Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 90

Related reading and listening

1. Victorian ideas about belief and doubt — FROM VOL. 148 Timothy Larsen situates George MacDonald within a Victorian understanding of faith and doubt. (17 minutes)
2. “Prophet of holiness” — Timothy Larsen discusses a new edition of George MacDonald‘s Diary of An Old Soul, a slim book of poem-prayers to be read daily as a devotional aid. (30 minutes)
3. Faith that is more than “chemically pure” — Romano Guardini on sustaining a Christian understanding of all of Creation
4. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 163 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Youngblood, R. J. Snell, Nicholas Denysenko, Nigel Biggar, Robert McNamara, and David Cayley
5. The powerful presence of the body — FROM VOL. 9 Painter Ed Knippers discusses how he attempts to capture the reality and mystery of the human body without reducing it to a wooden object or exalting it to the status of an idol. (7 minutes)
6. The Body Worlds exhibit and Western art — FROM VOL. 88 Michael J. Lewis explores the effects of the Body Worlds exhibits on the moral imagination of the viewer, who encounters human cadavers in a mechanistic way erased of all moral context. (26 minutes)
7. Human nature through the eyes of Lucian Freud — FROM VOL. 7 Art critic and sculptor Ted Prescott discusses the work of British realist painter Lucian Freud (notably, the grandson of Sigmund Freud). (8 minutes)
8. Depicting the human form — FROM VOL. 6 Ted Prescott explains the history of portraying the nude human body in art and contrasts it with the way the naked human form is often used in advertising. (9 minutes)
9. Aslan, the Christ-figure of Narnia — Alex Markos explores the transformational power of Aslan as the Christ figure in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. (31 minutes)
10. Good stewardship of language — Marilyn Chandler McEntyre discusses central themes from her 2009 book, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. ALSO: clips from 6 other programs about language. (36 minutes)
11. The Bully Pulpit: Presidential Rhetoric and True Leadership — Elvin Lim talks about the decline of the content of presidential rhetoric and its consequences to democracy. (49 minutes)
12. When language is weaponized — FROM VOL. 52 Jeffrey Meyers explains George Orwell‘s understanding of how language can be used as a weapon in totalitarian movements and regimes. (10 minutes)
13. The Decline of Formal Speech and Why It Matters — John McWhorter examines the reasons behind the decline in articulate speech and writing in the late 20th century, and the implications of this change across many areas of culture. (55 minutes)
14. Multi-leveled language and active spiritual engagement — FROM VOL. 95 Eugene Peterson talks about how Jesus spent most of his time speaking normally and conversationally, and how the Spirit infused this normal speech. (14 minutes)
15. How words are central to the human experience — FROM VOL. 95 Craig Gay reflects on the essential linguistic nature of humanity: how our growth (or decline) in life is tied to words. (18 minutes)
16. Diverting language from its richest possibilities — FROM VOL. 75 Steve Talbott discusses the rich capacities of language and how technology diminishes them. (18 minutes)
17. Courtesy as a theological issue — FROM VOL. 37 Donald McCullough discusses his insights into the increasingly coarse nature of society and the theological foundations for courtesy. (12 minutes)
18. Worldliness vs. otherworldliness — FROM VOL. 38 Sociologist Craig Gay speaks of the charge that Christianity is an otherworldly religion. (12 minutes)
19. The abolition of the fine arts — In this lecture, R. V. Young examines why people are increasingly unable to discriminate between base and fine art, arguing why this issue is of particular concern to Christians. (41 minutes)
20. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 162 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, R. Jared Staudt, Paul Weston, William C. Hackett, Hans Boersma, and David Paul Baird
21. Early evangelical response to C. S. Lewis — Historian Mark Noll discusses the reasons why American evangelicals were initially slow to warm to Lewis. (15 minutes)
22. 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)
23. “A state of divine carelessness” — FROM VOL. 121 Daniel Gabelman attempts to correct the notion that George MacDonald prizes seriousness and sobriety. (20 minutes)
24. When is civil disobedience necessary? — Douglas Farrow examines the relation between “the kings of the earth” and the law of Christ, particularly when governmental law is exercised without reference to natural or divine law. (49 minutes)
25. 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)
26. “Reading Lewis with blinders on” — Chris Armstrong explains how C. S. Lewis’s work is grounded deeply in the Christian humanist tradition. (45 minutes)
27. On The Abolition of Man — FROM VOL. 154 Michael Ward explains why The Abolition of Man is one of Lewis’s most important but also most difficult books. (36 minutes)
28. 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
29. Education, reason, and the Good — Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson on C. S. Lewis’s argument about natural law
30. 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)
31. Infrastructures of addiction — Christopher Lasch on the subversive effects of the expectation of novelty
32. Faith and unbelief — FROM VOL. 98 This Archive Feature revisits two conversations, one with Roger Lundin and one with David Bentley Hart, on what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (39 minutes)
33. Developing a Christian aesthetic — In the inaugural lecture for the Eliot Society, titled “Faithful Imaginations in a Meaningful Creation,” Ken Myers addresses the question of the relationship between the arts and the Church. (59 minutes)
34. The negation of transcendence — Michael Hanby argues that our current civilizational crisis can be understood as a “new totalitarianism” that negates or disallows every form of transcendence. (32 minutes)
35. The peril of positivism — Owen Barfield on a popular denial of the possibility of meaning
36. The dance of law and freedom — Calvin Stapert on the experience of joyous order in Bach’s music
37. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
38. Prescott, Catherine Porter — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Catherine Prescott taught painting and drawing at Messiah University for 20 years, and has taught intermittently in Gordon College’s Orvieto Program abroad since 1998.
39. Bertrand, J. Mark — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: J. Mark Bertrand is a novelist, pastor, and consultant on Bible design. He serves on the board of Worldview Academy.
40. 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.
41. Blest be the ties of language that bind us — Marion Montgomery on the precious gift of words
42. Ward, Michael — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Michael Ward is an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hillsdale College.
43. In the image of an Imaginer — Dorothy L. Sayers on the inevitability of analogical language about God (and everything else)
44. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
45. An unlikely trio in life (and in death) — FROM VOL. 1Philosopher Peter Kreeft was interviewed in 1982 by Ken Myers about his book, Between Heaven and Hell. In 1992, that interview was featured on the pilot cassette tape which became the Mars Hill Tapes. (10 minutes)
46. 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)
47. Engaging the sound of ancient wisdom — Monique Neal explains how learning an ancient language as a spoken, living one enriches one’s experience of reading original texts. (21 minutes)
48. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 155 — FEATURED GUESTS: Donald Kraybill, Thaddeus Kozinski, David Bentley Hart, Nigel Biggar, Ravi Scott Jain, and Jason Baxter
49. Volume 1 revisited — In August of 1992, Mars Hill Audio released the pilot edition of what became known as the MARS HILL Tapes. In celebration of this anniversary, we recycle three interviews heard in that distant era, with Ted Prescott, Edward Mendelson, and Peter Kreeft. (30 minutes)
50. The Narnian as Jeremiah — Michael Ward on the bleak prognosis in C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man