Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 160

Related reading and listening

1. How fantasy restores the world — In this 2019 lecture, Alison Milbank shows how fantasy can help restore to us a vision of human flourishing that counters the atomization and meaninglessness of modern life. (43 minutes)
2. 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)
3. 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)
4. Sacramental preaching — FROM VOL. 135 Hans Boersma discusses why we should recover a patristic way of preaching and reading scripture. (23 minutes)
5. 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)
6. 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)
7. 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)
8. 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)
9. 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)
10. 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)
11. “A society of friends at work” — Political philosopher Andrew Willard Jones lays out a robust vision for a just society in which virtues are formed in an analogical manner through relational obedience and trust. (71 minutes)
12. Is liberalism compatible with religious freedom? — D. C. Schindler relies on two Thomistic axioms to illustrate why liberalism — which claims to offer a minimalist conception of the common good — is ultimately incompatible with a Catholic understanding of religious freedom. (34 minutes)
13. 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)
14. Prudence in politics — FROM VOL. 146 Henry T. Edmondson, III talks about Flannery O’Connor’s understanding of political life, which was influenced by a range of thinkers including Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Eric Voegelin, and Russell Kirk. (19 minutes)
15. Flannery O’Connor and Robert Giroux — FROM VOL. 147 Biographer and priest Patrick Samway talks about the relationship between fiction writer Flannery O’Connor and the legendary editor Robert Giroux. (21 minutes)
16. The dangers of the life of the mind — Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr., on why Flannery O’Connor encouraged the cultivation of “Christian skepticism”
17. Remembering Miss O’Connor — Literary critic Richard Gilman shares impressions of his relationship with Flannery O’Connor
18. God is in the details — Flannery O’Connor on why stories rely on the particularities of reality
19. The artist’s commitment to truth — Fr. Damian Ference, author of Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist, explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy. (18 minutes)
20. Flannery O’Connor and Thomistic philosophy — Fr. Damian Ference explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy, as evidenced by her reading habits, letters, prayer journal, and, of course, essays and fiction. (48 minutes)
21. St. Irenaeus against the Gnostics — In this reading of an essay by theologian Khaled Anatolios, St. Irenaeus is remembered for his synthesis of faith and reason. (52 minutes)
22. 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)
23. 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)
24. 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)
25. Looking for solutions in all the wrong places — Christopher A. Hall on how Thomas C. Oden (1931–2016) discovered the wisdom of the ancient Church
26. 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)
27. Mary: Abraham of the New Covenant — Gil Bailie explains how the Virgin Mary brings the Yes given to God by Abraham to its supreme expression
28. Hughes, Kyle — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: The Rev. Dr. Kyle R. Hughes is a scholar-pastor-teacher specializing in the study of early Christianity and working to mine the riches of patristic theology for the modern church and for Christian schools.
29. Bailie, Gil — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Gil Bailie is the founder and president of The Cornerstone Forum, a founding member of The Colloquium on Violence and Religion, a member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and a member of the College of Fellows of the Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology.
30. At the trailhead of a long trek — Jessica Hooten Wilson on the discovery of a literary remnant
31. Christian education and pagan literature — Kyle Hughes on learning from Basil of Caesarea about the curricular choices for Christian educators
32. What hath Hobbiton to do with Jerusalem? — Holly Ordway on the pre-Christian religion in Middle-earth
33. Political community and the good — D. C. Schindler on why political life is inevitably “a particular interpretation of the highest human good”
34. Tyson, Paul — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Dr Paul Tyson is a Senior Honorary Fellow with the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is an applied philosophical theologian.
35. Ordway, Holly — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Holly Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, and Visiting Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University.
36. In the image of our devices? — In light of the history of the meaning of intellectus, D. C. Schindler questions the use of the word “intelligence” to describe systems employing large language models. (18 minutes)
37. Scholarship’s silos and the eclipse of meaning — Paul Tyson on how the modern academy avoids engagement with Reality
38. Hooten Wilson, Jessica — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University. She is the author of several books, most recently Reading for the Love of God.
39. Christ, the key to human meaning — Gil Bailie on how the coming of Christ affirmed the intelligibility of human history (and why the abandonment of Christ invites unreason)
40. Why kings are compelling — Historian Francis Oakley describes how the modern idea of “secular” politics is a striking departure in human history. (32 minutes)
41. Put not your trust in tyrants — Andrew Willard Jones contrasts the pre-modern understanding of political power with the modern view. (46 minutes)
42. Teaching for wonderfulness — Stratford Caldecott on why education is about how we become more human, and therefore more free
43. 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)
44. 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
45. The university and the unity of knowledge — Biographer Ian Ker discusses John Henry Newman’s understanding the goal of “mental cultivation.” (17 minutes)
46. Justice and truth — Joseph Ratzinger: “Plato’s philosophy is utterly misconceived when he is presented as an individualistic, dualistic thinker who negates what is earthly and advocates a flight into the beyond.”
47. 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)
48. 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)
49. Schindler, D. C. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Dr. Schindler’s work sheds light on contemporary cultural challenges by drawing on the resources of the classical Christian tradition.
50. 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)