
In a 2006 lecture, Oliver O’Donovan argues that the conventional way of describing Western civil society creates obstacles to the participation of believers (Muslim, Christian, and other). (68 minutes)
Beyond proof-texts
February 25, 2022
Mark Noll argues that the distinctly American practice of interpreting the Bible through proof-texting hampered the abolitionist movement’s effectiveness. (41 minutes)
Aspects of our un-Christening
January 21, 2022
In this Friday Feature — presented courtesy of Biola University — Carlo Lancellotti talks with Aaron Kheriaty about the central ideas in Augusto Del Noce’s writings. (43 minutes)
What is really true? Why does beauty matter?
December 3, 2021
Bishop Robert Barron talks about the necessity of persuading people that theological claims are about things that are objectively true, not just personally meaningful. (14 minutes)
The light shines in the darkness
November 26, 2021
Physicist David Park explores the physical, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of light, considering the phenomenon of light in profound ways, from spiritual meanings embedded in our culture to the challenging questions put forth by great scientists and philosophers. (17 minutes)
Remembering Roger Lundin (1949-2015)
November 12, 2021
Today’s Feature presents our first and last interviews with frequent guest Roger Lundin (1949-2015), in which he shares his love of language and discusses a Christian understanding of desire. (34 minutes)
Democratic Authority at Century’s End
October 29, 2021
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)
Redefining gender
June 18, 2021
In this article from Communio, Margaret Harper McCarthy demonstrates that the attempt to eliminate the givenness of sexual difference rests on a denial of the created person’s origin in and ordination toward relations of love. (68 minutes)
“A roaming unrest of the spirit”
May 28, 2021
Theologian Reinhard Hütter argues that the contemporary plague of pornography is a symptom of a deep spiritual apathy. (28 minutes)
What is at stake for us in a self-driving future?
April 30, 2021
Matthew Crawford vividly details the “personal knowledge” acquired in interaction with physical things, their mecho-systems, and the people who care for them. (16 minutes)
When masks obscure faces
August 21, 2020
Portrait painter Catherine Prescott discusses what is lost in communication when faces are obscured by masks. (20 minutes)
Ethics as Theology, Part 2
May 29, 2020
Drawing from St. Augustine and figures such as Aelred of Rievaulx, Oliver O’Donovan describes how the Church, communication, community, and friendship all significantly contribute to how we understand the role of love in both ethical and political reflection. (52 minutes)
Ethics as Theology, Part 1
May 15, 2020
Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan discusses the first two volumes of his three-volume set, Ethics as Theology. Among other topics, he reflects on the significance of the thinking moral subject as well as what form of moral inadequacy the “life of the flesh” suggests. (58 minutes)
Dana Gioia on poets and poetry
September 6, 2019
In this collection of interview excerpts, poet and essayist Dana Gioia comments on the literary significance and distinctive voices of Longfellow, Donne, Hopkins, and other fellow poets. (25 minutes)
