PREVIEW
Guests heard on Volume 53
Lawrence Adams, on the possibilities of religious pluralism in Islamic views of state and society
Dana Gioia, on the craft, popularity, and significance of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Elmer M. Colyer, author of How to Read T. F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian and Scientific Theology, on theologian Thomas F. Torrance’s understanding of the Incarnation
R. A. Herrera, author of Reasons for Our Rhymes: An Inquiry into the Philosophy of History, on how the Christian view of Creation and Incarnation shapes an understanding of history
Margaret Visser, author of The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church, on learning to recognize the deep meaning in the design of Christian churches
Joseph Pearce, author of Tolkien: Man and Myth, on Tolkien’s other writings and on his view of myth and story
Bonus: Dana Gioia on the sorrowful life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; the congenial literary circle that gathered around him; and the international recognition that he achieved for American letters
Related reading and listening
- The gift of liturgical time — In this lecture, Gregory Wilbur explains how liturgy and liturgical time align us to the rhythms and order of Creation, forming us as disciples. (45 minutes)
- The confident optimism in true Christian asceticism — Philosopher Étienne Gilson on the essential goodness of Creation
- 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)
- Virgil and purposeful history — In this lecture from June 2019, classical educator Louis Markos examines Book II of The Aeneid to argue that Virgil had an eschatological view of history. (68 minutes)
- Festivity and the goodness of Creation — Drawing on Josef Pieper’s ideas, Ken Myers explains why the spirit of festivity is the spirit of worship, and that “entertainment” is ultimately an artificial, contrived, and empty effort to achieve festivity. (25 minutes)
- The integration of theoretical and mythic intelligence —
FROM VOL. 156 William C. Hackett discusses the relationships between philosophy and theology, and of both to the meaning embedded in myth. (29 minutes) - Forms as portals to reality — Ken Myers explains the ancient classical and Christian view that music embodies an order and forms that correspond to the whole of created reality, in its transcendence and materiality. (54 minutes)
- Theological realism — Kevin J. Vanhoozer discusses theologian T. F. Torrance’s understanding of the positive relation between science and theology. (52 minutes)
- Creation’s goodness and human faithfulness — J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael R. Stevens on Wendell Berry’s understanding of how Creation is a gift with certain givenness
- Farming and our primal vocation — Shawn and Beth Dougherty make a theological case for biomimicry, or fulfilling our original vocation of tending the earth by working according to the nature of Nature. (68 minutes)
- A theology of eating —
FROM VOL. 113 Theologian Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between food and faith. (24 minutes) - Honoring the pigness of pigs —
FROM VOL. 137 Popular innovator and speaker on farming practices Joel Salatin talks about the challenges of caring for Creation within an agricultural and food system that pays little attention to the purposes and inclinations of Creation. (25 minutes) - Only a dying civilization neglects its dead — Historian Dermot Quinn discusses the work of fellow historian Christopher Dawson (1889–1970). (15 minutes)
- Christopher Dawson: Chronicler of Christendom’s Rise and Fall — Dermot Quinn discusses historian Christopher Dawson’s meta-historical perspective and his wisdom about what makes cultures healthy or unhealthy. (54 minutes)
- An account of God’s relatedness to time and space — Colin Gunton on the trinitarian conception of the divine economy in St. Irenaeus
- 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)
- From democracy to bureaucracy — Historian John Lukacs on the challenges of living at the End of an Age
- 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 historian’s communal role as storyteller —
FROM VOL. 127 Historian Christopher Shannon discusses how American academic historical writing presents a grand narrative of progressivism, which it defends by subscribing to an orthodoxy of objective Reason. (21 minutes) - Three historians on history —
FROM VOL. 31 This Archive Feature presents interviews with three historians who discuss changes in historical studies. (33 minutes) - 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)
- “Reading Lewis with blinders on” — Chris Armstrong explains how C. S. Lewis’s work is grounded deeply in the Christian humanist tradition. (45 minutes)
- The past as presence, not souvenir — Historian Christopher Lasch on the importance of recognizing our dependence on the past
- “How deep the problems go” —
FROM VOL. 103 Eric Miller discusses the late historian and social critic Christopher Lasch’s intense commitment to understand the logic of American cultural confusion. (20 minutes) - Creation as beauty and gift —
FROM VOL. 67 David Bentley Hart describes how the Christian understanding of Creation as beauty and gift, as the outward expression of the delight the Trinity has in itself, reveals a vision of reality different from the pagan or fatalist vision of reality. (12 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)
- 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)
- Lessons from Leviticus — The book of Leviticus may be assumed to be irrelevant for charting a way through the challenges of modernity. Theologian Peter J. Leithart disagrees. (22 minutes)
- A theology of active beauty — In a 2010 lecture, George Marsden examines a few ways in which the distorting effects of Enlightenment rationalism were resisted in the work of Jonathan Edwards. (64 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
- Gioia, Dana — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Dana Gioia is the former Poet Laureate of California. An internationally recognized poet and critic, he is the author of six collections of verse.
- The de(con)struction of the humanities (and of truth) — Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb on the skeptical tendencies of the postmodern academy
- What hath Hobbiton to do with Jerusalem? — Holly Ordway on the pre-Christian religion in Middle-earth
- 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)
- Why economists need meta-economics — Joseph Pearce on the key insight of E. F. Schumacher
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 160 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jessica Hooten Wilson, Kyle Hughes, Gil Bailie, D. C. Schindler, Paul Tyson, and Holly Ordway
- Myths of tolerance — Historian Darío Fernández-Morera discusses the claims of his book, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain. (27 minutes)
- Islamic identity vs. nationalism — Bernard Lewis on how the anti-Western sentiment in the Middle East is only intelligible in theological terms
- Islam and modern anti-Semitism — Bernard Lewis on the humiliating effect of the birth of modern Israel
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
- Understanding the doctrine of participation —
FROM VOL. 150 Theologian 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) - On Earth as it is in Heaven —
FROM VOL. 108 Hans Boersma — author of Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry — explains why Christians should reject the modern separation of Heaven and Earth and recover a “sacramental ontology.” (26 minutes) - Lilies as analogues for farming — Fred Bahnson on the wisdom of attending to patterns of Creation
- Making peace with the land — Fred Bahnson challenges us to consider how we might honor our created and redeemed relationship with the earth as God’s stewards. (48 minutes)
- A myth which is also a fact — Holly Ordway on the existentially resonant power of myth
- Learning to see the world aright — Norman Wirzba on cultivating a Christocentric vision of Creation
- Parsing the intellectual vocation — Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann demonstrate that some form of humanism has always been central to the purposes of higher education, and insist that the recovery of a rich, Christocentric Christian humanism is the only way for the university to recover a coherent purpose. (39 minutes)
- This world is now my home — Belden Lane describes several approaches to understanding how we experience the sacredness of earthly places and how we learn to see God manifest in His Creation. (48 minutes)
- Breaking out of the immanent frame — Norman Wirzba on the true character of Creation and of our creatureliness
- Living in a meshwork world — Theologian Norma Wirzba believes that Creation is the “material manifestation of God’s love” and that this fundamental teaching affects everything, especially our understanding of the meaning of modern environmental crises and climate change. (17 minutes)