Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 118

Related reading and listening

• Ideas and historical consequences — Historian John Lukacs (1924–2019) discusses the relationship between institutions and character, popular sentiment versus public opinion, the distinction between patriotism and nationalism, and the very nature of studying history. (36 minutes)
• 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)
• Freedom as conformity to reality — W. Bradford Littlejohn summarizes the definitions of liberty offered by Richard Bauckham and Oliver O’Donovan
• Cleansing sea breezes — Thomas C. Oden argues that rather than being conformed to contemporary ideological trends, we should be informed by 2000 years of the Church’s wisdom. And Darrell Amundsen corrects some false claims about the early Church’s views on suicide. (27 minutes)
• The Life was the Light of men — In a lecture from 2018, Ken Myers contrasts the Enlightenment’s understanding of reason with the Christocentric conception of reason. (57 minutes)
• Milton Friedman meets Augustine — We present an interview from our archives with theologian William Cavanaugh, in which he examines the free market, consumerism, globalization, and scarcity, all parsed within an unabashedly theological framework. (37 minutes)
• The dance of law and freedom — Calvin Stapert on the experience of joyous order in Bach’s music
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
• Why not hatcheries? — Ethicist Paul Ramsey (1913–1988) challenges “the unchecked employment of powers the biological revolution places in human hands.”
• The logic of “making” babies — Gilbert Meilaender on the temptation to instrumentalize our bodies
• On babies and words — Leon Kass on the re-configuring of human origins
• Medical tools and the shaping of identity — C. Ben Mitchell and Carl Elliott examine how we form judgments about bioethical questions, and how various medical capabilities form us. (27 minutes)
• Philosophy and loving the Logos — Robert Louis Wilken on early Christians and the pursuit of a virtuous life
• Mitchell, Mark T. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Mark T. Mitchell is Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College where he teaches political theory.
• Meilaender, Gilbert — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Gilbert Meilaender is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center and was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2009.
• Community, the giver of freedom — Thomas H. Naylor and William H. Willimon on why suspicion about big government shouldn’t take the form of autonomous individualism
• Life, liberty, and the defense of dignity — In a 2003 interview, Leon Kass discussed his book Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. The unifying theme in the book’s essays is the threat of dehumanization in one form or another. (36 minutes)
• Light from Neither the East nor the West — Ken Myers reads an essay by theologian John Betz titled “Light from Neither the East nor the West.” It is the third of three essays by Betz in which he distinguishes a Christian understanding of freedom from the conventional modern definitions. (41 minutes)
• Deep conversion — D. H. Williams, Michael Budde, and Robert Brimlow describe the conventional practices of Christian discipleship practiced by the early Church, practices that encouraged the conversion of mind, will, and feelings. (26 minutes)
• Music, passion, and politics — In this interview from 2001, Carson Holloway discusses his book All Shook Up: Music, Passion, and Politics, which summarizes the dramatic chasm between the classical and modern views of political ends and of musical means. (45 minutes)
• Promethean medicine? — Stanley Hauerwas on medicine and limits
• Suffering and the vocation of medicine — Stanley Hauerwas on why the elimination of suffering is an inadequate (and unrealistic) goal for medicine
• Health and personhood — Dr. Kimbell Kornu explains how the training of medical professionals should be shaped by a recognition of a Christian understanding of personhood. (22 minutes)
• Human dignity, cosmic hierarchies — Political scientist Robert Kraynak on how Christianity opposes worldly hierarchies with hierarchies of its own
• Challenging the “gospel of democracy” — Robert Kraynak argues that assumptions many modern Christians hold about liberal democracy are rooted in some false ideas about the nature and purpose of civil government. (46 minutes)
• What makes our desires and action intelligible — David Bentley Hart on why we must believe that human beings are by nature inclined to the super-natural
• Freedom on Holiday: The Genealogy of a Cultural Revolution — In this second of three essays, 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)
• Rejecting “two-tiered” Thomism — FROM VOL. 155 David Bentley Hart on how “two-tier Thomism” deviates from historic Christian understanding of the relationship between God and Creation. (42 minutes)
• On moral authority and medicine — Continuing our time travel back to 1992, we hear two more interviews from the pilot tape for the Mars Hill Tapes, with sociologist James Davison Hunter and bioethicist Nigel Cameron. (28 minutes)
• Is irrational freedom truly freedom? — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argues that freedom must be understood in the context of interplay of reason and the will
• Freedom, real and counterfeit — D. C. Schindler contrasts the classical and Christian understanding of freedom with the modern understanding of freedom, and explains how true freedom is a condition of harmony with reality. (59 minutes)
• We Hold These Freedoms: Modern, Postmodern, Christian — An essay by John Betz explores the theological grounding of real freedom. He argues that human freedom cannot be understood apart from divine freedom. (36 minutes)
• God is not Zeus; you are not Prometheus — Ron Highfield addresses those who doubt Christianity’s goodness, especially as regards modern assumptions about identity, freedom, and dignity. (24 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 154 — FEATURED GUESTS: Felicia Wu Song, Michael Ward, Norman Wirzba, Carl Trueman, D. C. Schindler, and Kerry McCarthy
• “Broken Bodies Redeemed” — Today’s Feature presents a reading of a 2007 article by Gilbert Meilaender that explores the significance for bioethics of the mystery of human being as body and soul. (39 minutes)
• Medicine within the immanent frame — Charles C. Camosy on how the secularizing of medicine redefines care
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 153 — FEATURED GUESTS: Charles C. Camosy, O. Carter Snead, Matt Feeney, Margarita A. Mooney, Louis Markos, and Alan Jacobs
• Power to the people — Nathan O. Hatch on the DIY spirit of early American Christianity
• Unreason destroys freedom — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the relationship between freedom and truth
• The tasks, conditions, and limits of democratic politics — Excerpts from three interviews with Jean Bethke Elshtain about her concern that democracy might not be able to survive widespread distrust or the dynamics of identity politics. (37 minutes)
• Pragmatism, Politics, and the Spirit of Tragedy — John Patrick Diggins discusses themes in two of his books: The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority (1994) and Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy (1996). (27 minutes)
• Patients needing patience — Gilbert Meilaender on the quest for greater longevity
• How should we then die? — Stanley Hauerwas asks how the fear of death shapes the practice of medicine
• Thinking Christianly about the body — Theologian and ethicist Gilbert Meilaender discusses some of the themes he explores in two of his books: Body, Soul and Bioethics; and Bioethics: A Primer for Christians. (19 minutes)
• Conventional “charismatic” speech, in service of the Zeitgeist — Richard Stivers on how the rhetoric of democracy invites tyranny
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 151 — FEATURED GUESTS: Richard Stivers, Holly Ordway, Robin Phillips, Scott Newstok, Junius Johnson, and Peter Mercer-Taylor
• The restless vanity of the untrammeled self — Sociologist Daniel Bell on the rise of “the idea that experience in and of itself was the supreme value”
• The moral imperative of having fun — Daniel Bell on the moral imperative of having fun
• The legitimizing role of hedonism — Daniel Bell on what replaced the Protestant Ethic
• The obligation of prodigality — Daniel Bell on the hedonistic logic of the “new capitalism”