Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 150

Related reading and listening

1. What is lost with labor-saving devices — Romano Guardini on what is lost when cultural pursuits eclipse natural order
2. Technology and the kingdom of God — FROM VOL. 63 Albert Borgmann (1937–2023) believes Christians have an obligation to discuss and discern the kind of world that technology creates and encourages. (12 minutes)
3. The gift of meaningful work — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler argues that genuine work is inherently meaningful and facilitates an encounter with reality and therefore, ultimately, with God. (36 minutes)
4. Diverting language from its richest possibilities — FROM VOL. 75 Steve Talbott discusses the rich capacities of language and how technology diminishes them. (18 minutes)
5. The relationship between prudence and reality  — In this lecture, Ken Myers explains how the virtue of prudence is fundamentally connected with a deep and anchored understanding of reality. (54 minutes)
6. Why the sexual revolution “failed on its own terms” — FROM VOL. 38 Wendy Shalit argues that when promiscuity is considered natural, women lose the leverage and power inherent in modesty. (13 minutes)
7. Apprehending the enduring things — Vigen Guroian explains how children’s literature has the capacity to birth the moral imagination in our children, affirming for them the permanent things. (53 minutes)
8. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 162 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, R. Jared Staudt, Paul Weston, William C. Hackett, Hans Boersma, and David Paul Baird
9. What higher education forgot — FROM VOL. 84 Harry L. Lewis discusses higher education’s amnesia about its purposes, and how that shortchanges students. (19 minutes)
10. The formation of affections — FROM VOL. 101 James K. A. Smith explains how education always involves the formation of affections and how the form of Christian education should imitate patterns of formation evident in historic Christian liturgy. (15 minutes)
11. A Christian philosophy of integrated education — FROM VOL. 61 Michael L. Peterson discusses how Christianity could inform society’s understandings of education and human nature. (8 minutes)
12. Education for human flourishing — Co-authors Paul Spears and Steven Loomis argue that Christians should foster education that does justice to humans in our fullness of being. (23 minutes)
13. The social irrelevance of secular higher education — FROM VOL. 85 Professor C. John Sommerville describes the increasingly marginal influence of universities in our society, and why they seem to be of no substantive relevance to people outside the school. (13 minutes)
14. The history of Christianity and higher education — FROM VOL. 50 In tracing Christianity’s relationship to the academy, Arthur F. Holmes points to Augustine as one of the first to embrace higher learning, believing God’s ordered creation to be open to study by the rational mind of man. (9 minutes)
15. Automation and human agency — FROM VOL. 150 Philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford laments the losses of human skill that correspond with gains in mechanical automation. (21 minutes)
16. Getting outside of our heads — FROM VOL. 128Philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford explores what forms the self, arguing that individuality is an earned competence achieved through habits of submission to various tasks, traditions, and authorities. (20 minutes)
17. In praise of a hierarchy of taste — In a lecture at a CiRCE Institute conference, Ken Myers presented a rebuttal to the notion that encouraging the aesthetic appreciation of “higher things” is elitist and undemocratic. (58 minutes)
18. What does it mean to be a creature? — Canon-theologian Simon Oliver explains how and why the doctrine of Creation is cardinal and must frame all theology. (62 minutes)
19. The ecstasy of the act of knowing — Theologian Paul Griffiths situates our creaturely knowing within the framework of the relation between God and Creation
20. How music reflects and continues the created order — Musician, composer, and teacher Greg Wilbur explores how music reflects the created order of the cosmos. (55 minutes)
21. On wonder, wisdom, worship, and work — Classical educator Ravi Jain dives deeply into the nature, purpose, and interconnectedness of the liberal, common, and fine arts. (43 minutes)
22. Seeking control, in white magic and The Green Book — Alan Jacobs on C. S. Lewis’s critique of the modern pursuit of god-like control
23. Orienting reason and passions — In an essay titled “The Abolition of Mania” (Modern Age, Spring 2022), Michael Ward applies C. S. Lewis’s insights to the polarization that afflicts modern societies. (16 minutes)
24. Fixed certainties, fixed mysteries — FROM VOL. 42Science journalist John Horgan, author of The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, discusses the limits of neuroscience. (13 minutes)
25. Discerning an alternative modernity — In a lecture from 2019, Simon Oliver presents a summary of the cultural consequences of the comprehensiveness of the work of Christ. (28 minutes)
26. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
27. Let saints on Earth in concert sing . . . — In this audio reprint of an article from First Things, Church historian Robert Wilken describes how the lives of virtuous Christians became models for imitation.(46 minutes)
28. Davis, Joseph E. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Joseph Davis is a Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and Director of the Picturing the Human Project of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.
29. Crawford, Matthew B. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Matthew B. Crawford is a Senior Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and a New York Times bestselling author.
30. Davison, Andrew Paul — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Professor Andrew Paul Davison is Starbridge Professor of Theology and Natural Science, University of Cambridge, and Fellow in Theology and Dean of Chapel, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
31. Christian education and pagan literature — Kyle Hughes on learning from Basil of Caesarea about the curricular choices for Christian educators
32. Jacobsen, Eric O. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Rev. Eric O Jacobsen is the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church (ECO) in Tacoma, WA. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the relationship between the built environment and the Christian faith.
33. Smith, David I. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Dr. David I. Smith has written widely and worked extensively with educators at all levels of education on questions of how faith relates to the practice of teaching.
34. DeYoung, Rebecca Konyndyk — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung is Professor of Philosophy, Calvin University. She has enjoyed teaching ethics and the history of ancient and medieval philosophy at Calvin for over 25 years.
35. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 160 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jessica Hooten Wilson, Kyle Hughes, Gil Bailie, D. C. Schindler, Paul Tyson, and Holly Ordway
36. Everything about everything comes from God — 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)
37. Teaching for wonderfulness — Stratford Caldecott on why education is about how we become more human, and therefore more free
38. Education and human be-ing in the world — In championing a classical approach to teaching, Stratford Caldecott was an advocate for a musical education, affirming the harmonious unity in Creation. (26 minutes)
39. Maintaining a connected grasp of things — Ian Ker summarizes the central concern of John Henry Newman’s educational philosophy as developed in The Idea of a University
40. The university and the unity of knowledge — Biographer Ian Ker discusses John Henry Newman’s understanding the goal of “mental cultivation.” (17 minutes)
41. The future of Christian learning — Historian Mark Noll insists that for Christian intellectual life to flourish, a vision for comprehensive and universal social and cultural consequences of the Gospel has to be assumed. (18 minutes)
42. 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)
43. Earthly things in relation to heavenly realities — In this lecture, Ken Myers argues that the end of education is to train students to recognize what is really real. The things of this earth are only intelligible in light of heavenly realities. (59 minutes)
44. Understanding the doctrine of participation — FROM VOL. 150Theologian and priest Andrew Davison believes that retrieving the historic doctrine of participation is vital to help Christians escape from the default philosophy of the age. (32 minutes)
45. The surrender of culture to technology — FROM VOL. 6Neal Postman discuses the ways in which how we think about the world has been influenced by communications technology, even in its earliest forms. (11 minutes)
46. A.I., power, control, & knowledge — Ken Myers shares some paragraphs from Langdon Winner‘s seminal book, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (1977) and from Roger Shattuck‘s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (1996). An interview with Shattuck is also presented. (31 minutes)
47. Technology and social imaginaries — In this interview from 1999, cultural historian David Nye insists that societies have choices about how they use technologies, but that once choices are made and established, a definite momentum is established. (19 minutes)
48. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 158 — FEATURED GUESTS: David Setran, Vigen Guroian, Michael Dominic Taylor, Thomas Pfau, Jason Paone, and Matthew Levering
49. Living into focus — As our lives are increasingly shaped by technologically defined ways of living, Arthur Boers discusses how we might choose focal practices that counter distraction and isolation. (32 minutes)
50. Albert Borgmann, R.I.P. — Albert Borgmann argues that, despite its promise to the contrary, technology fails to provide meaning, significance, and coherence to our lives. (47 minutes)