Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 138

Related reading and listening

• 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)
• Friendship and life together — 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)
• Freedom as conformity to reality — W. Bradford Littlejohn summarizes the definitions of liberty offered by Richard Bauckham and Oliver O’Donovan
• Mechanism and the abolition of meaning — On the occasion of philosopher Daniel Dennett’s death this week, Ken Myers presents an archive interview with David Bentley Hart in which he explains how pure naturalism leads to the un-doing of rationality. (37 minutes)
• Materialism and the problem of mind — David Bentley Hart on the evasiveness implicit on all efforts to explain away human consciousness
• Dreary atheist fundamentalism — David Bentley Hart defends the naturalness of religious belief against the assertions of the Naturalists
• The infinity of beauty in Bach — David Bentley Hart on why Johann Sebastian Bach is the greatest of Christian theologians
• The sovereignty of love — In this 2022 lecture, Oliver O’Donovan explains the historical background — and present consequences — of the assertion by Jesus of two great commands. (67 minutes)
• O’Donovan, Oliver — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Oliver O’Donovan held teaching posts at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and Wycliffe College Toronto before becoming Regius Professor of Moral & Pastoral Theology and Canon of Christ Church at the University of Oxford in 1982.
• Why kings are compelling — Historian Francis Oakley describes how the modern idea of “secular” politics is a striking departure in human history. (32 minutes)
• Christology and human relationality — Joseph Ratzinger on how the longing for eternity expressed in human love is an analogue of Trinitarian love
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
• Conscience seared with a red-hot iron — Oliver O’Donovan on the convicting role of a good conscience
• Culture in light of Easter — Oliver O’Donovan rejects a gnostic reading of redemption
• With virtue, harmony, & charity — Kevin Vost traces a Christian development of the meaning of friendship throughout history, particularly as it is understood through the incarnation of Christ. (18 minutes)
• The basic act and order of things — David L. Schindler (1943–2022) insists that the reduction of love to a matter of private and personal sentiment, piety, or good will — is one of the fundamental disorders of modern culture. Christians should know better. (39 minutes)
• 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
• Recovering a sacramental imagination — Hans Boersma argues that we need to recover the pre-modern view that Creation not only points to God, but that it participates in the very being of God — that in God we live and move and have our being. (29 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)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 155 — FEATURED GUESTS: Donald Kraybill, Thaddeus Kozinski, David Bentley Hart, Nigel Biggar, Ravi Scott Jain, and Jason Baxter
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 154 — FEATURED GUESTS: Felicia Wu Song, Michael Ward, Norman Wirzba, Carl Trueman, D. C. Schindler, and Kerry McCarthy
• Religion within the bounds of citizenship — 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)
• Republican freedom — and ideological flexibility — Mark Noll on the novelty of America’s Christian republicanism
• 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 Church and the powers that be — Historian Mark Noll summarizes Christian ideas about political life in the last few centuries, examining how those ideas were worked out in various contexts in Western Europe and North America. (39 minutes)
• Politics in light of the Ascension — Oliver O’Donovan on the necessity of situating all political authority within redemptive history
• Beauty and a hermeneutics of creation — David Bentley Hart on the goodness of beauty
• A foretaste of the kingdom of God — Oliver O’Donovan on the sovereignty of love
• Loving relationships in community — In conversation with moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan, and with readings from his book, Entering into Rest, Ken Myers explores a central theme in O’Donovan’s work: that we are created to enjoy loving relationships in community. (27 minutes)
• Knowledge transformed by love — David K. Naugle on the reordered thinking of the redeemed
• Redefining gender — 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)
• Marva Dawn on spiritual formation and being Church — This Feature presents an interview with Marva Dawn from Volume 38 of the Journal, during which she talks about concerns discussed in two of her books, related to the spiritual formation of children and a more holistic understanding of sex and intimacy. (23 minutes)
• Questioning the world’s assumptions down to their very roots — John Milbank on the need for a more robust apologetics
• Totalitarianism in a new mode — John Milbank on how liberalism has a marked tendency to become illiberal
• Shrinking sources of causality — David Bentley Hart on the loss of a recognition of inherent meaning in the natural world
• The impact of the King James Version of the Bible — Melvyn Bragg argues that the influence of the King James Version of the Bible on literature, politics, democracy, and civil rights has largely been airbrushed from history, despite its incontrovertible influence on cultural figures such as William Shakespeare. (22 minutes)
• A very figurative and metaphorical God — David Lyle Jeffrey on the poetic character of the voice of God
• 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
• The correspondence between Lewis and Sayers — Gina Dalfonzo chronicles the encouragement and occasional spats documented in letters between C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers, two very different but nonetheless mutually sympathetic Christians. (24 minutes)
• Reasoning about values — Revisiting a 1974 text that examined the mutual animosities of the 1960s
• Liberalism’s totalitarian logic — Antonio López on the logic of liberalism’s totalitarian tendencies
• “Whose kingdom shall have no end” — Oliver O’Donovan and his mentor, George B. Caird, offer lessons from the book of Revelation for thinking about politics
• The social context of freedom — Brad Littlejohn talks about the necessity of a more expansive understanding of freedom, one which recognizes that we are really only free within the social experience of shared meaning and mutual recognition. (17 minutes)
• Post-liberalism of an earlier generation — Allan C. Carlson discusses an anthology of articles from Free America, a magazine published between 1937 and 1947 whose writers believed that political democracy could only survive if coupled with decentralized economic democracy. (26 minutes)
• The Sixth Commandment and the obligation to protect public health — Ethicist Gilbert Meilaender explains why our experience with COVID-19 has made it difficult for many — citizens and officials — to honor a proper obligation to protect public health. (17 minutes)
• Impact of “infotainment” on community — From 1999 Journal interviews, Neal Gabler and C. John Summerville discuss how the mentalities conveyed by our experience with communications media work against the nurturing of community. Ken Myers also reads related excerpts from George Steiner and Oliver O’Donovan. (33 minutes)
• Freedom, ancient and modern — In a brief excerpt from David Bentley Hart’s book Atheist Delusions, and a longer excerpt from an Areopagus Lecture by D. C. Schindler, the modern view of freedom is contrasted with the understanding of freedom present in ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman thought. (27 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 147 — FEATURED GUESTS: R. Jared Staudt, Jason Peters, D. C. Schindler, Craig Gay, Mary Hirschfeld, and Patrick Samway
• The Kingdom of God and the kings of the earth — In a 90-minute conversation with Matthew Lee Anderson and Ken Myers, Oliver O’Donovan explains some of the central themes of his work in political theology. (91 minutes)