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Each quarterly volume of the Journal features over two hours of conversation with perceptive and engaging thinkers examining the ideas, institutions, practices, and fashionable assumptions that shape our cultural lives. Its host and producer, Ken Myers, has over 45 years of experience in cultural journalism. Previously an arts and humanities editor for National Public Radio, Myers also served as editor of Eternity magazine and of the quarterly journal This World, the predecessor to First Things.
Our guests are selected from a wide range of disciplines, most of whom have written notable books examining aspects of our cultural experience, how the interaction of historical forces have created the cultural conditions in which we presently live, and — in many cases — how such conditions can be evaluated in light of Christian theological concerns.
The Journal does not offer neatly packaged answers to predictable questions. Rather, our guests provide a model of thoughtful conversation much needed in an age of rant and rage. They provide tools to sustain a framework of understanding within which Christians can more wisely discern the meaning of our current cultural challenges.
In this playful article from First Things, theologian David Bentley Hart muses on what is arguably America’s greatest contribution to civilization: baseball. Baseball, as Hart would have it, is the Platonic ideal of sports, “a game utterly saturated by infinity,” a game not contrived by our own artifice, but a discovery long kept secret in the dark mysteries of Reality. Contrary to what Hart disparagingly dubs “the oblong game” — the spatial and temporal confines of which are “pitilessly finite” — baseball in its shape and motion stretches towards endless vistas, unfolding organically according to its own narrative and inner logic while at the same time striving to complete the most perfect of shapes, the circle.
This article was originally published in First Things, August 2010. Read by Ken Myers. 27 minutes.
Alan Jacobs, literary critic and professor of humanities at Baylor University, has been a regular guest on the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal since 1993, discussing subjects ranging from the problem of literary sentimentalism (as in The Bridges of Madison County), and the delights of historical fiction (as in seafaring narratives of Patrick O’Brian) to the repulsive attraction of the vampire novels of Anne Rice. In his most recent book, A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age, Jacobs displays a similar range of breadth and depth, as well as significant portions of wit and grace. Included are essays on the mystery of true friendship (“Friendship and Its Discontents”), the severing of theology and literature (“Preachers without Poetry”), and the desire to know the future (“Dowsing in Scripture”).
Read by the author. 5 hours, 30 minutes. $15
In this Conversation with Ken Myers, Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, discusses a number of Lewis’s writings, including The Great Divorce, The Abolition of Man, The Magician’s Nephew, That Hideous Strength, and The Pilgrim’s Regress. The theme that dominates the discussion is Lewis's view of the imagination, and his deep conviction that the shaping of the conscience requires the training of the imagination.
53 minutes.
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis wrote that the early Romantics “taught me longing - Sehnsucht; made me for good or ill, and before I was six years old, a votary of the Blue Flower.” The Blue Flower, a symbol popularized among the early Romantics by the poet Novalis, represented a transforming encounter with beauty that provoked feelings of desire and longing for transcendence. But, as Milbank explains in her talk, Lewis understood his initial encounters with beauty as separable from his later longing for heaven, toward which he redirected his earlier feelings after he converted to Christianity. For Lewis, while his initial encounters with beauty may have awakened him to longing and the absence of something, they did not bring him closer to the knowledge of heavenly realities.
Lewis famously wrote in an essay published in 1939 that “reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.” In other statements and in his poem “Reason,” Lewis suggests that not only are reason and imagination distinct from each other, but that they are opposed and that we experience this opposition internally as an irreconcilable tension.
Lewis’s understanding of the imagination featured most prominently in a series of exchanges with his friend Owen Barfield that became known as “C. S. Lewis’ ‘Great War’ with Owen Barfield” (explored in depth by Lionel Adey in his book of the same title). Lewis’s view of the imagination differed from Barfield’s (and earlier Romantics, such as Coleridge and Novalis) in that the imagination was helpful when it came to aesthetic concerns, but unessential as a way of knowing the truth about things. By contrast, as George Tennyson explains in his essay “Owen Barfield: First and Last Inkling,” Barfield thought that the “Imagination” was the only means by which we could perceive or comprehend anything at all.
The distinction between these two views on the imagination can have significant consequences for how we view the rest of Creation. For Barfield, and for his predecessor Novalis, the Blue Flower both awakens us to an absence within ourselves and to a presence that resides in the creatures and things around us. As Dr. Milbank explains, “For Novalis, Nature is a magic petrified city which lies as if under a spell and it’s the task of the philosopher-poet to bring this frozen entity back to life by means of his imagination.” With the two-fold “longing for” and “awareness of” some other presence produced by the Blue Flower, the rational response is to enter into a relationship with the Blue Flower and to receive it as a loving gift. For the Christian, this gift is then offered back with gratitude to God.
In her lecture, Alison Milbank challenges “disciples” of C. S. Lewis to consider additional, yet sympathetic voices on the role of the imagination in order to more fully defend the Christian life as a wholly transformative way of thinking and of living that has both human and cosmic ramifications.
Is humanity — the quality of being human — a blessing or a curse? Do we simply put up with it, or do we embrace it? Many Christians consider their purpose in life to deny or escape their humanity. But the humanity of Christians is tied up in the humanity of Christ. If Jesus Christ is human, then his humanity is something to be learned and lived. Many Christians, however, do not believe in the humanity of Jesus and consequently find it hard to affirm and live out their own humanity. As Nigel Cameron points out in Are Christians Human? An Exploration of True Spirituality (Zondervan, 1990), being human as Jesus Christ is human has profound implications for daily living. It means living as embodied creatures, using the gifts of perception and intellect, feeling and responding emotionally to life, using one's discernment and will to chart a course in keeping with God's leading. “The purpose of redemption,” Cameron reminds us, “is to enable man to be once more himself, restored to his right mind and his right place as a creature under God. . . . The Christian life is the life of man, male and female, made in the image of God and after his likeness. To deny this humanity and attempt to reach beyond to a ‘spirituality’ which somehow contradicts it, is to fall prey once more to the tempter in his shining, specious livery, who as an angel of light beckons us to reach beyond the confines of our human existence to a place where in fact we deny it and fall from its dignity.”
Read by Ken Myers. 4 hours. $15.
In his article “Awakening the Moral Imagination,” Vigen Guroian discusses the role that fairy tales plays in moral formation. The multi-dimensional world of the fairy tale has the capacity to depict a compelling vision of what is good and evil without reducing moral formation to mere instruction and the moral imagination to advanced utilitarian reasoning skills. In this essay, Guroian also contrasts the features of character and virtue with those of what is more modernly called “values,” and examines how these different approaches to moral consideration reflect conflicting ways of understanding self-formation.
This article was originally published in The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 1996. Read by Ken Myers. 47 minutes.
As Americans grow increasingly weary with the emptiness and aridity of materialistic culture, they have shown a growing interest in books on spirituality. Best-Selling Spirituality examines the new style of American religious belief through the stories of three best-selling books: The Celestine Prophecy, Embraced by the Light, and Conversations with God.
This Report includes interviews with people who have been guided by such books, as well as with various critics. Among the guests featured are Betty Eadie, Robert Wuthnow, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Gene Edward Veith, Peter Jones, and many others.
2 hours. $15.
It is often noted that Martin Luther’s Reformation could never have advanced the way it did without the technology of the printing industry. While the coincidence of Luther and the printing press undoubtedly contributed to the Reformation’s rapid spread, the printing world at the time of Luther was largely under the patronage of the Catholic church (a large portion of which went toward the printing of indulgence certificates), and it was not inevitable, according to Andrew Pettegree, that “print would become an agent of insurrection.” In his book, Brand Luther: 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation, historian Andrew Pettegree shows how Luther’s facility for writing in German and his intuitive business sense not only spread ideas and incited controversy, but completely transformed the distribution model of the printing industry.
56 minutes.
“It is easy to imagine that we see the shadows of our society in Huxley’s vision of the future. But could it be that our insistence on seeing Huxley’s book as an exceedingly successful prophecy actually prevents us from recognizing its real insight? Is there a way for us to understand the book free of the great distorting influence of our own times?” That's what Caitrin Nicol accomplishes in this essay which combines a survey of contemporary reviews of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World with some thoughtful reflections on happiness and freedom.
This article was originally published in The New Atlantis, Spring 2007. Read by Ken Myers. 44 minutes.
Leon Kass, physician, biologist, and professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, discusses his book The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature, in which he explores how the activity of eating provides clues for understanding human nature and helps guide morality and communal life. Then Brother Peter Reinhart talks about the art of bread-making as a metaphor for spiritual life.
72 minutes.
Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University discusses his book Sharing the Journey. He highlights the advantages and dangers of the small-group movement. Then Richard Lints, professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, discusses his book The Fabric of Theology, and the need for a return to an understanding of the importance of theology.
84 minutes.
The development in nineteenth-century Catholic social thought of the idea of society as a spiritual and cultural reality is one of the themes in this Conversation with Dr. Russell Hittinger. In addition to the contribution of Pope Leo XIII and the revival of Thomistic thought to Catholic social thinking, Hittinger discusses the significance of marital notions to society, the limits of the idea of social contract, the effect of an increasing proportion of Muslims on European social thought, and how modern democracies have abandoned the project of understanding public life in moral terms.
60 minutes.
In this early article from First Things, historian Christopher Lasch poses the question of whether cultural conservatism is compatible with capitalism. If, as Lasch argues, conservatism is defined by a respect for limits — that human freedom has constraints imposed upon it by nature, history, human fallibility, and “original sin” — then the unrelenting and insatiable quest for ever-increasing standards of comfort that capitalism encourages is completely at odds with conservative values. Despite nineteenth-century attempts to bolster the family as the primary means of curbing the large-scale transfer of “private vices” to “public virtues” implied in liberal economic theory, the effects of twentieth-century capitalism have only underscored how vulnerable the family is when the integrity of its surrounding local institutions is destroyed. Also included in this article is an account of lower-middle class versus upper-middle class cultural values as well as the alternative — though now largely unheard of — economic approaches to liberal capitalism advanced by the distributists and syndicalists.
This article was originally published in First Things, April 1990. Read by Ken Myers. 42 minutes.
Modern liberalism, by contrast, has stepped outside of the Christian tradition and its synthesis of Jewish, Greek, and Roman thought. While religious freedom as it is understood today gives the impression of being amenable to religious faith of all types by claiming neutrality, it does so only by making all religions matters of private faith and preference. Religion, which historically has made ultimate and authoritative claims about reality, is reduced within modern liberalism to mere opinion. Through institutional obstruction of ultimate claims, modern liberalism threatens not only our protection from coercion, but ultimately the very meaning of nature, human and otherwise.
When St. Paul tells the Galatians that “for freedom Christ has set us free,” argues Schindler, he is not only referring to freedom understood in moral or theological terms, but also to freedom that is political and historical, as well as natural and metaphysical. In other words, the freedom for which Christ has set us free encompasses all of reality and all of human experience.
In his 2005 book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, pastor-theologian Eugene Peterson argued that believers should attend to the way God works in creation, history, and community. Such attention prevents theology from being mere abstraction and spirituality from becoming vague and gnostic. In this Conversation, Peterson discusses the necessity of taking time in worship; the benefits and liabilities of small groups; the delightful gifts of language; and the centrality of “fear of the Lord” in describing our response to God’s initiative in salvation.
73 minutes.
Literary critic and C. S. Lewis biographer Alan Jacobs has enriched our understanding of Christian faith and its consequences with his thoughtful book Original Sin: A Cultural History (2008). The book looks at beliefs about human waywardness and its sources through much of Western history, and how those beliefs have affected literature, politics, music, education, and other spheres of human culture. In this Conversation, Jacobs explains how belief in original sin (in its Augustinian form) offers resources for comfort and community.
60 minutes.
In this extended Conversation, moral philosopher, Oliver O’Donovan, joins Ken Myers to discuss the first two volumes of O’Donovan’s three-volume set Ethics as Theology. In this conversation, O’Donovan identifies some important touchstones that have guided his thinking about moral reflection, including his insight in Resurrection and Moral Order (1986) that moral thinking and action proceed from, and must resonate with, the realities of the created order. O’Donovan also reflects upon the significance of the thinking moral subject as well as what form of moral inadequacy the “life of the flesh” suggests.
Portions of this interview were originally published on Volume 127 of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal. 60 minutes.
In this extended Conversation with theologian and ethicist, Oliver O’Donovan, O’Donovan talks about how “love” as an ethical and existential category connects to the theological virtue of love consummated in the Kingdom of Heaven. O’Donovan’s final volume in the Ethics as Theology series, Entering into Rest, deals primarily with how love is transformed and “made fit for the presence of God.” But correspondingly, O’Donovan’s work also inquires into how the love operating now in the eschatological Church affects how we order our lives tomorrow in the world. Drawing from St. Augustine and figures such as Aelred of Rievaulx, O’Donovan describes how the Church, communication, community, and friendship all significantly contribute to how we understand the role of love in both ethical and political reflection.
Portions of this interview were originally published on Volume 138 of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal. 52 minutes.
MARS HILL AUDIO presents the first available audiobook of Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s classic work on theology and liturgy, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. Fr. Schmemann begins his essay into the sacraments of the Church with the observation that man is a hungry being and that the world is presented to him as his food. Man must eat in order to have life. From this observation, Fr. Schmemann follows with the question: “Of what life do we speak, what life do we preach, proclaim, and announce when, as Christians, we confess that Christ died for the life of the world? What life is both the motivation, and the beginning and goal of Christian mission?”
Throughout the book, Fr. Schmemann confronts challenges of clericalism and secularism and identifies subtle dualities between the spiritual and the religious, the active and contemplative, Word and sacrament, and finally sacrament and liturgy. As he walks through the Church’s life by way of the sacraments, Fr. Schmemann offers an account of the sacraments and their liturgies that reunites through Christ the eschatological and worshiping life of the Church with the cosmos and time that is its mission.
This recording is read by Ken Myers from the newly revised 2018 edition published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. 5 hours 48 minutes. $15
Drawing from MacDonald’s lesser-known fairytale, The Day Boy and the Night Girl, Kreglinger argued that MacDonald frames his account of gender roles according to the Genesis story of humanity’s Fall, emphasizing systemic sin and pathological patterns of relationships before addressing individual sins. By approaching the question of gender through universal human categories, MacDonald subverts oppressive gender stereotypes and illuminates how both women and men suffer from dehumanizing societal norms. But rather than positing individual gender identities over and against all others, MacDonald’s story shows how gender relies upon the weaknesses and strengths of its complement, such that ultimately human gender and freedom flourish through the act of self-giving love.
Beginning with the refreshing observation of the sheer ugliness of the word “globalization” (“an adjective, converted into a barbaric verb, then forced into service as a still more barbaric noun”), Joshua Hochschild observes that this misbegotten word labels a poorly defined concept. Despite its vagueness, it “suggests a trend toward increased economic and political interdependence, which at once fosters and is fostered by cultural homogenization.” Hochschild goes on to examine the effects of this trend on local communities and insists that any effort to evaluate globalization requires a return to a “political teleology,” reflection on the ends of politics given the ends of human being.
This article was originally published in The Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2006. Read by Ken Myers. 36 Minutes.
“It’s somehow the peculiar dialect of God that combines majesty with abasement, glory with this most incredible self-emptying. And [Hamann] sees this in creation, in Christ, and in the Scriptures, and so everywhere when he’s meditating on the Holy Trinity he sees this combination of glory and humility.”
—John Betz
Theologian John Betz discusses the eighteenth-century philosopher and translator, Johann Georg Hamann, critic and contemporary of Immanuel Kant and other prominent figures of the German Enlightenment. Hamann, even from the early stages of the Enlightenment, saw and argued that the project of modernity would lead to its own destruction. Hamann argued that reason could not, by itself in a pure form, give a complete account of reality, for he saw that the modern ideal of “pure reason” is a fiction. Reason, he argued, is always embedded within an historical culture and language from which one can never fully be detached. In his evaluation, Hamann anticipated the postmodern critics of the twentieth century; however, he avoided the nihilism of postmodernism by observing the revelatory character of language and history. By focusing on the divine kenosis or humility of God, who creates, reveals, and condescends to humanity through His Word, Hamann maintained that man’s pursuit of truth is always contingent on God’s Word in special and general revelation through history and creation. Throughout the interview, Professor Betz describes the centrality of God’s condescension in Hamann’s understanding of knowledge and reason. It is through the humility of God in his condescension to communicate to man that Hamann recognizes the Promethean project of modernity to attain enlightenment from man’s resources alone.
56 minutes.
Writing in The American Scholar in 1991, critic Bruce Bawer claimed that Richard Wilbur is “the outstanding contemporary instance of the type of poet who writes in strict forms about traditional themes, and whose poems—making, as they do, frequent, appropriate, and instructive use of meter, rhyme, imagery, alliteration, assonance, and even the occasional classical allusion—could serve as models in a textbook of prosody.” But the attentive (and therefore delighted) reader will take less note of Wilbur’s model practice than of the sense of marveling that saturates his work. As David Lyle Jeffrey observes in his article, “God’s Patient Stet,” the sense of consistency one perceives in Wilbur’s work “emerges not only from his craftsmanship as a poet but from his constancy as an affectionate observer of creation, both Nature and human nature.” Jeffrey’s article focuses on the poems in Wilbur’s 2010 anthology Anterooms, especially those that are more explicitly Biblical or theological in their allusions. David Lyle Jeffrey is Distinguished Professor of Literature and Humanities at Baylor University.
This article was originally published in First Things, July/August 2011. Read by Ken Myers. 25 minutes.
In this Conversation, Ken Myers talks with Susan Srigley about how Flannery O’Connor’s perception of reality suffuses her fiction in ways that fit the views of how art works developed by Thomas Aquinas, views often summarized as “sacramental” or “incarnational.” And Ralph Wood discusses O’Connor’s acceptance of the limits placed in our lives by Providence, how limits may be a source of wisdom rather than frustration.
60 minutes.
In this article, theologian Robert W. Jenson describes how a postmodern world is characterized by the loss of a conviction that we inhabit a “narratable world” that exists coherently outside of ourselves. Although modernity — as opposed to postmodernity — presupposed in its arts and philosophy this narratable world, it did so while at the same time discarding the Judeo-Christian framework that enabled such a supposition in the first place. Increasingly, as the arts prefigured and now as the general culture at large displays, the experience of and confidence in such a coherent narrative has broken down into fragments. How then is the Church to respond to a world that has lost its story? In Jenson's words: “If the church does not find her hearers antecedently inhabiting a narratable world, then the church must herself be that world.”
This article was originally published in First Things, October 1993. Read by Ken Myers. 40 minutes.
Modern people tend to ignore questions about the nature and purpose of things while learning to control them more efficiently. But as science and technology offer us the ability to fundamentally transform human nature, we can no longer avoid addressing metaphysical questions. The crisis of our time, many thinkers agree, is one concerning the definition of human nature. In “Human Life, Human Dignity,” Leon Kass outlines what is at stake and sets forth a framework for indispensable discussions surrounding biotechnologies. Kass stresses that we must approach the discussion with reverence and awe and that a major component of the discussion should be the notion of human dignity. Kass recommends that we turn first not to the findings of science and technology, but to the canon of “residual wisdom” in the East and West — found in literary, philosophical, and religious traditions — that vividly depicts human nature in its glories and tragedies.
60 minutes.
Transhumanism is an attitude toward humanity that views life and consciousness as data and material limitations (particularly the body) as disposable wetware. Through science and technology, transhumanists hope to achieve immortality by surpassing our current bodily limits, thus crossing over to a different type of humanity. While it is tempting to dismiss transhumanism as a fringe science fiction, professor of classical studies, Mark Shiffman, warns that the Cartesian aspirations of transhumanists are becoming more accepted and more common. And this should not come as a surprise, since the agenda to transcend ourselves emerges from a history of thought that reaches as far back as the thirteenth century. In this Audio Reprint, Shiffman repeats a forgotten account of human history in order to help readers identify our own assumptions about humanity and to reexamine our relationship to God and his creation.
This article was originally published in First Things, November 2015. Read by Ken Myers. 45 minutes.
The garden is a personal place of retreat and delight and labor for many people. Gardening helps us collect ourselves, much as praying does. For rich and poor — it makes no difference — a garden is a place where body and soul are in harmony. In Inheriting Paradise, Vigen Guroian offers an abundant vision of the spiritual life found in the cultivation of God's good creation. Capturing the earthiness and sacramental character of the Christian faith, these uplifting meditations bring together the experience of space and time through the cycle of the seasons in the garden and relate this fundamental experience to the cycle of the church year and the Christian seasons of grace. The tilling of the fresh earth; the sowing of seeds; the harvesting of rhubarb and roses, dillweed and daffodils — Guroian finds in the garden our most concrete connection with life and God's gracious giving. His personal reflections on this connection offer a compelling entry into Christian spirituality.
Read by the author. 2 hours. $15.
In this essay, Stephen Gurney shows how in his sermons, Newman draws the listener in through the craft and beauty of his prose — and, for those who heard his sermons, Newman’s entrancing voice — while nonetheless removing himself from the spotlight in order to convey his listeners to the True Presence of Christ. With a delicate and sophisticated balance of subjective devotion and sacramental ecclesiology, Newman’s sermons invite the whole person to participate in a spiritual journey that ends in an encounter with the Divine.
This article was originally published in Modern Age, Fall 2000. Read by Ken Myers. 51 minutes.
Long before Alasdair MacIntyre or Stanley Hauerwas were reminding us of the significance of historic teaching about virtue, Josef Pieper (1904-1997) was writing confidently about virtue and the virtues. Pieper is best known today for his 1952 book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. When the book was published, The New York Times enthused “Pieper’s message for us is plain. . . . The idolatry of the machine, the worship of mindless know-how, the infantile cult of youth and the common mind — all this points to our peculiar leadership in the drift toward the slave society. . . . Pieper’s profound insights are impressive and even formidable.” While the Times may not be quite as excited about Pieper today, we’re pleased to present a primer on Pieper’s ideas in this Audio Reprint: “Josef Pieper: Leisure and Its Discontents.” This 1999 essay by Roger Kimball introduces listeners to Pieper’s arguments about the nature of leisure, which are claims about the nature of philosophy and of human well-being. The article was originally published in The New Criterion, where Roger Kimball is editor and publisher.
This article was originally published in The New Criterion, January 1999. Read by Ken Myers. 34 minutes.
Cultural critic and professor of Italian literature, Robert Pogue Harrison, examines the conditions in which cultural transmission can take place. In his book, Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age, Harrison argues that Western culture is on the cusp of a new mode of civilization that can either result in a rejuvenation of the legacies of the past or in their juvenilization, the latter of which would lead to a loss of cultural memory and the infantilization of desires. A culture undergoing juvenescence, when it is going in the direction of juvenilization, is at risk of both cultural amnesia and orphanhood. Harrison reflects not only upon the ways in which our culture is evolving into a younger way of being human, but also upon the peculiar and precious qualities of youth that are uniquely receptive to fostering the amor mundi needed to preserve and transmit a world of permanence and belonging.
48 minutes.
Born in 1927 in Poland, Leszek Kolakowski grew out of his youthful Stalinism to become one of the most penetrating critics of Marxism. In his masterful three-volume Main Currents of Marxism, he concluded: “The self-deification of mankind, to which Marxism gave philosophical expression, has ended in the same way as all such attempts, whether individual or collective: it has revealed itself as the farcical aspect of human bondage.” Kolakowski’s diagnosis of the spiritual crisis of modernity goes far beyond his critique of Marxism; in a variety of books, essays, and public addresses, he regularly returned to the problem of modern culture’s denial of the sacred. This essay by Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, was written on the occasion of the release of a new edition of Main Currents of Marxism, and sets the arguments in that book in the wider context of Kolakowski’s other work.
This article was originally published in The New Criterion, June 2005. Read by Ken Myers. 35 minutes.
Paul Marshall, author of A Kind of Life Imposed on Man, discusses how society and the Church have understood work throughout history, and what positive ramifications we might expect to see if Christians began to understand their life at work as part of their life in Christ. On part two, Os Guinness, author of The Call, explains how vocation and identity have lost their theological moorings among Christians.
62 minutes.
When Tom Wolfe’s novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, was originally published in 2004, most of the reviews concentrated on the story’s sexual escapades. The book was received by social conservatives as an indictment of collegiate promiscuity and dismissed by progressives as a tired and embarrassing display of peephole prurience by a once-vital writer now in his grumpy 70s. Mickey Craig and Jon Fennell argue that sexual confusion is simply a symptom of a larger crisis prominently explored in the book. “The novel invites us to ask: Is love possible in the age of neuroscience? Or have we unmasked human beings only to discover that love is an illusion?”
This article was originally published in The New Atlantis, Fall 2005. Read by Ken Myers. 38 minutes.
While it is not a story set in the twentieth century, Tom Shippey (author of J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century) claims that The Lord of the Rings is very much a work of the twentieth century; the momentum of evil sweeps characters into action before they understand the events in which they are involved. Joseph Pearce (author of Tolkien: Man and Myth) defends The Lord of the Rings fantasy genre against those who would claim that realistic fiction is a better vessel for truth: because mythology is stripped of the factual, he explains, it can deal with truth unencumbered and therefore convey its moral more directly. Literary critic Ralph C. Wood explains why he has been drawn to J. R. R. Tolkien’s moral Middle-earth since his first reading of The Lord of the Rings in the 1960s. It is a world ordered by heroism, friendship, loyalty, and hope. These ties alone, he states, enable the hobbits to complete their quest and go where no one else can.
86 minutes.
Essays by Judith Martin (“Miss Manners”), Gertrude Himmelfarb, Deal Hudson, and James Morris discuss the relationship between manners and morals, and address the way in which the survival of a democratic society depends upon its citizens' respect for one another—respect that is manifested in the symbolic language of manners.
Read by Ken Myers. 90 minutes.
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On this MARS HILL AUDIO Conversation, Ken Myers and Thomas de Zengotita discuss how the omnipresence of “representations”—forms of communication that have been deliberately manipulated and designed to address you—contributes to the widespread sense of entitlement and partiality for autonomous choice. The postmodern condition of being constantly addressed by advertising, emails, text messages, and television results in what de Zengotita calls “the flattered self,” a self, which if left unexamined, increasingly believes itself to be the center of the universe. In his book Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, de Zengotita identifies how despite our unprecedented ability to “make ourselves,” the overwhelming flow of images, options, events, and stuff generates feelings of helplessness, apathy, ambiguity, and resignation, all of which are often evasively expressed in the multivalent utterance “Whatever.”
60 minutes.
In this Audio Reprint, ethicist Gilbert Meilaender considers the different ways in which we can think about our death, particularly from the paradoxical “simultaneities” of our finite nature and our transcendent desires. We are dual creatures, writes Meilaender, simultaneously bound by nature’s cycles and yet freed from mere finitude by our God-directed ends. To view death solely from one or the other of these realities is to trivialize either our spiritual longings or our historical and physical experiences. Taking his cues from Charlotte’s Web, Bambi, and The Last Battle, Meilaender confronts contemporary inclinations to deny death by placing both death and life within a spiritual framework that enables us to “measure our days.”
This article was originally published in First Things, February 1991. Read by Ken Myers. 51 minutes.
The familiar Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” itself a translation of the Latin hymn Veni, veni, Emmanuel, is a summary of the early liturgical plainchant antiphons that were traditionally sung during the week before Christmas. Known as the “O Antiphons,” these chants were sung in vespers services as liturgical responses on either side of Mary’s Magnificat. Each antiphon highlights a scriptural reference to Christ — O Sapientia, O Adonai, O Radix Jesse, O Clavis David, O Oriens, O Rex Gentium, and O Emmanuel — by way of preparation for Christ’s coming.
The original order of the antiphons is a bit different than the order of verses that appears in the hymn we sing today. Emmanuel is, in the traditional structure, the name invoked on the last of these seven nights. O Sapientia was originally the first of the seven, and the Latin text translates as: “O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other mightily, and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.”
In this Conversation, poet and priest Malcolm Guite talks about his seven sonnets corresponding to the seven “O Antiphons.” Also included in this Conversation is an interview with composer J. A. C. Redford, who collaborated with Malcolm Guite to set Guite’s seven “O Antiphons” to music for unaccompanied choir. In these interviews, the poet and composer discuss how poetry and liturgy invite repetition, and how music can be an interpretation of a text so as to aid how one “inhabits” poetry over time.
45 minutes.
In this Anthology, Ken Myers talks with poet and former National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia about the decline in reading among Americans of all ages and education. Also discussing the benefits of reading and the tragedy of its decline are literary critic Sven Birkerts, painter Makoto Fujimura, columnist Maggie Jackson, pastor-theologian Eugene Peterson, preacher and media ecologist Gregory Edward Reynolds, and portrait painter Catherine Prescott.
73 minutes.
In this biographical sketch, Jeremy Beer describes the intellectual trajectory of cultural historian, Christopher Lasch, whose career spanned from the 1960s through the early 1990s. Beer recounts how, despite growing up in a “militantly secular” home and, throughout his career, sympathetically grappling with the works of Marx and Freud, Christopher Lasch distanced himself from the leftist “radical intellectuals,” whose version of progressivism did not coincide with Lasch’s understanding of a healthy democracy. In his scholarship and criticism, Lasch was concerned about democracy, both as an achievable ideal and as an imperfect reality. He rejected the Left-Right dualism of American politics, arguing that the ostensibly opposing ideologies were merely two sides of the same coin that amounted to the refusal to acknowledge human limitations. Lasch’s diagnosis of the modern, “anxiously narcissistic” self involved a sharp critique of the culture that produced it, namely, a culture that condoned the conquest of nature through scientific, technological, and economic methods without any regard for naturally or institutionally based limits on human freedom.
This article was originally published in Modern Age, Fall 2005. Read by Ken Myers. 55 minutes.
(a Trinity Forum Reading, 1997)
In 1989, David Aikman, then a journalist with Time magazine, was granted the first major interview Solzhenitsyn had given an American news organization for years. In this essay, Aikman offers an engaging and lively account of the dramatic and sobering events of Solzhenitsyn's life: from his early years as a Communist, to the beginnings of his literary efforts and his subsequent imprisonment, to his exile and life in the West, to his return to Russia in the 1990s. A portrait emerges of a courageous man devoted to the battle for truth in the context of the distinctive disorders of modern, post-Christian culture. This Reprint is read by the author, and includes a foreword written and read by Os Guinness on the contemporary crisis of truth in the West. 107 minutes.
“The key to P. D. James’s fiction, especially her later work, is her Christianity.” So argues Ralph C. Wood, University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University. “She regards our cultural malaise as having theological no less than ethical cause.” In this essay, Wood discusses the way in which the futuristic dystopia of her novel, The Children of Men, reveals much about the West’s modern spiritual confusion and about the possible sources of hope beyond that chaos.
This article was originally published in Theology Today, vol. 51, no. 20 (July 1994). Read by Ken Myers. 39 minutes.
Throughout history, great literature has been a cohesive force in Western culture. It interprets our experiences and tells us the truth about our fears and longings. It is a catalyst to our thinking and an invaluable index to the minds and feelings of people around us. In Realms of Gold, Leland Ryken proceeds chronologically through some of his most favorite classics, from Homer to Shakespeare and Milton to Tolstoy and Camus, offering not only a taste of the classics, but a framework in which to analyze them. For students studying literature, this book serves as an introduction to the classics as friends; for those who read the classics a long time ago, it is a motivation to renew delightful acquaintances; and for people already intimate with these works, it offers the opportunity to deepen their understanding within a Christian context.
Read by Ken Myers. 8 hours 30 minutes. $18.
During the last thirty-five years — and particularly since Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue — contemporary moral philosophy has recovered the language of virtues. Virtue ethics has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy, but was soon adopted into the Christian tradition by the early church fathers.
With the naming of virtues, of course, comes the naming of vices. In this conversation, philosopher Rebecca DeYoung explains how the language of vices speaks to patterns or narratives in our lives that are distinct from original sin and from acts of rule-breaking. Drawing from the wisdom of the Desert Fathers, DeYoung describes vainglory and the other “deadly sins” as capital vices from which more vices materialize.
But what is vainglory? Most people know the seven deadly sins — if they know them at all — as gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, pride, and lust. But traditionally, pride was the source of all vice and vainglory was among the original list of seven. Though this bygone word seems to have disappeared from our cultural memory, DeYoung argues that it is a term worth recovering in a time when we are constantly tempted toward vainglory.
56 minutes.
Modern culture is profoundly shaped by science—by its methods, its products, and its public authority. The centrality of science in modern society affects how we think, what we think about, the kinds of conclusions we come to, and the kinds of assumptions that we hold—including assumptions about what sort of creatures we are and what sort of lives are most fitting for our nature. Theologian Lesslie Newbigin has argued that science has effectively eliminated “Why” questions from our culture. Modern Western people, he wrote, have “a disposition to believe that purpose has no place as a category of explanation in any exercise that claims to be ‘scientific,’ and thus to look for the explanation of everything, including both animal and human behavior, without reference to purpose.
This anthology features philosophers, theologians, historians, and research scientists, all of whom have thought deeply about the interaction of science with other disciplines and with the settings in which science is practiced and exerts its influence. One theme that emerges is how science in answering “How?” sometimes obscures the “What?” of specific things, as well as the “Why?” of all things.
1 hour 47 minutes.
In 1979, a much-respected physicist named John Polkinghorne resigned from his position at Cambridge. Just five years earlier he had been honored for his remarkable achievements in mathematical physics (he had been part of the team that discovered the quark) by being appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society. Polkinghorne was departing the environs of this profound and mysterious reflection on the nature of reality for a vocation no less intellectually and personally challenging: the study of theology and service as an Anglican priest. One of the benefits to the public of Polkinghorne’s twin interests in science and theology has been the remarkable series of books he has written since 1983, beginning with The Way the World Is, continuing with the publication of his 1993 Gifford Lectures (published as The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker) and most recently Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality (Yale). Sir John Polkinghorne talks about the main themes of this book in this Conversation.
54 minutes.
Sociologist John Steadman Rice, author of A Disease of One’s Own: Psychotherapy, Addiction, and the Emergence of Co-Dependency, maintains that the concept of codependency is rooted in the tenets of “liberation psychotherapy,” a way of thinking about the self that sees all psychological problems as a function of the restrictions placed on individuals by social institutions, especially by the family. Rice asks what kind of society will result if a critical mass of people are converted to an asocial existence.
48 minutes.
In the age of think tanks, consulting firms, and IKEA, craftsmanship seems to be in decline. Shop class is becoming rarer, and our children are told that college is the ticket to an “open future” as a “knowledge worker.” This rejection of craftsmanship wrongly ignores the cognitive, social, and remunerative rewards of skilled manual work, and wrongly assumes that white-collar work always engages the mind. In this essay, political philosopher Matthew B. Crawford recounts life as a motorcycle mechanic and makes a case for the manual trades as an expression of human flourishing.
This article was originally published in The New Atlantis, Summer 2006. Read by Ken Myers. 55 minutes.
What if our understanding of creation “as origin” is inadequate? Can a misunderstanding of creation lead to unhealthy and harmful cultural institutions?
The fall 2017 Areopagus Lecture, entitled “Creation, Modernity, and Public Theology,” featured canon-theologian, Simon Oliver on the traditional understanding of the doctrine of creation and on how some of our modern divisions and disputes are products of an insufficient framework for creation that developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Excerpts from two recent books explain how and why a greater familiarity with the forms of faithfulness of our spiritual predecessors is an important resource for twenty-first century Christians. An excerpt from Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, by Christopher A. Hall, explains how commentaries on biblical texts from the first six centuries of the Church can provide much-needed perspective for contemporary believers. A chapter from Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants, by D. H. Williams, summarizes how it is a misreading of Scripture and of the history of Protestantism to insist that revelation and tradition are antithetical concerns of the Church.
Read by Ken Myers. 96 minutes.
In this essay, James Matthew Wilson examines T. S. Eliot’s cultural conservatism and religious conversion in light of his intellectual and familial influences. Wilson shows that throughout his life, Eliot grappled with the weaknesses of cultural theories that substituted art for religion, such as those proposed by Matthew Arnold and Eliot’s Harvard professors Irving Babbitt and George Santayana. Rather than filling the vacuum left by religious disbelief, the substitution of “civil religion” or “culture” for true religious faith merely confused and distracted modern man from what was at heart a theological and religious depletion. Contrary to appearances, Wilson argues that Eliot as the young modernist poet remained consistent with Eliot the cultural critic and Eliot the Christian. Despite Eliot’s radical reputation, through his poetry, one sees a working-out of Eliot’s thinking on the role of poetry and culture in light of modern man’s condition and a definite metaphysical account of reality.
Portions of this article were originally published on The Imaginative Conservative website. Read by Ken Myers. 80 minutes.
Though largely ignored, the work of research chemist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) offers rich insight into the methods of science, the role of belief in all human knowing, and the important connections between knowledge and responsibility. Tacit Knowing, Truthful Knowing explores Michael Polanyi's criticisms of both objectivism and subjectivism, and his attempts to develop a more truthful understanding of how we know the world. His ideas are based on the belief that all knowledge is either tacit (silent and unspoken) or rooted in tacit knowledge.
This Report features interviews with leading interpreters of Polanyi's thought, including Marjorie Grene, Richard Gelwick, Thomas Torrance, and Martin X. Moleski. Interviews with Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dudley Herschbach, educator Steven Garber, and master violin makers Peter and Wendy Moes, along with readings from Michael Polanyi's books and correspondence, further illuminate his ideas.
2 hours 30 minutes. $15.
There are few issues within the church more potent than that of homosexuality. Barbara Wheeler, President of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, has noted that “What we in the churches teach about homosexuality affects the lives of many more people than our own members.” In recent years, the debate on this issue has centered on disagreements over the exact nature of biblical teaching concerning sexuality. Dr. Robert Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject and the author of the critically acclaimed text, The Bible and Homosexual Practice. In this Conversation, Dr. Gagnon talks with Ken Myers about the cultural trends and theological arguments that have shaped the dispute over the past few decades, in the hope of clarifying the answers to many of these complex questions.
72 minutes.
The death of Solzhenitsyn in 2008 provided an opportunity to reassess the life and work of this remarkable figure, whose accomplishment is discussed on this Anthology. Ken Myers talks with the late Edward E. Ericson, Jr. (Solzhenitsyn and the Modern World and co-author of The Soul and Barbed Wire), David Aikman (Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century), and James Pontuso (Solzhenitsyn's Political Thought) about the conditions and experiences that transformed Solzhenitsyn from a committed Communist schoolteacher to a Nobel Prize-winning novelist and the global symbol of heroic resistance to tyranny. One of the main themes emphasized by these three guests is that Solzhenitsyn was not principally concerned with politics, but with human nature and purpose, understood in light of the Christian account of reality.
73 minutes.
In this Anthology, Ken Myers talks with Clyde Kilby about Lewis’s view of the imagination; with Michael Aeschliman about Lewis’s reasonable distrust of trusting reason too much; with James Como about the rhetorical genius in Lewis’s writing; with Bruce L. Edwards, Jr. about what his students learn from Lewis’s integration of faith and life; with Thomas Howard about the deep meaning of Till We Have Faces; and with Gilbert Meilaender about the surprising approach of Lewis’s apologetics. The program concludes with Alan Jacobs reading his 1998 essay, “Lewis at 100.”
73 minutes.
After the events of September 11, 2001, many people in the West began pursuing crash courses in understanding Islamic belief and history. As a result, many realized the wisdom of acquiring some historical perspective on what appears to be a clash of civilizations. In this Conversation, Bernard Lewis, a Western historian of the Middle East whose work is recognized around the world, helps provide that essential perspective.
50 minutes.
For the Christian to think about questions of sexuality as they arise today, he or she must first think about the biblical and ecclesial teaching of marriage as “an image of what is truly ultimate.” In this Audio Reprint, Gilbert Meilaender argues that notions of sexual fulfillment that ground themselves in self-expression and emotional satisfaction, or in the mutual exchange of love cannot adequately account for the historical, spiritual, communal, and bodily dimensions of sexual union. Although the challenge to establish Christian norms of behavior while avoiding additional conditions for salvation is perennial for the Church, failure to undertake this challenge stimulates a dangerous dualism between body and spirit within the Church itself. By emphasizing that the body is the place of spiritual and moral significance in our lives, Meilaender points out the need for the Church to uphold and enforce normative behaviors of chastity, in order to practice the pastoral role of showing compassion and acceptance with integrity.
This article was originally published in Pro Ecclesia, Vol. VI, No. 4 (1997). Read by Ken Myers. 40 minutes.
In this Anthology, Ken Myers talks with architects, historians, activists, and clergy about how loving our neighbors can and must take shape in how we order the material aspects of shared life. The conversations on this Anthology give particular attention to how the New Urbanist movement has challenged the dehumanizing effects of modernism in urban design.
100 minutes.
For decades, readers and scholars have wondered whether there was a Master Plan for the structure of the seven books in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. In his book Planet Narnia, Michael Ward makes a compelling case that the qualities attributed to the seven planets in the cosmology of antiquity and the Middle Ages are embodied in the seven books about Narnia. In this Conversation, Ward explains why Lewis thought the pre-Copernican view of the cosmos can still be of spiritual benefit, that although it may not be true in a factual sense, its beauty nonetheless reveals deeper truths.
67 minutes.
It is commonly assumed that science is a morally neutral set of practices which may be used for good or bad purposes. But Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, insists that science has always been “a profoundly moral enterprise, aimed at improving the condition of the human race, relieving suffering, enhancing health, and enriching life.” Because this moral dynamic is so deeply assumed, our society finds it difficult to assess how we ought to use science when the improvement of health comes into conflict with other social goods. In this article, Levin calls for a more deliberate awareness of how science shapes how we ask and answer moral questions together.
This article was originally published in The New Atlantis, Fall 2006. Read by Ken Myers. 44 minutes.
For 2,500 years in the West, music was understood as a work of discovery, as an expression of something present in the structure of the cosmos. Despite changes in musical styles, the ways composers and musicians arranged melody, harmony, and rhythm were assumed to be expressive of some objective reality in the nature of things. As Robert R. Reilly summarizes this view, “Music was number made audible. Music was man's participation in the harmony of the universe.” In the twentieth century, that view was abandoned by courageous pioneers of the avant-garde, and “musical art was reduced to the arbitrary manipulation of fragments of sound.” In this essay, Robert R. Reilly contrasts these two sets of assumptions about music, and introduces two twentieth-century composers who rejected the metaphysics of chaos in their compositions: the Danish composer Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) and the American John Adams (1947-).
This article was originally published in The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 2001. Read by Ken Myers. 43 minutes.
The classics are, argues Louise Cowan, “the primary curricular need of our time.” The classics are poetic in the root sense of the word: they are a form of making (poesis), based on mimesis, “the envisioning, or imagining, of fictional analogies, a kind of knowing different from philosophy or history and yet occupying an irreplaceable position in the quest for wisdom.” Cowan (a recipient of the National Humanities Medal) insists that what we label the classics “have become classics because they elicit greatness of soul,” and that such aspiration can only be informed by such works.
This article was originally published in The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 2001. Read by Ken Myers. 35 minutes.
In this book, Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann trace the history of higher education from its medieval roots to the present, focusing on how educational agendas have been assembled in light of shifting understandings of the nature of knowledge and the nature of human well-being. They 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.
Read by Ken Myers. 6 hours 30 minutes. $15.
In recent years, Christian educators have rediscovered ancient ideas about how the head and heart interact. There is a relationship between the cultivation of affections, dispositions, and virtues, and the acquisition of knowledge. What we believe is inextricably linked to what we love and what we worship. What we love, in turn, is encouraged by practices: by the ways our bodies and imaginations engage the world of the senses. Christian educators are coming to question the idea that teaching is merely the transmission of ideas and are giving more attention to the formative power of classroom practices and the culture of schools. In this Conversation, David I. Smith, director of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin College, discusses some new insights on the practice of Christian pedagogy.
56 minutes.
Language professor and pedagogue, David I. Smith, joins us again to discuss in more detail how practices in the classroom reinforce or contradict the goals of Christian teaching. The phrase “integration of faith and learning” has stimulated an abundance of scholarship on why faith and reason are compatible. It has also provoked extensive and various accounts of a “Christian worldview,” a phrase that often conveys a set of doctrines which, when applied to the goal of Christian teaching, places an emphasis on Christian belief over Christian practices. In this Conversation, David Smith argues that more attention needs to be given to the meaning conveyed in our methods and assumptions about teaching. Smith considers factors like body language and position; pictures and scenarios in textbooks; time, space, and sound in classroom interaction; and the cultural power of homework.
Smith’s book On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom extends the ideas discussed in MARS HILL AUDIO Conversation 28: The Practice of Christian Pedagogy (Volume I). In this interview, Smith describes his process of pursuing a Christian vocation through teaching as well as the philosophical and biblical motivations for Christian pedagogy that are explored in the book Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning, co-edited by Smith and his colleague James K. A. Smith.
63 minutes.
Literary critic Alan Jacobs talks about how W. H. Auden returned to the Church after recognizing that liberal humanism had no answers to the problem of human evil. He also discusses the social themes in Auden’s poetry, which avoided utopianism and apocalypticism.
58 minutes.
Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. In this essay, Richard Sherlock explores the significance of Strauss’s methodology, focusing on how he understood the communication of ideas in classical and modern thought about political order. Strauss’s deep, insightful readings and profound respect for the writers of seminal works manifested a powerful apologetic for the idea of “classic natural right,” even as his intellectual esotericism masked a critical gap in his political philosophy.
This article was originally published in Modern Age, Summer 2006. Read by Ken Myers. 36 minutes.
In this Anthology, Mark Noll (The Future of Christian Learning) describes why serious Christian learning requires a confidence that the Gospel has broad social and intellectual consequences. Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann (The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education) explain why the term “Christian humanism” is especially apt in describing the aims of Christian higher education. James K. A. Smith (Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation) develops the idea that education is more about formation than information, and that we are formed by our participation in liturgies, whether at church or at the mall.
78 minutes.
Barry Sanders, author of A is for Ox, discusses teaching in the age of technology, the effects of literacy on society, and the links between illiteracy and violence. Sanders believes literacy is impossible without an oral phase of community of memory, from which the memory, conscience, and sense of self develop.
54 minutes.
In this Anthology, Ken Myers speaks with guests John McWhorter, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, and Craig Gay about our world’s linguistic ailments. They recognize the power of language to enrich our relationship with God, with each other, and with all of Creation and suggest habits rooted in recognition of the glorious possibilities of words lovingly and thoughtfully employed.
65 minutes.
In this essay, literary scholar Thomas Howard describes C. S. Lewis’s fictional works in terms of a mythological re-presentation of the Christian and pre-modern moral and cosmic vision. The greatest apologetic challenge for Lewis was not so much responding to arguments, as it was persuading an audience whose horizon had been radically altered and shaped by modernity that that which was esteemed and revered in the pre-modern imagination was in fact desirable. The modern imagination seeks meaning in self-liberation, in the quest, in self-authenticating experimentation. By contrast, the world that Lewis presents is that of a finely choreographed dance, one in which perfect freedom is achieved when the individual listens to the music that precedes him and after mastering the steps joins the rest of the cosmos in a dance that he did not create, but which was nevertheless made for him.
This article was originally published in Modern Age, Fall 1978. Read by Ken Myers. 41 minutes.
C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces is, in his own words, “a myth retold.” Literary critic Thomas Howard explains that Lewis’s decision to tell this story as a myth was informed by the fact that the mythical outlook on the world is fundamentally opposed to the tenets of modernity, for which Lewis had such unrelenting criticism.
50 minutes.
In 2004, theologian Michael Hanby wrote an article for Communio entitled “The Culture of Death, the Ontology of Boredom, and the Resistance of Joy,” in which he described boredom as the “noughting” of the world, a disposition that no longer finds the world captivating and which is incapable of being captivated. In this interview, philosopher R. J. Snell draws from how Hanby uses the verb “noughting” to interpret boredom, and connects it with the capital vice of acedia — or its token symptom, sloth — to help us recognize how this particular vice captures the “mood of our age.” Snell argues that the metaphysical boredom of modernity is sustained by our deeply-held convictions about freedom and contingency, which view the former as necessary and the latter as offensive. Like a sulking child, the slothful prefer to choose nothing rather than accept the neediness and dependency implied by our finite existence. When this slothful posture expands to the metaphysical plane, boredom becomes the very denial of being itself or, in other words, the “noughting” of the world.
48 minutes.
Social networking sites — in widespread use only since 2002 — are changing the shape of relationships for millions of Americans. But how are those changes affecting our understanding and experience of friendship and our sense of personal identity? What happens in personal and social life when we are increasingly connected by weak (and conveniently abandoned) ties? Citing numerous studies by social scientists, Christine Rosen asks: “Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong?”
This article was originally published in The New Atlantis, Summer 2007. Read by Ken Myers. 50 minutes.
Guests on Volume 100
• JENNIFER BURNS on the life and legacy of Ayn Rand, “goddess of the market” and entrenched enemy of altruism
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on the aimless cultural world of emerging adulthood and on how it makes the idea of objective moral order implausible
• DALLAS WILLARD on why it's important to recover the conviction that religious beliefs involve real knowledge
In honor of the five score milestone, part two of the issue features a look back at the beginnings of the Journal and a few special excerpts of conversations with those early guests:
• PETER KREEFT on Lewis, Huxley, and J.F.K. after death
• P. D. JAMES on good and evil in fiction
• JAMES DAVISON HUNTER on culture wars
• PAUL McHUGH on when psychiatry loses its way
• TED PRESCOTT on nudity in art and advertising
• ED KNIPPERS on the powerful presence of the body
• MARTHA BAYLES on pop and perverse modernism
• DOMINIC AQUILA on Christopher Lasch
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on random kindness
• NEIL POSTMAN on technology and culture
• ALAN JACOBS on being maudlin in Madison County
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jennifer Burns
"I found that in a lot of the letters people would write to her: 'I no longer feel I have to be my brother's keeper' or 'I understand that I don’t owe other people anything; I can be myself.' Part of that is, I think, why she's attractive to adolescents who are trying to figure out who they are, break free of bonds to other people, and who aren't comfortable with obligations and are striving to become independent and become unique and her work is a sort of tonic for them."
— Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Jennifer Burns, assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia, discusses her intellectual biography of Ayn Rand. In her biography, Burns examines the early life of Ayn Rand, born Alisa Rosenbaum, in Russia before the Revolution. She traces the life of Rand through her family’s experiences during the Russian Revolution and her later immigration to the United States, a place that in Rand's imagination was filled with glamour, wealth and beauty. She became jaded by the American intellectual elite's friendliness and acceptance of socialism and communism in the late 1920s and 30s, but grew to believe the wider American population had the right views concerning freedom and economics and sought to make herself a literary champion of capitalist freedom for “their side.” Burns describes how Ayn Rand's relationships mirrored her system of ethics as well; she thought the only valuable relationships were those completely freely chosen, eschewing non-voluntary ties and resting relations on individual perceptions of value devoid of emotional considerations. Such beliefs as well as her atheism had a polarizing effect on conservatives around her; Burns discusses how her person and/or work were received by various figures of conservatism over time — figures including Whittaker Chambers, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard — as well as their personal interactions. Finally, Burns comments on her intellectual and imaginative influences including Nietzsche and cinema, both of which, from an early age, she was greatly impressed by. ⇧
• • •
Christian Smith
"The dark side, the Nietszchean side of postmodernism hasn't settled in and it's in large part, in my viewpoint, because the promise of mass consumerism of living a happy life of collecting possessions, and having friends around those possessions, and having a good life and a beautiful spouse and beautiful kids, and parties with alcohol; all of that is extremely appealing to emerging adults, and they haven't failed at that. Those that will eventually fail have not yet failed and so there's a tremendous amount of optimism about where their futures are going, even paradoxically while they have very little optimism about the state of the larger world . . ."
— Christian Smith, author of Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Sociologist Christian Smith discusses his book Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, the sequel to his earlier book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. This study follows up on the same cohort of American young people who were teenagers when described in Soul Searching. Sociologists have come to describe this new life stage occurring after the teenager stage but before young adulthood when the subject is typically between 18-29 years of age as “emerging adulthood." Smith characterizes this period of emerging adulthood as being a time of exploration, opportunity, transience, confusion, openness and experimentation. Developing out of changes in the social, educational and economic structure of society, it is accompanied by new and particular expectations and norms. Emerging adults realize that some time in the future they will have to settle down, but now is the time for doing whatever they want to do and exploring different things, trying to have fun, and managing all the transitions they are facing while keeping their options open. But they face these choices and experiences in life without the aid of concrete and authoritative cultural forms, structures and pathways; instead, they operate out of vague and amorphous scripts largely disconnected from a sense of objective moral reality beyond themselves. With the loss or deep skepticism of belief in objective moral order, the emerging adult tends to lack motivation for anything apart from their subjective interests. Most, though not all, of these cultural forces shaping the emerging adults tend to work against a settled membership and life in a tradition or church community. The interview ends with a discussion of the various subgroups within emerging adults documented in Smith's study. ⇧
• • •
Dallas Willard
"Religion has always presented itself as knowledge of reality based on experience and thought, no matter which religion. And certainly that was true of the Christian religion up through the middle of the 1900s."
— Dallas Willard, author of Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (HarperOne, 2009)
Dallas Willard discusses the truth of spiritual knowledge and its epistemological validity in this segment of the Journal. His book, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, arose in response to interactions he had with a wide range of business, legal and political leaders which revealed their skepticism of the validity of religious, spiritual or ethical knowledge; as opposed to publicly valid knowledge, spiritual claims were seen as mere subjective traditions or opinions divorced from objective reality. He traces this skeptical belief in the U. S. back to the desire of liberal Christian theologians to protect Christianity from what they believed to be threatening developments in science, and the desire of conservative Christian theologians to emphasize the importance of understanding faith as a gift and not rational knowledge — a dichotomy Willard does not see any reason to accept. He describes in detail how this false dichotomy had led to great distortions in the understanding and practice of faith among everyday Christians and in churches, forcing believers to understand themselves as "committing" to essentially irrational claims. This sort of irrationalism leads to damaging consequences, including a loss of authority and the reduction of truth to the imposition of will and desire. ⇧
• • •
Peter Kreeft
November 22, 1963, is certainly best remembered as the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Philosopher Peter Kreeft of Boston College found it interesting that two other notable figures of the twentieth century died on the same November day: authors C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. Kreeft, who had long been fascinated with the writing of Socratic dialogue, wrote a post-death dialogue among Kennedy, Lewis, and Huxley in his book Between Heaven and Hell. Far from being a difficult task, Kreeft said the writing of the book was the easiest and most pleasurable writing he's done. ⇧
• • •
P. D. James
Mystery writer P.D. James talks about mystery as a genre and the way her own religious leanings influence her fiction. Detective stories remain popular, according to James, because they require that readers use their human reason and ingenuity to solve problems, and because they rest upon a conviction that murder is a great irreversible crime and is always evil. James also reflects on why writing about good and virtuous characters is more difficult than writing about evil and wicked villains. She describes herself as a religious person who is aware that there is more to life than this world; in her novel Innocent Blood she explores what she calls "the great religious questions" of guilt and repentance, sin and redemption. ⇧
• • •
James Davison Hunter
In Culture Wars, sociologist James Davison Hunter argues that public policy debates over issues in law, art, family, and education are more than political battles. Hunter claims that they evidence a struggle for cultural authority between two groups which hold conflicting moral visions. Cultural conservatives believe that moral authority derives from transcendent sources. Cultural progressives reject static ideas about truth in favor of openness, relativism, and pluralism. But progressives are not amoral or secular, according to Hunter. In fact, they are equally zealous about their view of reality and seek the cultural authority to shape the norms and mores of public life according to this view. Hunter also explains how media technologies exacerbate the tension by reducing public discourse to sound bites. ⇧
• • •
Paul McHugh
"Sometimes the sterner virtues of, well, being truthful, being just, have to come along with the kindness and support virtues. Psychotherapists sometimes have to use judgment even when they can be accused of being judgmental, since certain kinds of behavior are — in themselves — destructive to the person, their future, and the people around them."
— Paul McHugh
Psychiatrist Paul McHugh discusses how he is trying to reform psychiatry and why a new system would be helpful for therapists and patients. McHugh is author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry. He states that the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is akin to Roger Tory Peterson's field guide for birds, which identifies what warblers look like and how to tell them apart but does not address how they came into being or what factors have contributed to their development; the DSM identifies symptoms of diseases without addressing their causes. McHugh explains why psychiatry ought to categorize mental disorders in ways which account for their causes. If psychiatrists know which type of depression their patients have and what is causing it, for example, they will have a better understanding of how to heal the depression and not just its symptoms, and they will also know of which sorts of virtues their patients are in need. ⇧
• • •
Ted Prescott
Professor and sculptor Ted Prescott traces the history of nudity in art from the Greco-Roman period through the Renaissance, and to the current trends in modern advertising. According to Prescott, the difference between the depiction of the body in art and in advertising has to do with the ends the two disciplines hope to achieve. Advertisements, as opposed to art, use nudity to attract potential consumers to products. While advertisements can be artistically and aesthetically pleasing, their primary purpose is to convince people of their need for the product. The body becomes, according to Prescott, "a stylized piece of furniture on which to hang a product." ⇧
• • •
Ed Knippers
Painter Ed Knippers discusses how the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Lord’s Supper influence his painting. In his fleshy portraits of biblical characters, Knippers 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. Knippers insists that physicality is a gift from God that must be appreciated but not worshipped. The artist’s challenge is to strike the balance between these polar interpretations of the flesh. ⇧
• • •
Martha Bayles
Martha Bayles discusses her book on popular music, Hole in Our Soul, in which she examines how modernist notions about science and the nature of truth have led to a loss of beauty and meaning in art. Bayles explains how the increasing emphasis on empirical data as the only measure of truth relegated both religion and art to the purely subjective sphere. This development paved the way for “introverted” modernism, a movement that disconnected art from any accountability to reality, preferring to celebrate art for art's sake. Bayles's book focuses on the reaction against this elitist trend that began with Dadaism after World War I and reached its apex with the music of Janis Joplin in the late 1960s. For “perverse” modernists, art is a means for shocking people, according to Bayles. ⇧
• • •
Dominic Aquila
Social critic Christopher Lasch was deeply concerned about the individual and social consequences of what he dubbed "the culture of narcissism." Professor Dominic Aquila, who studied with Lasch, explains how Lasch’s concern about self-absorption informed his critique of the state of American art and music in America. Lasch argued that art lost its reference point when it became separated from work or craftsmanship. Now that the arts are funded by the government or corporations, artists are no longer artisans, and their work has become increasingly self-referential, according to Lasch. This minimalism represents the loss of an artistic vocabulary. The artist’s inability to articulate anything of substance mirrors the widespread nihilism and faithlessness that troubled Lasch toward the end of his career. ⇧
• • •
Gilbert Meilaender
Ethicist Gilbert Meilaender compares the popular slogan "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty” with classical and Christian ideas about virtue. This "bumper sticker morality" emphasizes impulsiveness over against the Aristotelian notion that virtues are habits of behavior that must be intentionally developed through discipline. Whereas Christian charity is grounded in a larger understanding of human beings and their relationship to God and one another, randomness resists connection with a broader ethical theory. Meilander also reminds us that true kindness requires a willingness to discipline and even wound. ⇧
• • •
Neil Postman
In his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York University communications theorist Neil Postman argues that technologies alter the way we think about the world. Postman asserts that Americans are now living in a "technopoly:" a culture in which technology has become sovereign over traditional modes of human association and social values. Rather than serving as a tool which helps solve specific problems, technology has become an end in itself: invention for the sake of invention. While Postman recognizes that inventions often confer benefits, he warns that they also limit possibilities (for example, one can no longer buy a Honda Accord without power windows). Technologies, according to Postman, are Faustian bargains: they giveth, but they also taketh away. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
Literary critic Alan Jacobs reviews Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County. This rendition of Erich Segal’s Love Story is predicated on the assumption that one should not think, only feel. Such excessive sentimentality encourages the reader to suspend judgment and reflection in order to indulge deliberately in emotion for its own sake. Jacobs contends that reflection reinforces and strengthens true emotions while exposing those feelings that are shallow and disingenuous. Sentimentalists such as Waller try to avoid this truth by keeping people from asking questions and by calling those who do insist on reflection "cynics." Jacobs counters that Waller's shameless manipulation of his readers' emotions is the ultimate act of cynicism. ⇧
Guests on Volume 100
• JENNIFER BURNS on the life and legacy of Ayn Rand, “goddess of the market” and entrenched enemy of altruism
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on the aimless cultural world of emerging adulthood and on how it makes the idea of objective moral order implausible
• DALLAS WILLARD on why it's important to recover the conviction that religious beliefs involve real knowledge
In honor of the five score milestone, part two of the issue features a look back at the beginnings of the Journal and a few special excerpts of conversations with those early guests:
• PETER KREEFT on Lewis, Huxley, and J.F.K. after death
• P. D. JAMES on good and evil in fiction
• JAMES DAVISON HUNTER on culture wars
• PAUL McHUGH on when psychiatry loses its way
• TED PRESCOTT on nudity in art and advertising
• ED KNIPPERS on the powerful presence of the body
• MARTHA BAYLES on pop and perverse modernism
• DOMINIC AQUILA on Christopher Lasch
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on random kindness
• NEIL POSTMAN on technology and culture
• ALAN JACOBS on being maudlin in Madison County
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jennifer Burns
"I found that in a lot of the letters people would write to her: 'I no longer feel I have to be my brother's keeper' or 'I understand that I don’t owe other people anything; I can be myself.' Part of that is, I think, why she's attractive to adolescents who are trying to figure out who they are, break free of bonds to other people, and who aren't comfortable with obligations and are striving to become independent and become unique and her work is a sort of tonic for them."
— Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Jennifer Burns, assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia, discusses her intellectual biography of Ayn Rand. In her biography, Burns examines the early life of Ayn Rand, born Alisa Rosenbaum, in Russia before the Revolution. She traces the life of Rand through her family’s experiences during the Russian Revolution and her later immigration to the United States, a place that in Rand's imagination was filled with glamour, wealth and beauty. She became jaded by the American intellectual elite's friendliness and acceptance of socialism and communism in the late 1920s and 30s, but grew to believe the wider American population had the right views concerning freedom and economics and sought to make herself a literary champion of capitalist freedom for “their side.” Burns describes how Ayn Rand's relationships mirrored her system of ethics as well; she thought the only valuable relationships were those completely freely chosen, eschewing non-voluntary ties and resting relations on individual perceptions of value devoid of emotional considerations. Such beliefs as well as her atheism had a polarizing effect on conservatives around her; Burns discusses how her person and/or work were received by various figures of conservatism over time — figures including Whittaker Chambers, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard — as well as their personal interactions. Finally, Burns comments on her intellectual and imaginative influences including Nietzsche and cinema, both of which, from an early age, she was greatly impressed by. ⇧
• • •
Christian Smith
"The dark side, the Nietszchean side of postmodernism hasn't settled in and it's in large part, in my viewpoint, because the promise of mass consumerism of living a happy life of collecting possessions, and having friends around those possessions, and having a good life and a beautiful spouse and beautiful kids, and parties with alcohol; all of that is extremely appealing to emerging adults, and they haven't failed at that. Those that will eventually fail have not yet failed and so there's a tremendous amount of optimism about where their futures are going, even paradoxically while they have very little optimism about the state of the larger world . . ."
— Christian Smith, author of Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Sociologist Christian Smith discusses his book Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, the sequel to his earlier book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. This study follows up on the same cohort of American young people who were teenagers when described in Soul Searching. Sociologists have come to describe this new life stage occurring after the teenager stage but before young adulthood when the subject is typically between 18-29 years of age as “emerging adulthood." Smith characterizes this period of emerging adulthood as being a time of exploration, opportunity, transience, confusion, openness and experimentation. Developing out of changes in the social, educational and economic structure of society, it is accompanied by new and particular expectations and norms. Emerging adults realize that some time in the future they will have to settle down, but now is the time for doing whatever they want to do and exploring different things, trying to have fun, and managing all the transitions they are facing while keeping their options open. But they face these choices and experiences in life without the aid of concrete and authoritative cultural forms, structures and pathways; instead, they operate out of vague and amorphous scripts largely disconnected from a sense of objective moral reality beyond themselves. With the loss or deep skepticism of belief in objective moral order, the emerging adult tends to lack motivation for anything apart from their subjective interests. Most, though not all, of these cultural forces shaping the emerging adults tend to work against a settled membership and life in a tradition or church community. The interview ends with a discussion of the various subgroups within emerging adults documented in Smith's study. ⇧
• • •
Dallas Willard
"Religion has always presented itself as knowledge of reality based on experience and thought, no matter which religion. And certainly that was true of the Christian religion up through the middle of the 1900s."
— Dallas Willard, author of Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (HarperOne, 2009)
Dallas Willard discusses the truth of spiritual knowledge and its epistemological validity in this segment of the Journal. His book, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, arose in response to interactions he had with a wide range of business, legal and political leaders which revealed their skepticism of the validity of religious, spiritual or ethical knowledge; as opposed to publicly valid knowledge, spiritual claims were seen as mere subjective traditions or opinions divorced from objective reality. He traces this skeptical belief in the U. S. back to the desire of liberal Christian theologians to protect Christianity from what they believed to be threatening developments in science, and the desire of conservative Christian theologians to emphasize the importance of understanding faith as a gift and not rational knowledge — a dichotomy Willard does not see any reason to accept. He describes in detail how this false dichotomy had led to great distortions in the understanding and practice of faith among everyday Christians and in churches, forcing believers to understand themselves as "committing" to essentially irrational claims. This sort of irrationalism leads to damaging consequences, including a loss of authority and the reduction of truth to the imposition of will and desire. ⇧
• • •
Peter Kreeft
November 22, 1963, is certainly best remembered as the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Philosopher Peter Kreeft of Boston College found it interesting that two other notable figures of the twentieth century died on the same November day: authors C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. Kreeft, who had long been fascinated with the writing of Socratic dialogue, wrote a post-death dialogue among Kennedy, Lewis, and Huxley in his book Between Heaven and Hell. Far from being a difficult task, Kreeft said the writing of the book was the easiest and most pleasurable writing he's done. ⇧
• • •
P. D. James
Mystery writer P.D. James talks about mystery as a genre and the way her own religious leanings influence her fiction. Detective stories remain popular, according to James, because they require that readers use their human reason and ingenuity to solve problems, and because they rest upon a conviction that murder is a great irreversible crime and is always evil. James also reflects on why writing about good and virtuous characters is more difficult than writing about evil and wicked villains. She describes herself as a religious person who is aware that there is more to life than this world; in her novel Innocent Blood she explores what she calls "the great religious questions" of guilt and repentance, sin and redemption. ⇧
• • •
James Davison Hunter
In Culture Wars, sociologist James Davison Hunter argues that public policy debates over issues in law, art, family, and education are more than political battles. Hunter claims that they evidence a struggle for cultural authority between two groups which hold conflicting moral visions. Cultural conservatives believe that moral authority derives from transcendent sources. Cultural progressives reject static ideas about truth in favor of openness, relativism, and pluralism. But progressives are not amoral or secular, according to Hunter. In fact, they are equally zealous about their view of reality and seek the cultural authority to shape the norms and mores of public life according to this view. Hunter also explains how media technologies exacerbate the tension by reducing public discourse to sound bites. ⇧
• • •
Paul McHugh
"Sometimes the sterner virtues of, well, being truthful, being just, have to come along with the kindness and support virtues. Psychotherapists sometimes have to use judgment even when they can be accused of being judgmental, since certain kinds of behavior are — in themselves — destructive to the person, their future, and the people around them."
— Paul McHugh
Psychiatrist Paul McHugh discusses how he is trying to reform psychiatry and why a new system would be helpful for therapists and patients. McHugh is author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry. He states that the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is akin to Roger Tory Peterson's field guide for birds, which identifies what warblers look like and how to tell them apart but does not address how they came into being or what factors have contributed to their development; the DSM identifies symptoms of diseases without addressing their causes. McHugh explains why psychiatry ought to categorize mental disorders in ways which account for their causes. If psychiatrists know which type of depression their patients have and what is causing it, for example, they will have a better understanding of how to heal the depression and not just its symptoms, and they will also know of which sorts of virtues their patients are in need. ⇧
• • •
Ted Prescott
Professor and sculptor Ted Prescott traces the history of nudity in art from the Greco-Roman period through the Renaissance, and to the current trends in modern advertising. According to Prescott, the difference between the depiction of the body in art and in advertising has to do with the ends the two disciplines hope to achieve. Advertisements, as opposed to art, use nudity to attract potential consumers to products. While advertisements can be artistically and aesthetically pleasing, their primary purpose is to convince people of their need for the product. The body becomes, according to Prescott, "a stylized piece of furniture on which to hang a product." ⇧
• • •
Ed Knippers
Painter Ed Knippers discusses how the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Lord’s Supper influence his painting. In his fleshy portraits of biblical characters, Knippers 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. Knippers insists that physicality is a gift from God that must be appreciated but not worshipped. The artist’s challenge is to strike the balance between these polar interpretations of the flesh. ⇧
• • •
Martha Bayles
Martha Bayles discusses her book on popular music, Hole in Our Soul, in which she examines how modernist notions about science and the nature of truth have led to a loss of beauty and meaning in art. Bayles explains how the increasing emphasis on empirical data as the only measure of truth relegated both religion and art to the purely subjective sphere. This development paved the way for “introverted” modernism, a movement that disconnected art from any accountability to reality, preferring to celebrate art for art's sake. Bayles's book focuses on the reaction against this elitist trend that began with Dadaism after World War I and reached its apex with the music of Janis Joplin in the late 1960s. For “perverse” modernists, art is a means for shocking people, according to Bayles. ⇧
• • •
Dominic Aquila
Social critic Christopher Lasch was deeply concerned about the individual and social consequences of what he dubbed "the culture of narcissism." Professor Dominic Aquila, who studied with Lasch, explains how Lasch’s concern about self-absorption informed his critique of the state of American art and music in America. Lasch argued that art lost its reference point when it became separated from work or craftsmanship. Now that the arts are funded by the government or corporations, artists are no longer artisans, and their work has become increasingly self-referential, according to Lasch. This minimalism represents the loss of an artistic vocabulary. The artist’s inability to articulate anything of substance mirrors the widespread nihilism and faithlessness that troubled Lasch toward the end of his career. ⇧
• • •
Gilbert Meilaender
Ethicist Gilbert Meilaender compares the popular slogan "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty” with classical and Christian ideas about virtue. This "bumper sticker morality" emphasizes impulsiveness over against the Aristotelian notion that virtues are habits of behavior that must be intentionally developed through discipline. Whereas Christian charity is grounded in a larger understanding of human beings and their relationship to God and one another, randomness resists connection with a broader ethical theory. Meilander also reminds us that true kindness requires a willingness to discipline and even wound. ⇧
• • •
Neil Postman
In his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York University communications theorist Neil Postman argues that technologies alter the way we think about the world. Postman asserts that Americans are now living in a "technopoly:" a culture in which technology has become sovereign over traditional modes of human association and social values. Rather than serving as a tool which helps solve specific problems, technology has become an end in itself: invention for the sake of invention. While Postman recognizes that inventions often confer benefits, he warns that they also limit possibilities (for example, one can no longer buy a Honda Accord without power windows). Technologies, according to Postman, are Faustian bargains: they giveth, but they also taketh away. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
Literary critic Alan Jacobs reviews Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County. This rendition of Erich Segal’s Love Story is predicated on the assumption that one should not think, only feel. Such excessive sentimentality encourages the reader to suspend judgment and reflection in order to indulge deliberately in emotion for its own sake. Jacobs contends that reflection reinforces and strengthens true emotions while exposing those feelings that are shallow and disingenuous. Sentimentalists such as Waller try to avoid this truth by keeping people from asking questions and by calling those who do insist on reflection "cynics." Jacobs counters that Waller's shameless manipulation of his readers' emotions is the ultimate act of cynicism. ⇧
Guests on Volume 101
• JAMES DAVISON HUNTER on how the most prominent strategies of Christian cultural engagement are based on a misunderstanding about how cultures work
• PAUL SPEARS on why Christian scholars need to understand their disciplines in ways that depart from conventional understanding
• STEVEN LOOMIS on why education needs to attend more carefully to non-quantifiable aspects of human experience
• JAMES K. A. SMITH on 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
• THOMAS LONG on how funeral practices have the capacity to convey an understanding of the meaning of discipleship and death
• WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH on the distinctly modern definition of “religion” and how the conventional account of the “Wars of Religion” misrepresents the facts in the interest of consolidating state power
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
James Davison Hunter
"'We need to make worldviews more Christian' is the idea here, that ‘if we just do that with enough people and if we get them to take the Christian nature of their worldview seriously and act on it, then we will change the world.' The problem is that perspective is almost completely wrong."
— James Davison Hunter, author of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Sociologist James Davison Hunter challenges reigning paradigms of cultural change and criticizes their influence on the life of the Church. He talks about how three main groups of Christians have sought to change culture but have failed because they operated under a flawed theory of grass-roots change. Not only have they failed to change culture in meaningful ways, he argues, but those very politicizing populist strategies have served to undermine the sacred character and witness of the Church and the very plausibility of a holy, transcendent God. Hunter argues that because social institutions are central carriers of culture, the abandonment of social institutions (with authority and hierarchy) due to a populist impulse both undermines cultural change and remakes the Church in the image of secular, popular culture rather than the reverse. Hunter argues that the way forward for the Church is by an incarnational "faithful presence" that enters the world not only as individuals, but as institutional communities of people. ⇧
• • •
Paul Spears
"Students are pursuing the academic life not because humans are rational but because they need to get money. And that pretty quickly sours on every human person because there's something intrinsic in all of us, foundational in all of us, that says 'That's not it' and a third-grader knows that."
— Paul Spears, co-author of Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
Educator Paul Spears discusses ugly trends within education and how a fuller understanding of human beings can aid Christian educators in fostering learning environments that do justice to students. Spears argues that humans, as rational created beings, are meant to develop their minds in pursuit of God’s redemptive purposes for the world, including but not limited to individuals. Spears discusses how various educational pedagogies can train students to deny inevitable failures rather than to learn from them and to see education merely in terms of making money, thereby fostering a sour cynicism and despair. ⇧
• • •
Steven Loomis
"All of those value-based sources of knowledge are very costly to a system that wants to economize through scale."
— Steven Loomis, co-author of Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
Co-author with Paul Spears, Steven Loomis, discusses how a technical managerial ethos imported from the secular business world reduces education to a flat, standardized set of procedures which ignores the context and the fullness of truth. Education thus follows the rest of secular culture in its drive for efficiency and ease at that cost of messy values and non-quantifiable wisdom. Loomis believes that resisting this tendency within education is a singularly important task for educators who seek to make wise disciples of Christ. ⇧
• • •
James K. A. Smith
"There is a kind of know-how that is embedded in the practices of Christian worship that can inform my thinking about human flourishing in ways that don't just deduce from theological formulations."
— James K. A. Smith, author of Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Baker, 2009)
James K. A. Smith talks about the links between desire, worship, education, and cultural formation. Smith argues that education is and always has been formation of the whole person, involving mores and morals and not just minds, affections and imaginations not just intellects. Smith draws on an earlier Reformational and Kuyperian tradition which understands worldview as more than merely a collection of Christian ideas and propositional content, but instead an entire point of view, a way of thinking of and feeling and experiencing the world that involves more, though not less, than true propositions. It involves true emotions and dispositions and relations as well. Education is formation, formation is discipleship, and discipleship is the mission that Jesus gives his people. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Long
"The best therapy for grief is not psychological comfort; the best assessment of grief is for the loss to be placed in the framework of meaning, and the ritual that acts out what does death mean, what is the future of the dead in Christ, to act that out in a ritual fashion, places our psychological loss in a grand structure of Gospel meaning, and that's what finally gives us the deepest comfort."
— Thomas Long, author of Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009)
Thomas Long paints a picture of historic Christian burial practice and discuss both the meaning embodied in the formal ritual and how the practice shapes the people who participate in it. Long then describes how what is done in the Christian funeral has shifted over time to reflect a different portrait of what is going on in death and how the congregation relates to the deceased. He discusses the differences between the historic and contemporary models and argues that while the benefits and goods embodied in the newer model are there and can be learned from, the historic model captures best what is going on in death and the destiny of the dead in Christ. In so doing, the historical model brings comfort to the grief-stricken by placing death within the Gospel narrative in place and time through movement and song. ⇧
• • •
William T. Cavanaugh
""[T]his is not just the way things are: the myth of religious violence is a deeply ideological way of looking at the world and is not, by any means, some kind of neutral description of what's actually out there."
— William Cavanaugh, author of The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Theologian William T. Cavanaugh examines the emptiness of the myth of religious violence. He begins by illustrating how the idea of "religion" as modern people understand it was an invention of early modern European thought meant to divide ways of life into the public and the private so as to allow the modern State to isolate, truncate and control the newly-invented private sphere, henceforth called "religion." This development arose out of centuries of struggle between ecclesiastic and civil authorities in Europe for power; when civil authorities gained the upper hand, Cavanaugh argues, they redefined the jurisdiction of the Church to be the newly-constructed private realm while taking the public realm for itself. As the dominance of the modern State grew over the past three centuries, their public political role and the Church's private religious role came to be solidified. Cavanaugh shows that this division between politics and religion has its own creation myth in the so-called "wars of religion" in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a myth that is belied by an examination of the warring parties in that period. He points out that the very fact that Catholics fought other Catholics, Protestants fought other Protestants, and that Protestants joined Catholics to fight other Protestants and Catholics indicates that there was something more going on than warring over theological disputes. That something was the beginning of a centralizing, homogenizing modern State that sought to exert control and bring uniformity over the diverse plurality of medieval locales and provinces, whether Protestant or Catholic, which resisted the growing centralization of the State, whether under Protestant or Catholic control. Cavanaugh argues that the deeply ideological separation of religion and politics has never been neutral but instead reflects a largely Western ideological conceit that is facing growing challenges centering on what is, at best, a tension within the division, and at worst, an incoherence. ⇧
Guests on Volume 101
• JAMES DAVISON HUNTER on how the most prominent strategies of Christian cultural engagement are based on a misunderstanding about how cultures work
• PAUL SPEARS on why Christian scholars need to understand their disciplines in ways that depart from conventional understanding
• STEVEN LOOMIS on why education needs to attend more carefully to non-quantifiable aspects of human experience
• JAMES K. A. SMITH on 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
• THOMAS LONG on how funeral practices have the capacity to convey an understanding of the meaning of discipleship and death
• WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH on the distinctly modern definition of “religion” and how the conventional account of the “Wars of Religion” misrepresents the facts in the interest of consolidating state power
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
James Davison Hunter
"'We need to make worldviews more Christian' is the idea here, that ‘if we just do that with enough people and if we get them to take the Christian nature of their worldview seriously and act on it, then we will change the world.' The problem is that perspective is almost completely wrong."
— James Davison Hunter, author of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Sociologist James Davison Hunter challenges reigning paradigms of cultural change and criticizes their influence on the life of the Church. He talks about how three main groups of Christians have sought to change culture but have failed because they operated under a flawed theory of grass-roots change. Not only have they failed to change culture in meaningful ways, he argues, but those very politicizing populist strategies have served to undermine the sacred character and witness of the Church and the very plausibility of a holy, transcendent God. Hunter argues that because social institutions are central carriers of culture, the abandonment of social institutions (with authority and hierarchy) due to a populist impulse both undermines cultural change and remakes the Church in the image of secular, popular culture rather than the reverse. Hunter argues that the way forward for the Church is by an incarnational "faithful presence" that enters the world not only as individuals, but as institutional communities of people. ⇧
• • •
Paul Spears
"Students are pursuing the academic life not because humans are rational but because they need to get money. And that pretty quickly sours on every human person because there's something intrinsic in all of us, foundational in all of us, that says 'That's not it' and a third-grader knows that."
— Paul Spears, co-author of Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
Educator Paul Spears discusses ugly trends within education and how a fuller understanding of human beings can aid Christian educators in fostering learning environments that do justice to students. Spears argues that humans, as rational created beings, are meant to develop their minds in pursuit of God’s redemptive purposes for the world, including but not limited to individuals. Spears discusses how various educational pedagogies can train students to deny inevitable failures rather than to learn from them and to see education merely in terms of making money, thereby fostering a sour cynicism and despair. ⇧
• • •
Steven Loomis
"All of those value-based sources of knowledge are very costly to a system that wants to economize through scale."
— Steven Loomis, co-author of Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
Co-author with Paul Spears, Steven Loomis, discusses how a technical managerial ethos imported from the secular business world reduces education to a flat, standardized set of procedures which ignores the context and the fullness of truth. Education thus follows the rest of secular culture in its drive for efficiency and ease at that cost of messy values and non-quantifiable wisdom. Loomis believes that resisting this tendency within education is a singularly important task for educators who seek to make wise disciples of Christ. ⇧
• • •
James K. A. Smith
"There is a kind of know-how that is embedded in the practices of Christian worship that can inform my thinking about human flourishing in ways that don't just deduce from theological formulations."
— James K. A. Smith, author of Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Baker, 2009)
James K. A. Smith talks about the links between desire, worship, education, and cultural formation. Smith argues that education is and always has been formation of the whole person, involving mores and morals and not just minds, affections and imaginations not just intellects. Smith draws on an earlier Reformational and Kuyperian tradition which understands worldview as more than merely a collection of Christian ideas and propositional content, but instead an entire point of view, a way of thinking of and feeling and experiencing the world that involves more, though not less, than true propositions. It involves true emotions and dispositions and relations as well. Education is formation, formation is discipleship, and discipleship is the mission that Jesus gives his people. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Long
"The best therapy for grief is not psychological comfort; the best assessment of grief is for the loss to be placed in the framework of meaning, and the ritual that acts out what does death mean, what is the future of the dead in Christ, to act that out in a ritual fashion, places our psychological loss in a grand structure of Gospel meaning, and that's what finally gives us the deepest comfort."
— Thomas Long, author of Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009)
Thomas Long paints a picture of historic Christian burial practice and discuss both the meaning embodied in the formal ritual and how the practice shapes the people who participate in it. Long then describes how what is done in the Christian funeral has shifted over time to reflect a different portrait of what is going on in death and how the congregation relates to the deceased. He discusses the differences between the historic and contemporary models and argues that while the benefits and goods embodied in the newer model are there and can be learned from, the historic model captures best what is going on in death and the destiny of the dead in Christ. In so doing, the historical model brings comfort to the grief-stricken by placing death within the Gospel narrative in place and time through movement and song. ⇧
• • •
William T. Cavanaugh
""[T]his is not just the way things are: the myth of religious violence is a deeply ideological way of looking at the world and is not, by any means, some kind of neutral description of what's actually out there."
— William Cavanaugh, author of The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Theologian William T. Cavanaugh examines the emptiness of the myth of religious violence. He begins by illustrating how the idea of "religion" as modern people understand it was an invention of early modern European thought meant to divide ways of life into the public and the private so as to allow the modern State to isolate, truncate and control the newly-invented private sphere, henceforth called "religion." This development arose out of centuries of struggle between ecclesiastic and civil authorities in Europe for power; when civil authorities gained the upper hand, Cavanaugh argues, they redefined the jurisdiction of the Church to be the newly-constructed private realm while taking the public realm for itself. As the dominance of the modern State grew over the past three centuries, their public political role and the Church's private religious role came to be solidified. Cavanaugh shows that this division between politics and religion has its own creation myth in the so-called "wars of religion" in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a myth that is belied by an examination of the warring parties in that period. He points out that the very fact that Catholics fought other Catholics, Protestants fought other Protestants, and that Protestants joined Catholics to fight other Protestants and Catholics indicates that there was something more going on than warring over theological disputes. That something was the beginning of a centralizing, homogenizing modern State that sought to exert control and bring uniformity over the diverse plurality of medieval locales and provinces, whether Protestant or Catholic, which resisted the growing centralization of the State, whether under Protestant or Catholic control. Cavanaugh argues that the deeply ideological separation of religion and politics has never been neutral but instead reflects a largely Western ideological conceit that is facing growing challenges centering on what is, at best, a tension within the division, and at worst, an incoherence. ⇧
Guests on Volume 102
• DANIEL M. BELL, JR. on recovering the view that the just war tradition is more about the shaping of character and virtue than a checklist for political leaders
• LEW DALY on how the discussion concerning faith-based initiatives raised larger issues about the identity of social groups in American society
• ADAM K. WEBB on whether the traditional personal and communal virtues in premodern village life must be abandoned for poverty to be alleviated
• STRATFORD CALDECOTT on how denying the reality of beauty is linked to a denial of the coherent meaning of Creation
• JAMES MATTHEW WILSON on Jacques Maritain’s pilgrimage to faith and his subsequent development of a rich philosophy of beauty
• THOMAS HIBBS on the similar projects of painters Georges Rouault (1871-1958) and Makoto Fujimura (b. 1960), and how they each resisted various confusions in modern art
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Daniel M. Bell, Jr.
"For the just war as public policy checklist, character is irrelevant. Anybody can pick up the checklist and use it, and as long as they can check it off, they can claim to be a just warrior. It doesn’t matter if just yesterday, they didn’t care about justice, they didn’t care about their neighbors, they couldn't care less about love and seeking peace. Anybody, any scoundrel can use it."
— Daniel M. Bell, Jr., author of Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State (Brazos Press, 2009)
Daniel M. Bell, Jr. discusses the just war tradition, a tradition which is often invoked by figures who, upon closer inspection, tend to lack a robust understanding of its history and criteria. Bell observes that the just war tradition, historically, arose out of the Christian community trying to grapple with and understand how the Church, as a community, could love one's neighbor even when it comes to war; he contrasts this historical understanding, rooted in the faith and practice of the Church, with just war theory as a contemporary politician's policy checklist to justify one's decision for war in the context of the modern nation-state and international law. As a public policy checklist, it is detached from the lived Christian moral tradition that sees the questions of war as being in continuity with the everyday ethical questions faced in a particularly Christian communal life of loving one’s neighbor and answered in accordance with the work of the Spirit accomplished in the character of the Christian community living out the faith in practice as disciples of Jesus. Bell argues that just war is not, from this perspective, a tradition that can be coherently or wisely divorced from the ethical life and character of the practicing Church and suddenly invoked on the eve of war by politicians, which is how it is often used today. Bell discusses why this is by drawing upon the recorded experiences of actual soldiers in war and the conditions he observes allowed them to fight justly and refuse the temptations to commit atrocities in the trauma and fear of battle. Bell moves on to discussing the development of the consideration of war as a necessary evil, and suggests that this involves a denial of the doctrine of sanctification. Drawing on early Church writers, Bell discusses how the counterintuitive claim that just war is a form of love even toward our enemies can be understood by modern Christians. ⇧
• • •
Lew Daly
"Can the government, can the welfare state, really take on the total risk of society in ways that it might have to as other structures -- as other risk pooling structures like the family -- are eroded and scattered by the labor market?"
— Lew Daly, author of God's Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
Lew Daly talks about the origins and trajectory of faith-based initiatives and related movements. His book discusses the relationship between faith-based groups, individuals, and the State when it comes to a shared goal of providing public goods; Daly observes how the political and legal framework in the U. S. has a difficult time addressing groups and communities due to the liberalism inherent in it. Since individuals are the only entities with an ontology in a liberal framework, almost all groups can only exist as a arbitrary collection of and have rights that are merely derivative of individuals. Perhaps the only group with an ontology as such is the nation-state, and the consequences of this lack of institutional recognition of groups such as families has been to reduce them to mere contractual relationships and enervate them. Daly suggests that moving towards a recognition of the social ontology of additional groups and communities would be true to life and a fruitful, even necessary, way of moving forward. Daly examines the intellectual genealogy of faith-based initiatives in the works of Abraham Kuyper and Leo XIII. ⇧
• • •
Adam K. Webb
"They didn't want to lose their independence to government cadres anymore than they wanted to lose their independence to big business."
— Adam K. Webb, author of A Path of Our Own: An Andean Village and Tomorrow's Economy of Values (ISI Books, 2009)
Adam K. Webb, Resident Associate Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins Nanjing Centre in China, discusses what he's learned about the possibilities of sustaining community life within the globalization of late modernity. He contrasts many of the values and virtues of local village life in the Peruvian village he studied over the course of a decade with the values inherent in the political and economic forces rural Peru is encountering in the modern world. Villagers have experienced much of urban life in their pursuit for employment, a pursuit which is not total and often finds villagers back in their original communities. Webb comments on the encounter of the village elders with outside modernizers and of the difficulties, possibilities, successes and disappointments. He examines the question of to what extent a certain kind of desirable economic development is compatible with the generational and traditional values of Peruvian villagers, what things can change, and what things do not have to change. His comments range from observations of the social structure of the village to the social and economic incentives contained within the practices of the Peruvian village. Drawing from thinkers like Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton who held to a robust understanding of human nature and flourishing in their thinking about economics, he illustrates possibilities and guidelines for a way forward. ⇧
• • •
Stratford Caldecott
"We were put here in the midst of this beautiful Creation essentially to give thanks, to recognize it as gift, respond to it accordingly, and to live the life of gratitude, thanksgiving, and return which is really the life of love which is rooted in the Trinity as the life of God himself."
— Stratford Caldecott, author of Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education (Brazos Press, 2009)
Stratford Caldecott reflects on how beauty is linked to the inherent meaning in Creation. He talks about some of the concerns that led him to elaborate on this issue, especially his experiences of nominalism in the education system growing up. He notes that the steady disenchantment of the world has caused people to become insecure when it comes to matters of beauty and faith. If the world is meaningless apart from the meaning we impose on it, then faith and beauty become a matter of will rather than something objective and inherent within the structure of Creation. Caldecott discusses the implications of recovering the true character of Creation as a gift of love for our life of understanding. ⇧
• • •
James Matthew Wilson
"He and his future wife Raissa Maritain effectively made a suicide pact; they said that if this turns out to be true; if the universe is really as empty and merely material as our teachers say it is, then we're going to end it all."
— James Matthew Wilson, author of The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (Catholic University of America Press, 2017)
Literary critic James Matthew Wilson discusses the aesthetics of Jacques Maritain. He begins by describing the curious tendency within the last thirty years to believe that American culture can be restored by means of electoral politics; this observation instigated a series on the relation of aesthetics to rationality and culture in which he discusses the three aspects of beauty in Maritain's aesthetics: integrity, proportion, and clarity. Wilson reviews the life of Maritain and how he came to Christian faith from rationalist materialism; the way in which Maritain came to faith set the trajectory of Maritain's elucidation of the significance of aesthetics and art to understanding reality and living a meaningful life. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Hibbs
"I think both of them are taking seriously this sense of the artist and individuals in our culture as dislocated from the tradition, and so the tradition can’t simply be assumed and enacted, it has to be recovered and refreshed."
— Thomas Hibbs, author of Rouault-Fujimura: Soliloquies (Square Halo Books, 2009)
Thomas Hibbs speaks about the art of painters Georges Rouault and Makoto Fujimura. He was asked to write a pamphlet introducing an exhibit juxtaposing paintings by the two artists, and he comments on the development of the artistic themes within the exhibit, entitled Soliloquies. Fujimura was greatly influenced by Rouault, and both Fujimura and Rouault were influenced by Jacques Maritain. Hibbs notes that much of their work was concerned with how to create art in a world where the symbols and patterns and language describing reality is desiccated by reductive tendencies and forces. Their art answers the question by locating the brokenness and misery of the world within the Passion of Jesus Christ where suffering is revealed to be both truly suffering and beautifully intelligible in the context of God's redemptive purposes and work. ⇧
Guests on Volume 102
• DANIEL M. BELL, JR. on recovering the view that the just war tradition is more about the shaping of character and virtue than a checklist for political leaders
• LEW DALY on how the discussion concerning faith-based initiatives raised larger issues about the identity of social groups in American society
• ADAM K. WEBB on whether the traditional personal and communal virtues in premodern village life must be abandoned for poverty to be alleviated
• STRATFORD CALDECOTT on how denying the reality of beauty is linked to a denial of the coherent meaning of Creation
• JAMES MATTHEW WILSON on Jacques Maritain’s pilgrimage to faith and his subsequent development of a rich philosophy of beauty
• THOMAS HIBBS on the similar projects of painters Georges Rouault (1871-1958) and Makoto Fujimura (b. 1960), and how they each resisted various confusions in modern art
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Daniel M. Bell, Jr.
"For the just war as public policy checklist, character is irrelevant. Anybody can pick up the checklist and use it, and as long as they can check it off, they can claim to be a just warrior. It doesn’t matter if just yesterday, they didn’t care about justice, they didn’t care about their neighbors, they couldn't care less about love and seeking peace. Anybody, any scoundrel can use it."
— Daniel M. Bell, Jr., author of Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State (Brazos Press, 2009)
Daniel M. Bell, Jr. discusses the just war tradition, a tradition which is often invoked by figures who, upon closer inspection, tend to lack a robust understanding of its history and criteria. Bell observes that the just war tradition, historically, arose out of the Christian community trying to grapple with and understand how the Church, as a community, could love one's neighbor even when it comes to war; he contrasts this historical understanding, rooted in the faith and practice of the Church, with just war theory as a contemporary politician's policy checklist to justify one's decision for war in the context of the modern nation-state and international law. As a public policy checklist, it is detached from the lived Christian moral tradition that sees the questions of war as being in continuity with the everyday ethical questions faced in a particularly Christian communal life of loving one’s neighbor and answered in accordance with the work of the Spirit accomplished in the character of the Christian community living out the faith in practice as disciples of Jesus. Bell argues that just war is not, from this perspective, a tradition that can be coherently or wisely divorced from the ethical life and character of the practicing Church and suddenly invoked on the eve of war by politicians, which is how it is often used today. Bell discusses why this is by drawing upon the recorded experiences of actual soldiers in war and the conditions he observes allowed them to fight justly and refuse the temptations to commit atrocities in the trauma and fear of battle. Bell moves on to discussing the development of the consideration of war as a necessary evil, and suggests that this involves a denial of the doctrine of sanctification. Drawing on early Church writers, Bell discusses how the counterintuitive claim that just war is a form of love even toward our enemies can be understood by modern Christians. ⇧
• • •
Lew Daly
"Can the government, can the welfare state, really take on the total risk of society in ways that it might have to as other structures -- as other risk pooling structures like the family -- are eroded and scattered by the labor market?"
— Lew Daly, author of God's Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
Lew Daly talks about the origins and trajectory of faith-based initiatives and related movements. His book discusses the relationship between faith-based groups, individuals, and the State when it comes to a shared goal of providing public goods; Daly observes how the political and legal framework in the U. S. has a difficult time addressing groups and communities due to the liberalism inherent in it. Since individuals are the only entities with an ontology in a liberal framework, almost all groups can only exist as a arbitrary collection of and have rights that are merely derivative of individuals. Perhaps the only group with an ontology as such is the nation-state, and the consequences of this lack of institutional recognition of groups such as families has been to reduce them to mere contractual relationships and enervate them. Daly suggests that moving towards a recognition of the social ontology of additional groups and communities would be true to life and a fruitful, even necessary, way of moving forward. Daly examines the intellectual genealogy of faith-based initiatives in the works of Abraham Kuyper and Leo XIII. ⇧
• • •
Adam K. Webb
"They didn't want to lose their independence to government cadres anymore than they wanted to lose their independence to big business."
— Adam K. Webb, author of A Path of Our Own: An Andean Village and Tomorrow's Economy of Values (ISI Books, 2009)
Adam K. Webb, Resident Associate Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins Nanjing Centre in China, discusses what he's learned about the possibilities of sustaining community life within the globalization of late modernity. He contrasts many of the values and virtues of local village life in the Peruvian village he studied over the course of a decade with the values inherent in the political and economic forces rural Peru is encountering in the modern world. Villagers have experienced much of urban life in their pursuit for employment, a pursuit which is not total and often finds villagers back in their original communities. Webb comments on the encounter of the village elders with outside modernizers and of the difficulties, possibilities, successes and disappointments. He examines the question of to what extent a certain kind of desirable economic development is compatible with the generational and traditional values of Peruvian villagers, what things can change, and what things do not have to change. His comments range from observations of the social structure of the village to the social and economic incentives contained within the practices of the Peruvian village. Drawing from thinkers like Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton who held to a robust understanding of human nature and flourishing in their thinking about economics, he illustrates possibilities and guidelines for a way forward. ⇧
• • •
Stratford Caldecott
"We were put here in the midst of this beautiful Creation essentially to give thanks, to recognize it as gift, respond to it accordingly, and to live the life of gratitude, thanksgiving, and return which is really the life of love which is rooted in the Trinity as the life of God himself."
— Stratford Caldecott, author of Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education (Brazos Press, 2009)
Stratford Caldecott reflects on how beauty is linked to the inherent meaning in Creation. He talks about some of the concerns that led him to elaborate on this issue, especially his experiences of nominalism in the education system growing up. He notes that the steady disenchantment of the world has caused people to become insecure when it comes to matters of beauty and faith. If the world is meaningless apart from the meaning we impose on it, then faith and beauty become a matter of will rather than something objective and inherent within the structure of Creation. Caldecott discusses the implications of recovering the true character of Creation as a gift of love for our life of understanding. ⇧
• • •
James Matthew Wilson
"He and his future wife Raissa Maritain effectively made a suicide pact; they said that if this turns out to be true; if the universe is really as empty and merely material as our teachers say it is, then we're going to end it all."
— James Matthew Wilson, author of The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (Catholic University of America Press, 2017)
Literary critic James Matthew Wilson discusses the aesthetics of Jacques Maritain. He begins by describing the curious tendency within the last thirty years to believe that American culture can be restored by means of electoral politics; this observation instigated a series on the relation of aesthetics to rationality and culture in which he discusses the three aspects of beauty in Maritain's aesthetics: integrity, proportion, and clarity. Wilson reviews the life of Maritain and how he came to Christian faith from rationalist materialism; the way in which Maritain came to faith set the trajectory of Maritain's elucidation of the significance of aesthetics and art to understanding reality and living a meaningful life. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Hibbs
"I think both of them are taking seriously this sense of the artist and individuals in our culture as dislocated from the tradition, and so the tradition can’t simply be assumed and enacted, it has to be recovered and refreshed."
— Thomas Hibbs, author of Rouault-Fujimura: Soliloquies (Square Halo Books, 2009)
Thomas Hibbs speaks about the art of painters Georges Rouault and Makoto Fujimura. He was asked to write a pamphlet introducing an exhibit juxtaposing paintings by the two artists, and he comments on the development of the artistic themes within the exhibit, entitled Soliloquies. Fujimura was greatly influenced by Rouault, and both Fujimura and Rouault were influenced by Jacques Maritain. Hibbs notes that much of their work was concerned with how to create art in a world where the symbols and patterns and language describing reality is desiccated by reductive tendencies and forces. Their art answers the question by locating the brokenness and misery of the world within the Passion of Jesus Christ where suffering is revealed to be both truly suffering and beautifully intelligible in the context of God's redemptive purposes and work. ⇧
Guests on Volume 103
• STEVEN D. SMITH on how the law only makes sense in the context of certain metaphysical beliefs, and on why we aren’t allowed to talk about such things in public
• DAVID THOMSON on the American Dream, acting, loneliness, the moral complicity of movie audiences, and the genius of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
• ADAM McHUGH on how American culture distrusts introverts and on why their place in the Church needs to be valued
• GLENN C. ARBERY on the Vanderbilt Agrarians, poetry, and the moral imagination and the shaping of virtue
• ERIC MILLER on Christopher Lasch’s intense commitment to understand the logic of American cultural confusion
• ERIC METAXAS on how Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s early experiences prepared him for his heroic defiance of the Third Reich
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Steven D. Smith
"There is and should be a sort of disenchantment now with the secular discourse because of its inadequacy to convey a lot of what we really do believe and understand."
— Steven D. Smith, author of The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Harvard University Press, 2010)
Law professor Steven D. Smith discusses the metaphysical assumptions concerning human nature underlying the public legal order. He argues that because the legal regime only makes sense in the context of these assumptions, it is impossible to be truly neutral with respect to morality and religion when it comes to the law. Secular discourse, when it comes to the law, tends to ignore these facts, and Smith attributes related changes in American jurisprudence in the twentieth century to a creeping and unacknowledged naturalism, which Smith believes should be unmasked and "disenchanted" so that deliberations might proceed with integrity at minimum and perhaps even with genuine progress away from shallowness and toward a depth of understanding and engagement the lack of which is often publicly bemoaned. Finally, Smith describes the metaphor of "smuggling" and its capacity to undermine reasonable discourse. ⇧
• • •
David Thomson
"Why do we enjoy violence and cruelty so much [in film]? Why do we enjoy murder so much?"
— David Thomson, author of The Moment of Psycho: How Albert Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder (Basic Books, 2009)
Renowned film critic David Thomson talks about director Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho. Thomson discusses the effect the move to the United States from the United Kingdom had on Hitchcock and his films. Thomson suggests that film achieves a kind of unique synergy with American culture because of the way that the medium interacts with the opportunity, scale, and character of American dreams and the American Dream. It's a powerful combination that brings exhilaration to Hitchcock and his viewers but darkness and danger as well, the flip side of the dream. Thomson describes the relation between dream and acting as the capacity to imagine and embody an alternative reality; for actors for whom this kind of practice constitutes livelihood, this phenomenon can subtly shift and distort their identity, but it poses questions for Americans whose lives are ever more saturated with people in visual media with whom they identify and care for and in whom they believe, and yet do not really know. The uncertainty is necessarily there in a different way with screen distance, and a consequent sense of loneliness is something that is not only experienced but displayed in popular culture. Hitchcock paints a portrait of one form of such alienation in the character of Norman Bates in Psycho, and he does so in such a way as to leave additional questions about the viewer's enjoyment of watching it. It's not simply the display of brokenness and violence that Hitchcock was after, but our response to it and what that means as well, or at least the asking of that question. But what does that mean? ⇧
• • •
Adam McHugh
"In so many cases introverts are defined by what we're not rather than what we are . . . I wanted to say 'Well, what are the benefits, what are the advantages, what are the gifts we have to offer to the other people in our lives that maybe our gregarious action-oriented culture is missing if we're not contributing these gifts?'"
— Adam McHugh, author of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
Pastor Adam McHugh shares his thoughts about introverts and the American Church. His research focuses on the changes in American culture in the twentieth century and how those changes affect the social place of introverts in society and in churches. He correlates the rise of extroversion in the past decades to the growth of mass media and the necessity of cultural leaders to be able to engage and navigate the new media ecosystem. Americans have always loved the gregarious go-getter and the big personality, but that disposition is magnified today by technological developments, as signified by the use of "networking" to describe not just technological but social relations. McHugh notes how advertising salesmanship has influenced models of evangelism, and how informality influences the amount and kind of communications. Introversion, for McHugh, is an inclination toward the inner world marked by significant activity and energy therein; he contrasts this view with common perceptions and misperceptions concerning introversion. His goal in the book is to present ways for introverts to engage a extroverted culture and contribute to and participate in the life of the Church without having to sacrifice the qualities and gifts introversion can bring. ⇧
• • •
Glenn C. Arbery
"The language of a poem is so particular to that poem, in its rhythms, the way the words sound next to each other, in the particular choice of words — that it's difficult to even to imagine what a poem would be if you simply paraphrased it, used other words, and had no access to that level of experience of the poem . . . it's something whose sensitivity has to be learned."
— Glenn C. Arbery, author of The Southern Critics: An Anthology (ISI Books, 2010)
Glenn Arbery discusses the mid-twentieth century group of literary critics in the American South known as the Vanderbilt Agrarians. These critics, along with their students, exercised an incredible influence on the study of literature. Arbery suggests they centered their criticisms around changing technological, social, and industrial norms, and they finally settled on the metaphor of agrarianism to highlight the aspects of traditional farming communities they believed did justice to the sort of life people were made to have. Through their prose and especially their poetry, they attempted to draw out and embody these aspects so as to strengthen their readers and communities to be able to resist the practices and norms of consumer society and hyper-mobility and busyness. Arbery discusses the particular strengths of the form of poetry and its power to be able to capture and communicate the truths concerning a well-lived life. This conversation ends with a short discussion of "new criticism." ⇧
• • •
Eric Miller
"He really had no interest in making himself useful for political purposes, in the way that people who are trying to orchestrate political purposes would imagine usefulness. Rather, he understood his calling to, as an intellectual, tell the truth as being the most useful thing he could do for the body politic, for the beloved community that he imagined our end to be."
— Eric Miller, author of Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch (Eerdmans, 2010)
Eric Miller joins us to talk about the late social critic Christopher Lasch, of whom he wrote a biography. After an early period of literary ambition, Lasch studied at Harvard University and came to see his calling to see and communicate what is really happening in society. He became concerned about the analysis and knowledge of history because he recognized that without understanding how reality and particular circumstances came to be, there would be little hope for positive change. Lasch observed the changes within the progressive tradition in which he was raised by his progressive parents and sought to understand why they were happening, especially the losses in the social and communal aspects of the tradition. He searched out these issues with seriousness and passion, not self-consciously, but with a kind of integrity even those who disagreed with him could appreciate. Miller traces the roots of Lasch's critique to a sense of the corruption in the world whose manifestations could only be challenged when they were recognized as such. ⇧
• • •
Eric Metaxas
"He understood that to be a Christian, it's about the Incarnation, it's not just about head knowledge, as it were. It's about your whole life. It's about your voice, it's about singing, it's about how you conduct yourself. It's about everything, every aspect of one's life has to be given over to God."
— Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Thomas Nelson, 2010)
Eric Metaxas, whose latest biography is about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, discusses the early life of the great pastor-theologian, including the enormous influence of his parents and family life when he was a child. Bonhoeffer was raised in a highly-sophisticated, well-educated and important family in Germany; in many ways, the Bonhoeffer family represented the best of early twentieth century German Christian culture, the culture of Bach, Goethe and Schiller. It was a musical family who enjoyed performing every Saturday night. In fact, if he had not heard the call to ordination, Bonhoeffer was likely to have become a professional musician. Nevertheless, the seriousness of his mother and the family culture of devout worship she established would anchor Bonhoeffer's own maturity. As a pastor, Bonhoeffer came to recognize a need to reform the German church, which had been growing decadent. He was greatly influenced by his travels to the United States as well, where he witnessed people of all different sorts of ethnic backgrounds worshipping God together. For this German Lutheran, it was a new experience. Metaxas argues that this as well as many other strands of Bonhoeffer's life would be woven together to make possible his courageous stand against the Nazi party. ⇧
Guests on Volume 103
• STEVEN D. SMITH on how the law only makes sense in the context of certain metaphysical beliefs, and on why we aren’t allowed to talk about such things in public
• DAVID THOMSON on the American Dream, acting, loneliness, the moral complicity of movie audiences, and the genius of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
• ADAM McHUGH on how American culture distrusts introverts and on why their place in the Church needs to be valued
• GLENN C. ARBERY on the Vanderbilt Agrarians, poetry, and the moral imagination and the shaping of virtue
• ERIC MILLER on Christopher Lasch’s intense commitment to understand the logic of American cultural confusion
• ERIC METAXAS on how Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s early experiences prepared him for his heroic defiance of the Third Reich
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Steven D. Smith
"There is and should be a sort of disenchantment now with the secular discourse because of its inadequacy to convey a lot of what we really do believe and understand."
— Steven D. Smith, author of The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Harvard University Press, 2010)
Law professor Steven D. Smith discusses the metaphysical assumptions concerning human nature underlying the public legal order. He argues that because the legal regime only makes sense in the context of these assumptions, it is impossible to be truly neutral with respect to morality and religion when it comes to the law. Secular discourse, when it comes to the law, tends to ignore these facts, and Smith attributes related changes in American jurisprudence in the twentieth century to a creeping and unacknowledged naturalism, which Smith believes should be unmasked and "disenchanted" so that deliberations might proceed with integrity at minimum and perhaps even with genuine progress away from shallowness and toward a depth of understanding and engagement the lack of which is often publicly bemoaned. Finally, Smith describes the metaphor of "smuggling" and its capacity to undermine reasonable discourse. ⇧
• • •
David Thomson
"Why do we enjoy violence and cruelty so much [in film]? Why do we enjoy murder so much?"
— David Thomson, author of The Moment of Psycho: How Albert Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder (Basic Books, 2009)
Renowned film critic David Thomson talks about director Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho. Thomson discusses the effect the move to the United States from the United Kingdom had on Hitchcock and his films. Thomson suggests that film achieves a kind of unique synergy with American culture because of the way that the medium interacts with the opportunity, scale, and character of American dreams and the American Dream. It's a powerful combination that brings exhilaration to Hitchcock and his viewers but darkness and danger as well, the flip side of the dream. Thomson describes the relation between dream and acting as the capacity to imagine and embody an alternative reality; for actors for whom this kind of practice constitutes livelihood, this phenomenon can subtly shift and distort their identity, but it poses questions for Americans whose lives are ever more saturated with people in visual media with whom they identify and care for and in whom they believe, and yet do not really know. The uncertainty is necessarily there in a different way with screen distance, and a consequent sense of loneliness is something that is not only experienced but displayed in popular culture. Hitchcock paints a portrait of one form of such alienation in the character of Norman Bates in Psycho, and he does so in such a way as to leave additional questions about the viewer's enjoyment of watching it. It's not simply the display of brokenness and violence that Hitchcock was after, but our response to it and what that means as well, or at least the asking of that question. But what does that mean? ⇧
• • •
Adam McHugh
"In so many cases introverts are defined by what we're not rather than what we are . . . I wanted to say 'Well, what are the benefits, what are the advantages, what are the gifts we have to offer to the other people in our lives that maybe our gregarious action-oriented culture is missing if we're not contributing these gifts?'"
— Adam McHugh, author of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
Pastor Adam McHugh shares his thoughts about introverts and the American Church. His research focuses on the changes in American culture in the twentieth century and how those changes affect the social place of introverts in society and in churches. He correlates the rise of extroversion in the past decades to the growth of mass media and the necessity of cultural leaders to be able to engage and navigate the new media ecosystem. Americans have always loved the gregarious go-getter and the big personality, but that disposition is magnified today by technological developments, as signified by the use of "networking" to describe not just technological but social relations. McHugh notes how advertising salesmanship has influenced models of evangelism, and how informality influences the amount and kind of communications. Introversion, for McHugh, is an inclination toward the inner world marked by significant activity and energy therein; he contrasts this view with common perceptions and misperceptions concerning introversion. His goal in the book is to present ways for introverts to engage a extroverted culture and contribute to and participate in the life of the Church without having to sacrifice the qualities and gifts introversion can bring. ⇧
• • •
Glenn C. Arbery
"The language of a poem is so particular to that poem, in its rhythms, the way the words sound next to each other, in the particular choice of words — that it's difficult to even to imagine what a poem would be if you simply paraphrased it, used other words, and had no access to that level of experience of the poem . . . it's something whose sensitivity has to be learned."
— Glenn C. Arbery, author of The Southern Critics: An Anthology (ISI Books, 2010)
Glenn Arbery discusses the mid-twentieth century group of literary critics in the American South known as the Vanderbilt Agrarians. These critics, along with their students, exercised an incredible influence on the study of literature. Arbery suggests they centered their criticisms around changing technological, social, and industrial norms, and they finally settled on the metaphor of agrarianism to highlight the aspects of traditional farming communities they believed did justice to the sort of life people were made to have. Through their prose and especially their poetry, they attempted to draw out and embody these aspects so as to strengthen their readers and communities to be able to resist the practices and norms of consumer society and hyper-mobility and busyness. Arbery discusses the particular strengths of the form of poetry and its power to be able to capture and communicate the truths concerning a well-lived life. This conversation ends with a short discussion of "new criticism." ⇧
• • •
Eric Miller
"He really had no interest in making himself useful for political purposes, in the way that people who are trying to orchestrate political purposes would imagine usefulness. Rather, he understood his calling to, as an intellectual, tell the truth as being the most useful thing he could do for the body politic, for the beloved community that he imagined our end to be."
— Eric Miller, author of Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch (Eerdmans, 2010)
Eric Miller joins us to talk about the late social critic Christopher Lasch, of whom he wrote a biography. After an early period of literary ambition, Lasch studied at Harvard University and came to see his calling to see and communicate what is really happening in society. He became concerned about the analysis and knowledge of history because he recognized that without understanding how reality and particular circumstances came to be, there would be little hope for positive change. Lasch observed the changes within the progressive tradition in which he was raised by his progressive parents and sought to understand why they were happening, especially the losses in the social and communal aspects of the tradition. He searched out these issues with seriousness and passion, not self-consciously, but with a kind of integrity even those who disagreed with him could appreciate. Miller traces the roots of Lasch's critique to a sense of the corruption in the world whose manifestations could only be challenged when they were recognized as such. ⇧
• • •
Eric Metaxas
"He understood that to be a Christian, it's about the Incarnation, it's not just about head knowledge, as it were. It's about your whole life. It's about your voice, it's about singing, it's about how you conduct yourself. It's about everything, every aspect of one's life has to be given over to God."
— Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Thomas Nelson, 2010)
Eric Metaxas, whose latest biography is about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, discusses the early life of the great pastor-theologian, including the enormous influence of his parents and family life when he was a child. Bonhoeffer was raised in a highly-sophisticated, well-educated and important family in Germany; in many ways, the Bonhoeffer family represented the best of early twentieth century German Christian culture, the culture of Bach, Goethe and Schiller. It was a musical family who enjoyed performing every Saturday night. In fact, if he had not heard the call to ordination, Bonhoeffer was likely to have become a professional musician. Nevertheless, the seriousness of his mother and the family culture of devout worship she established would anchor Bonhoeffer's own maturity. As a pastor, Bonhoeffer came to recognize a need to reform the German church, which had been growing decadent. He was greatly influenced by his travels to the United States as well, where he witnessed people of all different sorts of ethnic backgrounds worshipping God together. For this German Lutheran, it was a new experience. Metaxas argues that this as well as many other strands of Bonhoeffer's life would be woven together to make possible his courageous stand against the Nazi party. ⇧
Guests on Volume 104
• JAMES LE FANU on the mistaken assumption that modern medical science has eliminated the fittingness of a sense of mystery and wonder at the human mind and body
• GARRET KEIZER on how many noises in modern life reveal a state of warfare with the limitations of our embodiment
• DANIEL RITCHIE on how Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and Isaac Watts (1674-1748) anticipated late twentieth-century critiques of the Enlightenment
• MONICA GANAS on how the distinct vision of life embedded in “California-ism” has exerted a powerful cultural influence
• JONATHAN WILSON-HARTGROVE on how the search for faithfulness to Christ led him to the wisdom of the Benedictine Rule and a new monasticism
• PETER J. LEITHART on why Constantine has an unfairly bad reputation and on how his rule dealt a severe blow to paganism in the West
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
James Le Fanu
"People need to know how little we know."
— James Le Fanu, author of Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves (Pantheon, 2009)
James Le Fanu talks about how scientific developments are increasing rather than eliminating the mysteriousness of the human person. For example, he lists a number of phenomena that remain opaque to developments in neuroscience. Le Fanu argues that there are many important things about the human person that science cannot explain, that remain outside of the competence of science to explain. Unfortunately, rather than acknowledging the limits of the nature and competence of science, many cultural authorities tend to ignore, diminish, or reduce to materialistic aspects those parts and phenomena of reality that science cannot address. If science cannot apprehend or explain something, it must be something illusory, something that isn't truly real. Consciousness, for example, might be reduced down to mere chemical reactions in the brain creating an illusion of self-awareness. In Le Fanu's experience, the practice of reducing phenomena to purely material explanation begins quite early for many children in science education, which tends to bore them because of it. Le Fanu would have us reinforce the instinctual appreciation for the non-material aspects of our existence found in traditional liberal arts education and especially the humanities. ⇧
• • •
Garret Keizer
"A lot of the noise we're making is noise expended in the effort not to return to the earth but to utterly escape the earth and our bodies with it, and each other."
— Garret Keizer, author of The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise (Public Affairs, 2010)
Critic Garret Keizer recognizes that much of the noise in our everyday lives is a by-product of our attempts to surpass the limits of our bodies. Keizer discusses how Milton and Dante regarded and wrote about noise in their works, and comments on the historical association of noise with pain, in contrast to music with pleasure. He points out that a drawback of particular advances in power over time and space is the noise that is generated through those particular advances, noise that is repulsive because it interferes with our fullest and deepest enjoyment of life. This creates a tension in our lives that must be navigated, but Keizer believes it is instructive to attend to the particular noises we hear and experience because of the way particular noises represent conflict in particular ways, in particular places, and within particular orders. Noise can represent a challenge to those things, which can be just and good or illegitimate and dehumanizing, and which require attention. ⇧
• • •
Daniel Ritchie
"Watts is critical of Locke's reduction of rationality to sensation and reflection . . . but that's not what we remember Watts for."
— Daniel Ritchie, author of The Fullness of Knowing: Modernity and Post Modernity from Defoe to Gadamer (Baylor University Press, 2010)
English professor Daniel Ritchie describes how many of the figures he studies in his new book, including Jonathan Swift and Isaac Watts, emphasize the significance of human experience, enculturation and contingency to human knowledge; in contrast to this appreciation of the humanity of knowledge, Ritchie observes that many of the figures of the Enlightenment idealized a non-contingent, machine-like knowledge that could be completely divorced from particular human situatedness. Jonathan Swift illustrates the contrasts between these two approaches in parts of his satirical Gulliver's Travels and in a number of his essays at the beginnings of the Enlightenment. Swift was responding to the major discussions of the time where contemporary and ancient times were being compared. Isaac Watts was likewise aware of the intellectual currents of the day, and he engaged contemporary discussions in both prose and verse. He was highly critical of the divorce between beauty and knowing that figures such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant later would claim. ⇧
• • •
Monica Ganas
"I think grace — the notion of grace — was co-opted sort of early on by a notion of luck that operates as a central metaphor."
— Monica Ganas, author of Under the Influence: California's Intoxicating Spiritual and Cultural Impact on America (Brazos, 2010)
Monica Ganas reflects on the cultural impact of the unique state of California. A mystique surrounds California, Ganas observes, one that is perceived in the way people not from California talk about it. It evokes hopes and dreams and possibility and longing in an almost mythic way that has formed the backdrop of many significant events in California's history from its naming to the Gold Rush and beyond. She links these powerful qualities of possibility to the growth of information technology and genetic engineering, which are industries especially situated at the vanguard of the future promise of expansion and renewal. The image and mindset of progress is often in tension with grace because the passion cultivated by "California-ism" is both directed to and driven by heroic achievement in the grasping and harnessing of opportunity. Luck displaces grace in California-ism, but it still maintains a vital religious sensibility of faith in possibility -- the possibility of fortune. ⇧
• • •
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
"There's much to be said for being free from all of those things that are bad, but that conversation alone doesn't determine what we're free for, what the content of our freedom will be once we begin to live into it."
— Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author of The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture (Paraclete Press, 2010)
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove discusses the value of resisting hyper-mobility and living in one place for a long time. He argues that stability in a certain place makes possible a kind of depth and breadth in the experience of a community that is strained and often precluded by constantly moving around. He has learned much from the monastic tradition of Christianity about how one's faith can be lived out fully, and he observes that many Christians who seek intentional community out of frustration with their churches likewise draw from these resources support that can sustain them. He points out that the very dearth of deep and satisfying community that generates longing for it unfortunately also shapes people in ways that keep them from being able to receive and participate in that deep sort of love; this phenomenon perpetuates a vicious cycle, and Wilson-Hartgrove appreciates the collected wisdom of the Benedictine monks that address such phenomena in human experience. He discusses the differences between American notions of freedom and Benedictine notions. Finally, Wilson-Hartgrove cautions against an over-determined view of monastic life; Benedictine practice has always retained a flexibility that has served it well over the centuries, looking different in different times and yet retaining continuity with the tradition. ⇧
• • •
Peter Leithart
"We're so used to a de-sacrificed civic order that we have a hard time imagining how significant that was. But that's a huge shift in Western civilization."
— Peter Leithart, author of Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (InterVarsity Press, 2010)
Theologian Peter Leithart examines Constantine's life and legacy, and the implications of that for Christian life today. He begins by observing that biblical Christianity contains within it a vision of all of life and reality and relations, and so Christian thinking about various aspects of life from economics and sociology to art and music to what it means to be human cannot faithfully start from scratch, but must grow within and out of that cosmological vision. Theology is social theory, a theory of the relations of man and God in history. Leithart cites John Milbank's historical work concretely tracing the genealogy of contemporary political and social thought to particular philosophies and theologies in time, and he notes that many of the theories operative today arise out of heretical Christian theology and pagan philosophy. In history, there is no neutral civic or social theory, but always one presupposing and built upon particular theologies and philosophies claiming certain things about the people and the world. Leithart then discusses his aims for the book: to evaluate the historical evidence concerning Constantine's life in such a way as to clarify the historical narrative on which contemporary political theology rests. He does this in great sympathy with critics of Constantine, carefully noting the main critics, arguments, and evidence that have cast suspicion upon Constantine and deemed his influence upon the early Church as corrupting. He appreciatively cites John Howard Yoder as providing the most compelling of the Constantinian critiques in that his criticisms are ecclesial and eschatological in nature and resist the modern privatization and over-spiritualization of the Church typical of post-Enlightenment and liberal Protestant critics. The interview ends with a lengthy discussion on the end of pagan sacrifice in and organizing the Roman civic order, a theme Leithart draws out in his conclusion to the book. ⇧
Guests on Volume 104
• JAMES LE FANU on the mistaken assumption that modern medical science has eliminated the fittingness of a sense of mystery and wonder at the human mind and body
• GARRET KEIZER on how many noises in modern life reveal a state of warfare with the limitations of our embodiment
• DANIEL RITCHIE on how Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and Isaac Watts (1674-1748) anticipated late twentieth-century critiques of the Enlightenment
• MONICA GANAS on how the distinct vision of life embedded in “California-ism” has exerted a powerful cultural influence
• JONATHAN WILSON-HARTGROVE on how the search for faithfulness to Christ led him to the wisdom of the Benedictine Rule and a new monasticism
• PETER J. LEITHART on why Constantine has an unfairly bad reputation and on how his rule dealt a severe blow to paganism in the West
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
James Le Fanu
"People need to know how little we know."
— James Le Fanu, author of Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves (Pantheon, 2009)
James Le Fanu talks about how scientific developments are increasing rather than eliminating the mysteriousness of the human person. For example, he lists a number of phenomena that remain opaque to developments in neuroscience. Le Fanu argues that there are many important things about the human person that science cannot explain, that remain outside of the competence of science to explain. Unfortunately, rather than acknowledging the limits of the nature and competence of science, many cultural authorities tend to ignore, diminish, or reduce to materialistic aspects those parts and phenomena of reality that science cannot address. If science cannot apprehend or explain something, it must be something illusory, something that isn't truly real. Consciousness, for example, might be reduced down to mere chemical reactions in the brain creating an illusion of self-awareness. In Le Fanu's experience, the practice of reducing phenomena to purely material explanation begins quite early for many children in science education, which tends to bore them because of it. Le Fanu would have us reinforce the instinctual appreciation for the non-material aspects of our existence found in traditional liberal arts education and especially the humanities. ⇧
• • •
Garret Keizer
"A lot of the noise we're making is noise expended in the effort not to return to the earth but to utterly escape the earth and our bodies with it, and each other."
— Garret Keizer, author of The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise (Public Affairs, 2010)
Critic Garret Keizer recognizes that much of the noise in our everyday lives is a by-product of our attempts to surpass the limits of our bodies. Keizer discusses how Milton and Dante regarded and wrote about noise in their works, and comments on the historical association of noise with pain, in contrast to music with pleasure. He points out that a drawback of particular advances in power over time and space is the noise that is generated through those particular advances, noise that is repulsive because it interferes with our fullest and deepest enjoyment of life. This creates a tension in our lives that must be navigated, but Keizer believes it is instructive to attend to the particular noises we hear and experience because of the way particular noises represent conflict in particular ways, in particular places, and within particular orders. Noise can represent a challenge to those things, which can be just and good or illegitimate and dehumanizing, and which require attention. ⇧
• • •
Daniel Ritchie
"Watts is critical of Locke's reduction of rationality to sensation and reflection . . . but that's not what we remember Watts for."
— Daniel Ritchie, author of The Fullness of Knowing: Modernity and Post Modernity from Defoe to Gadamer (Baylor University Press, 2010)
English professor Daniel Ritchie describes how many of the figures he studies in his new book, including Jonathan Swift and Isaac Watts, emphasize the significance of human experience, enculturation and contingency to human knowledge; in contrast to this appreciation of the humanity of knowledge, Ritchie observes that many of the figures of the Enlightenment idealized a non-contingent, machine-like knowledge that could be completely divorced from particular human situatedness. Jonathan Swift illustrates the contrasts between these two approaches in parts of his satirical Gulliver's Travels and in a number of his essays at the beginnings of the Enlightenment. Swift was responding to the major discussions of the time where contemporary and ancient times were being compared. Isaac Watts was likewise aware of the intellectual currents of the day, and he engaged contemporary discussions in both prose and verse. He was highly critical of the divorce between beauty and knowing that figures such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant later would claim. ⇧
• • •
Monica Ganas
"I think grace — the notion of grace — was co-opted sort of early on by a notion of luck that operates as a central metaphor."
— Monica Ganas, author of Under the Influence: California's Intoxicating Spiritual and Cultural Impact on America (Brazos, 2010)
Monica Ganas reflects on the cultural impact of the unique state of California. A mystique surrounds California, Ganas observes, one that is perceived in the way people not from California talk about it. It evokes hopes and dreams and possibility and longing in an almost mythic way that has formed the backdrop of many significant events in California's history from its naming to the Gold Rush and beyond. She links these powerful qualities of possibility to the growth of information technology and genetic engineering, which are industries especially situated at the vanguard of the future promise of expansion and renewal. The image and mindset of progress is often in tension with grace because the passion cultivated by "California-ism" is both directed to and driven by heroic achievement in the grasping and harnessing of opportunity. Luck displaces grace in California-ism, but it still maintains a vital religious sensibility of faith in possibility -- the possibility of fortune. ⇧
• • •
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
"There's much to be said for being free from all of those things that are bad, but that conversation alone doesn't determine what we're free for, what the content of our freedom will be once we begin to live into it."
— Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author of The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture (Paraclete Press, 2010)
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove discusses the value of resisting hyper-mobility and living in one place for a long time. He argues that stability in a certain place makes possible a kind of depth and breadth in the experience of a community that is strained and often precluded by constantly moving around. He has learned much from the monastic tradition of Christianity about how one's faith can be lived out fully, and he observes that many Christians who seek intentional community out of frustration with their churches likewise draw from these resources support that can sustain them. He points out that the very dearth of deep and satisfying community that generates longing for it unfortunately also shapes people in ways that keep them from being able to receive and participate in that deep sort of love; this phenomenon perpetuates a vicious cycle, and Wilson-Hartgrove appreciates the collected wisdom of the Benedictine monks that address such phenomena in human experience. He discusses the differences between American notions of freedom and Benedictine notions. Finally, Wilson-Hartgrove cautions against an over-determined view of monastic life; Benedictine practice has always retained a flexibility that has served it well over the centuries, looking different in different times and yet retaining continuity with the tradition. ⇧
• • •
Peter Leithart
"We're so used to a de-sacrificed civic order that we have a hard time imagining how significant that was. But that's a huge shift in Western civilization."
— Peter Leithart, author of Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (InterVarsity Press, 2010)
Theologian Peter Leithart examines Constantine's life and legacy, and the implications of that for Christian life today. He begins by observing that biblical Christianity contains within it a vision of all of life and reality and relations, and so Christian thinking about various aspects of life from economics and sociology to art and music to what it means to be human cannot faithfully start from scratch, but must grow within and out of that cosmological vision. Theology is social theory, a theory of the relations of man and God in history. Leithart cites John Milbank's historical work concretely tracing the genealogy of contemporary political and social thought to particular philosophies and theologies in time, and he notes that many of the theories operative today arise out of heretical Christian theology and pagan philosophy. In history, there is no neutral civic or social theory, but always one presupposing and built upon particular theologies and philosophies claiming certain things about the people and the world. Leithart then discusses his aims for the book: to evaluate the historical evidence concerning Constantine's life in such a way as to clarify the historical narrative on which contemporary political theology rests. He does this in great sympathy with critics of Constantine, carefully noting the main critics, arguments, and evidence that have cast suspicion upon Constantine and deemed his influence upon the early Church as corrupting. He appreciatively cites John Howard Yoder as providing the most compelling of the Constantinian critiques in that his criticisms are ecclesial and eschatological in nature and resist the modern privatization and over-spiritualization of the Church typical of post-Enlightenment and liberal Protestant critics. The interview ends with a lengthy discussion on the end of pagan sacrifice in and organizing the Roman civic order, a theme Leithart draws out in his conclusion to the book. ⇧
Guests on Volume 105
• JULIAN YOUNG on the historical context of Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas and on why he still believed in the necessity of religion
• PERRY L. GLANZER on the failure of American universities to adequately address the challenge of moral formation
• KENDRA CREASY DEAN on why churches are to blame for the “moralistic therapeutic deism” so common among teens
• BRIAN BROCK on how the centrality of technology in Western culture encourages us to see the gift of Creation as merely nature awaiting our manipulation
• NICHOLAS CARR on how the distracted character of multi-tasking ruins reading and how social networking systems sustain a “transactional” view of relationships
• ALAN JACOBS on how the literary form of the essay reproduces the unpredictable way that our thoughts develop
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Julian Young
"Whereas the familiar interpretation says society exists for the sake of the exceptional individual, I say that's wrong, that for Nietzsche the exceptional individual exists for the sake of society."
— Julian Young, author of Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
This volume begins with an interview with Julian Young, the author of what has been called the definitive English biography of Friedrich Nietzsche. Young has previously written on Nietzsche's philosophy of art and his philosophy of religion, but he believed an examination of the events of Nietzsche's life and the German culture in which he lived would yield greater insight into his ideas. Nietzsche grew up in an age where breakthroughs in science and technology were calling into question the viability of traditional Christian belief and European morality. Nietzsche marveled at Darwinian science and at the power and speed of rail travel, recognizing the great impact such developments might have on social and individual life. It was a time of change and modernization, and for Nietzsche, it was time full of possibility and opportunity for the revitalization of European culture through a revival of the classical norms of ancient Greece and a diminishing of Christian traditions and values which he believed were the source of the weakness of modern man. This cultural expectation and desire of Nietzsche puts to rest the mistaken notion that his concept of the Übermensch was radically antisocial and individualistic. For Nietzsche, the greatness of exceptional individuals was to be cultivated for the sake of society and not in antagonism to it. Young relates this logic to the logic of Darwinian evolution, seeing that exceptional individuals might be the means by which a species would survive. ⇧
• • •
Perry L. Glanzer
"Every university attempts to form character; they're just scared of that language."
— Perry L. Glanzer, author of Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Perry Glanzer talks about Christian identity and moral education at the university. Glanzer describes the change not of students, who have always tended to be undeveloped, but of the ways faculty at universities have responded to the need to educate and shape students. The history of the American university involves a shift in the ground and purpose of education; as Enlightenment norms of what constituted knowledge changed, the university grew less comfortable with grounding ethics in Christianity due to its particularity and apparent lack of a kind of universality that reason and science could provide, at least purportedly. The failure to be able to ground moral formation in reason and science such that a unified consensus developed led to the gradual abandonment of the university's self-consciousness in being a moral teacher. A resurgence in ethics, however, has been blooming lately in response to contemporary events and crises that highlight the necessity for ethics. Glanzer notes, however, that the key difference is that universities are only focused on ethics within a professional field, rather than the moral formation of one's whole humanity. ⇧
• • •
Kendra Creasy Dean
"I think one of the things that is really tricky, particularly to convey to parents and in the congregations as well, is that if you are trying to form your kids to be Christians, it's not going to fit them very well for American culture; and actually it's probably going to deform them for some of the things we value as a society."
— Kenda Creasy Dean, author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Kenda Creasy Dean discusses her observations on the spirituality of American Christian teenagers, drawn from her sociological studies of that age group. She notes that because every parent desires safety and comfort for their children, and rightly so, it's difficult to communicate to parents and congregations how being a Christian should and will often place their teenage children at odds with society, including successful, safe and "well-adjusted" society. One way this plays out is in the emotional life of teenagers absorbed in consumerism; the consumer seeks satisfaction in the purchasing and consumption of goods, and such a focus tends to displace passion from deep commitments, including religious ones, to the next best thing to buy. Consumerism relates synergistically to individualism, since the customer who is always right is inculcated by that consumeristic emotional arc against submission to external constraints and realities that might oppose them, and to ecclesiology, since the teenage consumer will see themselves more as a part of their age group or style group and less as a member of the church. Dean suggests that in order for Christian teenagers to grow into maturity, the networks of adults and authoritative communities in their lives will need to recover a mode of living that can sustain a particular faith amidst and against competing alternatives; Christians would do well to draw lessons in this matter from the early Church's activity within a religiously plural society. ⇧
• • •
Brian Brock
"At every point, our desire for efficiency and productivity causes us to see the manipulability of nature in a very foregrounded way. And that's why it takes revelation for us to even begin to comprehend what it might mean for the material universe we live in to appear to us as creation and therefore as gift."
— Brian Brock, author of Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Eerdmans, 2010)
Theologian Brian Brock's current project focuses on the mindset and orientation toward creation that is engendered by technology and technological priorities. Because technology has been conceived primarily in terms of efficiency, productivity and power over nature, Brock argues that the good and gifted character of creation recedes and is marginalized. When nature is understood primarily to exist for the purposes of man, the purposes of God for creation that are not necessarily those of man are marginalized. When nature is understood to have meaning and order only in so far as human beings give it meaning and order, then the meaning and order of creation that God has spoken and preserves in Christ is ignored or belittled. Brock's task in his book is to examine how, apart from sustained theological reflection and communal practice, the growth of technology and Christian participation in the prevailing mindset driving technological development obscure to Christians the priority of God and his purposes which might limit or even conflict with particular developments and applications of technology. ⇧
• • •
Nicholas Carr
"When people learned how to read books... that encouraged writers and composers to take many more chances and experiment and go into great levels of complexity, because they could assume that somebody was out there actually paying attention to their works."
— Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (W. W. Norton, 2010)
Critic Nicholas Carr talks about how technology-driven trends affect our cultural and personal lives. He reflects on how various technologies have made it both easier and more common for people to multi-task and split their attention. He suggests that singular intellectual focus is a kind of unnatural development in the life of human beings that is nonetheless desirable as a maturation or added sophistication of human capacities for creative and deep cultural work. Many technologies tend to undermine this capacity for focus; others, like social networking, tend to shape human relationships in terms of discrete transactions that aggregate in various compartments and categories. Life in society, however, does not consist and are not served well by this modular, computational and transactional form of relationship, but is in many significant ways fuzzier, more spontaneous, more open-ended, unified, and unstructured. Carr continues with a discussion of reading and technology, and he concludes with autobiographical observations of his own experience and some lessons learned. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
"For me the best essays don’t offer . . . the kind of take-away that you can sum up in a sentence; but the take-away is rather reflection, meditation: here’s something I need to think about more."
— Alan Jacobs, author of Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant (Eerdmans, 2010)
Literary critic Alan Jacobs discusses his book of essays entitled Wayfaring and what he thinks is special about the essay as a literary form. For Jacobs, it’s about telling the story of how the mind journeys through a topic or experience, reflecting the dips and turns and unexpected curves on the way to the conclusion. Jacobs sees great potential in this form for Christians because of the way the form corresponds to the navigation and journey of a Christian life, but observes that Christians have not, in recent years, embraced it. Perhaps it is because of the way the essay seems to be less ambitious and more humble than an epic poem or a grand novel, or perhaps it is because the best essays are, though containing a true arc, are finally indeterminate because the journey has not ended. He continues his observations about the essay by highlighting what some of his favorite essayists are able to do through their essays and how they do it. ⇧
Guests on Volume 105
• JULIAN YOUNG on the historical context of Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas and on why he still believed in the necessity of religion
• PERRY L. GLANZER on the failure of American universities to adequately address the challenge of moral formation
• KENDRA CREASY DEAN on why churches are to blame for the “moralistic therapeutic deism” so common among teens
• BRIAN BROCK on how the centrality of technology in Western culture encourages us to see the gift of Creation as merely nature awaiting our manipulation
• NICHOLAS CARR on how the distracted character of multi-tasking ruins reading and how social networking systems sustain a “transactional” view of relationships
• ALAN JACOBS on how the literary form of the essay reproduces the unpredictable way that our thoughts develop
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Julian Young
"Whereas the familiar interpretation says society exists for the sake of the exceptional individual, I say that's wrong, that for Nietzsche the exceptional individual exists for the sake of society."
— Julian Young, author of Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
This volume begins with an interview with Julian Young, the author of what has been called the definitive English biography of Friedrich Nietzsche. Young has previously written on Nietzsche's philosophy of art and his philosophy of religion, but he believed an examination of the events of Nietzsche's life and the German culture in which he lived would yield greater insight into his ideas. Nietzsche grew up in an age where breakthroughs in science and technology were calling into question the viability of traditional Christian belief and European morality. Nietzsche marveled at Darwinian science and at the power and speed of rail travel, recognizing the great impact such developments might have on social and individual life. It was a time of change and modernization, and for Nietzsche, it was time full of possibility and opportunity for the revitalization of European culture through a revival of the classical norms of ancient Greece and a diminishing of Christian traditions and values which he believed were the source of the weakness of modern man. This cultural expectation and desire of Nietzsche puts to rest the mistaken notion that his concept of the Übermensch was radically antisocial and individualistic. For Nietzsche, the greatness of exceptional individuals was to be cultivated for the sake of society and not in antagonism to it. Young relates this logic to the logic of Darwinian evolution, seeing that exceptional individuals might be the means by which a species would survive. ⇧
• • •
Perry L. Glanzer
"Every university attempts to form character; they're just scared of that language."
— Perry L. Glanzer, author of Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Perry Glanzer talks about Christian identity and moral education at the university. Glanzer describes the change not of students, who have always tended to be undeveloped, but of the ways faculty at universities have responded to the need to educate and shape students. The history of the American university involves a shift in the ground and purpose of education; as Enlightenment norms of what constituted knowledge changed, the university grew less comfortable with grounding ethics in Christianity due to its particularity and apparent lack of a kind of universality that reason and science could provide, at least purportedly. The failure to be able to ground moral formation in reason and science such that a unified consensus developed led to the gradual abandonment of the university's self-consciousness in being a moral teacher. A resurgence in ethics, however, has been blooming lately in response to contemporary events and crises that highlight the necessity for ethics. Glanzer notes, however, that the key difference is that universities are only focused on ethics within a professional field, rather than the moral formation of one's whole humanity. ⇧
• • •
Kendra Creasy Dean
"I think one of the things that is really tricky, particularly to convey to parents and in the congregations as well, is that if you are trying to form your kids to be Christians, it's not going to fit them very well for American culture; and actually it's probably going to deform them for some of the things we value as a society."
— Kenda Creasy Dean, author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Kenda Creasy Dean discusses her observations on the spirituality of American Christian teenagers, drawn from her sociological studies of that age group. She notes that because every parent desires safety and comfort for their children, and rightly so, it's difficult to communicate to parents and congregations how being a Christian should and will often place their teenage children at odds with society, including successful, safe and "well-adjusted" society. One way this plays out is in the emotional life of teenagers absorbed in consumerism; the consumer seeks satisfaction in the purchasing and consumption of goods, and such a focus tends to displace passion from deep commitments, including religious ones, to the next best thing to buy. Consumerism relates synergistically to individualism, since the customer who is always right is inculcated by that consumeristic emotional arc against submission to external constraints and realities that might oppose them, and to ecclesiology, since the teenage consumer will see themselves more as a part of their age group or style group and less as a member of the church. Dean suggests that in order for Christian teenagers to grow into maturity, the networks of adults and authoritative communities in their lives will need to recover a mode of living that can sustain a particular faith amidst and against competing alternatives; Christians would do well to draw lessons in this matter from the early Church's activity within a religiously plural society. ⇧
• • •
Brian Brock
"At every point, our desire for efficiency and productivity causes us to see the manipulability of nature in a very foregrounded way. And that's why it takes revelation for us to even begin to comprehend what it might mean for the material universe we live in to appear to us as creation and therefore as gift."
— Brian Brock, author of Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Eerdmans, 2010)
Theologian Brian Brock's current project focuses on the mindset and orientation toward creation that is engendered by technology and technological priorities. Because technology has been conceived primarily in terms of efficiency, productivity and power over nature, Brock argues that the good and gifted character of creation recedes and is marginalized. When nature is understood primarily to exist for the purposes of man, the purposes of God for creation that are not necessarily those of man are marginalized. When nature is understood to have meaning and order only in so far as human beings give it meaning and order, then the meaning and order of creation that God has spoken and preserves in Christ is ignored or belittled. Brock's task in his book is to examine how, apart from sustained theological reflection and communal practice, the growth of technology and Christian participation in the prevailing mindset driving technological development obscure to Christians the priority of God and his purposes which might limit or even conflict with particular developments and applications of technology. ⇧
• • •
Nicholas Carr
"When people learned how to read books... that encouraged writers and composers to take many more chances and experiment and go into great levels of complexity, because they could assume that somebody was out there actually paying attention to their works."
— Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (W. W. Norton, 2010)
Critic Nicholas Carr talks about how technology-driven trends affect our cultural and personal lives. He reflects on how various technologies have made it both easier and more common for people to multi-task and split their attention. He suggests that singular intellectual focus is a kind of unnatural development in the life of human beings that is nonetheless desirable as a maturation or added sophistication of human capacities for creative and deep cultural work. Many technologies tend to undermine this capacity for focus; others, like social networking, tend to shape human relationships in terms of discrete transactions that aggregate in various compartments and categories. Life in society, however, does not consist and are not served well by this modular, computational and transactional form of relationship, but is in many significant ways fuzzier, more spontaneous, more open-ended, unified, and unstructured. Carr continues with a discussion of reading and technology, and he concludes with autobiographical observations of his own experience and some lessons learned. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
"For me the best essays don’t offer . . . the kind of take-away that you can sum up in a sentence; but the take-away is rather reflection, meditation: here’s something I need to think about more."
— Alan Jacobs, author of Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant (Eerdmans, 2010)
Literary critic Alan Jacobs discusses his book of essays entitled Wayfaring and what he thinks is special about the essay as a literary form. For Jacobs, it’s about telling the story of how the mind journeys through a topic or experience, reflecting the dips and turns and unexpected curves on the way to the conclusion. Jacobs sees great potential in this form for Christians because of the way the form corresponds to the navigation and journey of a Christian life, but observes that Christians have not, in recent years, embraced it. Perhaps it is because of the way the essay seems to be less ambitious and more humble than an epic poem or a grand novel, or perhaps it is because the best essays are, though containing a true arc, are finally indeterminate because the journey has not ended. He continues his observations about the essay by highlighting what some of his favorite essayists are able to do through their essays and how they do it. ⇧
Guests on Volume 106
• ADAM BRIGGLE on how Leon Kass’s leadership of the President’s Council on Bioethics attempted to reframe public thinking about ethical matters
• JOHN C. MÉDAILLE on why economics should be concerned with ethical matters from the bottom up
• CHRISTOPHER PAGE on how the presence of choral music in the Church shaped the rise of the West
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on why sociologists need a richer understanding of human nature and human personhood and should recognize love as an essential human attribute
• HERMAN DALY on why he and Wendell Berry are disturbed by the lack of attention paid by classical economics to the realities of the material world
• THOMAS HIBBS on the dark nihilism in the films of Woody Allen
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Adam Briggle
"The story of public bioethics up until the Kass council has been . . . to land on what they hope is a neutral dialogue. . . . Now this moral discourse which is supposedly neutral would have given rise to a material culture that is far from neutral in its effects on the way we live."
— Adam Briggle, author of A Rich Bioethics: Public Policy, Biotechnology, and the Kass Council (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)
Adam Briggle discusses the prevailing approach to bioethics characterizing our pluralistic society. He describes it as following John Rawls in achieving an "overlapping consensus" based on three principles believed to be shared no matter what the particular background of the citizen. Bioethics policy would be based upon those shared principles and would in theory achieve a neutrality with respect to ultimate principles. Yet Briggle demonstrates how such an approach actually results in a complicity regarding new forms of technology that is not neutral regarding ultimate principles concerning what the good life looks like. Contrasting with this ultimately flawed set of theories was the healthier approach of Leon Kass and his Presidential Council on Bioethics. ⇧
• • •
John C. Médaille
"Every economy makes a decision about what constitutes equity. And that decision will determine the results of the economy. In a sense, the theological question preceeds and predetermines the economic question."
— John C. Médaille, author of Toward a Truly Free Market (ISI Books, 2010)
Should economics be considered a science free of moral judgments regarding the meaning of human life? John C. Médaille argues that the compartmentalization of political economy into politics and economics took all the moral questions out of economics, to the detriment of any sense of justice. The government, then, is expected to provide solutions to the problems that the supposedly neutral field of economics is not expected to address. Médaille describes the capitalist concentration of property in the hands of a few versus the Socialist concentration of property in the hands of the government, and describes what he believes is a healthier way: the distribution of property among many. Médaille and MARS HILL AUDIO host Ken Myers discuss the difference between defending freedom and defending license, and Médaille concludes by raising questions regarding the extent to which capitalism depends on disordered desires. ⇧
• • •
Christopher Page
"That way music unifies people, that takes them together to a place where their minds, as it were, almost as if a thousand minds together are like a thousand hairs on the head, first thing in the morning, all over the place; and then somehow music combs them and they all start to lie in the same direction. And that is one of the things I think music brings to worship."
— Christopher Page, author of The Christian West and Its Singers (Yale University Press, 2010)
The metaphysical and theological convictions of Christians have led them to create a narrative flow in harmony and melody that reflects belief in a God who ordered the universe rationally. Conductor and Cambridge professor Christopher Page talks about his book The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years. Gregorian chant and other early Christian repertories have been a continuous tradition haunting western music, and Page points to specific elements of melodic use such as shape, timing, length of phrase, and the creation and release of tension that he believes this haunting directly caused. Music existing in the same place for thousands of years can act as a kind of ritualistic formalization of the beliefs of its inhabitants. Page discusses the psychological mystery of human minds locking into each other during communal singing, as well as the way in which music can powerfully shape their general state of responsiveness. ⇧
• • •
Christian Smith
"If we can't, in our lives, live without the concept of love, then why should sociology expunge it from its toolkit?. . . Love is presupposed in the care, the upbringing, the relationships, any kind of health of any human being."
— Christian Smith, author of What is a Person? (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
Sociologist Christian Smith explores how sociology studies the underlying structure of human personhood that orders human culture, history, and narration. He explains that many of the ideas that are most vital for good sociology are unfortunately unfashionable to both the academy and the broader culture. Smith describes what he believes are missing theoretical tools in sociology, which sociologists therefore fail to understand the fullness of reality and the implications of human dignity. In understanding how social orders ought to be set up for that good, Smith points to two neglected ideas: embodiment and love. More recently, he says, embodiment as a concept has been paid more attention to. However, the concept of love is still ignored. Smith articulates the importance of recovering this concept as innate to personhood and any kind of hierarchy of human nature. He concludes by encouraging us not to oversimplify the subject of our study: ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Herman Daly
"Unfortunately, neoclassical economics is still operating basically on the assumption that we live in an empty world, and that these scarcities are just not real, and to the extent that they are inconvenient sometimes, technology will deal with them."
— Herman Daly, contributor to What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth (Counterpoint, 2010)
Herman Daly discusses the gnostic inclinations of modern culture and the affect they have had on economics. He sees this primarily in a sense of disconnection with the physical environment and the assumption that there is no problem which cannot be dealt with by technology's powers. Daly reveals these deeply flawed gnostic assumptions, while at the same time pointing out paradoxically how materialistic these same assumptions are. Along with Berry, Daly believes economics should not be so narrowly confined, but should take into account the whole of created reality. In a right ordering of the economy, Daly stresses the importance of person in community. Daly concludes that economists need the "kick" that Wendell Berry is giving them, and hopes they will take him seriously. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Hibbs
"It's not a tale of sound and fury; its just a tale signifying nothing."
— Thomas Hibbs, author of Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from The Exorcist to Seinfeld (Spence Books, 1999)
Woody Allen has always had a nihilistic strain to his filmmaking, but recently that element has increased. Thomas Hibbs praises elements in his earlier films, comparing them to his more recent output and finding the later films wanting. Without the gentle, romantic elements present in those earlier films, they become no more than a depressingly-dull meditation on nothing; a fight against reality. Allen's view of reality is defined by a sense of raw, irrational chance, of crime and a lack of punishment. Hibbs explains how Allen portrays a sense of moral struggle in his films — yet characters discover there is no grounding in reason, and the illusion is forced upon us as an illusion rather than an escape. This, argues Hibbs, reveals both a philosophical contradiction and an artistic failure on Allen's part. ⇧
Guests on Volume 106
• ADAM BRIGGLE on how Leon Kass’s leadership of the President’s Council on Bioethics attempted to reframe public thinking about ethical matters
• JOHN C. MÉDAILLE on why economics should be concerned with ethical matters from the bottom up
• CHRISTOPHER PAGE on how the presence of choral music in the Church shaped the rise of the West
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on why sociologists need a richer understanding of human nature and human personhood and should recognize love as an essential human attribute
• HERMAN DALY on why he and Wendell Berry are disturbed by the lack of attention paid by classical economics to the realities of the material world
• THOMAS HIBBS on the dark nihilism in the films of Woody Allen
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Adam Briggle
"The story of public bioethics up until the Kass council has been . . . to land on what they hope is a neutral dialogue. . . . Now this moral discourse which is supposedly neutral would have given rise to a material culture that is far from neutral in its effects on the way we live."
— Adam Briggle, author of A Rich Bioethics: Public Policy, Biotechnology, and the Kass Council (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)
Adam Briggle discusses the prevailing approach to bioethics characterizing our pluralistic society. He describes it as following John Rawls in achieving an "overlapping consensus" based on three principles believed to be shared no matter what the particular background of the citizen. Bioethics policy would be based upon those shared principles and would in theory achieve a neutrality with respect to ultimate principles. Yet Briggle demonstrates how such an approach actually results in a complicity regarding new forms of technology that is not neutral regarding ultimate principles concerning what the good life looks like. Contrasting with this ultimately flawed set of theories was the healthier approach of Leon Kass and his Presidential Council on Bioethics. ⇧
• • •
John C. Médaille
"Every economy makes a decision about what constitutes equity. And that decision will determine the results of the economy. In a sense, the theological question preceeds and predetermines the economic question."
— John C. Médaille, author of Toward a Truly Free Market (ISI Books, 2010)
Should economics be considered a science free of moral judgments regarding the meaning of human life? John C. Médaille argues that the compartmentalization of political economy into politics and economics took all the moral questions out of economics, to the detriment of any sense of justice. The government, then, is expected to provide solutions to the problems that the supposedly neutral field of economics is not expected to address. Médaille describes the capitalist concentration of property in the hands of a few versus the Socialist concentration of property in the hands of the government, and describes what he believes is a healthier way: the distribution of property among many. Médaille and MARS HILL AUDIO host Ken Myers discuss the difference between defending freedom and defending license, and Médaille concludes by raising questions regarding the extent to which capitalism depends on disordered desires. ⇧
• • •
Christopher Page
"That way music unifies people, that takes them together to a place where their minds, as it were, almost as if a thousand minds together are like a thousand hairs on the head, first thing in the morning, all over the place; and then somehow music combs them and they all start to lie in the same direction. And that is one of the things I think music brings to worship."
— Christopher Page, author of The Christian West and Its Singers (Yale University Press, 2010)
The metaphysical and theological convictions of Christians have led them to create a narrative flow in harmony and melody that reflects belief in a God who ordered the universe rationally. Conductor and Cambridge professor Christopher Page talks about his book The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years. Gregorian chant and other early Christian repertories have been a continuous tradition haunting western music, and Page points to specific elements of melodic use such as shape, timing, length of phrase, and the creation and release of tension that he believes this haunting directly caused. Music existing in the same place for thousands of years can act as a kind of ritualistic formalization of the beliefs of its inhabitants. Page discusses the psychological mystery of human minds locking into each other during communal singing, as well as the way in which music can powerfully shape their general state of responsiveness. ⇧
• • •
Christian Smith
"If we can't, in our lives, live without the concept of love, then why should sociology expunge it from its toolkit?. . . Love is presupposed in the care, the upbringing, the relationships, any kind of health of any human being."
— Christian Smith, author of What is a Person? (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
Sociologist Christian Smith explores how sociology studies the underlying structure of human personhood that orders human culture, history, and narration. He explains that many of the ideas that are most vital for good sociology are unfortunately unfashionable to both the academy and the broader culture. Smith describes what he believes are missing theoretical tools in sociology, which sociologists therefore fail to understand the fullness of reality and the implications of human dignity. In understanding how social orders ought to be set up for that good, Smith points to two neglected ideas: embodiment and love. More recently, he says, embodiment as a concept has been paid more attention to. However, the concept of love is still ignored. Smith articulates the importance of recovering this concept as innate to personhood and any kind of hierarchy of human nature. He concludes by encouraging us not to oversimplify the subject of our study: ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Herman Daly
"Unfortunately, neoclassical economics is still operating basically on the assumption that we live in an empty world, and that these scarcities are just not real, and to the extent that they are inconvenient sometimes, technology will deal with them."
— Herman Daly, contributor to What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth (Counterpoint, 2010)
Herman Daly discusses the gnostic inclinations of modern culture and the affect they have had on economics. He sees this primarily in a sense of disconnection with the physical environment and the assumption that there is no problem which cannot be dealt with by technology's powers. Daly reveals these deeply flawed gnostic assumptions, while at the same time pointing out paradoxically how materialistic these same assumptions are. Along with Berry, Daly believes economics should not be so narrowly confined, but should take into account the whole of created reality. In a right ordering of the economy, Daly stresses the importance of person in community. Daly concludes that economists need the "kick" that Wendell Berry is giving them, and hopes they will take him seriously. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Hibbs
"It's not a tale of sound and fury; its just a tale signifying nothing."
— Thomas Hibbs, author of Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from The Exorcist to Seinfeld (Spence Books, 1999)
Woody Allen has always had a nihilistic strain to his filmmaking, but recently that element has increased. Thomas Hibbs praises elements in his earlier films, comparing them to his more recent output and finding the later films wanting. Without the gentle, romantic elements present in those earlier films, they become no more than a depressingly-dull meditation on nothing; a fight against reality. Allen's view of reality is defined by a sense of raw, irrational chance, of crime and a lack of punishment. Hibbs explains how Allen portrays a sense of moral struggle in his films — yet characters discover there is no grounding in reason, and the illusion is forced upon us as an illusion rather than an escape. This, argues Hibbs, reveals both a philosophical contradiction and an artistic failure on Allen's part. ⇧
Guests on Volume 107
• VICTOR LEE AUSTIN on why authority is not a barrier to true freedom and is necessary for human flourishing (and will be forever)
• ELLEN T. CHARRY on why happiness has been underplayed in Christian theology (and why it shouldn’t be)
• ANTHONY ESOLEN on the explicit and implicit teaching that has caused many young people to be cynical and unhappy
• FERDINAND SCHLINGENSIEPEN on the ambivalence of postwar Germans to the anti-Nazi resistance movement (and to Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
• ALLEN VERHEY on why it's dangerous to draw too stark a line between nature and supernature
• CALVIN STAPERT on the historical, theological, and musical elements that combined to produce Handel’s Messiah
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Victor Lee Austin
"The more complex the music, the more authority is operative in its performance."
— Victor Lee Austin, author of Up With Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (T & T Clark, 2010)
Victor Lee Austin paints a picture of how authority relates to human flourishing. Austin is well aware of the bad and partly justified reputation authority has as negative force that presses down on people in harmful ways; this is why he begins at a different place, to show the beauty of goods achieved only with the aid of well-used authority. Part of the background of our social life and imagination is a misunderstanding of the individual that places him in necessary opposition to and independence from a community. Austin argues that this isn't true to our experience of how individuals relate to families, communities and society. Individuals are shaped and formed in various communities to become a part of a society, and only in doing so come to express their full individuality therein. The more complex the society or the shared objective, the more authority is required to orchestrate persons to achieve the excellence of human flourishing. ⇧
• • •
Ellen T. Charry
"With that focus on our sinfulness and penchant for evil, it made it also difficult to even talk about happiness as a goal of life, as if happiness would compete with obedience to God and submission to the will of God."
— Ellen T. Charry, author of God and the Art of Happiness (Eerdmans, 2010)
Theologian Ellen Charry has written a book articulating a theology of happiness and trying to understand why happiness is often viewed with suspicion in Christian circles. She first provides a caveat that the notion of happiness she is concerned with is not the glib, shallow and ephemeral feeling rooted in excitement that is everywhere in society today, but a deeper feeling that is rooted in the experience of all of life as a participation in the goodness of Creation and of being. She notes that for most of the Christian tradition, there has not been as much discussion of happiness as there has been of hope; most reflection has tended to push off happiness towards the eschaton for a number of reasons Charry elucidates. Finally, Charry comments on the division of the true from the good and the beautiful in Christian thinking and intellectual formation embodied in the separation of theology and "practical theology." ⇧
• • •
Anthony Esolen
"It's the sort of thing that has the capacity to change their lives."
— Anthony Esolen, author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (ISI Books, 2010)
English professor Anthony Esolen is concerned about the imagination of young people. He teaches undergraduate students and draws on his experience to illustrate the yearning young people have for transcendence and real joy, and articulates a number of practices that serve to undermine that joy and inflict sullenness or some cheap emotional stimulation in its stead. Esolen goes to bat for spending time outdoors and for the McGuffey Reader in the process of differentiating the narcissism that passes for imagination in much of modern culture from the kind of imagination flowing out of a posture of receiving, which he sees is necessary for a flourishing life. The segment ends as Esolen reflects on the power of the greatest works of imagination from the past to enthrall and captivate young people today. ⇧
• • •
Ferdinand Schlingensiepen
"In the years to come, he was led, step by step, to the decision himself . . . are you prepared to obey Christ or not?"
— Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, author of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance (T & T Clark, 2010)
Ferdinand Schlingensiepen shares his knowledge about the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Schlingensiepen was a dear friend of Eberhard Bethge, who was a close student of Bonhoeffer and his first biographer. Schlingensiepen begins by talking about the memory of Bonhoeffer in the post-war period of Germany, and how his popularity changed over the years. He traces the trajectory of Bonhoeffer's stand against the German Christians and his opposition to the Nazi government and its growing power, and then reflects on the theological and pastoral themes of Bonhoeffer's work. ⇧
• • •
Allen Verhey
"Compassion is a response to suffering, but our compassion has been trained by this mythos to look for the best and closest technology."
— Allen Verhey, author of Nature and Altering It (Eerdmans, 2010)
Ethicist Allen Verhey talks about nature and some of the ways modern people think about it. One of the ways we can think of nature is as strictly divorced from the supernatural. Verhey articulates a number of ways this is problematic, as it can diminish the immanent work and care of God in creation and add to its disenchantment and abuse. He comments that certain myths about nature can serve to orient our activity in the world, including a myth that reduces life to genetics and a technological millennialism that sees salvation as lying in humanity's increasing power over and control of nature irrespective of the teleological order in nature. Especially powerful is the myth of autonomous individualism underlying liberal society. Verhey is careful to point out that to suggest goods like freedom can be absolutized and idolized is not to suggest they have no value at all, but that their value must be recognized in ordered relationship to that of other goods. ⇧
• • •
Calvin Stapert
"This collection of texts which promotes the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a tool to combat the spread of deism."
— Calvin Stapert, author of Handel's Messiah: Comfort for God's People (Eerdmans, 2010)
Calvin Stapert explains the origins and character of Handel's Messiah in this next interview. Messiah was in a number of ways an introduction of the tradition of the oratorio to England. Stapert comments on the Continental development of the oratorio as a liturgical form for services attended by laity that were centered around prayer, and gives a short history and description of various oratorios in Italy. The dramatic form of the oratorio borrowed much from the tradition of the opera, with a couple of notable differences. The interview ends with a discussion of Messiah as a Christocentric theological response to nascent deism in the society and the church in Handel’s time. ⇧
Guests on Volume 107
• VICTOR LEE AUSTIN on why authority is not a barrier to true freedom and is necessary for human flourishing (and will be forever)
• ELLEN T. CHARRY on why happiness has been underplayed in Christian theology (and why it shouldn’t be)
• ANTHONY ESOLEN on the explicit and implicit teaching that has caused many young people to be cynical and unhappy
• FERDINAND SCHLINGENSIEPEN on the ambivalence of postwar Germans to the anti-Nazi resistance movement (and to Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
• ALLEN VERHEY on why it's dangerous to draw too stark a line between nature and supernature
• CALVIN STAPERT on the historical, theological, and musical elements that combined to produce Handel’s Messiah
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Victor Lee Austin
"The more complex the music, the more authority is operative in its performance."
— Victor Lee Austin, author of Up With Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (T & T Clark, 2010)
Victor Lee Austin paints a picture of how authority relates to human flourishing. Austin is well aware of the bad and partly justified reputation authority has as negative force that presses down on people in harmful ways; this is why he begins at a different place, to show the beauty of goods achieved only with the aid of well-used authority. Part of the background of our social life and imagination is a misunderstanding of the individual that places him in necessary opposition to and independence from a community. Austin argues that this isn't true to our experience of how individuals relate to families, communities and society. Individuals are shaped and formed in various communities to become a part of a society, and only in doing so come to express their full individuality therein. The more complex the society or the shared objective, the more authority is required to orchestrate persons to achieve the excellence of human flourishing. ⇧
• • •
Ellen T. Charry
"With that focus on our sinfulness and penchant for evil, it made it also difficult to even talk about happiness as a goal of life, as if happiness would compete with obedience to God and submission to the will of God."
— Ellen T. Charry, author of God and the Art of Happiness (Eerdmans, 2010)
Theologian Ellen Charry has written a book articulating a theology of happiness and trying to understand why happiness is often viewed with suspicion in Christian circles. She first provides a caveat that the notion of happiness she is concerned with is not the glib, shallow and ephemeral feeling rooted in excitement that is everywhere in society today, but a deeper feeling that is rooted in the experience of all of life as a participation in the goodness of Creation and of being. She notes that for most of the Christian tradition, there has not been as much discussion of happiness as there has been of hope; most reflection has tended to push off happiness towards the eschaton for a number of reasons Charry elucidates. Finally, Charry comments on the division of the true from the good and the beautiful in Christian thinking and intellectual formation embodied in the separation of theology and "practical theology." ⇧
• • •
Anthony Esolen
"It's the sort of thing that has the capacity to change their lives."
— Anthony Esolen, author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (ISI Books, 2010)
English professor Anthony Esolen is concerned about the imagination of young people. He teaches undergraduate students and draws on his experience to illustrate the yearning young people have for transcendence and real joy, and articulates a number of practices that serve to undermine that joy and inflict sullenness or some cheap emotional stimulation in its stead. Esolen goes to bat for spending time outdoors and for the McGuffey Reader in the process of differentiating the narcissism that passes for imagination in much of modern culture from the kind of imagination flowing out of a posture of receiving, which he sees is necessary for a flourishing life. The segment ends as Esolen reflects on the power of the greatest works of imagination from the past to enthrall and captivate young people today. ⇧
• • •
Ferdinand Schlingensiepen
"In the years to come, he was led, step by step, to the decision himself . . . are you prepared to obey Christ or not?"
— Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, author of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance (T & T Clark, 2010)
Ferdinand Schlingensiepen shares his knowledge about the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Schlingensiepen was a dear friend of Eberhard Bethge, who was a close student of Bonhoeffer and his first biographer. Schlingensiepen begins by talking about the memory of Bonhoeffer in the post-war period of Germany, and how his popularity changed over the years. He traces the trajectory of Bonhoeffer's stand against the German Christians and his opposition to the Nazi government and its growing power, and then reflects on the theological and pastoral themes of Bonhoeffer's work. ⇧
• • •
Allen Verhey
"Compassion is a response to suffering, but our compassion has been trained by this mythos to look for the best and closest technology."
— Allen Verhey, author of Nature and Altering It (Eerdmans, 2010)
Ethicist Allen Verhey talks about nature and some of the ways modern people think about it. One of the ways we can think of nature is as strictly divorced from the supernatural. Verhey articulates a number of ways this is problematic, as it can diminish the immanent work and care of God in creation and add to its disenchantment and abuse. He comments that certain myths about nature can serve to orient our activity in the world, including a myth that reduces life to genetics and a technological millennialism that sees salvation as lying in humanity's increasing power over and control of nature irrespective of the teleological order in nature. Especially powerful is the myth of autonomous individualism underlying liberal society. Verhey is careful to point out that to suggest goods like freedom can be absolutized and idolized is not to suggest they have no value at all, but that their value must be recognized in ordered relationship to that of other goods. ⇧
• • •
Calvin Stapert
"This collection of texts which promotes the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a tool to combat the spread of deism."
— Calvin Stapert, author of Handel's Messiah: Comfort for God's People (Eerdmans, 2010)
Calvin Stapert explains the origins and character of Handel's Messiah in this next interview. Messiah was in a number of ways an introduction of the tradition of the oratorio to England. Stapert comments on the Continental development of the oratorio as a liturgical form for services attended by laity that were centered around prayer, and gives a short history and description of various oratorios in Italy. The dramatic form of the oratorio borrowed much from the tradition of the opera, with a couple of notable differences. The interview ends with a discussion of Messiah as a Christocentric theological response to nascent deism in the society and the church in Handel’s time. ⇧
Guests on Volume 108
• THOMAS ALBERT HOWARD on why many nineteenth-century Europeans were nervous about the shape of American religious life
• JEAN PORTER on how natural law provides a rationale for the rule of law and for legislative and judicial authority
• PETER AUGUSTINE LAWLER on how neither ancient philosophy nor modern science explains human nature (but the Logos does)
• HANS BOERSMA on why Christians should reject the modern separation of Heaven and Earth and recover a “sacramental ontology”
• FELICIA WU SONG on how online communication systems shape relationships and community
• ELIAS ABOUJAOUDE on how life online makes us think we’re bigger, badder, and smarter than we really are
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Thomas Albert Howard
"The idea was that the logic of history moves from the theological to the irreligious, to the secular; that's the normative route of modern history.”
— Thomas Albert Howard, author of God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Thomas Albert Howard discusses European perspectives of eighteenth-century American religious life. Howard suggests that for many American writers and thinkers, Alexis de Tocqueville is the be-all and end-all of European observers of the relation between American religious and public life. However, to get at and understand some of the darker and more negative opinions of American public life, Howard notes that other European sources may prove to be more fruitful. Philip Schaff was one of those sources who, from a Protestant perspective, noticed some of the dangers and problems with religious life in America. For many Europeans, the exuberant and untrammeled sort of freedom on display in America was disconcerting. For example, while they paid far greater attention to the industrial and French revolutions in their immediate vicinity, the German Romantics were also disturbed by the lack of idealism that seemed to them a consequence of the highly-practical and commercial orientation of Americans. As time went on, European thinkers influenced by the Enlightenment gradually came to focus on the recalcitrance of American religiosity, which seemed an aberration with respect to what they saw as a historically normative process of secularization. ⇧
• • •
Jean Porter
"The very formality of legal systems, when they operate in good order, when they are set up in accordance with real ideals of legality and not simply pretexts for some kind of improper dominion . . . they embody principles of justice and fairness."
— Jean Porter, author of Ministers of the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority (Eerdmans, 2010)
Jean Porter joins us to describe how natural law justifies legal and moral authority within the life of the human person. She argues that the ideals of legality are positive goods, not merely necessary evils or concessions to human weakness and sin. One of the motivations for her writing is her observation that a strong suspicion of government has in the past thirty years developed into something much stronger akin to a soft anarchism. Christians, in her view, have too uncritically bought into the notion that the government is always the problem. She contrasts this to ideas she finds in medieval Christian sources which portray the relationship of individuals to authoritative communities and their institutions not as an intrinsically antagonistic one, but one where the community and the individual find their proper fulfillment in each other: the community by its respect for the individual, and the individual by its participation and formation in the community. Individuals need institutions and culture to frame and structure their lives as rational beings. She notes how instability often arises in periods of radical change in social and technological spheres, and compares contemporary times to periods in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries where significant dislocations led to varied political responses, some richly innovation and fruitful and some not. The interview ends with an intriguing discussion of what she means by "the autonomy of the law" and the formal goods of legal proceedings and structures which do not merely serve as instruments to achieve justice, but actually embody justice. ⇧
• • •
Peter Augustine Lawler
"Christianity showed us something that reason can affirm, but in fact reason had not discovered. But once Christianity tells the truth about human freedom, that idea of freedom can't disappear because of its truth. So even modern philosophy is kind of secularized Christianity affirming an idea of freedom that actually natural science has never been comfortable with."
— Peter Augustine Lawler, author of Modern and American Dignity: Who We Are as Persons, and What That Means For Our Future (ISI Books, 2010)
Peter Augustine Lawler discusses in this segment three differing views of the human person. He contrasts the ancient philosophical view of the Greeks rooted in an impersonal dualistic cosmology, the modern scientific view rooted in self-construction, and a Christian view rooted in the Logos and animated by recent writings of Pope Benedict XVI. His goal is to correct the Aristotelian and Darwinian sciences through a personalism that is "open to being," that is open to the experience of love, goodness and dignity inherent in the existence and experience of a person, which is validated ultimately in the Incarnation of the Person of the Logos. He illustrates with a number of examples where modern and ancient scientific views cannot explain our experience of freedom, resulting in conflicting dualisms that are passed over and ignored or otherwise suppressed. Lawler observes that human persons are neither minds nor bodies but a third thing combining both into something that is capable of love and dignity in a way incomprehensible to views of humans as fundamentally divisible minds and bodies. ⇧
• • •
Hans Boersma
"We've assumed especially since the Enlightenment that we can approach natural realities by themselves and can properly understand them, can properly grasp them, without any supernatural assumptions."
— Hans Boersma, author of Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Eerdmans, 2011)
Theologian Hans Boersma talks about a sacramental view of reality he calls a "sacramental ontology." Boersma uses the word ontology loosely to describe the way we understand all of reality. He argues that a view of salvation that is limited to individual human souls apart from the rest of Creation inadequately describes the biblical portrait of salvation and God's relation to his Creation. God isn't merely some far-off alien whose only relationship with an autonomous Creation occurs when humans repent and place their faith in him. Rather, all of reality is always and already interpenetrated with the presence of God, apart from which Creation does not exist since its existence depends upon the being of God. The relationship and activities of redemption are not, then, arbitrary interventions beginning a new contrived relationship between a God who is basically foreign to Creation, but the intimate work of a loving God on a cosmos that has always been his own and which has depended on his divine being for its created being. The relation of Creation to God is not merely as a sign pointing nominally to God, though it is that. It is a deeper, more intimate relation where Creation at a fundamental level participates in the being of God. Boersma observes that one form of separation between earth and heaven (or pure nature and pure grace or pure reason and pure faith) mirrors a dubious and misleading separation between the natural and supernatural which associates Jesus Christ with one rather than the other, when Christ is the supernatural source of all things, and so all things we consider natural actually have a supernatural telos. ⇧
• • •
Felicia Wu Song
"Very often the harsh qualities that exist within our communities, our real communities, [become] realities we can choose to turn on or off."
— Felicia Wu Song, author of Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together (Peter Lang, 2009)
Sociologist Felicia Wu Song explains her research on virtual communities. Recently, her work has focused on networks of "mommy" blogs and the challenges they face when commercial interests make authentic posting and blogging relationships more complicated. She notes how the internet facilitates the creation of homogenous communities - beginning with those who are able to afford internet access - but observes internet technology only amplifies a preexisting trend in society. The internet also shapes in peculiarly technological ways how people organize and put into action ethical and social movements: what once required face-to-face meetings with those in need can be done with a Like button that makes a small donation to a cause, and the context is lost. ⇧
• • •
Elias Aboujaoude
"All these traits were not invented with the internet . . . but what's happening is that this particular medium is amplifying them, it's giving them a new stage and new audience."
— Elias Aboujaoude, author of Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality (W. W. Norton, 2011)
Elias Aboujaoude discusses the effects of online participation on personality. He notes that rigorous studies on the psychological and neurological consequences of the virtual revolution have been lacking considering how pervasive online life is in modern society, which is why he did his study. Through his study and encounters with patients, Aboujaoude found that the ways one behaves online influence one's personality in general in a number of ways that bear resemblance to psychological disorders, including impulsivity, addictive behavior, infantile regression, viciousness, and delusions of knowledge. For example, a form of grandiosity can obtain through one's experiences online; the internet can open up a new frontier for people to explore and let loose, and apparent prospects of limitlessness (or at least fewer limits) for things online like popularity or property or status can inculcate a distorted sense of reality that overflows to one's life offline. Aboujaoude believes we're just not that good at compartmentalizing our experiences. ⇧
Guests on Volume 108
• THOMAS ALBERT HOWARD on why many nineteenth-century Europeans were nervous about the shape of American religious life
• JEAN PORTER on how natural law provides a rationale for the rule of law and for legislative and judicial authority
• PETER AUGUSTINE LAWLER on how neither ancient philosophy nor modern science explains human nature (but the Logos does)
• HANS BOERSMA on why Christians should reject the modern separation of Heaven and Earth and recover a “sacramental ontology”
• FELICIA WU SONG on how online communication systems shape relationships and community
• ELIAS ABOUJAOUDE on how life online makes us think we’re bigger, badder, and smarter than we really are
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Thomas Albert Howard
"The idea was that the logic of history moves from the theological to the irreligious, to the secular; that's the normative route of modern history.”
— Thomas Albert Howard, author of God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Thomas Albert Howard discusses European perspectives of eighteenth-century American religious life. Howard suggests that for many American writers and thinkers, Alexis de Tocqueville is the be-all and end-all of European observers of the relation between American religious and public life. However, to get at and understand some of the darker and more negative opinions of American public life, Howard notes that other European sources may prove to be more fruitful. Philip Schaff was one of those sources who, from a Protestant perspective, noticed some of the dangers and problems with religious life in America. For many Europeans, the exuberant and untrammeled sort of freedom on display in America was disconcerting. For example, while they paid far greater attention to the industrial and French revolutions in their immediate vicinity, the German Romantics were also disturbed by the lack of idealism that seemed to them a consequence of the highly-practical and commercial orientation of Americans. As time went on, European thinkers influenced by the Enlightenment gradually came to focus on the recalcitrance of American religiosity, which seemed an aberration with respect to what they saw as a historically normative process of secularization. ⇧
• • •
Jean Porter
"The very formality of legal systems, when they operate in good order, when they are set up in accordance with real ideals of legality and not simply pretexts for some kind of improper dominion . . . they embody principles of justice and fairness."
— Jean Porter, author of Ministers of the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority (Eerdmans, 2010)
Jean Porter joins us to describe how natural law justifies legal and moral authority within the life of the human person. She argues that the ideals of legality are positive goods, not merely necessary evils or concessions to human weakness and sin. One of the motivations for her writing is her observation that a strong suspicion of government has in the past thirty years developed into something much stronger akin to a soft anarchism. Christians, in her view, have too uncritically bought into the notion that the government is always the problem. She contrasts this to ideas she finds in medieval Christian sources which portray the relationship of individuals to authoritative communities and their institutions not as an intrinsically antagonistic one, but one where the community and the individual find their proper fulfillment in each other: the community by its respect for the individual, and the individual by its participation and formation in the community. Individuals need institutions and culture to frame and structure their lives as rational beings. She notes how instability often arises in periods of radical change in social and technological spheres, and compares contemporary times to periods in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries where significant dislocations led to varied political responses, some richly innovation and fruitful and some not. The interview ends with an intriguing discussion of what she means by "the autonomy of the law" and the formal goods of legal proceedings and structures which do not merely serve as instruments to achieve justice, but actually embody justice. ⇧
• • •
Peter Augustine Lawler
"Christianity showed us something that reason can affirm, but in fact reason had not discovered. But once Christianity tells the truth about human freedom, that idea of freedom can't disappear because of its truth. So even modern philosophy is kind of secularized Christianity affirming an idea of freedom that actually natural science has never been comfortable with."
— Peter Augustine Lawler, author of Modern and American Dignity: Who We Are as Persons, and What That Means For Our Future (ISI Books, 2010)
Peter Augustine Lawler discusses in this segment three differing views of the human person. He contrasts the ancient philosophical view of the Greeks rooted in an impersonal dualistic cosmology, the modern scientific view rooted in self-construction, and a Christian view rooted in the Logos and animated by recent writings of Pope Benedict XVI. His goal is to correct the Aristotelian and Darwinian sciences through a personalism that is "open to being," that is open to the experience of love, goodness and dignity inherent in the existence and experience of a person, which is validated ultimately in the Incarnation of the Person of the Logos. He illustrates with a number of examples where modern and ancient scientific views cannot explain our experience of freedom, resulting in conflicting dualisms that are passed over and ignored or otherwise suppressed. Lawler observes that human persons are neither minds nor bodies but a third thing combining both into something that is capable of love and dignity in a way incomprehensible to views of humans as fundamentally divisible minds and bodies. ⇧
• • •
Hans Boersma
"We've assumed especially since the Enlightenment that we can approach natural realities by themselves and can properly understand them, can properly grasp them, without any supernatural assumptions."
— Hans Boersma, author of Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Eerdmans, 2011)
Theologian Hans Boersma talks about a sacramental view of reality he calls a "sacramental ontology." Boersma uses the word ontology loosely to describe the way we understand all of reality. He argues that a view of salvation that is limited to individual human souls apart from the rest of Creation inadequately describes the biblical portrait of salvation and God's relation to his Creation. God isn't merely some far-off alien whose only relationship with an autonomous Creation occurs when humans repent and place their faith in him. Rather, all of reality is always and already interpenetrated with the presence of God, apart from which Creation does not exist since its existence depends upon the being of God. The relationship and activities of redemption are not, then, arbitrary interventions beginning a new contrived relationship between a God who is basically foreign to Creation, but the intimate work of a loving God on a cosmos that has always been his own and which has depended on his divine being for its created being. The relation of Creation to God is not merely as a sign pointing nominally to God, though it is that. It is a deeper, more intimate relation where Creation at a fundamental level participates in the being of God. Boersma observes that one form of separation between earth and heaven (or pure nature and pure grace or pure reason and pure faith) mirrors a dubious and misleading separation between the natural and supernatural which associates Jesus Christ with one rather than the other, when Christ is the supernatural source of all things, and so all things we consider natural actually have a supernatural telos. ⇧
• • •
Felicia Wu Song
"Very often the harsh qualities that exist within our communities, our real communities, [become] realities we can choose to turn on or off."
— Felicia Wu Song, author of Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together (Peter Lang, 2009)
Sociologist Felicia Wu Song explains her research on virtual communities. Recently, her work has focused on networks of "mommy" blogs and the challenges they face when commercial interests make authentic posting and blogging relationships more complicated. She notes how the internet facilitates the creation of homogenous communities - beginning with those who are able to afford internet access - but observes internet technology only amplifies a preexisting trend in society. The internet also shapes in peculiarly technological ways how people organize and put into action ethical and social movements: what once required face-to-face meetings with those in need can be done with a Like button that makes a small donation to a cause, and the context is lost. ⇧
• • •
Elias Aboujaoude
"All these traits were not invented with the internet . . . but what's happening is that this particular medium is amplifying them, it's giving them a new stage and new audience."
— Elias Aboujaoude, author of Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality (W. W. Norton, 2011)
Elias Aboujaoude discusses the effects of online participation on personality. He notes that rigorous studies on the psychological and neurological consequences of the virtual revolution have been lacking considering how pervasive online life is in modern society, which is why he did his study. Through his study and encounters with patients, Aboujaoude found that the ways one behaves online influence one's personality in general in a number of ways that bear resemblance to psychological disorders, including impulsivity, addictive behavior, infantile regression, viciousness, and delusions of knowledge. For example, a form of grandiosity can obtain through one's experiences online; the internet can open up a new frontier for people to explore and let loose, and apparent prospects of limitlessness (or at least fewer limits) for things online like popularity or property or status can inculcate a distorted sense of reality that overflows to one's life offline. Aboujaoude believes we're just not that good at compartmentalizing our experiences. ⇧
Guests on Volume 109
• DOUGLAS COUPLAND on the strange and wonderful life and thought of media guru Marshall McLuhan
• CHARLES MATHEWES on lessons from Augustine on thinking about our political lives in theological terms
• WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH on how the modern state is a unique kind of political entity, inviting a new kind of idolatry
• WILLIAM DYRNESS on the challenges of developing a positive theology of desire and the imagination
• STEVEN GUTHRIE on relating the Spirit’s work in making us human to what happens in art and human creativity
• SUSANNAH CLEMENTS on the changing view of evil evident in the evolution of vampires from Bram Stoker to Sookie Stackhouse
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Douglas Coupland
“People thought that to show a communist on TV was to have the person watching it turn into a communist. . . . [McLuhan] sort of eclipsed that entire dialogue by saying 'Look, it’s not the communist on TV . . . it’s the fact that you’re watching TV.'"
— Douglas Coupland, author of Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work (Atlas & Co., 2010)
This playfully-edited yet evocative interview with author Douglas Coupland focuses on media guru Marshall McLuhan. Coupland discusses the centrality of pattern recognition to the thought of this paragon of media theory and relates that recognition to McLuhan's understanding of natural law. McLuhan was no advocate for the changes he witnessed, contemplated, and judged; he perceived the formidable challenge of technology to the natural and human, a challenge unmet by the dominant cultural institutions of modern society. So his only defense against the rapid development of media technology consisted in his intense focus on observation, a focus that Coupland believes enabled McLuhan to foresee the advent of the internet. McLuhan's main concern was for the effects of media technology upon the human soul, and to discover and understand these effects, McLuhan utilized a broad range of learning and provocative dialogical skills, the results of which were not always appreciated by his contemporaries. His greatest insights were to discern the subtle but pervasive effects that the form rather than the content of media has on human beings. Interspersed through this interview is a series of audio clips of McLuhan which demonstrate both his personal style and perspective. ⇧
• • •
Charles Mathewes
“A lot of the political language we have could have a theological resonance if we understand it properly . . . without idolatrizing that political language.”
— Charles Mathewes, author of The Republic of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts for Dark Times (Eerdmans, 2010)
There is a prevalent assumption today that we can neatly separate theology from politics. In this interview, Charles Matthews takes lessons from Augustine to help us regain the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love. He argues that church is ultimately a public thing, and it is impossible to divide politics so cleanly from our religious lives, as many today wish to do. Metaphysical questions, however, cannot be isolated. Mathewes says his goal is to enrich the way in which people think about their lives, politically and religiously. Attempting to chart a balanced course, he explains that the overwhelming power of the modern nation-state should not be demonized, and yet our primary citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven should be pondered carefully as well. Mathewes argues that historical events such as the threat of communism and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have caused us to take up an imperial burden that is dangerous to believers. We must never confuse America with the Kingdom of God. ⇧
• • •
William T. Cavanaugh
“For the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures . . . all of life was about the celebration and about the sacred. And it’s a mistake that’s often made in certain kinds of Christianity, to say that Jesus overcame this crude materialism and made it all about the spiritual and what’s inside your heart. But I think Jesus is in continuity with the Old Testament in this way. All of life is sacred, and nothing is outside of the purview of God. And this is why religion and politics are somewhat artificial distinctions.”
— William T. Cavanaugh, author of Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Eerdmans, 2011)
Theologian William T. Cavanaugh discusses the way in which the exaltation of the modern state required the marginalization and privatizing of Christian faith, so that redemption is seen as a purely personal and private matter. Cavanaugh's book, Migrations of the Holy, explains how faith in the United States and in secular Western values can take on an element of religious conviction. The willingness to die for one's country versus the willingness to die for the Gospel is a symptom of this "migration" of the holy. Cavanaugh mentions a book provocatively entitled Was Jesus Muslim? in which author Robert Shedinger argues that the "religionization of Christianity" (in other words, the restriction of faith into a narrow, private category) is what we should really be worried about, not the "politicization of Islam." Ultimately, politics and religion are false categories that have been invented along with the rise of the centralizing modern nation-state, and Cavanaugh raises fundamental questions about the meaning of church, state, and the place of community. He argues that ultimately, as shown in the Hebrew Scriptures, there is no aspect of life that God doesn't care about, and the distinction between religion and politics is inherently false. ⇧
• • •
William Dyrness
“Of course [desire] is disordered. But it's that faculty that allows us to move outside of ourselves, to imagine and love others, and eventually God.”
— William Dyrness, author of Poetic Theology: God and the Poetics of Everyday Life (Eerdmans, 2010)
William Dyrness's writings on theology and the arts have been attracting readers for decades. In this segment, Dyrness describes his inspiration for this project within the context of his larger body of works. Working from within the Reformed tradition, Dyrness has always been frustrated that the arts are not more highly valued by his own tradition. He argues for a positive theology of desire and imagination, built upon a deep understanding of the goodness of God’s creation. He sees gratitude and praise of God at the heart of a healthy approach to interacting with that goodness. Dyrness mentions Calvin's instructions for church order: “Outside of ordinary times of worship, the church should be locked, so that no superstition will be performed there” and describes the unintended consequence of this teaching on the manner in which Protestants interact with their church buildings. Dyrness encourages us to recover the virtues of contemplation: to sit quietly in a quiet space and contemplate visual things, and to meditate on Scripture. Recapturing a vision of God takes time and contemplation. ⇧
• • •
Steven Guthrie
“The work of the Spirit is to make the Word of God flesh, to make the Word of God man. From a Christian perspective, the definition of humanity is Jesus Christ: He’s the perfect man, the complete human, the final human. Nietzsche very famously complained that our problem is ‘we are human, all too human.’ But from a Biblical perspective, our problem is that we’re not nearly human enough.”
— Steven Guthrie, author of Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human (Baker Academic, 2011)
Steven Guthrie explains his quest for a theology that combines necessary abstractions with the concrete particulars of life. He begins by relating his background in music, and original intention to be a composer, as the beginnings of a quest for beauty and the spiritual meaning behind it. This path led him in a theological direction, and his book Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human focuses on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit through the lens of the arts in human experience. Guthrie mentions the frequent use of the word “spiritual" in casual conversation and explains how it relates to (and falls short of) the fullness of the theological understanding of the third person of the Trinity. Guthrie discusses how art in the twentieth century tended to view humanity as either meat or machines. This raises several questions: Does beauty sweep the horrors and tragedies of life under the carpet? Must art be brutal in order to be honest? Guthrie concludes that the Christian vision of beauty should not be blind to the horrors of the world. Yet it should be hopeful: we can look forward with joy and wonder to the ultimate purpose and eschatological reality God has promised. ⇧
• • •
Susannah Clements
"Throughout [Bram Stoker's Dracula,] the crucifix is a symbol, and it’s a symbol of Christian faith and a symbol the vampires are afraid of. Throughout the novel, the cross gains more power as the characters grow to understand that this is the source of protection against what the vampire represents.”
— Susannah Clements, author of The Vampire Defanged: How the Embodiment of Evil Became a Romantic Hero (Brazos Press, 2011)
Susannah Clements describes the history of literature dealing with the nightmarish specter of the vampire, examining their symbolic understanding of sin and human nature. The 1897 publishing of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula expresses anxieties in late Victorian fiction, poetry and art about gender issues and the family. Bram Stoker's reptilian, physically-demonic Count Dracula is nevertheless hypnotically attractive, which reveals a view of evil held by the author and readers of the Victorian era. By stark contrast, the Twilight series is a modern example of the current dreamy take on vampires. Clements describes the historically symbolic power of the vampire as representative of evil residing within the human body, explaining how the attempt by characters to escape bondage to that evil provides an illustration of the human soul in a battle against evil. These early beginnings of the horror genre were originally intended to "scare the hell out of you.” In sharp contrast, Anne Rice's revision of the myth focuses more on the idea of guilt rather than sin, questioning the very concept of evil. Clements theorizes that vampire romance novels are increasingly popular today because of a growing cynicism among romance novel connoisseurs regarding the old "bodice-ripper" romance. The vampire now becomes the male interest in a larger-than-life role of spiritually perverse seduction. ⇧
Guests on Volume 109
• DOUGLAS COUPLAND on the strange and wonderful life and thought of media guru Marshall McLuhan
• CHARLES MATHEWES on lessons from Augustine on thinking about our political lives in theological terms
• WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH on how the modern state is a unique kind of political entity, inviting a new kind of idolatry
• WILLIAM DYRNESS on the challenges of developing a positive theology of desire and the imagination
• STEVEN GUTHRIE on relating the Spirit’s work in making us human to what happens in art and human creativity
• SUSANNAH CLEMENTS on the changing view of evil evident in the evolution of vampires from Bram Stoker to Sookie Stackhouse
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Douglas Coupland
“People thought that to show a communist on TV was to have the person watching it turn into a communist. . . . [McLuhan] sort of eclipsed that entire dialogue by saying 'Look, it’s not the communist on TV . . . it’s the fact that you’re watching TV.'"
— Douglas Coupland, author of Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work (Atlas & Co., 2010)
This playfully-edited yet evocative interview with author Douglas Coupland focuses on media guru Marshall McLuhan. Coupland discusses the centrality of pattern recognition to the thought of this paragon of media theory and relates that recognition to McLuhan's understanding of natural law. McLuhan was no advocate for the changes he witnessed, contemplated, and judged; he perceived the formidable challenge of technology to the natural and human, a challenge unmet by the dominant cultural institutions of modern society. So his only defense against the rapid development of media technology consisted in his intense focus on observation, a focus that Coupland believes enabled McLuhan to foresee the advent of the internet. McLuhan's main concern was for the effects of media technology upon the human soul, and to discover and understand these effects, McLuhan utilized a broad range of learning and provocative dialogical skills, the results of which were not always appreciated by his contemporaries. His greatest insights were to discern the subtle but pervasive effects that the form rather than the content of media has on human beings. Interspersed through this interview is a series of audio clips of McLuhan which demonstrate both his personal style and perspective. ⇧
• • •
Charles Mathewes
“A lot of the political language we have could have a theological resonance if we understand it properly . . . without idolatrizing that political language.”
— Charles Mathewes, author of The Republic of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts for Dark Times (Eerdmans, 2010)
There is a prevalent assumption today that we can neatly separate theology from politics. In this interview, Charles Matthews takes lessons from Augustine to help us regain the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love. He argues that church is ultimately a public thing, and it is impossible to divide politics so cleanly from our religious lives, as many today wish to do. Metaphysical questions, however, cannot be isolated. Mathewes says his goal is to enrich the way in which people think about their lives, politically and religiously. Attempting to chart a balanced course, he explains that the overwhelming power of the modern nation-state should not be demonized, and yet our primary citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven should be pondered carefully as well. Mathewes argues that historical events such as the threat of communism and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have caused us to take up an imperial burden that is dangerous to believers. We must never confuse America with the Kingdom of God. ⇧
• • •
William T. Cavanaugh
“For the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures . . . all of life was about the celebration and about the sacred. And it’s a mistake that’s often made in certain kinds of Christianity, to say that Jesus overcame this crude materialism and made it all about the spiritual and what’s inside your heart. But I think Jesus is in continuity with the Old Testament in this way. All of life is sacred, and nothing is outside of the purview of God. And this is why religion and politics are somewhat artificial distinctions.”
— William T. Cavanaugh, author of Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Eerdmans, 2011)
Theologian William T. Cavanaugh discusses the way in which the exaltation of the modern state required the marginalization and privatizing of Christian faith, so that redemption is seen as a purely personal and private matter. Cavanaugh's book, Migrations of the Holy, explains how faith in the United States and in secular Western values can take on an element of religious conviction. The willingness to die for one's country versus the willingness to die for the Gospel is a symptom of this "migration" of the holy. Cavanaugh mentions a book provocatively entitled Was Jesus Muslim? in which author Robert Shedinger argues that the "religionization of Christianity" (in other words, the restriction of faith into a narrow, private category) is what we should really be worried about, not the "politicization of Islam." Ultimately, politics and religion are false categories that have been invented along with the rise of the centralizing modern nation-state, and Cavanaugh raises fundamental questions about the meaning of church, state, and the place of community. He argues that ultimately, as shown in the Hebrew Scriptures, there is no aspect of life that God doesn't care about, and the distinction between religion and politics is inherently false. ⇧
• • •
William Dyrness
“Of course [desire] is disordered. But it's that faculty that allows us to move outside of ourselves, to imagine and love others, and eventually God.”
— William Dyrness, author of Poetic Theology: God and the Poetics of Everyday Life (Eerdmans, 2010)
William Dyrness's writings on theology and the arts have been attracting readers for decades. In this segment, Dyrness describes his inspiration for this project within the context of his larger body of works. Working from within the Reformed tradition, Dyrness has always been frustrated that the arts are not more highly valued by his own tradition. He argues for a positive theology of desire and imagination, built upon a deep understanding of the goodness of God’s creation. He sees gratitude and praise of God at the heart of a healthy approach to interacting with that goodness. Dyrness mentions Calvin's instructions for church order: “Outside of ordinary times of worship, the church should be locked, so that no superstition will be performed there” and describes the unintended consequence of this teaching on the manner in which Protestants interact with their church buildings. Dyrness encourages us to recover the virtues of contemplation: to sit quietly in a quiet space and contemplate visual things, and to meditate on Scripture. Recapturing a vision of God takes time and contemplation. ⇧
• • •
Steven Guthrie
“The work of the Spirit is to make the Word of God flesh, to make the Word of God man. From a Christian perspective, the definition of humanity is Jesus Christ: He’s the perfect man, the complete human, the final human. Nietzsche very famously complained that our problem is ‘we are human, all too human.’ But from a Biblical perspective, our problem is that we’re not nearly human enough.”
— Steven Guthrie, author of Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human (Baker Academic, 2011)
Steven Guthrie explains his quest for a theology that combines necessary abstractions with the concrete particulars of life. He begins by relating his background in music, and original intention to be a composer, as the beginnings of a quest for beauty and the spiritual meaning behind it. This path led him in a theological direction, and his book Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human focuses on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit through the lens of the arts in human experience. Guthrie mentions the frequent use of the word “spiritual" in casual conversation and explains how it relates to (and falls short of) the fullness of the theological understanding of the third person of the Trinity. Guthrie discusses how art in the twentieth century tended to view humanity as either meat or machines. This raises several questions: Does beauty sweep the horrors and tragedies of life under the carpet? Must art be brutal in order to be honest? Guthrie concludes that the Christian vision of beauty should not be blind to the horrors of the world. Yet it should be hopeful: we can look forward with joy and wonder to the ultimate purpose and eschatological reality God has promised. ⇧
• • •
Susannah Clements
"Throughout [Bram Stoker's Dracula,] the crucifix is a symbol, and it’s a symbol of Christian faith and a symbol the vampires are afraid of. Throughout the novel, the cross gains more power as the characters grow to understand that this is the source of protection against what the vampire represents.”
— Susannah Clements, author of The Vampire Defanged: How the Embodiment of Evil Became a Romantic Hero (Brazos Press, 2011)
Susannah Clements describes the history of literature dealing with the nightmarish specter of the vampire, examining their symbolic understanding of sin and human nature. The 1897 publishing of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula expresses anxieties in late Victorian fiction, poetry and art about gender issues and the family. Bram Stoker's reptilian, physically-demonic Count Dracula is nevertheless hypnotically attractive, which reveals a view of evil held by the author and readers of the Victorian era. By stark contrast, the Twilight series is a modern example of the current dreamy take on vampires. Clements describes the historically symbolic power of the vampire as representative of evil residing within the human body, explaining how the attempt by characters to escape bondage to that evil provides an illustration of the human soul in a battle against evil. These early beginnings of the horror genre were originally intended to "scare the hell out of you.” In sharp contrast, Anne Rice's revision of the myth focuses more on the idea of guilt rather than sin, questioning the very concept of evil. Clements theorizes that vampire romance novels are increasingly popular today because of a growing cynicism among romance novel connoisseurs regarding the old "bodice-ripper" romance. The vampire now becomes the male interest in a larger-than-life role of spiritually perverse seduction. ⇧
Guests on Volume 110
• KEVIN BELMONTE on how G. K. Chesterton embraced a “defiant joy” in spite of the cynical pessimism of many of his contemporaries
• DAVID LYLE JEFFREY and GREGORY MAILLET on why Christians cannot afford to regard literature as a mere entertaining diversion
• MARK NOLL on what motivates anti-intellectualism among Christians and why it is a theologically-indefensible prejudice
• ALAN JACOBS on W. H. Auden's understanding of the vocation of a poet and on the spiritual and historical background to Auden's 1947 book-length poem, The Age of Anxiety
• JONATHAN CHAPLIN on the outlines and sources of the social and political thought of Herman Dooyeweerd and on his understanding of the relationship between theology and Christian philosophy
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Kevin Belmonte
"When he began to come through his period of despair, he says 'We thank people for the gift of cigars or the gift of slippers at Christmastime; can we thank no one for the birthday present of birth?'"
— Kevin Belmonte, author of Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life and Impact of G. K. Chesterton (Thomas Nelson, 2011)
Kevin Belmonte talks about the life and impact of G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton began his career as an art critic who was deeply affected by the modern art world's pessimism regarding the state of the world. He only emerged from the "slough of despond" through his recollection of the imaginative fairy tales of his youth and through the literature of authors like Robert Browning, George MacDonald, and Walt Whitman. Belmonte describes how great poetry and literature continued throughout his years to shape his inner life with joy - a joy that overflowed into his public writing and speaking. ⇧
• • •
David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet
"If a student has not got a capacity to absorb truth from figurative speech - truth from fiction - then there is a tremendous deficiency in the range of wisdom that that student will be able to acquire."
— David Lyle Jeffrey
"As students experience great Christian literary texts, they move away from a subjective re-creation of reality towards the sense of reality as God created it."
— Gregory Maillet
David Lyle Jeffrey and co-author Gregory Maillet reflect on the conceptual foundations for literature in light of the truths of Christianity. They point out how critical it is for churches to cultivate strong skills of literacy in order to properly study and absorb Scripture. Much of Scripture, they point out, is not mere propositional truth, but poetry and other forms of literature that involve the imagination. We should learn from Jesus' use of metaphor and poetry and parable that the nature of life-giving truth and how that truth is acquired depends upon the use of imaginative literary forms. In their book Christianity and Literature: Philosphical Foundations and Christian Practice (Intervarsity Press, 2011) Jeffrey and Maillet set out to provide concepts and tools to help students better appreciate and understand how literature functions and what literature can accomplish in drawing students out of a subjective self into a real, objective world of beauty and order. Lastly, they discuss the monumental influence of Augustine's On Christian Doctrine on the study of literature in Western history. ⇧
• • •
Mark Noll
"The life of the mind certainly can be perverted and turned to self - mental activity can be idolatrous - but it can only be these evil things because it's a good thing that God has created for the use of his glory that then can be perverted."
— Mark Noll, author of Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Eerdmans, 2011)
Historian Mark Noll discusses the Christian life of the mind. He talks about the difference between "integration" and "integrity" with respect to Christian belief and the pursuit of knowledge, arguing that the life of the mind is not somehow exterior to Christianity (or vice-versa), but that Christianity's cosmic claims involves all of life, including the life of the mind, and so the task of the intellectual is to work out in his life the reality of the triune God and his purposes in history. Noll discusses the reasons many Christians downplay or dismiss the intellectual and why, even though he has some sympathy with certain criticisms, an anti-intellectual stance ultimately cannot be squared with the truth of Christianity. He ends with some critical observations he accepts regarding his earlier work, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
"He's very much aware that when the war is over, that's not going to mean the end of anxiety, that it's going to mean a renewal of anxieties. People don't know where they are in the cosmos, and they are going to feel even more lost in the cosmos (to borrow a phrase from Walker Percy), when the war is over and they don't know who their enemies are anymore."
— Alan Jacobs, editor of The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Princeton University Press, 2011)
Literary critic Alan Jacobs explores W. H. Auden's book-length poem, The Age of Anxiety. Auden, according to Jacobs, was a virtuosic poet, motivated by a strong sense of vocation. Auden believed that every master poet worth his salt should be able to write to order when asked. He viewed his vocation as that of a craftsman, being able to produce particular artifacts when asked no matter how he "feels" on that occasion. But his proficiency in every poetic form he heard of was more than just to expand the carpenter's toolbox. Auden understood that each poetic form was a different window from which to view reality, and that some views were only possible through certain forms rather than others. A deeper knowledge of the world was at stake. One aspect of that knowledge Auden gradually came to perceive related to the state of anxiety he perceived in Western society, an anxiety that predated and continued through and even after World War II. Jacobs tells of Auden's sense of the source of that anxiety and its social and spiritual repercussions, and of Auden's recommendations in response to the malaise. ⇧
• • •
Jonathan Chaplin
"Instead of shrinking human experience down to one or other of its most basic elements and trying to explain everything else in terms of that basic element - whether it's the physical or biological or the psychological - he wanted to expand it or keep us all alert to the expansiveness of creation, its multidimensionality."
— Jonathan Chaplin, author of Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011)
Jonathan Chaplin discusses the work of Herman Dooyeweerd, whose writings responded to secular or Enlightenment liberalism in general, but in particular the tendency for liberalism to morph into an increasingly pervasive authoritarianism with respect to the apparatus of the state. Dooyeweerd saw much of this tendency in the period of time leading up and through the stock market crash of the late 1920s. Significant to his thinking was the idea of institutional pluralism in which institutions (e.g. the state, family, church) occupy separate spheres within which each institution held and exerted sovereignty. It was a bulwark against the sort of institutional monism Dooyeweerd saw emerging from liberalism. Chaplin relates some of the biographical background that led to Dooyeweerd's distancing himself from academic theology in pursuit of a philosophy independent from theology that would provide the framework for understanding other fields and setting their terms. In spite of Dooyeweerd's articulation of a pre-theoretical religious "ground motive" which he believed underlay even philosophy, Chaplin is not entirely convinced Dooyeweerd was successful in trying to form a philosophy independent of theology. Nonetheless, Dooyeweerd's expansive philosophy proved to be fertile soil for the theory of numerous influential thinkers from a diverse range of fields in the twentieth century, including the work of aesthetician Calvin Seerveld. Chaplin explores the reasons why Dooyeweerdian philosophy bore fruit in aesthetic theory. ⇧
Guests on Volume 110
• KEVIN BELMONTE on how G. K. Chesterton embraced a “defiant joy” in spite of the cynical pessimism of many of his contemporaries
• DAVID LYLE JEFFREY and GREGORY MAILLET on why Christians cannot afford to regard literature as a mere entertaining diversion
• MARK NOLL on what motivates anti-intellectualism among Christians and why it is a theologically-indefensible prejudice
• ALAN JACOBS on W. H. Auden's understanding of the vocation of a poet and on the spiritual and historical background to Auden's 1947 book-length poem, The Age of Anxiety
• JONATHAN CHAPLIN on the outlines and sources of the social and political thought of Herman Dooyeweerd and on his understanding of the relationship between theology and Christian philosophy
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Kevin Belmonte
"When he began to come through his period of despair, he says 'We thank people for the gift of cigars or the gift of slippers at Christmastime; can we thank no one for the birthday present of birth?'"
— Kevin Belmonte, author of Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life and Impact of G. K. Chesterton (Thomas Nelson, 2011)
Kevin Belmonte talks about the life and impact of G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton began his career as an art critic who was deeply affected by the modern art world's pessimism regarding the state of the world. He only emerged from the "slough of despond" through his recollection of the imaginative fairy tales of his youth and through the literature of authors like Robert Browning, George MacDonald, and Walt Whitman. Belmonte describes how great poetry and literature continued throughout his years to shape his inner life with joy - a joy that overflowed into his public writing and speaking. ⇧
• • •
David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet
"If a student has not got a capacity to absorb truth from figurative speech - truth from fiction - then there is a tremendous deficiency in the range of wisdom that that student will be able to acquire."
— David Lyle Jeffrey
"As students experience great Christian literary texts, they move away from a subjective re-creation of reality towards the sense of reality as God created it."
— Gregory Maillet
David Lyle Jeffrey and co-author Gregory Maillet reflect on the conceptual foundations for literature in light of the truths of Christianity. They point out how critical it is for churches to cultivate strong skills of literacy in order to properly study and absorb Scripture. Much of Scripture, they point out, is not mere propositional truth, but poetry and other forms of literature that involve the imagination. We should learn from Jesus' use of metaphor and poetry and parable that the nature of life-giving truth and how that truth is acquired depends upon the use of imaginative literary forms. In their book Christianity and Literature: Philosphical Foundations and Christian Practice (Intervarsity Press, 2011) Jeffrey and Maillet set out to provide concepts and tools to help students better appreciate and understand how literature functions and what literature can accomplish in drawing students out of a subjective self into a real, objective world of beauty and order. Lastly, they discuss the monumental influence of Augustine's On Christian Doctrine on the study of literature in Western history. ⇧
• • •
Mark Noll
"The life of the mind certainly can be perverted and turned to self - mental activity can be idolatrous - but it can only be these evil things because it's a good thing that God has created for the use of his glory that then can be perverted."
— Mark Noll, author of Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Eerdmans, 2011)
Historian Mark Noll discusses the Christian life of the mind. He talks about the difference between "integration" and "integrity" with respect to Christian belief and the pursuit of knowledge, arguing that the life of the mind is not somehow exterior to Christianity (or vice-versa), but that Christianity's cosmic claims involves all of life, including the life of the mind, and so the task of the intellectual is to work out in his life the reality of the triune God and his purposes in history. Noll discusses the reasons many Christians downplay or dismiss the intellectual and why, even though he has some sympathy with certain criticisms, an anti-intellectual stance ultimately cannot be squared with the truth of Christianity. He ends with some critical observations he accepts regarding his earlier work, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
"He's very much aware that when the war is over, that's not going to mean the end of anxiety, that it's going to mean a renewal of anxieties. People don't know where they are in the cosmos, and they are going to feel even more lost in the cosmos (to borrow a phrase from Walker Percy), when the war is over and they don't know who their enemies are anymore."
— Alan Jacobs, editor of The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Princeton University Press, 2011)
Literary critic Alan Jacobs explores W. H. Auden's book-length poem, The Age of Anxiety. Auden, according to Jacobs, was a virtuosic poet, motivated by a strong sense of vocation. Auden believed that every master poet worth his salt should be able to write to order when asked. He viewed his vocation as that of a craftsman, being able to produce particular artifacts when asked no matter how he "feels" on that occasion. But his proficiency in every poetic form he heard of was more than just to expand the carpenter's toolbox. Auden understood that each poetic form was a different window from which to view reality, and that some views were only possible through certain forms rather than others. A deeper knowledge of the world was at stake. One aspect of that knowledge Auden gradually came to perceive related to the state of anxiety he perceived in Western society, an anxiety that predated and continued through and even after World War II. Jacobs tells of Auden's sense of the source of that anxiety and its social and spiritual repercussions, and of Auden's recommendations in response to the malaise. ⇧
• • •
Jonathan Chaplin
"Instead of shrinking human experience down to one or other of its most basic elements and trying to explain everything else in terms of that basic element - whether it's the physical or biological or the psychological - he wanted to expand it or keep us all alert to the expansiveness of creation, its multidimensionality."
— Jonathan Chaplin, author of Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011)
Jonathan Chaplin discusses the work of Herman Dooyeweerd, whose writings responded to secular or Enlightenment liberalism in general, but in particular the tendency for liberalism to morph into an increasingly pervasive authoritarianism with respect to the apparatus of the state. Dooyeweerd saw much of this tendency in the period of time leading up and through the stock market crash of the late 1920s. Significant to his thinking was the idea of institutional pluralism in which institutions (e.g. the state, family, church) occupy separate spheres within which each institution held and exerted sovereignty. It was a bulwark against the sort of institutional monism Dooyeweerd saw emerging from liberalism. Chaplin relates some of the biographical background that led to Dooyeweerd's distancing himself from academic theology in pursuit of a philosophy independent from theology that would provide the framework for understanding other fields and setting their terms. In spite of Dooyeweerd's articulation of a pre-theoretical religious "ground motive" which he believed underlay even philosophy, Chaplin is not entirely convinced Dooyeweerd was successful in trying to form a philosophy independent of theology. Nonetheless, Dooyeweerd's expansive philosophy proved to be fertile soil for the theory of numerous influential thinkers from a diverse range of fields in the twentieth century, including the work of aesthetician Calvin Seerveld. Chaplin explores the reasons why Dooyeweerdian philosophy bore fruit in aesthetic theory. ⇧
Guests on Volume 111
• SIVA VAIDHAYANATHAN on why trusting Google to organize the world's knowledge is an odd (and dangerous) thing to do
• JOHN FEA on the history of the idea of America as a Christian nation and on how the Founders were - as statesmen - less interested in the truth of religion than in its political utility
• ROSS DOUTHAT on how commitment to historical Christian orthodoxy has eroded among American religious institutions since the 1960s
• IAN KER on why G. K. Chesterton deserves wider recognition as a significant literary critic
• LARRY WOIWODE on how his decision to become a writer grew out of a desire to make connections with other people
• DANA GIOIA on the remarkable life of poet John Donne and how his spiritual and intellectual struggles created the conditions for his unique poetic voice
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Siva Vaidhyanathan
“[Google’s] mission statement of the company itself is: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. And it struck me, when I first read that, my first reaction is, ‘Who asked you guys? Who granted you the authority to take on that grand mission?’ Oxford University doesn't even have that grand a mission. . . .The fact is, we are Google's product. We are what Google sells. Google sells all of our attention. And it decides to whom our attention will be sold, based on the data it collects about us, based on our history of interaction with the web. That's a tremendous amount of power.”
—Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011)
Siva Vaidhyanathan is concerned about the growing influence of Google and what that means for the world. His 2011 book The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) points out how great Google's cultural power is, and how our assumptions about efficiency and convenience have contributed to this power. The unspoken assumption is that the most accessible information is therefore the best information. He discusses the differences between what search engine technologies do and what librarians do as an entry point into a conversation about the public acquiescence to Google's ambitions, and how shallow a search engine's ability is to comprehend the complexities of knowledge-seeking. Vaidhyanathan believes the history of Google and its interactions with social and political institutions raise questions about the role of public institutions and society's tremendous faith in information technology. This young company is involved in both judging and creating the terms of access to collections of knowledge and information. But knowledge is more than sheer data; there are many ways to interact with it, and Vaidhyanathan encourages us to resist technological determinism in the shaping of our culture. He wonders whether we are even aware of the need to ask questions about the nature of particular technologies or whether we are being so overwhelmed by the power and benefits of technology that we miss subtly dehumanizing effects like the displacement of significance from human persons to technologies. Lastly, Vaidhyanathan emphasizes the need for wisdom more than the quantified approximations of wisdom so convenient and tempting to a certain mindset. ⇧
• • •
John Fea
“The name of God is never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, with the exception of ‘in the year of our Lord’ which was of course the common way of listing the date. And actually, there’s probably good evidence to suggest that that was added after the members left Philadelphia. Now how can you have a secular constitution and say God’s on your side?”
—John Fea, author of Was America Founded As a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011)
Historian John Fea discusses the idea of America as a Christian nation. He traces the idea’s acceptance in most of the past four centuries through America’s founding, manifest destiny, the Civil War, nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal Protestantism, the civil rights movement, fundamentalism, and the Religious Right. His 2011 book Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction deals with the complicated historical puzzle this question addresses. Many Christians make a constant reference to the need to "reclaim our Judeo-Christian heritage." The idea has always been pervasive and influential, though what is meant by the term in the particulars has changed over time depending on which groups were using the rhetoric. Each side of the Civil War, for example, invoked God and the Christian nature of the nation to buttress their arguments. America’s founders, whatever else, saw religion in the Greco-Roman tradition: as necessary for the moral and civic formation of citizens. Liberal Protestants in the immense Social Gospel movement saw their politics as establishing the principles of the kingdom of God. Americans throughout history understood their nation as a sacred and providential trust from a God who was working through America for the sake of progress in the world. Host Ken Myers discusses with Fea the implications of what it would mean to be a truly Christian nation, and whether assumptions about our heritage are in line with historical realities. ⇧
• • •
Ross Douthat
"You have the drama of decolonization happening around the world which is obviously a drama that Americans because of our own history would have a lot of instinctive sympathy for, and so you’re watching all this unfold as Westerners, as members of this dominant culture whose dominance is now being called into question."
—Ross Douthat, author of Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012)
In discussing the heresies that dominate American Christianity, journalist Ross Douthat lists four heresies whose widespread acceptance in America makes it a nation of heretics: historical revisionism concerning Jesus, therapeutic Christianity, the prosperity Gospel, and America and the new Israel. Douthat wants to point out these heresies so that Americans might repent and return to orthodox forms of Christianity, and he sees great potential in the uncertainty of the present for reflection making a way for revival. He sees an example of this in how figures in the civil rights movement were able to appeal to the Christianity of their opponents to bridge the divide. Douthat continues his observations concerning some of the major cultural changes that reinforced and dovetailed with particular American tendencies to change the way we think about and live out religion. ⇧
• • •
Ian Ker
"Mostly the famous literary critics have devoted themselves to tragedy rather than to comedy. But Chesterton thought that comedy was extremely important, and that it was as important as tragedy in understanding life."
—Ian Ker, author of G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Ian Ker’s 700-page book G. K. Chesterton: A Biography is a thorough exploration of Chesterton’s importance as an early twentieth-century literary figure. In this segment, Ker explains that Chesterton was until recently considered out of fashion, and is still almost totally neglected by current scholarship. Ker argues against critics of his biography who say that Chesterton is a minor figure, merely a fun character who should not be treated seriously. Urging his readers not to discount the man because of his larger-than-life persona, Ker discusses the seriousness with which Chesterton treated humor, and the extent to which he saw it as a path to the Christian virtue of humility. Chesterton also had a great ability to appreciate people apart from their intellectual flaws: he stood alone against the terrible views held by many of his contemporaries. A central idea of Chesterton’s work was the importance of limits. He saw natural limitations as central to the Christian idea of human life and as enabler of imagination and specificity. Chesterton opposed modern art because the idea of limitation was discarded, whereas he valued children highly for their natural delight in dealing with limitations. Ker concludes that the freshness of Chesterton’s imagination encourages Christians to constantly refresh their understanding of the faith. ⇧
• • •
Larry Woiwode
"I like to be busy with my hands because the more I am in contact and in touch with reality, especially with the reality of animals dependent on me, the more the inner connections of reality seem to strike me."
—Larry Woiwode, author of Words Made Fresh: Essays on Literature and Culture (Crossway, 2011)
Poet Larry Woiwode describes his own method of writing. He begins by arguing that good writing ultimately requires connecting with space and time. Thus, the body is the ultimate reference point and Woiwode concludes that connecting with other people through an attentiveness to the concrete aspects of life is at the root of all great writing. He describes the realization he had as a young man that communication with people was a central purpose of his life and calling as a writer. Woiwode describes the deeper spiritual desire, or communion, that is behind this desire to communicate. ⇧
• • •
Dana Gioia
"Donne himself is astonished by his spiritual journey. And this is what animates the poetry . . . This is the poetry of a man undergoing a spiritual crisis in which every aspect of his humanity [is] being torn asunder. And that’s what makes it magnificent."
—Dana Gioia, contributor to Sacred and Profane Love: The Poetry of John Donne (Trinity Forum, 2011)
Poet Dana Gioia begins his discussion of John Donne’s poetic achievement with a biographical outline of the poet’s life, which was atypical in many ways. Rejecting his family’s Catholic faith, Donne pursued worldly acclaim for most of his life. Only after 22 years of unsuccessful public life, Donne finally took orders at age 43 (and only then because he was basically forced to it by the king). Coming through a great spiritual crisis after the death of his wife, he became profoundly religious and very quickly the most famous preacher in England. Gioia describes the magnificence of his sermons and the darkness of his sonnets as the direct outcome of this surprising spiritual journey. Gioia argues that Donne’s physical, passionate, "blood-and-guts" poetry provides a refreshing counter to the enervated type of bad religious poetry so common in the history of Christian writing. He also explains how technically experimental the poetry is, and reminds us that it wasn’t until the twentieth century that poets such as T. S. Eliot began rediscovering and popularizing Donne’s poetry. Now, he is the most widely anthologized poet in English. Gioia concludes by commenting on Donne’s particular ability to resonate with the modern vantage point. ⇧
Guests on Volume 111
• SIVA VAIDHAYANATHAN on why trusting Google to organize the world's knowledge is an odd (and dangerous) thing to do
• JOHN FEA on the history of the idea of America as a Christian nation and on how the Founders were - as statesmen - less interested in the truth of religion than in its political utility
• ROSS DOUTHAT on how commitment to historical Christian orthodoxy has eroded among American religious institutions since the 1960s
• IAN KER on why G. K. Chesterton deserves wider recognition as a significant literary critic
• LARRY WOIWODE on how his decision to become a writer grew out of a desire to make connections with other people
• DANA GIOIA on the remarkable life of poet John Donne and how his spiritual and intellectual struggles created the conditions for his unique poetic voice
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Siva Vaidhyanathan
“[Google’s] mission statement of the company itself is: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. And it struck me, when I first read that, my first reaction is, ‘Who asked you guys? Who granted you the authority to take on that grand mission?’ Oxford University doesn't even have that grand a mission. . . .The fact is, we are Google's product. We are what Google sells. Google sells all of our attention. And it decides to whom our attention will be sold, based on the data it collects about us, based on our history of interaction with the web. That's a tremendous amount of power.”
—Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011)
Siva Vaidhyanathan is concerned about the growing influence of Google and what that means for the world. His 2011 book The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) points out how great Google's cultural power is, and how our assumptions about efficiency and convenience have contributed to this power. The unspoken assumption is that the most accessible information is therefore the best information. He discusses the differences between what search engine technologies do and what librarians do as an entry point into a conversation about the public acquiescence to Google's ambitions, and how shallow a search engine's ability is to comprehend the complexities of knowledge-seeking. Vaidhyanathan believes the history of Google and its interactions with social and political institutions raise questions about the role of public institutions and society's tremendous faith in information technology. This young company is involved in both judging and creating the terms of access to collections of knowledge and information. But knowledge is more than sheer data; there are many ways to interact with it, and Vaidhyanathan encourages us to resist technological determinism in the shaping of our culture. He wonders whether we are even aware of the need to ask questions about the nature of particular technologies or whether we are being so overwhelmed by the power and benefits of technology that we miss subtly dehumanizing effects like the displacement of significance from human persons to technologies. Lastly, Vaidhyanathan emphasizes the need for wisdom more than the quantified approximations of wisdom so convenient and tempting to a certain mindset. ⇧
• • •
John Fea
“The name of God is never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, with the exception of ‘in the year of our Lord’ which was of course the common way of listing the date. And actually, there’s probably good evidence to suggest that that was added after the members left Philadelphia. Now how can you have a secular constitution and say God’s on your side?”
—John Fea, author of Was America Founded As a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011)
Historian John Fea discusses the idea of America as a Christian nation. He traces the idea’s acceptance in most of the past four centuries through America’s founding, manifest destiny, the Civil War, nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal Protestantism, the civil rights movement, fundamentalism, and the Religious Right. His 2011 book Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction deals with the complicated historical puzzle this question addresses. Many Christians make a constant reference to the need to "reclaim our Judeo-Christian heritage." The idea has always been pervasive and influential, though what is meant by the term in the particulars has changed over time depending on which groups were using the rhetoric. Each side of the Civil War, for example, invoked God and the Christian nature of the nation to buttress their arguments. America’s founders, whatever else, saw religion in the Greco-Roman tradition: as necessary for the moral and civic formation of citizens. Liberal Protestants in the immense Social Gospel movement saw their politics as establishing the principles of the kingdom of God. Americans throughout history understood their nation as a sacred and providential trust from a God who was working through America for the sake of progress in the world. Host Ken Myers discusses with Fea the implications of what it would mean to be a truly Christian nation, and whether assumptions about our heritage are in line with historical realities. ⇧
• • •
Ross Douthat
"You have the drama of decolonization happening around the world which is obviously a drama that Americans because of our own history would have a lot of instinctive sympathy for, and so you’re watching all this unfold as Westerners, as members of this dominant culture whose dominance is now being called into question."
—Ross Douthat, author of Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012)
In discussing the heresies that dominate American Christianity, journalist Ross Douthat lists four heresies whose widespread acceptance in America makes it a nation of heretics: historical revisionism concerning Jesus, therapeutic Christianity, the prosperity Gospel, and America and the new Israel. Douthat wants to point out these heresies so that Americans might repent and return to orthodox forms of Christianity, and he sees great potential in the uncertainty of the present for reflection making a way for revival. He sees an example of this in how figures in the civil rights movement were able to appeal to the Christianity of their opponents to bridge the divide. Douthat continues his observations concerning some of the major cultural changes that reinforced and dovetailed with particular American tendencies to change the way we think about and live out religion. ⇧
• • •
Ian Ker
"Mostly the famous literary critics have devoted themselves to tragedy rather than to comedy. But Chesterton thought that comedy was extremely important, and that it was as important as tragedy in understanding life."
—Ian Ker, author of G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Ian Ker’s 700-page book G. K. Chesterton: A Biography is a thorough exploration of Chesterton’s importance as an early twentieth-century literary figure. In this segment, Ker explains that Chesterton was until recently considered out of fashion, and is still almost totally neglected by current scholarship. Ker argues against critics of his biography who say that Chesterton is a minor figure, merely a fun character who should not be treated seriously. Urging his readers not to discount the man because of his larger-than-life persona, Ker discusses the seriousness with which Chesterton treated humor, and the extent to which he saw it as a path to the Christian virtue of humility. Chesterton also had a great ability to appreciate people apart from their intellectual flaws: he stood alone against the terrible views held by many of his contemporaries. A central idea of Chesterton’s work was the importance of limits. He saw natural limitations as central to the Christian idea of human life and as enabler of imagination and specificity. Chesterton opposed modern art because the idea of limitation was discarded, whereas he valued children highly for their natural delight in dealing with limitations. Ker concludes that the freshness of Chesterton’s imagination encourages Christians to constantly refresh their understanding of the faith. ⇧
• • •
Larry Woiwode
"I like to be busy with my hands because the more I am in contact and in touch with reality, especially with the reality of animals dependent on me, the more the inner connections of reality seem to strike me."
—Larry Woiwode, author of Words Made Fresh: Essays on Literature and Culture (Crossway, 2011)
Poet Larry Woiwode describes his own method of writing. He begins by arguing that good writing ultimately requires connecting with space and time. Thus, the body is the ultimate reference point and Woiwode concludes that connecting with other people through an attentiveness to the concrete aspects of life is at the root of all great writing. He describes the realization he had as a young man that communication with people was a central purpose of his life and calling as a writer. Woiwode describes the deeper spiritual desire, or communion, that is behind this desire to communicate. ⇧
• • •
Dana Gioia
"Donne himself is astonished by his spiritual journey. And this is what animates the poetry . . . This is the poetry of a man undergoing a spiritual crisis in which every aspect of his humanity [is] being torn asunder. And that’s what makes it magnificent."
—Dana Gioia, contributor to Sacred and Profane Love: The Poetry of John Donne (Trinity Forum, 2011)
Poet Dana Gioia begins his discussion of John Donne’s poetic achievement with a biographical outline of the poet’s life, which was atypical in many ways. Rejecting his family’s Catholic faith, Donne pursued worldly acclaim for most of his life. Only after 22 years of unsuccessful public life, Donne finally took orders at age 43 (and only then because he was basically forced to it by the king). Coming through a great spiritual crisis after the death of his wife, he became profoundly religious and very quickly the most famous preacher in England. Gioia describes the magnificence of his sermons and the darkness of his sonnets as the direct outcome of this surprising spiritual journey. Gioia argues that Donne’s physical, passionate, "blood-and-guts" poetry provides a refreshing counter to the enervated type of bad religious poetry so common in the history of Christian writing. He also explains how technically experimental the poetry is, and reminds us that it wasn’t until the twentieth century that poets such as T. S. Eliot began rediscovering and popularizing Donne’s poetry. Now, he is the most widely anthologized poet in English. Gioia concludes by commenting on Donne’s particular ability to resonate with the modern vantage point. ⇧
Guests on Volume 112
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on why “emerging adults” feel compelled to keep all their options open, in life and in thought
• DAVID L. SCHINDLER on how modern liberalism fails to acknowledge the reality of God's love in the order of Creation
• SARA ANSON VAUX on the moral vision of director Clint Eastwood
• MELVYN BRAGG on the origins and profound cultural influence of the King James Bible
• TIMOTHY LARSEN on how Victorians were united in their preoccupation with the Bible, whether or not they believed in God
• RALPH C. WOOD on the sacramental vision of G. K. Chesterton, and on the enigmatic message of The Man Who Was Thursday
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Christian Smith
"That creates a background understanding simply for earning a livelihood that: don't get stuck, don't settle in, don't settle down, don't get too confident, always be ready to move, always be ready to upgrade, keep all your options open, never burn any bridges. And I think there's kind of a cultural transposition between that realization of the implications of that economic fact, and the rest of life, which is just sort of kept open indefinitely."
—Christian Smith, author of Lost In Translation: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Sociologist Christian Smith begins this issue of the Journal with a discussion about the cultural conditions that shape emerging adults. Smith insists that emerging adults are not cultural aberrations, but fully in line with the culture that was handed down to them and is sustained by the wider society. It's a mistake to blame the youth, as if the problematic nature of emerging adulthood is merely a result of individual bad decisions. Smith describes how the expansion of higher education, delays in marriage, continuing parental financial support, technological changes, and changes in the global economy provide conditions for the development of emerging adults. These forces go hand in hand with a moral sensibility characterized by an unwillingness to invest in moral commitments because they don't matter. ⇧
• • •
David L. Schindler
"That memory of God is something that has to be recapitulated and unfolded in my subsequent way of life and subsequent acts of consciousness. . . . The implicit recognition that we are not our own, that we're given by another, and therefore it is always the case that we are more loved than we love, and therefore the movement of our consciousness already has built into it this implicit call to be grateful.”
—David L. Schindler, author of Ordering Love: Liberal Societies and the Memory of God (Eerdmans, 2011)
Theologian David L. Schindler explains the metaphysical centrality to all of reality of love, understood not merely as positive affections and acts of the human will, but as a given order of relationships and a rational and meaningful structure in all of Creation that exists prior to human engagement with it. It involves facts and values, public and private; it is not merely subjective, but objective as well. Love is not merely a human construction or activity, but a given, rationally-intelligible shape in Creation precisely because the Creator is a Logos of love. Liberal societies attempt to order life procedurally and apart from ultimate loves because questions of love involve non-neutral metaphysical claims which are understood categorically as dangerous or unfair. But this is not merely destructive since humans were made for love, but indeed impossible because even the denial of love (and other metaphysical claims) is itself a non-neutral metaphysical claim. To claim that societies can be governed apart from metaphysics is itself a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality. Schindler notes this becomes clear in any discussion of what freedom is. He observes that liberal conceptions of freedom, while overtly denying the presence of metaphysical claims, actually smuggle them in definitionally with enormous consequences for the lives of citizens. ⇧
• • •
Sara Anson Vaux
“He's mining something really deep about how and why humans get involved in slaughtering each other, even people very close to them.”
—Sara Anson Vaux, author of The Ethical Vision of Clint Eastwood (Eerdmans, 2011)
Sara Anson Vaux examines the ethical concerns of Clint Eastwood. Vaux describes the qualities of Eastwood's directing that she appreciates and also discusses some of the themes that are prevalent in Eastwood's films: the capacity of humans for slaughtering others, betrayal, beauty, bonds of friendship, the needs of community, and the relationship between members of different generations. In the process, Vaux draws on a number of Eastwood films, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, Mystic River, Unforgiven, Changeling, and Invictus. ⇧
• • •
Melvyn Bragg
"It is probably the most single important trigger in bringing us to where we are now. In language, in democracy, in the abolition of slavery, in philanthropy, in the empowerment of women, and on it goes.”
—Melvyn Bragg, author of The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011 (Counterpoint, 2011)
Melvyn Bragg reflects on the King James Bible's (KJV) massive literary and cultural influence in the world. Bragg begins by giving an account of his own experience in the Church of England and how the prose of the KJV was pervasive in the cultural institutions that ordered his experience. He argues that the KJV's influence on literature, politics, democracy, and civil rights has largely been airbrushed from history, despite its incontrovertible influence on cultural figures such as William Shakespeare. In Bragg's view, virulent strains of atheists and secularists are responsible in part for this loss of knowledge, and he laments the hubristic displacement of mystery that often accompanies overly enthusiastic proponents of science. Bragg relates some of the history surrounding the writing of the KJV, the reasons King James had for commissioning it, and the principles Tyndale used in writing the translation. ⇧
• • •
Timothy Larsen
"There are ways in which she clearly believed more about the Bible than she was able to articulate in a theological scheme.”
—Timothy Larsen, author of A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Timothy Larsen talks about the extent to which the King James Bible saturated the Victorian period and people. He notes that in the Victorian era, even atheists took it upon themselves to become experts on the Bible. The Bible was the primary literature through which the schools taught children to read, and its influence continued into adulthood. Larsen discusses the place of doubt in the experience of Victorians and the reasons for and meaning of the doubt. At some level, the tremendous doubt of the Victorians arose out of the pervasive importance and influence of the Bible in its texts, its symbolism, and its metaphors. Because it was so highly regarded, it was so closely scrutinized, and doubt and belief mixed together in the Victorian soul in paradoxical and complex ways. At the deepest levels, the Bible shaped the patterns of thinking and feeling not merely for churchgoers, but for atheists, agnostics, and heretics. ⇧
• • •
Ralph C. Wood
“Good and evil are not obvious.”—Ralph C. Wood, author of Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God (Baylor University Press, 2011)
Ralph C. Wood discusses G. K. Chesterton's sacramental imagination on this last segment of the issue of the Journal. Wood describes what sacraments do, and he views G. K. Chesterton's imagination as especially fruitful in conveying grace and edification to his readers. He does this not merely by creating storied images of the true, good, and beautiful, but also by critically illustrating the false, evil, and ugly in our world. His voice was prophetic in that respect, calling out authorities for their moral failures. Wood describes Chesterton's spiritual journey since his youth, especially his encounters with nihilism in particular schools of art and public figures and intellectuals. "Nightmare" is the way this nihilism is represented in Chesterton’s writings; for him, the world has a nightmarish quality to it. Finally, Wood comments on Chesterton’s novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, which evokes the complexity and frequently ambiguous appearance of good and evil. ⇧
Guests on Volume 112
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on why “emerging adults” feel compelled to keep all their options open, in life and in thought
• DAVID L. SCHINDLER on how modern liberalism fails to acknowledge the reality of God's love in the order of Creation
• SARA ANSON VAUX on the moral vision of director Clint Eastwood
• MELVYN BRAGG on the origins and profound cultural influence of the King James Bible
• TIMOTHY LARSEN on how Victorians were united in their preoccupation with the Bible, whether or not they believed in God
• RALPH C. WOOD on the sacramental vision of G. K. Chesterton, and on the enigmatic message of The Man Who Was Thursday
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Christian Smith
"That creates a background understanding simply for earning a livelihood that: don't get stuck, don't settle in, don't settle down, don't get too confident, always be ready to move, always be ready to upgrade, keep all your options open, never burn any bridges. And I think there's kind of a cultural transposition between that realization of the implications of that economic fact, and the rest of life, which is just sort of kept open indefinitely."
—Christian Smith, author of Lost In Translation: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Sociologist Christian Smith begins this issue of the Journal with a discussion about the cultural conditions that shape emerging adults. Smith insists that emerging adults are not cultural aberrations, but fully in line with the culture that was handed down to them and is sustained by the wider society. It's a mistake to blame the youth, as if the problematic nature of emerging adulthood is merely a result of individual bad decisions. Smith describes how the expansion of higher education, delays in marriage, continuing parental financial support, technological changes, and changes in the global economy provide conditions for the development of emerging adults. These forces go hand in hand with a moral sensibility characterized by an unwillingness to invest in moral commitments because they don't matter. ⇧
• • •
David L. Schindler
"That memory of God is something that has to be recapitulated and unfolded in my subsequent way of life and subsequent acts of consciousness. . . . The implicit recognition that we are not our own, that we're given by another, and therefore it is always the case that we are more loved than we love, and therefore the movement of our consciousness already has built into it this implicit call to be grateful.”
—David L. Schindler, author of Ordering Love: Liberal Societies and the Memory of God (Eerdmans, 2011)
Theologian David L. Schindler explains the metaphysical centrality to all of reality of love, understood not merely as positive affections and acts of the human will, but as a given order of relationships and a rational and meaningful structure in all of Creation that exists prior to human engagement with it. It involves facts and values, public and private; it is not merely subjective, but objective as well. Love is not merely a human construction or activity, but a given, rationally-intelligible shape in Creation precisely because the Creator is a Logos of love. Liberal societies attempt to order life procedurally and apart from ultimate loves because questions of love involve non-neutral metaphysical claims which are understood categorically as dangerous or unfair. But this is not merely destructive since humans were made for love, but indeed impossible because even the denial of love (and other metaphysical claims) is itself a non-neutral metaphysical claim. To claim that societies can be governed apart from metaphysics is itself a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality. Schindler notes this becomes clear in any discussion of what freedom is. He observes that liberal conceptions of freedom, while overtly denying the presence of metaphysical claims, actually smuggle them in definitionally with enormous consequences for the lives of citizens. ⇧
• • •
Sara Anson Vaux
“He's mining something really deep about how and why humans get involved in slaughtering each other, even people very close to them.”
—Sara Anson Vaux, author of The Ethical Vision of Clint Eastwood (Eerdmans, 2011)
Sara Anson Vaux examines the ethical concerns of Clint Eastwood. Vaux describes the qualities of Eastwood's directing that she appreciates and also discusses some of the themes that are prevalent in Eastwood's films: the capacity of humans for slaughtering others, betrayal, beauty, bonds of friendship, the needs of community, and the relationship between members of different generations. In the process, Vaux draws on a number of Eastwood films, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, Mystic River, Unforgiven, Changeling, and Invictus. ⇧
• • •
Melvyn Bragg
"It is probably the most single important trigger in bringing us to where we are now. In language, in democracy, in the abolition of slavery, in philanthropy, in the empowerment of women, and on it goes.”
—Melvyn Bragg, author of The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011 (Counterpoint, 2011)
Melvyn Bragg reflects on the King James Bible's (KJV) massive literary and cultural influence in the world. Bragg begins by giving an account of his own experience in the Church of England and how the prose of the KJV was pervasive in the cultural institutions that ordered his experience. He argues that the KJV's influence on literature, politics, democracy, and civil rights has largely been airbrushed from history, despite its incontrovertible influence on cultural figures such as William Shakespeare. In Bragg's view, virulent strains of atheists and secularists are responsible in part for this loss of knowledge, and he laments the hubristic displacement of mystery that often accompanies overly enthusiastic proponents of science. Bragg relates some of the history surrounding the writing of the KJV, the reasons King James had for commissioning it, and the principles Tyndale used in writing the translation. ⇧
• • •
Timothy Larsen
"There are ways in which she clearly believed more about the Bible than she was able to articulate in a theological scheme.”
—Timothy Larsen, author of A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Timothy Larsen talks about the extent to which the King James Bible saturated the Victorian period and people. He notes that in the Victorian era, even atheists took it upon themselves to become experts on the Bible. The Bible was the primary literature through which the schools taught children to read, and its influence continued into adulthood. Larsen discusses the place of doubt in the experience of Victorians and the reasons for and meaning of the doubt. At some level, the tremendous doubt of the Victorians arose out of the pervasive importance and influence of the Bible in its texts, its symbolism, and its metaphors. Because it was so highly regarded, it was so closely scrutinized, and doubt and belief mixed together in the Victorian soul in paradoxical and complex ways. At the deepest levels, the Bible shaped the patterns of thinking and feeling not merely for churchgoers, but for atheists, agnostics, and heretics. ⇧
• • •
Ralph C. Wood
“Good and evil are not obvious.”—Ralph C. Wood, author of Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God (Baylor University Press, 2011)
Ralph C. Wood discusses G. K. Chesterton's sacramental imagination on this last segment of the issue of the Journal. Wood describes what sacraments do, and he views G. K. Chesterton's imagination as especially fruitful in conveying grace and edification to his readers. He does this not merely by creating storied images of the true, good, and beautiful, but also by critically illustrating the false, evil, and ugly in our world. His voice was prophetic in that respect, calling out authorities for their moral failures. Wood describes Chesterton's spiritual journey since his youth, especially his encounters with nihilism in particular schools of art and public figures and intellectuals. "Nightmare" is the way this nihilism is represented in Chesterton’s writings; for him, the world has a nightmarish quality to it. Finally, Wood comments on Chesterton’s novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, which evokes the complexity and frequently ambiguous appearance of good and evil. ⇧
Guests on Volume 113
• STEVEN SHAPIN on whether or not there is a single thing called “science,” and whether scientists are united by a single “scientific method"
• ARTHUR BOERS on why the ways in which technologies shape our lives should be recognized as spiritual and pastoral challenges
• CHRISTINE POHL on why a deliberate commitment to certain shared practices is necessary for the sustaining of community
• NORMAN WIRZBA on how attentiveness to our eating and our care of the land are central aspects of culture and of godly faith
• CRAIG BARTHOLOMEW on carelessness concerning embodied experience and our “crisis of place"
• DAVID I. SMITH on how the forms of pedagogical practices ought to be crafted to correspond to the content of teaching
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Steven Shapin
“I remember sitting next to a chemist at a meeting when someone stood up and said 'All the students at the university should know something called the scientific method,' and the chemist turned to me and said 'What is that?' And the person making the statement was an economist."
—Steven Shapin, author of Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority (Johns Hopkins, 2010)
Steven Shapin, historian of science at Harvard University, talks about the qualities modern people project onto science in order to enhance its stature and the ways cultural authorities burnish its image. He describes how science is today seen by many educated persons as monolithic, when there are in fact many sciences, each with their particular histories, methods, and modes of inquiry. At one point, even the academic field in which Shapin works was considered a science along the lines of the work of Max Weber. Nevertheless, as a matter of economic and political realities, institutional forces in society perpetuate this unhelpful simplification of the sciences. Shapin notes that it is counterintuitively in the departments of philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, etc. where “the scientific method” tends to be pushed most strongly. He goes on to describe the kind of ultimacy modern people seek from a mechanical method of gaining knowledge. The problem is that in the actual practice of the sciences it is impossible for it to be mechanical. Credibility and rhetoric, for example, are non-scientific factors that are always present and always bear on the conclusions. ⇧
• • •
Arthur Boers
“The key issue about technology or our use of technology is what it displaces from our lives.”
—Arthur Boers, author of Living Into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distractions (Brazos Press, 2012)
Arthur Boers discusses the practices of focal discipline that allow practitioners to fully and attentively live in a highly-technologized world. He describes some of the experiences with both Christians and non-Christians that led him to think and write about learning to re-focus on life. Boers believes that Christians tend to suffer from the same distracted ways of living as non-Christians, and so the Church does not provide a life-giving, attractive alternative to the cultural status quo. Focal practices allow relationships to be built in communities that tend to be fragmented by technological use. Boers wants us not to abandon technology, but to understand the ways we engage it and are shaped by it so that we can live with the kind of integrity we long for. ⇧
• • •
Christine Pohl
“When you're entitled to everything, you're grateful for nothing.”
—Christine Pohl, author of Living Into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us (Eerdmans, 2012)
Christine Pohl reflects on what is required for communities to grow and thrive over the long term. Pohl describes both our incredible desire for community, but also the difficulties we have with living in real communities. We tend to want community on our terms; we want the benefits, but not the obligations that are necessary for the generation of those benefits. This tendency is compounded by the unfortunate downplaying of the actual skills necessary for communities to thrive, skills which must be developed through practices because we are embodied creatures. Many believe that good intentions or a good perspective on community is really all that's needed, and that practices are inauthentic, but this is a misunderstanding of how embodied people come to know and love each other. Gratitude and hospitality are two of the practices that Pohl discusses with respect to individuals and also in the context of communities. ⇧
• • •
Norman Wirzba
“When we think about eating, we think about the act of consumption rather than the whole sweep of activity and process and production that has to happen before we could actually sit down to eat something.”
—Norman Wirzba, author of Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (Cambridge, 2011)
Theologian Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between food and faith. He begins by discussing the changes in the meaning of the word "culture" in the past two centuries: from expressing the link one has to the land and the process of deriving one's life from that land with its other inhabitants, to expressing an individual's consumption of products divorced from their earthly origins. That is, consumption in the modern world is increasingly distanced from the myriad processes that generate the goods to be consumed. Bread, for example, is reliant on many communities and cultural practices for it to be made and enjoyed. Eating depends on life and death in the world in profound ways, and modern practices can obscure the connections and significance of this truth. Wirzba turns to Genesis 2 to describe human interdependence with the very soil of Creation and man’s vocation as caretakers of the garden and of the animals originally presented to Adam. Rather than working out that vocation, he believes modern people have given themselves over to the idols of control, efficiency and convenience and created institutional structures and systems in the image of those idols that, ironically, undermine life. ⇧
• • •
Craig Bartholomew
“For science to really help us, it has to return to lived experience, and it's in that returning that it can deepen it.”
—Craig Bartholomew, author of Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place for Today (Baker Academic, 2011)
Craig Bartholomew reflects on the importance of place to our humanity. He agrees with the vast volume of literature detailing a “crisis of place" in our world, from the aesthetic homogeneity of suburban sprawl to the ecological devastation in various parts of the world to the movements of refugees from their homelands. Bartholomew explains how global culture is primarily structured in such a way as to increase spending and consumption; that is, it's built like a commercial mall. Not everyone views the diminishment of place as a problem, however. With these people, Bartholomew would agree that modernity brings many blessings, but at the same time, its destructive aspects have become evident and need to be addressed. He suggests that it is the abstraction of truth and knowledge from lived experience by (would-be) pure reason that is responsible for the damaging tendencies of some scientific pursuits, and he traces this practice of abstraction from the Enlightenment to contemporary ways of understanding the pursuit of knowledge. Bartholomew ends by reflecting on the incredible fertility of Scripture's view of place. ⇧
• • •
David I. Smith
“It's not that people don't care about teaching, and it's not that there aren't individuals who are doing it very well and who are expending great amounts of time and creativity, but we're still somewhat lacking in that ability to actually talk about what it is we're doing in a theologically-informed way when it comes to teaching practice.”
—David I. Smith, editor of Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith & Learning (Eerdmans, 2011)
David I. Smith, professor of German at Calvin College, recalls how he became a teacher of languages, asking himself what it means to teach Christianly. He believes that while the past forty years have brought significant clarity to the relationship between the Christian faith and ideas and worldviews, the vision of Christianity's significance for pedagogy itself is much murkier. Practical outworkings tend to lag our theorizing, especially in the realm of higher education. In fact, Christian universities generally follow secular schools in prizing academic research over excellence in teaching; consequentially, the practice of teaching is relatively underdeveloped. Smith draws on Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue to articulate the essential role of forms and practices in the building of virtues, and he gives examples from his own teaching experience to show the difference embodied practices can make in teaching. ⇧
Guests on Volume 113
• STEVEN SHAPIN on whether or not there is a single thing called “science,” and whether scientists are united by a single “scientific method"
• ARTHUR BOERS on why the ways in which technologies shape our lives should be recognized as spiritual and pastoral challenges
• CHRISTINE POHL on why a deliberate commitment to certain shared practices is necessary for the sustaining of community
• NORMAN WIRZBA on how attentiveness to our eating and our care of the land are central aspects of culture and of godly faith
• CRAIG BARTHOLOMEW on carelessness concerning embodied experience and our “crisis of place"
• DAVID I. SMITH on how the forms of pedagogical practices ought to be crafted to correspond to the content of teaching
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Steven Shapin
“I remember sitting next to a chemist at a meeting when someone stood up and said 'All the students at the university should know something called the scientific method,' and the chemist turned to me and said 'What is that?' And the person making the statement was an economist."
—Steven Shapin, author of Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority (Johns Hopkins, 2010)
Steven Shapin, historian of science at Harvard University, talks about the qualities modern people project onto science in order to enhance its stature and the ways cultural authorities burnish its image. He describes how science is today seen by many educated persons as monolithic, when there are in fact many sciences, each with their particular histories, methods, and modes of inquiry. At one point, even the academic field in which Shapin works was considered a science along the lines of the work of Max Weber. Nevertheless, as a matter of economic and political realities, institutional forces in society perpetuate this unhelpful simplification of the sciences. Shapin notes that it is counterintuitively in the departments of philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, etc. where “the scientific method” tends to be pushed most strongly. He goes on to describe the kind of ultimacy modern people seek from a mechanical method of gaining knowledge. The problem is that in the actual practice of the sciences it is impossible for it to be mechanical. Credibility and rhetoric, for example, are non-scientific factors that are always present and always bear on the conclusions. ⇧
• • •
Arthur Boers
“The key issue about technology or our use of technology is what it displaces from our lives.”
—Arthur Boers, author of Living Into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distractions (Brazos Press, 2012)
Arthur Boers discusses the practices of focal discipline that allow practitioners to fully and attentively live in a highly-technologized world. He describes some of the experiences with both Christians and non-Christians that led him to think and write about learning to re-focus on life. Boers believes that Christians tend to suffer from the same distracted ways of living as non-Christians, and so the Church does not provide a life-giving, attractive alternative to the cultural status quo. Focal practices allow relationships to be built in communities that tend to be fragmented by technological use. Boers wants us not to abandon technology, but to understand the ways we engage it and are shaped by it so that we can live with the kind of integrity we long for. ⇧
• • •
Christine Pohl
“When you're entitled to everything, you're grateful for nothing.”
—Christine Pohl, author of Living Into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us (Eerdmans, 2012)
Christine Pohl reflects on what is required for communities to grow and thrive over the long term. Pohl describes both our incredible desire for community, but also the difficulties we have with living in real communities. We tend to want community on our terms; we want the benefits, but not the obligations that are necessary for the generation of those benefits. This tendency is compounded by the unfortunate downplaying of the actual skills necessary for communities to thrive, skills which must be developed through practices because we are embodied creatures. Many believe that good intentions or a good perspective on community is really all that's needed, and that practices are inauthentic, but this is a misunderstanding of how embodied people come to know and love each other. Gratitude and hospitality are two of the practices that Pohl discusses with respect to individuals and also in the context of communities. ⇧
• • •
Norman Wirzba
“When we think about eating, we think about the act of consumption rather than the whole sweep of activity and process and production that has to happen before we could actually sit down to eat something.”
—Norman Wirzba, author of Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (Cambridge, 2011)
Theologian Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between food and faith. He begins by discussing the changes in the meaning of the word "culture" in the past two centuries: from expressing the link one has to the land and the process of deriving one's life from that land with its other inhabitants, to expressing an individual's consumption of products divorced from their earthly origins. That is, consumption in the modern world is increasingly distanced from the myriad processes that generate the goods to be consumed. Bread, for example, is reliant on many communities and cultural practices for it to be made and enjoyed. Eating depends on life and death in the world in profound ways, and modern practices can obscure the connections and significance of this truth. Wirzba turns to Genesis 2 to describe human interdependence with the very soil of Creation and man’s vocation as caretakers of the garden and of the animals originally presented to Adam. Rather than working out that vocation, he believes modern people have given themselves over to the idols of control, efficiency and convenience and created institutional structures and systems in the image of those idols that, ironically, undermine life. ⇧
• • •
Craig Bartholomew
“For science to really help us, it has to return to lived experience, and it's in that returning that it can deepen it.”
—Craig Bartholomew, author of Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place for Today (Baker Academic, 2011)
Craig Bartholomew reflects on the importance of place to our humanity. He agrees with the vast volume of literature detailing a “crisis of place" in our world, from the aesthetic homogeneity of suburban sprawl to the ecological devastation in various parts of the world to the movements of refugees from their homelands. Bartholomew explains how global culture is primarily structured in such a way as to increase spending and consumption; that is, it's built like a commercial mall. Not everyone views the diminishment of place as a problem, however. With these people, Bartholomew would agree that modernity brings many blessings, but at the same time, its destructive aspects have become evident and need to be addressed. He suggests that it is the abstraction of truth and knowledge from lived experience by (would-be) pure reason that is responsible for the damaging tendencies of some scientific pursuits, and he traces this practice of abstraction from the Enlightenment to contemporary ways of understanding the pursuit of knowledge. Bartholomew ends by reflecting on the incredible fertility of Scripture's view of place. ⇧
• • •
David I. Smith
“It's not that people don't care about teaching, and it's not that there aren't individuals who are doing it very well and who are expending great amounts of time and creativity, but we're still somewhat lacking in that ability to actually talk about what it is we're doing in a theologically-informed way when it comes to teaching practice.”
—David I. Smith, editor of Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith & Learning (Eerdmans, 2011)
David I. Smith, professor of German at Calvin College, recalls how he became a teacher of languages, asking himself what it means to teach Christianly. He believes that while the past forty years have brought significant clarity to the relationship between the Christian faith and ideas and worldviews, the vision of Christianity's significance for pedagogy itself is much murkier. Practical outworkings tend to lag our theorizing, especially in the realm of higher education. In fact, Christian universities generally follow secular schools in prizing academic research over excellence in teaching; consequentially, the practice of teaching is relatively underdeveloped. Smith draws on Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue to articulate the essential role of forms and practices in the building of virtues, and he gives examples from his own teaching experience to show the difference embodied practices can make in teaching. ⇧
Guests on Volume 114
• SUSAN CAIN, on how the twentieth-century displacement of character by “personality” encouraged Americans to sell themselves (and marginalize introverts)
• BRAD S. GREGORY, on the danger of assuming that previous epochs of history have no lasting influence, and how unintended consequences of the Reformation shrunk Christian cultural influence
• DAVID SEHAT, on why the story of religious liberty in America is more complicated than is often acknowledged
• AUGUSTINE THOMPSON, O.P., on the myths and realities of St. Francis of Assisi
• GERALD R. MCDERMOTT, on how love and beauty are more fundamental in the thought of Jonathan Edwards than the image of an angry God
• MARILYN CHANDLER MCENTYRE, on lessons in The Scarlet Letter about wise ways of reading complex texts.
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Susan Cain
"When we hit the culture of personality, all of a sudden the ads started focusing on [communicating] ‘Use our product, use this shaving cream and you will become a great salesman, you will become socially attractive.'"
— Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Crown Publishers, 2012)
Author Susan Cain talks about the social and economic factors in the twentieth century that led to a culture that celebrated and encouraged extroversion and de-valued introversion. Cain argues that the rise of big business and urbanization at the turn of the century drew larger and larger numbers of young people out of small towns away into big cities where the business was. What began to matter more than the inner person and character that was known over time was personality, salesmanship and the first impression because those were the criteria that success in big cities would be based on. In the new culture of personality, selling yourself and your business well were the crucial capacities people would aspire to. ⇧
• • •
Brad S. Gregory
"Religion is not something separate from the rest of life in the late Middle Ages or in the Reformation era. It becomes something separate and separable as a long-term, difficult, painful process because of the disagreements and concrete conflicts of the Reformation era."
—Brad Gregory, author of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard University Press, 2012)
Historian Brad Gregory discusses the unintended consequences of the Reformation, consequences which continue to this very day in the hyperpluralism and polarization of the public sphere, the unsustainable consumerism of the developed world, and the marginalization of truth in human morality and culture. He begins by articulating the problems with a "supersessionist" view of history, the idea that later epochs completely displaced earlier periods of time so that the concerns of earlier periods effectively evaporate. Among these problems is the forced homogeneity this view imposes on what really is a very heterogenous mix of persons, perspectives, and lives in modern society. Gregory then explains how the disagreements and conflicts of the Reformation era between various Protestant and Catholics communities led to institutional solutions that first created a category of private religion and then removed that religion from the domain of public life. Ironically, this development would not have been acceptable from any of the Reformation-era parties, all of whom insisted Christianity ordered all of life, but nonetheless their inability to unite led to the secularization of the world. Gregory ends with a discussion of religious liberty and how the modern State controls the religious lives of individuals as much if not more than civil or ecclesiastical authorities in the medieval period. ⇧
• • •
David Sehat
“When we don't acknowledge the complexity of the past, we end up simplifying and betraying what's at stake."
— David Sehat, author of The Myth of American Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2011)
David Sehat explains how his book on religious liberty in America emerged out of his observations that most contemporary people discussing religious liberty had false views about the past that (mis)informed discussion. He elaborates on how his readings of early American documents challenged his preexisting view, typical of modern progressive liberals, that church and state was clearly separated in the founding of America, and that religious conservatives were trying to undo the genius of the Founding Fathers. But his reading also disproved the typical religious conservative view that church and state had a simple, conflict-free relationship. Rather, the actual history is characterized as much by incoherence, inconsistency, dissent and disagreement as any temporary agreements, and by loud, passionate public discussion of the place and significance of religious belief in matters of social and political order. Finally, Sehat described a more nuanced three-fold manner in which religion can be established, used by John Witte, Jr. The first manner is when the state financially supports the church directly. The second manner is the ceremonial establishment of religion, where religious language is used in official functions and ceremonial processes of the State. The third manner is the importation and propagation of religious ideas into law and policy. Sehat argues that while religious establishment in the first manner largely went away by the 1830s, Protestant Christianity continued to be largely established in the second and third manners leading to many conflicts in American history to this day. ⇧
• • •
Augustine Thompson
“His encounter of God is an encounter of an enfleshed God who died for us: so physical things matter."
—Augustine Thompson, O. P., author of Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Cornell University Press, 2012)
Augustine Thompson reflects on the origins of the notion of the bohemian hippie St. Francis of Assisi in the searches for the historical Francis than began in the late nineteenth century. Thompson discusses how certain documents were misdated as earlier than they were, and on that basis, a picture of St. Francis as an individualistic, romantic rebel, constrained in his spirituality by the corrupt church hierarchy was promulgated. He describes the historical context of St. Francis’s life and explains how the events of his conversion and spiritual life were actually not exceptional, but rather quite conventional for lay penitents of the period. Even Francis's complaints against the clergy were not what is typically thought of as Francis’s, but were about the lackadaisical manner of their care for the bodies of the congregation. One area where contemporary knowledge of St. Francis is largely accurate is his love for nature and for animals, especially the birds. Thompson concludes the interview with stories about Francis's encounter with animals and their sacramental significance to St. Francis. ⇧
• • •
Gerald McDermott
“In the whole history of Christian thought — twenty centuries of Christian thinking — no one, for no thinker, not even Augustine, not even Von Balthasar in the twentieth century who came the closest, for none of these thinkers was beauty as central to their vision of God as it was for Jonathan Edwards.”
—Gerald McDermott, author of The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Gerald McDermott discusses the place of beauty in the thought of Jonathan Edwards. He notes that Edwards was always open in his thinking to more, deeper and greater truths that can be reached through the faculty of redeemed reason chastened by Scripture. It's this openness to truths that makes Edwards a bridge figure for many Christian traditions, between Protestant and Catholic, Eastern and Western, liberal and conservative, and charismatic and non-charismatic traditions. Edwards's understanding of beauty is central to how he understands conversion and what the unregenerate are capable and incapable of perceiving and loving because beauty is what the affections are concerned with, and the affections -;which originate in the heart, the deepest part of the soul -;are what makes humans the way they are. Creation itself, and man-made culture and objects, exist as pointers to the triune beauty of God. God himself would not be God apart from his triune beauty, and his divine laws are manifestations of that beauty for the participation of his human creatures in his life. ⇧
• • •
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
“So he’s constantly throwing the matter back to the reader to say: you participate in making meaning. You participate not only in discovering meaning, but in actually determining how things mean what they mean.
—Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, author of Reading Like a Serpent: What the Scarlet A Is About (Cascade Books, 2012)
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre explains the experimental character of The Scarlet Letter, which centers on Hawthorne's shifting of genre in the way the narrator tells the story of the events. The narrator is highlighted in a stronger and craftier manner in the beginning, and he continues to explain the events in a way that draws out the complexity of the telling of events, self-consciously drawing the reader's attention to the not so objective nor omniscient nature of the storyteller. It was disturbing to the readers in the same way that higher criticism began to disrupt the traditional understanding of Scripture and the Enlightenment understanding of certainty and knowledge. In this way, the book represents a reaction against the reigning rationalism and scientism of the day. Even allegory that determines only a single meaning for texts is too restrictive compared to a symbolism which can provide space for multiple meanings. This line of thinking is under much discussion in artistic, literary, and biblical scholarship circles because the issues surrounding authorial intent, the sufficiency of texts, and the place of personal and communal experience and judgment. McEntyre concludes with comments regarding Hawthorne’s views of individual judgment and his religious life. ⇧
Guests on Volume 114
• SUSAN CAIN, on how the twentieth-century displacement of character by “personality” encouraged Americans to sell themselves (and marginalize introverts)
• BRAD S. GREGORY, on the danger of assuming that previous epochs of history have no lasting influence, and how unintended consequences of the Reformation shrunk Christian cultural influence
• DAVID SEHAT, on why the story of religious liberty in America is more complicated than is often acknowledged
• AUGUSTINE THOMPSON, O.P., on the myths and realities of St. Francis of Assisi
• GERALD R. MCDERMOTT, on how love and beauty are more fundamental in the thought of Jonathan Edwards than the image of an angry God
• MARILYN CHANDLER MCENTYRE, on lessons in The Scarlet Letter about wise ways of reading complex texts.
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Susan Cain
"When we hit the culture of personality, all of a sudden the ads started focusing on [communicating] ‘Use our product, use this shaving cream and you will become a great salesman, you will become socially attractive.'"
— Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Crown Publishers, 2012)
Author Susan Cain talks about the social and economic factors in the twentieth century that led to a culture that celebrated and encouraged extroversion and de-valued introversion. Cain argues that the rise of big business and urbanization at the turn of the century drew larger and larger numbers of young people out of small towns away into big cities where the business was. What began to matter more than the inner person and character that was known over time was personality, salesmanship and the first impression because those were the criteria that success in big cities would be based on. In the new culture of personality, selling yourself and your business well were the crucial capacities people would aspire to. ⇧
• • •
Brad S. Gregory
"Religion is not something separate from the rest of life in the late Middle Ages or in the Reformation era. It becomes something separate and separable as a long-term, difficult, painful process because of the disagreements and concrete conflicts of the Reformation era."
—Brad Gregory, author of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard University Press, 2012)
Historian Brad Gregory discusses the unintended consequences of the Reformation, consequences which continue to this very day in the hyperpluralism and polarization of the public sphere, the unsustainable consumerism of the developed world, and the marginalization of truth in human morality and culture. He begins by articulating the problems with a "supersessionist" view of history, the idea that later epochs completely displaced earlier periods of time so that the concerns of earlier periods effectively evaporate. Among these problems is the forced homogeneity this view imposes on what really is a very heterogenous mix of persons, perspectives, and lives in modern society. Gregory then explains how the disagreements and conflicts of the Reformation era between various Protestant and Catholics communities led to institutional solutions that first created a category of private religion and then removed that religion from the domain of public life. Ironically, this development would not have been acceptable from any of the Reformation-era parties, all of whom insisted Christianity ordered all of life, but nonetheless their inability to unite led to the secularization of the world. Gregory ends with a discussion of religious liberty and how the modern State controls the religious lives of individuals as much if not more than civil or ecclesiastical authorities in the medieval period. ⇧
• • •
David Sehat
“When we don't acknowledge the complexity of the past, we end up simplifying and betraying what's at stake."
— David Sehat, author of The Myth of American Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2011)
David Sehat explains how his book on religious liberty in America emerged out of his observations that most contemporary people discussing religious liberty had false views about the past that (mis)informed discussion. He elaborates on how his readings of early American documents challenged his preexisting view, typical of modern progressive liberals, that church and state was clearly separated in the founding of America, and that religious conservatives were trying to undo the genius of the Founding Fathers. But his reading also disproved the typical religious conservative view that church and state had a simple, conflict-free relationship. Rather, the actual history is characterized as much by incoherence, inconsistency, dissent and disagreement as any temporary agreements, and by loud, passionate public discussion of the place and significance of religious belief in matters of social and political order. Finally, Sehat described a more nuanced three-fold manner in which religion can be established, used by John Witte, Jr. The first manner is when the state financially supports the church directly. The second manner is the ceremonial establishment of religion, where religious language is used in official functions and ceremonial processes of the State. The third manner is the importation and propagation of religious ideas into law and policy. Sehat argues that while religious establishment in the first manner largely went away by the 1830s, Protestant Christianity continued to be largely established in the second and third manners leading to many conflicts in American history to this day. ⇧
• • •
Augustine Thompson
“His encounter of God is an encounter of an enfleshed God who died for us: so physical things matter."
—Augustine Thompson, O. P., author of Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Cornell University Press, 2012)
Augustine Thompson reflects on the origins of the notion of the bohemian hippie St. Francis of Assisi in the searches for the historical Francis than began in the late nineteenth century. Thompson discusses how certain documents were misdated as earlier than they were, and on that basis, a picture of St. Francis as an individualistic, romantic rebel, constrained in his spirituality by the corrupt church hierarchy was promulgated. He describes the historical context of St. Francis’s life and explains how the events of his conversion and spiritual life were actually not exceptional, but rather quite conventional for lay penitents of the period. Even Francis's complaints against the clergy were not what is typically thought of as Francis’s, but were about the lackadaisical manner of their care for the bodies of the congregation. One area where contemporary knowledge of St. Francis is largely accurate is his love for nature and for animals, especially the birds. Thompson concludes the interview with stories about Francis's encounter with animals and their sacramental significance to St. Francis. ⇧
• • •
Gerald McDermott
“In the whole history of Christian thought — twenty centuries of Christian thinking — no one, for no thinker, not even Augustine, not even Von Balthasar in the twentieth century who came the closest, for none of these thinkers was beauty as central to their vision of God as it was for Jonathan Edwards.”
—Gerald McDermott, author of The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Gerald McDermott discusses the place of beauty in the thought of Jonathan Edwards. He notes that Edwards was always open in his thinking to more, deeper and greater truths that can be reached through the faculty of redeemed reason chastened by Scripture. It's this openness to truths that makes Edwards a bridge figure for many Christian traditions, between Protestant and Catholic, Eastern and Western, liberal and conservative, and charismatic and non-charismatic traditions. Edwards's understanding of beauty is central to how he understands conversion and what the unregenerate are capable and incapable of perceiving and loving because beauty is what the affections are concerned with, and the affections -;which originate in the heart, the deepest part of the soul -;are what makes humans the way they are. Creation itself, and man-made culture and objects, exist as pointers to the triune beauty of God. God himself would not be God apart from his triune beauty, and his divine laws are manifestations of that beauty for the participation of his human creatures in his life. ⇧
• • •
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
“So he’s constantly throwing the matter back to the reader to say: you participate in making meaning. You participate not only in discovering meaning, but in actually determining how things mean what they mean.
—Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, author of Reading Like a Serpent: What the Scarlet A Is About (Cascade Books, 2012)
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre explains the experimental character of The Scarlet Letter, which centers on Hawthorne's shifting of genre in the way the narrator tells the story of the events. The narrator is highlighted in a stronger and craftier manner in the beginning, and he continues to explain the events in a way that draws out the complexity of the telling of events, self-consciously drawing the reader's attention to the not so objective nor omniscient nature of the storyteller. It was disturbing to the readers in the same way that higher criticism began to disrupt the traditional understanding of Scripture and the Enlightenment understanding of certainty and knowledge. In this way, the book represents a reaction against the reigning rationalism and scientism of the day. Even allegory that determines only a single meaning for texts is too restrictive compared to a symbolism which can provide space for multiple meanings. This line of thinking is under much discussion in artistic, literary, and biblical scholarship circles because the issues surrounding authorial intent, the sufficiency of texts, and the place of personal and communal experience and judgment. McEntyre concludes with comments regarding Hawthorne’s views of individual judgment and his religious life. ⇧
Guests on Volume 115
• ARLIE RUSSELL HOCHSCHILD on how the reliance in personal life on professional consultants establishes market-shaped models for imagining personal identity
• ANDREW DAVISON on why a fully Christian approach to apologetics requires a Christian understanding of reason
• ADRIAN PABST on why only a Christian understanding of God and Creation can provide the ground for understanding the order of reality
• GARY COLLEDGE on the centrality of Christian belief to the writings and social concerns of Charles Dickens
• LINDA LEWIS on how Charles Dickens assumed in his readers a basic Biblical literacy, and so constructed his stories in a sort of conversation with the teaching of Jesus
• THOMAS BERGLER on how the Church’s captivity to youth culture eclipses concern for (or even a belief in the possibility of) Christian maturity
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Arlie Russell Hochschild
"We look at life in a 'buying' kind of way by focusing on the result - the purchase point - and not at the process that brings us to that result.”
— Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times (Metropolitan Books, 2012)
Arlie Russell Hochschild joins us to talk about how viewing our very selves as products on a market distorts the way we experience our lives. Hochschild criticizes the encouragement of “branding” ourselves, which limits our worth to how we are perceived by the public. She discusses what is lost when we begin to commercialize the deepest and most intimate parts of our lives. Being fixated on the end result, we lose the power and significance of the process of making something and growing with others in a journey. We become infatuated with control, and we attempt to control things whose value is undermined by artificiality. Hochschild cites numerous examples of practices and services which are growing in popularity which can accurately be described as creepy in how they remove and delegate participation in our own lives. In contrast to the contractual, limited, disjointed interactions of market relationships, relationships built on trust and loyalty through self-giving create longer lasting and more rewarding relationships. The interview ends with a discussion of weddings and the services surrounding that occasion. ⇧
• • •
Andrew Davison
"Apologetics is already halfway towards its goal if it's responding to wonder."
— Andrew Davison, author of Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition (Eerdmans, 2011)
Andrew Davison wants to re-evaluate how we understand apologetics. He views modern apologetics as relying on an Enlightenment understanding of reason as cold, calculating, analytical and purely logical rather than a pre-modern, Christian understanding of reason as desiring the truth for its beauty and goodness. For that reason, modern apologetics fails to grapple with the imagination and how the mind is drawn in by beauty. Beginning from that understanding of reason, Davison wants to push back against the notion that everyone can see reality clearly. Rather, he believes it is necessary for all peoples seeking the truth to realize that even the most basic observations are interpretive in nature, resting on a particular lens through which we view and desire the world. Davison ends with comments on the wonder of receiving the world as a milestone of apologetics. ⇧
• • •
Adrian Pabst
"No anonymous creative principle could explain in the end why it would want to issue forth into a multiplicity of individual things."
— Adrian Pabst, author of Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy (Eerdmans, 2012)
Adrian Pabst discusses the theological nature of metaphysics. He begins with addressing why metaphysics came to be dismissed by public intellectuals in wider society. Thinkers like Nietzsche viewed metaphysics as a straitjacket, an obscuring obstacle and constraint upon our minds in pursuit of the truth. Pabst takes issue with this disregard of metaphysics, often based on misunderstandings of philosophers, foremost among whom is Plato. He discusses common misreadings of Plato focusing on dualism, and explains how Plato understood the relationship between the unity and multiplicity of the reality we all experience. Pabst highlights the notion of participation as key to this relationship, as well as the fundamentally relational and self-giving nature of truth, goodness, beauty, justice and other transcendental ideas. While premodern philosophers were able to discover much of the metaphysical nature of reality, Pabst argues the personal and relational nature of the Creator in the Biblical tradition as necessary to explain the most basic questions of matter and reality that Plato could not answer. Pabst explains how a truer understanding of metaphysics would make “the common good” a coherent concept and aid in the cultivation of an alternative modernity. ⇧
• • •
Gary Colledge
“He wants [his children] to read the New Testament and understand the Jesus of the New Testament without hearing a preacher stand up and explain that Jesus to them or reading something about Jesus; he wants them to see it from the New Testament.”
— Gary Colledge, author of God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author (Brazos, 2012)
Gary Colledge believes the Christian worldview of Charles Dickens has been obscured and ignored by literary critics. He believes this worldview formed the background of his novels, and that accounting for those Christian beliefs and convictions is necessary to understanding the texts. For example, Bleak House involves characters that embody distinct biblical ethical paradigms and whose conflicts with each other form significant aspects of the plot. And yet, recent major stage and film productions of the story ignore these conflicts. Colledge traces this dismissal of the religious aspects of Dickens to early and influential critics like Arthur Quiller-Couch and Humphrey House. But Colledge argues that, for example, criticism of the church is not a sign of irreligion, but of a desire of the church to be reformed. Colledge’s research leads him to use Dickens’s book The Life of Our Lord, which he wrote to his children, as a touchstone of Dickens’s entire corpus and a view into the heart of Dickens, a heart which, despite his controversial views of the Old Testament and some New Testament epistles, Colledge argues is deeply Christian. ⇧
• • •
Linda Lewis
“These children were being idolized as almost physical icons. . . . Older people are not to be trusted, that the young are insightful, pure, innocent, close to God.”
— Linda Lewis, author of Dickens, His Parables, and His Reader (University of Missouri Press, 2012)
Linda Lewis discusses biblical themes in some of Dickens’s writings. She argues that Dickens assumed a deep familiarity with biblical narratives and other Christian sources like the Anglican liturgy. Debt and forgiveness, mercy and grace, free will and good works, faith and doubt, and other motifs are repeatedly displayed in Dickens’s characters. Lewis concludes that Dickens’s ambitions were for praise for himself, but also for the promotion of a social ethic and political vision he believed was best. Dickens was ruthless in criticizing certain churches and, despite his desire to be liked, did not shy away from singling out particular practices he saw as misguided and destructive. This segment concludes with Lewis commenting on Dickens’s high view of children throughout his novels, which foreshadowed a number of cultural trends in the twentieth century. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Bergler
“American teenagers in the 1950s were highly unlikely to become Communist, but were very likely to become passive consumers. . . . Technically speaking, if all you really want of young people is to come to church and not make trouble, [consumerism] works for that, too. But if you want young people to do something more than that, then it doesn’t work as well.”
— Thomas Bergler, author of The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Eerdmans, 2012)
Thomas Bergler joins us on this concluding segment of the issue to talk about the juvenilization of American Christianity. He comments that most Christian students are no longer aware of the need to be spiritually mature. Maturity is seen in a negative light, just as in the broader culture. Bergler does not place all the blame on churches and individuals, but observes that this cultural tendency has to do with changes in what it means to be an adult more generally as well. Yet this is a problem, Bergler argues, because it obscures an essential aspect of the Gospel, which is not just about the forgiveness of our sins and our place in heaven, but about the renewal of our lives in conformity to Christ. This aspect is undermined by an undervaluing of maturity and giving “fun” a central place in Christianity. Bergler outlines how this tendency to immaturity arose from strategies churches and parachurch organizations used to appeal to younger people. A significant motivation and aspect of the driving force for the rash mobilization of youth appeal strategies on a mass scale in the mid-20th century was the fear of losing the youth to Communism and Fascism. Youth ministries in America felt it was their calling to save the world from these twin evils, and they won funding and support from major commercial and public institutions to win the young people. Bergler concludes the discussion by reflecting on impact of consumerism on Christian youth culture and the increasingly implausible goal of maturity in a world where the customer is always right. ⇧
Guests on Volume 115
• ARLIE RUSSELL HOCHSCHILD on how the reliance in personal life on professional consultants establishes market-shaped models for imagining personal identity
• ANDREW DAVISON on why a fully Christian approach to apologetics requires a Christian understanding of reason
• ADRIAN PABST on why only a Christian understanding of God and Creation can provide the ground for understanding the order of reality
• GARY COLLEDGE on the centrality of Christian belief to the writings and social concerns of Charles Dickens
• LINDA LEWIS on how Charles Dickens assumed in his readers a basic Biblical literacy, and so constructed his stories in a sort of conversation with the teaching of Jesus
• THOMAS BERGLER on how the Church’s captivity to youth culture eclipses concern for (or even a belief in the possibility of) Christian maturity
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Arlie Russell Hochschild
"We look at life in a 'buying' kind of way by focusing on the result - the purchase point - and not at the process that brings us to that result.”
— Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times (Metropolitan Books, 2012)
Arlie Russell Hochschild joins us to talk about how viewing our very selves as products on a market distorts the way we experience our lives. Hochschild criticizes the encouragement of “branding” ourselves, which limits our worth to how we are perceived by the public. She discusses what is lost when we begin to commercialize the deepest and most intimate parts of our lives. Being fixated on the end result, we lose the power and significance of the process of making something and growing with others in a journey. We become infatuated with control, and we attempt to control things whose value is undermined by artificiality. Hochschild cites numerous examples of practices and services which are growing in popularity which can accurately be described as creepy in how they remove and delegate participation in our own lives. In contrast to the contractual, limited, disjointed interactions of market relationships, relationships built on trust and loyalty through self-giving create longer lasting and more rewarding relationships. The interview ends with a discussion of weddings and the services surrounding that occasion. ⇧
• • •
Andrew Davison
"Apologetics is already halfway towards its goal if it's responding to wonder."
— Andrew Davison, author of Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition (Eerdmans, 2011)
Andrew Davison wants to re-evaluate how we understand apologetics. He views modern apologetics as relying on an Enlightenment understanding of reason as cold, calculating, analytical and purely logical rather than a pre-modern, Christian understanding of reason as desiring the truth for its beauty and goodness. For that reason, modern apologetics fails to grapple with the imagination and how the mind is drawn in by beauty. Beginning from that understanding of reason, Davison wants to push back against the notion that everyone can see reality clearly. Rather, he believes it is necessary for all peoples seeking the truth to realize that even the most basic observations are interpretive in nature, resting on a particular lens through which we view and desire the world. Davison ends with comments on the wonder of receiving the world as a milestone of apologetics. ⇧
• • •
Adrian Pabst
"No anonymous creative principle could explain in the end why it would want to issue forth into a multiplicity of individual things."
— Adrian Pabst, author of Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy (Eerdmans, 2012)
Adrian Pabst discusses the theological nature of metaphysics. He begins with addressing why metaphysics came to be dismissed by public intellectuals in wider society. Thinkers like Nietzsche viewed metaphysics as a straitjacket, an obscuring obstacle and constraint upon our minds in pursuit of the truth. Pabst takes issue with this disregard of metaphysics, often based on misunderstandings of philosophers, foremost among whom is Plato. He discusses common misreadings of Plato focusing on dualism, and explains how Plato understood the relationship between the unity and multiplicity of the reality we all experience. Pabst highlights the notion of participation as key to this relationship, as well as the fundamentally relational and self-giving nature of truth, goodness, beauty, justice and other transcendental ideas. While premodern philosophers were able to discover much of the metaphysical nature of reality, Pabst argues the personal and relational nature of the Creator in the Biblical tradition as necessary to explain the most basic questions of matter and reality that Plato could not answer. Pabst explains how a truer understanding of metaphysics would make “the common good” a coherent concept and aid in the cultivation of an alternative modernity. ⇧
• • •
Gary Colledge
“He wants [his children] to read the New Testament and understand the Jesus of the New Testament without hearing a preacher stand up and explain that Jesus to them or reading something about Jesus; he wants them to see it from the New Testament.”
— Gary Colledge, author of God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author (Brazos, 2012)
Gary Colledge believes the Christian worldview of Charles Dickens has been obscured and ignored by literary critics. He believes this worldview formed the background of his novels, and that accounting for those Christian beliefs and convictions is necessary to understanding the texts. For example, Bleak House involves characters that embody distinct biblical ethical paradigms and whose conflicts with each other form significant aspects of the plot. And yet, recent major stage and film productions of the story ignore these conflicts. Colledge traces this dismissal of the religious aspects of Dickens to early and influential critics like Arthur Quiller-Couch and Humphrey House. But Colledge argues that, for example, criticism of the church is not a sign of irreligion, but of a desire of the church to be reformed. Colledge’s research leads him to use Dickens’s book The Life of Our Lord, which he wrote to his children, as a touchstone of Dickens’s entire corpus and a view into the heart of Dickens, a heart which, despite his controversial views of the Old Testament and some New Testament epistles, Colledge argues is deeply Christian. ⇧
• • •
Linda Lewis
“These children were being idolized as almost physical icons. . . . Older people are not to be trusted, that the young are insightful, pure, innocent, close to God.”
— Linda Lewis, author of Dickens, His Parables, and His Reader (University of Missouri Press, 2012)
Linda Lewis discusses biblical themes in some of Dickens’s writings. She argues that Dickens assumed a deep familiarity with biblical narratives and other Christian sources like the Anglican liturgy. Debt and forgiveness, mercy and grace, free will and good works, faith and doubt, and other motifs are repeatedly displayed in Dickens’s characters. Lewis concludes that Dickens’s ambitions were for praise for himself, but also for the promotion of a social ethic and political vision he believed was best. Dickens was ruthless in criticizing certain churches and, despite his desire to be liked, did not shy away from singling out particular practices he saw as misguided and destructive. This segment concludes with Lewis commenting on Dickens’s high view of children throughout his novels, which foreshadowed a number of cultural trends in the twentieth century. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Bergler
“American teenagers in the 1950s were highly unlikely to become Communist, but were very likely to become passive consumers. . . . Technically speaking, if all you really want of young people is to come to church and not make trouble, [consumerism] works for that, too. But if you want young people to do something more than that, then it doesn’t work as well.”
— Thomas Bergler, author of The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Eerdmans, 2012)
Thomas Bergler joins us on this concluding segment of the issue to talk about the juvenilization of American Christianity. He comments that most Christian students are no longer aware of the need to be spiritually mature. Maturity is seen in a negative light, just as in the broader culture. Bergler does not place all the blame on churches and individuals, but observes that this cultural tendency has to do with changes in what it means to be an adult more generally as well. Yet this is a problem, Bergler argues, because it obscures an essential aspect of the Gospel, which is not just about the forgiveness of our sins and our place in heaven, but about the renewal of our lives in conformity to Christ. This aspect is undermined by an undervaluing of maturity and giving “fun” a central place in Christianity. Bergler outlines how this tendency to immaturity arose from strategies churches and parachurch organizations used to appeal to younger people. A significant motivation and aspect of the driving force for the rash mobilization of youth appeal strategies on a mass scale in the mid-20th century was the fear of losing the youth to Communism and Fascism. Youth ministries in America felt it was their calling to save the world from these twin evils, and they won funding and support from major commercial and public institutions to win the young people. Bergler concludes the discussion by reflecting on impact of consumerism on Christian youth culture and the increasingly implausible goal of maturity in a world where the customer is always right. ⇧
Guests on Volume 116
• STRATFORD CALDECOTT on why education should be designed with a deep and wide understanding of human nature and must sustain the unity of knowledge
• FRED BAHNSON on how a Christian understanding of God's redemptive work on the earth should influence our practices of growing and sharing food
• ERIC O. JACOBSEN on how modernism distorted the shape of cities and how Christian reflection on the nature of neighborliness can help restore them
• J. BUDZISZEWSKI on how meaning in human life transcends a merely biological explanation of our behavior
• BRIAN BROCK on the various ways in which the Church has regarded its obligation to welcome the disabled
• ALLEN VERHEY on the difference between a “medicalized” death and a death experienced in light of God's cosmic work of redemption
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Stratford Caldecott
“When an adult manages to preserve that sense of a kind of giftedness, the infinite wonder and extraordinariness of being alive, (as G.K. Chesterton did, for example, in his writing), it enlivens ones whole existence. . . . I feel it’s somehow at the base of this kind of sensibility that I was trying to get people to cultivate in education.”
— Stratford Caldecott, author of Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education (Angelico Publications, 2012)
How we teach is shaped by how we think about reality. Many perceptive books diagnosing cultural disorder deal extensively with education as the core of that problem and therefore it's cure. C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man is a good example. Education should concern the whole man, challenging him to see and understand the whole of reality. Stratford Caldecott discusses the meaning and good of the classical liberal arts education, emphasizing the foundational nature of the Trivium (Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric) as the sustaining element throughout education. Caldecott discusses the centrality of contemplation in human fulfillment and receptivity to God, concluding with the importance of acknowledging our creatureliness, and recounting the birth of language in the Garden of Eden. ⇧
• • •
Fred Bahnson
“The whole history of agriculture in the twentieth century in America is a misunderstanding of dominion and our role in creation. We have to read those verses like 'subdue and conquer it through a Christological lens. How does Jesus conquer? He conquers through the cross, in suffering and weakness.”
— Fred Bahnson, author of Making Peace with the Land: God's Call to Reconcile with Creation (InterVarsity Press, 2012)
Fred Bahnson talks about how to live peacefully in relation to the land God has created. Bahnson reflects on how he came to appreciate the order God has created within the ecosystems in which he grew up, and human flourishing in light of how God has made the earth. There is a strong temptation to understand dominion and agriculture in ways that emphasize the imposition of human goals and desires, rather than seeking to understand the teleological purpose God designed for a region and how we might do agriculture in light of it and in light of the sort of loving dominion Christ exercises as the suffering King. Bahnson describes his path from divinity school to Catholic Mayan coffee farms in South America to an organic permaculture farm in North Carolina, a path in which his vocational calling to grow food and then to teach gardeners because clearer. He now seeks to help churches, pastors and other Christian leaders to cultivate communities that grow food together and in so doing experience the presence of Christ. ⇧
• • •
Eric O. Jacobsen
“It raises the question, ‘How does community ever get going when our impulse so often is to turn away from community?’ And the answer that I came up with is that often times it has to do with limits.”
— Eric O. Jacobsen, author of The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic, 2012)
Eric Jacobsen discusses developments in New Urbanism and ways a Christian understanding of architecture and urban planning can meet the challenges ahead. He wrote his earlier book, Sidewalks in the Kingdom, to encourage Christians to read the secular literature on New Urbanism because there was much Christians could learn from it. His latest book presents a Christian perspective on the ordering of public spaces, and he is concerned with the ways public space is ordered to adolescent avoidance of conflict and pain, rather than in building environments that encourage interaction in ways that allow people to deal with conflict and pain and grow up together. He explains modernism — with respect to the built environment — as technologically focused, valuing efficiency, and encouraging individual autonomy. The most widespread example of this modernism is how our spaces are built for cars, with big parking lots and structures that look good when driving by at 60 mph, but are boring and sterile when standing next to them. Where modernism is concerned with aesthetics, it treats buildings and structures as interesting or beautiful sculptures to look at, rather than as places for people to live and work and enjoy. Jacobsen believes a Christian understanding of the built environment seeks to make places conform to the needs and flourishing of communities and human encounters, rather than the needs of people in cars per se. At the same time, Christian New Urbanists have learned that simply building a New Urbanist neighborhood and moving in isn't sufficient to create community in so far as the residents act as autonomous consumers who act in communal ways only when convenient. Jacobsen observes and reflects on how limits on our resources and on what we can do often serve as the means for real community to develop. ⇧
• • •
J. Budziszewski
“We don’t just rut: we marry, we court, we love. ... It just tears me up to see how jaded, how cynical some of these 19 year olds are already. Now, an animal doesn't get cynical: why do we? People say, ‘if only we cast off the illusion that sex has any meaning, we’ll be much happier.’ I would say that the idea that it has no meaning is the illusion I wish we would become disillusioned with.”
— J. Budziszewski, author of On the Meaning of Sex (ISI Books, 2012)
Philosopher J. Budziszewski talks about the meaning of sex. He begins by exposing the flaws in the notion that authenticity in humans means living out the capacities we share with animals. After all, humans behave differently from animals and struggle with questions of meaning that are simply absent in animals. To be authentic then, we must be true to that difference. Budziszewski discusses his experiences as a professor with students first learning of the reasons for believing in sexuality morality. There are a range and mix of reactions even among Christian students, from an appreciation that morality is not arbitrary, social contract challenges, to utilitarian responses, to panic and sadness, to excitement and longing, to fear that the truth might require a change in way that they live. Many more students today recognize that something went amiss during the sexual revolution, though they are not sure what or why. Yet Budziszewski sees much hope in this recognition that the ways students understand and live with respect to sex might change. ⇧
• • •
Brian Brock
“The language of disability has been, for modern secularity, strongly narrowed onto the question of political rights. Dementia presents an incredible pastoral problem. . . . All those questions can only be grappled with pastorally if we've gotten beyond the modern straight jacket that says ‘oh, they’re losing their humanity.’”
— Brian Brock, author of Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Eerdmans, 2010)
Theologian Brian Brock examines how Christians throughout history have understood human disability. In the secular West today, we understand the language of disability in terms of political rights, with respect to a status that demands some kind of public provision. One reason this is problematic for a theological account of disability is because such an understanding tends to be restricted to a view of proper functionality defined in materialistic and economic terms. Brock also points out that the modern disability movement tends to reject notions of charity and care for the disabled which deny the full equality of the disabled person compared to the powerful one offering charity. Theologians dealing with disability in recent decades have agreed with the need to recognize the full inclusion of disabled persons in society, and yet difficulties have arisen with respect to intellectual disability because so much of modern society is predicated on a notion of personhood as fundamentally a functioning will that can choose and make decisions and define oneself. This question is paralled in Catholic parishes and Protestant churches in the struggle to determine whether those with cerebral palsy or Downs Syndrome might receive the Eucharist apart from catechesis or a credible profession of faith. Brock summarizes three discourses. The activist approach was an immediate reaction of the church which recognized that some events that happen to people should not happen, and Christians should do something about it. So early Christians saved children abandoned to die to exposure and pushed back against the ostracizing of lepers. A second approach is the theoretical approach of conceptually elaborating and explaining what is going on with disability or extreme variations in human bodies, and this follows after a couple centuries. The existential discourse reflects on how the self reacts to variations in human persons, and how the self might conform and change into holiness. Brock's aspiration for this book is to help churches go beyond an inclusion model to seeing how disabled persons might be more mature and faithful than “normal” Christians — and therefore models to emulate — not merely in spite, but because of their disability. ⇧
• • •
Allen Verhey
“When we have this imagination that death is the enemy to be defeated by the greater powers of medicine, then the temptation is for the church to abandon the patient to medicine. It is the vocation of the church to resist surrendering death and the dying to medicine. It is the vocation of the church to continue to care for and be present with those of their community who are dying.”
— Allen Verhey, author of The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus (Eerdmans, 2012)
Ethicist Allen Verhey talks about his reflections on dying precipitated by a recent period in his life in which he was in danger of death from a blood condition. He begins by noting how the contemporary medicalization of death has made dying a technological matter in which medical technicians play the active role and the dying become passive patients and wards. There is less of a sense of dying as an event in a person's life with family and friends, where the dying person is the central actor. Verhey comments on his studies of books in the genre of ars moriendi, in particular Craft and Knowledge for to Die Well. Unfortunately, the Christian tradition absorbed from this book and the greater ars moriendi tradition an understanding of death as a friend that liberates us from our bodies into a spiritual realm. In this image, death should be celebrated as the pathway to bliss. Combined with the medicalization of death, the image of death as a friend and a blessing distorts the biblical understanding of death as a horror that is defeated not by medical technology, but by the resurrection of Jesus. The biblical portrait creates a place and reason for comfort amidst death, rather than celebration, and grounds our hope in the acting of God in history rather than the powers of medical technology. Verhey concludes with a discussion of other ways the church ought to distance itself from the flaws of ars moriendi and embrace practices of lament and hope in the future. ⇧
Guests on Volume 116
• STRATFORD CALDECOTT on why education should be designed with a deep and wide understanding of human nature and must sustain the unity of knowledge
• FRED BAHNSON on how a Christian understanding of God's redemptive work on the earth should influence our practices of growing and sharing food
• ERIC O. JACOBSEN on how modernism distorted the shape of cities and how Christian reflection on the nature of neighborliness can help restore them
• J. BUDZISZEWSKI on how meaning in human life transcends a merely biological explanation of our behavior
• BRIAN BROCK on the various ways in which the Church has regarded its obligation to welcome the disabled
• ALLEN VERHEY on the difference between a “medicalized” death and a death experienced in light of God's cosmic work of redemption
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Stratford Caldecott
“When an adult manages to preserve that sense of a kind of giftedness, the infinite wonder and extraordinariness of being alive, (as G.K. Chesterton did, for example, in his writing), it enlivens ones whole existence. . . . I feel it’s somehow at the base of this kind of sensibility that I was trying to get people to cultivate in education.”
— Stratford Caldecott, author of Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education (Angelico Publications, 2012)
How we teach is shaped by how we think about reality. Many perceptive books diagnosing cultural disorder deal extensively with education as the core of that problem and therefore it's cure. C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man is a good example. Education should concern the whole man, challenging him to see and understand the whole of reality. Stratford Caldecott discusses the meaning and good of the classical liberal arts education, emphasizing the foundational nature of the Trivium (Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric) as the sustaining element throughout education. Caldecott discusses the centrality of contemplation in human fulfillment and receptivity to God, concluding with the importance of acknowledging our creatureliness, and recounting the birth of language in the Garden of Eden. ⇧
• • •
Fred Bahnson
“The whole history of agriculture in the twentieth century in America is a misunderstanding of dominion and our role in creation. We have to read those verses like 'subdue and conquer it through a Christological lens. How does Jesus conquer? He conquers through the cross, in suffering and weakness.”
— Fred Bahnson, author of Making Peace with the Land: God's Call to Reconcile with Creation (InterVarsity Press, 2012)
Fred Bahnson talks about how to live peacefully in relation to the land God has created. Bahnson reflects on how he came to appreciate the order God has created within the ecosystems in which he grew up, and human flourishing in light of how God has made the earth. There is a strong temptation to understand dominion and agriculture in ways that emphasize the imposition of human goals and desires, rather than seeking to understand the teleological purpose God designed for a region and how we might do agriculture in light of it and in light of the sort of loving dominion Christ exercises as the suffering King. Bahnson describes his path from divinity school to Catholic Mayan coffee farms in South America to an organic permaculture farm in North Carolina, a path in which his vocational calling to grow food and then to teach gardeners because clearer. He now seeks to help churches, pastors and other Christian leaders to cultivate communities that grow food together and in so doing experience the presence of Christ. ⇧
• • •
Eric O. Jacobsen
“It raises the question, ‘How does community ever get going when our impulse so often is to turn away from community?’ And the answer that I came up with is that often times it has to do with limits.”
— Eric O. Jacobsen, author of The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic, 2012)
Eric Jacobsen discusses developments in New Urbanism and ways a Christian understanding of architecture and urban planning can meet the challenges ahead. He wrote his earlier book, Sidewalks in the Kingdom, to encourage Christians to read the secular literature on New Urbanism because there was much Christians could learn from it. His latest book presents a Christian perspective on the ordering of public spaces, and he is concerned with the ways public space is ordered to adolescent avoidance of conflict and pain, rather than in building environments that encourage interaction in ways that allow people to deal with conflict and pain and grow up together. He explains modernism — with respect to the built environment — as technologically focused, valuing efficiency, and encouraging individual autonomy. The most widespread example of this modernism is how our spaces are built for cars, with big parking lots and structures that look good when driving by at 60 mph, but are boring and sterile when standing next to them. Where modernism is concerned with aesthetics, it treats buildings and structures as interesting or beautiful sculptures to look at, rather than as places for people to live and work and enjoy. Jacobsen believes a Christian understanding of the built environment seeks to make places conform to the needs and flourishing of communities and human encounters, rather than the needs of people in cars per se. At the same time, Christian New Urbanists have learned that simply building a New Urbanist neighborhood and moving in isn't sufficient to create community in so far as the residents act as autonomous consumers who act in communal ways only when convenient. Jacobsen observes and reflects on how limits on our resources and on what we can do often serve as the means for real community to develop. ⇧
• • •
J. Budziszewski
“We don’t just rut: we marry, we court, we love. ... It just tears me up to see how jaded, how cynical some of these 19 year olds are already. Now, an animal doesn't get cynical: why do we? People say, ‘if only we cast off the illusion that sex has any meaning, we’ll be much happier.’ I would say that the idea that it has no meaning is the illusion I wish we would become disillusioned with.”
— J. Budziszewski, author of On the Meaning of Sex (ISI Books, 2012)
Philosopher J. Budziszewski talks about the meaning of sex. He begins by exposing the flaws in the notion that authenticity in humans means living out the capacities we share with animals. After all, humans behave differently from animals and struggle with questions of meaning that are simply absent in animals. To be authentic then, we must be true to that difference. Budziszewski discusses his experiences as a professor with students first learning of the reasons for believing in sexuality morality. There are a range and mix of reactions even among Christian students, from an appreciation that morality is not arbitrary, social contract challenges, to utilitarian responses, to panic and sadness, to excitement and longing, to fear that the truth might require a change in way that they live. Many more students today recognize that something went amiss during the sexual revolution, though they are not sure what or why. Yet Budziszewski sees much hope in this recognition that the ways students understand and live with respect to sex might change. ⇧
• • •
Brian Brock
“The language of disability has been, for modern secularity, strongly narrowed onto the question of political rights. Dementia presents an incredible pastoral problem. . . . All those questions can only be grappled with pastorally if we've gotten beyond the modern straight jacket that says ‘oh, they’re losing their humanity.’”
— Brian Brock, author of Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Eerdmans, 2010)
Theologian Brian Brock examines how Christians throughout history have understood human disability. In the secular West today, we understand the language of disability in terms of political rights, with respect to a status that demands some kind of public provision. One reason this is problematic for a theological account of disability is because such an understanding tends to be restricted to a view of proper functionality defined in materialistic and economic terms. Brock also points out that the modern disability movement tends to reject notions of charity and care for the disabled which deny the full equality of the disabled person compared to the powerful one offering charity. Theologians dealing with disability in recent decades have agreed with the need to recognize the full inclusion of disabled persons in society, and yet difficulties have arisen with respect to intellectual disability because so much of modern society is predicated on a notion of personhood as fundamentally a functioning will that can choose and make decisions and define oneself. This question is paralled in Catholic parishes and Protestant churches in the struggle to determine whether those with cerebral palsy or Downs Syndrome might receive the Eucharist apart from catechesis or a credible profession of faith. Brock summarizes three discourses. The activist approach was an immediate reaction of the church which recognized that some events that happen to people should not happen, and Christians should do something about it. So early Christians saved children abandoned to die to exposure and pushed back against the ostracizing of lepers. A second approach is the theoretical approach of conceptually elaborating and explaining what is going on with disability or extreme variations in human bodies, and this follows after a couple centuries. The existential discourse reflects on how the self reacts to variations in human persons, and how the self might conform and change into holiness. Brock's aspiration for this book is to help churches go beyond an inclusion model to seeing how disabled persons might be more mature and faithful than “normal” Christians — and therefore models to emulate — not merely in spite, but because of their disability. ⇧
• • •
Allen Verhey
“When we have this imagination that death is the enemy to be defeated by the greater powers of medicine, then the temptation is for the church to abandon the patient to medicine. It is the vocation of the church to resist surrendering death and the dying to medicine. It is the vocation of the church to continue to care for and be present with those of their community who are dying.”
— Allen Verhey, author of The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus (Eerdmans, 2012)
Ethicist Allen Verhey talks about his reflections on dying precipitated by a recent period in his life in which he was in danger of death from a blood condition. He begins by noting how the contemporary medicalization of death has made dying a technological matter in which medical technicians play the active role and the dying become passive patients and wards. There is less of a sense of dying as an event in a person's life with family and friends, where the dying person is the central actor. Verhey comments on his studies of books in the genre of ars moriendi, in particular Craft and Knowledge for to Die Well. Unfortunately, the Christian tradition absorbed from this book and the greater ars moriendi tradition an understanding of death as a friend that liberates us from our bodies into a spiritual realm. In this image, death should be celebrated as the pathway to bliss. Combined with the medicalization of death, the image of death as a friend and a blessing distorts the biblical understanding of death as a horror that is defeated not by medical technology, but by the resurrection of Jesus. The biblical portrait creates a place and reason for comfort amidst death, rather than celebration, and grounds our hope in the acting of God in history rather than the powers of medical technology. Verhey concludes with a discussion of other ways the church ought to distance itself from the flaws of ars moriendi and embrace practices of lament and hope in the future. ⇧
Guests on Volume 117
• MATTHEW DICKERSON on the likenesses between Beowulf and three of Tolkien’s heroes, and on how (despite Peter Jackson’s rendition) The Lord of the Rings is more interested in virtue than in military exploits
• JENNIFER WOODDRUFF TAIT on how assumptions about the nature of moral knowledge — derived from the school of common-sense realism — compelled Victorian Methodists and others to substitute grape juice for wine in celebrating the Lord’s Supper
• JEFFRY DAVIS and PHILIP RYKEN on why the liberal arts ought to be recognized as a calling that enriches Christian living
• ROBERT GEORGE on the consequences of redefining marriage
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Matthew Dickerson
“It’s not other-worldly literature — we always think of fantasy literature as being other-worldly, and Tolkien’s works are often considered the greatest example of fantasy literature — but this one great example of fantasy literature was, in Tolkien’s mind, not other-worldly at all, but really about an imagined history in our world.”
— Matthew Dickerson, author of A Hobbit's Journey: Discovering the Enchantment of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth (Brazos Press, 2012)
Matthew Dickerson talks about how The Lord of the Rings is rooted in J. R. R. Tolkien’s religious understanding of reality. Dickerson examines some of Tolkien’s characters in light of Tolkien’s essays on Beowulf. Moral virtue is the thing that, for Tolkien, defines heroism. Although Tolkien’s works are fantasy literature, they share moral truths with our universe; we are part of the same story. Dickerson points out that Tolkien’s books are much less concerned with martial matters than we often think. Even though war is the backdrop to the books, very little of the progression of the story is taking place in battle. The physical battles in the book become, in some way, metaphorical for the spiritual battle against evil. ⇧
• • •
Jennifer Woodruff Tait
“Sometimes the Bible speaks of wine negatively. That’s not a problem for these people. Sometimes the Bible speaks of wine positively, yet science tells us that wine is never positive. So we have to find a way to make this work exegetically. And that’s where you get the two-wine theory, the idea that there are two kinds of wine spoken of in the Bible. . . . This didn’t always work when the wrong word showed up in the wrong passage.”
— Jennifer Woodruff Tait, author of The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism (University of Alabama Press, 2012)
Jennifer Woodruff Tait begins by defining a philosophical movement known as “common sense realism.” Common sense realism led people to the idea that alcohol destroyed the sense organs, prohibiting one from making proper moral judgments. These Victorian Methodists understood that science teaches alcohol is always negative; this conclusion then had to be reconciled with Scripture. There was a strong emphasis in nineteenth-century intellectual culture on the necessity of order and regularity, both of which alcohol was thought to undermine. Tait discusses the link between common sense realism and the eugenic ideas of the nineteenth century, and how drinking was thought to cause the birth of imbeciles. ⇧
• • •
Jeffry Davis and Philip Ryken
“We live in a culture, as I suppose everyone that has ever lived has, that wants to squeeze us into its own mold. But the mold of our culture is not thoughtful, reflective, taking time to read deeply and seek to answer questions deeply — but it’s much more superficial and ephemeral. And if we can cultivate in a younger generation a love for the life of the mind, we are providing something that is deeply counter-cultural and also deeply Christian.”
— Philip Ryken, co-editor of Liberal Arts for the Christian Life (Crossway, 2012)
Jeffry Davis and Philip Ryken expound the virtues of a liberal arts education. They begin by discussing their intent for the book: to get students to think about the liberal arts as a way of life. We live in a superficial culture that wants to mold us after its own fashion, so we must cultivate in the younger generation a love for the life of the mind. It is misleading to talk about the integration of faith and learning, because the life of the mind and the life of Christian faith are connected. Truth is not apparent; it must be pursued, and the best way to pursue it is through community. Ryken describes the type of upbringing that would best foster an appreciation for the liberal arts in a child – a family dinner table, a strong church community, and a home context in which the child is opened up to the world of beauty through sound are all important aspects. ⇧
• • •
Robert George
“In both cases, those challenging the laws are making the claim that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment . . . essentially requires states to recognize same-sex partnerships as marriages.”
— Robert George, editor of The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals (Spence Publishing, 2006)
Legal scholar Robert George begins by detailing two cases about marriage currently being considered in the U.S. Supreme Court. Hollingsworth v. Perry challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8 in California, and United States v. Windsor challenges the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.
“[Justice Sotomayor], who is a liberal jurist appointed by President Obama . . . asked a very tough question: ‘well if that’s true, then on what ground of principle could we say that states are permitted to refuse to recognize polygamous marriages as valid?’ It was a penetrating and tough question . . . and to her very great credit, she asked the question. And the answer was not a very good answer.”
— Robert George
Robert George mentions a difficult question posed by Justice Sotomayor: if we recognize same-sex marriages as valid, on what grounds of principle can we refuse to recognize the validity of polygamous marriages? George also points out that there is technically no ban on homosexual marriage — same-sex couples can go through a marriage ceremony at churches that will perform them, and then view themselves as married. What we mean by “ban” is actually the absence of state recognition of these marriages. What might follow from state recognition of such marriages is the enforcement that all third parties such as churches or educational institutions recognize such marriages as valid. While same-sex marriage advocates claim to be pushing the state towards a “neutral” understanding of marriage, their claim of “neutrality” is actual a drastic redefinition of marriage, from the traditional understanding of marriage as a conjugal union to the revisionist definition: that marriage is a completely emotional and romantic attachment to a significant other. Marriage, unlike friendship, is a comprehensive relationship; not just limited to an intellectual or spiritual or emotional bond, as in a friendship, but a bodily union as well. This is why cultures have never made infertility grounds for barring people from marriage or annulment of a marriage, but not consummating the marriage was grounds for annulment. If we do not accept this comprehensive, bodily grounding of marriage, we cannot explain why marriage is seen as a sexual union at all - we might as well base marriages on things like playing tennis together.
“There is no basis for supposing that marriage is inherently a sexual relationship at all, if we redefine marriage as simply emotional union.”
— Robert George
Absent a comprehensive, conjugal view of marriage, there is no ground for barring a “marriage” between two sisters who care for each other. Why should they be barred from marriage simply because they are not in a sexual relationship? George argues that we have grown too accustomed in our culture to think of human goods in purely instrumental terms, and not in terms of human flourishing. Many people have also lost the distinction between true freedom and license (or licentiousness). As a result, human good and freedom has come to mean nothing more than the satisfaction of my personal desires, however untrammeled they might be. George suggests that we must recover a sense of the intrinsic value of virtue; of virtue for its own sake. ⇧
Guests on Volume 117
• MATTHEW DICKERSON on the likenesses between Beowulf and three of Tolkien’s heroes, and on how (despite Peter Jackson’s rendition) The Lord of the Rings is more interested in virtue than in military exploits
• JENNIFER WOODDRUFF TAIT on how assumptions about the nature of moral knowledge — derived from the school of common-sense realism — compelled Victorian Methodists and others to substitute grape juice for wine in celebrating the Lord’s Supper
• JEFFRY DAVIS and PHILIP RYKEN on why the liberal arts ought to be recognized as a calling that enriches Christian living
• ROBERT GEORGE on the consequences of redefining marriage
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Matthew Dickerson
“It’s not other-worldly literature — we always think of fantasy literature as being other-worldly, and Tolkien’s works are often considered the greatest example of fantasy literature — but this one great example of fantasy literature was, in Tolkien’s mind, not other-worldly at all, but really about an imagined history in our world.”
— Matthew Dickerson, author of A Hobbit's Journey: Discovering the Enchantment of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth (Brazos Press, 2012)
Matthew Dickerson talks about how The Lord of the Rings is rooted in J. R. R. Tolkien’s religious understanding of reality. Dickerson examines some of Tolkien’s characters in light of Tolkien’s essays on Beowulf. Moral virtue is the thing that, for Tolkien, defines heroism. Although Tolkien’s works are fantasy literature, they share moral truths with our universe; we are part of the same story. Dickerson points out that Tolkien’s books are much less concerned with martial matters than we often think. Even though war is the backdrop to the books, very little of the progression of the story is taking place in battle. The physical battles in the book become, in some way, metaphorical for the spiritual battle against evil. ⇧
• • •
Jennifer Woodruff Tait
“Sometimes the Bible speaks of wine negatively. That’s not a problem for these people. Sometimes the Bible speaks of wine positively, yet science tells us that wine is never positive. So we have to find a way to make this work exegetically. And that’s where you get the two-wine theory, the idea that there are two kinds of wine spoken of in the Bible. . . . This didn’t always work when the wrong word showed up in the wrong passage.”
— Jennifer Woodruff Tait, author of The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism (University of Alabama Press, 2012)
Jennifer Woodruff Tait begins by defining a philosophical movement known as “common sense realism.” Common sense realism led people to the idea that alcohol destroyed the sense organs, prohibiting one from making proper moral judgments. These Victorian Methodists understood that science teaches alcohol is always negative; this conclusion then had to be reconciled with Scripture. There was a strong emphasis in nineteenth-century intellectual culture on the necessity of order and regularity, both of which alcohol was thought to undermine. Tait discusses the link between common sense realism and the eugenic ideas of the nineteenth century, and how drinking was thought to cause the birth of imbeciles. ⇧
• • •
Jeffry Davis and Philip Ryken
“We live in a culture, as I suppose everyone that has ever lived has, that wants to squeeze us into its own mold. But the mold of our culture is not thoughtful, reflective, taking time to read deeply and seek to answer questions deeply — but it’s much more superficial and ephemeral. And if we can cultivate in a younger generation a love for the life of the mind, we are providing something that is deeply counter-cultural and also deeply Christian.”
— Philip Ryken, co-editor of Liberal Arts for the Christian Life (Crossway, 2012)
Jeffry Davis and Philip Ryken expound the virtues of a liberal arts education. They begin by discussing their intent for the book: to get students to think about the liberal arts as a way of life. We live in a superficial culture that wants to mold us after its own fashion, so we must cultivate in the younger generation a love for the life of the mind. It is misleading to talk about the integration of faith and learning, because the life of the mind and the life of Christian faith are connected. Truth is not apparent; it must be pursued, and the best way to pursue it is through community. Ryken describes the type of upbringing that would best foster an appreciation for the liberal arts in a child – a family dinner table, a strong church community, and a home context in which the child is opened up to the world of beauty through sound are all important aspects. ⇧
• • •
Robert George
“In both cases, those challenging the laws are making the claim that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment . . . essentially requires states to recognize same-sex partnerships as marriages.”
— Robert George, editor of The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals (Spence Publishing, 2006)
Legal scholar Robert George begins by detailing two cases about marriage currently being considered in the U.S. Supreme Court. Hollingsworth v. Perry challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8 in California, and United States v. Windsor challenges the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.
“[Justice Sotomayor], who is a liberal jurist appointed by President Obama . . . asked a very tough question: ‘well if that’s true, then on what ground of principle could we say that states are permitted to refuse to recognize polygamous marriages as valid?’ It was a penetrating and tough question . . . and to her very great credit, she asked the question. And the answer was not a very good answer.”
— Robert George
Robert George mentions a difficult question posed by Justice Sotomayor: if we recognize same-sex marriages as valid, on what grounds of principle can we refuse to recognize the validity of polygamous marriages? George also points out that there is technically no ban on homosexual marriage — same-sex couples can go through a marriage ceremony at churches that will perform them, and then view themselves as married. What we mean by “ban” is actually the absence of state recognition of these marriages. What might follow from state recognition of such marriages is the enforcement that all third parties such as churches or educational institutions recognize such marriages as valid. While same-sex marriage advocates claim to be pushing the state towards a “neutral” understanding of marriage, their claim of “neutrality” is actual a drastic redefinition of marriage, from the traditional understanding of marriage as a conjugal union to the revisionist definition: that marriage is a completely emotional and romantic attachment to a significant other. Marriage, unlike friendship, is a comprehensive relationship; not just limited to an intellectual or spiritual or emotional bond, as in a friendship, but a bodily union as well. This is why cultures have never made infertility grounds for barring people from marriage or annulment of a marriage, but not consummating the marriage was grounds for annulment. If we do not accept this comprehensive, bodily grounding of marriage, we cannot explain why marriage is seen as a sexual union at all - we might as well base marriages on things like playing tennis together.
“There is no basis for supposing that marriage is inherently a sexual relationship at all, if we redefine marriage as simply emotional union.”
— Robert George
Absent a comprehensive, conjugal view of marriage, there is no ground for barring a “marriage” between two sisters who care for each other. Why should they be barred from marriage simply because they are not in a sexual relationship? George argues that we have grown too accustomed in our culture to think of human goods in purely instrumental terms, and not in terms of human flourishing. Many people have also lost the distinction between true freedom and license (or licentiousness). As a result, human good and freedom has come to mean nothing more than the satisfaction of my personal desires, however untrammeled they might be. George suggests that we must recover a sense of the intrinsic value of virtue; of virtue for its own sake. ⇧
Guests on Volume 118
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on the ethical questions raised by anti-aging research, especially its most extreme forms in the "transhumanist" movement
• RON HIGHFIELD on why the modern assumptions about personal identity, freedom, and human dignity create prejudices against the Gospel's account of God and the self
• MARK MITCHELL on why gratitude and stewardship should be seen as fundamental political postures
• DANIEL M. BELL, JR., on how capitalism nurtures the assumption of the autonomous self
• HELEN RHEE on the centrality of almsgiving to Christian identity in the early Church
• PETER BROWN on how the early Church's wrestling with the questions of wealth and poverty steered a course between radical asceticism and careless indulgence
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Gilbert Meilaender
“Christians . . . have always been drawn back away from that sense of the person as entirely separate from the body—drawn back by some of the most fundamental Christian affirmations: Incarnation and Resurrection. Those are basic beliefs that finally require us to find ways to think about the connection of body and person and not to separate them.”
—Gilbert Meilaender, author of Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging (Eerdmans, 2013)
Ethicist Gilbert Meilaender explains why anti-aging research cannot be a metaphysically neutral topic, and argues against the utopianism of escaping the body. The interview includes an audio clip of Ray Kurzweil discussing the body’s disposability, and Meilaender points out why this futuristic hope is both unlikely and unwise. The desire to leave the body has its roots in the modern liberal tradition, and has to do with possessing versus being a body. Meilaender argues that this idea of remaking ourselves without any limit is an example of inappropriate desire for control, while recognizing the complexities inherent in these “ethical ambiguities.” ⇧
• • •
Ron Highfield
“We have to understand the culture better than it understands itself, so that we can then address the underlying values, the underlying way of thinking and assumptions about the self, and make those explicit so people can see them.”
—Ron Highfield, author of God, Freedom, and Human Dignity: Embracing a God-Centered Identity in a Me-Centered Culture (InterVarsity Press, 2013)
Ron Highfield discusses how his book addresses those who doubt Christianity’s goodness, especially as regards modern assumptions about identity, freedom, and dignity. He argues that there must be a fundamental altering of worldview presuppositions, and describes Zeus mythology’s caricature of God as an unjust and unpredictable tyrant--a being of pure will. Modern assumptions long established in other areas have greatly influenced our understanding of identity and submission to authority. Highfield explains how the Protestant affirmation of ordinary, everyday life can degenerate to sensualism and a denial of the need to rise to moral heights such as those set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. The goodness of creation means that it can be used for good; but not if it’s taken out of order. Highfield concludes that true community cannot be established apart from a conviction of harmony and God’s Divine ordering. Freedom and dignity, therefore, must be rooted in love. ⇧
• • •
Mark Mitchell
“I want to speak in terms of stewardship of the natural world, to be sure, but [also] of culture, of institutions, of places, that are specifically human. And so gratitude itself gives a launching pad for this discussion of stewardship that I think is so essential.”
—Mark Mitchell, author of The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place and Community in a Global Age (Potomac House, 2012)
Mark Mitchell’s book The Politics of Gratitude puts forward four concepts that are sadly missing from most political debates today: creatureliness, gratitude, human scale, and place. In this conversation, Mitchell explores the consequences of these four concepts throughout our lives. He urges that the conservatives of today to read conservatives of generations past in order to understand the philosophical foundations for true conservatism. He argues that responsibility ties directly into politics, and that shouldering the responsibility to steward our inheritance is a test of our gratitude for what we have received. He claims that the greatest errors of today are rooted in an emphasis on human autonomy and a hatred of the notion of limits on that autonomy. Mitchell concludes that withstanding consumerism is one way to potentially recover a countercultural sense of gratitude for the “un-bought graces of life.” ⇧
• • •
Daniel M. Bell, Jr.
“The natural ends should be rightly ordered toward the supernatural end. The use of material goods — the natural order of things — is a means of grace that’s meant to help guide us toward our supernatural ends, which is communion with God.”
—Daniel M. Bell, Jr., author of The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World (Baker Academic, 2012)
Is capitalism antithetical to the Christian life? Daniel M. Bell, Jr. explores the extent of this claim. Capitalism is about freedom of the individual to choose their own ends or purposes, which is antithetical to the Christian understanding of freedom. In fact, the root of the term “heresy” is “choice.” Bell argues that it is misguided to think the supernatural can be divorced from the natural end. He discusses how human desire is shaped by capitalist assumptions and manipulative marketing, which has been made possibly by a limiting of faith to the intellectual realm. Bell reminds us that our hearts and loves should also be directed toward God, and concludes with advice to clergy about how to encourage their parishioners toward a deep understanding of their economic lives and a healthy relation to God and neighbor. ⇧
• • •
Helen Rhee
“Because God cares about the poor, almsgiving is the most important work as Christians, as followers of a God who cares about the poor . . . It is the solution to greed and avarice, which is an idolatry.”
—Helen Rhee, author of Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation (Baker Academic, 2012)
Church historian Helen Rhee discusses Jewish thought regarding wealth and poverty as the background to the New Testament understanding of such. She also mentions a few instances of pagan almsgiving, though they were not prominent. In Jewish prophetic literature, certain Psalms of lament identify the psalmist as the poor and needy. Rhee concludes that the Christians thought of almsgiving as a solution to idolatry, explaining that it is not just theological or spiritual, but also social and moral in its implications. ⇧
• • •
Peter Brown
“I think on a subject like wealth and poverty, which are very charged topics . . . our danger is always to forget that they are complex topics. And I think that what a historian can do is, by basically nosing about in the ancient past, meet people who are engaged with the complexity, who are actually caught up in the complexity. And I think the danger is, perhaps, we over-dramatize the history of the Church.”
—Peter Brown, author of Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton University Press, 2012)
Historian Peter Brown explains that in spite of having had access for centuries to the church fathers’ numerous writings, only recently have we come to understand the social and material context within which they lived. The debate about wealth and poverty which was once considered primarily theological can now be seen as worked out among the less educated lay people. Brown describes how the remnants of small churches from ancient times were mostly lost next to the splendor of the gothic cathedrals. Because of their rediscovery through excavation, we are able now to study the life of the average Christian: what the Church was doing for the poor, and the consequences in the lives of the rich. Brown discusses Augustine’s teachings regarding the integration of the wealthy into the church, and seeks to correct the mistaken assumption that spectacular renunciations were seen by the church fathers as the only way to gain God’s grace. Brown instead argues that the greatest and steadiest almsgiving was often done by wealthy who didn’t give up everything, yet took seriously the responsibility of almsgiving. He reminds us of Augustine’s teaching that “you give to the poor because you recognize that you yourself are poor” and that rich and poor alike are mutually dependent on God’s mercy. ⇧
Guests on Volume 118
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on the ethical questions raised by anti-aging research, especially its most extreme forms in the "transhumanist" movement
• RON HIGHFIELD on why the modern assumptions about personal identity, freedom, and human dignity create prejudices against the Gospel's account of God and the self
• MARK MITCHELL on why gratitude and stewardship should be seen as fundamental political postures
• DANIEL M. BELL, JR., on how capitalism nurtures the assumption of the autonomous self
• HELEN RHEE on the centrality of almsgiving to Christian identity in the early Church
• PETER BROWN on how the early Church's wrestling with the questions of wealth and poverty steered a course between radical asceticism and careless indulgence
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Gilbert Meilaender
“Christians . . . have always been drawn back away from that sense of the person as entirely separate from the body—drawn back by some of the most fundamental Christian affirmations: Incarnation and Resurrection. Those are basic beliefs that finally require us to find ways to think about the connection of body and person and not to separate them.”
—Gilbert Meilaender, author of Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging (Eerdmans, 2013)
Ethicist Gilbert Meilaender explains why anti-aging research cannot be a metaphysically neutral topic, and argues against the utopianism of escaping the body. The interview includes an audio clip of Ray Kurzweil discussing the body’s disposability, and Meilaender points out why this futuristic hope is both unlikely and unwise. The desire to leave the body has its roots in the modern liberal tradition, and has to do with possessing versus being a body. Meilaender argues that this idea of remaking ourselves without any limit is an example of inappropriate desire for control, while recognizing the complexities inherent in these “ethical ambiguities.” ⇧
• • •
Ron Highfield
“We have to understand the culture better than it understands itself, so that we can then address the underlying values, the underlying way of thinking and assumptions about the self, and make those explicit so people can see them.”
—Ron Highfield, author of God, Freedom, and Human Dignity: Embracing a God-Centered Identity in a Me-Centered Culture (InterVarsity Press, 2013)
Ron Highfield discusses how his book addresses those who doubt Christianity’s goodness, especially as regards modern assumptions about identity, freedom, and dignity. He argues that there must be a fundamental altering of worldview presuppositions, and describes Zeus mythology’s caricature of God as an unjust and unpredictable tyrant--a being of pure will. Modern assumptions long established in other areas have greatly influenced our understanding of identity and submission to authority. Highfield explains how the Protestant affirmation of ordinary, everyday life can degenerate to sensualism and a denial of the need to rise to moral heights such as those set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. The goodness of creation means that it can be used for good; but not if it’s taken out of order. Highfield concludes that true community cannot be established apart from a conviction of harmony and God’s Divine ordering. Freedom and dignity, therefore, must be rooted in love. ⇧
• • •
Mark Mitchell
“I want to speak in terms of stewardship of the natural world, to be sure, but [also] of culture, of institutions, of places, that are specifically human. And so gratitude itself gives a launching pad for this discussion of stewardship that I think is so essential.”
—Mark Mitchell, author of The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place and Community in a Global Age (Potomac House, 2012)
Mark Mitchell’s book The Politics of Gratitude puts forward four concepts that are sadly missing from most political debates today: creatureliness, gratitude, human scale, and place. In this conversation, Mitchell explores the consequences of these four concepts throughout our lives. He urges that the conservatives of today to read conservatives of generations past in order to understand the philosophical foundations for true conservatism. He argues that responsibility ties directly into politics, and that shouldering the responsibility to steward our inheritance is a test of our gratitude for what we have received. He claims that the greatest errors of today are rooted in an emphasis on human autonomy and a hatred of the notion of limits on that autonomy. Mitchell concludes that withstanding consumerism is one way to potentially recover a countercultural sense of gratitude for the “un-bought graces of life.” ⇧
• • •
Daniel M. Bell, Jr.
“The natural ends should be rightly ordered toward the supernatural end. The use of material goods — the natural order of things — is a means of grace that’s meant to help guide us toward our supernatural ends, which is communion with God.”
—Daniel M. Bell, Jr., author of The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World (Baker Academic, 2012)
Is capitalism antithetical to the Christian life? Daniel M. Bell, Jr. explores the extent of this claim. Capitalism is about freedom of the individual to choose their own ends or purposes, which is antithetical to the Christian understanding of freedom. In fact, the root of the term “heresy” is “choice.” Bell argues that it is misguided to think the supernatural can be divorced from the natural end. He discusses how human desire is shaped by capitalist assumptions and manipulative marketing, which has been made possibly by a limiting of faith to the intellectual realm. Bell reminds us that our hearts and loves should also be directed toward God, and concludes with advice to clergy about how to encourage their parishioners toward a deep understanding of their economic lives and a healthy relation to God and neighbor. ⇧
• • •
Helen Rhee
“Because God cares about the poor, almsgiving is the most important work as Christians, as followers of a God who cares about the poor . . . It is the solution to greed and avarice, which is an idolatry.”
—Helen Rhee, author of Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation (Baker Academic, 2012)
Church historian Helen Rhee discusses Jewish thought regarding wealth and poverty as the background to the New Testament understanding of such. She also mentions a few instances of pagan almsgiving, though they were not prominent. In Jewish prophetic literature, certain Psalms of lament identify the psalmist as the poor and needy. Rhee concludes that the Christians thought of almsgiving as a solution to idolatry, explaining that it is not just theological or spiritual, but also social and moral in its implications. ⇧
• • •
Peter Brown
“I think on a subject like wealth and poverty, which are very charged topics . . . our danger is always to forget that they are complex topics. And I think that what a historian can do is, by basically nosing about in the ancient past, meet people who are engaged with the complexity, who are actually caught up in the complexity. And I think the danger is, perhaps, we over-dramatize the history of the Church.”
—Peter Brown, author of Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton University Press, 2012)
Historian Peter Brown explains that in spite of having had access for centuries to the church fathers’ numerous writings, only recently have we come to understand the social and material context within which they lived. The debate about wealth and poverty which was once considered primarily theological can now be seen as worked out among the less educated lay people. Brown describes how the remnants of small churches from ancient times were mostly lost next to the splendor of the gothic cathedrals. Because of their rediscovery through excavation, we are able now to study the life of the average Christian: what the Church was doing for the poor, and the consequences in the lives of the rich. Brown discusses Augustine’s teachings regarding the integration of the wealthy into the church, and seeks to correct the mistaken assumption that spectacular renunciations were seen by the church fathers as the only way to gain God’s grace. Brown instead argues that the greatest and steadiest almsgiving was often done by wealthy who didn’t give up everything, yet took seriously the responsibility of almsgiving. He reminds us of Augustine’s teaching that “you give to the poor because you recognize that you yourself are poor” and that rich and poor alike are mutually dependent on God’s mercy. ⇧
Guests on Volume 119
• MARY EBERSTADT on how the decline of formation of natural families has made Christian belief less plausible and contributed to the secularization of Europe
• ALLAN BEVERE on why the claim by “empire criticism” that the letter to the Colossians is a veiled repudiation of Roman imperial hubris is mistaken
• PETER J. LEITHART on how the Bible evaluates empires in light of their relationship with the people of God
• STEVEN BOYER on why “mystery” is a necessary category in Christian theology
• KAREN DIELEMAN on how different liturgical practices of Victorian congregationalism, Anglo-Catholicism, and Roman Catholicism influenced the poetry of Elizabeth Barret Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Proctor
• PETER PHILLIPS on the founding of The Tallis Scholars and the peculiar beauty of Renaissance polyphony
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Mary Eberstadt
“Nothing in human experience is regarded as quite so transcendental as being handed an infant and told, ‘take care of this.’”
— Mary Eberstadt, author of How the West Really Lost God (Templeton Press, 2013)
Mary Eberstadt’s book How the West Really Lost God challenges assumptions about the nature of secularization. In this conversation, Eberstadt argues that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has always depended on the family for its transmission. Although religious conviction is known to influence family formation, Eberstadt turns that assumption upside down: according to her research, weak family formation and familial illiteracy is the first cause of a diminishing Christianity. In a discussion of the history of post-World War II religious revivals and the effect of secularization, Eberstadt points out that religious booms are always accompanied by a rise in marriage and birth rates. She describes the manner in which participation in a family shapes our understanding of faith, and concludes that the institutionalization of birth and death (as in daycare and nursing homes) insulates people from the rhythms of family life and makes religion inaccessible to many people. ⇧
• • •
Allan Bevere
“Empires can do good things. Empires can be unjust. But because of the lordship of Jesus Christ, we know all empires end.”
— Allan Bevere, contributor to Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies (InterVarsity Press, 2013)
Jesus is Lord, Caesar Is Not, edited by Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica, is the first book to hold empire criticism up to evaluation. As one of this anthology’s contributing authors, Allan Bevere addresses this new direction in an increasingly politicized hermeneutic. He says that this type of New Testament criticism was especially popular during the Bush presidency’s era of aggressive foreign policy. However, although many of these policies still remain and are hallmarks of a totalizing empire, many of these voices have dropped quiet with the Obama presidency. Bevere agrees with empire critics who resist the spiritualizing of the gospel and maintain a historical context within which it should be understood. However, while recognizing that there is some good writing being done regarding the dominating tendency of empire, Bevere maintains that Paul is not primarily concerned with empire in his letter to the Colossians, and concludes that empire criticism has gone too far. ⇧
• • •
Peter J. Leithart
“That’s one of the key things that distinguished the more negative portrayal of empires in the Bible from the more neutral or positive ones...the issue that divides them is how the empire treats the people of God.”
— Peter J. Leithart, author of Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective (Wipf and Stock, 2012)
Leithart explains that empire studies (what Allan Bevere refers to as ‘empire criticism’) is a thread of New Testament scholarship that reads its text as consistently anti-imperial. His book Between Babel and Beast: American Empires in Biblical Perspective focuses on the extent to which empire criticism lumps together all empires as basically the same type of entity. The reality is much more complex, in that there are diverse sorts of empires. To highlight the stark contrasts between these empires, Leithart compares the early and late Old Testament description of Babel and Babylon as exemplary of maturing gentile political structures. Most important of all is the relation of empires to God’s people. Leithart balances his criticism of empire studies, maintaining that he is suspicious of the religious right’s portrayal of America in which the American nation takes on the sacredness of the Church’s mission. The centrality of the Church is a key theme in his book, by which Leithart seeks to encourage New Testament scholars toward a thoroughly Christo-centric politics. ⇧
• • •
Steven Boyer
“The apostles are given the mystery of the kingdom of God. They know the mystery. And yet, how many of us would say that knowing it means they've got it all figured out?”
— Steven Boyer, coauthor of The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable (Baker Academic, 2012)
Is it possible to confine God within the limits of reason, within cognitive categories suited to the world? Steven Boyer explains that mystery is not merely a puzzle to be solved: it can be the answer in itself. The oft-quoted mantra “Knowledge is Power” can lead to the assumption that the only knowledge worth having is that which leads to practical power. Boyer points out what he sees as an unhealthy distinction between God and God's attributes, and explains what he means by “revelational” versus “investigative” mystery. Discussing the extent to which childhood is motivated by wonder, Boyer concludes that the task of mature theology is not to eliminate wonder but to expand it. His book The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable was coauthored by Christopher A. Hall. ⇧
• • •
Karen Dieleman
“A Congregationalist comes to reality, to knowing the truth through the proclamation of the word. And an Anglo-Catholic comes to it through God's manifestation of Himself through a more indirect way: through analogy, for example, through typology.”
— Karen Dieleman, author of Religious Imaginaries: The Liturgical and Poetic Practices of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Proctor (Ohio University Press, 2012)
English professor Karen Dieleman discusses her book Religious Imaginaries: The Liturgical and Poetic Practices of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Procter. She addresses the influence of denominational difference in each poet's experience of life, relating it to the resulting structure and style of their poetry. Dieleman explains that to the Congregationalist Browning, everything tended toward the expository dimension, which can be seen in the multiple-voiced, dramatic dialogue which works its way in her poetry to a point of public epiphany. In Rossetti's Anglo-Catholic experience however, Dieleman sees a private encounter with mystery in which words are less necessary and language is more tightly disciplined. Dieleman sees the future-orientated nature of Procter’s poetry as inspired by the Roman Catholic focus on the resurrected Christ. She concludes that the Anglo-Catholic tradition was the most community-oriented of its day, expressed in Christina Rossetti's poetry by her interchangeable use of “I” and “We.” ⇧
• • •
Peter Phillips
“The emotional element is there. But it’s not thrown at you, it’s not as in your face as opera is. . . . In a really good piece, you've got to listen for about 10 minutes, because it probably won’t manifest itself at its full force until the end, until the final bars, where it’s going to blow up in your face and just sweep you away.”
— Peter Phillips, founder of The Tallis Scholars
Founder Peter Phillips recounts the history of his choral ensemble The Tallis Scholars. Phillips explains the extent to which 1970s performance practices obscured the natural clarity of this music, and the life’s work he saw in furthering the music’s appeal to audiences. Phillips describes the digital recording innovation of bringing forward the usually unheard inner parts with clarity, and explains his preference for a less reverberate recording space. He also defends this repertoire against the accusation of “boring, white, emotionless” and explains the subtle nature of the music's emotional element. The interview concludes with a discussion of Thomas Tallis’ hidden depths, and the continuing discovery of works of Flemish Renaissance polyphony. ⇧
Guests on Volume 119
• MARY EBERSTADT on how the decline of formation of natural families has made Christian belief less plausible and contributed to the secularization of Europe
• ALLAN BEVERE on why the claim by “empire criticism” that the letter to the Colossians is a veiled repudiation of Roman imperial hubris is mistaken
• PETER J. LEITHART on how the Bible evaluates empires in light of their relationship with the people of God
• STEVEN BOYER on why “mystery” is a necessary category in Christian theology
• KAREN DIELEMAN on how different liturgical practices of Victorian congregationalism, Anglo-Catholicism, and Roman Catholicism influenced the poetry of Elizabeth Barret Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Proctor
• PETER PHILLIPS on the founding of The Tallis Scholars and the peculiar beauty of Renaissance polyphony
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Mary Eberstadt
“Nothing in human experience is regarded as quite so transcendental as being handed an infant and told, ‘take care of this.’”
— Mary Eberstadt, author of How the West Really Lost God (Templeton Press, 2013)
Mary Eberstadt’s book How the West Really Lost God challenges assumptions about the nature of secularization. In this conversation, Eberstadt argues that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has always depended on the family for its transmission. Although religious conviction is known to influence family formation, Eberstadt turns that assumption upside down: according to her research, weak family formation and familial illiteracy is the first cause of a diminishing Christianity. In a discussion of the history of post-World War II religious revivals and the effect of secularization, Eberstadt points out that religious booms are always accompanied by a rise in marriage and birth rates. She describes the manner in which participation in a family shapes our understanding of faith, and concludes that the institutionalization of birth and death (as in daycare and nursing homes) insulates people from the rhythms of family life and makes religion inaccessible to many people. ⇧
• • •
Allan Bevere
“Empires can do good things. Empires can be unjust. But because of the lordship of Jesus Christ, we know all empires end.”
— Allan Bevere, contributor to Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies (InterVarsity Press, 2013)
Jesus is Lord, Caesar Is Not, edited by Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica, is the first book to hold empire criticism up to evaluation. As one of this anthology’s contributing authors, Allan Bevere addresses this new direction in an increasingly politicized hermeneutic. He says that this type of New Testament criticism was especially popular during the Bush presidency’s era of aggressive foreign policy. However, although many of these policies still remain and are hallmarks of a totalizing empire, many of these voices have dropped quiet with the Obama presidency. Bevere agrees with empire critics who resist the spiritualizing of the gospel and maintain a historical context within which it should be understood. However, while recognizing that there is some good writing being done regarding the dominating tendency of empire, Bevere maintains that Paul is not primarily concerned with empire in his letter to the Colossians, and concludes that empire criticism has gone too far. ⇧
• • •
Peter J. Leithart
“That’s one of the key things that distinguished the more negative portrayal of empires in the Bible from the more neutral or positive ones...the issue that divides them is how the empire treats the people of God.”
— Peter J. Leithart, author of Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective (Wipf and Stock, 2012)
Leithart explains that empire studies (what Allan Bevere refers to as ‘empire criticism’) is a thread of New Testament scholarship that reads its text as consistently anti-imperial. His book Between Babel and Beast: American Empires in Biblical Perspective focuses on the extent to which empire criticism lumps together all empires as basically the same type of entity. The reality is much more complex, in that there are diverse sorts of empires. To highlight the stark contrasts between these empires, Leithart compares the early and late Old Testament description of Babel and Babylon as exemplary of maturing gentile political structures. Most important of all is the relation of empires to God’s people. Leithart balances his criticism of empire studies, maintaining that he is suspicious of the religious right’s portrayal of America in which the American nation takes on the sacredness of the Church’s mission. The centrality of the Church is a key theme in his book, by which Leithart seeks to encourage New Testament scholars toward a thoroughly Christo-centric politics. ⇧
• • •
Steven Boyer
“The apostles are given the mystery of the kingdom of God. They know the mystery. And yet, how many of us would say that knowing it means they've got it all figured out?”
— Steven Boyer, coauthor of The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable (Baker Academic, 2012)
Is it possible to confine God within the limits of reason, within cognitive categories suited to the world? Steven Boyer explains that mystery is not merely a puzzle to be solved: it can be the answer in itself. The oft-quoted mantra “Knowledge is Power” can lead to the assumption that the only knowledge worth having is that which leads to practical power. Boyer points out what he sees as an unhealthy distinction between God and God's attributes, and explains what he means by “revelational” versus “investigative” mystery. Discussing the extent to which childhood is motivated by wonder, Boyer concludes that the task of mature theology is not to eliminate wonder but to expand it. His book The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable was coauthored by Christopher A. Hall. ⇧
• • •
Karen Dieleman
“A Congregationalist comes to reality, to knowing the truth through the proclamation of the word. And an Anglo-Catholic comes to it through God's manifestation of Himself through a more indirect way: through analogy, for example, through typology.”
— Karen Dieleman, author of Religious Imaginaries: The Liturgical and Poetic Practices of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Proctor (Ohio University Press, 2012)
English professor Karen Dieleman discusses her book Religious Imaginaries: The Liturgical and Poetic Practices of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Procter. She addresses the influence of denominational difference in each poet's experience of life, relating it to the resulting structure and style of their poetry. Dieleman explains that to the Congregationalist Browning, everything tended toward the expository dimension, which can be seen in the multiple-voiced, dramatic dialogue which works its way in her poetry to a point of public epiphany. In Rossetti's Anglo-Catholic experience however, Dieleman sees a private encounter with mystery in which words are less necessary and language is more tightly disciplined. Dieleman sees the future-orientated nature of Procter’s poetry as inspired by the Roman Catholic focus on the resurrected Christ. She concludes that the Anglo-Catholic tradition was the most community-oriented of its day, expressed in Christina Rossetti's poetry by her interchangeable use of “I” and “We.” ⇧
• • •
Peter Phillips
“The emotional element is there. But it’s not thrown at you, it’s not as in your face as opera is. . . . In a really good piece, you've got to listen for about 10 minutes, because it probably won’t manifest itself at its full force until the end, until the final bars, where it’s going to blow up in your face and just sweep you away.”
— Peter Phillips, founder of The Tallis Scholars
Founder Peter Phillips recounts the history of his choral ensemble The Tallis Scholars. Phillips explains the extent to which 1970s performance practices obscured the natural clarity of this music, and the life’s work he saw in furthering the music’s appeal to audiences. Phillips describes the digital recording innovation of bringing forward the usually unheard inner parts with clarity, and explains his preference for a less reverberate recording space. He also defends this repertoire against the accusation of “boring, white, emotionless” and explains the subtle nature of the music's emotional element. The interview concludes with a discussion of Thomas Tallis’ hidden depths, and the continuing discovery of works of Flemish Renaissance polyphony. ⇧
Guests on Volume 120
• DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF on the experience of “present shock” and the consequent loss of belief in the capability of stories to convey the shape of reality to us
• PHILLIP THOMPSON on Thomas Merton's lifelong concern about the disorienting effects of the technological mindset
• JONATHAN WILSON on how the life of the Trinity — a life of interpersonal giving and receiving — is the model of life within Creation, calling us to lives of generosity
• JAMES BRATT on the life and thought of Abraham Kuyper, and on some of his early influences
• D. C. SCHINDLER on how consciousness and reason are “ecstatic,” and necessarily involve reaching outside of ourselves
• PAUL ELIE on how access to recordings enables a deeper understanding of music, and how the experience of Bach's music benefits from such depth
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Douglas Rushkoff
“When you're in a space where you can't be controlled, it's very hard to make you submit to a traditional story.”
— Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (Current, 2013)
In his book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, Douglas Rushkoff embraces a presentist mindset toward the world. The information age, he argues, has precipitated the "diminishment of anything that isn't right now." As a result, humans have become disinterested and detached. Instead of relying on stories, we have succumbed to narrative collapse; there just isn't time anymore to tell a story. This presentism, Rushkoff argues, is a good thing. Indeed, we should stop conceiving of things as having beginnings, middles and ends. This narratively structured conception of the world has led to world wars and other disasters, as people became seduced by "ends justify means" reasoning. Instead, we should focus on the present, seeking to evolve in response to new technologies. ⇧
• • •
Phillip Thompson
“Technology changes how we think. It changes our lives dramatically. And it does so in many, many ways. . . . If we use technology in society we are going to change.”
— Phillip Thompson, author of Returning to Reality: Thomas Merton's Wisdom for a Technological World (Cascade Books, 2013)
In Returning to Reality: Thomas Merton's Wisdom for a Technological World, Phillip Thompson describes Thomas Merton’s lifelong quest to balance contemplation and technology. Living in a monastery for the latter part of his life, Merton became distraught at the mechanistic approach to the world that had permeated even the monastery. This methodology focuses on outcomes at the expense of everything else. The primary cause of this worldview is the progress of technology. As a result, humans believe they have complete control over themselves and their identities. For a contemporary example of this, we must look no further than Facebook. From social media to advertising, we are incentivized to embrace our best self instead of our real self. In Merton’s mind, man’s deepest need is to purely and directly experience reality. We can achieve this experience through contemplation. He does not condemn technology entirely, however. Rather, we must acknowledge and combat its negative effects on our lives. ⇧
• • •
Jonathan Wilson
— Jonathan Wilson, author of God's Good World: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Creation (Baker Academic, 2013)
In God’s Good World: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Creation, Jonathan Wilson distinguishes between two fundamental ways of viewing Creation. This distinction illuminates the irreconcilable chasm between a true Christian account of the world and a “survival of the fittest” one. Wilson calls the first view the “wisdom” view. Under this perspective, Creation is a result of God’s infinite wisdom. He describes the second as the techné view. This perspective is informed by a scientistic lens on the world. Even professing Christians can succumb to this second view. In doing so, however, we deny the superabundance of life that God has given us. Death becomes the ultimate driving force in the universe. We take upon ourselves the full responsibility of sustaining our own lives and the resultant anxiety. When we adopt the wisdom view, we recognize God’s providence. We stop constantly trying to avoid death. Instead, we acknowledge the giving and receiving of the Trinity and its life-giving power. Wilson calls on us to emulate this giving and receiving in our own lives. Instead of trying to combat the apparent scarcity of this life, we should instead recognize the superabundance of life that God has given us. But questions remain: Can we adopt this mentality in a world ravaged by sin? Or must we cede ground and acknowledge the apparent scarcity of the fallen world? ⇧
• • •
James Bratt
— Abraham Kuyper
In Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat, James Bratt chronicles the life and thought of Abraham Kuyper, whose career was, as Mark Noll writes, “as filled with noteworthy achievement as that of any single individual in modern Western history.” Kuyper's project, as Bratt describes, was to discover the dynamic equivalent in his nineteenth century world of what John Calvin did in his sixteenth century one. What resulted, in Bratt’s mind, was a kind of Calvinistic unitarianism. Kuyper was so obsessed with the ethical rigor of Christianity that he often forsook trinitarianism. He grappled with the fashionable claims of anti-supernaturalism and materialism throughout his life, astonished at their lack of eternal hope and necessitation of ruthlessness. Despising lack of conviction in any form, he praised modernism for forcing Christians to stand up for their beliefs. As a man, he craved certainty, condemning his contemporary culture for being addicted to doubt. These convictions caused Kuyper to embrace a dialectical methodology. He wanted to use dialectic to rediscover the bedrock of Christianity and build back up from there. In Kuyper, we have a man with strong and some seemingly harsh beliefs. We may question some of his beliefs, but we may never question his conviction. ⇧
• • •
D. C. Schindler
“In that form you have built into the very roots of consciousness this relation to another and this receptivity. And therefore what I say is kind of a dramatic reality of consciousness. . . . Consciousness is not just a thing in itself, it's an event, it's something that happens through this relationship.”
— D. C. Schindler, author of The Catholicity of Reason (Eerdmans, 2013)
D. C. Schindler argues that the Enlightenment was not wrong for giving too much to reason; it was wrong in endorsing an impoverished conception of reason. In The Catholicity of Reason, he calls for a restoration of the wholeness of reason. Reason, he claims, cannot only include things that we can readily understand. It must include everything. Reason, unlike the maxim of the Enlightenment, is never alone. Instead, it is always ecstatic; it is always a relation. He utilizes the idea of a baby's first smile to illustrate the reciprocity involved. The mother's love coaxes the smile out of the child in a way. She catalyzes the baby into consciousness. Schindler also relies on the notion of surprise using various examples. After we have finished a mystery novel, for instance, we want to be surprised by the ending but also to be able to acknowledge that the surprise was somehow inevitable and fit perfectly. We experience the same feeling upon listening to a piece by Bach. This effect can yield an experience of transcendence. In it, we are taken up into something bigger than ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Paul Elie
“That’s what the people who deride passive listening seem to overlook: that familiarity, that intimacy with the music that even non-musicians can now gain.”
— Paul Elie, author of Reinventing Bach (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2012)
Conductor Paul Elie addresses the hotly contested issue of recordings. While some things may be sacrificed in this era of digital recordings, he argues, the gains far outweigh the losses. While Bach may have only heard some of his own pieces performed a few times, we may hear them repeatedly. If we listen to music as rich as Bach's over and over, we can learn, understand, and experience more and more. This stance relies on the idea of a classic as transcending cultural circumstance and being amenable to repeated listenings. Recordings also allow us to participate in the past. Listening to a recording for the mid-20th century, for instance, gives us a window into that culture as well as into Bach's culture. The multiplicity of recordings allows us to experience many different interpretations of the work. Elie also addresses Bach's creativity and the idea of creativity in general. Is Bach's music-making recombination and discovery or is it creation? If it is both, which is more prevalent? Regardless, Bach's genius offers us a transcendence that even the strictest reductionist cannot ignore. ⇧
Guests on Volume 120
• DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF on the experience of “present shock” and the consequent loss of belief in the capability of stories to convey the shape of reality to us
• PHILLIP THOMPSON on Thomas Merton's lifelong concern about the disorienting effects of the technological mindset
• JONATHAN WILSON on how the life of the Trinity — a life of interpersonal giving and receiving — is the model of life within Creation, calling us to lives of generosity
• JAMES BRATT on the life and thought of Abraham Kuyper, and on some of his early influences
• D. C. SCHINDLER on how consciousness and reason are “ecstatic,” and necessarily involve reaching outside of ourselves
• PAUL ELIE on how access to recordings enables a deeper understanding of music, and how the experience of Bach's music benefits from such depth
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Douglas Rushkoff
“When you're in a space where you can't be controlled, it's very hard to make you submit to a traditional story.”
— Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (Current, 2013)
In his book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, Douglas Rushkoff embraces a presentist mindset toward the world. The information age, he argues, has precipitated the "diminishment of anything that isn't right now." As a result, humans have become disinterested and detached. Instead of relying on stories, we have succumbed to narrative collapse; there just isn't time anymore to tell a story. This presentism, Rushkoff argues, is a good thing. Indeed, we should stop conceiving of things as having beginnings, middles and ends. This narratively structured conception of the world has led to world wars and other disasters, as people became seduced by "ends justify means" reasoning. Instead, we should focus on the present, seeking to evolve in response to new technologies. ⇧
• • •
Phillip Thompson
“Technology changes how we think. It changes our lives dramatically. And it does so in many, many ways. . . . If we use technology in society we are going to change.”
— Phillip Thompson, author of Returning to Reality: Thomas Merton's Wisdom for a Technological World (Cascade Books, 2013)
In Returning to Reality: Thomas Merton's Wisdom for a Technological World, Phillip Thompson describes Thomas Merton’s lifelong quest to balance contemplation and technology. Living in a monastery for the latter part of his life, Merton became distraught at the mechanistic approach to the world that had permeated even the monastery. This methodology focuses on outcomes at the expense of everything else. The primary cause of this worldview is the progress of technology. As a result, humans believe they have complete control over themselves and their identities. For a contemporary example of this, we must look no further than Facebook. From social media to advertising, we are incentivized to embrace our best self instead of our real self. In Merton’s mind, man’s deepest need is to purely and directly experience reality. We can achieve this experience through contemplation. He does not condemn technology entirely, however. Rather, we must acknowledge and combat its negative effects on our lives. ⇧
• • •
Jonathan Wilson
— Jonathan Wilson, author of God's Good World: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Creation (Baker Academic, 2013)
In God’s Good World: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Creation, Jonathan Wilson distinguishes between two fundamental ways of viewing Creation. This distinction illuminates the irreconcilable chasm between a true Christian account of the world and a “survival of the fittest” one. Wilson calls the first view the “wisdom” view. Under this perspective, Creation is a result of God’s infinite wisdom. He describes the second as the techné view. This perspective is informed by a scientistic lens on the world. Even professing Christians can succumb to this second view. In doing so, however, we deny the superabundance of life that God has given us. Death becomes the ultimate driving force in the universe. We take upon ourselves the full responsibility of sustaining our own lives and the resultant anxiety. When we adopt the wisdom view, we recognize God’s providence. We stop constantly trying to avoid death. Instead, we acknowledge the giving and receiving of the Trinity and its life-giving power. Wilson calls on us to emulate this giving and receiving in our own lives. Instead of trying to combat the apparent scarcity of this life, we should instead recognize the superabundance of life that God has given us. But questions remain: Can we adopt this mentality in a world ravaged by sin? Or must we cede ground and acknowledge the apparent scarcity of the fallen world? ⇧
• • •
James Bratt
— Abraham Kuyper
In Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat, James Bratt chronicles the life and thought of Abraham Kuyper, whose career was, as Mark Noll writes, “as filled with noteworthy achievement as that of any single individual in modern Western history.” Kuyper's project, as Bratt describes, was to discover the dynamic equivalent in his nineteenth century world of what John Calvin did in his sixteenth century one. What resulted, in Bratt’s mind, was a kind of Calvinistic unitarianism. Kuyper was so obsessed with the ethical rigor of Christianity that he often forsook trinitarianism. He grappled with the fashionable claims of anti-supernaturalism and materialism throughout his life, astonished at their lack of eternal hope and necessitation of ruthlessness. Despising lack of conviction in any form, he praised modernism for forcing Christians to stand up for their beliefs. As a man, he craved certainty, condemning his contemporary culture for being addicted to doubt. These convictions caused Kuyper to embrace a dialectical methodology. He wanted to use dialectic to rediscover the bedrock of Christianity and build back up from there. In Kuyper, we have a man with strong and some seemingly harsh beliefs. We may question some of his beliefs, but we may never question his conviction. ⇧
• • •
D. C. Schindler
“In that form you have built into the very roots of consciousness this relation to another and this receptivity. And therefore what I say is kind of a dramatic reality of consciousness. . . . Consciousness is not just a thing in itself, it's an event, it's something that happens through this relationship.”
— D. C. Schindler, author of The Catholicity of Reason (Eerdmans, 2013)
D. C. Schindler argues that the Enlightenment was not wrong for giving too much to reason; it was wrong in endorsing an impoverished conception of reason. In The Catholicity of Reason, he calls for a restoration of the wholeness of reason. Reason, he claims, cannot only include things that we can readily understand. It must include everything. Reason, unlike the maxim of the Enlightenment, is never alone. Instead, it is always ecstatic; it is always a relation. He utilizes the idea of a baby's first smile to illustrate the reciprocity involved. The mother's love coaxes the smile out of the child in a way. She catalyzes the baby into consciousness. Schindler also relies on the notion of surprise using various examples. After we have finished a mystery novel, for instance, we want to be surprised by the ending but also to be able to acknowledge that the surprise was somehow inevitable and fit perfectly. We experience the same feeling upon listening to a piece by Bach. This effect can yield an experience of transcendence. In it, we are taken up into something bigger than ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Paul Elie
“That’s what the people who deride passive listening seem to overlook: that familiarity, that intimacy with the music that even non-musicians can now gain.”
— Paul Elie, author of Reinventing Bach (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2012)
Conductor Paul Elie addresses the hotly contested issue of recordings. While some things may be sacrificed in this era of digital recordings, he argues, the gains far outweigh the losses. While Bach may have only heard some of his own pieces performed a few times, we may hear them repeatedly. If we listen to music as rich as Bach's over and over, we can learn, understand, and experience more and more. This stance relies on the idea of a classic as transcending cultural circumstance and being amenable to repeated listenings. Recordings also allow us to participate in the past. Listening to a recording for the mid-20th century, for instance, gives us a window into that culture as well as into Bach's culture. The multiplicity of recordings allows us to experience many different interpretations of the work. Elie also addresses Bach's creativity and the idea of creativity in general. Is Bach's music-making recombination and discovery or is it creation? If it is both, which is more prevalent? Regardless, Bach's genius offers us a transcendence that even the strictest reductionist cannot ignore. ⇧
Guests on Volume 121
• DANIEL GABELMAN on how George MacDonald’s celebration of the “childlike” promotes levity and a joyful sense of play, rooted in filial trust of the Father
• CURTIS WHITE on the troubling enthusiasm for accounts of the human person that reduce us to mere meat and wetware
• MICHAEL HANBY on why there is no “neutral” science, how all accounts of what science does and why contain metaphysical and theological assumptions
• ALAN JACOBS on why the Book of Common Prayer has lived such a long and influential life
• JAMES K. A. SMITH on how some movements in modern philosophy provide resources for recovering an appreciation for the role of the body in knowing the world
• BRUCE HERMAN and WALTER HANSEN on Herman’s paintings and how conversing about works of art enables us to grow in understanding of the non-verbal meaning they convey
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Daniel Gabelman
“What faith can and should do in its best forms and in its best ways is to allow us to be children again in some sense. [It can and should] allow us to be playful and to be free of the cares and the anxieties that most frequently crush in upon us and bear us down.”
— Daniel Gabelman, author of George MacDonald: Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity (Baylor University Press, 2013)
In Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity, Daniel Gabelman attempts to correct the notion that George MacDonald prizes seriousness and sobriety. In fact, he, with contemporaries like Lewis Carroll, frequently poked fun at the seriousness of Victorian culture. What separated him from his playful contemporaries, however, was that his notion of levity was rooted in Christ. He viewed Christ's first miracle--turning the water into wine--as an expression of this levity. He believed that we should strive for a certain childlikeness in our lives. Promoting levity, however, can easily seem misguided. Indeed, MacDonald had a very specific conception of proper levity: it must exist on a backdrop of treating other human beings with a certain seriousness. For this reason faith is a necessary condition for levity. Through it we can respect others as persons yet retain levity in our freedom from the anxieties of the world. MacDonald, as Gabelman notes, struggled with the seeming rigidity of Christianity early in his life. While he loved and enjoyed nature, it seemed that Christianity would condemn his passion. Growing up in Presbyterian Scotland, the Christianity he saw did not appeal to him. In interacting with the Bible, however, he discovered that all did not have to be so serious. We as Christians would do well to emulate children in their levity and playfulness. ⇧
• • •
Curtis White
“The thing that is very disturbing to me is the sort of joyfulness with which a certain American or Western audience takes up the idea that we're just, in Daniel Dennett's words, moist robots.”
— Curtis White, author of The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers (Melville House, 2013)
In The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers, Curtis White questions the widespread and seemingly mindless acceptance of reductionism. As he explicitly states in this interview, he is not targeting science as a whole, but rather scientism, which he describes as science as ideology. Not only do many passively accept the scientist account, he argues, but they do so with rejoicing. In addition to questioning this reaction to the reductionist story, he also questions the reductionist story itself. In contemporary science, we are studying things so small that they are not subject to empirical tests. In their stead, the modern scientific accounts rely on mathematical models. As Newtonian physics has shown, however, mathematical models are idealized; they can be extremely helpful, but they do not accurately reflect reality. White believes the demise of the romanticist scientist has precipitated this acceptance of scientism. We need to view science in light of the larger picture, not as the larger picture. ⇧
• • •
Michael Hanby
“If the world really is Creation, then that has to matter: that has to make a difference to what the world is, that has to make a difference to our ability to adequately describe and understand it.”
— Michael Hanby, author of No God, No Science? Theology, Cosmology, Biology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)
Theologian Michael Hanby questions the significance of the distinction between science and scientism. People often believe that we can strip away the metaphysical assumptions and totalizing force of scientism and reveal a neutral science. Hanby thinks otherwise. Any science unavoidably involves certain assumptions. Since this is the case, science can never be neutral. A Christian account of science must consider the ongoing relation of God to his Creation. This relation has ramifications not only for the Creation itself, but also for every moment of existence. The distinction between science and scientism, then, serves to conceal the fundamental problems with modern science itself. For these reasons, the doctrine of Creation is fundamentally a doctrine of God. In a certain sense, Hanby argues, every moment is Creation. It is just as impressive that we continue to exist now as it is that we came into existence in the first place. If we subscribe to the Christian account, then, we must incorporate theology into the foundation of our science. For this reason, Creation answers different questions than science thinks. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
“So for [Thomas Cranmer] the language is not about how it looks on the page, but what it's going to sound like when a priest says it to people, and what it's going to sound like when the people say their parts back to the priest. How is it going to fill this room?”
— Alan Jacobs, author of The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2013)
Literary critic Alan Jacobs details the creation and reception of the Book of Common Prayer. Highlighting its composition, he discusses the character of its primary author, Thomas Cranmer, in great depth. In doing so, he hopes to illustrate the impossibility of extricating the literary aspects of the book from its liturgical and other features. Cranmer, in composing the book, understood its proper use, namely to be read aloud in church services. For this reason, he wrote it with rhythmic considerations firmly in mind. He hoped that the construction of the prayers would keep congregations in unison as they recited them. Motivated by these considerations, he also frequently utilized Hebrew poetic styles like alliteration and repetition. Cranmer's literary and theological skills, Jacobs argues, cannot be found in today's era of extreme academic specialization. Today, we would have to assemble an expert theologian, an expert writer, and other experts, whereas Cranmer was able to play all of those roles. While many, including John Milton, opposed this liturgical conception of prayer, Jacobs argues that even extemporaneous prayer quickly becomes liturgical as those who pray rely on structures they have already used or heard. The Book of Common Prayer was and is an invaluable tool for the Christian. ⇧
• • •
James K. A. Smith
“We're still making sense of the world, but we're not processing it propositionally or merely intellectually. There's a kind of know-how that's carried in our fingers and our hands and our bones that makes sense of the world in that way.”
— James K. A. Smith, author of Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Eerdmans, 2013)
In Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, James K. A. Smith advocates for a return to some pre-modern conceptualizations of the human body. In contrast to the popular notion of the human as rational and analytic, Smith stresses that other features of the human body—like habit and "feel"—are also important. In morality, we are not rational agents who choose principles, but rather we have a pre-rational attraction to a certain conception of the good life. This process incorporates the whole person, not just the rational part. Contemporary philosophy of action offers evidence for these claims. As corroborated by contemporary cognitive science, most actions are not caused by rational choice. Rather, they occur through habituated processes of various kinds. Many in the pre-modern tradition, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, noticed this habituation. Applying these observations to morality, we should view it as a kind of disposition toward the good; we should try to create good habits which incline us toward the good. Thus even morality incorporates the whole person, not just the rational or analytic part. For God will raise us as whole persons, body and soul, in the resurrection. ⇧
• • •
Bruce Herman and Walter Hansen
“This split between propositional and personal in fact isn't life. We communicate our inner being by words but meaning is far beyond that. Meaning precedes that and follows that. Meaning is very much embodied. Our body experiences meaning before the mind verbalizes that meaning.”
— Walter Hansen, author of Through Your Eyes: Dialogues on the Paintings of Bruce Herman (Eerdmans, 2013)
In Through Your Eyes: Dialogues on the Paintings of Bruce Herman, theologian Walter Hansen and painter Bruce Herman question contemporary conceptions of meaning that confine it to the verbal or consider visual and verbal meaning to be completely exclusive. As we view art, we cannot simply be passive recipients of it. As settings change and we change, we will view artworks differently and gain new insights from them. We cannot translate this meaning fully into verbal meaning; it goes beyond that. Indeed, the visual and the linguistic intersect, or as Herman puts it, "dance." When viewing a portrait or any work with a human likeness, we engage with this face in a certain way. Putting a human likeness into a work, Herman says, creates a target: the viewer will immediately focus on it, sometimes at the expense of other features of the work. Meaning, in this sense, is embodied. We have a certain hunger for the human visage and we derive meaning from it. To reduce this experience to the purely verbal would be to needlessly impoverish our conception of meaning. ⇧
Guests on Volume 121
• DANIEL GABELMAN on how George MacDonald’s celebration of the “childlike” promotes levity and a joyful sense of play, rooted in filial trust of the Father
• CURTIS WHITE on the troubling enthusiasm for accounts of the human person that reduce us to mere meat and wetware
• MICHAEL HANBY on why there is no “neutral” science, how all accounts of what science does and why contain metaphysical and theological assumptions
• ALAN JACOBS on why the Book of Common Prayer has lived such a long and influential life
• JAMES K. A. SMITH on how some movements in modern philosophy provide resources for recovering an appreciation for the role of the body in knowing the world
• BRUCE HERMAN and WALTER HANSEN on Herman’s paintings and how conversing about works of art enables us to grow in understanding of the non-verbal meaning they convey
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Daniel Gabelman
“What faith can and should do in its best forms and in its best ways is to allow us to be children again in some sense. [It can and should] allow us to be playful and to be free of the cares and the anxieties that most frequently crush in upon us and bear us down.”
— Daniel Gabelman, author of George MacDonald: Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity (Baylor University Press, 2013)
In Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity, Daniel Gabelman attempts to correct the notion that George MacDonald prizes seriousness and sobriety. In fact, he, with contemporaries like Lewis Carroll, frequently poked fun at the seriousness of Victorian culture. What separated him from his playful contemporaries, however, was that his notion of levity was rooted in Christ. He viewed Christ's first miracle--turning the water into wine--as an expression of this levity. He believed that we should strive for a certain childlikeness in our lives. Promoting levity, however, can easily seem misguided. Indeed, MacDonald had a very specific conception of proper levity: it must exist on a backdrop of treating other human beings with a certain seriousness. For this reason faith is a necessary condition for levity. Through it we can respect others as persons yet retain levity in our freedom from the anxieties of the world. MacDonald, as Gabelman notes, struggled with the seeming rigidity of Christianity early in his life. While he loved and enjoyed nature, it seemed that Christianity would condemn his passion. Growing up in Presbyterian Scotland, the Christianity he saw did not appeal to him. In interacting with the Bible, however, he discovered that all did not have to be so serious. We as Christians would do well to emulate children in their levity and playfulness. ⇧
• • •
Curtis White
“The thing that is very disturbing to me is the sort of joyfulness with which a certain American or Western audience takes up the idea that we're just, in Daniel Dennett's words, moist robots.”
— Curtis White, author of The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers (Melville House, 2013)
In The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers, Curtis White questions the widespread and seemingly mindless acceptance of reductionism. As he explicitly states in this interview, he is not targeting science as a whole, but rather scientism, which he describes as science as ideology. Not only do many passively accept the scientist account, he argues, but they do so with rejoicing. In addition to questioning this reaction to the reductionist story, he also questions the reductionist story itself. In contemporary science, we are studying things so small that they are not subject to empirical tests. In their stead, the modern scientific accounts rely on mathematical models. As Newtonian physics has shown, however, mathematical models are idealized; they can be extremely helpful, but they do not accurately reflect reality. White believes the demise of the romanticist scientist has precipitated this acceptance of scientism. We need to view science in light of the larger picture, not as the larger picture. ⇧
• • •
Michael Hanby
“If the world really is Creation, then that has to matter: that has to make a difference to what the world is, that has to make a difference to our ability to adequately describe and understand it.”
— Michael Hanby, author of No God, No Science? Theology, Cosmology, Biology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)
Theologian Michael Hanby questions the significance of the distinction between science and scientism. People often believe that we can strip away the metaphysical assumptions and totalizing force of scientism and reveal a neutral science. Hanby thinks otherwise. Any science unavoidably involves certain assumptions. Since this is the case, science can never be neutral. A Christian account of science must consider the ongoing relation of God to his Creation. This relation has ramifications not only for the Creation itself, but also for every moment of existence. The distinction between science and scientism, then, serves to conceal the fundamental problems with modern science itself. For these reasons, the doctrine of Creation is fundamentally a doctrine of God. In a certain sense, Hanby argues, every moment is Creation. It is just as impressive that we continue to exist now as it is that we came into existence in the first place. If we subscribe to the Christian account, then, we must incorporate theology into the foundation of our science. For this reason, Creation answers different questions than science thinks. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
“So for [Thomas Cranmer] the language is not about how it looks on the page, but what it's going to sound like when a priest says it to people, and what it's going to sound like when the people say their parts back to the priest. How is it going to fill this room?”
— Alan Jacobs, author of The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2013)
Literary critic Alan Jacobs details the creation and reception of the Book of Common Prayer. Highlighting its composition, he discusses the character of its primary author, Thomas Cranmer, in great depth. In doing so, he hopes to illustrate the impossibility of extricating the literary aspects of the book from its liturgical and other features. Cranmer, in composing the book, understood its proper use, namely to be read aloud in church services. For this reason, he wrote it with rhythmic considerations firmly in mind. He hoped that the construction of the prayers would keep congregations in unison as they recited them. Motivated by these considerations, he also frequently utilized Hebrew poetic styles like alliteration and repetition. Cranmer's literary and theological skills, Jacobs argues, cannot be found in today's era of extreme academic specialization. Today, we would have to assemble an expert theologian, an expert writer, and other experts, whereas Cranmer was able to play all of those roles. While many, including John Milton, opposed this liturgical conception of prayer, Jacobs argues that even extemporaneous prayer quickly becomes liturgical as those who pray rely on structures they have already used or heard. The Book of Common Prayer was and is an invaluable tool for the Christian. ⇧
• • •
James K. A. Smith
“We're still making sense of the world, but we're not processing it propositionally or merely intellectually. There's a kind of know-how that's carried in our fingers and our hands and our bones that makes sense of the world in that way.”
— James K. A. Smith, author of Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Eerdmans, 2013)
In Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, James K. A. Smith advocates for a return to some pre-modern conceptualizations of the human body. In contrast to the popular notion of the human as rational and analytic, Smith stresses that other features of the human body—like habit and "feel"—are also important. In morality, we are not rational agents who choose principles, but rather we have a pre-rational attraction to a certain conception of the good life. This process incorporates the whole person, not just the rational part. Contemporary philosophy of action offers evidence for these claims. As corroborated by contemporary cognitive science, most actions are not caused by rational choice. Rather, they occur through habituated processes of various kinds. Many in the pre-modern tradition, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, noticed this habituation. Applying these observations to morality, we should view it as a kind of disposition toward the good; we should try to create good habits which incline us toward the good. Thus even morality incorporates the whole person, not just the rational or analytic part. For God will raise us as whole persons, body and soul, in the resurrection. ⇧
• • •
Bruce Herman and Walter Hansen
“This split between propositional and personal in fact isn't life. We communicate our inner being by words but meaning is far beyond that. Meaning precedes that and follows that. Meaning is very much embodied. Our body experiences meaning before the mind verbalizes that meaning.”
— Walter Hansen, author of Through Your Eyes: Dialogues on the Paintings of Bruce Herman (Eerdmans, 2013)
In Through Your Eyes: Dialogues on the Paintings of Bruce Herman, theologian Walter Hansen and painter Bruce Herman question contemporary conceptions of meaning that confine it to the verbal or consider visual and verbal meaning to be completely exclusive. As we view art, we cannot simply be passive recipients of it. As settings change and we change, we will view artworks differently and gain new insights from them. We cannot translate this meaning fully into verbal meaning; it goes beyond that. Indeed, the visual and the linguistic intersect, or as Herman puts it, "dance." When viewing a portrait or any work with a human likeness, we engage with this face in a certain way. Putting a human likeness into a work, Herman says, creates a target: the viewer will immediately focus on it, sometimes at the expense of other features of the work. Meaning, in this sense, is embodied. We have a certain hunger for the human visage and we derive meaning from it. To reduce this experience to the purely verbal would be to needlessly impoverish our conception of meaning. ⇧
Guests on Volume 122
• N. T. WRIGHT on the significance of narrative awareness as a gesture towards participating in God's on-going narrative and away from cultural captivity
• GEORGE MARSDEN on American public intellectuals of the 1950s and their anxieties concerning national purpose
• MAKOTO FUJIMURA on modernist art, Jacques Maritain, and the Eastern pictorial tradition
• DAVID BENTLEY HART on why historic theism (and all of its metaphysical claims) explains reality better than materialism does
• THOMAS LESSL on the institutional "Copernican revolution" of the university and its attending warfare mythology as enduring perpetuators of the war between science and religion
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
N.T. Wright
“I think I want to say that story is not simply a bit of decoration around the borders of reality.”
— N.T. Wright, author of Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress Press, 2013)
New Testament scholar N. T. Wright addresses reasons for why we should want to reconstruct a first century worldview and discusses to what extent discipleship should be a re-arranging of how we see reality. He also defends the significance of reading Scripture as narrative, and more specifically, God’s narrative in our world, in which God’s actions are historically decisive and not reducible to dogmatic abstractions. In this interview, Wright offers his take on why many people are suspicious of narrative. ⇧
• • •
George Marsden
“[T]hey represented the ideal of consensus. And the consensus was built on trying to shore up the American traditions that go back to the founding and to say ‘here we’ve fought this terrific war against the forces of evil. We’re now facing the Cold War where we have atheistic communists to confront. What are the American ideals that we stand for?’”
— George Marsden, author of The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (Basic Books, 2014)
Historian George Marsden discusses the influence of public intellectuals in America during the 1950s and their concerns for national moral consensus. Marsden identifies the continuity felt among public figures in the fifties with the common sense ideals held by American Enlightenment founders. Somewhat paradoxically, in addition to calling for a shared tradition, these critics encouraged individual non-conformity to allay the leveling effects of mass media. ⇧
• • •
Makoto Fujimura
“I find Maritain’s writing in general to bridge this gap between some modernist position[s] that nature … first of all, that we have enmity, that we have to fight against nature, but furthermore that it is a veil and a certain obstacle to even reach the divine. There’s this notion that if God is to exist, nature in some way gets in the way. . . . Maritain seems to bring that veiled nature into this very transparent, maybe even integrated, path toward God.”
— Makoto Fujimura, author of Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture (NavPress, 2019)
Artist Makoto Fujimura reflects on the modernist conflict between man and nature. In this conversation, Fujimura discusses the subtleties of abstraction, poetic essence, and re-presentation in visual art. He also talks about the convergence of Jacques Maritain’s writings on creativity and art with Fujimura’s adaptation of the Asian visual tradition. ⇧
• • •
David Bentley Hart
“[C]onsciousness, especially intentional consciousness . . . that is, the capacity of the mind to be about things, to know things not only as a sort of storm of sense impressions, but under particular aspects with certain intentions imposing certain meanings . . . that’s an act of the mind reaching out towards; that is intention, the stretching out towards all reality in a finite, specific way; that is the most conspicuous imaginable violation of the principle of mechanism, . . . because intention, in that sense, is teleological.”
— David Bentley Hart, author of The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale University Press, 2013)
Theologian David Bentley Hart discusses what is meant by “God” in contemporary apologetic debate among both atheists and Christians. He examines how pre-modern questions about transcendent form and purpose expose the modern pathology to elevate mechanistic method to the realm of metaphysics. Hart challenges the assumption that progress is made in our ability to account for reality if we assume the modern division between material and spiritual or physical and metaphysical. In this interview, Hart explains how pure naturalism leads to an un-doing of rationality as a result of its self-imposed limitations. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Lessl
“We tend to perceive scientists as a kind of priestly cast, independent from all others, who interact in this [public] sphere in different ways, almost like the way the Catholic church would have been perceived down through the ages … because [their] resources of knowledge come from elsewhere: for the church that was revelation and tradition and for science, it’s nature. Science has become the priest that mediates between the natural world and the rest of us.”
— Thomas Lessl, author of Rhetorical Darwinism: Religion, Evolution, and the Scientific Identity (Baylor University Press, 2012)
Communications professor Thomas Lessl discusses how “public science”—comprising its need for sources of revenue and institutional support and its means of attaining that support—influences our perception of the role of science in public life. Lessl explores the emergence of science as an institution during the nineteenth century and the structural effects it had upon the university. ⇧
Guests on Volume 122
• N. T. WRIGHT on the significance of narrative awareness as a gesture towards participating in God's on-going narrative and away from cultural captivity
• GEORGE MARSDEN on American public intellectuals of the 1950s and their anxieties concerning national purpose
• MAKOTO FUJIMURA on modernist art, Jacques Maritain, and the Eastern pictorial tradition
• DAVID BENTLEY HART on why historic theism (and all of its metaphysical claims) explains reality better than materialism does
• THOMAS LESSL on the institutional "Copernican revolution" of the university and its attending warfare mythology as enduring perpetuators of the war between science and religion
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
N.T. Wright
“I think I want to say that story is not simply a bit of decoration around the borders of reality.”
— N.T. Wright, author of Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress Press, 2013)
New Testament scholar N. T. Wright addresses reasons for why we should want to reconstruct a first century worldview and discusses to what extent discipleship should be a re-arranging of how we see reality. He also defends the significance of reading Scripture as narrative, and more specifically, God’s narrative in our world, in which God’s actions are historically decisive and not reducible to dogmatic abstractions. In this interview, Wright offers his take on why many people are suspicious of narrative. ⇧
• • •
George Marsden
“[T]hey represented the ideal of consensus. And the consensus was built on trying to shore up the American traditions that go back to the founding and to say ‘here we’ve fought this terrific war against the forces of evil. We’re now facing the Cold War where we have atheistic communists to confront. What are the American ideals that we stand for?’”
— George Marsden, author of The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (Basic Books, 2014)
Historian George Marsden discusses the influence of public intellectuals in America during the 1950s and their concerns for national moral consensus. Marsden identifies the continuity felt among public figures in the fifties with the common sense ideals held by American Enlightenment founders. Somewhat paradoxically, in addition to calling for a shared tradition, these critics encouraged individual non-conformity to allay the leveling effects of mass media. ⇧
• • •
Makoto Fujimura
“I find Maritain’s writing in general to bridge this gap between some modernist position[s] that nature … first of all, that we have enmity, that we have to fight against nature, but furthermore that it is a veil and a certain obstacle to even reach the divine. There’s this notion that if God is to exist, nature in some way gets in the way. . . . Maritain seems to bring that veiled nature into this very transparent, maybe even integrated, path toward God.”
— Makoto Fujimura, author of Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture (NavPress, 2019)
Artist Makoto Fujimura reflects on the modernist conflict between man and nature. In this conversation, Fujimura discusses the subtleties of abstraction, poetic essence, and re-presentation in visual art. He also talks about the convergence of Jacques Maritain’s writings on creativity and art with Fujimura’s adaptation of the Asian visual tradition. ⇧
• • •
David Bentley Hart
“[C]onsciousness, especially intentional consciousness . . . that is, the capacity of the mind to be about things, to know things not only as a sort of storm of sense impressions, but under particular aspects with certain intentions imposing certain meanings . . . that’s an act of the mind reaching out towards; that is intention, the stretching out towards all reality in a finite, specific way; that is the most conspicuous imaginable violation of the principle of mechanism, . . . because intention, in that sense, is teleological.”
— David Bentley Hart, author of The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale University Press, 2013)
Theologian David Bentley Hart discusses what is meant by “God” in contemporary apologetic debate among both atheists and Christians. He examines how pre-modern questions about transcendent form and purpose expose the modern pathology to elevate mechanistic method to the realm of metaphysics. Hart challenges the assumption that progress is made in our ability to account for reality if we assume the modern division between material and spiritual or physical and metaphysical. In this interview, Hart explains how pure naturalism leads to an un-doing of rationality as a result of its self-imposed limitations. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Lessl
“We tend to perceive scientists as a kind of priestly cast, independent from all others, who interact in this [public] sphere in different ways, almost like the way the Catholic church would have been perceived down through the ages … because [their] resources of knowledge come from elsewhere: for the church that was revelation and tradition and for science, it’s nature. Science has become the priest that mediates between the natural world and the rest of us.”
— Thomas Lessl, author of Rhetorical Darwinism: Religion, Evolution, and the Scientific Identity (Baylor University Press, 2012)
Communications professor Thomas Lessl discusses how “public science”—comprising its need for sources of revenue and institutional support and its means of attaining that support—influences our perception of the role of science in public life. Lessl explores the emergence of science as an institution during the nineteenth century and the structural effects it had upon the university. ⇧
Guests on Volume 123
• NICHOLAS M. HEALY on some of the practical and theological weaknesses in the writings of Stanley Hauerwas
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on the spiritual lives of emerging adults raised within the Roman Catholic Church and taught at Catholic schools
• JAMES K. A. SMITH on Charles Taylor's explanation (in The Secular Age) of how modern culture came to unlearn the theistic assumption of the West
• ESTHER LIGHTCAP MEEK on why pitting “objectivity” against “subjectivity” in describing the nature of knowledge isn't helpful, and on why all knowing involves making a commitment
• RICHARD VILADESAU on the relationship between formal, propositional, academic theology and the theological expressions found in works of art and music
• JEREMY BEGBIE on why theologians should be more interested in how music and modernity have interacted
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Nicholas M. Healy
“If one looks at the lives of Christian communities, there is much less formation going on than I think [Hauerwas’s] theory seems to need. . . . It’s not as if one goes to a Christian church and is then formed by that Christian church. It is that we decide to join this church rather than that church because we find it appealing. In other words, we already have a kind of taste for a particular kind of Christianity. We go there and we get more of that. . . . Each and every one of us is formed to a very limited extent, I would say, because we live so much in the world . . . and the world is forming us all the time.”
— Nicholas M. Healy, author of Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Eerdmans, 2014)
In his book, Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction, theologian Nicholas M. Healy agrees with Stanley Hauerwas's project to build a church that establishes practices which inform theology and shape character; however, Healy takes issue with the modes of argument Hauerwas has typically employed. Healy is concerned that Hauerwas's focus on ethics over-emphasizes community identity at the expense of trinitarian and soteriological doctrine. At stake, Healy argues, is whether the Church is viewed as a human institution or a product of God’s work. ⇧
• • •
Christian Smith
“Even though the Catholic church has the theological resources for a sort of rich communal sense of the faith, I think the American experience today is actually very thin.”
— Christian Smith, author of Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone From the Church (Oxford University Press, 2014)
To Christian Smith’s continued study on the religious lives of adolescents and emerging adults, he and his colleagues have recently appended a narrower study on the religious lives of young Roman Catholics in America. Smith’s study reports a general decline among young Catholics, which he attributes to a particular cluster of events that significantly reshaped American Catholicism. Beginning in the 1960s, Catholics began to encounter a greater increase in social upward mobility that allowed for the Catholic ghetto community of the fifties to be more fully assimilated into the surrounding culture. However, as Smith notes, many of the broader cultural currents that were developing during the 60s—such as the sexual revolution and the turn towards therapeutic values—emerged as hostile to historic Catholicism. Coinciding with these trends, the Second Vatican Council of the early 60s marked an institutional softening and openness towards many aspects of modernity, which—in the absence of proper clerical instruction—made many Catholics vulnerable to adopting the beliefs and presuppositions of their secular, non-Catholic peers. ⇧
• • •
James K. A. Smith
“As I started having conversations with church planters and pastors in urban contexts, I started to realize that—oh man, actually, this should be like a DMin course in a box, because this might be the kind of ethnography of Manhattan or Seattle that they need [in order] to make sense of their new context.”
— James K. A. Smith, author of How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Eerdmans, 2014)
Philosopher James K. A. Smith discusses the evangelical and ecclesial ramifications for Christians living within Charles Taylor’s third wave of secularism. In contrast to the classical-medieval paradigm in which the secular designates the temporal and earthly, and in contrast to the Enlightenment paradigm of a metaphysically detached or neutral secular realm, Taylor’s third wave of secularism is one in which belief in God is merely one choice among a plurality of choices or, for many, completely implausible. ⇧
• • •
Esther Lightcap Meek
“Somehow in the water of our approach to knowing, whether we’ve done philosophy or not, we just assume that knowledge is certainty, and if you don’t have certainty, you don’t have knowledge.”
— Esther Lightcap Meek, author of A Little Manual for Knowing (Cascade Books, 2014)
Philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek talks about how our presuppositions about knowledge have been deformed by a mind/body dualism inherited from Enlightenment thinkers such as Descartes. As a result of divorcing the mind from the body, how we think about knowledge (a.k.a. epistemology), in turn, became divorced from our selves as whole persons. In her book, A Little Manual for Knowing, Meek argues that knowledge is not something we pin down and put in a box, nor is it something that pins us down; rather, knowledge is that which simultaneously opens up, and guides us through, future possibilities. In Meek’s epistemology, knowledge is inseparable from personal interaction with the world, requiring both commitment and profession. In this way, knowledge accumulates attributes that it shares in common with hope and, quite often, leads us toward hope. ⇧
• • •
Richard Viladesau
“[A]esthetic theology has always been the main form of theology in the Church—although sometimes the way it’s presented by the hierarchical, or the official Church, it seems like it’s the other way around. But in fact, I think it has always been the aesthetic theology that’s been preached—at least when the preaching is effective—and that has constituted the main body of the transmission of theology in aesthetic modes. One of the problems is that frequently people haven’t recognized that; they’ve mistaken aesthetics for dogmatics and vice versa.”
— Richard Viladesau, author of The Pathos of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts - The Baroque Era (Oxford University Press, 2014)
In Richard Viladesau’s series on aesthetic theology, Viladesau examines how an artwork is more than its subject. A painting or a piece of music is not merely a conduit for an abstract doctrine or lesson. It is, in its form and presentation of the subject, its own commentary. In other words, theology is irreducibly aesthetic. In his third volume surveying the theology of the cross in art, entitled The Pathos of the Cross, Viladesau explains how the Baroque era emphasized the viewer’s emotional response to, and participation in, the subject of Christ on the cross. ⇧
• • •
Jeremy Begbie
“I think, at the risk of gross generalization, what we’ve witnessed in the move from the medieval to the modern—as far as music is concerned, as far as theorizing about music is concerned—is a shift from, what I call, the cosmological to the anthropological. . . . What we see from the 1500s onwards, perhaps even earlier, is the tendency to see music more and more as a humanly constructed tool, a tool of persuasion (especially emotional persuasion), and the sense in which music is embedded in the cosmic order at large begins to wane.”
— Jeremy Begbie, author of Music, Modernity, and God: Listening to Music (Oxford University Press, 2013)
In his book, Music, Modernity, and God: Essays in Listening, theologian Jeremy Begbie discusses the role that music played within the larger cultural shift from a medieval to a modern outlook. Despite the challenges that music presents for referential certainty, Begbie argues that the ubiquity and prominence of music during many historical transitions and among every people-group demands that it be given its due attention by those theologians wanting to fully understand the ramifications of modernity. ⇧
Guests on Volume 123
• NICHOLAS M. HEALY on some of the practical and theological weaknesses in the writings of Stanley Hauerwas
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on the spiritual lives of emerging adults raised within the Roman Catholic Church and taught at Catholic schools
• JAMES K. A. SMITH on Charles Taylor's explanation (in The Secular Age) of how modern culture came to unlearn the theistic assumption of the West
• ESTHER LIGHTCAP MEEK on why pitting “objectivity” against “subjectivity” in describing the nature of knowledge isn't helpful, and on why all knowing involves making a commitment
• RICHARD VILADESAU on the relationship between formal, propositional, academic theology and the theological expressions found in works of art and music
• JEREMY BEGBIE on why theologians should be more interested in how music and modernity have interacted
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Nicholas M. Healy
“If one looks at the lives of Christian communities, there is much less formation going on than I think [Hauerwas’s] theory seems to need. . . . It’s not as if one goes to a Christian church and is then formed by that Christian church. It is that we decide to join this church rather than that church because we find it appealing. In other words, we already have a kind of taste for a particular kind of Christianity. We go there and we get more of that. . . . Each and every one of us is formed to a very limited extent, I would say, because we live so much in the world . . . and the world is forming us all the time.”
— Nicholas M. Healy, author of Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Eerdmans, 2014)
In his book, Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction, theologian Nicholas M. Healy agrees with Stanley Hauerwas's project to build a church that establishes practices which inform theology and shape character; however, Healy takes issue with the modes of argument Hauerwas has typically employed. Healy is concerned that Hauerwas's focus on ethics over-emphasizes community identity at the expense of trinitarian and soteriological doctrine. At stake, Healy argues, is whether the Church is viewed as a human institution or a product of God’s work. ⇧
• • •
Christian Smith
“Even though the Catholic church has the theological resources for a sort of rich communal sense of the faith, I think the American experience today is actually very thin.”
— Christian Smith, author of Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone From the Church (Oxford University Press, 2014)
To Christian Smith’s continued study on the religious lives of adolescents and emerging adults, he and his colleagues have recently appended a narrower study on the religious lives of young Roman Catholics in America. Smith’s study reports a general decline among young Catholics, which he attributes to a particular cluster of events that significantly reshaped American Catholicism. Beginning in the 1960s, Catholics began to encounter a greater increase in social upward mobility that allowed for the Catholic ghetto community of the fifties to be more fully assimilated into the surrounding culture. However, as Smith notes, many of the broader cultural currents that were developing during the 60s—such as the sexual revolution and the turn towards therapeutic values—emerged as hostile to historic Catholicism. Coinciding with these trends, the Second Vatican Council of the early 60s marked an institutional softening and openness towards many aspects of modernity, which—in the absence of proper clerical instruction—made many Catholics vulnerable to adopting the beliefs and presuppositions of their secular, non-Catholic peers. ⇧
• • •
James K. A. Smith
“As I started having conversations with church planters and pastors in urban contexts, I started to realize that—oh man, actually, this should be like a DMin course in a box, because this might be the kind of ethnography of Manhattan or Seattle that they need [in order] to make sense of their new context.”
— James K. A. Smith, author of How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Eerdmans, 2014)
Philosopher James K. A. Smith discusses the evangelical and ecclesial ramifications for Christians living within Charles Taylor’s third wave of secularism. In contrast to the classical-medieval paradigm in which the secular designates the temporal and earthly, and in contrast to the Enlightenment paradigm of a metaphysically detached or neutral secular realm, Taylor’s third wave of secularism is one in which belief in God is merely one choice among a plurality of choices or, for many, completely implausible. ⇧
• • •
Esther Lightcap Meek
“Somehow in the water of our approach to knowing, whether we’ve done philosophy or not, we just assume that knowledge is certainty, and if you don’t have certainty, you don’t have knowledge.”
— Esther Lightcap Meek, author of A Little Manual for Knowing (Cascade Books, 2014)
Philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek talks about how our presuppositions about knowledge have been deformed by a mind/body dualism inherited from Enlightenment thinkers such as Descartes. As a result of divorcing the mind from the body, how we think about knowledge (a.k.a. epistemology), in turn, became divorced from our selves as whole persons. In her book, A Little Manual for Knowing, Meek argues that knowledge is not something we pin down and put in a box, nor is it something that pins us down; rather, knowledge is that which simultaneously opens up, and guides us through, future possibilities. In Meek’s epistemology, knowledge is inseparable from personal interaction with the world, requiring both commitment and profession. In this way, knowledge accumulates attributes that it shares in common with hope and, quite often, leads us toward hope. ⇧
• • •
Richard Viladesau
“[A]esthetic theology has always been the main form of theology in the Church—although sometimes the way it’s presented by the hierarchical, or the official Church, it seems like it’s the other way around. But in fact, I think it has always been the aesthetic theology that’s been preached—at least when the preaching is effective—and that has constituted the main body of the transmission of theology in aesthetic modes. One of the problems is that frequently people haven’t recognized that; they’ve mistaken aesthetics for dogmatics and vice versa.”
— Richard Viladesau, author of The Pathos of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts - The Baroque Era (Oxford University Press, 2014)
In Richard Viladesau’s series on aesthetic theology, Viladesau examines how an artwork is more than its subject. A painting or a piece of music is not merely a conduit for an abstract doctrine or lesson. It is, in its form and presentation of the subject, its own commentary. In other words, theology is irreducibly aesthetic. In his third volume surveying the theology of the cross in art, entitled The Pathos of the Cross, Viladesau explains how the Baroque era emphasized the viewer’s emotional response to, and participation in, the subject of Christ on the cross. ⇧
• • •
Jeremy Begbie
“I think, at the risk of gross generalization, what we’ve witnessed in the move from the medieval to the modern—as far as music is concerned, as far as theorizing about music is concerned—is a shift from, what I call, the cosmological to the anthropological. . . . What we see from the 1500s onwards, perhaps even earlier, is the tendency to see music more and more as a humanly constructed tool, a tool of persuasion (especially emotional persuasion), and the sense in which music is embedded in the cosmic order at large begins to wane.”
— Jeremy Begbie, author of Music, Modernity, and God: Listening to Music (Oxford University Press, 2013)
In his book, Music, Modernity, and God: Essays in Listening, theologian Jeremy Begbie discusses the role that music played within the larger cultural shift from a medieval to a modern outlook. Despite the challenges that music presents for referential certainty, Begbie argues that the ubiquity and prominence of music during many historical transitions and among every people-group demands that it be given its due attention by those theologians wanting to fully understand the ramifications of modernity. ⇧
Guests on Volume 124
• JOHN FEA on how American individualism fuels indifference to the study of history, and how K-12 education can counter that apathy
• ROBERT F. REA on how engagement with Church history deepens our faith and enriches our capacity as faithful servants
• JOHN C. PINHEIRO on how anti-Catholic prejudice in mid-nineteenth-century America was intertwined with beliefs about the virtues of Republicanism, "Manifest Destiny," and the Mexican-American War
• R. J. SNELL on how newer ideas about natural law focus less on moral propositions and concepts and more on the thrust for meaning and value
• DUNCAN G. STROIK on how architectural styles function as languages that speak to us and enable buildings to speak to each other
• KATE TAMARKIN and FIONA HUGHES on the healing power of music
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Fea
“I think that in the sense that America is the first Enlightenment nation in the world, it is inherently progressive, and those who are progressive . . . really have no use for the past other than to look to it to make sure that we don't do that again . . . to do that horrible thing again, whatever that horrible thing happens to be.”
— John Fea, author of Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past (Baker Academic, 2013)
Historian John Fea discusses how American and Protestant individualism continues to influence our orientation towards the past. In contrast to other Christian cultures, such as Roman Catholicism, European Christendom, and the Eastern Orthodox tradition — all of which have viewed their histories more in terms of dynamic, living traditions — American Protestantism has been disposed to treat history as a collection of dates and events that are extrinsic and, more or less, optional to understanding the present and future.
Fea argues that the benefit of studying history is that history de-centers us, such that we are compelled to consider situations and motivations beyond ourselves. For Fea, history’s instruction leads to both moral and public consequences that must be cultivated with wise pedagogy. Rather than teaching students to be “consumers” of history, Fea and others call for practices of “producing” history, which requires engaging with primary sources and articulating informed and coherent accounts of historical documents. ⇧
• • •
Robert F. Rea
“Most of the people who have . . . reservations about spending a lot of time on the Tradition, most of them are not saying that they don’t think it’s important. They’re just wondering if it’s important enough to spend time dealing with it, that they could use for other things and other practices. But what they often don’t realize is that many of the doctrines that they articulate are articulated in ways that were provided for them by people who went before.”
— Robert F. Rea, author of Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past (InterVarsity Press, 2014)
Church historian Robert F. Rea in his book Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past, wants to persuade Christians from Evangelical and Free-Church traditions that the study of church history is more than an intellectual exercise or an academic discipline. For Rea, studying church history is a means through which we participate in the Church Universal, which includes the communion of those saints who have lived for twenty centuries. Rea’s invitation “to love and learn” prompts us to appeal to the Tradition as still living; part of this involves seeking out, and submitting to, the spiritual mentorship of a Church figure from the past. Connecting with “dead Christians” and their communities need not solely benefit personal spiritual formation, but can also reform our paradigms for what the practices and life of the Church community have been and can be. ⇧
• • •
John C. Pinheiro
“The dynamic that I think the Mexican-American War revealed is that white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants as a race (as Americans would have thought of it) were somehow uniquely predisposed to be the guardians of liberty and the spreaders of liberty, and that the darker or more Catholic you got, the less able you were to accomplish these things.”
— John C. Pinheiro, author of Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American War (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Historian John C. Pinheiro discusses the ways that nineteenth-century American Republicanism, and its attending notions of freedom, was conflated with Protestant theology and national prosperity. In his book, Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American War, Pinheiro tells how these notions were disseminated with evangelical rhetoric by such figures as the preacher Lyman Beecher and journalist John L. O’Sullivan. Included in this rhetoric were eschatological rationales for American expansion that resulted in pervasive anti-Catholic sentiments, which, in turn, helped to justify and motivate the Mexican-American War. ⇧
• • •
R. J. Snell
“The natural law is not an abstract deductivist theory. It’s not just concepts in relation to concepts, but it’s about how real human beings . . . organize our lives towards purpose and meaning and good. And so there’s reasons why it doesn’t work out as pristinely as it looks to be in the textbooks. . . . When I think of natural law, I think of it in many ways as a form of therapy.”
— R. J. Snell, author of The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode (Pickwick Publications, 2014)
Philosopher R. J. Snell explains how new currents in natural law have shifted from beginning with metaphysical assumptions, that answer metaphysical questions, to beginning with plain persons, who inquire (through a process of self-examination) into their reasons and motivations for action. Given the lack of vocabularies for moral discourse in contemporary public life, new natural law philosophers have responded by dispensing with natural law as a theory that accounts for a set of questions made evident through practical reason, in favor of natural law as a “performance,” or “therapy,” that cultivates practical reason and self-examination, and thereby makes possible an arena for argument. ⇧
• • •
Duncan G. Stroik
“Perhaps the best example is how traditional cities and traditional buildings speak to each other. There’s a discussion amongst them and to the people that are visiting them. Whereas you could take three famous modernist buildings and plop them down next to each other and they wouldn’t have anything in common.”
— Duncan G. Stroik, author of The Church Building as a Sacred Place: Beauty, Transcendence, and the Eternal (Hillenbrand Books, 2012)
Architect and professor Duncan G. Stroik calls attention to the distinctly public and rhetorical power of architecture. Using the metaphor of architecture as “frozen music,” Stroik describes how buildings can be intelligibly expressive through their use of themes and sub-themes, which, although “frozen,” are nonetheless experienced over time. Stroik is especially concerned with the ways in which church buildings communicate to those inside and out. He details how mid-nineteenth-century tent revivalism drastically altered churches from places premised upon the location and worship of something sacred to spaces modeled after the stages of theaters and auditoriums. ⇧
• • •
Kate Tamarkin and Fiona Hughes
“Hearing is the first sense to develop in the womb and the last sense to go at death. You can play to a baby who’s not yet born and you can speak to a person who looks absolutely unresponsive or even in a coma. So that says to me that whatever creative powers in the universe fashioned this, it must have been important.”
— Kate Tamarkin, conductor
Conductor Kate Tamarkin and violinist Fiona Hughes share about their training in the area of therapeutic music. Not to be confused with music therapists (who attain a degree and use music to achieve specific rehabilitative goals), Tamarkin and Hughes apply their musical skills to partner with medical establishments as public servants to those in physical or mental distress.
While many of the physical responses to music remain anecdotal, there is a growing amount of measurable research to confirm how sensitive our bodies are to different forms of music. One such result has been in the area of hospice care. Researchers have discovered that medieval plainchant is especially palliative to patients who are dying. The structure of the music would seem to sympathize with what the person experiences in the process nearing death. The chant’s irregular beat and cadence; its simple, stepwise melodic profile; and its disposition to tarry and weave rather than drive towards a goal are all features it shares with the unforeseeable experience of dying. One might even suggest that the chant helps to prepare the dying person. ⇧
Guests on Volume 124
• JOHN FEA on how American individualism fuels indifference to the study of history, and how K-12 education can counter that apathy
• ROBERT F. REA on how engagement with Church history deepens our faith and enriches our capacity as faithful servants
• JOHN C. PINHEIRO on how anti-Catholic prejudice in mid-nineteenth-century America was intertwined with beliefs about the virtues of Republicanism, "Manifest Destiny," and the Mexican-American War
• R. J. SNELL on how newer ideas about natural law focus less on moral propositions and concepts and more on the thrust for meaning and value
• DUNCAN G. STROIK on how architectural styles function as languages that speak to us and enable buildings to speak to each other
• KATE TAMARKIN and FIONA HUGHES on the healing power of music
A digital edition of this Volume is available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Fea
“I think that in the sense that America is the first Enlightenment nation in the world, it is inherently progressive, and those who are progressive . . . really have no use for the past other than to look to it to make sure that we don't do that again . . . to do that horrible thing again, whatever that horrible thing happens to be.”
— John Fea, author of Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past (Baker Academic, 2013)
Historian John Fea discusses how American and Protestant individualism continues to influence our orientation towards the past. In contrast to other Christian cultures, such as Roman Catholicism, European Christendom, and the Eastern Orthodox tradition — all of which have viewed their histories more in terms of dynamic, living traditions — American Protestantism has been disposed to treat history as a collection of dates and events that are extrinsic and, more or less, optional to understanding the present and future.
Fea argues that the benefit of studying history is that history de-centers us, such that we are compelled to consider situations and motivations beyond ourselves. For Fea, history’s instruction leads to both moral and public consequences that must be cultivated with wise pedagogy. Rather than teaching students to be “consumers” of history, Fea and others call for practices of “producing” history, which requires engaging with primary sources and articulating informed and coherent accounts of historical documents. ⇧
• • •
Robert F. Rea
“Most of the people who have . . . reservations about spending a lot of time on the Tradition, most of them are not saying that they don’t think it’s important. They’re just wondering if it’s important enough to spend time dealing with it, that they could use for other things and other practices. But what they often don’t realize is that many of the doctrines that they articulate are articulated in ways that were provided for them by people who went before.”
— Robert F. Rea, author of Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past (InterVarsity Press, 2014)
Church historian Robert F. Rea in his book Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past, wants to persuade Christians from Evangelical and Free-Church traditions that the study of church history is more than an intellectual exercise or an academic discipline. For Rea, studying church history is a means through which we participate in the Church Universal, which includes the communion of those saints who have lived for twenty centuries. Rea’s invitation “to love and learn” prompts us to appeal to the Tradition as still living; part of this involves seeking out, and submitting to, the spiritual mentorship of a Church figure from the past. Connecting with “dead Christians” and their communities need not solely benefit personal spiritual formation, but can also reform our paradigms for what the practices and life of the Church community have been and can be. ⇧
• • •
John C. Pinheiro
“The dynamic that I think the Mexican-American War revealed is that white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants as a race (as Americans would have thought of it) were somehow uniquely predisposed to be the guardians of liberty and the spreaders of liberty, and that the darker or more Catholic you got, the less able you were to accomplish these things.”
— John C. Pinheiro, author of Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American War (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Historian John C. Pinheiro discusses the ways that nineteenth-century American Republicanism, and its attending notions of freedom, was conflated with Protestant theology and national prosperity. In his book, Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American War, Pinheiro tells how these notions were disseminated with evangelical rhetoric by such figures as the preacher Lyman Beecher and journalist John L. O’Sullivan. Included in this rhetoric were eschatological rationales for American expansion that resulted in pervasive anti-Catholic sentiments, which, in turn, helped to justify and motivate the Mexican-American War. ⇧
• • •
R. J. Snell
“The natural law is not an abstract deductivist theory. It’s not just concepts in relation to concepts, but it’s about how real human beings . . . organize our lives towards purpose and meaning and good. And so there’s reasons why it doesn’t work out as pristinely as it looks to be in the textbooks. . . . When I think of natural law, I think of it in many ways as a form of therapy.”
— R. J. Snell, author of The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode (Pickwick Publications, 2014)
Philosopher R. J. Snell explains how new currents in natural law have shifted from beginning with metaphysical assumptions, that answer metaphysical questions, to beginning with plain persons, who inquire (through a process of self-examination) into their reasons and motivations for action. Given the lack of vocabularies for moral discourse in contemporary public life, new natural law philosophers have responded by dispensing with natural law as a theory that accounts for a set of questions made evident through practical reason, in favor of natural law as a “performance,” or “therapy,” that cultivates practical reason and self-examination, and thereby makes possible an arena for argument. ⇧
• • •
Duncan G. Stroik
“Perhaps the best example is how traditional cities and traditional buildings speak to each other. There’s a discussion amongst them and to the people that are visiting them. Whereas you could take three famous modernist buildings and plop them down next to each other and they wouldn’t have anything in common.”
— Duncan G. Stroik, author of The Church Building as a Sacred Place: Beauty, Transcendence, and the Eternal (Hillenbrand Books, 2012)
Architect and professor Duncan G. Stroik calls attention to the distinctly public and rhetorical power of architecture. Using the metaphor of architecture as “frozen music,” Stroik describes how buildings can be intelligibly expressive through their use of themes and sub-themes, which, although “frozen,” are nonetheless experienced over time. Stroik is especially concerned with the ways in which church buildings communicate to those inside and out. He details how mid-nineteenth-century tent revivalism drastically altered churches from places premised upon the location and worship of something sacred to spaces modeled after the stages of theaters and auditoriums. ⇧
• • •
Kate Tamarkin and Fiona Hughes
“Hearing is the first sense to develop in the womb and the last sense to go at death. You can play to a baby who’s not yet born and you can speak to a person who looks absolutely unresponsive or even in a coma. So that says to me that whatever creative powers in the universe fashioned this, it must have been important.”
— Kate Tamarkin, conductor
Conductor Kate Tamarkin and violinist Fiona Hughes share about their training in the area of therapeutic music. Not to be confused with music therapists (who attain a degree and use music to achieve specific rehabilitative goals), Tamarkin and Hughes apply their musical skills to partner with medical establishments as public servants to those in physical or mental distress.
While many of the physical responses to music remain anecdotal, there is a growing amount of measurable research to confirm how sensitive our bodies are to different forms of music. One such result has been in the area of hospice care. Researchers have discovered that medieval plainchant is especially palliative to patients who are dying. The structure of the music would seem to sympathize with what the person experiences in the process nearing death. The chant’s irregular beat and cadence; its simple, stepwise melodic profile; and its disposition to tarry and weave rather than drive towards a goal are all features it shares with the unforeseeable experience of dying. One might even suggest that the chant helps to prepare the dying person. ⇧
Guests on Volume 125
• BRENT HULL on the virtues of craftsmanship
• DAVID KOYZIS on the goodness and nature of authority
• STEVE WILKENS on three Christian views of the relationship between faith and reason
• ROGER LUNDIN on faith and doubt in an inescapably verbal universe
• CRAIG BERNTHAL on the Christian doctrine of Creation in Tolkien’s mythic writings
• KERRY MCCARTHY on the life and legacy of English Renaissance composer William Byrd
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Brent Hull
“Around the turn of the century there was a rejection of ornamentation . . . and so when modern architecture began to take over . . . we lost ornament. And I think part of the reason why modern buildings are inhuman is because they don’t have craft. There isn’t ornament. There isn’t a celebration (for lack of a better word) of the human experience and of skill and of being able to show off.”
— Brent Hull, author of Building a Timeless House in an Instant Age (Brown Books, 2014)
Architect Brent Hull discusses how attentive craftsmanship and the classical principles of scale and proportion humanize our buildings, infusing them with personality, meaning, and gender. ⇧
• • •
David Koyzis
“Even in the work of Yves Simon . . . there is this presupposition — or this kind of background supposition — that authority and freedom are somehow different from each other. They’re complementary, he believes — they’re not to be opposed — but they’re still two different things. I think that’s wrong, because I think what we think of as freedom is simply another kind of authority. It’s what I would call exclusive personal authority.”
— David Koyzis, author of We Answer to Another (Pickwick Publications, 2014)
Political philosopher David Koyzis challenges the common objections that authority leads to abuses of power and that authority conflicts with freedom. By contrast, Koyzis argues that authority is not primarily found in persuasion or coercion, but rather in our nature as the image bearers of God. The Imago Dei is the “office” that is authorized by the Supreme Authority and extends into all individual and institutional acts. Within this paradigm, freedom is not separate from authority, but dependent upon our response to the many and diverse “authoritative offices” in which we find ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Steve Wilkens
“Which seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it? Why do you attempt to prove the God you are in conversation with? But there is this notion of reason being redeemed. . . . [U]nderstanding isn’t just the accumulation of an ever greater basket of facts or a bigger spreadsheet of data to work from. Understanding means being transformed so that we can see the purpose of God for the use of our reason. . . . So understanding is a broad framework in which we now see the world in a different way.”
— Steve Wilkens, editor of Faith and Reason: Three Views (InterVarsity Press, 2014)
Philosophy professor Steve Wilkens surveys three common views of the relationship between faith and reason within the Christian tradition. Far from being completely distinct and separate, these views often overlap and are held to various degrees among different Christians. Wilkens also examines how these views differ in relation to the Incarnation and the ways in which postmodern categories have shaped the tone of discourse about faith and reason. ⇧
• • •
Roger Lundin
“More than ever I think it’s crucial for Christian cultural critics in the twenty-first century to celebrate and to explore the mysteries of the Trinitarian complexity and beauty of God.”
— Roger Lundin, author of Beginning with the Word: Modern Literature and the Question of Belief (Baker Academic, 2014)
English professor and literary critic Roger Lundin shares the ways in which language enables us to encounter the world: both by giving a name to our desires, exposing the gaps between our experience and our aspirations, and by declaring with confidence the hope grounded in the Word made flesh. Lundin’s book Beginning with the Word challenges the naturalist assumption — found within religious and secular settings — that we are mere matter in a closed system in which “belief” is an epiphenomenal means of coping with consciousness. Instead, Lundin insists, the consequences of an incarnated Word and a trinitarian God reunites and holds in place the modern dichotomy between belief and faith. ⇧
• • •
Craig Bernthal
“Tolkien believed that no one was ever cut off from the truth, no one was ever completely cut off from the Logos, . . . but that it was the impulse of human beings to try to recover that, so that all of human myth has at least some element of truth in it. When Tolkien looked at the Mediterranean myths of dying and resurrecting gods . . . he didn’t use that as a way to dismiss Christianity . . . but it was so much the better for those people who had created those myths; they had gotten part of the truth!”
— Craig Bernthal, author of Tolkien's Sacramental Vision: Discerning the Holy in Middle Earth (Second Spring, 2014)
English professor Craig Bernthal, talks about the influences upon Tolkien’s creation myths, including Johannine literature, the relationship between pre-modern notions of cosmic harmony and music, Tolkien’s interest in languages, and the proximity of myths to Truth. ⇧
• • •
Kerry McCarthy
“What Byrd was really interested in was the effect on the listeners and also the effect on the performers, since so much of his music was designed as chamber music.”
— Kerry McCarthy, author of Byrd (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Musicologist Kerry McCarthy discusses William Byrd’s very successful musical career within Reformational England. She also talks about Byrd’s interest in music education and his exceptional ability to absorb foreign influences while creating music that was, nonetheless, English. ⇧
Guests on Volume 125
• BRENT HULL on the virtues of craftsmanship
• DAVID KOYZIS on the goodness and nature of authority
• STEVE WILKENS on three Christian views of the relationship between faith and reason
• ROGER LUNDIN on faith and doubt in an inescapably verbal universe
• CRAIG BERNTHAL on the Christian doctrine of Creation in Tolkien’s mythic writings
• KERRY MCCARTHY on the life and legacy of English Renaissance composer William Byrd
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Brent Hull
“Around the turn of the century there was a rejection of ornamentation . . . and so when modern architecture began to take over . . . we lost ornament. And I think part of the reason why modern buildings are inhuman is because they don’t have craft. There isn’t ornament. There isn’t a celebration (for lack of a better word) of the human experience and of skill and of being able to show off.”
— Brent Hull, author of Building a Timeless House in an Instant Age (Brown Books, 2014)
Architect Brent Hull discusses how attentive craftsmanship and the classical principles of scale and proportion humanize our buildings, infusing them with personality, meaning, and gender. ⇧
• • •
David Koyzis
“Even in the work of Yves Simon . . . there is this presupposition — or this kind of background supposition — that authority and freedom are somehow different from each other. They’re complementary, he believes — they’re not to be opposed — but they’re still two different things. I think that’s wrong, because I think what we think of as freedom is simply another kind of authority. It’s what I would call exclusive personal authority.”
— David Koyzis, author of We Answer to Another (Pickwick Publications, 2014)
Political philosopher David Koyzis challenges the common objections that authority leads to abuses of power and that authority conflicts with freedom. By contrast, Koyzis argues that authority is not primarily found in persuasion or coercion, but rather in our nature as the image bearers of God. The Imago Dei is the “office” that is authorized by the Supreme Authority and extends into all individual and institutional acts. Within this paradigm, freedom is not separate from authority, but dependent upon our response to the many and diverse “authoritative offices” in which we find ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Steve Wilkens
“Which seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it? Why do you attempt to prove the God you are in conversation with? But there is this notion of reason being redeemed. . . . [U]nderstanding isn’t just the accumulation of an ever greater basket of facts or a bigger spreadsheet of data to work from. Understanding means being transformed so that we can see the purpose of God for the use of our reason. . . . So understanding is a broad framework in which we now see the world in a different way.”
— Steve Wilkens, editor of Faith and Reason: Three Views (InterVarsity Press, 2014)
Philosophy professor Steve Wilkens surveys three common views of the relationship between faith and reason within the Christian tradition. Far from being completely distinct and separate, these views often overlap and are held to various degrees among different Christians. Wilkens also examines how these views differ in relation to the Incarnation and the ways in which postmodern categories have shaped the tone of discourse about faith and reason. ⇧
• • •
Roger Lundin
“More than ever I think it’s crucial for Christian cultural critics in the twenty-first century to celebrate and to explore the mysteries of the Trinitarian complexity and beauty of God.”
— Roger Lundin, author of Beginning with the Word: Modern Literature and the Question of Belief (Baker Academic, 2014)
English professor and literary critic Roger Lundin shares the ways in which language enables us to encounter the world: both by giving a name to our desires, exposing the gaps between our experience and our aspirations, and by declaring with confidence the hope grounded in the Word made flesh. Lundin’s book Beginning with the Word challenges the naturalist assumption — found within religious and secular settings — that we are mere matter in a closed system in which “belief” is an epiphenomenal means of coping with consciousness. Instead, Lundin insists, the consequences of an incarnated Word and a trinitarian God reunites and holds in place the modern dichotomy between belief and faith. ⇧
• • •
Craig Bernthal
“Tolkien believed that no one was ever cut off from the truth, no one was ever completely cut off from the Logos, . . . but that it was the impulse of human beings to try to recover that, so that all of human myth has at least some element of truth in it. When Tolkien looked at the Mediterranean myths of dying and resurrecting gods . . . he didn’t use that as a way to dismiss Christianity . . . but it was so much the better for those people who had created those myths; they had gotten part of the truth!”
— Craig Bernthal, author of Tolkien's Sacramental Vision: Discerning the Holy in Middle Earth (Second Spring, 2014)
English professor Craig Bernthal, talks about the influences upon Tolkien’s creation myths, including Johannine literature, the relationship between pre-modern notions of cosmic harmony and music, Tolkien’s interest in languages, and the proximity of myths to Truth. ⇧
• • •
Kerry McCarthy
“What Byrd was really interested in was the effect on the listeners and also the effect on the performers, since so much of his music was designed as chamber music.”
— Kerry McCarthy, author of Byrd (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Musicologist Kerry McCarthy discusses William Byrd’s very successful musical career within Reformational England. She also talks about Byrd’s interest in music education and his exceptional ability to absorb foreign influences while creating music that was, nonetheless, English. ⇧
Guests on Volume 126
• JAMES W. SKILLEN on how all human cultural activity, including politics, should be understood in the context of God’s good purposes for Creation
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on how American sociology is not (as is claimed) a disinterested scientific endeavor but the pursuit of a sacred project driven by sacred commitments
• B. W. POWE on the unique “apocalyptic” insights of Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye
• DAVID DOWNING on C. S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress
• ROGER SCRUTON on the inability for materialism to give a satisfactory account of our experience of the material world
• JONATHAN ARNOLD on the curious place of sacred music in a secular society
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
James W. Skillen
“It finally dawned on me that the most basic question that wasn’t being asked was: Is government there because of sin, or does it have some root in Creation?”
— James W. Skillen, author of The Good of Politics: A Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Introduction (Baker Academic, 2014)
Within this neglected question, political-theologian James W. Skillen identifies two other forgotten inquiries. Namely, is Christianity solely a sin-salvation story and who is this Savior? These questions lead to far-reaching consequences that extend into all matters of cultural life. Skillen argues that Christianity and all true religions are not, on the one hand, mere expressions of worship or, on the other hand, neutral institutions with a religious veneer, but entire “ways of life” that structurally inhabit and give life to human institutions, authority, and responsibility. ⇧
• • •
Christian Smith
“Part of what I’m saying here is that sociology operates, to some degree, with a kind of false consciousness about itself. That, on the one hand, it would like to think about itself as a scientific study of society . . . and, on the other hand, it’s this incredibly highly committed — politically, ideologically, morally — project that . . . actually has the character that it’s sacred, in a Durkheimian sense.”
— Christian Smith, author of The Sacred Project of American Sociology (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Sociologist Christian Smith discusses the tacit assumptions, commitments, and ventures of American sociology. In particular, Smith foregrounds the underlying contradiction between sociology as a field that believes identities are profoundly shaped by social communities and structures, and the assumption within the sociological community that identity is fundamentally freely constructed by the sovereign Self. To this extent, American sociology is deeply American in that it is at heart a liberationist project committed to freeing individuals from the social constraints in which they are embedded. ⇧
• • •
B. W. Powe
“[McLuhan and Frye] represent an older literary tradition, an older philosophical tradition. They both rejected deconstructionism; they were very well aware of it. . . . [W]hat they saw as being the essential questions — the quest for identity, the nature of media ecology, how does the environment influence us, the primacy of literary texts at the core of the humanities — may have seemed like passé questions in the 80s and 90s and the turn of the century, but I would assert actually that they're not now . . . for the very simple reason that they are essential questions. They are the ones that relate deeply to our questions of soul, identity, spirit, imagination, and awareness.”
— B. W. Powe, author of Marshal McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy (University of Toronto Press, 2014)
English professor and author B. W. Powe shares his experiences and observations as a student and researcher of the literary critics Marshal McLuhan and Northrop Frye. Colleagues at the University of Toronto for over three decades, McLuhan and Frye both gained distinguished reputations in their fields, but with decidedly different styles. While McLuhan was notorious for his oral aphorisms, riffs, and dialogic associations, Frye was known for his paragraphic and architectural literary prose. McLuhan’s work in media theory anticipated the future with prophetic perception; Frye, on the other hand, probed into metaphors, symbols, and images with profound insight concerning the perennial quest for identity. ⇧
• • •
David Downing
“Lewis wrote [The Pilgrim’s Regress] in two weeks while on vacation in Ireland . . . [H]e wrote in this white heat of creativity and pretty much wanted to get down everything he could think about about his own spiritual journey, and it probably was a mistake to write it that quickly. He later wrote a preface [where] he said that he was sorry for the ‘needless obscurity and the uncharitable temper of the book.’”
— David Downing
In this conversation, English professor David Downing discusses the context that accounts for the puzzling and allusive difficulty of C. S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress. ⇧
• • •
Roger Scruton
“I think we’re living through a period in which we’re defacing things, defacing each other and defacing the world around us . . . We no longer see the light of the soul shining in things and this is revealed in our way of abusing and misusing nature, but also in the way of abusing and misusing ourselves.”
— Roger Scruton, author of The Soul of the World (Princeton University Press, 2014)
Philosopher Roger Scruton discusses the ways in which the sacred or religious sensibility is prefigured in aesthetic experiences and in our relationships to the world. In his book, The Soul of the World, Scruton explores what sort of reality must exist in order for our relationships and our experiences to have meaning. Do merely physical causes account for our consciousness, our point of view? Can materialism satisfactorily explain our propensity to speak about things and to ask why? As Scruton argues, there is a soul and a face to the world around us which addresses us and to which we respond. Our responsibility results in an understanding of the world that stretches beyond mere explanation. ⇧
• • •
Jonathan Arnold
“What I find so interesting about the concept of beauty, and why it might be important to describe sacred music in that way, is what is the ultimate goal of a beautiful thing? It would be leading us to find the highest part of ourselves, to ultimately, at its best, transform us into something more beautiful ourselves, and lead us towards the ultimate greatest source of beauty, which is love.”
— Jonathan Arnold, author of Sacred Music in Secular Society (Ashgate, 2014)
Singer and theologian Jonathan Arnold explores why people of no religious commitment pay money to hear specifically sacred music. Arnold hypothesizes that for many people who consider themselves atheist or agnostic, sacred music provides a “real presence” of something much more powerful than themselves. In his book, Sacred Music in Secular Society, Arnold interviews a number of composers, conductors, and performers, a philosopher, and a theologian to glean insight into what might be happening for these listeners. ⇧
Guests on Volume 126
• JAMES W. SKILLEN on how all human cultural activity, including politics, should be understood in the context of God’s good purposes for Creation
• CHRISTIAN SMITH on how American sociology is not (as is claimed) a disinterested scientific endeavor but the pursuit of a sacred project driven by sacred commitments
• B. W. POWE on the unique “apocalyptic” insights of Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye
• DAVID DOWNING on C. S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress
• ROGER SCRUTON on the inability for materialism to give a satisfactory account of our experience of the material world
• JONATHAN ARNOLD on the curious place of sacred music in a secular society
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
James W. Skillen
“It finally dawned on me that the most basic question that wasn’t being asked was: Is government there because of sin, or does it have some root in Creation?”
— James W. Skillen, author of The Good of Politics: A Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Introduction (Baker Academic, 2014)
Within this neglected question, political-theologian James W. Skillen identifies two other forgotten inquiries. Namely, is Christianity solely a sin-salvation story and who is this Savior? These questions lead to far-reaching consequences that extend into all matters of cultural life. Skillen argues that Christianity and all true religions are not, on the one hand, mere expressions of worship or, on the other hand, neutral institutions with a religious veneer, but entire “ways of life” that structurally inhabit and give life to human institutions, authority, and responsibility. ⇧
• • •
Christian Smith
“Part of what I’m saying here is that sociology operates, to some degree, with a kind of false consciousness about itself. That, on the one hand, it would like to think about itself as a scientific study of society . . . and, on the other hand, it’s this incredibly highly committed — politically, ideologically, morally — project that . . . actually has the character that it’s sacred, in a Durkheimian sense.”
— Christian Smith, author of The Sacred Project of American Sociology (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Sociologist Christian Smith discusses the tacit assumptions, commitments, and ventures of American sociology. In particular, Smith foregrounds the underlying contradiction between sociology as a field that believes identities are profoundly shaped by social communities and structures, and the assumption within the sociological community that identity is fundamentally freely constructed by the sovereign Self. To this extent, American sociology is deeply American in that it is at heart a liberationist project committed to freeing individuals from the social constraints in which they are embedded. ⇧
• • •
B. W. Powe
“[McLuhan and Frye] represent an older literary tradition, an older philosophical tradition. They both rejected deconstructionism; they were very well aware of it. . . . [W]hat they saw as being the essential questions — the quest for identity, the nature of media ecology, how does the environment influence us, the primacy of literary texts at the core of the humanities — may have seemed like passé questions in the 80s and 90s and the turn of the century, but I would assert actually that they're not now . . . for the very simple reason that they are essential questions. They are the ones that relate deeply to our questions of soul, identity, spirit, imagination, and awareness.”
— B. W. Powe, author of Marshal McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy (University of Toronto Press, 2014)
English professor and author B. W. Powe shares his experiences and observations as a student and researcher of the literary critics Marshal McLuhan and Northrop Frye. Colleagues at the University of Toronto for over three decades, McLuhan and Frye both gained distinguished reputations in their fields, but with decidedly different styles. While McLuhan was notorious for his oral aphorisms, riffs, and dialogic associations, Frye was known for his paragraphic and architectural literary prose. McLuhan’s work in media theory anticipated the future with prophetic perception; Frye, on the other hand, probed into metaphors, symbols, and images with profound insight concerning the perennial quest for identity. ⇧
• • •
David Downing
“Lewis wrote [The Pilgrim’s Regress] in two weeks while on vacation in Ireland . . . [H]e wrote in this white heat of creativity and pretty much wanted to get down everything he could think about about his own spiritual journey, and it probably was a mistake to write it that quickly. He later wrote a preface [where] he said that he was sorry for the ‘needless obscurity and the uncharitable temper of the book.’”
— David Downing
In this conversation, English professor David Downing discusses the context that accounts for the puzzling and allusive difficulty of C. S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress. ⇧
• • •
Roger Scruton
“I think we’re living through a period in which we’re defacing things, defacing each other and defacing the world around us . . . We no longer see the light of the soul shining in things and this is revealed in our way of abusing and misusing nature, but also in the way of abusing and misusing ourselves.”
— Roger Scruton, author of The Soul of the World (Princeton University Press, 2014)
Philosopher Roger Scruton discusses the ways in which the sacred or religious sensibility is prefigured in aesthetic experiences and in our relationships to the world. In his book, The Soul of the World, Scruton explores what sort of reality must exist in order for our relationships and our experiences to have meaning. Do merely physical causes account for our consciousness, our point of view? Can materialism satisfactorily explain our propensity to speak about things and to ask why? As Scruton argues, there is a soul and a face to the world around us which addresses us and to which we respond. Our responsibility results in an understanding of the world that stretches beyond mere explanation. ⇧
• • •
Jonathan Arnold
“What I find so interesting about the concept of beauty, and why it might be important to describe sacred music in that way, is what is the ultimate goal of a beautiful thing? It would be leading us to find the highest part of ourselves, to ultimately, at its best, transform us into something more beautiful ourselves, and lead us towards the ultimate greatest source of beauty, which is love.”
— Jonathan Arnold, author of Sacred Music in Secular Society (Ashgate, 2014)
Singer and theologian Jonathan Arnold explores why people of no religious commitment pay money to hear specifically sacred music. Arnold hypothesizes that for many people who consider themselves atheist or agnostic, sacred music provides a “real presence” of something much more powerful than themselves. In his book, Sacred Music in Secular Society, Arnold interviews a number of composers, conductors, and performers, a philosopher, and a theologian to glean insight into what might be happening for these listeners. ⇧
Guests on Volume 127
• CHRISTOPHER SHANNON on the historian's communal role as story-teller
• KEVIN VANHOOZER on the dramatic purposes of doctrine
• OLIVER O'DONOVAN on negotiating our way in the created realities
• REBECCA DEYOUNG on the forgotten vice of vainglory
• THOMAS FORREST KELLY on the invention of Western musical notation
• CALVIN STAPERT on the life and work of Joseph Haydn
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Christopher Shannon
“If we truly believe in pluralism . . . then [we] have to let some substantively different stories and different conceptions of the good into the conversation, or [pluralism] is a sham.”
— Christopher Shannon, author of The Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition, and the Renewal of Catholic History (Christendom Press, 2014)
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. In The Past as Pilgrimage, Shannon and his colleague, Christopher Blum, take their cue from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, in which MacIntyre argued that a community’s conception of the good is rooted and upheld in communal stories and practices. For Shannon, the historian’s craft is to give an authentic re-telling of a community’s vision of the good as it is sustained through story and practice. ⇧
• • •
Kevin Vanhoozer
“Doctrine is direction for understanding the drama of the Christ. And that direction for understanding, we only demonstrate that we’ve understood when we participate in that same drama in a knowing, understanding, fitting way.”
— Kevin Vanhoozer, author of Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014)
Theologian Kevin Vanhoozer recounts his experience that seminary students think doctrine is of little consequence to the everyday details of ministry. In contrast to this theory/practice dichotomy, Vanhoozer asserts that doctrine is essential for performing the drama of the Christ and is necessary for informing our everyday practices. In other words, the extent to which we perform the creative and redemptive work begun in Christ as the Kingdom of God is the extent to which we perform our roles as disciples of Christ. By combining elements of the language of narrative and practices, Vanhoozer advances that “drama” is story made flesh, which, when we participate as actors, shapes not only our minds and bodies, but also our imaginations. ⇧
• • •
Oliver O’Donovan
“Spontaneity is doing what comes into your mind. Freedom is not doing what comes into your mind; freedom is doing what you have in your mind.”
— Oliver O’Donovan, author of Self, World, and Time (Eerdmans, 2013)
Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan discusses the first two volumes of his three-volume set on Ethics as Theology. In this conversation, O’Donovan identifies some important touchstones that have guided his thinking about moral reflection, including his insight in Resurrection and Moral Order (1986) that moral thinking and action proceed from, and must resonate with, the realities of the created order. O’Donovan also reflects upon the significance of the thinking moral subject as well as what form of moral inadequacy the “life of the flesh” suggests. ⇧
• • •
Rebecca DeYoung
“Vice names a pattern in our behavior and our way of seeing the world and our way of feeling about the world that has been built up by many acts over time.”
— Rebecca DeYoung, author of Vainglory: The Forgotten Vice (Eerdmans, 2014)
Philosopher Rebecca DeYoung talks about the forgotten vice of vainglory. As DeYoung explains, the body of reflection upon the “deadly sins ”—originally conceived as source vices, or capital vices—were passed on from the tradition of moral reflection and practices of the Desert Fathers. After examining the difference between glory and vainglory, DeYoung discusses how vainglory is socially fed and rewarded in our culture. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Forrest Kelly
“I think the really earliest [notation] — these gestural signs — are really not so much a picture of the music, as they are a picture of how the music goes, as how you do a song that you already know.”
— Thomas Forrest Kelly, author of Capturing Music: The Story of Notation (W. W. Norton, 2014)
Harvard musicologist Thomas Forrest Kelly talks about how music, particularly the remembering and performing of it, mediates for us a foregrounded experience of time. In his book, Capturing Music: The Story of Notation, Kelly looks at the technologies involved in transferring the temporal and aural medium of music into a spatial representation, and how the decisions made along the way reveal and conceal different elements of what we perform and hear in music. ⇧
• • •
Calvin Stapert
“No composer has ever achieved the respect of his colleagues and the love of the general musical public to the degree that Haydn did.”
— Calvin Stapert, author of Playing Before the Lord: The Life and Work of Joseph Haydn (Eerdmans, 2014)
Musicologist Calvin Stapert looks at the life and work of composer Joseph Haydn. Stapert regrets that Haydn’s reception history has fallen victim to a progressive aesthetic, in which the zenith of musical expression was achieved in the Romantic compositions of Beethoven. Stapert argues that while much of Haydn’s music retains the preferred “pleasantness” of the time, it is rarely mere pleasantry. Instead, like the rustic characters of the pastoral tradition, Haydn’s music carries with it a simple profundity that offers insight and understanding. ⇧
Guests on Volume 127
• CHRISTOPHER SHANNON on the historian's communal role as story-teller
• KEVIN VANHOOZER on the dramatic purposes of doctrine
• OLIVER O'DONOVAN on negotiating our way in the created realities
• REBECCA DEYOUNG on the forgotten vice of vainglory
• THOMAS FORREST KELLY on the invention of Western musical notation
• CALVIN STAPERT on the life and work of Joseph Haydn
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Christopher Shannon
“If we truly believe in pluralism . . . then [we] have to let some substantively different stories and different conceptions of the good into the conversation, or [pluralism] is a sham.”
— Christopher Shannon, author of The Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition, and the Renewal of Catholic History (Christendom Press, 2014)
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. In The Past as Pilgrimage, Shannon and his colleague, Christopher Blum, take their cue from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, in which MacIntyre argued that a community’s conception of the good is rooted and upheld in communal stories and practices. For Shannon, the historian’s craft is to give an authentic re-telling of a community’s vision of the good as it is sustained through story and practice. ⇧
• • •
Kevin Vanhoozer
“Doctrine is direction for understanding the drama of the Christ. And that direction for understanding, we only demonstrate that we’ve understood when we participate in that same drama in a knowing, understanding, fitting way.”
— Kevin Vanhoozer, author of Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014)
Theologian Kevin Vanhoozer recounts his experience that seminary students think doctrine is of little consequence to the everyday details of ministry. In contrast to this theory/practice dichotomy, Vanhoozer asserts that doctrine is essential for performing the drama of the Christ and is necessary for informing our everyday practices. In other words, the extent to which we perform the creative and redemptive work begun in Christ as the Kingdom of God is the extent to which we perform our roles as disciples of Christ. By combining elements of the language of narrative and practices, Vanhoozer advances that “drama” is story made flesh, which, when we participate as actors, shapes not only our minds and bodies, but also our imaginations. ⇧
• • •
Oliver O’Donovan
“Spontaneity is doing what comes into your mind. Freedom is not doing what comes into your mind; freedom is doing what you have in your mind.”
— Oliver O’Donovan, author of Self, World, and Time (Eerdmans, 2013)
Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan discusses the first two volumes of his three-volume set on Ethics as Theology. In this conversation, O’Donovan identifies some important touchstones that have guided his thinking about moral reflection, including his insight in Resurrection and Moral Order (1986) that moral thinking and action proceed from, and must resonate with, the realities of the created order. O’Donovan also reflects upon the significance of the thinking moral subject as well as what form of moral inadequacy the “life of the flesh” suggests. ⇧
• • •
Rebecca DeYoung
“Vice names a pattern in our behavior and our way of seeing the world and our way of feeling about the world that has been built up by many acts over time.”
— Rebecca DeYoung, author of Vainglory: The Forgotten Vice (Eerdmans, 2014)
Philosopher Rebecca DeYoung talks about the forgotten vice of vainglory. As DeYoung explains, the body of reflection upon the “deadly sins ”—originally conceived as source vices, or capital vices—were passed on from the tradition of moral reflection and practices of the Desert Fathers. After examining the difference between glory and vainglory, DeYoung discusses how vainglory is socially fed and rewarded in our culture. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Forrest Kelly
“I think the really earliest [notation] — these gestural signs — are really not so much a picture of the music, as they are a picture of how the music goes, as how you do a song that you already know.”
— Thomas Forrest Kelly, author of Capturing Music: The Story of Notation (W. W. Norton, 2014)
Harvard musicologist Thomas Forrest Kelly talks about how music, particularly the remembering and performing of it, mediates for us a foregrounded experience of time. In his book, Capturing Music: The Story of Notation, Kelly looks at the technologies involved in transferring the temporal and aural medium of music into a spatial representation, and how the decisions made along the way reveal and conceal different elements of what we perform and hear in music. ⇧
• • •
Calvin Stapert
“No composer has ever achieved the respect of his colleagues and the love of the general musical public to the degree that Haydn did.”
— Calvin Stapert, author of Playing Before the Lord: The Life and Work of Joseph Haydn (Eerdmans, 2014)
Musicologist Calvin Stapert looks at the life and work of composer Joseph Haydn. Stapert regrets that Haydn’s reception history has fallen victim to a progressive aesthetic, in which the zenith of musical expression was achieved in the Romantic compositions of Beethoven. Stapert argues that while much of Haydn’s music retains the preferred “pleasantness” of the time, it is rarely mere pleasantry. Instead, like the rustic characters of the pastoral tradition, Haydn’s music carries with it a simple profundity that offers insight and understanding. ⇧
Guests on Volume 128
• MATTHEW CRAWFORD on how skillful engagement with the material world provides the setting for true individuality
• CARLO LANCELLOTTI on Augusto Del Noce's critique of modernity
• JAMES TURNER on the origins of the humanities in the venerable discipline of philology
• ROD DREHER on what he learned from Dante’s Divine Comedy
• MARK EVAN BONDS on the idea of "absolute music"
• JEREMY BEER on the neglected accomplishments of Booth Tarkington
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Matthew Crawford
“I think there’s a fixation on the self that we call individualism, and when I look at people who are engaged in skilled practices doing really impressive things, I don’t see such a fixation on the self. Rather there’s almost a submission to things that have their own intractable ways to them.”
— Matthew Crawford, author of The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2014)
Philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford attracted attention with his 2009 book Shop Class as Soulcraft, An Inquiry into the Value of Work. His newest book, The World beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, continues Crawford’s investigation into what forms the self. In this interview, Crawford suggests that individuality is very different from the radical individualism often underwriting discussions of self identity. As selves, our individuality is not so much a right granted to us through our capacity to choose as it is an earned competence achieved through habits of submission to various tasks, traditions, and authorities. ⇧
• • •
Carlo Lancellotti
“The denial of God in Marx is not a conclusion; it’s a presupposition. Because, in a sense, in order to be free, humans have to create themselves through their work. In order to create themselves through their work, they cannot be created by somebody else. [Del Noce's] reading of Marx is very theological. He’s not interested in Marx as a political thinker or a political economist. He’s interested in Marx as a metaphysician, as a fundamental philosopher.”
— Carlo Lancellotti, editor of The Crisis of Modernity (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014)
Physicist and mathematician Carlo Lancellotti discusses the life and work of twentieth-century Italian philosopher, Augusto Del Noce. Though Del Noce is a renowned philosopher in Italy, he is virtually unknown among English speakers. Lancellotti’s recent translation of some of Del Noce’s essays, published through McGill-Queen’s Press, marks the first English translation of Del Noce’s work. In this interview, Lancellotti describes Del Noce’s interest in the history of European rationalism, particularly in its culminating manifestation in the revolutionary theories of Karl Marx. Marxism, according to Del Noce, is a watershed movement in which rationalism shifts from a philosophy for the well-educated elite to a “religion” that “reaches the masses.” ⇧
• • •
James Turner
“You can think of a textual philologist, traditionally, as needing to know a great deal about, let’s say Roman culture (if he’s studying the letters of Cicero in the late republic of Roman culture). In order to interpret correctly a letter from Cicero, you need to know a lot about the Roman law courts . . . you need to know about the Roman family . . . you need to know about agriculture . . . So you need to know all this stuff about Roman culture, economy, society, and politics in order to understand the texts of Cicero.”
— James Turner, author of Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton University Press, 2014)
The word philology once designated the entire range of what we now call the humanities or humanistic studies. Historian James Turner explains how this inquiry into texts and languages involved the sensibility and habit of making comparisons and drawing connections which we typically associate with the humanities. The discipline of philology provided the basis for a mode of research that viewed history as the key to understanding knowledge and culture. ⇧
• • •
Rod Dreher
“I call the Divine Comedy the greatest self-help book ever written because it is very, very practical. Not only is it one of the ultimate expressions of artistic achievement and spiritual achievement in Western civilization, it’s also a very practical work.”
— Rod Dreher, author of How Dante Can Save Your Life (Regan Arts, 2015)
The opening lines to Dante’s Inferno read, “In the middle of the path through life we all must take, I found myself in a dark wood where the way ahead was no longer clear.” Journalist Rod Dreher would be the first to tell you that he was, in many ways, an unlikely candidate for writing a book about Dante’s Divine Comedy, or any other work of great poetry. But as he explains in this interview, the misery that he was experiencing in the middle of the journey of his life was an existential preparation that no amount of scholarship or conventional erudition could have equaled. In a letter to one of his patrons, Dante Alighieri wrote that his Commedia was intended to lead men out of a state of wretchedness into one of happiness. For Dreher, Dante’s aspirations could not have been more perfectly realized. As Dreher recounts, though he was reading the Commedia, the Commedia was reading him. ⇧
• • •
Mark Evan Bonds
“The idea of art for art’s sake, which we kind of take for granted, was really quite novel in the 1820s and '30s. People just hadn’t thought about it in those terms. It was always assumed that there was some moral quality to art. And the idea that there wouldn’t be—that there wouldn’t be an ethical dimension—was strange and slightly frightening to some people.”
— Mark Evan Bonds, author of Absolute Music: The History of an Idea (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Music historian Mark Evan Bonds discusses the history of the question of whether the effects music has on listeners have anything to do with what music is. In his book, Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, Bonds frames the questions involved as such: “Is music capable by itself of expressing emotions or ideas? If so, how? If not, what - if anything - does music express?” Debates over what music is and what music does are as old as written history and have been discussed throughout the centuries under various configurations and in various permutations. In this interview, Bonds focuses on the new nineteenth-century idea that music does not express meaning in any semantic or semiotic sense, but simply is pure, or absolute, form. ⇧
• • •
Jeremy Beer
“I think [Tarkington] qualifies as more prophetic than many of his contemporaries, because, if we have a god now (civilly speaking) surely it is fluidity and malleability when it comes from everything to gender to the ability to remake ourselves genetically… things that Tarkington could never have foreseen. He did, I think, foresee the way . . . certain changes in technology were going to drive changes in our own self conceptions.”
— Jeremy Beer, editor of America Moved: Booth Tarkington's Memoirs of Time and Place, 1869-1928 (Front Porch Republic Books, 2015)
Booth Tarkington wrote the book upon which Orson Welles's film The Magnificent Ambersons was based. His book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1918, and was a bestseller. Born in Indianapolis in 1869, Tarkington was a proud Midwesterner who was unabashedly out of step with the fashionable writers and critics of the early twentieth century. Jeremy Beer, editor of America Moved: Booth Tarkington’s Memoirs of Time and Place, 1869-1928, talks about Tarkington’s questioning of the vogue “giantism” and speed of early twentieth-century social life. ⇧
Guests on Volume 128
• MATTHEW CRAWFORD on how skillful engagement with the material world provides the setting for true individuality
• CARLO LANCELLOTTI on Augusto Del Noce's critique of modernity
• JAMES TURNER on the origins of the humanities in the venerable discipline of philology
• ROD DREHER on what he learned from Dante’s Divine Comedy
• MARK EVAN BONDS on the idea of "absolute music"
• JEREMY BEER on the neglected accomplishments of Booth Tarkington
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Matthew Crawford
“I think there’s a fixation on the self that we call individualism, and when I look at people who are engaged in skilled practices doing really impressive things, I don’t see such a fixation on the self. Rather there’s almost a submission to things that have their own intractable ways to them.”
— Matthew Crawford, author of The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2014)
Philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford attracted attention with his 2009 book Shop Class as Soulcraft, An Inquiry into the Value of Work. His newest book, The World beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, continues Crawford’s investigation into what forms the self. In this interview, Crawford suggests that individuality is very different from the radical individualism often underwriting discussions of self identity. As selves, our individuality is not so much a right granted to us through our capacity to choose as it is an earned competence achieved through habits of submission to various tasks, traditions, and authorities. ⇧
• • •
Carlo Lancellotti
“The denial of God in Marx is not a conclusion; it’s a presupposition. Because, in a sense, in order to be free, humans have to create themselves through their work. In order to create themselves through their work, they cannot be created by somebody else. [Del Noce's] reading of Marx is very theological. He’s not interested in Marx as a political thinker or a political economist. He’s interested in Marx as a metaphysician, as a fundamental philosopher.”
— Carlo Lancellotti, editor of The Crisis of Modernity (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014)
Physicist and mathematician Carlo Lancellotti discusses the life and work of twentieth-century Italian philosopher, Augusto Del Noce. Though Del Noce is a renowned philosopher in Italy, he is virtually unknown among English speakers. Lancellotti’s recent translation of some of Del Noce’s essays, published through McGill-Queen’s Press, marks the first English translation of Del Noce’s work. In this interview, Lancellotti describes Del Noce’s interest in the history of European rationalism, particularly in its culminating manifestation in the revolutionary theories of Karl Marx. Marxism, according to Del Noce, is a watershed movement in which rationalism shifts from a philosophy for the well-educated elite to a “religion” that “reaches the masses.” ⇧
• • •
James Turner
“You can think of a textual philologist, traditionally, as needing to know a great deal about, let’s say Roman culture (if he’s studying the letters of Cicero in the late republic of Roman culture). In order to interpret correctly a letter from Cicero, you need to know a lot about the Roman law courts . . . you need to know about the Roman family . . . you need to know about agriculture . . . So you need to know all this stuff about Roman culture, economy, society, and politics in order to understand the texts of Cicero.”
— James Turner, author of Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton University Press, 2014)
The word philology once designated the entire range of what we now call the humanities or humanistic studies. Historian James Turner explains how this inquiry into texts and languages involved the sensibility and habit of making comparisons and drawing connections which we typically associate with the humanities. The discipline of philology provided the basis for a mode of research that viewed history as the key to understanding knowledge and culture. ⇧
• • •
Rod Dreher
“I call the Divine Comedy the greatest self-help book ever written because it is very, very practical. Not only is it one of the ultimate expressions of artistic achievement and spiritual achievement in Western civilization, it’s also a very practical work.”
— Rod Dreher, author of How Dante Can Save Your Life (Regan Arts, 2015)
The opening lines to Dante’s Inferno read, “In the middle of the path through life we all must take, I found myself in a dark wood where the way ahead was no longer clear.” Journalist Rod Dreher would be the first to tell you that he was, in many ways, an unlikely candidate for writing a book about Dante’s Divine Comedy, or any other work of great poetry. But as he explains in this interview, the misery that he was experiencing in the middle of the journey of his life was an existential preparation that no amount of scholarship or conventional erudition could have equaled. In a letter to one of his patrons, Dante Alighieri wrote that his Commedia was intended to lead men out of a state of wretchedness into one of happiness. For Dreher, Dante’s aspirations could not have been more perfectly realized. As Dreher recounts, though he was reading the Commedia, the Commedia was reading him. ⇧
• • •
Mark Evan Bonds
“The idea of art for art’s sake, which we kind of take for granted, was really quite novel in the 1820s and '30s. People just hadn’t thought about it in those terms. It was always assumed that there was some moral quality to art. And the idea that there wouldn’t be—that there wouldn’t be an ethical dimension—was strange and slightly frightening to some people.”
— Mark Evan Bonds, author of Absolute Music: The History of an Idea (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Music historian Mark Evan Bonds discusses the history of the question of whether the effects music has on listeners have anything to do with what music is. In his book, Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, Bonds frames the questions involved as such: “Is music capable by itself of expressing emotions or ideas? If so, how? If not, what - if anything - does music express?” Debates over what music is and what music does are as old as written history and have been discussed throughout the centuries under various configurations and in various permutations. In this interview, Bonds focuses on the new nineteenth-century idea that music does not express meaning in any semantic or semiotic sense, but simply is pure, or absolute, form. ⇧
• • •
Jeremy Beer
“I think [Tarkington] qualifies as more prophetic than many of his contemporaries, because, if we have a god now (civilly speaking) surely it is fluidity and malleability when it comes from everything to gender to the ability to remake ourselves genetically… things that Tarkington could never have foreseen. He did, I think, foresee the way . . . certain changes in technology were going to drive changes in our own self conceptions.”
— Jeremy Beer, editor of America Moved: Booth Tarkington's Memoirs of Time and Place, 1869-1928 (Front Porch Republic Books, 2015)
Booth Tarkington wrote the book upon which Orson Welles's film The Magnificent Ambersons was based. His book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1918, and was a bestseller. Born in Indianapolis in 1869, Tarkington was a proud Midwesterner who was unabashedly out of step with the fashionable writers and critics of the early twentieth century. Jeremy Beer, editor of America Moved: Booth Tarkington’s Memoirs of Time and Place, 1869-1928, talks about Tarkington’s questioning of the vogue “giantism” and speed of early twentieth-century social life. ⇧
Guests on Volume 129
• NICHOLAS CARR on how automation technologies make our lives easier — while detaching us from the practices of engaging the world that are most fulfilling for us
• ROBERT POGUE HARRISON on the challenges of nurturing the inner lives and loves of our children to enable them to receive the legacies of our culture
• R. J. SNELL on how the vice of acedia denies the being of Creation
• NORMAN WIRZBA on how a Scriptural imagination allows us to perceive the world as Creation (not just as nature)
• PHILIP ZALESKI AND CAROL ZALESKI on how the Inklings were critical of modernity in the interest of restoring Western culture to its Christian roots
• PETER PHILLIPS on the “tintinnabuli” style of composition in the works of Arvo Pärt
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Nicholas Carr
“A tool at its best is not just a means of production, it’s a means of experience. A good tool allows us to do things that we couldn’t do otherwise. And that actually expands our perceptions of the world; it expands our ability to act in the world; it changes the world.”
— Nicholas Carr, author of The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (W. W. Norton, 2014)
How are we to think well about automation? As software technologies grow more ubiquitous and more sophisticated, how often do we imagine ourselves in the image of our devices rather than vice versa? Do we assume that our brains work computationally and that, given the right equations, we can transfer our thought-processes and our skills to machines without suffering any losses? Profit-making companies have long preferred machines to humans, replacing skilled laborers with machine operators and, more recently, computer operators, but to what extent do we now individually forgo our own human skills and capacities in favor of an easy, “frictionless” experience? Technology critic Nicholas Carr encourages us to consider how automation technologies impact our ability to engage with the world and whether — like a good tool — they present a more inviting world or close us off from that world. ⇧
• • •
Robert Pogue Harrison
“It’s the permanence of the world which is in danger at the present moment in my view. That permanence now is going to depend on the younger generations. And for them to preserve a certain degree of the world’s permanence is going to require a certain commitment to the world. And that commitment is always in the final analysis based on love. That’s where education has to find a way to get deep into the soul where the sources of love lie.”
— Robert Pogue Harrison, author of Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
Cultural critic and professor of Italian literature Robert Pogue Harrison examines the conditions in which cultural transmission can take place. In his book, Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age, Harrison argues that Western culture is on the cusp of a new mode of civilization that can either result in a rejuvenation of the legacies of the past or in their juvenilization, the latter of which would lead to (among other things) a loss of cultural memory and the infantilization of desires. Harrison reflects not only upon the ways in which our culture is evolving into a younger kind of human being, but also upon the peculiar and precious qualities of youth that are uniquely receptive to fostering the amor mundi needed to preserve and transmit a world of permanence and belonging. ⇧
• • •
R. J. Snell
“Our own society is so full of power. We’re capable of living the way that monarchs lived in the past. We’re capable of reordering our body; perhaps now that we’ve mapped the gene, of remapping aspects of the gene. We have this incredible power, and along with that is a real sense that we wish to be in control. And I think a real sense that what earlier generations had thought of as a gift is for us just merely factual; it’s just there. We can do with it as we wish. And its limits on us are not thought of as something to welcome or to cherish, but as something to refuse or even to overcome, which in the end is what I think sloth basically is: this refusal to accept limits.”
— R. J. Snell, author of Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire (Angelico Press, 2015)
Philosopher R. J. Snell talks about the vice of boredom as the “mood of our age.” Acedia, sloth, and boredom are all nouns depicting a vice which at its root rejects God’s gift of being (and all of its limited manifestations in Creation) as an imposition upon our freedom and chooses instead a world that can be mastered and bent to our wills. Like a sulking child, the slothful prefer to choose nothing rather than accept the neediness and dependency that gift implies. When this slothful posture expands to the metaphysical plane, boredom becomes the very denial of being itself, the “noughting” of the world by which the world can no longer captivate and we can no longer be captivated. ⇧
• • •
Norman Wirzba
“What would it mean for the church to say we’re serious about proclaiming the Gospel, not just to people, but to the whole of creation? What would we need to do as Christian communities or denominations to become good news for ecosystems or to become good news for animal species?”
— Norman Wirzba, author of From Nature to Creation: A Christian Vision for Understanding and Loving Our World (Baker Academic, 2015)
Theologian Norman Wirzba joins us again to help us rethink the category of nature in terms of the Christian doctrine of creation. Jesus, observes Wirzba, is not just the Savior of the world, he is the Creator of the world and his salvation extends to all of creation. So, too, the creation of the world is not just an originating event, but is a description of what everything is. With Christ as the logos through which everthing was created and by which everything holds together, the Christian understanding of creation apprehends nature not as raw material or resources, but as things that are the subjects of their own intelligible purpose. ⇧
• • •
Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski
“You can think about them as a group tackling the disenchantment, looking for ways of re-enchantment, but also individually — they’re not all doing the same things, but they are all certainly concerned with the recovery of a more meaningful universe, a more coherent vision of the universe, which includes both enchantment and a sense of reason. They want to recover reason as well.”
— Carol Zaleski, author of The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2015)
Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski talk about the underlying themes of recovery and wonder that unified the members of the literary club The Inklings. While the group never articulated any social agenda, the Inklings, through their literary work and common enthusiasms, shared a desire to confront the disenchantment of modernity by recovering those sources in Western culture that were truly humanizing. Frequently, this literary “ressourcement” revolved around the cultural significance of language and mythopoeic fantasy as media that contain a unique potential for enhancing our powers of perception and restoring human imagination and wonder in the wake of devastating events, such as (in the case of The Inklings members) the wreckage of World War I. ⇧
• • •
Peter Phillips
“There's a grit in there; there's a pull on one's overall awareness of life and death that Pärt can express very directly. . . . And it's fascinating; it holds one's attention over long spans and for a long time.”
— Peter Phillips, founder of The Tallis Scholars
Conductor Peter Phillips discusses the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Known for his “new simplicity” or “new minimalist” style of composition, Pärt developed his style by returning to the sources of melody in the Western musical tradition after rejecting the serialism in vogue during the mid-twentieth century. As Phillips observes, one senses a compatibility between Pärt’s music and that of Medieval chant and Renaissance polyphony. Though this compatibility is subtle and difficult to analyze, Pärt’s music shares with Renaissance sacred music a type of musical space that is contemplative and unhurried. One defining aspect of this space is Pärt’s use of bell-like, or bell-inspired, sounds, which he called “tintinnabuli.” The soft, yet precise, harmonic language of bells became the organizing principle in Pärt’s musical language. ⇧
Guests on Volume 129
• NICHOLAS CARR on how automation technologies make our lives easier — while detaching us from the practices of engaging the world that are most fulfilling for us
• ROBERT POGUE HARRISON on the challenges of nurturing the inner lives and loves of our children to enable them to receive the legacies of our culture
• R. J. SNELL on how the vice of acedia denies the being of Creation
• NORMAN WIRZBA on how a Scriptural imagination allows us to perceive the world as Creation (not just as nature)
• PHILIP ZALESKI AND CAROL ZALESKI on how the Inklings were critical of modernity in the interest of restoring Western culture to its Christian roots
• PETER PHILLIPS on the “tintinnabuli” style of composition in the works of Arvo Pärt
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Nicholas Carr
“A tool at its best is not just a means of production, it’s a means of experience. A good tool allows us to do things that we couldn’t do otherwise. And that actually expands our perceptions of the world; it expands our ability to act in the world; it changes the world.”
— Nicholas Carr, author of The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (W. W. Norton, 2014)
How are we to think well about automation? As software technologies grow more ubiquitous and more sophisticated, how often do we imagine ourselves in the image of our devices rather than vice versa? Do we assume that our brains work computationally and that, given the right equations, we can transfer our thought-processes and our skills to machines without suffering any losses? Profit-making companies have long preferred machines to humans, replacing skilled laborers with machine operators and, more recently, computer operators, but to what extent do we now individually forgo our own human skills and capacities in favor of an easy, “frictionless” experience? Technology critic Nicholas Carr encourages us to consider how automation technologies impact our ability to engage with the world and whether — like a good tool — they present a more inviting world or close us off from that world. ⇧
• • •
Robert Pogue Harrison
“It’s the permanence of the world which is in danger at the present moment in my view. That permanence now is going to depend on the younger generations. And for them to preserve a certain degree of the world’s permanence is going to require a certain commitment to the world. And that commitment is always in the final analysis based on love. That’s where education has to find a way to get deep into the soul where the sources of love lie.”
— Robert Pogue Harrison, author of Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
Cultural critic and professor of Italian literature Robert Pogue Harrison examines the conditions in which cultural transmission can take place. In his book, Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age, Harrison argues that Western culture is on the cusp of a new mode of civilization that can either result in a rejuvenation of the legacies of the past or in their juvenilization, the latter of which would lead to (among other things) a loss of cultural memory and the infantilization of desires. Harrison reflects not only upon the ways in which our culture is evolving into a younger kind of human being, but also upon the peculiar and precious qualities of youth that are uniquely receptive to fostering the amor mundi needed to preserve and transmit a world of permanence and belonging. ⇧
• • •
R. J. Snell
“Our own society is so full of power. We’re capable of living the way that monarchs lived in the past. We’re capable of reordering our body; perhaps now that we’ve mapped the gene, of remapping aspects of the gene. We have this incredible power, and along with that is a real sense that we wish to be in control. And I think a real sense that what earlier generations had thought of as a gift is for us just merely factual; it’s just there. We can do with it as we wish. And its limits on us are not thought of as something to welcome or to cherish, but as something to refuse or even to overcome, which in the end is what I think sloth basically is: this refusal to accept limits.”
— R. J. Snell, author of Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire (Angelico Press, 2015)
Philosopher R. J. Snell talks about the vice of boredom as the “mood of our age.” Acedia, sloth, and boredom are all nouns depicting a vice which at its root rejects God’s gift of being (and all of its limited manifestations in Creation) as an imposition upon our freedom and chooses instead a world that can be mastered and bent to our wills. Like a sulking child, the slothful prefer to choose nothing rather than accept the neediness and dependency that gift implies. When this slothful posture expands to the metaphysical plane, boredom becomes the very denial of being itself, the “noughting” of the world by which the world can no longer captivate and we can no longer be captivated. ⇧
• • •
Norman Wirzba
“What would it mean for the church to say we’re serious about proclaiming the Gospel, not just to people, but to the whole of creation? What would we need to do as Christian communities or denominations to become good news for ecosystems or to become good news for animal species?”
— Norman Wirzba, author of From Nature to Creation: A Christian Vision for Understanding and Loving Our World (Baker Academic, 2015)
Theologian Norman Wirzba joins us again to help us rethink the category of nature in terms of the Christian doctrine of creation. Jesus, observes Wirzba, is not just the Savior of the world, he is the Creator of the world and his salvation extends to all of creation. So, too, the creation of the world is not just an originating event, but is a description of what everything is. With Christ as the logos through which everthing was created and by which everything holds together, the Christian understanding of creation apprehends nature not as raw material or resources, but as things that are the subjects of their own intelligible purpose. ⇧
• • •
Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski
“You can think about them as a group tackling the disenchantment, looking for ways of re-enchantment, but also individually — they’re not all doing the same things, but they are all certainly concerned with the recovery of a more meaningful universe, a more coherent vision of the universe, which includes both enchantment and a sense of reason. They want to recover reason as well.”
— Carol Zaleski, author of The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2015)
Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski talk about the underlying themes of recovery and wonder that unified the members of the literary club The Inklings. While the group never articulated any social agenda, the Inklings, through their literary work and common enthusiasms, shared a desire to confront the disenchantment of modernity by recovering those sources in Western culture that were truly humanizing. Frequently, this literary “ressourcement” revolved around the cultural significance of language and mythopoeic fantasy as media that contain a unique potential for enhancing our powers of perception and restoring human imagination and wonder in the wake of devastating events, such as (in the case of The Inklings members) the wreckage of World War I. ⇧
• • •
Peter Phillips
“There's a grit in there; there's a pull on one's overall awareness of life and death that Pärt can express very directly. . . . And it's fascinating; it holds one's attention over long spans and for a long time.”
— Peter Phillips, founder of The Tallis Scholars
Conductor Peter Phillips discusses the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Known for his “new simplicity” or “new minimalist” style of composition, Pärt developed his style by returning to the sources of melody in the Western musical tradition after rejecting the serialism in vogue during the mid-twentieth century. As Phillips observes, one senses a compatibility between Pärt’s music and that of Medieval chant and Renaissance polyphony. Though this compatibility is subtle and difficult to analyze, Pärt’s music shares with Renaissance sacred music a type of musical space that is contemplative and unhurried. One defining aspect of this space is Pärt’s use of bell-like, or bell-inspired, sounds, which he called “tintinnabuli.” The soft, yet precise, harmonic language of bells became the organizing principle in Pärt’s musical language. ⇧
Guests on Volume 130
• JACOB SILVERMAN on the hidden costs of social media
• CARSON HOLLOWAY on the neglected role of religious revelation within political science
• JOSEPH ATKINSON on the sacramental and ontological foundations of marriage and family
• GREG PETERS on the value of retrieving the theology and practices of Christian monasticism
• ANTONIO LÓPEZ on human nature and freedom in a technological culture
• JULIAN JOHNSON on how Western music expresses the spirit of modernity
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jacob Silverman
“The utopian impulses that we see in communications technologies, and a lot of the promises we see, and a lot of the hype we see have been around for one or two hundred years if not longer . . . If you look at the life cycles of some of these technologies and some of the great commentators of earlier eras, you just find that so much essentially remains the same; it’s just sometimes the names or the details that might change.”
— Jacob Silverman, author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection (Harper, 2015)
Cultural critic Jacob Silverman discusses the "Californian utopianism" that developed in the 1960s and continues to motivate a lot of communications technologies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Though social media proponents will argue that communications technologies help to facilitate communication, intimacy, and authenticity, they rarely discuss the extent to which social media are commodified and propelled by corporate interests. These platforms are anything but neutral, Silverman argues, and are contributing to monumental shifts in how we experience time and in how we think of ourselves as persons. ⇧
• • •
Carson Holloway
“To the extent that it is studied, revelation is often treated merely as a brute fact . . . and not often treated as a source of wisdom, or a possible source of insight into the human condition.”
— Carson Holloway, editor of Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith (Northern Illinois University Press, 2014)
Despite the prophetic cries of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche proclaiming that moral principles for human freedom and dignity cannot be sustained apart from the religious truth claims received by revelation, many contemporary materialists have yet to grapple with the theoretical and political consequences of a radically secular society. Political scientist Carson Holloway joins us to discuss this topic, which is the focus of a collection of essays entitled Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order. Holloway laments the fact that the reigning attitude among political theorists neglects religious revelation not only as a potential source of knowledge about reality, but also as a source of wisdom for ordering our lives together. This neglect suggests a degree of willful denial and nearsightedness towards the religious context from which modern Western ethics emerged. ⇧
• • •
Joseph Atkinson
“The issue that we’re facing is the anthropological heresies and they’re rife throughout our society at this point. (They’re becoming creedal, actually, in our society.) And so the question that our society now radically opposes to us is ‘what is the nature of the human person?’, which in the end, always has to include an account for the corporate dimension, which then includes the family.”
— Joseph Atkinson, author of Biblical and Theological Foundations of the Family: The Domestic Church (Catholic University of America Press, 2015)
Theologian Joseph Atkinson, examines the dangers of defining the human person as radically isolated, autonomous, and self-determining. Atkinson argues that this is an anthropological heresy — in contrast to the christological heresies of the early Church — that is directly opposed to the Christian and Hebraic concept of “corporate personality,” a principle which can be summarized by the African proverb “I am because we are.” ⇧
• • •
Greg Peters
“[I]f you’re gonna talk about recovering an institution and practices like monasticism, you can’t just say, ‘well it’s always existed, so it should exist.’ Instead you have to theologize about why it should exist. Is it possible to biblically theologize about its existence?”
— Greg Peters, author of The Story of Monasticism: Retrieving an Ancient Tradition for Contemporary Spirituality (Baker Academic, 2015)
Theology professor Greg Peters discusses some of the wisdom that monastic practices can offer to protestants and evangelicals. However, he cautions against a market-driven temptation to adopt practices for the sake of being trendy or useful. Rather, the habits of the Tradition need to be retrieved for their theological purposes as much as for their relevance to contemporary situations or anxieties. ⇧
• • •
Antonio López
“Technology tends to see reality as heaps, as a conglomeration of fragments that somehow are put together by someone in order to obtain something . . . that don’t have any inner order or interiority that is resistant to human manipulation.”
— Antonio López, editor of Retrieving Origins and the Claim of Multiculturalism (Eerdmans, 2014)
Theologian Antonio López explains how our technological culture obstructs our ability to see nature, things, and persons as true Others to be respected. A technological culture, López argues, is not just a society of advanced processes and stuff, but a society that sees the world in a certain way: as fragments and parts that can be manipulated or reconfigured according to our wills and to our advantage. In this worldview, nature has no intrinsic or constitutive meaning, but is completely docile to the meaning(s) we assign it. This is in contrast to a framework that sees the world and oneself as first and foremost “given” with an integrity that exists outside of our capacity to build or improve. To acknowledge something or someone as Other, in this regard, then, is to acknowledge the Other as inexhaustibly whole and wonderful. ⇧
• • •
Julian Johnson
“When people talk about the modern, they almost always emphasize this sense of being future oriented . . . but that seems to me absolutely the flip side of the coin from the sense of having arrived too late exactly after some huge catastrophic event. And I think in the mindset of modernity, that catastrophic event is experienced as a loss of wholeness, a loss of being connected to the whole.”
— Julian Johnson, author of Out of Time: Music and the Making of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2015)
In his book, The Theological Origins of Modernity, philosopher Michael Gillespie states that to be modern is to define one's being in terms of time. In this conversation, musicologist Julian Johnson discusses his book, Out of Time: Music and the Making of Modernity, in which he explores how Western music from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries articulates our modern experience of no longer living in a capacious present defined by the cycles of nature, but of traversing through a linear history that is at any moment regretfully looking back, restlessly striving forward, or desperately clutching at the present. ⇧
Guests on Volume 130
• JACOB SILVERMAN on the hidden costs of social media
• CARSON HOLLOWAY on the neglected role of religious revelation within political science
• JOSEPH ATKINSON on the sacramental and ontological foundations of marriage and family
• GREG PETERS on the value of retrieving the theology and practices of Christian monasticism
• ANTONIO LÓPEZ on human nature and freedom in a technological culture
• JULIAN JOHNSON on how Western music expresses the spirit of modernity
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jacob Silverman
“The utopian impulses that we see in communications technologies, and a lot of the promises we see, and a lot of the hype we see have been around for one or two hundred years if not longer . . . If you look at the life cycles of some of these technologies and some of the great commentators of earlier eras, you just find that so much essentially remains the same; it’s just sometimes the names or the details that might change.”
— Jacob Silverman, author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection (Harper, 2015)
Cultural critic Jacob Silverman discusses the "Californian utopianism" that developed in the 1960s and continues to motivate a lot of communications technologies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Though social media proponents will argue that communications technologies help to facilitate communication, intimacy, and authenticity, they rarely discuss the extent to which social media are commodified and propelled by corporate interests. These platforms are anything but neutral, Silverman argues, and are contributing to monumental shifts in how we experience time and in how we think of ourselves as persons. ⇧
• • •
Carson Holloway
“To the extent that it is studied, revelation is often treated merely as a brute fact . . . and not often treated as a source of wisdom, or a possible source of insight into the human condition.”
— Carson Holloway, editor of Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith (Northern Illinois University Press, 2014)
Despite the prophetic cries of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche proclaiming that moral principles for human freedom and dignity cannot be sustained apart from the religious truth claims received by revelation, many contemporary materialists have yet to grapple with the theoretical and political consequences of a radically secular society. Political scientist Carson Holloway joins us to discuss this topic, which is the focus of a collection of essays entitled Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order. Holloway laments the fact that the reigning attitude among political theorists neglects religious revelation not only as a potential source of knowledge about reality, but also as a source of wisdom for ordering our lives together. This neglect suggests a degree of willful denial and nearsightedness towards the religious context from which modern Western ethics emerged. ⇧
• • •
Joseph Atkinson
“The issue that we’re facing is the anthropological heresies and they’re rife throughout our society at this point. (They’re becoming creedal, actually, in our society.) And so the question that our society now radically opposes to us is ‘what is the nature of the human person?’, which in the end, always has to include an account for the corporate dimension, which then includes the family.”
— Joseph Atkinson, author of Biblical and Theological Foundations of the Family: The Domestic Church (Catholic University of America Press, 2015)
Theologian Joseph Atkinson, examines the dangers of defining the human person as radically isolated, autonomous, and self-determining. Atkinson argues that this is an anthropological heresy — in contrast to the christological heresies of the early Church — that is directly opposed to the Christian and Hebraic concept of “corporate personality,” a principle which can be summarized by the African proverb “I am because we are.” ⇧
• • •
Greg Peters
“[I]f you’re gonna talk about recovering an institution and practices like monasticism, you can’t just say, ‘well it’s always existed, so it should exist.’ Instead you have to theologize about why it should exist. Is it possible to biblically theologize about its existence?”
— Greg Peters, author of The Story of Monasticism: Retrieving an Ancient Tradition for Contemporary Spirituality (Baker Academic, 2015)
Theology professor Greg Peters discusses some of the wisdom that monastic practices can offer to protestants and evangelicals. However, he cautions against a market-driven temptation to adopt practices for the sake of being trendy or useful. Rather, the habits of the Tradition need to be retrieved for their theological purposes as much as for their relevance to contemporary situations or anxieties. ⇧
• • •
Antonio López
“Technology tends to see reality as heaps, as a conglomeration of fragments that somehow are put together by someone in order to obtain something . . . that don’t have any inner order or interiority that is resistant to human manipulation.”
— Antonio López, editor of Retrieving Origins and the Claim of Multiculturalism (Eerdmans, 2014)
Theologian Antonio López explains how our technological culture obstructs our ability to see nature, things, and persons as true Others to be respected. A technological culture, López argues, is not just a society of advanced processes and stuff, but a society that sees the world in a certain way: as fragments and parts that can be manipulated or reconfigured according to our wills and to our advantage. In this worldview, nature has no intrinsic or constitutive meaning, but is completely docile to the meaning(s) we assign it. This is in contrast to a framework that sees the world and oneself as first and foremost “given” with an integrity that exists outside of our capacity to build or improve. To acknowledge something or someone as Other, in this regard, then, is to acknowledge the Other as inexhaustibly whole and wonderful. ⇧
• • •
Julian Johnson
“When people talk about the modern, they almost always emphasize this sense of being future oriented . . . but that seems to me absolutely the flip side of the coin from the sense of having arrived too late exactly after some huge catastrophic event. And I think in the mindset of modernity, that catastrophic event is experienced as a loss of wholeness, a loss of being connected to the whole.”
— Julian Johnson, author of Out of Time: Music and the Making of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2015)
In his book, The Theological Origins of Modernity, philosopher Michael Gillespie states that to be modern is to define one's being in terms of time. In this conversation, musicologist Julian Johnson discusses his book, Out of Time: Music and the Making of Modernity, in which he explores how Western music from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries articulates our modern experience of no longer living in a capacious present defined by the cycles of nature, but of traversing through a linear history that is at any moment regretfully looking back, restlessly striving forward, or desperately clutching at the present. ⇧
Guests on Volume 131
• JOHN DURHAM PETERS on understanding media as agencies of order, not just devices of information
• PAUL HEINTZMAN on how a biblical understanding of human spirituality can inform our concept of “leisure”
• RICHARD LINTS on how the image of God and idolatry are inversely related
• PETER HARRISON on how our current definition of “science” and “religion” represents novel conceptual categories
• FRANCIS J. BECKWITH on the widespread tendency to erect a wall between faith and reason
• DAVID L. SCHINDLER & NICHOLAS J. HEALY, JR., on how the First Amendment is not as sympathetic to religious freedom as is commonly believed
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Durham Peters
“What’s most important about a medium is not its supposed content, but the way that it reorganizes the environment, the infrastructure, the presuppositions in which we live and move and have our being.”
— John Durham Peters, author of The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Media (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
Media theorist John Durham Peters wants us to reexamine the purposes of media and how fundamental media are. Every civilization must develop ways of mediating between oneself, between other people, and between people and nature. Media are not simply new information technologies and fine gadgetry, but significant responses to the perennial human questions of how we manage time, space, water, power, and emotions. The difference between a healthy city or a thriving civilization and a poor one is how we use media to order and reveal the world around us. ⇧
• • •
Paul Heintzman
“The Jewish sabbath is in some ways a little bit like the free time view [of leisure] in that there’s this one day when you don’t work, but then it’s not really a good fit or a good match because it’s more than just that — it has this qualitative dimension, this celebratory dimension … as well.”
— Paul Heintzman, author of Leisure and Spirituality: Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Perspectives (Baker Academic, 2015)
• • •
Richard Lints
“I think we misread [the Genesis] text as a cosmological text, [rather than] a liturgical text fundamentally. God has built [a cosmic temple]. This is the earliest Jewish readings of Genesis, where all of creation is construed as a place in which worship takes central place. So to use inside of that space of worship the language of tselem, the language of image, says that our fundamental identity lies in the act of worship.”
— Richard Lints, author of Identity and Idolatry: The Image of God and Its Inversion (InterVarsity Press, 2015)
Theologian Richard Lints discusses how the Judeo-Christian concept of “image” and imago Dei as it appears in the early chapters of Genesis is intentionally set up as a diatribe against idolatry. Lints argues that while it is possible to have a discussion about the particular attributes that distinguish humans from animals as bearers of the image of God, the Mosaic account is not primarily concerned with this debate. Rather, Lints states, the Genesis narrative is concerned with the Jewish question of who we are to worship. ⇧
• • •
Peter Harrison
“In the public sphere, particularly in the polemical context of the putative conflicts between science and religion, there are reasons that some people may want to police the boundaries of science in particular. . . . It’s important for some people to argue that science actually tells us something about the meaning of the world even if that meaning is paradoxically that there is no meaning, as it were. And for that reason, science has to take over the role that religion once occupied.”
— Peter Harrison, author of The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
Science historian Peter Harrison argues that one of the key distinguishing features of modernity that makes us different from our medieval predecessors is how we think about the categories “science” and “religion.” As both terms shifted from concepts concerned with the cultivation of inner virtue to categories that dealt with external propositions about beliefs and facts, so also the possibility of a relationship emerged, in which science and religion were at odds with each other due to the type of “knowledge” each professed to have. ⇧
• • •
Francis J. Beckwith
“How do you justify reason? We usually think that reason is something that we use to justify other things. . . . But if we ask ourselves about our mental powers, our mental powers seem to be ordered towards a certain end. But to say that something’s ordered towards a certain end is to imply what? That it has intrinsic purpose and design to it. But in order to be a kind of run-of-the-mill naturalist or secularist today, you actually have to deny that there’s such a thing as intrinsic ends or purposes. So the paradox here is that it turns out that a very strong, aggressive materialism winds up undermining reason itself.”
— Francis J. Beckwith, author of Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Philosophy professor Francis J. Beckwith talks about what qualifies as “rational” in the public sphere. The separation between church and state, observes Beckwith, has morphed into a separation between faith and reason such that religious arguments, though they may be compelling, consistent and logical, are deemed unreasonable simply for being religious. This is largely due to the claim that only empirically verifiable arguments can be made in public as rational arguments. But this definition of “rational,” argues Beckwith, is ahistorical as well as a-cultural, and fails, itself, to be a scientifically verifiable claim. ⇧
• • •
David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr.
“Of course an argument needs to be made in defense of and in support of religious freedom, but at the same time, we have to challenge the assumptions about: what do we conceive religion to be and what is freedom. Underlying both of those questions is a certain vision of the human person. What does it mean to be a human being?”
— Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., co-author of Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom (Eerdmans, 2015)
Theologians David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. talk about the historical and intellectual context from which the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis humanae, emerged. As scholars have interpreted this document on religious freedom, the central question has been whether or not a religious philosophy is embedded in the articles of the First Amendment. Does upholding a right to religious freedom have, paradoxically, an inherently secularizing effect? And what might a right to religious freedom imply about the human person? In what sense is the human person religious and in what sense is he free? ⇧
Guests on Volume 131
• JOHN DURHAM PETERS on understanding media as agencies of order, not just devices of information
• PAUL HEINTZMAN on how a biblical understanding of human spirituality can inform our concept of “leisure”
• RICHARD LINTS on how the image of God and idolatry are inversely related
• PETER HARRISON on how our current definition of “science” and “religion” represents novel conceptual categories
• FRANCIS J. BECKWITH on the widespread tendency to erect a wall between faith and reason
• DAVID L. SCHINDLER & NICHOLAS J. HEALY, JR., on how the First Amendment is not as sympathetic to religious freedom as is commonly believed
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Durham Peters
“What’s most important about a medium is not its supposed content, but the way that it reorganizes the environment, the infrastructure, the presuppositions in which we live and move and have our being.”
— John Durham Peters, author of The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Media (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
Media theorist John Durham Peters wants us to reexamine the purposes of media and how fundamental media are. Every civilization must develop ways of mediating between oneself, between other people, and between people and nature. Media are not simply new information technologies and fine gadgetry, but significant responses to the perennial human questions of how we manage time, space, water, power, and emotions. The difference between a healthy city or a thriving civilization and a poor one is how we use media to order and reveal the world around us. ⇧
• • •
Paul Heintzman
“The Jewish sabbath is in some ways a little bit like the free time view [of leisure] in that there’s this one day when you don’t work, but then it’s not really a good fit or a good match because it’s more than just that — it has this qualitative dimension, this celebratory dimension … as well.”
— Paul Heintzman, author of Leisure and Spirituality: Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Perspectives (Baker Academic, 2015)
• • •
Richard Lints
“I think we misread [the Genesis] text as a cosmological text, [rather than] a liturgical text fundamentally. God has built [a cosmic temple]. This is the earliest Jewish readings of Genesis, where all of creation is construed as a place in which worship takes central place. So to use inside of that space of worship the language of tselem, the language of image, says that our fundamental identity lies in the act of worship.”
— Richard Lints, author of Identity and Idolatry: The Image of God and Its Inversion (InterVarsity Press, 2015)
Theologian Richard Lints discusses how the Judeo-Christian concept of “image” and imago Dei as it appears in the early chapters of Genesis is intentionally set up as a diatribe against idolatry. Lints argues that while it is possible to have a discussion about the particular attributes that distinguish humans from animals as bearers of the image of God, the Mosaic account is not primarily concerned with this debate. Rather, Lints states, the Genesis narrative is concerned with the Jewish question of who we are to worship. ⇧
• • •
Peter Harrison
“In the public sphere, particularly in the polemical context of the putative conflicts between science and religion, there are reasons that some people may want to police the boundaries of science in particular. . . . It’s important for some people to argue that science actually tells us something about the meaning of the world even if that meaning is paradoxically that there is no meaning, as it were. And for that reason, science has to take over the role that religion once occupied.”
— Peter Harrison, author of The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
Science historian Peter Harrison argues that one of the key distinguishing features of modernity that makes us different from our medieval predecessors is how we think about the categories “science” and “religion.” As both terms shifted from concepts concerned with the cultivation of inner virtue to categories that dealt with external propositions about beliefs and facts, so also the possibility of a relationship emerged, in which science and religion were at odds with each other due to the type of “knowledge” each professed to have. ⇧
• • •
Francis J. Beckwith
“How do you justify reason? We usually think that reason is something that we use to justify other things. . . . But if we ask ourselves about our mental powers, our mental powers seem to be ordered towards a certain end. But to say that something’s ordered towards a certain end is to imply what? That it has intrinsic purpose and design to it. But in order to be a kind of run-of-the-mill naturalist or secularist today, you actually have to deny that there’s such a thing as intrinsic ends or purposes. So the paradox here is that it turns out that a very strong, aggressive materialism winds up undermining reason itself.”
— Francis J. Beckwith, author of Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Philosophy professor Francis J. Beckwith talks about what qualifies as “rational” in the public sphere. The separation between church and state, observes Beckwith, has morphed into a separation between faith and reason such that religious arguments, though they may be compelling, consistent and logical, are deemed unreasonable simply for being religious. This is largely due to the claim that only empirically verifiable arguments can be made in public as rational arguments. But this definition of “rational,” argues Beckwith, is ahistorical as well as a-cultural, and fails, itself, to be a scientifically verifiable claim. ⇧
• • •
David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr.
“Of course an argument needs to be made in defense of and in support of religious freedom, but at the same time, we have to challenge the assumptions about: what do we conceive religion to be and what is freedom. Underlying both of those questions is a certain vision of the human person. What does it mean to be a human being?”
— Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., co-author of Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom (Eerdmans, 2015)
Theologians David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. talk about the historical and intellectual context from which the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis humanae, emerged. As scholars have interpreted this document on religious freedom, the central question has been whether or not a religious philosophy is embedded in the articles of the First Amendment. Does upholding a right to religious freedom have, paradoxically, an inherently secularizing effect? And what might a right to religious freedom imply about the human person? In what sense is the human person religious and in what sense is he free? ⇧
Guests on Volume 132
• DAVID I. SMITH on how metaphors assumed by teachers lead them to imagine the vocation of teaching
• SUSAN FELCH on how the metaphors of gardens, building, and feasting can inform the task of education
• D. C. SCHINDLER on philosopher Robert Spaemann's understanding of a teleological nature
• MALCOLM GUITE on his seven sonnets based on the ancient “O Antiphons” sung traditionally during Advent
• J. A. C. REDFORD on setting Malcolm Guite’s “O Antiphon” sonnets to music
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
David I. Smith
“There’s been a lot of literature in the last 30 years pointing out that in fact images are part of what we think with. Our mental furniture, again, is not just a set of propositions that state what we believe about the world, or a collection of facts that we find trustworthy, but that we organize our thinking with images and that those images then start to shape the way we perceive our surroundings, the way we perceive our role in our surroundings, and therefore what we actually do. And this applies to classrooms.”
— David I. Smith, co-author of Teaching and Christian Imagination (Eerdmans, 2016)
Professor of German, David I. Smith, discusses how metaphors, whether consciously or unconsciously, inform how teachers view their vocation and shape the ways they organize their classroom. Smith and his colleagues, in the book Teaching and Christian Imagination, reintroduce certain biblical metaphors that have been used throughout the Tradition to think about learning and teaching. Christian teachers, remarks Smith, have not given enough attention to how scripture and the Christian tradition can help them think about education. ⇧
• • •
Susan Felch
“Every single piece that you’re doing in the classroom — from how you set up the chairs and tables to how you design each activity — you want to be thinking how you’re forming these students as learners in this particular ‘field.’”
— Susan Felch, co-author of Teaching and Christian Imagination (Eerdmans, 2016)
In this conversation, English professor, Susan Felch, co-author of Teaching and Christian Imagination, describes how choosing a rich metaphor, such as the biblical metaphors of fasting and feasting, can help teachers find fresh and innovative approaches to their goals as well as provide stabilizing criteria against which to justify what they teach. Felch also talks about the need for rituals in the classroom and shares some practices that her students have found especially formative. ⇧
• • •
D. C. Schindler
“For Spaemann, the heart of freedom is what he calls ‘recollection of nature.’ At one point, he says, ‘the deepest act of freedom is the act of letting be.’ . . . A grateful surrender where we acknowledge the givenness of our nature. . . . The project of freedom is an acceptance of, a consent to nature (and our own nature) in a way that then fruitfully transforms it and opens up genuinely fruitful possibility.”
— D. C. Schindler, translator of A Robert Spaemann Reader: Philosophical Essays on Nature, God, and the Human Person (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Philosopher D. C. Schindler discusses the thought of contemporary German philosopher Robert Spaemann, and his defense of a purposeful structure in nature. Reality possesses an interiority, a type of intentionality to which it is appropriate, observes Spaemann, that we respond with our poetic and seemingly naive anthropomorphisms. Though Spaemann is best known for his work on the philosophy of personhood, what is in fact more fundamental to his thought than the “ontology of humanness” is “talking about reality humanly.” This underlying distinction has significant implications for how we then think about personhood, education, and freedom. ⇧
• • •
Malcolm Guite
“The advantage of having a text in front of you, I find, is that you already have a conversation partner. You have a series of terms that already mean a great deal, but which you feel free to take from the original text and, as it were, set in living the life and motion in the new context.”
— Malcolm Guite, author of Waiting on the Word: A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (Canterbury Press, 2015)
Poet and priest Malcolm Guite talks about his seven sonnets corresponding to the seven “O Antiphons” traditionally sung at the vespers service each night the week preceding Christmas. Guite describes how he approached the metaphors for Christ used in the antiphons in a way that attempts to reveal what these terms mean for contemporary listeners. ⇧
• • •
J. A. C. Redford
“I like to think that in this cycle the way that I’ve set the poems will be honoring to the metaphors and images that are in the poems and present a particular point of view that might help the audience respond both intellectually and emotionally to the poem in a different way than they would if they just heard it read without the music.”
— J. A. C. Redford, composer of Let Beauty Be Our Memorial (Plough Down Sillion Music, 2015)
Composer J. A. C. Redford talks about the ways music is able to attach itself to different sensations and experiences, such as color, motion, and memory. He also discusses his goals as a composer when setting a text to music — such as Malcolm Guite’s “O Antiphons” — seeing himself as a type of “illuminator of texts,” who merges the words with another kind of world to expand and layer the encounter. ⇧
Guests on Volume 132
• DAVID I. SMITH on how metaphors assumed by teachers lead them to imagine the vocation of teaching
• SUSAN FELCH on how the metaphors of gardens, building, and feasting can inform the task of education
• D. C. SCHINDLER on philosopher Robert Spaemann's understanding of a teleological nature
• MALCOLM GUITE on his seven sonnets based on the ancient “O Antiphons” sung traditionally during Advent
• J. A. C. REDFORD on setting Malcolm Guite’s “O Antiphon” sonnets to music
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
David I. Smith
“There’s been a lot of literature in the last 30 years pointing out that in fact images are part of what we think with. Our mental furniture, again, is not just a set of propositions that state what we believe about the world, or a collection of facts that we find trustworthy, but that we organize our thinking with images and that those images then start to shape the way we perceive our surroundings, the way we perceive our role in our surroundings, and therefore what we actually do. And this applies to classrooms.”
— David I. Smith, co-author of Teaching and Christian Imagination (Eerdmans, 2016)
Professor of German, David I. Smith, discusses how metaphors, whether consciously or unconsciously, inform how teachers view their vocation and shape the ways they organize their classroom. Smith and his colleagues, in the book Teaching and Christian Imagination, reintroduce certain biblical metaphors that have been used throughout the Tradition to think about learning and teaching. Christian teachers, remarks Smith, have not given enough attention to how scripture and the Christian tradition can help them think about education. ⇧
• • •
Susan Felch
“Every single piece that you’re doing in the classroom — from how you set up the chairs and tables to how you design each activity — you want to be thinking how you’re forming these students as learners in this particular ‘field.’”
— Susan Felch, co-author of Teaching and Christian Imagination (Eerdmans, 2016)
In this conversation, English professor, Susan Felch, co-author of Teaching and Christian Imagination, describes how choosing a rich metaphor, such as the biblical metaphors of fasting and feasting, can help teachers find fresh and innovative approaches to their goals as well as provide stabilizing criteria against which to justify what they teach. Felch also talks about the need for rituals in the classroom and shares some practices that her students have found especially formative. ⇧
• • •
D. C. Schindler
“For Spaemann, the heart of freedom is what he calls ‘recollection of nature.’ At one point, he says, ‘the deepest act of freedom is the act of letting be.’ . . . A grateful surrender where we acknowledge the givenness of our nature. . . . The project of freedom is an acceptance of, a consent to nature (and our own nature) in a way that then fruitfully transforms it and opens up genuinely fruitful possibility.”
— D. C. Schindler, translator of A Robert Spaemann Reader: Philosophical Essays on Nature, God, and the Human Person (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Philosopher D. C. Schindler discusses the thought of contemporary German philosopher Robert Spaemann, and his defense of a purposeful structure in nature. Reality possesses an interiority, a type of intentionality to which it is appropriate, observes Spaemann, that we respond with our poetic and seemingly naive anthropomorphisms. Though Spaemann is best known for his work on the philosophy of personhood, what is in fact more fundamental to his thought than the “ontology of humanness” is “talking about reality humanly.” This underlying distinction has significant implications for how we then think about personhood, education, and freedom. ⇧
• • •
Malcolm Guite
“The advantage of having a text in front of you, I find, is that you already have a conversation partner. You have a series of terms that already mean a great deal, but which you feel free to take from the original text and, as it were, set in living the life and motion in the new context.”
— Malcolm Guite, author of Waiting on the Word: A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (Canterbury Press, 2015)
Poet and priest Malcolm Guite talks about his seven sonnets corresponding to the seven “O Antiphons” traditionally sung at the vespers service each night the week preceding Christmas. Guite describes how he approached the metaphors for Christ used in the antiphons in a way that attempts to reveal what these terms mean for contemporary listeners. ⇧
• • •
J. A. C. Redford
“I like to think that in this cycle the way that I’ve set the poems will be honoring to the metaphors and images that are in the poems and present a particular point of view that might help the audience respond both intellectually and emotionally to the poem in a different way than they would if they just heard it read without the music.”
— J. A. C. Redford, composer of Let Beauty Be Our Memorial (Plough Down Sillion Music, 2015)
Composer J. A. C. Redford talks about the ways music is able to attach itself to different sensations and experiences, such as color, motion, and memory. He also discusses his goals as a composer when setting a text to music — such as Malcolm Guite’s “O Antiphons” — seeing himself as a type of “illuminator of texts,” who merges the words with another kind of world to expand and layer the encounter. ⇧
Guests on Volume 133
• DARÍO FERNÁNDEZ-MORERA on the real history of Islamic Spain in the Middle Ages
• FRANCIS OAKLEY on the enduring belief in sacral kingship and the secularization of politics in the late Middle Ages
• OLIVER O'DONOVAN on why all political authority can only be properly understood by way of analogy with God’s kingship
• THOMAS STORCK on the conflicts between “Americanism” and Catholic social teaching
• JOHN SAFRANEK on the self-contradictory character of modern liberalism
• BRIAN BROCK on the challenges and opportunities of being a “Church theologian” in a secular university
• GEORGE MARSDEN on the birth and influential life of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Darío Fernández-Morera
“Scholars in Islamic Studies departments argue that jihad really means a self-striving for perfection . . . (and they may be right and they maybe know more about the actual meaning of jihad than those medieval scholars and medieval leaders did), but of course that has nothing to do with what actually happened. And all the documents from both Islamic sources and Christian sources and archeological evidence indicate that religion was the main motivating force of the invasion.”
— Darío Fernández-Morera, author of The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain (ISI Books, 2016)
Cultural critic Darío Fernández-Morera re-examines the conventional belief that medieval Islamic Spain was peaceful and culturally thriving. While the widespread account of Islamic Spain claims that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam lived harmoniously under the rule of educated and cultured Muslims, Morera identifies this narrative as a myth that likely emerged during the eighteenth century as an argument against what was seen as a repressive Catholic regime. Since then, many factors have perpetuated this account and served as obstacles to reliable scholarship in Islamic studies. Listen to this interview to hear more about the religious motivations of jihad and how the Islamic conquest of Spain interacted with the prevailing Christian culture. ⇧
• • •
Francis Oakley
“It’s quite an extraordinary thing; that you have notions of sacred monarchy worldwide in cultures that have no observable connection with each other. . . . In the ideology behind it there’s no clear distinction between nature/supernature, animate/inanimate, political/religious. Those distinctions just don’t belong.”
— Francis Oakley, author of The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (Yale University Press, 2015)
Historian Francis Oakley discusses how the theme of sacral kingship has been the normal form of government for human kind throughout history and how the liberal political theories of the modern west are, in fact, deviations from that norm. Part of the rationale behind sacral kingship is the very un-modern notion of cosmic harmony, that in reality there are no clear distinctions between nature and supernature, animate and inanimate, or politics and religion. In such a cosmology, the one who has the highest political authority is an integral mediator between nature, the divine, and culture; it is the ruler’s responsibility to insure that all are in accordance with each other for the purpose of securing a harmonious way of life for the people. ⇧
• • •
Oliver O'Donovan
“We are not invited as it were to evacuate the metaphor [of kingship and government]. Rather we should say, the governments we know are pale reflections in the order of creation — of what God does for the world and what God is in the world — very inadequate reflections . . . but not because they are too much government, but because they are very much too little government as God understands government.”
— Oliver O'Donovan, author of The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
In this excerpt from our archives, Oliver O’Donovan cautions against dismissing the particular manifestations of God’s word and God’s created order because of our own personal or social grievances to certain metaphors and institutions. Often, we too readily compare the metaphors God uses to reveal himself, such as father or king, to our own experiences of fathers and kings. This comparison limits the meaning of the revelation to our imperfect and finite experience; human fathers and human kings become the originals and God a mere likeness of them. Rather, argues O’Donovan, we should interpret these descriptions of God as the ideals informing how we ought to think about notions of fatherhood, kingship, governance, and so forth. God’s fatherhood and God’s kingship are the realities against which we measure all human examples. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Storck
“The idea of the craft guild (or occupational group, or vocational group) is not as absurd or as strange as it might seem, but is actually a very intelligent way of looking at an approach to economics, if you accept the idea that economics is not about personal enrichment. Economics is about supplying the human race with the things it needs and incidentally about providing the manufacturer . . . with what he needs to live a decent life.”
— Thomas Storck, author of From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond (Angelico Press, 2015)
Author Thomas Storck explains how inimical the American ideals of freedom and the pursuit of one’s own happiness are to a just and generous economic life. In his book From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond, Storck examines the medieval understanding of economics as a subordinate aspect of human life in contrast to an American anthropology that promotes economics to the fore of human activity. Rather than considering economics as the pursuit of unlimited wealth, Storck argues that we need to retrieve the notion of economics as the process by which we provide what is needed for the community. ⇧
• • •
John Safranek
“Every law smuggles in some view of the good. There’s no law that’s ever been passed that isn’t attached to a view of the good. Aristotle noted — and this is kind of a fundamental point of ethics — every action done is done for the sake of some good. . . . No legislator says ‘I’m passing this law, because it makes no sense and it produces a lot of evil.’”
— John Safranek, author of The Myth of Liberalism (Catholic University of America Press, 2015)
Philosopher and medical doctor John Safranek joins us to discuss the ways in which the political theory of liberalism deceptively masks what it can and cannot do. As a philosophy, liberalism aims to protect the freedom and autonomy of members of society. It does so, however, not by appealing to a higher good that transcends each individual, but by defending its members from possible infringements of their freedoms. However, when conflicts arise over competing moral claims, such as in the case of abortion or gay marriage, liberalism is unable to resolve these disputes, since, according to the tenets of liberal philosophy, we cannot appeal to a particular understanding of the good. As a result, words such as “freedom,” “autonomy,” and “dignity” become rhetorically charged terms, functioning as authoritative concepts while being ostensibly neutral. ⇧
• • •
Brian Brock
“I wanted to combine that martial image in which we’re not the warriors, we’re the booty, we’re the captives, with the idea that being so captive is an incorporation into Christ, being totally unthreatened by everything that goes on. . . . And that I think positions us differently in public conversation.”
— Brian Brock, author of Captive to Christ, Open to the World: On Doing Christian Ethics in Public (Cascade Books, 2014)
Ethicist Brian Brock reflects on being a church theologian in a secular university in Great Britain and how this represents a greater tolerance in general towards the place of religion in British public life compared to its American counterpart. The American effort to separate the church from state affairs has lead to the bracketing of religious reasoning to private life in favor of a secular reason in public life. For Christians, this can often give rise to a state of being captive to the world and its language rather than to Christ and the language of the Church. Brock exhorts Christians to reconnect with the Christian tradition and not to shy away from thinking about social problems theologically. ⇧
• • •
George Marsden
“Although there’s a strong element of rationality in [Lewis’s] defense of the faith, it’s also always surrounded with a strong imaginative sense and an empathetic, personal, affective sense of what the faith involves.”
— George Marsden, author of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2016)
Historian of American evangelicalism George Marsden talks about his biography of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Originally presented as a series of radio talks for the BBC during World War II, Mere Christianity became one of the most popular books among American evangelicals after Lewis’s lifetime. Listen to the full interview to hear how this high church Anglican became an unlikely favorite among evangelicals in America. ⇧
Guests on Volume 133
• DARÍO FERNÁNDEZ-MORERA on the real history of Islamic Spain in the Middle Ages
• FRANCIS OAKLEY on the enduring belief in sacral kingship and the secularization of politics in the late Middle Ages
• OLIVER O'DONOVAN on why all political authority can only be properly understood by way of analogy with God’s kingship
• THOMAS STORCK on the conflicts between “Americanism” and Catholic social teaching
• JOHN SAFRANEK on the self-contradictory character of modern liberalism
• BRIAN BROCK on the challenges and opportunities of being a “Church theologian” in a secular university
• GEORGE MARSDEN on the birth and influential life of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Darío Fernández-Morera
“Scholars in Islamic Studies departments argue that jihad really means a self-striving for perfection . . . (and they may be right and they maybe know more about the actual meaning of jihad than those medieval scholars and medieval leaders did), but of course that has nothing to do with what actually happened. And all the documents from both Islamic sources and Christian sources and archeological evidence indicate that religion was the main motivating force of the invasion.”
— Darío Fernández-Morera, author of The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain (ISI Books, 2016)
Cultural critic Darío Fernández-Morera re-examines the conventional belief that medieval Islamic Spain was peaceful and culturally thriving. While the widespread account of Islamic Spain claims that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam lived harmoniously under the rule of educated and cultured Muslims, Morera identifies this narrative as a myth that likely emerged during the eighteenth century as an argument against what was seen as a repressive Catholic regime. Since then, many factors have perpetuated this account and served as obstacles to reliable scholarship in Islamic studies. Listen to this interview to hear more about the religious motivations of jihad and how the Islamic conquest of Spain interacted with the prevailing Christian culture. ⇧
• • •
Francis Oakley
“It’s quite an extraordinary thing; that you have notions of sacred monarchy worldwide in cultures that have no observable connection with each other. . . . In the ideology behind it there’s no clear distinction between nature/supernature, animate/inanimate, political/religious. Those distinctions just don’t belong.”
— Francis Oakley, author of The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (Yale University Press, 2015)
Historian Francis Oakley discusses how the theme of sacral kingship has been the normal form of government for human kind throughout history and how the liberal political theories of the modern west are, in fact, deviations from that norm. Part of the rationale behind sacral kingship is the very un-modern notion of cosmic harmony, that in reality there are no clear distinctions between nature and supernature, animate and inanimate, or politics and religion. In such a cosmology, the one who has the highest political authority is an integral mediator between nature, the divine, and culture; it is the ruler’s responsibility to insure that all are in accordance with each other for the purpose of securing a harmonious way of life for the people. ⇧
• • •
Oliver O'Donovan
“We are not invited as it were to evacuate the metaphor [of kingship and government]. Rather we should say, the governments we know are pale reflections in the order of creation — of what God does for the world and what God is in the world — very inadequate reflections . . . but not because they are too much government, but because they are very much too little government as God understands government.”
— Oliver O'Donovan, author of The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
In this excerpt from our archives, Oliver O’Donovan cautions against dismissing the particular manifestations of God’s word and God’s created order because of our own personal or social grievances to certain metaphors and institutions. Often, we too readily compare the metaphors God uses to reveal himself, such as father or king, to our own experiences of fathers and kings. This comparison limits the meaning of the revelation to our imperfect and finite experience; human fathers and human kings become the originals and God a mere likeness of them. Rather, argues O’Donovan, we should interpret these descriptions of God as the ideals informing how we ought to think about notions of fatherhood, kingship, governance, and so forth. God’s fatherhood and God’s kingship are the realities against which we measure all human examples. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Storck
“The idea of the craft guild (or occupational group, or vocational group) is not as absurd or as strange as it might seem, but is actually a very intelligent way of looking at an approach to economics, if you accept the idea that economics is not about personal enrichment. Economics is about supplying the human race with the things it needs and incidentally about providing the manufacturer . . . with what he needs to live a decent life.”
— Thomas Storck, author of From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond (Angelico Press, 2015)
Author Thomas Storck explains how inimical the American ideals of freedom and the pursuit of one’s own happiness are to a just and generous economic life. In his book From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond, Storck examines the medieval understanding of economics as a subordinate aspect of human life in contrast to an American anthropology that promotes economics to the fore of human activity. Rather than considering economics as the pursuit of unlimited wealth, Storck argues that we need to retrieve the notion of economics as the process by which we provide what is needed for the community. ⇧
• • •
John Safranek
“Every law smuggles in some view of the good. There’s no law that’s ever been passed that isn’t attached to a view of the good. Aristotle noted — and this is kind of a fundamental point of ethics — every action done is done for the sake of some good. . . . No legislator says ‘I’m passing this law, because it makes no sense and it produces a lot of evil.’”
— John Safranek, author of The Myth of Liberalism (Catholic University of America Press, 2015)
Philosopher and medical doctor John Safranek joins us to discuss the ways in which the political theory of liberalism deceptively masks what it can and cannot do. As a philosophy, liberalism aims to protect the freedom and autonomy of members of society. It does so, however, not by appealing to a higher good that transcends each individual, but by defending its members from possible infringements of their freedoms. However, when conflicts arise over competing moral claims, such as in the case of abortion or gay marriage, liberalism is unable to resolve these disputes, since, according to the tenets of liberal philosophy, we cannot appeal to a particular understanding of the good. As a result, words such as “freedom,” “autonomy,” and “dignity” become rhetorically charged terms, functioning as authoritative concepts while being ostensibly neutral. ⇧
• • •
Brian Brock
“I wanted to combine that martial image in which we’re not the warriors, we’re the booty, we’re the captives, with the idea that being so captive is an incorporation into Christ, being totally unthreatened by everything that goes on. . . . And that I think positions us differently in public conversation.”
— Brian Brock, author of Captive to Christ, Open to the World: On Doing Christian Ethics in Public (Cascade Books, 2014)
Ethicist Brian Brock reflects on being a church theologian in a secular university in Great Britain and how this represents a greater tolerance in general towards the place of religion in British public life compared to its American counterpart. The American effort to separate the church from state affairs has lead to the bracketing of religious reasoning to private life in favor of a secular reason in public life. For Christians, this can often give rise to a state of being captive to the world and its language rather than to Christ and the language of the Church. Brock exhorts Christians to reconnect with the Christian tradition and not to shy away from thinking about social problems theologically. ⇧
• • •
George Marsden
“Although there’s a strong element of rationality in [Lewis’s] defense of the faith, it’s also always surrounded with a strong imaginative sense and an empathetic, personal, affective sense of what the faith involves.”
— George Marsden, author of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2016)
Historian of American evangelicalism George Marsden talks about his biography of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Originally presented as a series of radio talks for the BBC during World War II, Mere Christianity became one of the most popular books among American evangelicals after Lewis’s lifetime. Listen to the full interview to hear how this high church Anglican became an unlikely favorite among evangelicals in America. ⇧
Guests on Volume 134
• CHRIS ARMSTRONG on what C. S. Lewis knew (and we need to know) about the culture and faith of medieval Christianity
• GREVEL LINDOP on the unique poetic imagination of poet, novelist, and theologian Charles Williams, “the third Inkling”
• MICHAEL MARTIN on how the experience of Beauty in Creation and art can enable an encounter with divine Wisdom
• WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH on why Christians should think about economics theologically, not just as a science or an ethical discipline
• PHILIP TURNER on why Christian ethics has the health of the Church at its center, not just personal obedience or social justice
• GISELA KREGLINGER on wine, the culture of wine, and the superabundant goodness of God made manifest in the gift of wine
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Chris Armstrong
“[Readers hear C. S. Lewis] say something that deeply affects them or that strikes them as being deeply true and they assume . . . that he’s simply telling them in a clearer way what Scripture already says and ‘isn’t it good that he’s such a good rhetorician . . .’ What they don’t know is that what he’s doing is actually channeling the Tradition to them.”
— Chris Armstrong, author of Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C. S. Lewis (Brazos Press, 2016)
Church history professor Chris Armstrong talks about the “cultural nestorianism” of modern evangelical Christianity. In the same way that Nestorius thought that the two natures of Christ went on and off, but never existed simultaneously, so likewise do many modern Christians separate their spiritual lives and God’s influence from their ordinary lives and the material world. Armstrong argues that one means of correcting this error is to “contemplate” and “enjoy” the theological and cultural mindset of medieval Christianity. For evangelical Christians, says Armstrong, there is no better guide for this task than C. S. Lewis. ⇧
• • •
Grevel Lindop
“For Williams there was no boundary between the natural and the supernatural. Williams had a living consciousness of the spiritual world all the time and he didn’t see this as being separate from what we would think of as the natural or the material world. And so his challenge in his writings is to try and make us also see our everyday world as being penetrated by spiritual energies.”
— Grevel Lindop, author of Charles Williams: The Third Inkling (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Poet and writer Grevel Lindop discusses the life and imagination of third Inkling member, Charles Williams. Though Williams is one of the more esoteric and theologically contestable of the Inklings, Williams’s literary output and spiritual pursuits reveal a person grappling for an adequate articulation of a reality that is — to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins — “charged with the grandeur of God.” ⇧
• • •
Michael Martin
“One of the repercussions of modernity is that nature is not something we have a relationship to. . . . [Before the modern period,] you had that kind of intuition or assumption about the sacramental nature of ‘what is’ and to reject that is a big paradigm shift. And I think it’s an impoverishing paradigm shift, because then you have to make your sacredness.”
— Michael Martin, author of The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics (Angelico Press, 2015)
Poet and professor Michael Martin explains how the pursuit of Wisdom, or Sophia, in scripture and in the Christian tradition is not merely the pursuit of prudence. In his book, The Submerged Reality (2015), Martin examines how the Wisdom of God is a figure embedded and discovered in Creation. In this sense, Wisdom is an aspect of reality that we are often blind to, but which during occasions of loving attention, we stumble upon in flashes of insight or moments of transcendence. But are we right to call these illuminations “transcendent,” suggesting that we somehow depart from or rise above the stuff of this world? What would it mean to consider them “moments of immanence”? ⇧
• • •
William T. Cavanaugh
“The irony of course is that in the whole discussion around this move [in the economics department], the language of orthodoxy and heterodoxy kept getting used, which I thought was a really interesting indicator that what was actually at stake is not just science, but what is at stake is in some ways belief. . . . And so, there is a right belief and a wrong belief and what masquerades as science might not be on the same level as physics or math.”
— William T. Cavanaugh, author of Field Hospital: The Church's Engagement with a Wounded World (Eerdmans, 2016)
In this conversation, theologian William Cavanaugh criticizes the belief that economics functions scientifically the same way that physics or math functions. Far from being a “neutral science,” — a phrase that is itself problematic — economics carries with it ethical and theological presuppositions that are not value-free, but which significantly determine our definitions of economic behavior as well as how we imagine the purposes and ends of that behavior. ⇧
• • •
Philip Turner
“I worry about once you begin to say, first of all, “How am I doing? Am I getting more and more holy?” All sorts of things begin to go wrong. But if you say, "What are my relationships like? How am I contributing? . . . Why am I in this conflict, how do I get out of this conflict?" — that changes the location of one’s struggle to become Christlike.”
— Philip Turner, author of Christian Ethics and the Church: Ecclesial Foundations for Moral Thought and Practice (Baker Academic, 2015)
Ethicist and priest Philip Turner reflects on how Christian ethics is misplaced if it has as its central concern individual moral behavior or social justice. While individual sanctification and service to society are inseparable relationships in Christian ethics, they are more appropriately understood as subordinate to the primary social relationship for the Christian, which is the Body of Christ. Using St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as his central text, Turner argues that the purpose of the Church is to become a community in which Christ is taking form. Paul’s governing metaphor that members of the Church are members of Christ’s body requires that our questions of obedience and moral behavior must always re-member this central identity. ⇧
• • •
Gisela Kreglinger
“Wine became a very important symbol for the Kingdom of God and God’s redemption. So when Jesus transforms water into choice wine at the Wedding of Cana, it’s not ordinary wine, it’s beautiful wine that has an abundance, a surplus of meaning, because the Kingdom and God’s life is a life of abundance. His redemption is so beautiful that we cannot comprehend it. It’s so hard to put it into words and so to capture it in the beauty and richness of a wine is a way of saying ‘Look what God’s done!’ . . . I think we have to just come to terms with the fact that God uses beauty to reveal himself.”
— Gisela Kreglinger, author of The Spirituality of Wine (Eerdmans, 2016)
Theologian and vintner Gisela Kreglinger who joins us to discuss the spiritual and cultural significance of wine. Over the centuries, the craft of winemaking has fostered a tradition that connects people to the land, encourages practices of contemplation and attentiveness, and celebrates shared table festivities. But these cultural achievements are endangered by today’s industrial and economic habits and we run the risk of missing the rich theological significance of craft wine and what it can reveal to us about Creation. ⇧
Guests on Volume 134
• CHRIS ARMSTRONG on what C. S. Lewis knew (and we need to know) about the culture and faith of medieval Christianity
• GREVEL LINDOP on the unique poetic imagination of poet, novelist, and theologian Charles Williams, “the third Inkling”
• MICHAEL MARTIN on how the experience of Beauty in Creation and art can enable an encounter with divine Wisdom
• WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH on why Christians should think about economics theologically, not just as a science or an ethical discipline
• PHILIP TURNER on why Christian ethics has the health of the Church at its center, not just personal obedience or social justice
• GISELA KREGLINGER on wine, the culture of wine, and the superabundant goodness of God made manifest in the gift of wine
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Chris Armstrong
“[Readers hear C. S. Lewis] say something that deeply affects them or that strikes them as being deeply true and they assume . . . that he’s simply telling them in a clearer way what Scripture already says and ‘isn’t it good that he’s such a good rhetorician . . .’ What they don’t know is that what he’s doing is actually channeling the Tradition to them.”
— Chris Armstrong, author of Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C. S. Lewis (Brazos Press, 2016)
Church history professor Chris Armstrong talks about the “cultural nestorianism” of modern evangelical Christianity. In the same way that Nestorius thought that the two natures of Christ went on and off, but never existed simultaneously, so likewise do many modern Christians separate their spiritual lives and God’s influence from their ordinary lives and the material world. Armstrong argues that one means of correcting this error is to “contemplate” and “enjoy” the theological and cultural mindset of medieval Christianity. For evangelical Christians, says Armstrong, there is no better guide for this task than C. S. Lewis. ⇧
• • •
Grevel Lindop
“For Williams there was no boundary between the natural and the supernatural. Williams had a living consciousness of the spiritual world all the time and he didn’t see this as being separate from what we would think of as the natural or the material world. And so his challenge in his writings is to try and make us also see our everyday world as being penetrated by spiritual energies.”
— Grevel Lindop, author of Charles Williams: The Third Inkling (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Poet and writer Grevel Lindop discusses the life and imagination of third Inkling member, Charles Williams. Though Williams is one of the more esoteric and theologically contestable of the Inklings, Williams’s literary output and spiritual pursuits reveal a person grappling for an adequate articulation of a reality that is — to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins — “charged with the grandeur of God.” ⇧
• • •
Michael Martin
“One of the repercussions of modernity is that nature is not something we have a relationship to. . . . [Before the modern period,] you had that kind of intuition or assumption about the sacramental nature of ‘what is’ and to reject that is a big paradigm shift. And I think it’s an impoverishing paradigm shift, because then you have to make your sacredness.”
— Michael Martin, author of The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics (Angelico Press, 2015)
Poet and professor Michael Martin explains how the pursuit of Wisdom, or Sophia, in scripture and in the Christian tradition is not merely the pursuit of prudence. In his book, The Submerged Reality (2015), Martin examines how the Wisdom of God is a figure embedded and discovered in Creation. In this sense, Wisdom is an aspect of reality that we are often blind to, but which during occasions of loving attention, we stumble upon in flashes of insight or moments of transcendence. But are we right to call these illuminations “transcendent,” suggesting that we somehow depart from or rise above the stuff of this world? What would it mean to consider them “moments of immanence”? ⇧
• • •
William T. Cavanaugh
“The irony of course is that in the whole discussion around this move [in the economics department], the language of orthodoxy and heterodoxy kept getting used, which I thought was a really interesting indicator that what was actually at stake is not just science, but what is at stake is in some ways belief. . . . And so, there is a right belief and a wrong belief and what masquerades as science might not be on the same level as physics or math.”
— William T. Cavanaugh, author of Field Hospital: The Church's Engagement with a Wounded World (Eerdmans, 2016)
In this conversation, theologian William Cavanaugh criticizes the belief that economics functions scientifically the same way that physics or math functions. Far from being a “neutral science,” — a phrase that is itself problematic — economics carries with it ethical and theological presuppositions that are not value-free, but which significantly determine our definitions of economic behavior as well as how we imagine the purposes and ends of that behavior. ⇧
• • •
Philip Turner
“I worry about once you begin to say, first of all, “How am I doing? Am I getting more and more holy?” All sorts of things begin to go wrong. But if you say, "What are my relationships like? How am I contributing? . . . Why am I in this conflict, how do I get out of this conflict?" — that changes the location of one’s struggle to become Christlike.”
— Philip Turner, author of Christian Ethics and the Church: Ecclesial Foundations for Moral Thought and Practice (Baker Academic, 2015)
Ethicist and priest Philip Turner reflects on how Christian ethics is misplaced if it has as its central concern individual moral behavior or social justice. While individual sanctification and service to society are inseparable relationships in Christian ethics, they are more appropriately understood as subordinate to the primary social relationship for the Christian, which is the Body of Christ. Using St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as his central text, Turner argues that the purpose of the Church is to become a community in which Christ is taking form. Paul’s governing metaphor that members of the Church are members of Christ’s body requires that our questions of obedience and moral behavior must always re-member this central identity. ⇧
• • •
Gisela Kreglinger
“Wine became a very important symbol for the Kingdom of God and God’s redemption. So when Jesus transforms water into choice wine at the Wedding of Cana, it’s not ordinary wine, it’s beautiful wine that has an abundance, a surplus of meaning, because the Kingdom and God’s life is a life of abundance. His redemption is so beautiful that we cannot comprehend it. It’s so hard to put it into words and so to capture it in the beauty and richness of a wine is a way of saying ‘Look what God’s done!’ . . . I think we have to just come to terms with the fact that God uses beauty to reveal himself.”
— Gisela Kreglinger, author of The Spirituality of Wine (Eerdmans, 2016)
Theologian and vintner Gisela Kreglinger who joins us to discuss the spiritual and cultural significance of wine. Over the centuries, the craft of winemaking has fostered a tradition that connects people to the land, encourages practices of contemplation and attentiveness, and celebrates shared table festivities. But these cultural achievements are endangered by today’s industrial and economic habits and we run the risk of missing the rich theological significance of craft wine and what it can reveal to us about Creation. ⇧
Guests on Volume 135
• BOB CUTILLO on the importance of understanding health as a gift
• HANS BOERSMA on recovering the patristic recognition of the sacramental presence of Christ in the Old Testament
• DANA GIOIA on the devout life and distinctive poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
• MATTHEW LEVERING on the history of proofs of God’s existence, and what we learn about reason when we reason about God
• BRUCE GORDON on his “biography” of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion
• MARKUS RATHEY on the dramatic and liturgical character of the major vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Bob Cutillo
“We live in a culture that tells us over and over again in multiple ways that we are in control. We are getting continual messages that we’re in the driver’s seat, which makes the possibility of sickness and the idea of dying very disturbing.”
— Bob Cutillo, author of Pursuing Health in an Anxious Age (Crossway, 2016)
Perhaps more than ever before — certainly in a way unique to history — modern culture is preoccupied with health. Medical science and care are becoming more complex, more public, and more controversial with each year. Contradictions regarding health and medicine abound. Technology, prosperity, and availability of food and treatments are unprecedented, yet mortality rates, chronic diseases, and anxiety over general health and wellness suggest that we may not be better off than previous generations and that in some instances, we are regressing. As is the case in other areas, the internet has produced an abundance of resources, access, and chatter regarding medicine and health, exposing a growing disenchantment and cynicism towards conventional medicine and yielding a proliferation of alternative approaches to treatment and nutrition. But in the midst of so much information and so many positions, how frequently do we pause to examine our assumptions about what kind of thing health is? Medical doctor Bob Cutillo thinks that our enthusiasm for health hinders us from more honest reflection about basic human realities, such as the vulnerability of our bodies, the reality of death and suffering, and the connection between an individual’s health and the health of communities. ⇧
• • •
Hans Boersma
“The Reality to which the preacher needs to point the audience is the reality of God himself, the triune God. The purpose of the preacher is not simply to expound certain truths, but to discover within the text where Jesus Christ is revealed.”
— Hans Boersma, author of Sacramental Preaching: Sermons on the Hidden Presence of Christ (Baker Academic, 2016)
Theologian Hans Boersma joins us to discuss why we should recover a patristic way of preaching and reading scripture. While the modern tendency of exegesis is to move away from the words of a text to a more abstract summary or principle, the Church Fathers viewed scripture sacramentally as a reality to be entered into more deeply and more directly. Though the Church Fathers were very committed to correct doctrine, their guiding concern with regards to orthodoxy and preaching was to draw the Church into the life of God. We do not read scripture in order to abstract moral principles, but rather, in order that we might be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” and thereby perceive everything anew in light of Christ’s real presence. ⇧
• • •
Dana Gioia
“Hopkins is here and now and he’s giving you exact words to bring you to a precise, physical reality. He’s not about Eternity. He’s about Creation.”
— Dana Gioia, contributor to God's Grandeur (The Trinity Forum, 2016)
Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the most frequently anthologized poets in the English language because of his rhythmic originality and anomalous place among the Victorian poets. Yet few realize that were it not for the posthumous advocacy of Hopkins’s lifelong friend, Robert Bridges, the poetry of Hopkins may have completely disappeared. In this conversation, California poet-laureate, Dana Gioia, discusses the biographical circumstances that led to Hopkins’s conversion to Roman Catholicism and subsequent decision to stop writing poetry and why people should not confuse the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins with that of religious mystical poets. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Levering
“If you talk to educated people who’ve gone to Ivy League or gone to the great liberal arts colleges, they . . . don’t have even a concept of God. Not even the slightest concept. You can tell them about Jesus Christ our Lord, but they just simply have no background and they can’t think it. [F]or them, it’s like you’re telling them about the ‘Great Pumpkin.’ You’re out there with Linus in the pumpkin patch.”
— Matthew Levering, author of Proofs of God: Classical Arguments from Tertullian to Barth (Baker Academic, 2016)
Theologian Matthew Levering talks about the long tradition of reasoning about God. Modern skepticism often questions the possibility of knowing anything about God, in part, because of the way in which “knowledge” is frequently restricted to statements of scientific or empirical fact and brought to bear on merely utilitarian purposes. The possibility of other modes of knowledge, such as those philosophically or theologically derived, is disparaged and dismissed. But to adopt this stance, argues Levering, is to ignore a rich and nuanced tradition of thinking about what type of being God is, or as the case may be, what being is in relation to God. ⇧
• • •
Bruce Gordon
“[C]alvin was a man who was forever in development; a man who continued to grow throughout his life. And that was reflected in his most famous work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, which he continued to revise . . . and in those revisions, one sees Calvin’s development as a reformer, as a thinker, as a theologian.”
— Bruce Gordon, author of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2016)
When a work is published, it leaves the careful hands of its author and enters into the unpredictable and sometimes turbulent course of history. Some books have an interest that extends far beyond their covers, worthy of its own narrative and commentary. The Reformation work of systematic theology, Institutes of the Christian Religion, written by John Calvin and published in 1536, qualifies as such a book. In this interview, Church historian Bruce Gordon talks about his recent “biography” of the Institutes published by Princeton University Press for a series titled The Lives of Great Religious Books. Gordon recounts the different ways that Calvin’s Institutes have been interpreted since its original publication, and having written his own biography of Calvin the person, Gordon observes the curious ways in which Calvin emerges as a variety of people when he is recovered in subsequent generations. ⇧
• • •
Markus Rathey
“What we forget when we listen to Bach’s music in the concert hall is that Bach’s music was also embedded into a performance, into the liturgy, and that Bach’s works fulfill a very specific function in the context of the liturgy.”
— Markus Rathey, author of Bach's Major Vocal Works: Music, Drama, Liturgy (Yale University Press, 2016)
Musicologist Markus Rathey discusses the particular liturgical context in which J. S. Bach’s major vocal works originally appeared. While not advocating that we return to only encountering Bach’s sacred vocal works within liturgical performances, Rathey does argue that to assume the modern context of a secular concert hall or secular event as normative for Bach’s sacred music detracts from our ability to understand the full meaning and purpose of the music. Unlike Handel, whose sacred choral works were originally experienced in concert halls and as public events, Bach’s sacred music was more strictly limited to the liturgical readings and occasions of any given worship service. Far from being passively entertained, the “audience” of such music were already active participants in a much larger drama. ⇧
Guests on Volume 135
• BOB CUTILLO on the importance of understanding health as a gift
• HANS BOERSMA on recovering the patristic recognition of the sacramental presence of Christ in the Old Testament
• DANA GIOIA on the devout life and distinctive poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
• MATTHEW LEVERING on the history of proofs of God’s existence, and what we learn about reason when we reason about God
• BRUCE GORDON on his “biography” of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion
• MARKUS RATHEY on the dramatic and liturgical character of the major vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Bob Cutillo
“We live in a culture that tells us over and over again in multiple ways that we are in control. We are getting continual messages that we’re in the driver’s seat, which makes the possibility of sickness and the idea of dying very disturbing.”
— Bob Cutillo, author of Pursuing Health in an Anxious Age (Crossway, 2016)
Perhaps more than ever before — certainly in a way unique to history — modern culture is preoccupied with health. Medical science and care are becoming more complex, more public, and more controversial with each year. Contradictions regarding health and medicine abound. Technology, prosperity, and availability of food and treatments are unprecedented, yet mortality rates, chronic diseases, and anxiety over general health and wellness suggest that we may not be better off than previous generations and that in some instances, we are regressing. As is the case in other areas, the internet has produced an abundance of resources, access, and chatter regarding medicine and health, exposing a growing disenchantment and cynicism towards conventional medicine and yielding a proliferation of alternative approaches to treatment and nutrition. But in the midst of so much information and so many positions, how frequently do we pause to examine our assumptions about what kind of thing health is? Medical doctor Bob Cutillo thinks that our enthusiasm for health hinders us from more honest reflection about basic human realities, such as the vulnerability of our bodies, the reality of death and suffering, and the connection between an individual’s health and the health of communities. ⇧
• • •
Hans Boersma
“The Reality to which the preacher needs to point the audience is the reality of God himself, the triune God. The purpose of the preacher is not simply to expound certain truths, but to discover within the text where Jesus Christ is revealed.”
— Hans Boersma, author of Sacramental Preaching: Sermons on the Hidden Presence of Christ (Baker Academic, 2016)
Theologian Hans Boersma joins us to discuss why we should recover a patristic way of preaching and reading scripture. While the modern tendency of exegesis is to move away from the words of a text to a more abstract summary or principle, the Church Fathers viewed scripture sacramentally as a reality to be entered into more deeply and more directly. Though the Church Fathers were very committed to correct doctrine, their guiding concern with regards to orthodoxy and preaching was to draw the Church into the life of God. We do not read scripture in order to abstract moral principles, but rather, in order that we might be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” and thereby perceive everything anew in light of Christ’s real presence. ⇧
• • •
Dana Gioia
“Hopkins is here and now and he’s giving you exact words to bring you to a precise, physical reality. He’s not about Eternity. He’s about Creation.”
— Dana Gioia, contributor to God's Grandeur (The Trinity Forum, 2016)
Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the most frequently anthologized poets in the English language because of his rhythmic originality and anomalous place among the Victorian poets. Yet few realize that were it not for the posthumous advocacy of Hopkins’s lifelong friend, Robert Bridges, the poetry of Hopkins may have completely disappeared. In this conversation, California poet-laureate, Dana Gioia, discusses the biographical circumstances that led to Hopkins’s conversion to Roman Catholicism and subsequent decision to stop writing poetry and why people should not confuse the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins with that of religious mystical poets. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Levering
“If you talk to educated people who’ve gone to Ivy League or gone to the great liberal arts colleges, they . . . don’t have even a concept of God. Not even the slightest concept. You can tell them about Jesus Christ our Lord, but they just simply have no background and they can’t think it. [F]or them, it’s like you’re telling them about the ‘Great Pumpkin.’ You’re out there with Linus in the pumpkin patch.”
— Matthew Levering, author of Proofs of God: Classical Arguments from Tertullian to Barth (Baker Academic, 2016)
Theologian Matthew Levering talks about the long tradition of reasoning about God. Modern skepticism often questions the possibility of knowing anything about God, in part, because of the way in which “knowledge” is frequently restricted to statements of scientific or empirical fact and brought to bear on merely utilitarian purposes. The possibility of other modes of knowledge, such as those philosophically or theologically derived, is disparaged and dismissed. But to adopt this stance, argues Levering, is to ignore a rich and nuanced tradition of thinking about what type of being God is, or as the case may be, what being is in relation to God. ⇧
• • •
Bruce Gordon
“[C]alvin was a man who was forever in development; a man who continued to grow throughout his life. And that was reflected in his most famous work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, which he continued to revise . . . and in those revisions, one sees Calvin’s development as a reformer, as a thinker, as a theologian.”
— Bruce Gordon, author of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2016)
When a work is published, it leaves the careful hands of its author and enters into the unpredictable and sometimes turbulent course of history. Some books have an interest that extends far beyond their covers, worthy of its own narrative and commentary. The Reformation work of systematic theology, Institutes of the Christian Religion, written by John Calvin and published in 1536, qualifies as such a book. In this interview, Church historian Bruce Gordon talks about his recent “biography” of the Institutes published by Princeton University Press for a series titled The Lives of Great Religious Books. Gordon recounts the different ways that Calvin’s Institutes have been interpreted since its original publication, and having written his own biography of Calvin the person, Gordon observes the curious ways in which Calvin emerges as a variety of people when he is recovered in subsequent generations. ⇧
• • •
Markus Rathey
“What we forget when we listen to Bach’s music in the concert hall is that Bach’s music was also embedded into a performance, into the liturgy, and that Bach’s works fulfill a very specific function in the context of the liturgy.”
— Markus Rathey, author of Bach's Major Vocal Works: Music, Drama, Liturgy (Yale University Press, 2016)
Musicologist Markus Rathey discusses the particular liturgical context in which J. S. Bach’s major vocal works originally appeared. While not advocating that we return to only encountering Bach’s sacred vocal works within liturgical performances, Rathey does argue that to assume the modern context of a secular concert hall or secular event as normative for Bach’s sacred music detracts from our ability to understand the full meaning and purpose of the music. Unlike Handel, whose sacred choral works were originally experienced in concert halls and as public events, Bach’s sacred music was more strictly limited to the liturgical readings and occasions of any given worship service. Far from being passively entertained, the “audience” of such music were already active participants in a much larger drama. ⇧
Guests on Volume 136
• THOMAS ALBERT HOWARD on the history of commemorating the Reformation
• MARK NOLL on how the Reformers would want to be remembered
• ANDREW PETTEGREE on how Martin Luther transformed the printing industry
• PETER LEITHART on the biblical basis for the unity of the Church
• NORM KLASSEN on the political theology implicit in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
• JAMES LITTON on the life and work of hymnologist Erik Routley
• JOSEPH O’BRIEN on the neglected literary achievements of J. F. Powers
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Thomas Albert Howard
“[W]hat I’m trying to get at as an intellectual historian are some of the ironic or unintended consequences of how religious ideas can then get bound up with ethnic questions or political questions.”
— Thomas Albert Howard, author of Remembering the Reformation: An Inquiry into the Meanings of Protestantism (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Historian Thomas Albert Howard discusses how the social practice of commemoration accumulates different layers of meaning with respect to the Protestant Reformation and its ensuing religious and political contexts. Howard describes how the purpose of commemoration, with the goal of “shoring up identity,” alters with each centenary celebration according to the surrounding intellectual and national concerns. ⇧
• • •
Mark Noll
“They did not see themselves as necessarily standing at a kind of crux in history. They saw themselves in history. They saw a need for correcting abuse. They saw the need for purifying doctrine. They saw the need for clarifying the statement of the gospel. . . . So in that sense they were reformers. But whether or not they had a kind of cosmological or genealogical sense that reformation is always needed … I don’t know that that’s the case.”
— Mark Noll, editor of Protestantism After 500 Years (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Historian Mark Noll reflects on the distinction between an understanding of “reformation” as preserving that which has been handed down versus a progressive understanding of reform as a necessary process in history. Setting aside the academic details about the Reformation, Noll suggests that laymen should have a grasp of the major points of controversy during the early Reformation and how these disagreements have either been resolved or continue to be disputed in Christian churches today. ⇧
• • •
Andrew Pettegree
“Luther wrote by and large in German, small pamphlets, which could be produced in quick editions and sell out locally. So printers got exactly what they wanted, which is swift returns for minimal investment. So Luther to a very large extent reconstructed the European print world round principles that allowed printers to make money.”
— Andrew Pettegree, author of Brand Luther: 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation (Penguin Books, 2015)
It is often remarked that Martin Luther’s Reformation could never have advanced the way it did without the technology of the printing industry. While the coincidence of Luther and the printing press undoubtedly contributed to the Reformation’s rapid spread, the printing world at the time of Luther was largely under the patronage of the Catholic church, and it was not inevitable, according to Andrew Pettegree, that “print would become an agent of insurrection.” In his book, Brand Luther, historian Andrew Pettegree shows how Luther’s facility for writing in German and his intuitive business sense not only spread ideas and incited controversy, but completely transformed the distribution model of the printing industry. ⇧
• • •
Peter J. Leithart
“In order to imagine a unified church, we kind of have to un-imagine, we have to un-think what it means to be American, because being an American means being committed to the free exercise of religion and that means that we’re committed to maintaining these denominational structures.”
— Peter J. Leithart, author of The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church (Brazos Press, 2016)
Frequent MARS HILL AUDIO guest and pastor-theologian Peter Leithart talks about the unique challenge that American denominationalism poses to Church unity. Despite its reputation for being a religious nation (and, historically, a largely Christian nation), America is the first post-christendom Christian nation. As a result, American Christians have only encountered Christianity as a denominational, and hence, divided, affair. How then are Americans to conceive of Church unity? To what extent does our denominationalism amount to American nationalism and does this conflation impede Christians from pursuing the reality of the unified Church? ⇧
• • •
Norman Klassen
“The other thing that people will do . . . is they will say that Chaucer has a focus entirely on this world. Some people will talk about ‘well, let others concern themselves with the beatific vision, Chaucer’s vision is on this world.’ And what they want, I think what they rightly want is to say that Chaucer is really interested in embodiment. He’s really interested in nature. He’s really interested in this world, but what they miss is that paradoxical, theological idea that, actually, if you really want to know what this world is, you have to think of it in terms of its being caught up in the divine life.”
— Norman Klassen, author of The Fellowship of the Beatific Vision: Chaucer on Overcoming Tyranny and Becoming Ourselves (Cascade Books, 2016)
Literary critic Norman Klassen discusses the symbolic significance of dialogue and pilgrimage in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. While many Chaucer scholars attempt to extract Chaucer from his medieval context, contrasting his apparent secular emphasis over against the sacred themes of literary contemporaries such as Dante, Klassen sees Chaucer’s pilgrimage as a symbolic affirmation of the one, true Church. The pilgrimage of the Canterbury Tales plays out (albeit imperfectly) through dialogue and fellowship our need for each other that Christian ecclesiology says is necessary in order for us to fulfill our ultimate supernatural ends. Drawing from Rowan Williams and Mikhail Bakhtin, Klassen argues that the conversational fellowship of the Tales presents a view of freedom that assumes a natural dependency on others and ultimately on God. ⇧
• • •
James Litton
“He was an engaging lecturer. He knew numbers. For instance, he could tell you the number of particular hymns in practically any hymnal you would mention. . . . He was a superb pianist himself. A man of many, many talents. And of course, an incredible writer.”
— James Litton, editor of Duty and Delight: Routley Remembered (Hope Publishing Company, 1985)
In addition to the Reformation, 2017 marks the centenary anniversary of English hymnologist Erik Routley (1917-1982). Routley spent his career writing and teaching about the theological and liturgical significance of the Church’s musical tradition. He was a prolific author, writing numerous books and articles, including Church Music and the Christian Faith, The Musical Wesleys, and Hymns and Human Life. Routley taught music at both Princeton Theological Seminary and Westminster Choir College, two posts which he shared with his student, friend, and colleague James Litton. In this conversation, renowned choral conductor, James Litton, shares some of his personal reflections on the life and work of Erik Routley. ⇧
• • •
Joseph O’Brien
“I think what Powers is trying to say is ‘No look, there’s a whole other side: there’s a lot of boring Tuesday afternoon at 4 o’clock stuff going on in the priesthood.’ And I think that’s what he wanted to show. I think he wanted to show that the priesthood was not glamorous, but that there was a profound struggle going on.”
— Joseph O’Brien
This final segment of the issue features an interview about the Catholic short story author and novelist J. F. Powers (1917-1999), who was also born one hundred years ago this year. Known among literary circles as a “writer’s writer,” Powers’s output was modest, but his craft was exceptional. At the time of his death in 1999, however, none of Powers’s fiction was in print and since then, despite the reissue of all of his works by the New York Review of Books, Powers has faded into greater obscurity among the general population. Journalist Joseph O’Brien joins us here to reflect on the two features in the writing of J. F. Powers that make him both attractive and confusing for contemporary readers: his penchant for writing about the lives of priests and his preference for setting his stories in the American Midwest. ⇧
Guests on Volume 136
• THOMAS ALBERT HOWARD on the history of commemorating the Reformation
• MARK NOLL on how the Reformers would want to be remembered
• ANDREW PETTEGREE on how Martin Luther transformed the printing industry
• PETER LEITHART on the biblical basis for the unity of the Church
• NORM KLASSEN on the political theology implicit in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
• JAMES LITTON on the life and work of hymnologist Erik Routley
• JOSEPH O’BRIEN on the neglected literary achievements of J. F. Powers
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Thomas Albert Howard
“[W]hat I’m trying to get at as an intellectual historian are some of the ironic or unintended consequences of how religious ideas can then get bound up with ethnic questions or political questions.”
— Thomas Albert Howard, author of Remembering the Reformation: An Inquiry into the Meanings of Protestantism (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Historian Thomas Albert Howard discusses how the social practice of commemoration accumulates different layers of meaning with respect to the Protestant Reformation and its ensuing religious and political contexts. Howard describes how the purpose of commemoration, with the goal of “shoring up identity,” alters with each centenary celebration according to the surrounding intellectual and national concerns. ⇧
• • •
Mark Noll
“They did not see themselves as necessarily standing at a kind of crux in history. They saw themselves in history. They saw a need for correcting abuse. They saw the need for purifying doctrine. They saw the need for clarifying the statement of the gospel. . . . So in that sense they were reformers. But whether or not they had a kind of cosmological or genealogical sense that reformation is always needed … I don’t know that that’s the case.”
— Mark Noll, editor of Protestantism After 500 Years (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Historian Mark Noll reflects on the distinction between an understanding of “reformation” as preserving that which has been handed down versus a progressive understanding of reform as a necessary process in history. Setting aside the academic details about the Reformation, Noll suggests that laymen should have a grasp of the major points of controversy during the early Reformation and how these disagreements have either been resolved or continue to be disputed in Christian churches today. ⇧
• • •
Andrew Pettegree
“Luther wrote by and large in German, small pamphlets, which could be produced in quick editions and sell out locally. So printers got exactly what they wanted, which is swift returns for minimal investment. So Luther to a very large extent reconstructed the European print world round principles that allowed printers to make money.”
— Andrew Pettegree, author of Brand Luther: 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation (Penguin Books, 2015)
It is often remarked that Martin Luther’s Reformation could never have advanced the way it did without the technology of the printing industry. While the coincidence of Luther and the printing press undoubtedly contributed to the Reformation’s rapid spread, the printing world at the time of Luther was largely under the patronage of the Catholic church, and it was not inevitable, according to Andrew Pettegree, that “print would become an agent of insurrection.” In his book, Brand Luther, historian Andrew Pettegree shows how Luther’s facility for writing in German and his intuitive business sense not only spread ideas and incited controversy, but completely transformed the distribution model of the printing industry. ⇧
• • •
Peter J. Leithart
“In order to imagine a unified church, we kind of have to un-imagine, we have to un-think what it means to be American, because being an American means being committed to the free exercise of religion and that means that we’re committed to maintaining these denominational structures.”
— Peter J. Leithart, author of The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church (Brazos Press, 2016)
Frequent MARS HILL AUDIO guest and pastor-theologian Peter Leithart talks about the unique challenge that American denominationalism poses to Church unity. Despite its reputation for being a religious nation (and, historically, a largely Christian nation), America is the first post-christendom Christian nation. As a result, American Christians have only encountered Christianity as a denominational, and hence, divided, affair. How then are Americans to conceive of Church unity? To what extent does our denominationalism amount to American nationalism and does this conflation impede Christians from pursuing the reality of the unified Church? ⇧
• • •
Norman Klassen
“The other thing that people will do . . . is they will say that Chaucer has a focus entirely on this world. Some people will talk about ‘well, let others concern themselves with the beatific vision, Chaucer’s vision is on this world.’ And what they want, I think what they rightly want is to say that Chaucer is really interested in embodiment. He’s really interested in nature. He’s really interested in this world, but what they miss is that paradoxical, theological idea that, actually, if you really want to know what this world is, you have to think of it in terms of its being caught up in the divine life.”
— Norman Klassen, author of The Fellowship of the Beatific Vision: Chaucer on Overcoming Tyranny and Becoming Ourselves (Cascade Books, 2016)
Literary critic Norman Klassen discusses the symbolic significance of dialogue and pilgrimage in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. While many Chaucer scholars attempt to extract Chaucer from his medieval context, contrasting his apparent secular emphasis over against the sacred themes of literary contemporaries such as Dante, Klassen sees Chaucer’s pilgrimage as a symbolic affirmation of the one, true Church. The pilgrimage of the Canterbury Tales plays out (albeit imperfectly) through dialogue and fellowship our need for each other that Christian ecclesiology says is necessary in order for us to fulfill our ultimate supernatural ends. Drawing from Rowan Williams and Mikhail Bakhtin, Klassen argues that the conversational fellowship of the Tales presents a view of freedom that assumes a natural dependency on others and ultimately on God. ⇧
• • •
James Litton
“He was an engaging lecturer. He knew numbers. For instance, he could tell you the number of particular hymns in practically any hymnal you would mention. . . . He was a superb pianist himself. A man of many, many talents. And of course, an incredible writer.”
— James Litton, editor of Duty and Delight: Routley Remembered (Hope Publishing Company, 1985)
In addition to the Reformation, 2017 marks the centenary anniversary of English hymnologist Erik Routley (1917-1982). Routley spent his career writing and teaching about the theological and liturgical significance of the Church’s musical tradition. He was a prolific author, writing numerous books and articles, including Church Music and the Christian Faith, The Musical Wesleys, and Hymns and Human Life. Routley taught music at both Princeton Theological Seminary and Westminster Choir College, two posts which he shared with his student, friend, and colleague James Litton. In this conversation, renowned choral conductor, James Litton, shares some of his personal reflections on the life and work of Erik Routley. ⇧
• • •
Joseph O’Brien
“I think what Powers is trying to say is ‘No look, there’s a whole other side: there’s a lot of boring Tuesday afternoon at 4 o’clock stuff going on in the priesthood.’ And I think that’s what he wanted to show. I think he wanted to show that the priesthood was not glamorous, but that there was a profound struggle going on.”
— Joseph O’Brien
This final segment of the issue features an interview about the Catholic short story author and novelist J. F. Powers (1917-1999), who was also born one hundred years ago this year. Known among literary circles as a “writer’s writer,” Powers’s output was modest, but his craft was exceptional. At the time of his death in 1999, however, none of Powers’s fiction was in print and since then, despite the reissue of all of his works by the New York Review of Books, Powers has faded into greater obscurity among the general population. Journalist Joseph O’Brien joins us here to reflect on the two features in the writing of J. F. Powers that make him both attractive and confusing for contemporary readers: his penchant for writing about the lives of priests and his preference for setting his stories in the American Midwest. ⇧
Guests on Volume 137
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on how adoption offers lessons concerning the relationship between nature and grace
• JAMES L. NOLAN on what the observations of four distinguished foreign visitors can teach Americans about themselves
• JOEL SALATIN on how honoring the pigness of pigs enables us to more fully recognize the Godness of God
• MICHAEL DI FUCCIA on Owen Barfield’s understanding of the imagination
• ROBIN LEAVER on clarifying some misconceptions about Martin Luther’s commitment to congregational singing
• MICHAEL MARISSEN on how J. S. Bach’s music conveys theological meaning
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Gilbert Meilaender
“One of the things that I think I always knew, but that impressed itself upon me more when I went to work on this topic, is just how central that adoption motif is in the New Testament . . . the idea that one becomes a member of the body of Christ only through adoption, only by grace. You can’t be born into it.”
— Gilbert Meilaender, author of Not by Nature but by Grace: Forming Families Through Adoption (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017)
Theologian and ethicist Gilbert Meilaender discusses how the theme of adoption in the New Testament and the life of the Church can help Christians discern the differences between adoption and various assisted reproduction techniques now available. Taking the Christian orthodox precept that “grace transforms nature, it does not obliterate nature,” Meilaender argues that even between biological parents and their children, the relationship is not merely biological. Rather, all parents are “theologically adoptive” parents. This parent-child relationship is ritualized and effected through the sacrament of baptism, during which the biological parents hand their child over to the Church in order for that child to be adopted into the family of God. In return, the parents again receive their child in a new adoptive sense to care for and raise in the body of Christ. ⇧
• • •
James L. Nolan
“[O]ne of the things that Chesterton noticed was that he saw the kind of boastfulness [of Americans] actually linked to industrial capitalism. That is, he likened the American tendency to self-promote as being a carry-over from the advertising practices of capitalism. So, you sell a product and you have to promote it and boast about it and he felt like that’s what Americans, then, were doing regarding themselves.”
— James L. Nolan, author of What They Saw in America: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Sociologist James L. Nolan joins us in this interview to talk about the features of American culture that inhibit many Americans and American institutions from heeding the criticisms of outside observers. While the travelogues of Alexis de Tocqueville’s visit to the United States are familiar to many, Nolan adds to the discussion the observations of German sociologist Max Weber, journalist G. K. Chesterton, and the Egyptian intellectual, Sayyid Qutb, whose thinking helped to shape some of the more radical strains of Islamic fundamentalism. ⇧
• • •
Joel Salatin
“When James Dobson reads the bible he sees ‘family’ in every verse. I have to admit, when I read it, I see ecology and stewardship and how we treat God’s stuff in every verse.”
— Joel Salatin, author of The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God's Creation (FaithWords, 2016)
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. In his most recent book, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs (which Salatin refers to as his “coming-out book”), Salatin reveals his explicitly biblical reasons for how he approaches farming. Often trapped between his “constituency and his people,” Salatin explains how his self-ascribed moniker of being a “Christian, libertarian, environmentalist, capitalist, lunatic farmer” has helped to dissolve some of the misconceptions and presumptions held by both sides of the partisan divide. ⇧
• • •
Michael Di Fuccia
“What Barfield says is that this ‘war’ is about ‘the truthfulness of the imagination’ and what that meant for both of them. Barfield says something quite remarkable in that he says that ‘C. S. Lewis was in romantic love with the imagination, but I wanted to marry it.’”
— Michael Di Fuccia, author of Owen Barfield: Philosophy, Poetry, and Theology (Cascade Books, 2016)
Inkling member Owen Barfield is often over-looked in comparison to his friends C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien; however, his influence on the two thinkers and his reflections on both language and the role of the imagination are far from negligible. In this interview, theologian Michael Di Fuccia describes what was at stake in a series of animated exchanges, known as “the Great War,” between Owen Barfield and the pre-converted Lewis concerning the “truthfulness of the imagination.” ⇧
• • •
Robin Leaver
“In our twenty-first-century view of worship, our view of worship is the 59 minutes of worship on Sunday mornings and it mustn’t go over . . . That was not what the medieval society was about. . . . Worship was all-embracing and all-encompassing. The difference is — what Luther did — was to bring in these songs that were already known (sometimes they had to be doctrinally attended to), but to bring them actually within the service of worship.”
— Robin Leaver, author of The Whole Church Sings: Congregational Singing in Luther's Wittenberg (Eerdmans, 2017)
One common misconception about Martin Luther’s reformation of liturgical worship is that he simply repurposed popular drinking songs by setting them to sacred texts, supposedly because there was no preexisting sacred vernacular repertoire. However, as liturgical scholar Robin Leaver explains in this conversation, there actually existed a familiar canon of sacred vernacular songs that were reserved for extra-liturgical celebrations of the Church’s major festivals. To overlook this vernacular tradition, Leaver argues, is to run the risk of interpreting Luther’s role as more revolutionary than reformational. ⇧
• • •
Michael Marissen
“I’m the most interested in the examples in which the musical setting seems at first to be slightly at odds with what the text seems to be about, because I think those are the most powerful examples of what Bach has to contribute as a thinker.”
— Michael Marissen, Bach and God (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Musicologist Michael Marissen discusses the masterful way in which J. S. Bach uses musical idiom and quotation by way of theological counterpoint to the texts of his sacred vocal works. In particular, Marissen and Ken Myers talk about Cantatas BWV 12 (Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen), BWV 13 (Meine Seufze, meine Tränen), and BWV 170 (Vernügte Ruh’, beliebte Seelenlust). ⇧
Guests on Volume 137
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on how adoption offers lessons concerning the relationship between nature and grace
• JAMES L. NOLAN on what the observations of four distinguished foreign visitors can teach Americans about themselves
• JOEL SALATIN on how honoring the pigness of pigs enables us to more fully recognize the Godness of God
• MICHAEL DI FUCCIA on Owen Barfield’s understanding of the imagination
• ROBIN LEAVER on clarifying some misconceptions about Martin Luther’s commitment to congregational singing
• MICHAEL MARISSEN on how J. S. Bach’s music conveys theological meaning
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Gilbert Meilaender
“One of the things that I think I always knew, but that impressed itself upon me more when I went to work on this topic, is just how central that adoption motif is in the New Testament . . . the idea that one becomes a member of the body of Christ only through adoption, only by grace. You can’t be born into it.”
— Gilbert Meilaender, author of Not by Nature but by Grace: Forming Families Through Adoption (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017)
Theologian and ethicist Gilbert Meilaender discusses how the theme of adoption in the New Testament and the life of the Church can help Christians discern the differences between adoption and various assisted reproduction techniques now available. Taking the Christian orthodox precept that “grace transforms nature, it does not obliterate nature,” Meilaender argues that even between biological parents and their children, the relationship is not merely biological. Rather, all parents are “theologically adoptive” parents. This parent-child relationship is ritualized and effected through the sacrament of baptism, during which the biological parents hand their child over to the Church in order for that child to be adopted into the family of God. In return, the parents again receive their child in a new adoptive sense to care for and raise in the body of Christ. ⇧
• • •
James L. Nolan
“[O]ne of the things that Chesterton noticed was that he saw the kind of boastfulness [of Americans] actually linked to industrial capitalism. That is, he likened the American tendency to self-promote as being a carry-over from the advertising practices of capitalism. So, you sell a product and you have to promote it and boast about it and he felt like that’s what Americans, then, were doing regarding themselves.”
— James L. Nolan, author of What They Saw in America: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Sociologist James L. Nolan joins us in this interview to talk about the features of American culture that inhibit many Americans and American institutions from heeding the criticisms of outside observers. While the travelogues of Alexis de Tocqueville’s visit to the United States are familiar to many, Nolan adds to the discussion the observations of German sociologist Max Weber, journalist G. K. Chesterton, and the Egyptian intellectual, Sayyid Qutb, whose thinking helped to shape some of the more radical strains of Islamic fundamentalism. ⇧
• • •
Joel Salatin
“When James Dobson reads the bible he sees ‘family’ in every verse. I have to admit, when I read it, I see ecology and stewardship and how we treat God’s stuff in every verse.”
— Joel Salatin, author of The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God's Creation (FaithWords, 2016)
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. In his most recent book, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs (which Salatin refers to as his “coming-out book”), Salatin reveals his explicitly biblical reasons for how he approaches farming. Often trapped between his “constituency and his people,” Salatin explains how his self-ascribed moniker of being a “Christian, libertarian, environmentalist, capitalist, lunatic farmer” has helped to dissolve some of the misconceptions and presumptions held by both sides of the partisan divide. ⇧
• • •
Michael Di Fuccia
“What Barfield says is that this ‘war’ is about ‘the truthfulness of the imagination’ and what that meant for both of them. Barfield says something quite remarkable in that he says that ‘C. S. Lewis was in romantic love with the imagination, but I wanted to marry it.’”
— Michael Di Fuccia, author of Owen Barfield: Philosophy, Poetry, and Theology (Cascade Books, 2016)
Inkling member Owen Barfield is often over-looked in comparison to his friends C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien; however, his influence on the two thinkers and his reflections on both language and the role of the imagination are far from negligible. In this interview, theologian Michael Di Fuccia describes what was at stake in a series of animated exchanges, known as “the Great War,” between Owen Barfield and the pre-converted Lewis concerning the “truthfulness of the imagination.” ⇧
• • •
Robin Leaver
“In our twenty-first-century view of worship, our view of worship is the 59 minutes of worship on Sunday mornings and it mustn’t go over . . . That was not what the medieval society was about. . . . Worship was all-embracing and all-encompassing. The difference is — what Luther did — was to bring in these songs that were already known (sometimes they had to be doctrinally attended to), but to bring them actually within the service of worship.”
— Robin Leaver, author of The Whole Church Sings: Congregational Singing in Luther's Wittenberg (Eerdmans, 2017)
One common misconception about Martin Luther’s reformation of liturgical worship is that he simply repurposed popular drinking songs by setting them to sacred texts, supposedly because there was no preexisting sacred vernacular repertoire. However, as liturgical scholar Robin Leaver explains in this conversation, there actually existed a familiar canon of sacred vernacular songs that were reserved for extra-liturgical celebrations of the Church’s major festivals. To overlook this vernacular tradition, Leaver argues, is to run the risk of interpreting Luther’s role as more revolutionary than reformational. ⇧
• • •
Michael Marissen
“I’m the most interested in the examples in which the musical setting seems at first to be slightly at odds with what the text seems to be about, because I think those are the most powerful examples of what Bach has to contribute as a thinker.”
— Michael Marissen, Bach and God (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Musicologist Michael Marissen discusses the masterful way in which J. S. Bach uses musical idiom and quotation by way of theological counterpoint to the texts of his sacred vocal works. In particular, Marissen and Ken Myers talk about Cantatas BWV 12 (Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen), BWV 13 (Meine Seufze, meine Tränen), and BWV 170 (Vernügte Ruh’, beliebte Seelenlust). ⇧
Guests on Volume 138
• JOHN MILBANK on why politics needs to recognize the human soul (and what happens when it doesn’t)
• ADRIAN PABST on the “metacrisis” of liberalism
• GLENN W. OLSEN on Christopher Dawson’s understanding of religion and culture
• RUPERT SHORTT on how scientism misunderstands God and divine action
• OLIVER O'DONOVAN on the significance of love, community, and friendship as ethical and eschatological categories
• DAVID BENTLEY HART on the hazards and delights of translating the New Testament
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Milbank
“Liberalism is about the supremacy of the individual and in the wrong sense. It assumes that the individual is simply a focus of will, of self-motivation . . . and that apart from being a focus of will, the individual has merely kind of materially based impulses and intentions . . . So this tends to mean that the only public discourse we have is either about our individual rights . . . or else it’s about completely pragmatic processes.”
— John Milbank, co-author of The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)
John Milbank, theologian and president of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, discusses the Centre’s goals of reintegrating philosophy and theology, so as to equip theologians with the skills to address cultural and historical questions in light of a Christian account of reality. In this interview, Milbank also talks about how liberalism inadequately recognizes the human person in politics and economics. A robust account of political life needs to acknowledge the inherently transcendent nature of the human person; otherwise, argues Milbank, political and economic discourse assumes an anthropology that renders humans either as beasts or as machines. In The Politics of Virtue, co-written by Adrian Pabst, Milbank and Pabst describe a post-liberal vision of politics that denounces liberal, atomistic approaches to equality in favor of a “dynamic equity” that takes into account humans in time and at various stages of wisdom and knowledge. ⇧
• • •
Adrian Pabst
“It’s a metacrisis . . . because liberalism now really is seen to be going against the grain of humanity. It simply doesn’t recognize our political social nature; it doesn’t recognize association . . . Liberalism destroys the very foundations on which it rests. It needs a culture that is non-liberal in order to function. And that very non-liberal culture is precisely what liberalism undermines.”
— Adrian Pabst, co-author of The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)
John Milbank’s co-author Adrian Pabst discusses in this interview the nature of what many are calling the “crisis of liberalism.” Pabst argues that liberal assumptions about the human person and social relations lead to inherently self-destructive outcomes and that liberalism as an ordering principle for political life is parasitic upon pre-existing cultures if it does not establish a way to honor and secure non-liberal traditions. A better alternative to liberalism, argues Pabst, needs to preserve in its account of political life our primary status as social beings, which “flows out of the divine economy” of a trinitarian Creator. ⇧
• • •
Glenn W. Olsen
“I don’t see that he really ever thought that [the triumph of Christianity] was going to happen. Rather, he didn’t want to see too much destruction and darkness, because there will not be a single uniting thing.”
— Glenn W. Olsen, author of Supper at Emmaus: Great Themes in Western Culture and Intellectual History (Catholic University of America Press, 2016)
Historian Glenn W. Olsen talks about Christopher Dawson’s approach to cultural history. Christopher Dawson, one of the leading cultural critics of the twentieth century, was an independent scholar who influenced such figures as T. S. Eliot and Russell Kirk. Dawson, known for his insistence on maintaining the religious, or cultus, component of cultural development, was often suspicious of “successionist” historical accounts of the West, which, in Olsen’s words, tend to “obscure the Christian influence of culture.” ⇧
• • •
Rupert Shortt
“God is seen in classical theism as the eternal source and cause of all, on a different plane from material reality. . . . God and creature-hood are too different to be opposites — they don’t occupy two separate and mutually exclusive zones in the way that a triangle can’t be a square or a sheep can’t be a man.”
— Rupert Shortt, author of God Is No Thing: Coherent Christianity (Hurst & Company, 2016)
Religion editor for the London Times Literary Supplement Rupert Shortt discusses some of the common misconceptions of God and creation that are made by champions of scientism. The apologetic debate over the existence of God depends very much on how we think about God and who the God is in which we believe or disbelieve. The mistake by both sides of the debate is often to think of God as a “link in a chain of causality,” but Shortt offers a different metaphor by which to understand causality and to understand God’s relation to us: light — that which itself is not seen, yet makes everything else visible. ⇧
• • •
Oliver O’Donovan
“The classical writers had an idealized conception of friendship: just two people (always men) from youth to age totally loyal to one another, both totally virtuous, somehow standing out. . . . For Aelred, it’s so different. You have to have lots of friends and they will be at all sorts of different levels of development in your friendship. You’ll have the friends you can wholly rely on and you will have the friends you can rely on a bit. And this sort of adapting of the ideal of friendship to the realities of the life of sanctification and grace in which, ah, ‘we’re not all sanctified yet,’ is very important.”
— Oliver O’Donovan, author of Entering Into Rest (Eerdmans, 2017)
Theologian and ethicist Oliver O’Donovan talks about how “love” as an ethical and existential category connects to the theological virtue of love consummated in the Kingdom of Heaven. O’Donovan’s final volume in the Theology as Ethics series, Entering into Rest, deals primarily with how love is transformed and “made fit for the presence of God.” But correspondingly, O’Donovan’s work also inquires into how the love operating now in the eschatological Church affects how we order our lives tomorrow in the world. Drawing from St. Augustine and figures such as Aelred of Rievaulx, O’Donovan describes how the Church, communication, community, and friendship all significantly contribute to how we understand the role of love in both ethical and political reflection. ⇧
• • •
David Bentley Hart
“I think one should never abandon the original idioms, for a number of reasons. One is . . . that they’re actually quite beguiling and attractive when they give you a picture of the time and the way the gospel is preached. I think, though, the most important reason for not abandoning the idioms is that we should never presume that our idiomatic usages today describe the same content. It’s a sort of crass notion that every age and every culture sees the world in the same way and the metaphors or mannerisms that a culture develops are simply the disposable husk of some clear kernel of simple information.”
— David Bentley Hart, author of The New Testament: A Translation (Yale University Press, 2017)
Theologian David Bentley Hart explains his approach to translating the New Testament. In particular, Hart warns against the temptation to anachronistically introduce to a translation presupposed theological doctrines. While it is a given that every translation involves a level of interpretation, Hart wants to preserve as much as possible the integrity of the original idioms employed in the New Testament texts and the types of encounters the original hearers may have had with those texts. ⇧
Guests on Volume 138
• JOHN MILBANK on why politics needs to recognize the human soul (and what happens when it doesn’t)
• ADRIAN PABST on the “metacrisis” of liberalism
• GLENN W. OLSEN on Christopher Dawson’s understanding of religion and culture
• RUPERT SHORTT on how scientism misunderstands God and divine action
• OLIVER O'DONOVAN on the significance of love, community, and friendship as ethical and eschatological categories
• DAVID BENTLEY HART on the hazards and delights of translating the New Testament
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Milbank
“Liberalism is about the supremacy of the individual and in the wrong sense. It assumes that the individual is simply a focus of will, of self-motivation . . . and that apart from being a focus of will, the individual has merely kind of materially based impulses and intentions . . . So this tends to mean that the only public discourse we have is either about our individual rights . . . or else it’s about completely pragmatic processes.”
— John Milbank, co-author of The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)
John Milbank, theologian and president of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, discusses the Centre’s goals of reintegrating philosophy and theology, so as to equip theologians with the skills to address cultural and historical questions in light of a Christian account of reality. In this interview, Milbank also talks about how liberalism inadequately recognizes the human person in politics and economics. A robust account of political life needs to acknowledge the inherently transcendent nature of the human person; otherwise, argues Milbank, political and economic discourse assumes an anthropology that renders humans either as beasts or as machines. In The Politics of Virtue, co-written by Adrian Pabst, Milbank and Pabst describe a post-liberal vision of politics that denounces liberal, atomistic approaches to equality in favor of a “dynamic equity” that takes into account humans in time and at various stages of wisdom and knowledge. ⇧
• • •
Adrian Pabst
“It’s a metacrisis . . . because liberalism now really is seen to be going against the grain of humanity. It simply doesn’t recognize our political social nature; it doesn’t recognize association . . . Liberalism destroys the very foundations on which it rests. It needs a culture that is non-liberal in order to function. And that very non-liberal culture is precisely what liberalism undermines.”
— Adrian Pabst, co-author of The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)
John Milbank’s co-author Adrian Pabst discusses in this interview the nature of what many are calling the “crisis of liberalism.” Pabst argues that liberal assumptions about the human person and social relations lead to inherently self-destructive outcomes and that liberalism as an ordering principle for political life is parasitic upon pre-existing cultures if it does not establish a way to honor and secure non-liberal traditions. A better alternative to liberalism, argues Pabst, needs to preserve in its account of political life our primary status as social beings, which “flows out of the divine economy” of a trinitarian Creator. ⇧
• • •
Glenn W. Olsen
“I don’t see that he really ever thought that [the triumph of Christianity] was going to happen. Rather, he didn’t want to see too much destruction and darkness, because there will not be a single uniting thing.”
— Glenn W. Olsen, author of Supper at Emmaus: Great Themes in Western Culture and Intellectual History (Catholic University of America Press, 2016)
Historian Glenn W. Olsen talks about Christopher Dawson’s approach to cultural history. Christopher Dawson, one of the leading cultural critics of the twentieth century, was an independent scholar who influenced such figures as T. S. Eliot and Russell Kirk. Dawson, known for his insistence on maintaining the religious, or cultus, component of cultural development, was often suspicious of “successionist” historical accounts of the West, which, in Olsen’s words, tend to “obscure the Christian influence of culture.” ⇧
• • •
Rupert Shortt
“God is seen in classical theism as the eternal source and cause of all, on a different plane from material reality. . . . God and creature-hood are too different to be opposites — they don’t occupy two separate and mutually exclusive zones in the way that a triangle can’t be a square or a sheep can’t be a man.”
— Rupert Shortt, author of God Is No Thing: Coherent Christianity (Hurst & Company, 2016)
Religion editor for the London Times Literary Supplement Rupert Shortt discusses some of the common misconceptions of God and creation that are made by champions of scientism. The apologetic debate over the existence of God depends very much on how we think about God and who the God is in which we believe or disbelieve. The mistake by both sides of the debate is often to think of God as a “link in a chain of causality,” but Shortt offers a different metaphor by which to understand causality and to understand God’s relation to us: light — that which itself is not seen, yet makes everything else visible. ⇧
• • •
Oliver O’Donovan
“The classical writers had an idealized conception of friendship: just two people (always men) from youth to age totally loyal to one another, both totally virtuous, somehow standing out. . . . For Aelred, it’s so different. You have to have lots of friends and they will be at all sorts of different levels of development in your friendship. You’ll have the friends you can wholly rely on and you will have the friends you can rely on a bit. And this sort of adapting of the ideal of friendship to the realities of the life of sanctification and grace in which, ah, ‘we’re not all sanctified yet,’ is very important.”
— Oliver O’Donovan, author of Entering Into Rest (Eerdmans, 2017)
Theologian and ethicist Oliver O’Donovan talks about how “love” as an ethical and existential category connects to the theological virtue of love consummated in the Kingdom of Heaven. O’Donovan’s final volume in the Theology as Ethics series, Entering into Rest, deals primarily with how love is transformed and “made fit for the presence of God.” But correspondingly, O’Donovan’s work also inquires into how the love operating now in the eschatological Church affects how we order our lives tomorrow in the world. Drawing from St. Augustine and figures such as Aelred of Rievaulx, O’Donovan describes how the Church, communication, community, and friendship all significantly contribute to how we understand the role of love in both ethical and political reflection. ⇧
• • •
David Bentley Hart
“I think one should never abandon the original idioms, for a number of reasons. One is . . . that they’re actually quite beguiling and attractive when they give you a picture of the time and the way the gospel is preached. I think, though, the most important reason for not abandoning the idioms is that we should never presume that our idiomatic usages today describe the same content. It’s a sort of crass notion that every age and every culture sees the world in the same way and the metaphors or mannerisms that a culture develops are simply the disposable husk of some clear kernel of simple information.”
— David Bentley Hart, author of The New Testament: A Translation (Yale University Press, 2017)
Theologian David Bentley Hart explains his approach to translating the New Testament. In particular, Hart warns against the temptation to anachronistically introduce to a translation presupposed theological doctrines. While it is a given that every translation involves a level of interpretation, Hart wants to preserve as much as possible the integrity of the original idioms employed in the New Testament texts and the types of encounters the original hearers may have had with those texts. ⇧
Guests on Volume 139
• W. BRADFORD LITTLEJOHN on post-Reformation debates about the meaning of freedom
• SIMON OLIVER on how the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is a doctrine about God (and not just the origin of the universe)
• MATTHEW LEVERING on the necessity of God’s wisdom in the doctrine of creation
• ESTHER LIGHTCAP MEEK on Michael Polanyi’s case that making contact with reality is a process of discovery
• PAUL TYSON on resisting our modern assumptions about knowledge in favor of knowledge that is grounded in wonder
• DAVID FAGERBERG on acquiring a liturgical posture in everyday life
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
W. Bradford Littlejohn
“The problem that we have now . . . is that we have this idea of ‘freedom of religion,’ but nobody can say why. Why is freedom of religion a good thing?”
— W. Bradford Littlejohn, author of The Peril and Promise of Christian Liberty: Richard Hooker, the Puritans, and Protestant Political Theology (Eerdmans, 2017)
Theologian Brad Littlejohn distinguishes between our modern conception of freedom as “freedom of action” and the sixteenth-century Reformers’ understanding of freedom as “freedom of belief.” The issue at hand for the Reformers was how this newly-defined freedom of belief affected the capacity of civil authorities to enforce civil order and to encourage virtuous citizens. ⇧
• • •
Simon Oliver
“It’s not that God and creatures share in common this thing called ‘being’ and God just has it to an infinite degree whereas ‘Simon Oliver only has it to a finite degree’ — that we share the same kind of being — . . . It’s rather that God has being in its infinite fullness and I exist by sharing in that.”
— Simon Oliver, author of Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2017)
Theologian Simon Oliver clarifies some of the basic features of the early church doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Oliver summarizes fundamental concepts such as the being of God and God as final cause, divine freedom, divine sovereignty, and divine power. Oliver emphasizes that the doctrine of creation is foremost a doctrine about God and, following from that, a doctrine about how creation relates to God. Contrary to modern debates concerning origins, the doctrine of creation is not “a doctrine about the mechanics of how God got creation working.” Such an account fails to adequately preserve the distinction between God and creation, making God into a very large thing alongside a lot of other smaller things. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Levering
“Contemporary theologians tend to begin with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, but really the truth is, if God doesn’t know what he’s creating, then we’re all in a big mess. Imagine a creator who doesn’t know what he’s creating! . . . It’d be a little bit like the crazy scientist in the sky who hardly knows what’s coming out of the petri dish.”
— Matthew Levering, author of Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creatures, and the Wise and Good Creator (Baker Academic, 2017)
Theologian Matthew Levering points out that what is often missing from the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is an adequate understanding of God’s wisdom and knowledge. Known as the “doctrine of divine ideas,” God’s wisdom in his creative act answers the question of whether or not God knows what he is creating. However, “knowledge” in this sense, should not be conflated with capricious power (i.e. the capacity for God to know whatever he wants whenever he wants). Rather, in the doctrine of divine ideas, God’s knowledge is an ecstatic act of “self-presencing,” such that we can say with St. Augustine that God is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Esther Lightcap Meek
“I think [Polanyi’s] clear . . . that knowing and, you could say, ‘truth’ and ‘grasp of reality,’ is traditioned and is a matter of growing expertise and connoisseurship and apprenticeship . . . But then, the neat thing is that in accepting that rootedness in the tradition, that’s when you’re able to contact reality.”
— Esther Lightcap Meek, author of Contact With Reality: Michael Polanyi's Realism and Why It Matters (Cascade Books, 2017)
Philosopher Esther Meek joins us to discuss the realism of philosopher and chemist, Michael Polanyi and Polanyi’s belief that our understanding of reality shapes our understanding of knowledge. For Polanyi, reality is full of meaning and intelligibility that precedes our perception of it. In fact, it is something that we already participate in and, to some extent, know “subsidiarily.” This knowledge is something that is developed and acquired in tradition and passed along through generations. For Polanyi, knowledge that is anchored in an intelligible reality is what enables the scientist to achieve discovery through a process facilitated both by intuition and imagination. ⇧
• • •
Paul Tyson
“The kind of crisis that Jesus produced is very hard for us to think about if all we’re thinking of is, kind of, an ‘altar call.’ . . . In an altar call context everybody kind of knows what’s going on, but this sort of radical challenge to the very foundations of life as we know it, that’s the kind of crisis that produces the possibility of metanoia . . . and I think we have the same problem today in this area of the relationship between knowledge and belief.”
— Paul Tyson, author of De-fragmenting Modernity: Reintegrating Knowledge with Wisdom, Belief with Truth, and Reality with Being (Cascade Books, 2017)
Philosopher Paul Tyson wants to help his readers identify the “wallpaper assumptions” of modernity that prevent us from following Christ as fully as we should. One prevailing example is the way in which modernity has positioned science and technology in relation to theology, such that the terms of science are believed to have superseded the functions and terms of faith. However, when we realize that our default modes of thinking and seeing the world may not have always been assumed or accepted, we are then freed to “think the impossible.” ⇧
• • •
David Fagerberg
“I am trying to always move between the subterranean aquifer — this great ocean of grace — which then pops up on the surface in artesian wells that are our liturgical expressions. For me that is a movement between the sacred and the profane.”
— David Fagerberg, author of Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology (Angelico Press, 2016)
One feature of modernity is to oppose the sacred and the profane, resulting in stark divisions between the meaning in liturgical religious practices and the meaning in secular daily life. However, in his diptych project On Liturgical Asceticism and Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology, theologian David Fagerberg bridges this divide, arguing instead that the sacred and profane exist in a liminal relationship elucidated through the liturgy. Liturgical expressions are the world circumscribed for us to do “extraordinary” things, to learn how “to do the world,” argues Fagerberg, the way the world was meant to be done. ⇧
Guests on Volume 139
• W. BRADFORD LITTLEJOHN on post-Reformation debates about the meaning of freedom
• SIMON OLIVER on how the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is a doctrine about God (and not just the origin of the universe)
• MATTHEW LEVERING on the necessity of God’s wisdom in the doctrine of creation
• ESTHER LIGHTCAP MEEK on Michael Polanyi’s case that making contact with reality is a process of discovery
• PAUL TYSON on resisting our modern assumptions about knowledge in favor of knowledge that is grounded in wonder
• DAVID FAGERBERG on acquiring a liturgical posture in everyday life
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
W. Bradford Littlejohn
“The problem that we have now . . . is that we have this idea of ‘freedom of religion,’ but nobody can say why. Why is freedom of religion a good thing?”
— W. Bradford Littlejohn, author of The Peril and Promise of Christian Liberty: Richard Hooker, the Puritans, and Protestant Political Theology (Eerdmans, 2017)
Theologian Brad Littlejohn distinguishes between our modern conception of freedom as “freedom of action” and the sixteenth-century Reformers’ understanding of freedom as “freedom of belief.” The issue at hand for the Reformers was how this newly-defined freedom of belief affected the capacity of civil authorities to enforce civil order and to encourage virtuous citizens. ⇧
• • •
Simon Oliver
“It’s not that God and creatures share in common this thing called ‘being’ and God just has it to an infinite degree whereas ‘Simon Oliver only has it to a finite degree’ — that we share the same kind of being — . . . It’s rather that God has being in its infinite fullness and I exist by sharing in that.”
— Simon Oliver, author of Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2017)
Theologian Simon Oliver clarifies some of the basic features of the early church doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Oliver summarizes fundamental concepts such as the being of God and God as final cause, divine freedom, divine sovereignty, and divine power. Oliver emphasizes that the doctrine of creation is foremost a doctrine about God and, following from that, a doctrine about how creation relates to God. Contrary to modern debates concerning origins, the doctrine of creation is not “a doctrine about the mechanics of how God got creation working.” Such an account fails to adequately preserve the distinction between God and creation, making God into a very large thing alongside a lot of other smaller things. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Levering
“Contemporary theologians tend to begin with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, but really the truth is, if God doesn’t know what he’s creating, then we’re all in a big mess. Imagine a creator who doesn’t know what he’s creating! . . . It’d be a little bit like the crazy scientist in the sky who hardly knows what’s coming out of the petri dish.”
— Matthew Levering, author of Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creatures, and the Wise and Good Creator (Baker Academic, 2017)
Theologian Matthew Levering points out that what is often missing from the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is an adequate understanding of God’s wisdom and knowledge. Known as the “doctrine of divine ideas,” God’s wisdom in his creative act answers the question of whether or not God knows what he is creating. However, “knowledge” in this sense, should not be conflated with capricious power (i.e. the capacity for God to know whatever he wants whenever he wants). Rather, in the doctrine of divine ideas, God’s knowledge is an ecstatic act of “self-presencing,” such that we can say with St. Augustine that God is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Esther Lightcap Meek
“I think [Polanyi’s] clear . . . that knowing and, you could say, ‘truth’ and ‘grasp of reality,’ is traditioned and is a matter of growing expertise and connoisseurship and apprenticeship . . . But then, the neat thing is that in accepting that rootedness in the tradition, that’s when you’re able to contact reality.”
— Esther Lightcap Meek, author of Contact With Reality: Michael Polanyi's Realism and Why It Matters (Cascade Books, 2017)
Philosopher Esther Meek joins us to discuss the realism of philosopher and chemist, Michael Polanyi and Polanyi’s belief that our understanding of reality shapes our understanding of knowledge. For Polanyi, reality is full of meaning and intelligibility that precedes our perception of it. In fact, it is something that we already participate in and, to some extent, know “subsidiarily.” This knowledge is something that is developed and acquired in tradition and passed along through generations. For Polanyi, knowledge that is anchored in an intelligible reality is what enables the scientist to achieve discovery through a process facilitated both by intuition and imagination. ⇧
• • •
Paul Tyson
“The kind of crisis that Jesus produced is very hard for us to think about if all we’re thinking of is, kind of, an ‘altar call.’ . . . In an altar call context everybody kind of knows what’s going on, but this sort of radical challenge to the very foundations of life as we know it, that’s the kind of crisis that produces the possibility of metanoia . . . and I think we have the same problem today in this area of the relationship between knowledge and belief.”
— Paul Tyson, author of De-fragmenting Modernity: Reintegrating Knowledge with Wisdom, Belief with Truth, and Reality with Being (Cascade Books, 2017)
Philosopher Paul Tyson wants to help his readers identify the “wallpaper assumptions” of modernity that prevent us from following Christ as fully as we should. One prevailing example is the way in which modernity has positioned science and technology in relation to theology, such that the terms of science are believed to have superseded the functions and terms of faith. However, when we realize that our default modes of thinking and seeing the world may not have always been assumed or accepted, we are then freed to “think the impossible.” ⇧
• • •
David Fagerberg
“I am trying to always move between the subterranean aquifer — this great ocean of grace — which then pops up on the surface in artesian wells that are our liturgical expressions. For me that is a movement between the sacred and the profane.”
— David Fagerberg, author of Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology (Angelico Press, 2016)
One feature of modernity is to oppose the sacred and the profane, resulting in stark divisions between the meaning in liturgical religious practices and the meaning in secular daily life. However, in his diptych project On Liturgical Asceticism and Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology, theologian David Fagerberg bridges this divide, arguing instead that the sacred and profane exist in a liminal relationship elucidated through the liturgy. Liturgical expressions are the world circumscribed for us to do “extraordinary” things, to learn how “to do the world,” argues Fagerberg, the way the world was meant to be done. ⇧
Guests on Volume 140
• MATTHEW RUBERY on the history of the “talking book,” and on how reading aloud differs from listening to it being read
• JAMES A. HERRICK on the “post-human” aspirations of the transhumanist movement, and how its plausibility is established by stories
• JACK BAKER and JEFFREY BILBRO on lessons that universities should heed from Wendell Berry’s essays, poetry, and fiction about commitment to living in a place
• TIMOTHY GLOEGE on the influence of business methods on twentieth-century evangelicalism through the shaping of Moody Bible Institute
• DAVID HOLLINGER on how the sons and daughters of mid-twentieth-century missionaries to Asia came back to the U.S. and influenced government, journalism, and the academy
• BARRETT FISHER on the themes of the challenge of faithfulness as presented in Shusaku Endo’s Silence and in Martin Scorsese’s film version
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Matthew Rubery
“I thought I was in a pretty good position to be able to answer questions about reading . . . but when I started this project, I really did have to go back to basics and, like you say, look up the definition of ‘reading’ and try to get a grasp of all the different senses of that word in order to answer the question of ‘what counts as actually reading a book?’”
— Matthew Rubery, author of The Untold Story of the Talking Book (Harvard University Press, 2017)
Historian of reading practices Matthew Rubery argues that it is a false opposition to say that one reads a printed book but only listens to an audiobook. Instead, the two modes of reception are not so easily divided, for “orality” is present even when we read silently. When we ask the question of what “counts” as reading, Rubery observes, we are revealing an anxiety that simply wasn’t of concern to earlier generations and societies. While visual reading and aural or oral reading engage different senses, one is not necessarily inferior to the other, but both present an approach to reading that emphasizes and reveals different aspects of a text. ⇧
• • •
James A. Herrick
“Mythos, or myth, precedes logos or precedes policy and research agendas . . . a lot of times the storytelling is seen as a kind of enhancement of its own type or a kind of additional activity, a peripheral activity, but I think it’s actually the foundational activity that leads to the policy decisions, that leads to the funding decisions.”
— James A. Herrick, author of Visions of Technological Transcendence: Human Enhancement and the Rhetoric of the Future (Parlor Press, 2017)
Rhetoric and communications professor James Herrick observes how our stories about the future of humanity influence the kinds of questions and solutions that scientists search for. If we think, for instance, that there is nothing fixed about the human body, but that it is one step along the way in an evolutionary and technological process, then humanity as such can be manipulated, or dispensed with altogether, resulting in various movements towards transhumanism and posthumanism. ⇧
• • •
Jack Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro
“You walk up to the farm and you can’t say of the farm: This is what I want from you; this is what I expect from you. You have to walk up to it and say “what do you need?” And I think if we can as a university look outside of our walls and say to our community not ‘this is what we want from you,’ but ‘what do you need?’ — I think that question is an important one — that if we practice that here, it’s a question students can then begin to imitate in their lives when they do leave this place.”
— Jack Baker, co-author of Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (University Press of Kentucky, 2017)
English professors Jack Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro join us to discuss the importance of place in thinking about higher education. Most institutions of higher learning have adopted economic models of growth, selling to their consumers greater opportunities for upward mobility. But because these models treat their students as abstractions, offering “better careers” also implies a lot of lateral and downward mobility, contributing to the crisis of dislocation present across society. Drawing from the works of Wendell Berry, Baker and Bilbro incorporate into their vision of higher education a multidimensional notion of place according to which universities can begin to craft “artisanal models” of higher education that take advantage of the unique skills and circumstances of their time, place, and community. ⇧
• • •
Timothy Gloege
“This is the story of the birth of non-denominationalism. In the nineteenth century, you were a Presbyterian and your theology was Presbyterian, and you operated within that sphere especially when it came to doctrinal issues. So those were the people that you trusted. You might cooperate with a Methodist in another sphere, but when it came to theology, it was a denominational church affair. When [Henry] Crowell came along, he helped create the means of a person understanding [oneself] as being a “conservative Protestant,” but not being necessarily associated with a denomination that was a respectable denomination.”
— Timothy Gloege, author of Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism (University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
Historian Timothy Gloege recounts how the founder of Quaker Oats, Henry Crowell, used his business and marketing experience in order to create a brand of Christianity that could be “guaranteed pure” from the liberalizing forces of mid-twentieth-century mainline Christianity. During the search for a “mere Christianity,” many wealthy businessmen were instrumental in the publishing of The Fundamentals, a collection of theological treatises from which the Fundamentalist movement and Evangelicalism more broadly emerged. ⇧
• • •
David Hollinger
“The missionary cosmopolitans also provide this de-provincializing role; they also sort of cut America down to size by looking at it within a much broader compass, a broader range of experience and cultural content. But what the missionary cosmopolitans contribute is about Asia. . . . They then bring into American public life a sophistication . . . about Asian things that just wasn’t there before.”
— David Hollinger, author of Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2017)
Historian David Hollinger discusses the specific role that the children of missionaries to Asia played in mid-century American institutions. These “missionary cosmopolitans” shared a sense of responsibility for the world beyond the West and were influential in the development of foreign relations with Asia during WWII and later in the development of Asian studies programs in institutions of higher learning. ⇧
• • •
Barrett Fisher
“In films like Good Fellows and Mean Streets, often you have these older characters who serve as models or mentors in bringing the younger characters into the fold, often in this case, organized crime. But I think, more generally, because of Scorsese’s own upbringing where some of the Jesuits were really important models for him, I think he’s really struggling with the question of ‘how do we know what it means to be the kind of person we should be?’”
— Barrett Fisher
Humanities professor Barrett Fisher talks about the moral themes in the films of Martin Scorsese, particularly in his most recent film adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence. Fisher also compares the fiction of Shusaku Endo with that of Graham Greene and the way in which Christianity was a set of “ill-fitting clothes” for Endo and arguably for Japanese culture more generally. ⇧
Guests on Volume 140
• MATTHEW RUBERY on the history of the “talking book,” and on how reading aloud differs from listening to it being read
• JAMES A. HERRICK on the “post-human” aspirations of the transhumanist movement, and how its plausibility is established by stories
• JACK BAKER and JEFFREY BILBRO on lessons that universities should heed from Wendell Berry’s essays, poetry, and fiction about commitment to living in a place
• TIMOTHY GLOEGE on the influence of business methods on twentieth-century evangelicalism through the shaping of Moody Bible Institute
• DAVID HOLLINGER on how the sons and daughters of mid-twentieth-century missionaries to Asia came back to the U.S. and influenced government, journalism, and the academy
• BARRETT FISHER on the themes of the challenge of faithfulness as presented in Shusaku Endo’s Silence and in Martin Scorsese’s film version
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Matthew Rubery
“I thought I was in a pretty good position to be able to answer questions about reading . . . but when I started this project, I really did have to go back to basics and, like you say, look up the definition of ‘reading’ and try to get a grasp of all the different senses of that word in order to answer the question of ‘what counts as actually reading a book?’”
— Matthew Rubery, author of The Untold Story of the Talking Book (Harvard University Press, 2017)
Historian of reading practices Matthew Rubery argues that it is a false opposition to say that one reads a printed book but only listens to an audiobook. Instead, the two modes of reception are not so easily divided, for “orality” is present even when we read silently. When we ask the question of what “counts” as reading, Rubery observes, we are revealing an anxiety that simply wasn’t of concern to earlier generations and societies. While visual reading and aural or oral reading engage different senses, one is not necessarily inferior to the other, but both present an approach to reading that emphasizes and reveals different aspects of a text. ⇧
• • •
James A. Herrick
“Mythos, or myth, precedes logos or precedes policy and research agendas . . . a lot of times the storytelling is seen as a kind of enhancement of its own type or a kind of additional activity, a peripheral activity, but I think it’s actually the foundational activity that leads to the policy decisions, that leads to the funding decisions.”
— James A. Herrick, author of Visions of Technological Transcendence: Human Enhancement and the Rhetoric of the Future (Parlor Press, 2017)
Rhetoric and communications professor James Herrick observes how our stories about the future of humanity influence the kinds of questions and solutions that scientists search for. If we think, for instance, that there is nothing fixed about the human body, but that it is one step along the way in an evolutionary and technological process, then humanity as such can be manipulated, or dispensed with altogether, resulting in various movements towards transhumanism and posthumanism. ⇧
• • •
Jack Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro
“You walk up to the farm and you can’t say of the farm: This is what I want from you; this is what I expect from you. You have to walk up to it and say “what do you need?” And I think if we can as a university look outside of our walls and say to our community not ‘this is what we want from you,’ but ‘what do you need?’ — I think that question is an important one — that if we practice that here, it’s a question students can then begin to imitate in their lives when they do leave this place.”
— Jack Baker, co-author of Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (University Press of Kentucky, 2017)
English professors Jack Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro join us to discuss the importance of place in thinking about higher education. Most institutions of higher learning have adopted economic models of growth, selling to their consumers greater opportunities for upward mobility. But because these models treat their students as abstractions, offering “better careers” also implies a lot of lateral and downward mobility, contributing to the crisis of dislocation present across society. Drawing from the works of Wendell Berry, Baker and Bilbro incorporate into their vision of higher education a multidimensional notion of place according to which universities can begin to craft “artisanal models” of higher education that take advantage of the unique skills and circumstances of their time, place, and community. ⇧
• • •
Timothy Gloege
“This is the story of the birth of non-denominationalism. In the nineteenth century, you were a Presbyterian and your theology was Presbyterian, and you operated within that sphere especially when it came to doctrinal issues. So those were the people that you trusted. You might cooperate with a Methodist in another sphere, but when it came to theology, it was a denominational church affair. When [Henry] Crowell came along, he helped create the means of a person understanding [oneself] as being a “conservative Protestant,” but not being necessarily associated with a denomination that was a respectable denomination.”
— Timothy Gloege, author of Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism (University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
Historian Timothy Gloege recounts how the founder of Quaker Oats, Henry Crowell, used his business and marketing experience in order to create a brand of Christianity that could be “guaranteed pure” from the liberalizing forces of mid-twentieth-century mainline Christianity. During the search for a “mere Christianity,” many wealthy businessmen were instrumental in the publishing of The Fundamentals, a collection of theological treatises from which the Fundamentalist movement and Evangelicalism more broadly emerged. ⇧
• • •
David Hollinger
“The missionary cosmopolitans also provide this de-provincializing role; they also sort of cut America down to size by looking at it within a much broader compass, a broader range of experience and cultural content. But what the missionary cosmopolitans contribute is about Asia. . . . They then bring into American public life a sophistication . . . about Asian things that just wasn’t there before.”
— David Hollinger, author of Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2017)
Historian David Hollinger discusses the specific role that the children of missionaries to Asia played in mid-century American institutions. These “missionary cosmopolitans” shared a sense of responsibility for the world beyond the West and were influential in the development of foreign relations with Asia during WWII and later in the development of Asian studies programs in institutions of higher learning. ⇧
• • •
Barrett Fisher
“In films like Good Fellows and Mean Streets, often you have these older characters who serve as models or mentors in bringing the younger characters into the fold, often in this case, organized crime. But I think, more generally, because of Scorsese’s own upbringing where some of the Jesuits were really important models for him, I think he’s really struggling with the question of ‘how do we know what it means to be the kind of person we should be?’”
— Barrett Fisher
Humanities professor Barrett Fisher talks about the moral themes in the films of Martin Scorsese, particularly in his most recent film adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence. Fisher also compares the fiction of Shusaku Endo with that of Graham Greene and the way in which Christianity was a set of “ill-fitting clothes” for Endo and arguably for Japanese culture more generally. ⇧
Guests on Volume 141
• GRANT WYTHOFF on the technophiliac obsessions of Hugo Gernsback, the geeky midwife of modern science fiction
• SUSANNA LEE on how the hard-boiled protagonists of crime fiction in the 1930s and '40s were replaced by more nihilistic tough guys in the 1950s and '60s
• GERALD R. MCDERMOTT on how the work of theologian E. L. Mascall can expose blind spots in contemporary Christian thought
• CARLOS EIRE on how and why religion became “interiorized” in the wake of the reformations of the sixteenth century
• KELLY KAPIC on theology’s use of experience and why the Incarnation is the ground of Christian hope
• JAMES MATTHEW WILSON on the beauty of truth and goodness, and on the necessity of cultivating “intellectual vision”
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Grant Wythoff
“There was a lot of technological utopianism that was happening on both sides of the Atlantic before the Great War. After World War I, the tone changes drastically in Europe as all of these countries see the kinds of horrible impacts that modern technology can have on warfare and on people’s modes of existence . . . In the U.S., people were much more removed from the impact of that war . . . so I think [that] that technological utopianism was allowed to live on for a bit longer in the U.S. than it was in Europe and Gernsback was definitely part of that second wave . . . of hopefulness in the project of technology.”
— Grant Wythoff, author of The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientification (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)
Ever heard of the Hugo Awards? In this opening interview, literary and media scholar Grant Wythoff talks about the “father of science fiction,” Hugo Gernsback. Gernsback’s utopian views about technology helped to influence American optimism about science and technology through his publishing of columns, stories, and catalogs such as Modern Electrics. ⇧
• • •
Susanna Lee
“One of the most treasured Western ideals is the idea that there are utterly secular individuals who instinctively and naturally, and ‘without thought of it,’ incarnate spiritual virtues. And they don’t do it because they’re religious; they do it because that’s just the way they are.”
— Susanna Lee, author of Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority (Ohio State University Press, 2016)
Francophone studies professor Susanna Lee joins us to talk about moral authority in the heroes of hard-boiled crime fiction. Drawing from Georg Lukács’s distinction between epic heroes and heroes of the modern novel, Lee explains how the hard-boiled detective of French and American crime fiction shares similarities with both of these archetypes. Though the hard-boiled protagonists navigate a world in which God is absent, Lee locates the models for their moral authority in the religious and literary figures of the early nineteenth-century who were attempting to fill the void of religious authority left in the wake of the French and American revolutions. ⇧
• • •
Gerald R. McDermott
“The Church is an organism for Mascall. It’s not a bunch of people gathered together to talk about Jesus, although of course it is that at one level, but it’s so much more than that. It is the life of the Trinity imparted to men and women. The Church is the Trinity in all of its fullness because it means Christ in all of his fullness, which means, as Augustine put it, totus Christus, the whole Christ, the whole Messiah with his Body, i.e. the Church.”
— Gerald R. McDermott, contributor to E. L. Mascall's Christ, the Christian, and the Church (Hendrickson Press, 2017)
In this conversation about the re-issuing of Anglican theologian E. L. Mascall’s book Christ, the Christian, and the Church, theologian Gerald R. McDermott discusses Mascall’s cosmic vision in his treatment of Christology and ecclesiology. During the mid-twentieth century, at a time when many religious leaders and intellectuals were losing confidence in Christian orthodoxy and influence, Mascall was writing with a “holy boldness” about the most fundamental tenets of Christian creed and practice. ⇧
• • •
Carlos Eire
“How do you live with these people on a daily basis? How do you cohabitate? And it becomes necessary, in order to have ‘business as usual’ — in a literal sense — to be conducted, for religion to be an interior, private thing rather than a public thing . . . It’s not so much theory that brings about toleration; it is daily living . . . [T]his is much easier to do when the natural and supernatural are separated from each other or given some distance from each other.”
— Carlos Eire, author of Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 (Yale University Press, 2016)
Early modern historian Carlos Eire explains how the perennial temptation to separate the natural from the supernatural in theory became institutionalized in practice during the Protestant reformations as a consequence of the desperate attempt to live out daily life with one’s neighbors while avoiding the crossfire of competing churches. However, the gradual effect of that response was an increasingly interior and privatized faith that could give little guidance to civic life. ⇧
• • •
Kelly Kapic
“[W]e kind of think after the Enlightenment: Now we finally have the guts to honestly look at the world and suffering and say ‘This is so terrible there must not be a God’ . . . and really Calvin and Augustine and Aquinas and all those others, they just weren’t willing to be as honest as we are, but now we have the guts . . . I don’t buy that; I think it betrays this kind of problematic view of progress . . . One of the great surprises is not that [earlier Christians] thought suffering isn’t a problem, but that the Church responded to suffering with liturgy. The Church responded to suffering with actions, with defiance.”
— Kelly Kapic, author of Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering (InterVarsity Press, 2017)
Theologian Kelly Kapic talks about the significance of the many forms of Christ’s Body in our thinking about pain and suffering. We often think about the Body of Christ as the crucified Christ, but he is also the body in daily life, the body resurrected, the body ascended, and the body extended into the Church. The members of Christ’s Body, the Church, share each other’s suffering in a way that transcends common sympathy and that resists the powerfully isolating and privatizing effects of suffering. ⇧
• • •
James Matthew Wilson
“Complexity is not what marks off an en-souled being, or an intellectual being; it’s depth. To think of reality as reducible to information is to reduce it to a series of flattened nodes whose relationships can be graphed. It fails to recognize that what’s peculiar about intellectual beings in general is their depth. Why does that matter? Because depth is the way in which we describe things as always transcending the sum of their parts so that everything is more than itself . . . This is one of the first lessons of what it means to refer to Being as beautiful.”
— James Matthew Wilson, author of The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (Catholic University of America Press, 2017)
Poet and humanities professor James Matthew Wilson talks about how cultivating the desire to perceive the interior life of things sustains the basic human capacity for recognizing truth, pursuing wisdom, and contemplating beauty. The modern approach towards reality has surrendered that desire, settling instead for a “concupiscence of the eyes,” which views reality as a mere assembly of parts that can be decoded without being understood. ⇧
Guests on Volume 141
• GRANT WYTHOFF on the technophiliac obsessions of Hugo Gernsback, the geeky midwife of modern science fiction
• SUSANNA LEE on how the hard-boiled protagonists of crime fiction in the 1930s and '40s were replaced by more nihilistic tough guys in the 1950s and '60s
• GERALD R. MCDERMOTT on how the work of theologian E. L. Mascall can expose blind spots in contemporary Christian thought
• CARLOS EIRE on how and why religion became “interiorized” in the wake of the reformations of the sixteenth century
• KELLY KAPIC on theology’s use of experience and why the Incarnation is the ground of Christian hope
• JAMES MATTHEW WILSON on the beauty of truth and goodness, and on the necessity of cultivating “intellectual vision”
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Grant Wythoff
“There was a lot of technological utopianism that was happening on both sides of the Atlantic before the Great War. After World War I, the tone changes drastically in Europe as all of these countries see the kinds of horrible impacts that modern technology can have on warfare and on people’s modes of existence . . . In the U.S., people were much more removed from the impact of that war . . . so I think [that] that technological utopianism was allowed to live on for a bit longer in the U.S. than it was in Europe and Gernsback was definitely part of that second wave . . . of hopefulness in the project of technology.”
— Grant Wythoff, author of The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientification (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)
Ever heard of the Hugo Awards? In this opening interview, literary and media scholar Grant Wythoff talks about the “father of science fiction,” Hugo Gernsback. Gernsback’s utopian views about technology helped to influence American optimism about science and technology through his publishing of columns, stories, and catalogs such as Modern Electrics. ⇧
• • •
Susanna Lee
“One of the most treasured Western ideals is the idea that there are utterly secular individuals who instinctively and naturally, and ‘without thought of it,’ incarnate spiritual virtues. And they don’t do it because they’re religious; they do it because that’s just the way they are.”
— Susanna Lee, author of Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority (Ohio State University Press, 2016)
Francophone studies professor Susanna Lee joins us to talk about moral authority in the heroes of hard-boiled crime fiction. Drawing from Georg Lukács’s distinction between epic heroes and heroes of the modern novel, Lee explains how the hard-boiled detective of French and American crime fiction shares similarities with both of these archetypes. Though the hard-boiled protagonists navigate a world in which God is absent, Lee locates the models for their moral authority in the religious and literary figures of the early nineteenth-century who were attempting to fill the void of religious authority left in the wake of the French and American revolutions. ⇧
• • •
Gerald R. McDermott
“The Church is an organism for Mascall. It’s not a bunch of people gathered together to talk about Jesus, although of course it is that at one level, but it’s so much more than that. It is the life of the Trinity imparted to men and women. The Church is the Trinity in all of its fullness because it means Christ in all of his fullness, which means, as Augustine put it, totus Christus, the whole Christ, the whole Messiah with his Body, i.e. the Church.”
— Gerald R. McDermott, contributor to E. L. Mascall's Christ, the Christian, and the Church (Hendrickson Press, 2017)
In this conversation about the re-issuing of Anglican theologian E. L. Mascall’s book Christ, the Christian, and the Church, theologian Gerald R. McDermott discusses Mascall’s cosmic vision in his treatment of Christology and ecclesiology. During the mid-twentieth century, at a time when many religious leaders and intellectuals were losing confidence in Christian orthodoxy and influence, Mascall was writing with a “holy boldness” about the most fundamental tenets of Christian creed and practice. ⇧
• • •
Carlos Eire
“How do you live with these people on a daily basis? How do you cohabitate? And it becomes necessary, in order to have ‘business as usual’ — in a literal sense — to be conducted, for religion to be an interior, private thing rather than a public thing . . . It’s not so much theory that brings about toleration; it is daily living . . . [T]his is much easier to do when the natural and supernatural are separated from each other or given some distance from each other.”
— Carlos Eire, author of Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 (Yale University Press, 2016)
Early modern historian Carlos Eire explains how the perennial temptation to separate the natural from the supernatural in theory became institutionalized in practice during the Protestant reformations as a consequence of the desperate attempt to live out daily life with one’s neighbors while avoiding the crossfire of competing churches. However, the gradual effect of that response was an increasingly interior and privatized faith that could give little guidance to civic life. ⇧
• • •
Kelly Kapic
“[W]e kind of think after the Enlightenment: Now we finally have the guts to honestly look at the world and suffering and say ‘This is so terrible there must not be a God’ . . . and really Calvin and Augustine and Aquinas and all those others, they just weren’t willing to be as honest as we are, but now we have the guts . . . I don’t buy that; I think it betrays this kind of problematic view of progress . . . One of the great surprises is not that [earlier Christians] thought suffering isn’t a problem, but that the Church responded to suffering with liturgy. The Church responded to suffering with actions, with defiance.”
— Kelly Kapic, author of Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering (InterVarsity Press, 2017)
Theologian Kelly Kapic talks about the significance of the many forms of Christ’s Body in our thinking about pain and suffering. We often think about the Body of Christ as the crucified Christ, but he is also the body in daily life, the body resurrected, the body ascended, and the body extended into the Church. The members of Christ’s Body, the Church, share each other’s suffering in a way that transcends common sympathy and that resists the powerfully isolating and privatizing effects of suffering. ⇧
• • •
James Matthew Wilson
“Complexity is not what marks off an en-souled being, or an intellectual being; it’s depth. To think of reality as reducible to information is to reduce it to a series of flattened nodes whose relationships can be graphed. It fails to recognize that what’s peculiar about intellectual beings in general is their depth. Why does that matter? Because depth is the way in which we describe things as always transcending the sum of their parts so that everything is more than itself . . . This is one of the first lessons of what it means to refer to Being as beautiful.”
— James Matthew Wilson, author of The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (Catholic University of America Press, 2017)
Poet and humanities professor James Matthew Wilson talks about how cultivating the desire to perceive the interior life of things sustains the basic human capacity for recognizing truth, pursuing wisdom, and contemplating beauty. The modern approach towards reality has surrendered that desire, settling instead for a “concupiscence of the eyes,” which views reality as a mere assembly of parts that can be decoded without being understood. ⇧
Guests on Volume 142
• STANLEY HAUERWAS on writing letters to his godson about the virtues
• PERRY L. GLANZER and NATHAN F. ALLEMAN on the fragmentation of modern higher education and why we need theology to unify universities
• JEFFREY BISHOP on how modern medicine shapes an inadequate understanding of the human body
• ALAN JACOBS on how contemporary communications media discourage charitable thinking
• D. C. SCHINDLER on the diabolical nature of the modern understanding of freedom
• MARIANNE WRIGHT on how the gospel comes through in the writings of George MacDonald
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Stanley Hauerwas
“Faith, hope, and love were seen as the theological virtues and people got the idea through later interpretation that you had the natural virtues as far as they would go and you kind of put frosting on them with faith, hope, and love. But Aquinas was very clear that charity is the form of all the virtues. So charity-formed temperance is not the same as natural temperance.”
— Stanley Hauerwas, author of The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson (Eerdmans, 2018)
Theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas reflects on being a godparent and the responsibility to cultivate and talk about Christian virtue. In his collection of letters to his godson, Hauerwas goes through many of the natural virtues and correlates them to different developmental stages in a child’s life, emphasizing the importance of the body’s role in moral formation. ⇧
• • •
Perry L. Glanzer and Nathan F. Alleman
“The story that we’re trying to tell . . . is really a story of a missed opportunity. The emergence of higher education in the university where theology had this role and was displaced to a kind of a specialization rather than seeing it as integral to everything that was happening. And then we look at ‘what’s the contemporary price that we’re paying for that missed opportunity?’”
— Nathan F. Alleman, co-author of Restoring the Soul of the University: Unifying Christian Education in a Fragmented Age (InterVarsity Press, 2017)
Educators Perry L. Glanzer and Nathan F. Alleman talk about how higher education became so fragmented and how most educational institutions are operating within a “less-than-human” vision of curricular and co-curricular efforts. In order to reanimate the soul of the university, Glanzer and Alleman argue, educational institutions need to return to theology — the study and worship of God — as the ordering principle that can bring unity back to the university. ⇧
• • •
Jeffrey Bishop
“The students would have to go up to the person, introduce himself or herself to the model, and ask her or his permission to ‘palpate liver,’ for example. And so they suddenly have to learn that this body might recoil from pain or cold hands or from pushing a little too deeply, or from something going on in that body . . . and so suddenly they have to learn that in a social context.”
— Jeffrey Bishop, author of The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011)
Does medicine have to be reductionistic? In this interview, medical doctor and health care ethicist Jeffrey Bishop reflects on how the practices of the anatomy lab shape our understanding of the body in unhelpful and unrealistic ways. Bishop recounts how he came to feel uneasy about the ways in which medical education achieves certain standards of knowing while bypassing the standards of knowing actually needed when practicing medicine, often by treating the body as a dead object. As a corrective, Bishop wants to recover the question of what bodies are: a person and organism mystically integrated into a whole. Bishop wants to investigate a different way of approaching medicine that isn’t scientistic, but takes into account the mysteriously interactive capacities of human persons. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
“Each of us individually can’t know what we need to know about every issue. That means we have to trust other people to help and guide us and inform us, because we just don’t have the cognitive energy to be able to do this.”
— Alan Jacobs, author of How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds (Currency, 2017)
Frequent guest of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal Alan Jacobs joins us to discuss some principles he’s compiled to help us think well (and charitably) in our cultural context. Jacobs warns that we need to be attentive to the ways technology and social media displace previously fixed communities and how these new ways of communicating alter how we respond to different ideas and people. Martin Buber said that he allowed a new idea to gestate for nine months before baring it before the world; Jacobs asks that we wait for five minutes. Unfortunately, many people do not realize to what extent thinking is determined and helped by communities and individual narratives. We cannot think and make decisions without the help of others and without the passage of time. ⇧
• • •
D. C. Schindler
“Human freedom actually begins beyond us. It draws on the attractive power of Goodness and Beauty and Truth, ultimately, and it wells up in one. So when we make our choices it’s fruit being born in us of a movement that begins more profoundly than our deliberate intentions.”
— D. C. Schindler, author of Freedom From Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017)
Philosopher D. C. Schindler began thinking about the nature of freedom as a result of his efforts to understand the transcendentals Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Schindler identifies the “anthropological correlates” to the transcendentals as Reason, Freedom, and Love. If human freedom is most closely tied to goodness, what does it mean for man to be free? And does our modern understanding of freedom concur or conflict with man’s participation in Goodness? In this interview, Schindler contrasts the classical and Christian understanding of freedom with the modern understanding of freedom, and explains how John Locke, unlike his contemporaries, was able to popularize the revolutionary notions of freedom that some philosophers were endorsing during the early modern period. ⇧
• • •
Marianne Wright
“You’ll be reading and suddenly you’ll hit a sentence that just knocks you over the head that can be extracted, and . . . some of these very short one or two sentence passages are things that I’ve thought about for weeks after reading them. I think it’s possible to get a lot of the value out of MacDonald just with those short excerpts.”
— Marianne Wright, author of The Gospel in George MacDonald: Selections from His Novels, Fairy Tales, and Spiritual Writings (Plough Publishing House, 2016)
Bruderhof community member and editor with Plough Publishing Marianne Wright joins us to talk about how reading George MacDonald (as G. K. Chesterton put it) is like “picking jewels out of a rather irregular setting.” Like his Victorian contemporaries, MacDonald’s output was expansive, but even his greatest admirer, C. S. Lewis was quick to say that “few of MacDonald’s novels were good and none were very good.” Despite these faults, there are gems worth encountering and even worth digging for in MacDonald’s writings, namely, what Lewis called MacDonald’s “mythopoeic genius.” Fortunately for contemporary readers, Marianne Wright, like her predecessor C. S. Lewis, has compiled an anthology of excerpts that draws from MacDonald’s sermons, essays, novels, and fairy tales. ⇧
Guests on Volume 142
• STANLEY HAUERWAS on writing letters to his godson about the virtues
• PERRY L. GLANZER and NATHAN F. ALLEMAN on the fragmentation of modern higher education and why we need theology to unify universities
• JEFFREY BISHOP on how modern medicine shapes an inadequate understanding of the human body
• ALAN JACOBS on how contemporary communications media discourage charitable thinking
• D. C. SCHINDLER on the diabolical nature of the modern understanding of freedom
• MARIANNE WRIGHT on how the gospel comes through in the writings of George MacDonald
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Stanley Hauerwas
“Faith, hope, and love were seen as the theological virtues and people got the idea through later interpretation that you had the natural virtues as far as they would go and you kind of put frosting on them with faith, hope, and love. But Aquinas was very clear that charity is the form of all the virtues. So charity-formed temperance is not the same as natural temperance.”
— Stanley Hauerwas, author of The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson (Eerdmans, 2018)
Theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas reflects on being a godparent and the responsibility to cultivate and talk about Christian virtue. In his collection of letters to his godson, Hauerwas goes through many of the natural virtues and correlates them to different developmental stages in a child’s life, emphasizing the importance of the body’s role in moral formation. ⇧
• • •
Perry L. Glanzer and Nathan F. Alleman
“The story that we’re trying to tell . . . is really a story of a missed opportunity. The emergence of higher education in the university where theology had this role and was displaced to a kind of a specialization rather than seeing it as integral to everything that was happening. And then we look at ‘what’s the contemporary price that we’re paying for that missed opportunity?’”
— Nathan F. Alleman, co-author of Restoring the Soul of the University: Unifying Christian Education in a Fragmented Age (InterVarsity Press, 2017)
Educators Perry L. Glanzer and Nathan F. Alleman talk about how higher education became so fragmented and how most educational institutions are operating within a “less-than-human” vision of curricular and co-curricular efforts. In order to reanimate the soul of the university, Glanzer and Alleman argue, educational institutions need to return to theology — the study and worship of God — as the ordering principle that can bring unity back to the university. ⇧
• • •
Jeffrey Bishop
“The students would have to go up to the person, introduce himself or herself to the model, and ask her or his permission to ‘palpate liver,’ for example. And so they suddenly have to learn that this body might recoil from pain or cold hands or from pushing a little too deeply, or from something going on in that body . . . and so suddenly they have to learn that in a social context.”
— Jeffrey Bishop, author of The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011)
Does medicine have to be reductionistic? In this interview, medical doctor and health care ethicist Jeffrey Bishop reflects on how the practices of the anatomy lab shape our understanding of the body in unhelpful and unrealistic ways. Bishop recounts how he came to feel uneasy about the ways in which medical education achieves certain standards of knowing while bypassing the standards of knowing actually needed when practicing medicine, often by treating the body as a dead object. As a corrective, Bishop wants to recover the question of what bodies are: a person and organism mystically integrated into a whole. Bishop wants to investigate a different way of approaching medicine that isn’t scientistic, but takes into account the mysteriously interactive capacities of human persons. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
“Each of us individually can’t know what we need to know about every issue. That means we have to trust other people to help and guide us and inform us, because we just don’t have the cognitive energy to be able to do this.”
— Alan Jacobs, author of How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds (Currency, 2017)
Frequent guest of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal Alan Jacobs joins us to discuss some principles he’s compiled to help us think well (and charitably) in our cultural context. Jacobs warns that we need to be attentive to the ways technology and social media displace previously fixed communities and how these new ways of communicating alter how we respond to different ideas and people. Martin Buber said that he allowed a new idea to gestate for nine months before baring it before the world; Jacobs asks that we wait for five minutes. Unfortunately, many people do not realize to what extent thinking is determined and helped by communities and individual narratives. We cannot think and make decisions without the help of others and without the passage of time. ⇧
• • •
D. C. Schindler
“Human freedom actually begins beyond us. It draws on the attractive power of Goodness and Beauty and Truth, ultimately, and it wells up in one. So when we make our choices it’s fruit being born in us of a movement that begins more profoundly than our deliberate intentions.”
— D. C. Schindler, author of Freedom From Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017)
Philosopher D. C. Schindler began thinking about the nature of freedom as a result of his efforts to understand the transcendentals Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Schindler identifies the “anthropological correlates” to the transcendentals as Reason, Freedom, and Love. If human freedom is most closely tied to goodness, what does it mean for man to be free? And does our modern understanding of freedom concur or conflict with man’s participation in Goodness? In this interview, Schindler contrasts the classical and Christian understanding of freedom with the modern understanding of freedom, and explains how John Locke, unlike his contemporaries, was able to popularize the revolutionary notions of freedom that some philosophers were endorsing during the early modern period. ⇧
• • •
Marianne Wright
“You’ll be reading and suddenly you’ll hit a sentence that just knocks you over the head that can be extracted, and . . . some of these very short one or two sentence passages are things that I’ve thought about for weeks after reading them. I think it’s possible to get a lot of the value out of MacDonald just with those short excerpts.”
— Marianne Wright, author of The Gospel in George MacDonald: Selections from His Novels, Fairy Tales, and Spiritual Writings (Plough Publishing House, 2016)
Bruderhof community member and editor with Plough Publishing Marianne Wright joins us to talk about how reading George MacDonald (as G. K. Chesterton put it) is like “picking jewels out of a rather irregular setting.” Like his Victorian contemporaries, MacDonald’s output was expansive, but even his greatest admirer, C. S. Lewis was quick to say that “few of MacDonald’s novels were good and none were very good.” Despite these faults, there are gems worth encountering and even worth digging for in MacDonald’s writings, namely, what Lewis called MacDonald’s “mythopoeic genius.” Fortunately for contemporary readers, Marianne Wright, like her predecessor C. S. Lewis, has compiled an anthology of excerpts that draws from MacDonald’s sermons, essays, novels, and fairy tales. ⇧
Guests on Volume 143
• MARK REGNERUS on the effects of social changes in modernity on sexual behavior
• JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON on the influence of Fyodor Dostoevsky on Walker Percy’s convictions and his approach to writing
• JOHN HENRY CROSBY on the heroic witness borne by Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) in his philosophical writings and his battle against Nazism
• JOHN F. CROSBY on the influence of the schools of phenomenology and personalism in the thought of Dietrich von Hildebrand
• WYNAND DE BEER on lessons from Hellenic cosmology about the metaphysical questions raised by organic diversity and change
• SØRINA HIGGINS, on the perennial appeal of the stories inspired by the figure of King Arthur, especially in the work of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield.
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Mark Regnerus
“[Through contraception sexuality became] separated from the idea that this act could generate life, so I think the argument in the book (and I think the evidence bears it out) is that sex has become more of an infertile act in itself. Independently of what your partner is on or not on in terms of contraception, people are thinking of sex as a baseline infertile act . . . I think in this is a building of a new narrative, one that suggests that sex is infertile until proven otherwise.”
— Mark Regnerus, author of Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy (Oxford University Press, 2017)
Sociologist Mark Regnerus examines how the dating market and marriage practices have changed over the past several decades. He also explains some of the particular data sampling challenges that sociologists have to hurdle when asking questions about sexuality and marital relations. Regnerus sees the disintegration of certain social structures that historically have informed men and women about what relationships should look like and what their purposes are as largely contributing to the changes in marriage rates and sexual activity. He introduces his readers to the prescient insights of sociologist Anthony Giddens, author of The Transformation of Intimacy, particularly the notion of a “pure relationship.” ⇧
• • •
Jessica Hooten Wilson
“It’s part of our nature to imitate and to look back at our models. What does that mean for writers then? Why is it that we’ve disregarded our influences and we think that it kills our originality or we must protect our uniqueness by not admitting whom we’ve read before? Instead, Percy is coming out of this very humble place (having been a physician and not a novelist) and recognizing [that] in science you always stand on the shoulders of giants . . . So Percy had a habit of looking back at the writers that could influence him.”
— Jessica Hooten Wilson, author of Reading Walker Percy's Novels (LSU Press, 2018)
Literary scholar Jessica Hooten Wilson explains how she realized that the writings of Fyodor Dostoevksy greatly influenced the writing of novelist Walker Percy. “Influence,” however, is often taboo among writers and artists for fear that they might lose credibility as creative or original. But Wilson wants to restore the place of imitation. Influence, argues Wilson, can never truly be avoided without losing artistic integrity. Wilson also discusses the diagnostic stance towards modern man that characterizes Percy’s novels as well as his skepticism towards modern “self-help techniques” that disregard a vision of man rooted in transcendence. ⇧
• • •
John Henry Crosby
“I like to say that unlike someone like Cardinal Newman, who read his way into the Church, or someone like Augustine, you know, the classic case of a conversion rooted in moral reformation, moral awakening, in von Hildebrand’s case, it was really the attraction through the beautiful.”
— John Henry Crosby, The Hildebrand Project
President and founder of the Hildebrand Project John Henry Crosby describes Dietrich von Hildebrand’s roles as philosopher, Christian witness, political witness, and cultural representative. Von Hildebrand wrote eloquently for his fellow Christians about theological matters from the perspective of a lay Christian. During the middle of the twentieth century when Nazism was growing, von Hildebrand risked his life to fight against the anti-humanism of totalitarianism. And as a critic of culture, von Hildebrand urgently defended beauty, arguing that beauty is an essentially human and Christian topic that demands and deserves as much reverence as questions of ethics and doctrine. ⇧
• • •
John F. Crosby
“[B]eauty somehow addresses us as persons and calls for appreciation, and yet [von Hildebrand] doesn’t want to cross the line into subjectivism as if the beauty doesn’t exist except in our appreciation. It’s there, but it has . . . this appeal to us, this — as he says in a few places, it turns its face to us and is somehow left incomplete if there’s no human who understands it and is caught up and edified by it.”
— John F. Crosby, The Hildebrand Project
Philosopher and former student of Dietrich von Hildebrand John F. Crosby offers some helpful descriptions of the philosophical schools called phenomenology and personalism and how von Hildebrand’s thought reflects these approaches. Von Hildebrand felt that things and people needed to be protected from a reductionist mindset that collapsed the integrity of a thing into something incomplete and incompatible with real experience. His reflections on beauty and human freedom both take into account the inner life of persons and of things that influences how we relate to the world around us. ⇧
• • •
Wynand de Beer
“It was [Étienne] Gilson who first showed me the etymology of the word ‘evolution,’ being derived from the Latin evolvere, meaning ‘to unfold.’ And only that which has been enfolded can be unfolded; only that which has been enveloped can be developed.”
— Wynand de Beer, author of From Logos to Bios: Evolutionary Theory in Light of Plato, Aristotle, and Neoplatonism (Angelico Press, 2018)
Hellenic and Patristic scholar Wynand de Beer introduces some alternative evolutionary theories that have existed since Greek philosophy and which offer a different metaphysics from that of Darwinian evolutionary theory. De Beer explains that Darwinian theories of transformation fit well within a modern understanding of causality that recognizes only mechanical or material causes, which may account for why Darwinian evolution is often presumed to be the only evolutionary option available. In his book, From Logos to Bios, de Beer explores how Greek metaphysics can inform how we think about the origins of life on earth. ⇧
• • •
Sørina Higgins
“Their Arthurian works are there to communicate the idea that there is a union between what we tend to call the natural and the supernatural . . . [The Grail] is a physical locus where the natural and the supernatural touch. So another word that might work for all of this is ‘sacramental.’ I would say that The Inklings had a very sacramental vision of the world and Arthuriana and so the Grail works as an image for that.”
— Sørina Higgins, author of The Inklings and King Arthur (Apocryphile Press, 2017)
Literary scholar Sørina Higgins talks about how the legend of King Arthur has served the English people in various political and social contexts. Due to its variety of sources, the Arthurian legend is particularly pliable and therefore easily adaptable for different political and social purposes, whether that be establishing ruling legitimacy — as in the Tudor era — or critiquing assumptions about class and gender — as in the Victorian period. For The Inklings, especially Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien, Arthuriana material was a way of combating the destructive and reductive patterns of their late modern context. ⇧
Guests on Volume 143
• MARK REGNERUS on the effects of social changes in modernity on sexual behavior
• JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON on the influence of Fyodor Dostoevsky on Walker Percy’s convictions and his approach to writing
• JOHN HENRY CROSBY on the heroic witness borne by Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) in his philosophical writings and his battle against Nazism
• JOHN F. CROSBY on the influence of the schools of phenomenology and personalism in the thought of Dietrich von Hildebrand
• WYNAND DE BEER on lessons from Hellenic cosmology about the metaphysical questions raised by organic diversity and change
• SØRINA HIGGINS, on the perennial appeal of the stories inspired by the figure of King Arthur, especially in the work of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield.
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Mark Regnerus
“[Through contraception sexuality became] separated from the idea that this act could generate life, so I think the argument in the book (and I think the evidence bears it out) is that sex has become more of an infertile act in itself. Independently of what your partner is on or not on in terms of contraception, people are thinking of sex as a baseline infertile act . . . I think in this is a building of a new narrative, one that suggests that sex is infertile until proven otherwise.”
— Mark Regnerus, author of Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy (Oxford University Press, 2017)
Sociologist Mark Regnerus examines how the dating market and marriage practices have changed over the past several decades. He also explains some of the particular data sampling challenges that sociologists have to hurdle when asking questions about sexuality and marital relations. Regnerus sees the disintegration of certain social structures that historically have informed men and women about what relationships should look like and what their purposes are as largely contributing to the changes in marriage rates and sexual activity. He introduces his readers to the prescient insights of sociologist Anthony Giddens, author of The Transformation of Intimacy, particularly the notion of a “pure relationship.” ⇧
• • •
Jessica Hooten Wilson
“It’s part of our nature to imitate and to look back at our models. What does that mean for writers then? Why is it that we’ve disregarded our influences and we think that it kills our originality or we must protect our uniqueness by not admitting whom we’ve read before? Instead, Percy is coming out of this very humble place (having been a physician and not a novelist) and recognizing [that] in science you always stand on the shoulders of giants . . . So Percy had a habit of looking back at the writers that could influence him.”
— Jessica Hooten Wilson, author of Reading Walker Percy's Novels (LSU Press, 2018)
Literary scholar Jessica Hooten Wilson explains how she realized that the writings of Fyodor Dostoevksy greatly influenced the writing of novelist Walker Percy. “Influence,” however, is often taboo among writers and artists for fear that they might lose credibility as creative or original. But Wilson wants to restore the place of imitation. Influence, argues Wilson, can never truly be avoided without losing artistic integrity. Wilson also discusses the diagnostic stance towards modern man that characterizes Percy’s novels as well as his skepticism towards modern “self-help techniques” that disregard a vision of man rooted in transcendence. ⇧
• • •
John Henry Crosby
“I like to say that unlike someone like Cardinal Newman, who read his way into the Church, or someone like Augustine, you know, the classic case of a conversion rooted in moral reformation, moral awakening, in von Hildebrand’s case, it was really the attraction through the beautiful.”
— John Henry Crosby, The Hildebrand Project
President and founder of the Hildebrand Project John Henry Crosby describes Dietrich von Hildebrand’s roles as philosopher, Christian witness, political witness, and cultural representative. Von Hildebrand wrote eloquently for his fellow Christians about theological matters from the perspective of a lay Christian. During the middle of the twentieth century when Nazism was growing, von Hildebrand risked his life to fight against the anti-humanism of totalitarianism. And as a critic of culture, von Hildebrand urgently defended beauty, arguing that beauty is an essentially human and Christian topic that demands and deserves as much reverence as questions of ethics and doctrine. ⇧
• • •
John F. Crosby
“[B]eauty somehow addresses us as persons and calls for appreciation, and yet [von Hildebrand] doesn’t want to cross the line into subjectivism as if the beauty doesn’t exist except in our appreciation. It’s there, but it has . . . this appeal to us, this — as he says in a few places, it turns its face to us and is somehow left incomplete if there’s no human who understands it and is caught up and edified by it.”
— John F. Crosby, The Hildebrand Project
Philosopher and former student of Dietrich von Hildebrand John F. Crosby offers some helpful descriptions of the philosophical schools called phenomenology and personalism and how von Hildebrand’s thought reflects these approaches. Von Hildebrand felt that things and people needed to be protected from a reductionist mindset that collapsed the integrity of a thing into something incomplete and incompatible with real experience. His reflections on beauty and human freedom both take into account the inner life of persons and of things that influences how we relate to the world around us. ⇧
• • •
Wynand de Beer
“It was [Étienne] Gilson who first showed me the etymology of the word ‘evolution,’ being derived from the Latin evolvere, meaning ‘to unfold.’ And only that which has been enfolded can be unfolded; only that which has been enveloped can be developed.”
— Wynand de Beer, author of From Logos to Bios: Evolutionary Theory in Light of Plato, Aristotle, and Neoplatonism (Angelico Press, 2018)
Hellenic and Patristic scholar Wynand de Beer introduces some alternative evolutionary theories that have existed since Greek philosophy and which offer a different metaphysics from that of Darwinian evolutionary theory. De Beer explains that Darwinian theories of transformation fit well within a modern understanding of causality that recognizes only mechanical or material causes, which may account for why Darwinian evolution is often presumed to be the only evolutionary option available. In his book, From Logos to Bios, de Beer explores how Greek metaphysics can inform how we think about the origins of life on earth. ⇧
• • •
Sørina Higgins
“Their Arthurian works are there to communicate the idea that there is a union between what we tend to call the natural and the supernatural . . . [The Grail] is a physical locus where the natural and the supernatural touch. So another word that might work for all of this is ‘sacramental.’ I would say that The Inklings had a very sacramental vision of the world and Arthuriana and so the Grail works as an image for that.”
— Sørina Higgins, author of The Inklings and King Arthur (Apocryphile Press, 2017)
Literary scholar Sørina Higgins talks about how the legend of King Arthur has served the English people in various political and social contexts. Due to its variety of sources, the Arthurian legend is particularly pliable and therefore easily adaptable for different political and social purposes, whether that be establishing ruling legitimacy — as in the Tudor era — or critiquing assumptions about class and gender — as in the Victorian period. For The Inklings, especially Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien, Arthuriana material was a way of combating the destructive and reductive patterns of their late modern context. ⇧
Guests on Volume 144
• JONATHAN MCINTOSH on the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysical ideas on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien
• KEVIN VOST on the history of thinking about friendship in Patristic and Medieval Christian thought
• MALCOM GUITE on wisdom from Samuel Taylor Coleridge about reason and the imagination
• R. DAVID COX on the influence of the Virginia Episcopalian tradition on the religious life of Robert E. Lee
• GRANT BRODRECHT on why Civil War-era evangelicals in the North placed such a high value on preserving the Union
• PETER BOUTENEFF on the theological richness of the music of Arvo Pärt
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jonathan McIntosh
Jonathan McIntosh claims that the mythological stories of J. R. R. Tolkien are rooted in certain metaphysical assumptions. These ideas are most clearly evident in the Ainulindalë, the creation account which Tolkien includes in The Silmarillion. Tolkien scholarship has tended to ignore the depth of influence on Tolkien’s understanding of Creation of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. McIntosh is convinced that Aquinas’s discussion of the relationship between God and Creation serves as a helpful guide in understanding Tolkien’s instincts. In numerous letters and essays, Tolkien expressed his view that all works of art — of “sub-creation” — are a tribute to God’s own act of Creation, an act whereby the One who is Being gives being to the universe. All art is fundamentally about reality, and hence expresses metaphysical assumptions. McIntosh offers examples from Tolkien’s stories of his metaphysical concerns. ⇧
• • •
Kevin Vost
Kevin Vost explains that St. Aelred of Rievaulx’s treatise Spiritual Friendship, written in the twelfth century, is the first thorough examination of the nature of friendship in the Christian tradition. Friendship was understood to be compatible with the Christian command to extend charity to all neighbors. Spiritual friendship involves both the natural virtues and the virtue of charity. Aristotle, Cicero, and other pre-Christian writers had a helpful but limited understanding of friendship; the event of the Incarnation revealed God as capable and desirous of human friendship. The revelation of the Trinity is also transformative of the understanding of friendship, as God is understood as essentially relational. Vost describes St. Aelred’s warnings about destructive forms of “carnal” and “worldly” friendship, and about the vices that can destroy friendship. ⇧
• • •
Malcolm Guite
Poet Malcolm Guite observes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was living in an age in which Reason was becoming a diminished faculty, and Creation was becoming understood in reductionistic, mechanistic, and materialistic terms. Coleridge reacted against these Enlightenment revisions and insisted that the human mind is actively engaged with reality. The mind of the Creator and the minds of God’s image-bearers share an essential correspondence, so that we can perceive the world correctly when we perceive it in light of the Logos. Guite explains how Coleridge’s understanding of the imagination had a profound effect on George MacDonald. ⇧
• • •
R. David Cox
R. David Cox says that the veneration of Robert E. Lee after his death has obscured both his political and religious convictions. As a faithful Virginia Episcopalian, Lee was situated between two wings of the church, one more latitudinarian and tending toward Deism, the other more evangelical and concerned for deep personal faith. From his father, Lee inherited the former form of faith, although his wife was clearly a proponent of the more zealous and experiential piety. The key theological idea that shaped Lee’s life was a belief in Providence, which guided his decisions both before, during, and after his involvement with the Civil War. ⇧
• • •
Grant Brodrecht
Grant Brodrecht explains that Northern Evangelicals in the mid-nineteenth century believed that the Union of the American states was a means whereby God was bringing his Kingdom to Earth. Southern secession from that Union was a blasphemous rejection of God’s purposes in history, and demanded a vigorous response. Brodrecht says that Reconstruction failed to attend to the needs of freed slaves in part because the chief theologically necessitated aim of the War was achieved when the Union was re-established. Brodrecht also discusses the difference between two ways of understanding the meaning of nationhood: “civic nationalism” and “ethnocultural nationalism.” While many historians claim that Northern citizens (unlike Southerners) were civic nationalists, Brodrecht suggests that many nineteenth-century Northern Evangelicals look a lot more like ethnocultural nationalists. ⇧
• • •
Peter Bouteneff
Theologian Peter Bouteneff explains how engagement with Gregorian chant and early Renaissance polyphony — music from the life of the Western Church — contributed to composer Arvo Pärt’s conversion to Orthodoxy and his re-discovery of the meaning of melody and harmony. Pärt realized that this music arose from prayer, and that if he wanted to compose works with such qualities, he needed to reorder his own life by prayer. During a time of artistic and religious searching, Pärt was introduced to a number of sacred texts that would shape his thinking and composition. Bouteneff discusses unity in diversity — evident in the Incarnation and in the Trinity — and universality and particularity. The specificity of the religious texts Pärt sets to music does not prevent reception of a “universal” spiritual reality by his listeners. ⇧
Guests on Volume 144
• JONATHAN MCINTOSH on the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysical ideas on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien
• KEVIN VOST on the history of thinking about friendship in Patristic and Medieval Christian thought
• MALCOM GUITE on wisdom from Samuel Taylor Coleridge about reason and the imagination
• R. DAVID COX on the influence of the Virginia Episcopalian tradition on the religious life of Robert E. Lee
• GRANT BRODRECHT on why Civil War-era evangelicals in the North placed such a high value on preserving the Union
• PETER BOUTENEFF on the theological richness of the music of Arvo Pärt
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jonathan McIntosh
Jonathan McIntosh claims that the mythological stories of J. R. R. Tolkien are rooted in certain metaphysical assumptions. These ideas are most clearly evident in the Ainulindalë, the creation account which Tolkien includes in The Silmarillion. Tolkien scholarship has tended to ignore the depth of influence on Tolkien’s understanding of Creation of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. McIntosh is convinced that Aquinas’s discussion of the relationship between God and Creation serves as a helpful guide in understanding Tolkien’s instincts. In numerous letters and essays, Tolkien expressed his view that all works of art — of “sub-creation” — are a tribute to God’s own act of Creation, an act whereby the One who is Being gives being to the universe. All art is fundamentally about reality, and hence expresses metaphysical assumptions. McIntosh offers examples from Tolkien’s stories of his metaphysical concerns. ⇧
• • •
Kevin Vost
Kevin Vost explains that St. Aelred of Rievaulx’s treatise Spiritual Friendship, written in the twelfth century, is the first thorough examination of the nature of friendship in the Christian tradition. Friendship was understood to be compatible with the Christian command to extend charity to all neighbors. Spiritual friendship involves both the natural virtues and the virtue of charity. Aristotle, Cicero, and other pre-Christian writers had a helpful but limited understanding of friendship; the event of the Incarnation revealed God as capable and desirous of human friendship. The revelation of the Trinity is also transformative of the understanding of friendship, as God is understood as essentially relational. Vost describes St. Aelred’s warnings about destructive forms of “carnal” and “worldly” friendship, and about the vices that can destroy friendship. ⇧
• • •
Malcolm Guite
Poet Malcolm Guite observes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was living in an age in which Reason was becoming a diminished faculty, and Creation was becoming understood in reductionistic, mechanistic, and materialistic terms. Coleridge reacted against these Enlightenment revisions and insisted that the human mind is actively engaged with reality. The mind of the Creator and the minds of God’s image-bearers share an essential correspondence, so that we can perceive the world correctly when we perceive it in light of the Logos. Guite explains how Coleridge’s understanding of the imagination had a profound effect on George MacDonald. ⇧
• • •
R. David Cox
R. David Cox says that the veneration of Robert E. Lee after his death has obscured both his political and religious convictions. As a faithful Virginia Episcopalian, Lee was situated between two wings of the church, one more latitudinarian and tending toward Deism, the other more evangelical and concerned for deep personal faith. From his father, Lee inherited the former form of faith, although his wife was clearly a proponent of the more zealous and experiential piety. The key theological idea that shaped Lee’s life was a belief in Providence, which guided his decisions both before, during, and after his involvement with the Civil War. ⇧
• • •
Grant Brodrecht
Grant Brodrecht explains that Northern Evangelicals in the mid-nineteenth century believed that the Union of the American states was a means whereby God was bringing his Kingdom to Earth. Southern secession from that Union was a blasphemous rejection of God’s purposes in history, and demanded a vigorous response. Brodrecht says that Reconstruction failed to attend to the needs of freed slaves in part because the chief theologically necessitated aim of the War was achieved when the Union was re-established. Brodrecht also discusses the difference between two ways of understanding the meaning of nationhood: “civic nationalism” and “ethnocultural nationalism.” While many historians claim that Northern citizens (unlike Southerners) were civic nationalists, Brodrecht suggests that many nineteenth-century Northern Evangelicals look a lot more like ethnocultural nationalists. ⇧
• • •
Peter Bouteneff
Theologian Peter Bouteneff explains how engagement with Gregorian chant and early Renaissance polyphony — music from the life of the Western Church — contributed to composer Arvo Pärt’s conversion to Orthodoxy and his re-discovery of the meaning of melody and harmony. Pärt realized that this music arose from prayer, and that if he wanted to compose works with such qualities, he needed to reorder his own life by prayer. During a time of artistic and religious searching, Pärt was introduced to a number of sacred texts that would shape his thinking and composition. Bouteneff discusses unity in diversity — evident in the Incarnation and in the Trinity — and universality and particularity. The specificity of the religious texts Pärt sets to music does not prevent reception of a “universal” spiritual reality by his listeners. ⇧
Guests on Volume 145
• DAVID I. SMITH on Christian teaching as a set of practices that accords with Christian content
• BRUCE HINDMARSH on the rise of the conversion narrative in early Evangelicalism
• JASON BAXTER on the psychological subtlety in Dante’s Divine Comedy
• JOHN FEA on the entanglement of American evangelicals and politics
• LAURIE GAGNE on the spiritual longing of French philosopher Simone Weil
• MATTHEW O'DONOVAN on singing Renaissance polyphony with Stile Antico
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
David I. Smith
“If you start from a paradigm where the main meat of being Christian is getting doctrine straight — and I don’t mean to belittle that in anything I say here; that’s an important and worthy task — but if that’s 95 percent of what we’re writing about and therefore presumably thinking about, then it becomes very difficult to think about how faith relates to teaching in any other way than trying to find opportunities in our teaching to explain our doctrines.”
—David I. Smith, author of On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom (Eerdmans, 2018)
Language professor David I. Smith talks about how Christian education must involve more than correct doctrine. Because methods of teaching are often taken for granted or assumed to be neutral, many fail to reflect on the ways in which the form of teaching (its pedagogy) can contradict or reinforce Christian doctrine. For Smith, “Christian practices” are not just habits applied to worship or personal devotion, but must be incorporated into all of lived experience, which includes teaching and learning. Christian pedagogy is a way of Christian practice, which requires careful attention to how teachers use their bodies in space and time as well as to how they direct their students to inhabit a shared environment. In the words of David Smith, “I think of it as the rooting of teaching and learning in creation. It’s not just about the contents of my mind, it’s about the contours of the reality around me.” ⇧
• • •
Bruce Hindmarsh
“[Writing one’s own conversion narrative] requires something of a modern consciousness for it to be a truly popular genre for people to feel free to write about themselves without it being an offense against modesty.”
— Bruce Hindmarsh, author of The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Church historian Bruce Hindmarsh discusses the rise of the personal conversion narrative that occurred during the spread of early Evangelicalism in England. Hindmarsh observes how the development of the conversion testimony as the preferred “text” coincides with the flourishing of the modern period and a modern understanding of the individual. Hindmarsh also talks about how early Evangelicals navigated church life and church unity within a church culture that placed so much emphasis on the experience of God’s presence. ⇧
• • •
Jason Baxter
“I think Dante would have been heartbroken to know that we get more excited about his mud pit fights in Inferno than we do about his glorious divine dance of Paradiso.”
— Jason Baxter, author of A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy (Baker Academic, 2018)
Humanities professor Jason Baxter discusses the great psychological subtlety in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Throughout the Comedy, Dante provides us a with a vision of hell in which sin is truly sickening and of paradise in which the Body of Christ finally sees the strength of its members as truly indispensable. Through his book, A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Baxter introduces us to more than “an exciting adventure story” so that we might begin to participate in the soul’s awakening to and pursuit of Divine beauty. ⇧
• • •
John Fea
“You see this entanglement of Evangelicals and American politics all the way back to the coming of the American Revolution, so it’s not as if there was this kind of pure, undefiled type of Evangelicalism that was not influenced by politics.”
— John Fea, author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Eerdmans, 2018)
Historian John Fea talks about the murky waters of American Evangelicalism and its long history of rallying behind strong leaders. From the beginnings of the American Revolution up until Donald Trump, Evangelicals (and American protestants in general) have been attracted to power, often for the sake of sustaining the ideal of the American nation as a Christian nation. Fea discusses the current ambiguity surrounding the term “Evangelical” when used to describe voting polls in recent past elections. He also discusses the prominent role that fear has played in the relationship between Evangelicals and political life. ⇧
• • •
Laurie Gagne
“She said the true purpose of school studies was to cultivate a kind of attention that ultimately is necessary to encounter God. She said ultimately attention is the essence of prayer.”
— Laurie Gagne, editor of Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us (Plough Publishing House, 2018)
Laurie Gagne discusses the writings and thought of French philosopher Simone Weil. Weil died in 1943 in England at the age of 34 from a combination of malnourishment and tuberculosis. Because of her political idealism and great sympathy for the suffering of others, Weil contributed to her own death by self-rationing her food in order to suffer along with her fellow Frenchmen during German’s occupation of France. Weil was one of the great mystics of the twentieth century and, though agnostic for much of her life, earnestly sought after beauty and contemplative prayer. In this interview, Laurie Gagne describes how Weil’s conversion to Christianity revolved around her experience of the Eucharist, the witness of an Englishman, and a poem by George Herbert. ⇧
• • •
Matthew O’Donovan
“I think, also, what the sixteenth century saw with the advent of printing was a marked increase in the degree to which educated people could sing this music in their own homes, or sing similar things in their own homes, as they bought sets of part books and that sort of thing. I think we would be surprised by the degree to which musical literacy was an expected part of a solid education in the sixteenth century.”
— Matthew O’Donovan
Professional singer and Director of Lower Chapel Music at Eaton College Matthew O'Donovan discusses the challenges of performing Renaissance polyphony — originally intended for a liturgical context — in a modern-day concert setting. As a founding member of the choral ensemble, Stile Antico, Matthew O’Donovan has sung much of the sixteenth century choral repertoire. In this conversation, he talks about the harmonic and structural capacities of the choral music of the Renaissance (as well as the vocal proficiency demanded of its performers). ⇧
Guests on Volume 145
• DAVID I. SMITH on Christian teaching as a set of practices that accords with Christian content
• BRUCE HINDMARSH on the rise of the conversion narrative in early Evangelicalism
• JASON BAXTER on the psychological subtlety in Dante’s Divine Comedy
• JOHN FEA on the entanglement of American evangelicals and politics
• LAURIE GAGNE on the spiritual longing of French philosopher Simone Weil
• MATTHEW O'DONOVAN on singing Renaissance polyphony with Stile Antico
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
David I. Smith
“If you start from a paradigm where the main meat of being Christian is getting doctrine straight — and I don’t mean to belittle that in anything I say here; that’s an important and worthy task — but if that’s 95 percent of what we’re writing about and therefore presumably thinking about, then it becomes very difficult to think about how faith relates to teaching in any other way than trying to find opportunities in our teaching to explain our doctrines.”
—David I. Smith, author of On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom (Eerdmans, 2018)
Language professor David I. Smith talks about how Christian education must involve more than correct doctrine. Because methods of teaching are often taken for granted or assumed to be neutral, many fail to reflect on the ways in which the form of teaching (its pedagogy) can contradict or reinforce Christian doctrine. For Smith, “Christian practices” are not just habits applied to worship or personal devotion, but must be incorporated into all of lived experience, which includes teaching and learning. Christian pedagogy is a way of Christian practice, which requires careful attention to how teachers use their bodies in space and time as well as to how they direct their students to inhabit a shared environment. In the words of David Smith, “I think of it as the rooting of teaching and learning in creation. It’s not just about the contents of my mind, it’s about the contours of the reality around me.” ⇧
• • •
Bruce Hindmarsh
“[Writing one’s own conversion narrative] requires something of a modern consciousness for it to be a truly popular genre for people to feel free to write about themselves without it being an offense against modesty.”
— Bruce Hindmarsh, author of The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Church historian Bruce Hindmarsh discusses the rise of the personal conversion narrative that occurred during the spread of early Evangelicalism in England. Hindmarsh observes how the development of the conversion testimony as the preferred “text” coincides with the flourishing of the modern period and a modern understanding of the individual. Hindmarsh also talks about how early Evangelicals navigated church life and church unity within a church culture that placed so much emphasis on the experience of God’s presence. ⇧
• • •
Jason Baxter
“I think Dante would have been heartbroken to know that we get more excited about his mud pit fights in Inferno than we do about his glorious divine dance of Paradiso.”
— Jason Baxter, author of A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy (Baker Academic, 2018)
Humanities professor Jason Baxter discusses the great psychological subtlety in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Throughout the Comedy, Dante provides us a with a vision of hell in which sin is truly sickening and of paradise in which the Body of Christ finally sees the strength of its members as truly indispensable. Through his book, A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Baxter introduces us to more than “an exciting adventure story” so that we might begin to participate in the soul’s awakening to and pursuit of Divine beauty. ⇧
• • •
John Fea
“You see this entanglement of Evangelicals and American politics all the way back to the coming of the American Revolution, so it’s not as if there was this kind of pure, undefiled type of Evangelicalism that was not influenced by politics.”
— John Fea, author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Eerdmans, 2018)
Historian John Fea talks about the murky waters of American Evangelicalism and its long history of rallying behind strong leaders. From the beginnings of the American Revolution up until Donald Trump, Evangelicals (and American protestants in general) have been attracted to power, often for the sake of sustaining the ideal of the American nation as a Christian nation. Fea discusses the current ambiguity surrounding the term “Evangelical” when used to describe voting polls in recent past elections. He also discusses the prominent role that fear has played in the relationship between Evangelicals and political life. ⇧
• • •
Laurie Gagne
“She said the true purpose of school studies was to cultivate a kind of attention that ultimately is necessary to encounter God. She said ultimately attention is the essence of prayer.”
— Laurie Gagne, editor of Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us (Plough Publishing House, 2018)
Laurie Gagne discusses the writings and thought of French philosopher Simone Weil. Weil died in 1943 in England at the age of 34 from a combination of malnourishment and tuberculosis. Because of her political idealism and great sympathy for the suffering of others, Weil contributed to her own death by self-rationing her food in order to suffer along with her fellow Frenchmen during German’s occupation of France. Weil was one of the great mystics of the twentieth century and, though agnostic for much of her life, earnestly sought after beauty and contemplative prayer. In this interview, Laurie Gagne describes how Weil’s conversion to Christianity revolved around her experience of the Eucharist, the witness of an Englishman, and a poem by George Herbert. ⇧
• • •
Matthew O’Donovan
“I think, also, what the sixteenth century saw with the advent of printing was a marked increase in the degree to which educated people could sing this music in their own homes, or sing similar things in their own homes, as they bought sets of part books and that sort of thing. I think we would be surprised by the degree to which musical literacy was an expected part of a solid education in the sixteenth century.”
— Matthew O’Donovan
Professional singer and Director of Lower Chapel Music at Eaton College Matthew O'Donovan discusses the challenges of performing Renaissance polyphony — originally intended for a liturgical context — in a modern-day concert setting. As a founding member of the choral ensemble, Stile Antico, Matthew O’Donovan has sung much of the sixteenth century choral repertoire. In this conversation, he talks about the harmonic and structural capacities of the choral music of the Renaissance (as well as the vocal proficiency demanded of its performers). ⇧
Guests on Volume 146
• MARK MITCHELL on liberalism’s false metaphysical claims about purpose, human nature, and tradition
• HANS BOERSMA on the cultural implications of the beatific vision
• HENRY T. EDMONDSON, III on Flannery O’Connor’s understanding of political life
• BRIAN CLAYTON and DOUGLAS KRIES on the common and faulty assumption that faith and reason cannot be reconciled
• CONOR SWEENEY on wrestling with the ‘death of God’ with the help of hobbit wisdom, religious experience, and sacramental theology
• CAROLE VANDERHOOF on the creative, intelligent, and demanding integrity of Dorothy L. Sayers
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Mark Mitchell
“What we have is a kind of competitor to that view: the idea that there is no normative human nature; there is no teleological structure to human life; and what human beings are at core is Will. That human beings are creatures of various and competing desires and to impose from the outside a kind of constraint on those desires, or a structure upon those desires that says ‘this is what human beings ought to do by virtue of their nature,’ is perceived as a constraint on one’s individual freedom.”
— Mark Mitchell, author of The Limits of Liberalism: Tradition, Individualism, and the Crisis of Freedom (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019)
In the midst of so much turmoil surrounding the sustainability of political liberalism, professor of government Mark Mitchell asks whether there is anything that truly binds Americans together beyond their commitment to self-creation. Because liberalism presents an impoverished anthropology, which denies both a normative nature and a given social context to human beings, the result is that human beings are nothing more than uninhibited wills and a combination of various competing desires. In his book, The Limits of Liberalism, Mitchell examines the threat that liberalism poses to tradition especially and looks at three prominent thinkers who placed a high value upon tradition: Michael Oakeshott, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Polanyi. ⇧
• • •
Hans Boersma
“In an important sense, all of the world is a theater of God’s glory. It makes present God himself, so that . . . to the extent that we have spiritual eyes, we see God there. And when we see God there, that’s when we’re going to act, talk, think differently.”
— Hans Boersma, author of Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Eerdmans, 2018)
Theologian Hans Boersma argues that the beatific vision described throughout scripture is foreshadowed in “this-worldy experiences,” and that, particularly because of the Incarnation, eschatological experience is not only something in the future somewhere else, but is in fact connected with historical experience. Through this world, our purpose is to both perceive God’s glory and to be formed more and more like Christ, so that in the fullness of time we will be able to see God. This end, or telos, is built into all of creation and forms the horizon within which we engage with creation. ⇧
• • •
Henry T. Edmondson, III
“Rather than God being some component of history, I think she would say that history was a component of God. That we are interacting, whether we know it or not, with a transcendent order.”
— Henry T. Edmondson, III, editor of A Political Companion to Flannery O'Connor (University Press of Kentucky, 2017)
Political science professor 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. She shared with Kirk a suspicion of a “politics of tenderness” that focused on sentimentality over charity and his proposal for a prudential application of principles in favor of firm adherence to an ideology. Nonetheless, like Voegelin, O’Connor’s confidence in natural law and the supernatural allowed her to conceive of God as intrinsically acting within history. ⇧
• • •
Brian Clayton and Douglas Kries
“With the Enlightenment, suddenly there was this restriction of the scope of reason . . . It could tell us principally about natural science or it could be a calculative kind of thing . . . but it doesn’t have anything to say about the big questions anymore . . . This narrowing of the scope of reason means ([Pope Benedict] went on to argue) that theology or faith doesn’t have anybody to talk to anymore. And that was his point about how in order for the dialogue between faith and reason to move forward, reason has got to expand. It has to have a little confidence in its ability to say what’s true.”
— Douglas Kries, author of Two Wings: Integrating Faith and Reason (Ignatius Press, 2018)
Philosophers Brian Clayton and Douglas Kries discuss how their students often approach the relationship between faith and reason, noting that faith is frequently reduced to a set of affirmed propositions and reason to a scientific and calculative faculty. The two categories are usually either opposed or simply assumed to be separate. But in lived experience, faith and reason inform each other quite often and are often mutually reinforcing. A more expansive understanding of faith involves trust as well as an element of desire or love, which motivates our reasoning towards practical, material, moral, or spiritual ends. Likewise, a more expansive understanding of reason is able to think compellingly about questions of being, goodness, truth, and even beauty. ⇧
• • •
Conor Sweeney
“For me, it’s about wrestling with the ‘death of God.’ Confronting the forces of Sauron, if you will, for us really requires going back to the sources. And to do that, I think, baptism is like the ultimate template: this adoption into God’s inner life through the Son. [Baptism] for me is one of the primary Christian things that probably I think many of us have forgotten just how radical it is and just how constitutive it is for the Christian life and the Christian difference.”
— Conor Sweeney, author of Abiding the Long Defeat: How to Evangelize Like a Hobbit in a Disenchanted Age (Angelico Press, 2018)
In order to properly respond to the challenges of postmodernity, philosopher and theologian Conor Sweeney argues that Christians need to get back to the sacramental structure of faith, meaning that fundamentally, our faith is a gift. Sweeney observes that within the culture of the Church, love, worship, and beauty have been eclipsed and that our recovery of these three depends a great deal on how we understand baptism — the sacrament that is pure gift and through which we are grafted into the family of God. ⇧
• • •
Carole Vanderhoof
“All the way through, she insists on integrity and this high professional standard. You can hear her saying ‘Buck up! And get it right!’ and that was her attitude.”
— Carole Vanderhoof, author of The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers: Selections from Her Novels, Plays, Letters, and Essays (Plough Publishing House, 2018)
Editor Carole Vanderhoof talks about the work and personality of mystery writer and translator of Dante, Dorothy L. Sayers, whom C. S. Lewis fondly dubbed the “gleeful ogre.” Dorothy Sayers’s high standards for creativity as well as moral order and truth showed through in her works and in her actions, despite her “knowing how to have a good time.” ⇧
Guests on Volume 146
• MARK MITCHELL on liberalism’s false metaphysical claims about purpose, human nature, and tradition
• HANS BOERSMA on the cultural implications of the beatific vision
• HENRY T. EDMONDSON, III on Flannery O’Connor’s understanding of political life
• BRIAN CLAYTON and DOUGLAS KRIES on the common and faulty assumption that faith and reason cannot be reconciled
• CONOR SWEENEY on wrestling with the ‘death of God’ with the help of hobbit wisdom, religious experience, and sacramental theology
• CAROLE VANDERHOOF on the creative, intelligent, and demanding integrity of Dorothy L. Sayers
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Mark Mitchell
“What we have is a kind of competitor to that view: the idea that there is no normative human nature; there is no teleological structure to human life; and what human beings are at core is Will. That human beings are creatures of various and competing desires and to impose from the outside a kind of constraint on those desires, or a structure upon those desires that says ‘this is what human beings ought to do by virtue of their nature,’ is perceived as a constraint on one’s individual freedom.”
— Mark Mitchell, author of The Limits of Liberalism: Tradition, Individualism, and the Crisis of Freedom (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019)
In the midst of so much turmoil surrounding the sustainability of political liberalism, professor of government Mark Mitchell asks whether there is anything that truly binds Americans together beyond their commitment to self-creation. Because liberalism presents an impoverished anthropology, which denies both a normative nature and a given social context to human beings, the result is that human beings are nothing more than uninhibited wills and a combination of various competing desires. In his book, The Limits of Liberalism, Mitchell examines the threat that liberalism poses to tradition especially and looks at three prominent thinkers who placed a high value upon tradition: Michael Oakeshott, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Polanyi. ⇧
• • •
Hans Boersma
“In an important sense, all of the world is a theater of God’s glory. It makes present God himself, so that . . . to the extent that we have spiritual eyes, we see God there. And when we see God there, that’s when we’re going to act, talk, think differently.”
— Hans Boersma, author of Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Eerdmans, 2018)
Theologian Hans Boersma argues that the beatific vision described throughout scripture is foreshadowed in “this-worldy experiences,” and that, particularly because of the Incarnation, eschatological experience is not only something in the future somewhere else, but is in fact connected with historical experience. Through this world, our purpose is to both perceive God’s glory and to be formed more and more like Christ, so that in the fullness of time we will be able to see God. This end, or telos, is built into all of creation and forms the horizon within which we engage with creation. ⇧
• • •
Henry T. Edmondson, III
“Rather than God being some component of history, I think she would say that history was a component of God. That we are interacting, whether we know it or not, with a transcendent order.”
— Henry T. Edmondson, III, editor of A Political Companion to Flannery O'Connor (University Press of Kentucky, 2017)
Political science professor 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. She shared with Kirk a suspicion of a “politics of tenderness” that focused on sentimentality over charity and his proposal for a prudential application of principles in favor of firm adherence to an ideology. Nonetheless, like Voegelin, O’Connor’s confidence in natural law and the supernatural allowed her to conceive of God as intrinsically acting within history. ⇧
• • •
Brian Clayton and Douglas Kries
“With the Enlightenment, suddenly there was this restriction of the scope of reason . . . It could tell us principally about natural science or it could be a calculative kind of thing . . . but it doesn’t have anything to say about the big questions anymore . . . This narrowing of the scope of reason means ([Pope Benedict] went on to argue) that theology or faith doesn’t have anybody to talk to anymore. And that was his point about how in order for the dialogue between faith and reason to move forward, reason has got to expand. It has to have a little confidence in its ability to say what’s true.”
— Douglas Kries, author of Two Wings: Integrating Faith and Reason (Ignatius Press, 2018)
Philosophers Brian Clayton and Douglas Kries discuss how their students often approach the relationship between faith and reason, noting that faith is frequently reduced to a set of affirmed propositions and reason to a scientific and calculative faculty. The two categories are usually either opposed or simply assumed to be separate. But in lived experience, faith and reason inform each other quite often and are often mutually reinforcing. A more expansive understanding of faith involves trust as well as an element of desire or love, which motivates our reasoning towards practical, material, moral, or spiritual ends. Likewise, a more expansive understanding of reason is able to think compellingly about questions of being, goodness, truth, and even beauty. ⇧
• • •
Conor Sweeney
“For me, it’s about wrestling with the ‘death of God.’ Confronting the forces of Sauron, if you will, for us really requires going back to the sources. And to do that, I think, baptism is like the ultimate template: this adoption into God’s inner life through the Son. [Baptism] for me is one of the primary Christian things that probably I think many of us have forgotten just how radical it is and just how constitutive it is for the Christian life and the Christian difference.”
— Conor Sweeney, author of Abiding the Long Defeat: How to Evangelize Like a Hobbit in a Disenchanted Age (Angelico Press, 2018)
In order to properly respond to the challenges of postmodernity, philosopher and theologian Conor Sweeney argues that Christians need to get back to the sacramental structure of faith, meaning that fundamentally, our faith is a gift. Sweeney observes that within the culture of the Church, love, worship, and beauty have been eclipsed and that our recovery of these three depends a great deal on how we understand baptism — the sacrament that is pure gift and through which we are grafted into the family of God. ⇧
• • •
Carole Vanderhoof
“All the way through, she insists on integrity and this high professional standard. You can hear her saying ‘Buck up! And get it right!’ and that was her attitude.”
— Carole Vanderhoof, author of The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers: Selections from Her Novels, Plays, Letters, and Essays (Plough Publishing House, 2018)
Editor Carole Vanderhoof talks about the work and personality of mystery writer and translator of Dante, Dorothy L. Sayers, whom C. S. Lewis fondly dubbed the “gleeful ogre.” Dorothy Sayers’s high standards for creativity as well as moral order and truth showed through in her works and in her actions, despite her “knowing how to have a good time.” ⇧
Guests on Volume 147
• R. JARED STAUDT on the tradition of brewing beer in monastic and Christian culture
• JASON PETERS on defining localism, dealing with discontent and imperfection, and appreciating nostalgia
• D. C. SCHINDLER on the classical and Christian understanding of the Transcendentals and why they matter now
• CRAIG GAY on why we need a theology of personhood in response to challenges posed by technology
• MARY HIRSCHFELD on comparing contemporary economics with economics as understood by Thomas Aquinas
• PATRICK SAMWAY on the publishing relationship between Flannery O’Connor and Robert Giroux
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
R. Jared Staudt
“What I’m trying to do in the book is to call people to rethink their lives. How does everything fit together? Is our faith really the center that integrates everything else?”
— R. Jared Staudt, author of The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture Yesterday and Today (Angelico Press, 2018)
Dominican oblate R. Jared Staudt wants to call attention to the cultural influence of the monastic tradition of brewing beer. Benedictine monasteries have themselves been recovering a lost tradition of craft brewing and Staudt’s book reminds Christians that brewing beer, among other practices, is part of what has shaped a way of life for Christians through many centuries. Beer traditionally served as part of one’s subsistence and now encourages local virtues such as building community, providing employment, and participating in local economies. Closely linked not only with festivities, but with the Benedictine theme of hospitality, sharing local beers with one’s friends and neighbors is just one way of integrating all of life into Christian faith and practice. ⇧
• • •
Jason Peters
“We are habituated to the world long before we’re conscious of it. And then we find that we’re implicated in things that we would rather not be implicated in. And that’s a fact of existence; that’s a fact of the world as we find it. I think the honest thing is to own up to that and then to go about the modest but difficult task of shaking what has to be shaken.”
— Jason Peters, editor of Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto (Cascade Books, 2018)
English professor Jason Peters discusses the challenges of thinking about localism. While “localism” is a concept that has gained much ground in recent years, there is still the danger of it being a movement united around discontent over the current states of affairs, rather than around constructive or substantive principles. One way of overcoming this hurdle is by recognizing the various ways in which we are all implicated in “things as they are” whether we like it or not. A commitment to localism, says Peters, requires both honesty and modesty with regards to life as we find it. But such a recognition does not open the door to cynicism. Rather, it is a call to “get busy.” To be honest about our own embeddedness in the imperfections of life also protects a sense of home and even nostalgia for a lost home. ⇧
• • •
D. C. Schindler
“The idea in this book in a way is to try to bring back a sense of the ontological depth of love. It’s certainly not a mere chemical reaction in the brain, but nor is it a mere emotion. It’s not even simply wishing others well, a kind of good will. It includes all those kinds of things in their proper place, but it’s ultimately I think the meaning of reality.”
— D. C. Schindler, author of Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (Cascade Books, 2018)
Philosopher D. C. Schindler examines how postmodernism poses a unique threat to our sense of an interior self. Schindler argues that the postmodern predicament requires a recovery of reality, which would be more easily achieved through a recovery of the classical and Christian understanding of the Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, Beauty. Of key importance to this task is a renewed understanding of how Love and Beauty are connected and their capacity to unite us to what is really real. ⇧
• • •
Craig Gay
“What we need is a robust theology of personhood. And what I’m trying to remind people of is that ‘hey, if we’re Christians, we have one! And we need to remember it.’ It’s there and it’s rich and it’s full and it’s been developed over many centuries by all kinds of really interesting, intelligent people. And this is something that we for a variety of reasons seem to have forgotten, but now it’s time to remember it, because it’s only as we remember this theology of personhood that we stand any chance of answering the kinds of questions that are being put to us today about technology and our use of it.”
— Craig Gay, author of Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal (InterVarsity Press, 2018)
Sociologist Craig Gay argues that in order to address the challenges of a technological approach to the world, we need to recover the Christian tradition’s robust theology of personhood. Advocates for technological progress often point out how adaptable humans are, but Gay wants to push back, asking why it is that humans need to adapt to technology rather than the other way around. Simply having the ability to adapt does not mean that it is in our best interests to do so or that we ought to do so. Without asking the basic questions about the kinds of people we are or what we ought to become, we will be powerless to address the pressures imposed upon us by technological opportunities. ⇧
• • •
Mary Hirschfeld
“My ‘self-concern,’ among other things, includes other people for Aquinas much more naturally than would an economist’s conception of it. But also my self-concern is about developing community, supporting my family, and developing my character, right, developing virtue. And if those are my ultimate concerns, however that looks in my particular life, [then] the material goods that are used to sustain that life are instrumental goods and because they’re instrumental goods, for Aquinas, our desire for them is finite.”
— Mary Hirschfeld, author of Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Human Economy (Harvard University Press, 2018)
Economist and theologian Mary Hirschfeld compares how modern economists think about the human person compared to Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of personhood with regards to property and material wealth. While it may be unintentional, Hirschfeld argues that modern economics makes some fundamental assumptions about personhood, material goods, and God that prevent the discipline from developing a truly human understanding of economic life. To correct this error takes some honest rethinking of the discipline (with many clarifications along the way). ⇧
• • •
Patrick Samway
“We tend to think of a writer writing somehow in a cabin in the woods and it’s so beautiful. But as a matter of fact, these writers all have a lot of problems. And I thought it would be interesting to write about Flannery and her relationship with her editor. What I’m really writing about is the interstices. You know, the in-between times. What she was doing and what he was doing and how they collaborated.”
— Patrick Samway, author of Flannery O'Connor and Robert Giroux: A Publishing Partnership (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018)
Biographer and priest Patrick Samway talks about the relationship between fiction writer Flannery O’Connor and the legendary editor Robert Giroux. Samway’s direct link with Robert Giroux through their lasting friendship brings to the conversation several intimate accounts about the relationship between these two literary figures as well as their personal stories. ⇧
Guests on Volume 147
• R. JARED STAUDT on the tradition of brewing beer in monastic and Christian culture
• JASON PETERS on defining localism, dealing with discontent and imperfection, and appreciating nostalgia
• D. C. SCHINDLER on the classical and Christian understanding of the Transcendentals and why they matter now
• CRAIG GAY on why we need a theology of personhood in response to challenges posed by technology
• MARY HIRSCHFELD on comparing contemporary economics with economics as understood by Thomas Aquinas
• PATRICK SAMWAY on the publishing relationship between Flannery O’Connor and Robert Giroux
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
R. Jared Staudt
“What I’m trying to do in the book is to call people to rethink their lives. How does everything fit together? Is our faith really the center that integrates everything else?”
— R. Jared Staudt, author of The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture Yesterday and Today (Angelico Press, 2018)
Dominican oblate R. Jared Staudt wants to call attention to the cultural influence of the monastic tradition of brewing beer. Benedictine monasteries have themselves been recovering a lost tradition of craft brewing and Staudt’s book reminds Christians that brewing beer, among other practices, is part of what has shaped a way of life for Christians through many centuries. Beer traditionally served as part of one’s subsistence and now encourages local virtues such as building community, providing employment, and participating in local economies. Closely linked not only with festivities, but with the Benedictine theme of hospitality, sharing local beers with one’s friends and neighbors is just one way of integrating all of life into Christian faith and practice. ⇧
• • •
Jason Peters
“We are habituated to the world long before we’re conscious of it. And then we find that we’re implicated in things that we would rather not be implicated in. And that’s a fact of existence; that’s a fact of the world as we find it. I think the honest thing is to own up to that and then to go about the modest but difficult task of shaking what has to be shaken.”
— Jason Peters, editor of Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto (Cascade Books, 2018)
English professor Jason Peters discusses the challenges of thinking about localism. While “localism” is a concept that has gained much ground in recent years, there is still the danger of it being a movement united around discontent over the current states of affairs, rather than around constructive or substantive principles. One way of overcoming this hurdle is by recognizing the various ways in which we are all implicated in “things as they are” whether we like it or not. A commitment to localism, says Peters, requires both honesty and modesty with regards to life as we find it. But such a recognition does not open the door to cynicism. Rather, it is a call to “get busy.” To be honest about our own embeddedness in the imperfections of life also protects a sense of home and even nostalgia for a lost home. ⇧
• • •
D. C. Schindler
“The idea in this book in a way is to try to bring back a sense of the ontological depth of love. It’s certainly not a mere chemical reaction in the brain, but nor is it a mere emotion. It’s not even simply wishing others well, a kind of good will. It includes all those kinds of things in their proper place, but it’s ultimately I think the meaning of reality.”
— D. C. Schindler, author of Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (Cascade Books, 2018)
Philosopher D. C. Schindler examines how postmodernism poses a unique threat to our sense of an interior self. Schindler argues that the postmodern predicament requires a recovery of reality, which would be more easily achieved through a recovery of the classical and Christian understanding of the Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, Beauty. Of key importance to this task is a renewed understanding of how Love and Beauty are connected and their capacity to unite us to what is really real. ⇧
• • •
Craig Gay
“What we need is a robust theology of personhood. And what I’m trying to remind people of is that ‘hey, if we’re Christians, we have one! And we need to remember it.’ It’s there and it’s rich and it’s full and it’s been developed over many centuries by all kinds of really interesting, intelligent people. And this is something that we for a variety of reasons seem to have forgotten, but now it’s time to remember it, because it’s only as we remember this theology of personhood that we stand any chance of answering the kinds of questions that are being put to us today about technology and our use of it.”
— Craig Gay, author of Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal (InterVarsity Press, 2018)
Sociologist Craig Gay argues that in order to address the challenges of a technological approach to the world, we need to recover the Christian tradition’s robust theology of personhood. Advocates for technological progress often point out how adaptable humans are, but Gay wants to push back, asking why it is that humans need to adapt to technology rather than the other way around. Simply having the ability to adapt does not mean that it is in our best interests to do so or that we ought to do so. Without asking the basic questions about the kinds of people we are or what we ought to become, we will be powerless to address the pressures imposed upon us by technological opportunities. ⇧
• • •
Mary Hirschfeld
“My ‘self-concern,’ among other things, includes other people for Aquinas much more naturally than would an economist’s conception of it. But also my self-concern is about developing community, supporting my family, and developing my character, right, developing virtue. And if those are my ultimate concerns, however that looks in my particular life, [then] the material goods that are used to sustain that life are instrumental goods and because they’re instrumental goods, for Aquinas, our desire for them is finite.”
— Mary Hirschfeld, author of Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Human Economy (Harvard University Press, 2018)
Economist and theologian Mary Hirschfeld compares how modern economists think about the human person compared to Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of personhood with regards to property and material wealth. While it may be unintentional, Hirschfeld argues that modern economics makes some fundamental assumptions about personhood, material goods, and God that prevent the discipline from developing a truly human understanding of economic life. To correct this error takes some honest rethinking of the discipline (with many clarifications along the way). ⇧
• • •
Patrick Samway
“We tend to think of a writer writing somehow in a cabin in the woods and it’s so beautiful. But as a matter of fact, these writers all have a lot of problems. And I thought it would be interesting to write about Flannery and her relationship with her editor. What I’m really writing about is the interstices. You know, the in-between times. What she was doing and what he was doing and how they collaborated.”
— Patrick Samway, author of Flannery O'Connor and Robert Giroux: A Publishing Partnership (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018)
Biographer and priest Patrick Samway talks about the relationship between fiction writer Flannery O’Connor and the legendary editor Robert Giroux. Samway’s direct link with Robert Giroux through their lasting friendship brings to the conversation several intimate accounts about the relationship between these two literary figures as well as their personal stories. ⇧
Guests on Volume 148
• STEVEN D. SMITH on how a modern “religion without God” characterizes what alleges to be secular neutrality
• WILLEM VANDERBURG on the costs of forgetting the unity and interdependence of Creation
• JEFFREY BILBRO on lessons from Wendell Berry’s poetry, fiction, and essays about the virtues that characterize people who foster sustainable cultures
• EMMA MASON on the theological concerns evident in the poetry of Christina Rossetti
• ALISON MILBANK on how the Gothic literary genre in England expressed ambivalence about the effects of the Reformation
• TIMOTHY LARSEN on George MacDonald and Victorian earnestness about faith and anxieties about doubt
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Steven D. Smith
“Paganism is a label you can use to refer to a kind of immanent religiosity or a view that there is something that’s sacred and holy, but it’s not transcendent — it’s not part of a different sphere of being or another world. It is immanent in this world. And I suggest that that in a sense is the natural condition of humanity. Unless there’s something that comes along to lift us out of that, that is sort of our natural assumption.”
— Steven D. Smith, author of Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Eerdmans, 2018)
Law professor Steven D. Smith discusses the relationship between the sacred and the civic in his newest book Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac. Setting out to track the profound changes apparent in the modern world, Smith compares the paganism of the Roman Empire to the rise of a contemporary paganism which takes the form of a “religion without God.” For Smith, this differs radically from a transcendent religion which acknowledges an ultimate good beyond this universe. Right now, we are not witnessing so much a destruction of “the sacred” as such, but instead the rise of new orthodoxies, often centered on individual or national identity. Without the recognition that humans are inescapably religious creatures, the struggle to confront or solve our current public disputes will continue. ⇧
• • •
Willem Vanderburg
“About 100 years ago . . . we began to rearrange all human knowing and doing by means of disciplines. From the perspective of human history, that’s an extraordinarily strange way of arranging our knowing and doing. What we do with the discipline-based organization is, we say to the physicist, ‘Here, you study physical phenomena,’ . . . and to the sociologist, ‘Here, you study social phenomena,’ . . . In other words, we study human life and the world one category of phenomena at a time. And that has enormous limitation.”
— Willem Vanderburg, author of Secular Nations Under New Gods: Christianity's Subversion by Technology and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2018)
Willem H. Vanderburg, a former student of philosopher Jacques Ellul, argues for a vision of the world that better accounts for the complexity of life — both its individuality and its wholeness — than our current mechanistic, anti-human approach. Unlike machines, which can be quantified and mathematically represented, human life operates with an interconnectedness that cannot be so easily measured. Vanderburg emphasizes that we have rearranged human knowledge and action into narrow disciplines which purport to study life, but do so using single categories, an ordering which can work only in those fields where the focus on one category is useful, such as physics, biology, or chemistry. By reorganizing complex human methods of operation and communication into discipline-based silos which depend on the mechanical or technical domains, we have created a world of confusion where we understand life in the same terms as non-life. Vanderburg concludes that this subversion of a traditional Christian vision by modern technology poses a grave threat to our humanity. ⇧
• • •
Jeffrey Bilbro
“So much of the cult of the artist today is about originality and making things new and coming up with the latest and greatest, but that’s really a symptom of a technological society — that we always have to have a new iteration of the gadget . . . Berry’s emphasis [is] on fidelity and sticking with things that might seem old and obsolete and worn out, and trying to be creative about how they might be renewed and made useful and new again. A renewal presupposes that something good has come earlier and that our task is not to create ‘ex nihilo’ — that’s God’s task — but to renew that which has been broken.”
— Jeffrey Bilbro, author of Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry's Sustainable Forms (University Press of Kentucky, 2019)
Jeffrey Bilbro explores the importance of sustainability through the essays, poetry and fiction of Wendell Berry. He argues that Berry fosters a sense of propriety or fittingness, a manner in which we act in connection with the world around us. This theme is demonstrated by the example of a farmer who works with the land and within its limits, allowing the nature of the place to help form and correct the farmer’s initial vision. In opposition to this reciprocal way of farming, Berry describes much of contemporary agriculture, where the only value is how much can be produced, with no concern for the complexity of the relation of farmer to farm, leading inevitably to violent control of the relationship. Our current society has shifted into an economy that values an industrial mindset, focusing heavily on productivity. Bilbro defines this as the industrial grammar versus the agrarian grammar. He points out that the grammar of technology cannot heal, but only amplify the misdirected vision already in place. Bilbro hopes that we can, seeing through the eyes of Berry, come to recognize this reciprocity and, using a healthy imagination, make whole again those aspects of our lives that have been damaged. ⇧
• • •
Emma Mason
“What poetry does is almost push us into a position where we have to pay really close attention to words. It’s very difficult to read a poem quickly, and I think when we try to that’s often when people just get frustrated with it and say, ‘Oh, I don’t understand this,’ or ‘It feels inaccessible.’ Obviously, Rossetti works very hard to make her poetry quite accessible by using a very strong form, by using rhythm and by using rhyme. And it’s quite enjoyable to read. But I think underneath those rhymes and really in the poem are these very deep and profound meanings and reflections that are both philosophical and theological. Poetry enables this layering of ideas and layering of our feelings about those ideas.”
— Emma Mason, author of Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Professor Emma Mason explains how the Anglo-Catholic theological movement was integral to the faith of Christina Rossetti and helped shape her theological and philosophical convictions. The Oxford Movement within the Church of England, Mason explains, sought to return to a form that embraced the “supernatural” element then held in suspicion by many. Mason argues that important figures in this movement such as John Keble and John Henry Newman, drawing on a contemporary reclamation of the early Church fathers, turned to Romantic writers such as William Wordsworth and William Blake to find a way to rediscover the mystical in Anglicanism. Rossetti’s poetry reflects this attitude, exploring a deep connection to God through forms of rituals and practices that break free from a more rational, dualistic vision, drawing all things together through grace. ⇧
• • •
Alison Milbank
“I really do think that the ‘explained supernatural’ plays the 18th-century game of saying, ‘Yes, we have gotten beyond the past. We now live in an enlightened world.’ But then it begins to question that enlightenment. And I think that’s the point of the way that it works in Ann Radcliffe. And it’s also a Protestant mode which is partly about idolatry. I do think that there is a very Protestant form of Gothic whereby you show the deadness of the idol in order to point to the livingness of the true God.”
— Alison Milbank, author of God and the Gothic: Religion, Romance, and Reality in the English Literary Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Theologian Alison Milbank argues that nineteenth-century English Gothic literature grew out of the intuition of an uneasy relationship between the natural and supernatural following the English Reformation. The extreme rationalism of the nineteenth century led to a cultural ambivalence; belief in the narrative of historical progress conflicted with nostalgia for a past when structures and practices dealt with matters ghostly and divine. “The Catholic past is a site of desire as well as revulsion,” Milbank explains. “The Gothic seeks both to escape and harness its signifying power.” Haunted by that history, authors such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Bram Stoker explored the limits of materialism and grappled with the loss of a religious imaginary which could mediate the supernatural. ⇧
• • •
Timothy Larsen
“Questioning is natural and inevitable. It’s how you get to a more mature Christian view. To not doubt something is to not think about it. So, MacDonald can see that this is just a maturation process. You were told about the Virgin Birth when you were 11, and now you’re 18 and you’re thinking about it again in a new way, and to think about it is to doubt it. That questioning, not in the kind of scoffing, accusatory way but just in the processing way, is part of life. It’s part of the Christian life.”
— Timothy Larsen, author of George MacDonald in the Age of Miracles: Incarnation, Doubt, and Reenchantment (IVP Academic, 2018)
Historian Timothy Larsen situates George MacDonald within a Victorian understanding of faith and doubt. Faith, defined as “what you believe in your heart,” rose to an unprecedented value in the Victorian era, corresponding with a tendency toward unhealthy introspection and preoccupation with the problem of doubt. MacDonald held that these problems hinged upon understanding faith only in cerebral terms. He rejected a narrow Enlightenment view of faith, focusing instead upon trust in the person of Christ — specifically, the self-authenticating revelation of Christ in the Gospels. Larsen discusses how, like many Romantics, MacDonald worked toward the reenchantment of the world through the imagination, writing fairy tales as a medium to explore the meaning of reality. ⇧
Guests on Volume 148
• STEVEN D. SMITH on how a modern “religion without God” characterizes what alleges to be secular neutrality
• WILLEM VANDERBURG on the costs of forgetting the unity and interdependence of Creation
• JEFFREY BILBRO on lessons from Wendell Berry’s poetry, fiction, and essays about the virtues that characterize people who foster sustainable cultures
• EMMA MASON on the theological concerns evident in the poetry of Christina Rossetti
• ALISON MILBANK on how the Gothic literary genre in England expressed ambivalence about the effects of the Reformation
• TIMOTHY LARSEN on George MacDonald and Victorian earnestness about faith and anxieties about doubt
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Steven D. Smith
“Paganism is a label you can use to refer to a kind of immanent religiosity or a view that there is something that’s sacred and holy, but it’s not transcendent — it’s not part of a different sphere of being or another world. It is immanent in this world. And I suggest that that in a sense is the natural condition of humanity. Unless there’s something that comes along to lift us out of that, that is sort of our natural assumption.”
— Steven D. Smith, author of Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Eerdmans, 2018)
Law professor Steven D. Smith discusses the relationship between the sacred and the civic in his newest book Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac. Setting out to track the profound changes apparent in the modern world, Smith compares the paganism of the Roman Empire to the rise of a contemporary paganism which takes the form of a “religion without God.” For Smith, this differs radically from a transcendent religion which acknowledges an ultimate good beyond this universe. Right now, we are not witnessing so much a destruction of “the sacred” as such, but instead the rise of new orthodoxies, often centered on individual or national identity. Without the recognition that humans are inescapably religious creatures, the struggle to confront or solve our current public disputes will continue. ⇧
• • •
Willem Vanderburg
“About 100 years ago . . . we began to rearrange all human knowing and doing by means of disciplines. From the perspective of human history, that’s an extraordinarily strange way of arranging our knowing and doing. What we do with the discipline-based organization is, we say to the physicist, ‘Here, you study physical phenomena,’ . . . and to the sociologist, ‘Here, you study social phenomena,’ . . . In other words, we study human life and the world one category of phenomena at a time. And that has enormous limitation.”
— Willem Vanderburg, author of Secular Nations Under New Gods: Christianity's Subversion by Technology and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2018)
Willem H. Vanderburg, a former student of philosopher Jacques Ellul, argues for a vision of the world that better accounts for the complexity of life — both its individuality and its wholeness — than our current mechanistic, anti-human approach. Unlike machines, which can be quantified and mathematically represented, human life operates with an interconnectedness that cannot be so easily measured. Vanderburg emphasizes that we have rearranged human knowledge and action into narrow disciplines which purport to study life, but do so using single categories, an ordering which can work only in those fields where the focus on one category is useful, such as physics, biology, or chemistry. By reorganizing complex human methods of operation and communication into discipline-based silos which depend on the mechanical or technical domains, we have created a world of confusion where we understand life in the same terms as non-life. Vanderburg concludes that this subversion of a traditional Christian vision by modern technology poses a grave threat to our humanity. ⇧
• • •
Jeffrey Bilbro
“So much of the cult of the artist today is about originality and making things new and coming up with the latest and greatest, but that’s really a symptom of a technological society — that we always have to have a new iteration of the gadget . . . Berry’s emphasis [is] on fidelity and sticking with things that might seem old and obsolete and worn out, and trying to be creative about how they might be renewed and made useful and new again. A renewal presupposes that something good has come earlier and that our task is not to create ‘ex nihilo’ — that’s God’s task — but to renew that which has been broken.”
— Jeffrey Bilbro, author of Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry's Sustainable Forms (University Press of Kentucky, 2019)
Jeffrey Bilbro explores the importance of sustainability through the essays, poetry and fiction of Wendell Berry. He argues that Berry fosters a sense of propriety or fittingness, a manner in which we act in connection with the world around us. This theme is demonstrated by the example of a farmer who works with the land and within its limits, allowing the nature of the place to help form and correct the farmer’s initial vision. In opposition to this reciprocal way of farming, Berry describes much of contemporary agriculture, where the only value is how much can be produced, with no concern for the complexity of the relation of farmer to farm, leading inevitably to violent control of the relationship. Our current society has shifted into an economy that values an industrial mindset, focusing heavily on productivity. Bilbro defines this as the industrial grammar versus the agrarian grammar. He points out that the grammar of technology cannot heal, but only amplify the misdirected vision already in place. Bilbro hopes that we can, seeing through the eyes of Berry, come to recognize this reciprocity and, using a healthy imagination, make whole again those aspects of our lives that have been damaged. ⇧
• • •
Emma Mason
“What poetry does is almost push us into a position where we have to pay really close attention to words. It’s very difficult to read a poem quickly, and I think when we try to that’s often when people just get frustrated with it and say, ‘Oh, I don’t understand this,’ or ‘It feels inaccessible.’ Obviously, Rossetti works very hard to make her poetry quite accessible by using a very strong form, by using rhythm and by using rhyme. And it’s quite enjoyable to read. But I think underneath those rhymes and really in the poem are these very deep and profound meanings and reflections that are both philosophical and theological. Poetry enables this layering of ideas and layering of our feelings about those ideas.”
— Emma Mason, author of Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Professor Emma Mason explains how the Anglo-Catholic theological movement was integral to the faith of Christina Rossetti and helped shape her theological and philosophical convictions. The Oxford Movement within the Church of England, Mason explains, sought to return to a form that embraced the “supernatural” element then held in suspicion by many. Mason argues that important figures in this movement such as John Keble and John Henry Newman, drawing on a contemporary reclamation of the early Church fathers, turned to Romantic writers such as William Wordsworth and William Blake to find a way to rediscover the mystical in Anglicanism. Rossetti’s poetry reflects this attitude, exploring a deep connection to God through forms of rituals and practices that break free from a more rational, dualistic vision, drawing all things together through grace. ⇧
• • •
Alison Milbank
“I really do think that the ‘explained supernatural’ plays the 18th-century game of saying, ‘Yes, we have gotten beyond the past. We now live in an enlightened world.’ But then it begins to question that enlightenment. And I think that’s the point of the way that it works in Ann Radcliffe. And it’s also a Protestant mode which is partly about idolatry. I do think that there is a very Protestant form of Gothic whereby you show the deadness of the idol in order to point to the livingness of the true God.”
— Alison Milbank, author of God and the Gothic: Religion, Romance, and Reality in the English Literary Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Theologian Alison Milbank argues that nineteenth-century English Gothic literature grew out of the intuition of an uneasy relationship between the natural and supernatural following the English Reformation. The extreme rationalism of the nineteenth century led to a cultural ambivalence; belief in the narrative of historical progress conflicted with nostalgia for a past when structures and practices dealt with matters ghostly and divine. “The Catholic past is a site of desire as well as revulsion,” Milbank explains. “The Gothic seeks both to escape and harness its signifying power.” Haunted by that history, authors such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Bram Stoker explored the limits of materialism and grappled with the loss of a religious imaginary which could mediate the supernatural. ⇧
• • •
Timothy Larsen
“Questioning is natural and inevitable. It’s how you get to a more mature Christian view. To not doubt something is to not think about it. So, MacDonald can see that this is just a maturation process. You were told about the Virgin Birth when you were 11, and now you’re 18 and you’re thinking about it again in a new way, and to think about it is to doubt it. That questioning, not in the kind of scoffing, accusatory way but just in the processing way, is part of life. It’s part of the Christian life.”
— Timothy Larsen, author of George MacDonald in the Age of Miracles: Incarnation, Doubt, and Reenchantment (IVP Academic, 2018)
Historian Timothy Larsen situates George MacDonald within a Victorian understanding of faith and doubt. Faith, defined as “what you believe in your heart,” rose to an unprecedented value in the Victorian era, corresponding with a tendency toward unhealthy introspection and preoccupation with the problem of doubt. MacDonald held that these problems hinged upon understanding faith only in cerebral terms. He rejected a narrow Enlightenment view of faith, focusing instead upon trust in the person of Christ — specifically, the self-authenticating revelation of Christ in the Gospels. Larsen discusses how, like many Romantics, MacDonald worked toward the reenchantment of the world through the imagination, writing fairy tales as a medium to explore the meaning of reality. ⇧
Guests on Volume 149
• DRU JOHNSON on how rituals serve to shape our understanding of God and Creation
• STEVEN L. PORTER on the causes and consequences of the loss of confidence in the rationality of morality
• REINHARD HÜTTER on why Christian ethics must be ordered by Christian eschatology
• MATTHEW LEVERING on the theological and philosophical concerns of Hans Urs von Balthasar
• DAVID LYLE JEFFREY on the influence of the Bible on English poetry
• CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS on the cultural and spiritual effects of hymns and the “thingness” of hymnals
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Dru Johnson
“Every good endeavor to understand the world contains a lot of ritual in it — and rituals where you don’t necessarily understand what you’re doing, or why you are doing them at first. . . . The idea that you should be able to understand it from the outset, before you set foot into any activity, is kind of absurd in all of life. So I don’t know why we think it would be any different if God is enjoining us through our bodies into his world, to see it properly.”
— Dru Johnson, author of Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, and Sacraments (Eerdmans, 2019)
Biblical scholar Dru Johnson highlights the unique way the Scriptures link ritual with epistemology; what we know is inextricable from what we do. Human life is inescapably ritualistic, he argues, even if rituals are spurned as inauthentic or superficial. Approaching ritual studies from a Hebrew Bible perspective, Johnson views ritual as the umbrella concept for liturgy and sacrament. In his experience, the ritual nature of daily life garners resistance from Christians who want the sacraments to be almost bizarrely special. But discerning the ritual nature of all life helps us to discern the sacramentality of all life — guided by the sacredness of a particular meal and bath. Like poetry and story, the sacraments are irreducible; they cannot be boiled down to propositional statements. We are to “theologize through performance” because as Johnson explains, “The body is not ‘second-tier’ in how we understand the world.” ⇧
• • •
Steven L. Porter
“To tolerate someone else’s opinion and to respect their opinion actually needs to be grounded in knowledge, in moral knowledge, because . . . [toleration] is a form of respect; it’s to give the other person the dignity to hold the view that they hold, and to be as sympathetic and understanding as we possibly can as to the reasons they hold that. So knowledge actually engenders a kind of humility, a kind of open-mindedness, an actual respect and ability to listen to the other side without immediately thinking of how I’m going to respond without even understanding their arguments.”
— Steven L. Porter, editor of The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge (Routledge, 2018)
Steven L. Porter discusses The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, an unfinished manuscript (which he helped to complete) by the late philosopher Dallas Willard. The book traces how modern culture lost the assumption that ethical claims are matters of knowledge, which can be right or wrong. Without a basis in rationality, morality is confined to private opinion, pulled along by rhetoric and tribalism. While Willard held that this disappearance primarily resulted from sociological factors, nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers did not help matters, as they failed to provide an adequate foundation to ground ethical theory. As Porter explains, Willard grounds moral knowledge conclusively in love — an embrace of the other. Ultimately, toleration and humility grow out of recovering moral knowledge, making space for respect and complexity in the mutual pursuit of what is right. ⇧
• • •
Reinhard Hütter
“In Thomas Aquinas, eschatology runs all the way through. . . . The eschaton describes the final end of humans with God. And the final end is, in a certain way, already thematized right at the beginning [of the Summa Theologiae]. . . . If Christian theology is not all the way shot through by eschatology, it’s not Christian theology. It’s something else. Christian theology is all the way eschatological . . . because it’s always a connection — in the encounter with Christ, it’s a connection, not only with God . . . but also an encounter with that end to which God has called humans.”
— Reinhard Hütter, author of Bound for Beatitude: A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and Ethics (Catholic University of America Press, 2019)
Theologian Reinhard Hütter argues that Christian theology must be oriented toward the beatific vision — eschatalogical “all the way through.” While many modern Christians anticipate an Edenic paradise as the ultimate telos, this parts from the Church’s tradition, which recognized that Adam and Eve were made for something beyond Paradise: for union with God Himself. Hütter sets forth Thomas Aquinas’s theology as a corrective to modern underreaching eschatology. From the beginning of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas weaved in eschatology. He taught that each soul is directly created by God ex nihilo and that, therefore, the end of each soul is union with God. Despite the anti-human agendas of modernity, Hütter follows Aquinas and encourages that the transcendent will always break through, because the human soul is ordered to God and created for union with Him. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Levering
“Balthasar believes that the credibility of Christianity ultimately rests on love. He has a book called Love Alone is Credible because Christ alone reveals the form of divine love. And so the ultimate apologetic for the truth of Christianity is love. . . . And Nietzsche is a factor because Nietzsche cuts through this rationalism of the day and insists upon the role of the will. Now Balthasar does not accept the will to power, but he argues repeatedly that truth — when you uncover truth, when you get to the bottom of it — you see that truth is the will to love, the divine will to love.”
— Matthew Levering, author of The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Introduction to His Trilogy (Catholic University of America Press, 2019)
Theologian Matthew Levering discusses how Hans Urs von Balthasar engaged with the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche in order to spread the Christian faith among intellectuals. Balthasar believed that Catholic Neo-scholastics had an overly negative response to Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, shunning them as a "triad of heretics." Instead, Balthasar took these philosophers seriously, with a view towards apologetics. Responding to Nietzsche, for example, Balthasar rejected the overly propositional Christianity of Neo-scholasticism, arguing that truth does involve the will, as Nietzsche insisted, but not the will to power — rather the will to love. He held that self-surrender in love is the ground of all knowing, all beauty. For Hans Urs von Balthasar, as Levering explains, love is what makes Christianity credible. ⇧
• • •
David Lyle Jeffrey
“John Donne is keenly aware that when God speaks most authoritatively concerning his people, from the prophets on, through to the end of the Scriptures, and Jesus as well — when he teaches something that’s authoritative, that is absolutely necessary for the disciples to know, he resorts to a form of poetry. When Donne calls the Lord a ‘metaphorical God,’ what he means is that God, when he reaches out to us because he desires that we understand Him, recognizes the need for poetry both to communicate -- but it also becomes the stamp of Him speaking.”
— David Lyle Jeffrey, author of Scripture and the English Poetic Tradition (Baker Academic, 2019)
English professor David Lyle Jeffrey emphasizes the effect of “magnificent fruitfulness” that Scripture had upon the writings of English poets. Reason is not the only conduit of reality, Jeffrey observes, which is why God speaks so frequently through poetry in the Scriptures (and why John Donne can call him a “metaphorical God”). Beginning with medieval poetry, Jeffrey describes the surprising way Italian dramatic sermons, encouraged by St. Francis of Assisi, made the Gospel accessible to the imagination and later influenced English poets and Biblical translators. These dramatic sermons led to Gospel paraphrases which laid a foundation for translating Scripture into the vernacular, culminating in the incomparable King James Version. Accentuating the aural and oral nature of the English Scriptures, Jeffrey makes the case that beautiful poetic language is not only self-revelatory, but is also a stamp of authoritative divine revelation. ⇧
• • •
Christopher Phillips
“One of the things that I really found really exciting about this project was realizing how many things, not just people did with hymns, but how many things hymns enabled people to do and empowered them to do. To think that a creative mind as powerful as William Cowper, who would write everything from very witty rewrites of Horace and Pindar to scathing attacks on the evils of slavery to one of the most incisive descriptions of what depression fells like that a poet’s ever written. . . . He gets to it through what had been written off as this very conventional means.”
— Christopher Phillips, author of The Hymnal: A Reading History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)
English Professor Christopher N. Phillips discusses hymnals as physical artifacts and how these “lived-with books” have formed devotion at church, school, and home. While teaching through Susan Warner’s nineteenth-century novel The Wide, Wide World, Philips noticed how hymnbooks kept appearing in the text. This led him to focus on the “subplot of the hymnbook” within the novel, and how it “traces a growth of the self.” Making application beyond the novel, Phillips highlights how physical things like hymnbooks are deeply formative, in fellowship with practices and rituals. Philips also explores how the poetic form of hymns — sometimes disparaged as conventional — actually “enabled and empowered” some poets (such as Cowper, Frost, and Dickinson) toward original creative expression. ⇧
Guests on Volume 150
• DAVID I. SMITH on how Christian schools can make wise decisions about the use of educational technologies
• ERIC O. JACOBSEN on how living in a world mediated by screens encourages loneliness
• MATTHEW CRAWFORD on how the “promise” of self-driving cars threatens the capacities of agency enabled by driving
• ANDREW DAVISON on how the metaphysical concept of participation helps us understand God’s relationship with Creation (and with us)
• JOSEPH E. DAVIS on the medicalization of suffering and the reductionism promoted by neuroscience
• REBECCA KONYNDYK DEYOUNG on the wisdom of the tradition of understanding faithfulness and morality in the framework of virtues, vices, and spiritual disciplines
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
David I. Smith
“So many technology books . . . are either . . . ‘Technology, digital devices will save us and transform our future; there’s no going back, etc. etc.’ or ‘Digital devices are going to ruin us and destroy civilization and render us all mute’ and so on. Reality just seems to be in a more complex middle space than either of those stories — where there are always gains and losses, where when we change our technologies . . . they challenge us to figure out those gains and losses, and how to respond, and what choices to make.”
— David I. Smith, author of Digital Life Together: The Challenge of Technology for Christian Schools (Eerdmans, 2020)
Educator David I. Smith articulates the difficulties Christian schools face as they seek to use technology in a faithful way. The book he co-authored, Digital Life Together: The Challenge of Technology for Christian Schools, was the result of a multi-year project in which the authors meticulously analyzed the technological philosophies and artifacts of several Christian schools. Smith warns that technology, mixed with modern priorities of efficiency and productivity, can lead to an unfortunate alchemy, impoverishing a rich education into “getting things done by the deadlines.” However, he wants to avoid an all-out condemnation of technology, believing that wisdom calls for a careful assessment of the gains and losses that all new technologies bring. Smith encourages school administrators to keep their first principles before them as they make each decision about whether to incorporate a new technology into the life of their school. ⇧
• • •
Eric O. Jacobsen
“[Jane] Jacobs said that the city itself was a problem of organized complexity. It works, but it works in such a complex way that it defies our complete understanding. So, you make small interventions, but you pay attention to what is happening outside of your understanding. So, I say that with belonging as well. It’s not simply a matter of ‘Oh, people need a few more friendships.’ It’s not something that we’re going to solve with a really clear program like that. We need to create environments where friendship and connection are going to happen organically. It’s just really hard to engineer, it’s hard to engineer belonging. It grows in the right kind of soil.”
— Eric O. Jacobsen, author of Three Pieces of Glass: Why We Feel Lonely in a World Mediated by Screens (Brazos Press, 2020)
Pastor Eric O. Jacobsen addresses modern isolation and how to foster belonging in his book Three Pieces of Glass: Why We Feel Lonely in a World Mediated by Screens. The title “three pieces of glass” refers to the car windshield, the television, and the cell phone. Jacobsen structures his argument around these emblematic items to illustrate how modern priorities have led to alienation from people and the places where we live. Applying his previous work on the importance of place, Jacobsen explains how urbanist Jane Jacobs argued for respectful attentiveness to “organized complexity” in the city. Jacobsen applies her ideas to what he calls “kingdom-belonging,” arguing that it’s not possible to straightforwardly engineer, but only organically cultivate. The belonging that grows in this way, he believes, is the subjective experience of “shalom:” the goodness and beauty of right relationships in the Kingdom of God. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Crawford
“Urban driving . . . looks chaotic. It’s messy, but we’re basically improvising; we’re working it out on the fly; we’re solving problems together; we’re cooperating. For Tocqueville, that was really an important part of the democratic personality: The ability to cooperate in some practical activity, without having to be supervised (whether by some bureaucracy, or by some technology that does everything for us). So now we’re getting into the realm of political culture and sensibility. So the big worry here is that as the space for intelligent human action and skill and cooperation gets colonized by machines, our skills atrophy and I think our social intelligence is likely to atrophy — which of course leads to demands for further automation to replace trust with machine generated certainty.”
— Matthew Crawford, author of Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road (William Morrow, 2020)
Philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford argues for the renewal of manual competence through the lens of modern driving in his book Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road. Provoked by the specter of self-driving cars, Crawford laments the losses of human skill that correspond with gains in mechanical automation. For him, more automation means submitting to more bureaucracy as the car becomes a “device” comparable to a smartphone. Quoting Nietzche’s axiom that “Joy is the feeling of your powers expanding,” Crawford argues that we miss out on fundamental aspects of human experience the further we move toward automation and away from skill and responsibility. Drawing from Tocqueville’s insights into the democratic personality, Crawford ultimately holds that cultivating everyday skill (like the ability to drive well) is necessary for the “messy” realities of self-government. ⇧
• • •
Andrew Davison
“One helpful distinction that we get from theological writing is the distinction between cause in being and a cause in coming to be, initially. So, I think it would be a mistake to say that God is only cause of the world as if that were a past event; but rather . . . God is the cause of the being of the world every moment. So I think it is useful to think that there is a kind of freshness to God’s gift to us at every moment, really as fresh as the first moment of the existence of the world. We can continually see the world as given to us.”
— Andrew Davison, author of Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
Theologian and priest Andrew Davison believes that retrieving the historic doctrine of participation in God is vital to help Christians escape from the default philosophy of the age. In his recent book Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics, Davison undertakes a systematic treatment of the doctrine, approaching it from two angles: Creation (all things — whether the justice of man or the greenness of trees — find their being in God) and Redemption (God has saved us in order that we may become partakers in his very nature). The doctrine of participation means reckoning with the nature of being as ongoing gift of God and with the awareness that God’s transcendence does not mean God is distant from the world — “in Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” ⇧
• • •
Joseph E. Davis
“These older concepts and language implicate us in a way that the neurobiological seems to let us . . . not implicate our own history, our own life, our own experience. . . . That kind of stuff suggests either that the story I’m telling about myself might be wrong in some fundamental way, or that I might have to really do some painful soul searching. Psychotherapy can often be quite painful, if it’s good — or counseling . . . or broader kind of dialogical thinking about our suffering and shared experience and so on. If that’s done well, it’s going to force us to confront aspects of ourselves.”
— Joseph E. Davis, author of Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery (University of Chicago Press, 2020)
Sociologist Joseph Davis investigates the modern “healthscape” in his book Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery. He traces how the language of psychiatry entered the popular realm around 1980, providing a new neurobiological vocabulary that was socially validated. While Davis doesn’t dismiss the neurobiological, he wants to push back on reductionist explanations which don’t account for factors like personality, history, vices, or choices. Neurobiological language isolates the problem within an individual’s (merely material) existence, rather than situating persons within a larger social and spiritual context. Recovering older language (like “alienation” or “acedia”) may help to recontextualize experience. Nonetheless, coming to terms with factors beyond the neurobiological takes courage because of the way that we are implicated and may have to confront unattractive aspects of ourselves. ⇧
• • •
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
“What I often tell my students is ‘It’s very important to ask yourself, “Is this right thing to do?”’ That’s an important ethical question no doubt. But, it’s at least as important an ethical question to ask yourself, ‘If I do this thing today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and over and over again for the next five years, what kind of person will I become?’ And that’s a character question. So, I don’t want to reduce ethics to act-centric-only kind of thinking. . . . So, I think the vice lens is important because it narrates your ethical character over time. It says this is a life-long project of character building.”
— Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, author of Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies (Brazos Press, 2020)
Philosophy professor Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung illuminates how the seven deadly sins work to malform the heart in her book Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies. Instead of “deadly sins,” DeYoung argues that we should recover an older term, the “capital vices,” because it connotes how these sins are the principal underlying sources behind sinful actions. DeYoung situates the capital vices in the territory of habits, of accumulated patterns that become part of our ethical character through time. Explaining the need for a second edition of her book, DeYoung explains that she wrote the first edition from a philosophical perspective, not anticipating the broad audience who would read and be convicted by the book. In this edition, she focuses more explicitly on the healing and wholeness that come when we are able to name the roots of sin in our lives. ⇧
Guests on Volume 151
• RICHARD STIVERS on lessons from Jacques Ellul about media technologies and society
• HOLLY ORDWAY on the surprising reading habits of J. R. R. Tolkien
• ROBIN PHILLIPS on the challenge of sustaining a posture of gratitude in the midst of suffering
• SCOTT NEWSTOK on why William Shakespeare offers valuable perspectives on the means and ends of education
• JUNIUS JOHNSON on why the experience of beauty is dangerous, but necessary
• PETER MERCER-TAYLOR on how early 19th-century hymnody introduced many Americans to a repertoire of classical music
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Richard Stivers
“When you’re in real dialogue with a person, when you see this other person as independent, you make yourself vulnerable. So, basically, I think wanting to stay in control, not wanting to be vulnerable, people don’t want to be hurt. They want every relationship to be pleasant and to go their way. And so, I guess this is the great danger: that the more we use social media in particular, and every other type of anonymous/almost anonymous discourse, the less human we become. To be human is to be vulnerable, to try to understand another person, to not try to impose one’s will on a person, to listen to the other person, and these are clearly in short supply today.”
— Richard Stivers, author of The Media Creates Us in Its Image and Other Essays on Technology and Culture (Cascade Books, 2020)
Sociologist Richard Stivers argues that the destructive tendencies blamed on new technologies are actually the fulfilment of much older dynamics and priorities. In his book, The Media Creates Us in Its Image and Other Essays on Technology and Culture, Stivers continues to build on the work of philosopher Jacques Ellul, unpacking how the race for efficiency — what Max Weber called the “religion of the modern world” — shapes all of life in our technological society. One area in which we see this is in the increasing abstraction of human relationships. When efficiency is prioritized over meaning, the skills to navigate real human relationships atrophy. We lose the ability to disagree or to handle awkward realities of true relationships. As Stivers warns, “The more abstract human relationships become, the more the entire human being disappears.” ⇧
• • •
Holly Ordway
“A lot of the criticism, a lot of the scholarship, and indeed most of the popular view of Tolkien has been that he simply ignored all things modern, whether that’s theological, or philosophical, or simply chronological modernity, that he just shut himself off from it. That he wasn’t interested — at all — and he just kind of hid himself away in the Middle Ages and engaged there. And that’s completely not the case. And he actually engages quite significantly with modernity in all sorts of interesting ways.”
— Holly Ordway, author of Tolkien's Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages (Word on Fire Academic, 2020)
Professor Holly Ordway counters the assumption that J. R. R. Tolkien was stuck in the past in her book Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages. Ordway claims that we don’t even recognize the stereotype that Tolkien was hopelessly nostalgic. But in fact, as she demonstrates, Tolkien engaged widely and profoundly with modern literature, philosophy, and theology. Even in terms of technology, Tolkien was no Luddite, embracing in a nuanced way many of the most up-to-date technologies of his day. One of his students called Tolkien a “translator,” a “bridge” between the Middle Ages and the modern world. Ordway argues that to be an effective translator, one must be equally comfortable in both worlds. And she claims that because Tolkien was at home in both the Modern and the Medieval, his work continues to possess deep resonance today. ⇧
• • •
Robin Phillips
“Gratitude can’t be developed in isolation. Gratitude grows in an ecosystem of other virtues. And that’s another area where I think the self-help literature on gratitude goes wrong. They’ve recognized something important, which is that gratitude helps with health and well being and with joy. But it’s impossible to develop true spiritual gratitude outside of this larger ecosystem of virtues.”
— Robin Phillips, author of Gratitude in Life's Trenches: How to Experience the Good Life Even When Everything is Going Wrong (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2020)
Robin Phillips writes about his experience moving from a pop-culture to sacramental understanding of gratitude in his book Gratitude in Life’s Trenches: How to Experience the Good Life Even When Everything is Going Wrong. Influenced heavily by G. K. Chesterton and Alexander Schmemann, Phillips conveys how “embracing the dark side of life” and accepting its inherent difficulty helped him discover a more profound experience of gratitude, even in suffering. Phillips believes that gratitude requires vulnerability — it’s not a matter of either stoicism or a trivializing optimism. Gratitude also requires an “ecosystem of virtues.” It can’t be developed in isolation either from other people or from the virtues that support it. Ultimately, the church institutionalizes the practices and virtues that cultivate and sustain gratitude. ⇧
• • •
Scott Newstok
“I'm trying to offer a number of analogues, and models, and patterns for inspiration, but I am actually not doing the more conventional ‘how to do X’ book or self-help book where you lay out the seven habits of highly successful people or whatever the model might be. In some ways, the . . . implicit point of the book is the way to think like Shakespeare is not to follow a set pattern of things, it’s to go through a number of habit inducing practices; and, it means reading widely, and it means thinking imaginatively, and it means all kind of things, but it’s not really programmatic.”
— Scott Newstok, author of How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Princeton University Press, 2020)
English Professor Scott Newstok sets forth Shakespeare as a guide for the craft of thought in his book How to Think Like Shakespeare. Citing Shakespeare's "sponge-like quality of mind," Newstok points to habits and practices that helped refine Shakespeare's native brilliance. One habit is keeping a commonplace book to collect quotations. He also highlights the pedagogical practice of imitation, a ubiquitous technique in the past. Newstok believes that while we accept unreservedly the importance of imitation in physical practices, moderns are more critical of the use of imitation in scholarly pursuits. But, while imitation can certainly be stunted into parrot-like practice, it also can help develop a rich idiosyncratic style. With all that said, Newstok is not offering a procedural account of how to think like Shakespeare; he is articulating patterns and "habit-inducing practices" that contain the possibility of intellectual growth. ⇧
• • •
Junius Johnson
“The beautiful, Plato says, is difficult. The beautiful is very powerful. The beautiful is earth-shaking and heart-breaking. And I think that’s one of the main aspects of beauty in a broken world like we live in, is that it breaks our hearts. But the things of God, when they come to break our hearts, they do so because our hearts need to be broken. They do so because our hearts are hardened into forms that become these defenses against grace. Beauty is able to come in and fracture, and create these lines in our hearts that crack open — and these fissures — and through that, grace pours.”
— Junius Johnson, author of The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty (Baker Academic, 2020)
Junius Johnson warns that the pursuit of beauty is both perilous and unavoidable in his book The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty. The desire for beauty points to the desire for God. For unbelievers, that desire for beauty, Johnson says, is “the person’s heart witnessing against them,” because beauty is particularly capable of destroying modern defenses against God. Nonetheless, humans must be wary because we are experts in twisting good into evil, “mistaking the intermediary for the ultimate.” Johnson articulates Bonaventure’s idea of “contuition” as a way to rightly align recognition of the beautiful and recognition of God. He also brings in the concept of analogy, explaining how creation is a language God invented to speak about Himself and that, therefore, “things belong to a vocabulary of the divine.” ⇧
• • •
Peter Mercer-Taylor
“There were hundreds and hundreds of these adaptations published in the United States. And I have not looked at, for example, the English scene nearly as much as the American one, but my strong sense is that there wasn’t nearly that amount of this sort of thing going on in England. And at the same time, England had a more robust tradition of classical music performance, that in the United States, it was just much rarer as a general rule, to actually have exposure to the classical music that these [hymn tunes] were based on. And so, in that sense, it’s as though these hymn tune adaptations were serving a more . . . central cultural purpose in the American context than in the English.”
— Peter Mercer-Taylor, author of Gems of Exquisite Beauty: How Hymnody Carried Classical Music to America (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Musicologist Peter Mercer-Taylor tells the story of how 19th-century American musicians adapted classical repertoire into hymn tunes in his book Gems of Exquisite Beauty: How Hymnody Carried Classical Music to America. Mercer-Taylor’s research began as an extension of his Felix Mendelssohn scholarship, specifically when he began to uncover the story of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. This led to his discovery of many hundreds of these adaptations, specifically in the American context. While classical hymn tunes were not uncommon in England, they were more prominent in America, serving a “central cultural purpose,” since the performance of classical music was a rarity. These hymn tunes gradually fell out of vogue, but we can still see traces of the adaptations in the hymnals used today. ⇧
Guests on Volume 152
• ELISABETH LASCH-QUINN on the revival of interest in pre-Christian philosophical schools (in response to postmodern nihilism)
• JEFFREY BILBRO on resisting the disorienting and disintegrating effects of modern media
• ZENA HITZ on the love of learning and the freedom animated by the intellectual life
• JAMES L. NOLAN, JR. on the lessons we should have learned from the experience of the Manhattan Project
• BISHOP ROBERT BARRON on God, freedom, faith, reason, and the need to keep theology linked with sanctity
• JASON BLAKELY on how the social sciences are interpretive disciplines, more like the humanities than the “hard” sciences
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn
“I do really think that part of what we see in these ancient schools of thought — and then, possibly in their resurgence — is that side of human beings: the intellectual and philosophical. And then, that’s not even speaking quite yet of the spiritual. But, I do think that in everyday life, we can see all around us philosophies of different kinds. You know, sometimes fragmented, but sometimes . . . speaking quite loudly, through pretty much everything that we do or say or think or even feel. . . . There is something about reality — the human reality, the reality of the human person — that can resist the incursions of various different other ways of thinking.”
— Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, author of Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020)
Historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn discusses philosophy as the art of living in her book Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living. Birthed out of her deep personal interest in antiquity and her alarm at the “shrinkage” of modern life and thought, Lasch-Quinn’s book explores five ancient philosophical schools experiencing a contemporary resurgence. Describing modern society as a therapeutic culture wedded with consumerism, she argues that we live in a “fourth sophistic” era, because of the “acrobatic” way words and philosophies are utilized in relation to actual truth. Lasch-Quinn argues that a return to philosophy as the art of living (not an esoteric territory claimed only by academics) offers an alternative way of life. ⇧
• • •
Jeffrey Bilbro
“Curiosity, in the news context, you might think of the rubbernecking tendency: the tendency to be drawn toward the spectacular or the outrageous or the crazy. . . . It can also be a way of wanting to know stuff in order to better manipulate or control reality to get what we want. It doesn’t have to take superficial forms. You can be quite serious and still be curious. It’s about the posture toward new knowledge and the . . . ends to which you want to put this new knowledge to: Is it to better understand and love and care for creation, other people, your neighbor? Or is it to satisfy your own appetites?”
— Jeffrey Bilbro, author of Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News (InterVarsity Press, 2021)
English professor Jeffrey Bilbro explores a Christian posture toward contemporary digital media in his book Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News. Bilbro orients his inquiry around three questions: “To what should we attend? How should we imagine and experience time? And how should we belong to one another?” Bilbro is not a declinist – he recognizes that people have always struggled against distraction. Nonetheless, he is concerned with how social media amplifies that tendency. He wants Christians to evaluate their understanding of time, to realize that their experience of “chronos” time (modern quantified duration) inhabits “kairos” time (time that is seasonal and patterned). This type of realignment toward the eternal can help cultivate the sort of “holy indifference” which Pascal encouraged: a stance which enables Christians to care deeply, but also rest in the providence of God. ⇧
• • •
Zena Hitz
“I want to distinguish between ‘knowledge as power’ in the contemporary sense — where it means . . . the power to do something, the power to get things, the power to acquire, I think, in the end, a kind of mastery. And, rather, it’s the power that’s connected with one’s dignity as a human being with the growth of one’s capacities, with the development of one’s freedom, that’s a different kind of power and it’s something that you have in yourself for its own sake, and that you can maintain in situations of really extreme powerlessness.”
— Zena Hitz, author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton University Press, 2020)
Zena Hitz explores the dignity and freedom possible through the pursuit of learning with her book Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. An intellectual life is not necessarily tied to the university, according to Hitz. On the contrary, educational institutions are often captured by private interests and captive to the marketplace; they are not places where real learning can necessarily flourish. For Hitz, real learning is always hidden learning. It is not about competing for power and domination. It is also not an acquisition, a private possession. Real learning means studiousness, rather than the “love of spectacle.” And it entails a “seriousness about living and learning” which is ultimately undertaken in communion with others. ⇧
• • •
James L. Nolan, Jr.
“It was a very exciting time in nuclear physics — the exchange of ideas and the kind of discoveries that were unfolding at a rapid pace and, you know, ‘Can we do this?’ and I think that was clearly part of it. And again, the consequences, in terms of the military application of it, I don’t think was the primary or the leading motivation for the scientists. So much so that once they saw the Trinity Test and witnessed the enormity of the explosion, many of them all of a sudden had worries. Oppenheimer famously cited the Bhagavad Gita, ‘I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ And there’s all of a sudden a sense of ‘What have we done? What have we created?’”
— James L. Nolan, Jr., author of Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020)
In the book Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, sociologist James L. Nolan, Jr., tells the story of his grandfather’s medical involvement in the Manhattan Project — the World War II research and development which produced the first atomic weapons. Nolan had known the basics of his grandfather’s history in the nuclear age. However, it was only after discovering a box filled with family memorabilia that Nolan discovered the extent of his grandfather’s involvement, spanning from working on the Trinity Project to being one of the first doctors in Japan after the war. While the book is primarily a historical account, Nolan also sees this time period as a case study in the dangers of technological enthusiasm outpacing wisdom and caution, and he believes that we need to take these lessons seriously in our own day. ⇧
• • •
Bishop Robert Barron
“Precisely because God is not a being among beings, he is not one being sort of competing for territory in the same ontological space as creatures, then God’s presence is a non-competitive one. God can come close to his creatures without compromising their integrity. And, of course, the great moment when we see this is the incarnation. The two natures coming together —‘without mixing, mingling, or confusion,’ as Chalcedon puts it. So, the integrity of Jesus’ s humanity is preserved, it’s enhanced, it’s made perfect and beautiful precisely by the closeness of God.”
— Bishop Robert Barron, author of Renewing Our Hope: Essays for the New Evangelization (The Catholic University of America Press, 2021)
One of the central threads of Bishop Robert Barron's work through the years has been the non-competitive transcendence of God — that “God can come close to his creatures without compromising their integrity.” In his latest book, Renewing Our Hope: Essays for the New Evangelization, Bishop Barron continues exploring this theme and (among other topics) how it conflicts with the modern conception of freedom. Rather than a "zero-sum game," where the existence of God means the loss of human freedom and dignity, Barron argues that God’s non-competitive transcendence means the possibility of true freedom and dignity. Bishop Barron also believes the application of this theme addresses the tragic rift between theology and spirituality — in the same way that God's existence does not denigrate human dignity, right doctrine does not denigrate the human experience. The encounter with Christ is the purpose of theology and doctrine, and Barron does his best to exemplify this in his life and work. ⇧
• • •
Jason Blakely
“I think that actually the dominant philosophical school in the social sciences thinks of itself as on the path to articulating something akin to the natural sciences, this sort of descriptive theory that is often articulated in almost an abstraction away from the socio-political lifeworld. I mean, if you told a social scientist, ‘Are you interpreting?’ they might very well say, ‘Yes, I’m interpreting,’ but then if you looked at their actual methods and concepts, they would not show interpretive sensitivity.”
— Jason Blakely, author of We Built Reality: How Social Sciences Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Political scientist Jason Blakely argues in his book We Built Reality: How Social Sciences Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power that the social sciences have too often been treated as though they were the same as the natural sciences. In contrast to the natural sciences, where theories do not affect what is being studied, social theory massively affects and changes studies within the social sciences. When this is not recognized, the social sciences can be misused as pseudo-scientific means to justify changes in culture and politics. As a “hermeneuticist” committed to the art of interpretation, Blakely believes that the solution to this is to treat the social sciences in a way that is more akin to the humanities, recognizing the need for interpretive sensitivity. And he calls for social scientists to become comfortable with story as a way to capture the contingent causality that is always at play in the human sciences. ⇧
Guests on Volume 153
• CHARLES C. CAMOSY on how the exclusion of theological affirmations in bioethics threatens human dignity
• O. CARTER SNEAD on how laws and public regulations conceal an implicit theological anthropology
• MATT FEENEY on how anticipation of the “college admissions process” increases the temptation toward competitive parenting
• MARGARITA A. MOONEY on how the liberal arts promote a love of learning
• LOUIS MARKOS on why Christians shouldn’t ignore the gifts to the Church given by Plato’s philosophical insights
• ALAN JACOBS on escaping the tempestuous climate of modern media by reading books by dead people
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Charles C. Camosy
“Some secular folks . . . claim to have a vision according to natural kinds where we would include the newborn, disabled infant along with the college professor as being along the same lines, despite the obvious difference . . . but I’m not very convinced that those arguments actually work. Frankly, I think we see the more and more people move, you know, from a theological lens to a philosophical one, the more that that particular set of arguments fails to convince, and instead we move more towards autonomy, rationality, self-awareness, productivity as the things that we value. And then we find quite readily that not all human beings have those in equal measure — some appear not to have them at all — and we end up with radical inequality.”
— Charles C. Camosy, author of Losing Our Dignity: How Secularized Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality (New City Press, 2021)
Professor Charles Camosy argues that modern medicine lacks an adequate explanation for why all people should be treated with equal worth in his book Losing Our Dignity: How Secularized Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality. Instead, when the highest values are autonomy, rationality, and productivity, he states, “We end up with radical inequality.” Nonetheless, Camosy argues that the best ethical intuitions and judgments in modern medicine are grounded in a theological account of human nature. For example, historically, the de facto posture of “not aiming at death” emerged from medieval battlefield discussions between priests and doctors. Christians ought to be confident in our theological rationale, Camosy believes, because it has vital implications for thorny medical issues today. ⇧
• • •
O. Carter Snead
“The methodological claim is that the richest way to understand matters of public bioethics – this area of law and public policy– is to ask the question of ‘What vision of human identity and human flourishing anchors and undergirds and animates the laws and policies under consideration?’ And the reason I think this is a valuable point of entry into that kind of analysis is because all law purports to (and is intended to and is best understood as) providing for the flourishing of persons or protecting of persons. And so, if that’s true – and I think it is – the law has to assume (or have a set of assumptions) about what a person is and what human flourishing is.”
— O. Carter Snead, author of What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics (Harvard University Press, 2021)
Political scientist O. Carter Snead argues that all matters of public bioethics are determined by beliefs about human identity and flourishing. In his book, What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics, Snead analyzes abortion, end-of-life decision-making, and assisted reproduction, finding that the public bioethics concerning these matters is undergirded by the values of expressive individualism. Within this modern vision, human identity is found through a process of self-discovery, obviously prioritizing autonomy and detachment. And Snead makes the point that this vision is just a snapshot of humans at their most fortunate. Even at their very best, humans experience radical dependence at the beginning and end of life, which means that all humans have unchosen obligations and duties of care. Snead argues that this reality must be seriously reckoned with in public bioethics. ⇧
• • •
Matt Feeney
“There’s an irony about this stuff because the kids are kind of trained in the appearance of . . . niceness and concern, but, you know, from the standpoint of citizenship, it’s also perhaps a training in pliability and agreeability and conformity. This is my argument: that the process . . . of forming yourself in order to satisfy a committee is a process of making yourself . . . pliable. You have to kind of bend yourself in order to look the right way and then, to turn yourself into the kind of person that a committee likes.”
— Matt Feeney, author of Little Platoons: A Defense of Family in a Competitive Age (Basic Books, 2021)
In his book Little Platoons: A Defense of Family in a Competitive Age, political philosopher Matt Feeney argues that family life has become “colonized” for the sake of competitive child rearing. A father of three, Feeney started to explore this idea when his oldest daughter was in middle school, and he saw the pressure on students to take extracurriculars simply for the sake of their college application. Feeney does not take a scornful or shaming stance. Rather, his book flows from reflection on how children have been forced to compete in order to stand out to college admissions committees. These admissions committees now play an outsized role in the lives of students, and he wonders why college faculties do not do more to protest the diminishment of the formative role of the teacher as the center of collegiate life. ⇧
• • •
Margarita A. Mooney
“A liberal arts approach to education is broader than simply the content of the curriculum. It’s broader than simply including the great works of philosophy, literature, and theology. It’s an approach to the human person . . . that builds social order from the ground up. The liberal arts vision of education presupposes that by forming persons holistically, they will know how to enter into common life and how to build social bonds. So, the liberal arts education is not a social project in the sense that it doesn’t set out to create a particular set of political or social institutions. It aims to equip the next generation with an understanding of the traditions that preceded them — with a starting point for which to venture out into their common life, their shared life together.”
— Margarita A. Mooney, author of The Love of Learning: Seven Dialogues on the Liberal Arts (Cluny Media, 2021)
Professor Margarita A. Mooney argues that a liberal arts approach starts with a holistic and personal understanding of the individual and “builds social order from the ground up.” In her book, The Love of Learning: Seven Dialogues on the Liberal Arts, Mooney invites the reader into conversations with seven individuals invested in educational philosophy. As a professor, her own interest in the subject began in listening to her students' needs and realizing how vital it was for them to grasp the telos of their educational model. She wants students to grapple with whether the end of knowledge in their educational model is primarily about power or about knowledge in and of itself (and its ability to shape the soul). Ultimately, she argues that a liberal arts education is the model that does the most justice to the shape of the human soul and the needs of the greater social order. ⇧
• • •
Louis Markos
“We need to move beyond the shifting shadows to contemplate that which is truly true, and really real. It was Plato who taught us to seek after the beatific vision of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Now, thankfully, we have special revelation to tell us that yes, we can contemplate, but what we’re contemplating is not impersonal forms, as they are in Plato, but the very personal, trans-personal, triune God. But still, Plato is explaining to us the need not to be deceived by shadows, and to grow and move forward into the light of reality.”
— Louis Markos, author of From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2021)
Professor Louis Markos is weary of Plato being blamed for everything bad in the western Christian world. In his book, From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith, Markos claims instead that Plato needs to be recognized for his unique and serendipitous role in preparing the world for Christ. While certainly recognizing that the fullness of revelation is not to be found in Platonic philosophy, Markos still believes Christians need to reclaim the goodness that the great philosopher was able to reveal. He also wants Christians to stop reading later Gnosticism into Plato himself. Though Plato could not have had the revelation that humans are “enfleshed souls,” he did not believe that the body is inherently evil. Essentially, Markos argues that Plato can be “lifted up” into the fullness revealed in Christ. ⇧
• • •
Alan Jacobs
“It occurred to me that one of the really great things about ‘breaking bread with the dead’ — that is, with the writers and the thinkers and all the people from the past — is that that’s not as scary as sitting down at table with a political enemy, knowing that the conversation could escalate into something very tense or even angry. When you’re breaking bread with the dead, you don’t have to worry about that. . . . If this dead person says something to you that offends or hurts you, you can set the book down. Maybe you can come back to it later or maybe you don’t come back to it later, but you’re in charge of the situation. And it occurred to me that maybe if we can learn to break bread with the dead, it might give us a bit of training that would help us to break bread with the living.”
— Alan Jacobs, author of Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind (Penguin Press, 2020)
English professor Alan Jacobs encourages readers to pick up old books, not primarily for the sake of greatness, but for the sake of difference. In his book Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind, Jacobs considers how reading old books may be an education in patience and therefore applicable to difficult relationships, especially in our current political and cultural climate. Taking his title from a W. H. Auden quotation, Jacobs reflects on the similarities between reading old books and table fellowship. But he claims that the advantage to reading old books is that readers are in control of the conversation. They can put down the book, pausing (or even ending) the exchange. Nonetheless, if readers patiently engage, especially giving attention to the differences that make them uncomfortable, they may become more adept in dealing with differences between people and even achieve a “tranquil mind.” ⇧
Guests on Volume 154
• FELICIA WU SONG on how social media promote “networked individualism” and establish market-driven notions of authority
• MICHAEL WARD on the historical background of and the central ideas in C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man
• NORMAN WIRZBA on why we need to think more deeply about what Creation means and about the consequences of recognizing the presence of Christ — the Logos — in all of Creation
• CARL TRUEMAN on the long-developing social trends that gave rise to new understandings of the self, and to new claims about human sexuality
• D. C. SCHINDLER on how liberalism — especially in its boundaries between “private” and “public” — allows for less freedom than it pretends
• KERRY McCARTHY on the life and accomplishments of Tudor-era composer Thomas Tallis
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Felicia Wu Song
“When you move into the digital — in the ways that social media has framed us, organized us — we are all individuals. We aren’t attached to households or places. And so there’re ways in which our perceptions of ourselves and even the interactions that we have really are increasingly individualized because there are no other people that are mediating our interactions with other people. . . . No one’s knocking on my Facebook account door . . . to have to get past my brother to get to me — it’s just me. And so, what ends up happening is that the actual infrastructure of the social media shapes our imaginations about where we are located in society. It shapes how we imagine ourselves to be at the center of the networks.”
— Felicia Wu Song, author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age (InterVarsity Press, 2021)
Felicia Wu Song argues that social media flattens relationships into problems that need to be solved. Relationships have also been changed by the way social media frames all people as isolated individuals. Before the digital age, individuals were always known in the context of households, in the context of community. With social media, Song explains that each person becomes the center of the network. They also become trained into the sensibilities that life is defined by scarcity and optimization. A Christian social imaginary, she argues, must be counter-cultural to these sensibilities and grapple with what it looks like to live in the abundance of God’s grace and rest. ⇧
• • •
Michael Ward
“The objectivity of value does not mean that we all have to sing in unison. There can still be a plurality of voices, but unless we acknowledge the objectivity of value, there’s no grounds for pluralism. There’s no grounds for anything. And, that’s the fundamental thing, you know, at the back of Lewis’s whole argument. It’s not why should we care whether this or that is valued... but it’s why we should care about anything at all.”
— Michael Ward, author of After Humanity: A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Word on Fire Academic, 2021)
C. S. Lewis scholar Michael Ward explains why The Abolition of Man is one of Lewis’s most important but also most difficult books. While some readers think that The Abolition of Man is an almost modernist attempt by Lewis to establish absolute value, Ward explains that the book is really much more subtle. Lewis does not deny that we are subjects who experience reality through our own lenses. Instead, says Ward, “All Lewis is denying is that those things are themselves absolute and that they eradicate the possibility of objective knowledge.” Ultimately, Ward explains, Lewis warns that if we embrace radical subjectivism, we are headed toward cultural ruin. ⇧
• • •
Norman Wirzba
“If the starting point for Christians is that the world that we inhabit is not only occasionally, perhaps at certain points, the object of God’s love, but is in fact the material manifestation of God’s love, how can we simply leave that behind and say, ‘Well, the doctrine [of creation] is primarily about origins, and we fight about when that actually happened, but it’s not of enduring perennial practical significance.’ That seemed to me to be a theological catastrophe and it’s no accident then that Christians are really late to the game in thinking about how do we build a world in which species can flourish together.”
— Norman Wirzba, author of This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Theologian Norman 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. In This Sacred Life, Wirzba addresses how the Scriptures never depict a God who is interested in escaping the Creation, and he has never wanted for people to do so either. Instead, as we see in the miracles of Jesus, God desires for all creation to live into the fullness of their way of being — their “tropos,” according to Maximus the Confessor. In the end, Wirzba explains, the tropos of everything in creation is to take care of others — to be for others. ⇧
Carl Trueman
“If we were to look at the problem of modernity as a basic anthropological mistake, epitomized by Jean Jacques Rousseau's claim that “Man is born free and everywhere is in chains,” (self-evidently nonsense: nobody’s born free; we’re all born remarkably dependent upon others obviously our parents, but not restricted simply to them); if you think about modernity as being predicated on that fundamental anthropological mistake, then many of the ways that conservative Christians think are predicated on precisely that mistake as well: the emphasis on rights, the emphasis on autonomy, the emphasis on the unencumbered self.”
— Carl Trueman, author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway Books, 2020)
Historian Carl Trueman argues that conservative Christians are complicit in the same dynamics that they condemn in modern culture. Sexual immorality is the manifestation of deeper issues, Trueman explains, resulting out of the basic anthropological mistake of modernity: assuming that man is “born free, but is everywhere in chains” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau). Trueman explores the way that the concept of self has changed historically, from being outwardly directed to being inwardly directed. The atmosphere of expressive individualism that is pervasive today, he argues, leads to a kind of cultural amnesia. ⇧
D. C. Schindler
“There is a profound difference between a coincidence of self-interest and an actual real common good — a real thing in its objective reality that gathers us around itself. And when you lose a sense of things being able to gather us in a common good — and things beyond mere material concerns, so things like truth, dignity, culture, beauty, things that have a transcendent significance and ultimately God and the worship of God — when those things are no longer permitted to be affirmed, you lose any positive principle for genuine public life.”
— D. C. Schindler, author of The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism (New Polity Press, 2021)
Philosopher D. C. Schindler argues that — because of the nature of the incarnation — when one rejects reality, one is rejecting God. Rejecting the real — failing to recognizing and honor what is really the case — also means the loss of any true “public” gathered around a common good. In the pre-modern world, “the public” was understood as the life of the community, but with modernity, the individual shifts from being a member of a community to being the center of gravity in and of himself. This means that the public sphere became merely the place for the gathering of individuals. Liberalism sought to make way for these individuals to function together without any orientation to an explicit common good. But, as Schindler argues, without a common good, public life collapses in upon itself. ⇧
Kerry McCarthy
“The one thing I’m struck with most with Tallis in particular is his resilience. So many professional musicians in his situation quit music and did something else. They became teachers; they became clergy; they became theologians. A lot of them just died fairly young. But Tallis kept going and it’s almost a miraculous lifespan if you think about that.”
— Kerry McCarthy, author of Tallis (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Music historian Kerry McCarthy relates the shifting historical circumstances that surrounded the life of English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis. While the documentary evidence we have is very slim (only about 35 to 40 documents), McCarthy shares that what emerges clearly is a picture of Tallis’s resilience over the span of his half-century long career. Riding the tumultuous tides of political and musical changes in those years, Tallis constantly had to reinvent his musical style. And, McCarthy conveys, these layers of tumult, stylistic changes, and foreign emphases led to the music which still captivates and surprises us today. ⇧
Guests on Volume 155
• DONALD KRAYBILL on how the Amish "negotiate" with modernity as communities by making decisions about the uses of technology
• THADDEUS KOZINSKI on the dubious claim within liberalism that public life can be well-ordered by entirely neutral (non-transcendent) principles
• DAVID BENTLEY HART on how "two-tier Thomism" deviates from historic Christian understanding of the relationship between God and Creation
• NIGEL BIGGAR on recognizing problems with the notion of "natural rights," without denying the importance of rights understood as granted within social and political contexts
• RAVI SCOTT JAIN on reconfiguring science and the teaching of science within the framework of natural philosophy, natural history, and natural science
• JASON BAXTER on how C. S. Lewis’s imagination was shaped by texts from the Middle Ages
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Donald Kraybill
“My basic research question when I started this research with the Amish in the mid-80s to late-80s was, how is it possible for a tradition-laden group like the Amish who reject cars, reject electricity off the public grid, who reject high school, on and on — how is it possible for a group like that to be growing and thriving and flourishing in modern life, in modern society? They were and still are doubling every 20 years . . . And my answer was, well, they have found ways to negotiate with modernity: to accept certain things, to reject other things, and then to make a lot of compromises and then also to adapt — or as one Amish man said “Amishize” — equipment and make it fit into their way of life."
— Donald Kraybill, author of What the Amish Teach Us: Plain Living in a Busy World (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021)
Sociologist Donald Kraybill explains how the Amish have learned to “negotiate with modernity,” in his book What the Amish Teach Us: Plain Living in a Busy World. Kraybill has been writing about the Amish for decades. His curiosity was piqued initially by observing that Amish were flourishing — doubling every twenty years — despite the fact that they look like they are from the year 1900. His answer is that the Amish have found ways to dynamically reject and accept certain aspects of modernity as a community. Interestingly, the Amish origins do not contain a protest to technology. And, in fact, their origins include such modern ideas as voluntarism and separation of church and state (manifested in their rejection of the state’s demand for infant baptism). Kraybill also marvels at Amish ingenuity and innovation. In many ways, he observes, the Amish have a “culture of restraint” that is “spurring innovation.” ⇧
• • •
Thaddeus Kozinski
“As the idolatries become more and more insane and explicit, and when one realizes that substitute religions are kind of taking over the culture, one starts to see that, ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t supposed to happen in liberalism,’ and yet it is happening. And then the question is, ‘Why is it happening?' And the way I look at is, if politics and culture are not based on the real, and the real is known to us through tradition (and through the God-established tradition of Christianity) . . . if in some sense, all our actions (whether individual or communal, social, institutional or personal) are not somehow guided by that tradition in an integrated way, then some other comprehensive tradition — a substitute, a counterfeit — is going to crop up and emerge.”
— Thaddeus Kozinski, author of Modernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos (Angelico Press, 2019)
Thaddeus Kozinski argues that liberal order’s ideal of tradition-less neutrality is itself a tradition, in his book Modernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos. Kozinski, highly influenced by philosopher D. C. Schindler, explains how all the elements of a worldview exist “within a mythos and a logos that’s enculturated and integrated in a theology.” And, when they are not integrated within the real — what God has established in Christianity — these elements become disparate and “insane.” Ultimately, it’s “Christ or nothing.” And, as Kozinski states (referencing David Bentley Hart) “the nothing ends up portraying itself as a counterfeit architectonic religion.” ⇧
• • •
David Bentley Hart
“If there is, as I say, a certain porosity between the natural and supernatural, if the human . . . is invested already by its very nature with a divine vocation and a divine dignity and a predisposition to the good that’s intrinsic to our nature, then there are all sorts of realms where the law is non compos. But if in fact grace is extrinsic to the nature of the creature — which is the axiom that dominates this sect — then in fact, those who claim a divine warrant for governance can make the law absolute. There’s nothing in human nature itself that demands deference, that intrinsically possesses the dignity of created gods on the way to becoming one with God. Instead, we are just natural beings with an inherently natural end and if we are to be conduced to a higher destiny by an extrinsic grace, then that may take the form of an absolute legal power invested in a sort of throne and altar or a sacerdotal monarchical system and that’s . . . the form the new integralism takes.”
— David Bentley Hart, author of You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature
(Notre Dame Press, 2022)
In his book You are Gods: Nature and Supernature, David Bentley Hart argues that Biblical and Christian history flatly contradict the new integralist return to a two-tiered system of nature versus supernature. Hart believes that the impulse toward this metaphysical vision follows after the political vision: a desire to return to a non-existent medieval ideal where absolute power is manifested in “throne and altar or a sacerdotal monarchical system.” While we can all justly criticize modernity, Hart believes the new integralist critique of modern liberalism neglects the reality that the flaws of liberalism proceed out of the flaws of Christendom. Even the common dismissal of modern ideas of freedom as “voluntarist” is inadequate, Hart articulates. Because Enlightenment understandings of freedom proceed out of Renaissance humanism, modern ideas of freedom find their origin in an age that took seriously the god-like endowment of freedom of choice to those created in the image of God. ⇧
• • •
Nigel Biggar
“As a Christian, I don’t believe in a general right to liberty. I mean, if I’m a Hobbesian, then yes, we’re all at liberty to do whatever it takes to survive; if that means scratch each others’ eyes out, then we’re at liberty to do it. But, as a Christian, I believe we are born with responsibility and therefore we have room for choices, but we are born, not only with the liberty of making choices, we are born also into social obligations, which are, as it were, co-original. So there is no original, undefined liberty. . . . We may have a right to liberties of certain kinds in certain circumstances, but it is the abstraction that is the problem.”
— Nigel Biggar, author of What's Wrong with Rights? (Oxford University Press, 2020)
In his book, What’s Wrong with Rights?, theologian Nigel Biggar argues that the problem with rights talk today is its abstraction from context and from the process of moral deliberation. While Biggar does take issue with much of contemporary rights talk, he is also critical of many Christian thinkers’ carelessness in dismissing it altogether — not distinguishing between natural moral rights and positive legal rights. Some rights talk is legitimate, Biggar explains. Positive legal rights are often vitally important. On the other hand, he argues that there are no natural rights because the social institutions that strengthen and enforce what are normally considered natural rights are not always everywhere existent. Ultimately, Biggar argues that legal rights belong at the end of a process of moral conclusion — if they are introduced at the outset, they are too abstract to be helpful. ⇧
• • •
Ravi Scott Jain
“The best way to understand theology is the same kind of genetic/synthetic way that we advocate in the study of physics and biology — seeing the narrative of discovery. And part of it, too, is that the narrative of discovery is not merely discovery, it’s also a narrative of demonstration. Because in the liberal arts, there’s always this alternation between, 'You discovered something. That’s great!' But how do you get other people to believe your discoveries? You have to demonstrate it. And so that, when the students start learning not only to discover things, but also to demonstrate them to others, that’s also powerful and creates powerful habits of thought that cross all the disciplines.”
— Ravi Scott Jain, co-author of A New Natural Philosophy: Recovering a Natural Science and Christian Pedagogy (Classical Academic Press, 2021)
Science teacher Ravi Jain discusses natural philosophy, the “love of wisdom in the realm of nature,” as the overarching discipline in the sciences. In A New Natural Philosophy: Recovering a Natural Science and Christian Pedagogy, Jain and his co-authors, Robbie Andreason and Chris Hall, approach the sciences with a belief that “truth does not exclude mystery, but embraces it.” A posture of wonder as well as respect for mystery form the bedrock to approach science along the “narrative of discovery.” This “genetic/synthetic” pedagogy means a student comes to a subject by first understanding its context and the grappling that made the question emerge. Then, the process comes to fruition as the student demonstrates what they have discovered. In the end, this movement from discovery to demonstration creates habits and skills that cross all disciplines of learning. ⇧
• • •
Jason Baxter
“If you’ve understood something, you’ve realized it’s beautiful. And when you realize it’s beautiful (this is just good Thomism here), you reach out to grasp it. Your will desires it. You want to sort of bury it in your heart and in your veins, such that it becomes a part of you and it’s not . . . just a set of kilobytes of information in your brain. And I think that Lewis (even before the height of the age of information, what we live in, or what Deborah Lupton calls the ‘datafication of the self’) I think recognized this aspect of literature, but particularly pre-modern medieval literature, as its ability to be haptic, to have this sense of touch and taste and the palpable and then all the consequences of that extraordinary metaphor.”
— Jason Baxter, author of The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind (InterVarsity Press, 2022)
Scholar Jason Baxter explores the limitations of the modern imagination in his book The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind. C. S. Lewis marveled at the possibilities of literature — especially medieval literature — to communicate an atmosphere, a “weather of emotions.” Reading this literature enabled Lewis to become a “naturalized citizen of the Middle Ages,” and Baxter believes this aspect of Lewis can guide moderns to see and surpass the narrow boundaries of a “psychic paradigm controlled by scientific methodology.” Literature can influence the “deep structure of our thoughts,” Baxter explains. And this helps us to not turn back the clock but attend to the way that our daily lives have become so integrated to the machine. And, most importantly, we can learn that our deepest responses to beauty and goodness are not mere emotions but real knowledge that points to the eternal. ⇧
Guests on Volume 156
• KIMBELL KORNU on how and why theological concerns should not be prohibited within the practice of medicine
• PAUL TYSON on how the conventional definition of “science” makes metaphysical claims in the name of excluding metaphysical claims
• MARK NOLL on how the Bible shaped American history, and how American ideologies shaped the reading of the Bible
• DAVID NEY on how reading the Bible “figurally” opens us to its layers of meaning and to the transforming work it effects
• WILLIAM C. HACKETT on the relationships between philosophy and theology, and of both to the meaning embedded in myth
• MARIAN SCHWARTZ on the challenges and rewards of translating Eugene Vodolazkin, Leo Tolstoy, Alexsandr Solzshentsiyn, and others
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Kimbell Kornu
“[Maurice Merleau-Ponty] talks about lived experience being the base foundation upon which then scientific reflection can even occur, but modernity has inverted that. You know, the advent of early modern science and thereafter that science, somehow, is the standard by which we have to make sense of our lived experience (which is bonkers to me). But if you see that played out in medicine: where patients feel like they’re not being heard, they’re not understood, doctors don’t want to deal with suffering, they don’t want to deal with death. Because these are the actually deep animating questions that drive medicine in the first place. And yet medicine has forgotten its first love — because of its own epistemology.”
— Kimbell Kornu, MD, PhD, on the formation of a new school of medicine at Belmont University in Nashville, and on two published papers
While modern medical orthodoxy considers suffering the ultimate evil, physician and philosopher Kimbell Kornu, MD, PhD, argues that suffering has the potential to be generative. Though he doesn’t exalt suffering and believes that there is a need for pain relief, Kornu does hold that modern medicine has “forgotten its first love” by losing touch with its animating questions of suffering, death, and ultimate meaning. If the goal of modern medicine is a transhumanistic transcendence of suffering, Kornu states, the most efficient way to do this is to get rid of the sufferer. Those physicians who are not willing to go the route of euthanasia or eugenics need a metanarrative to ground the reality of suffering. For Christians, suffering has intrinsic meaning because Christ has suffered and “learned obedience through suffering” (Hebrews 5:8). Kornu argues that this is the metanarrative which enables the physician to provide truly compassionate care. ⇧
• • •
Paul Tyson
“The idea that science is not natural philosophy, it's just knowledge, is really an impossible fiction. And this is what [Michael] Polanyi is so good at: okay, it’s always personal knowledge. we always know in communities of knowers. The inner pole of understanding and the outer pole of reality always connect through the mediation of discourses of meaning. So, actually, there is no such thing as just knowledge. It’s all very well to sort of say that knowledge is only interested in facts and applications, but what you apply your knowledge for is always a philosophical or moral concern and a fact is only a fact as meaningful. So, the ways in which we persuade ourselves [that] we have boxes that separate science from religion and knowledge from philosophy are really disingenuous.”
— Paul Tyson, author of A Christian Theology of Science: Reimagining a Theological Vision of Natural Knowledge (Baker Academic, 2022)
As senior research fellow and co-coordinator of the After Science and Religion project at the University of Queensland, Paul Tyson objects to the categorization of science and religion as completely distinct entities in his book A Christian Theology of Science: Reimagining a Theological Vision of Natural Knowledge. The modern discrete categories are only a late invention, Tyson explains, resulting from coordinated effort by 19th-century scientific naturalists to secularize the universities and free scientific inquiry from any stultifying religious limitations. But, as Tyson argues, this causes all sorts of problems and is actually “disingenuous.” In the end, Tyson relates, the disciplines are intertwined: the theologian must be asking how to connect the natural world with theology, while the scientist must be asking about the meaning of the natural world and the morality of technologies. ⇧
• • •
Mark Noll
“The Methodist emphasis upon the Bible, the need to protect the Bible because it opens the doors of eternity for all and sundry, for ‘red and yellow, black and white,’ that message is really significant. And in my reading of the history, the Protestant groups that said, ‘Yes, we defend the Bible, but we’ve got to have the Bible if we’re going to have a social order,’ or ‘Yes, we defend the Bible, but we have to have the same liberty of interpreting the Bible as we won against the British,’ those voices are just simply not as influential. The Methodists multiply and multiply and multiply again. . . . There’s nothing in the 19th-century world like the rapid expanse of Methodism between 1790 and 1830 or 1840 in the United States, and that expanse is on the back of an allegiance to the Bible — it’s not entirely non-political — but an allegiance to the Bible that is primarily spiritual, without too many political trappings.”
— Mark Noll, author of America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794–1911 (Oxford University Press, 2022)
In America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794–1911, historian Mark Noll argues that the Bible held a unique preeminence in the years after the Revolutionary War into the 1830s and 40s. While the Bible was frequently invoked in the Colonial era as a rhetorical prop, it was really only a “reservoir of tropes;” it was not used as a foundation for reason. By contrast, in the early years of the 18th century, specifically as Americans responded to Thomas Paine’s devastating critique of the Bible in The Age of Reason, the Bible became the wellspring for argument and reason. This unique authority of the Scriptures held until the 1830s and 40s when the issue of slavery came to the forefront, and those both for and against passionately argued from the Scriptures for their position. While Noll doesn’t necessarily see this “rise and decline” of the Scriptures as a terrible thing for modern Christians, he suggests it “may have been worse for the country than for Bible believers.” ⇧
• • •
David Ney
“At its broadest, figural readers are interested in exploring and teasing out the connections that exist between different Scripture words. Figural readers refuse to atomize biblical texts and, in fact, they’re convinced that the meaning and specifically, the divine meaning of words, can only be understood in light of the whole canon of Scripture. Ultimately, the promise of figural reading is being able to see the world through the lens of Scripture; and therefore, somehow, if only in an attenuated, impartial way, through the eyes of God himself.”
— David Ney, co-author of All Thy Lights Combine: Figural Reading in the Anglican Tradition (Lexham Press, 2022)
Church historian David Ney explains how the figural reading of Scripture promises to help readers inhabit the Scriptures and see the world through the lens of Scripture. Ney is the co-editor of All Thy Lights Combine: Figural Reading in the Anglican Tradition, which presents case studies through church history of those who exemplify figural reading. Figural reading contrasts with a grammatical-historical method because it refuses to atomize the text. Nonetheless, it does not endorse making the text into abstractions so that Scripture can become a free-for-all of meaning. Instead, figural reading means taking seriously the Scripture words for individual objects, recognizing, as Ney states, “There is a divine meaning attached to each object in the Scriptures and the only way we can similarly attach a divine meaning to the objects we encounter every day is to inhabit the Scriptures.” ⇧
• • •
William C. Hackett
“Narrative intelligence — storytelling — is older than theoretical intelligence. . . . Theoretical intelligence emerges out of the milieu of mythic intelligence. That’s one indication that storytelling — narrative understanding — is not only the condition of the emergence of theoretical intelligence but also its the permanent condition for theoretical intelligence. That means that all theory and the formulation of concepts based on the perception of fundamental distinctions in the world (so we’re talking about what philosophy is there) is only possible within a framework of narrative understanding.”
—William C. Hackett, Author of Philosophy in Word and Name: Myth, Wisdom, Apocalypse (Angelico Press, 2020)
Philosopher William C. Hackett reflects on the integral relationship between narrative and theoretical intelligence in his book Philosophy in Word & Name: Myth, Wisdom, and Apocalypse. In the High Middle Ages, theology and philosophy were deliberately divided in the universities by faculty consensus. Hackett sees this encapsulating moment as “framing the history of modernity itself.” Because modernity prioritizes theoretical intelligence above mythic or metaphorical intelligence, then myth, wisdom, and apocalypse become fragmented. But Hackett argues that they are each integral and that they must not supplant each other. Ultimately, Hackett says, “myth never goes away” and in some way apocalypse itself includes a “recovery” of myth and wisdom. ⇧
• • •
Marian Schwartz
“What it really comes down to in translating is being so intimate with the language that you understand what is standard and what deviates from the standard and why it does and how it does and what the implications of that are. So if something is completely standard and unmarked in any way, then it has to be translated by something unmarked. And obviously, you’re looking at register; you’re looking at types of vocabulary; you’re looking at approaches to word formation.”
— Marian Schwartz, translator of Eugene Vodolazkin’s Brisbane: A Novel (Plough Publishing House, 2022)
Translator Marian Schwartz discusses intricacies and fashions in the translation world as well as her recent work on Eugene Vodolazkin’s Brisbane: A Novel. Schwartz explains that the fundamental part of translation is an intimacy with the language that attends to what is standard and what deviates. The role of the translator is to be able to artfully mark what is non-standard. Schwartz draws attention to matters of syntax that most readers overlook (for example, that “said Mark” is word order from a century ago and all modern books would use “Mark said”). Since, in a translation, one will always be reading both the original and the translator, ultimately, Schwartz states, “There is no translation that is not interpretation.” ⇧
Guests on Volume 157
• ALLAN C. CARLSON on early 20th-century American political projects that supported strong family life
• MATTHEW STEWART on how the novels of Wallace Stegner explored the dilemmas of community in modern America
• STEVEN KNEPPER on how philosopher William Desmond's thought recovers a metaphysics of wonder
• HOLLY ORDWAY on the "meaning-making" power of great literature and its role in evangelism
• NORM KLASSEN on the challenges to belief in rationality in modern literary theory
• NORMAN WIRZBA on how a recognition of our "meshwork" lives encourages spiritual practices with an agrarian slant
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Allan C. Carlson
When I was doing the work on this book, I went . . . to do a chapter on family policy and the New Deal. And, the first thing that struck me –astonishingly – was how uniformly the new feminist historians of the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s despised the New Deal, despised Eleanor Roosevelt, despised Franklin Roosevelt, despised the maternalist campaign. Not what I would have expected because again, ‘The New Deal is the great project of a liberal, left wing America. It’s socialism and so on.’ Aren’t feminists in favor of the New Deal? Well, they were not. And it was because the maternalists, their foes, had gained control of the levers of power. . . and virtually every domestic policy adopted by the Franklin Roosevelt administration in the 1930s and early 1940s, every one assumed the maternalist family vision.
Allan C. Carlson, author of The American Way: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity (Second edition, Canon Press, 2022)
Historian Allan Carlson discusses how pigeonholing pro-family policy as left or right is counterproductive, both historically and in the present. In his recently reissued book, The American Way: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity, Carlson relates the history of the maternalist movement, a prime example to muddle “left” or “right.” This movement grew out of the vision and work of social reform pioneer Jane Addams. In her work to help the immigrants of Chicago, Addams nurtured deep suspicion of industrial policy, setting up various efforts in order to “preserve ancestral ties within the new industrial order.” She advocated for public policy (such as a family wage) to support women specifically in their unique roles as wives and mothers, and the maternalists followed in Addams’s steps.The feminists of that time set themselves up as foes to the maternalists. In fact, the feminist National Women’s Party was funded by industrial capitalists who abhorred the idea of a family wage. Surprisingly — given today’s political climate — the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt was hated by the “liberals” of that day and entirely indebted to the lobbying of the maternalist movement. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Stewart
“One of the things that was interesting to me, too, about his California novels is that he has these kind of jokes about the rebels always actually being pretty conformist in their rebellion. Their rebellions kind of have their own shared paths. . . But, [Stegner] wanted to be part of something bigger than himself. It struck me as I was working on the book, the idea of the rolling stone… that gathers no moss: that three major icons of the 20th century – Rolling Stone magazine, Rolling Stones band, and the Bob Dylan song – it’s just really central to our whole mythology in the 20th century. He actually said, you know, ‘I wanted some attics in my life.’ He didn’t know the names of three of his grandparents, so he had no past whatsoever and he recognized that that’s what so many Americans were chasing after, it’s ‘what I have,’ but it’s not at all satisfying to have no past and no ancestry.”
Matthew Stewart, author of The Most Beautiful Place on Earth: Wallace Stegner in California (The University of Utah Press, 2022)
Author Matthew D. Stewart discusses the placemaking tragedy of regionalist writer Wallace Stegner in his book The Most Beautiful Place on Earth: Wallace Stegner in California. Stegner described two American character types: the “boomer” and the “sticker.” The boomer creates American boomtowns and never sets down roots, while the “sticker” loves the place that they have made and stays there. Stewart explains that Stegner writes wistfully of these types because his own father was a “boomer” and Stegner longed to be of a family of “stickers,” a family who had attics of multigenerational accumulation. Stegner ultimately set down his roots in Palo Alto, California – a profoundly ironic choice because the place where he chose to stick became the ultimate boomtown: Silicon Valley. Stewart analyzes Stegner’s ambivalence to his chosen place in his California novels (All the Little Live Things, The Spectator Bird, and Angle of Repose). Tragically, as Stewart states, “homemaking was no easy task. . . . What Stegner wanted from his place was not possible to recreate on his own.” ⇧
• • •
Steven Knepper
“In experiences of wonder, you’re struck by wonder. . . It’s not something you decide to do. It’s not something that you can force even. You know, you can cultivate openness to wonder, but in the end, wonder depends on being receptive to something that strikes you, being open to it. So, Desmond doesn’t discount willing. He says that humans are both receptive, porous creatures (He likes the word porous to describe this sense of receptivity), but we’re also willing creatures as well. And there’s a way in which those two things shouldn’t be just sort of posed against each other. They work together . . . To overemphasize just the willing, is not to be able to understand many many things in just our daily existence, broadly: from a great athlete, or the work of a craftsman, to the experience of wonder or the experience of beauty, even just sort of navigating your daily life. You have to have a combination of receptivity and openness and action.”
— Steven Knepper, author of Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond (State University of New York Press, 2022)
Professor Steven Knepper describes why the work of philosopher William Desmond has dramatically formed his understanding of aesthetics and theology. In his book Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond, Knepper gives both an orientation to the demanding philosophy of Desmond as well as an application in literature. As Knepper explains, four themes are especially prominent in Desmond’s work: wonder, receptivity, abundance, and affirmation. Knepper centers on the theme of wonder, explaining how in Desmond’s account, there are modes of wonder: astonishment (which is primarily affirmative), perplexity (which can be unsettling and even negative), and curiosity (which is not existential, but primarily looks at how things work). Desmond doesn’t see these modes as oppositional. Even curiosity, while it can become just a preoccupation on a surface level, is fundamentally an openness to the intelligibility of existence which leads back to wonder at the deeper mystery of being. ⇧
• • •
Holly Ordway
“[There is a] distrust of stories in general in some sense, because stories are incarnations of ideas. You have particular characters in a particular place and setting. It’s not pure abstract idea. And so that’s why you care about them . . . And, in one sense there is a sense of the power of narrative, but also, I think, a fear or distrust of it, because it gets us involved with this messy business of givenness and that makes us uncomfortable. But of course, that is a discomfort that comes from rubbing up against the fundamental, incarnate, created, given nature of reality. And so, that’s a good reason, I think, to grab onto storytelling and say, ‘Well, let’s use this.”
— Holly Ordway, author of Tales of Truth: A Guide to Sharing the Gospel through Literature (Word on Fire Institute, 2022)
Professor Holly Ordway is convinced that discussing literature is an exemplary way for modern secular people to learn how to attach meaning to Christian concepts.. In her book, Tales of Truth: A Guide to Sharing the Gospel through Literature, Ordway explains that too often we can talk of abstract ideas like “truth, goodness, and beauty” and unbelievers have no way of connecting those concepts to reality. The way to make meaning of those concepts is through imagination, as Ordway argues (following C. S. Lewis). Until the imagination can supply an image for a concept, the reason has no materials with which to work. As Ordway observes, since stories are fundamentally the incarnation of ideas, they offer the imagination the materials it needs to make meaning and can therefore, make the Gospel meaningful to modern people. ⇧
• • •
Norm Klassen
“I want to give them a sense . . . [that] we have to respect the deep critique of what passes for rationality, especially since the Enlightenment, especially in the way that we embrace science and economic thinking. There’s something really important going on here. Really valuable. But, can we affirm rationality as one of God’s gifts to us? Not the only gift, and not to be unaccompanied by faith, or love (in the way that Augustine especially will talk about love) but can we acknowledge that there is something more here that needs to be accessed and talked about and thought about. . . . I see this as kind of a work of pre-evangelism.”
— Norm Klassen, author of Rationality Is . . . The Essence of Literary Theory (Cascade Books, 2022)
English professor Norm Klassen argues that while literary theory makes a necessary and important critique of Enlightenment rationality, it means to undercut the validity of reason itself. In his book, Rationality Is . . . The Essence of Literary Theory, Klassen unpacks the goals of Feminist theory, Critical Race theory, and Freudian Psychoanalysis. Klassen believes that many English professors who are teaching theory do not really know the philosophy and metaphysics behind it; they do not understand the radical relativization of meaning. Klassen is not defending a modernist rationality; instead, he believes that a theology of participation, following especially after the insights of Paul Ricoeur, can account both for theory’s valid critiques of rationality, but also the reality that rationality participates in the Logos. Klassen ultimately believes that Christ is the “Word behind the inner word” that “underwrites the the confidence we have that we can understand reality.” ⇧
• • •
Norman Wirzba
“Apart from an understanding and appreciation for soil, for the land, we will be at odds with everything else that we touch. And this is important to stress because when we talk about nurturing the soil that then nurtures the plants that nurture the animals that nurture us and so forth, nurturing the soil is bedrock insofar as it helps us appreciate how we are soil-birthed, soil-nurtured kinds of beings. That we can’t think about our world as just a production platform or a stage upon which we do the varying and highly interesting things that human beings might do. No, we have to make our decisions about social practices, economic practices, political priorities with the health of the land first. Because when the land is neglected, everything that depends upon it will also suffer.”
— Norman Wirzba, author of Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022)
Theologian Norman Wirzba argues that God is an agrarian and that therefore, Christian ascetic practices must be deeply agrarian. In his book, Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land, Wirzba explains that his argument is not a back-to-the-land enterprise or a nostalgic ode to the way things used to be. To be an agrarian is not a matter of being rural or urban, instead, he defines, it’s “for people to understand that we have to nurture the land that nurtures us.” The skills that are implicit to nurturing and cultivating must shape our spiritual practices. Christian spirituality is not merely about getting our cognitive affairs in order, but it’s about being formed by the kind of bodily practices that we understand through the life of our embodied Lord. ⇧
Guests on Volume 158
• DAVID SETRAN on how American Christians thought about being good parents in the colonial period and in the nineteenth century
• VIGEN GUROIAN on how fairy stories serve to nurture healthy moral imaginations in children
• MICHAEL DOMINIC TAYLOR on developing an adequate metaphysical framework for understanding the natural world
• THOMAS PFAU on how images reveal to us invisible, numinous realities
• JASON PAONE on the unknown body of biblical commentary by Thomas Aquinas
• MATTHEW LEVERING on why the virtues rather than conscience should be recognized as the heart of Christian moral life
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
David Setran
“And by the nineteenth century . . . [the home] is the private place of the family. The home is the place in which I find my identity, in which I build a legacy — in which I see the importance of my children and my grandchildren in that way — and certainly lose a little bit of a sense of even the larger Church being a significant player in the raising of children. . . . It is our family blood, you know, not the blood of Christ, that becomes the most central identifying factor . . . which can also lead to a kind of idolatry of the family.”
David P. Setran, author of Christian Parenting: Wisdom and Perspectives from American History (Eerdmans, 2022)
David Setran traces changes in thinking by American parents about nurturing their children in the faith. He looks specifically at the shift between American Colonial households and mid-nineteenth century families. In the Colonial period, parents saw themselves as evangelists and priests, disciplining their children for salvation through worship and catechism. By the mid-nineteenth century, the family became much more focused on creating a nurturing environment, hoping to raise children in the faith by providing a loving home. As a consequence of this shift in emphasis, the home becomes a self-contained private space, the Church begins to lose its role in the formation of children, and household devotional activities become more about establishing close family ties and less about the worship of God. Ultimately, Setran argues, this shift works towards an idolization of the family, where familial blood usurps the blood of Christ. ⇧
Vigen Guroian
“I think the reason why [children] enjoy fairy tales and certain kinds of fantasy literature is not just because they’re interested in the protagonist, the hero or heroine — and how that hero or heroine overcomes dark forces and evil — but because these stories tend to be very concrete. And they seem to have an instinct built in us by the Lord, I think, that it is in the concrete that you find symbols and signs, and they are looking for that.”
Vigen Guroian, author of Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Vigen Guroian discusses the nature and narrative value of classic fairy tales. Guroian reflects on the power of fairy tales as creators of identity for young children. He claims that children have a great narrative sense and want to enter the stories for themselves by hearing them over and over again. Guroian critiques many modern adaptations of fairy tales for destroying their narrative coherence and power, reducing the stories to a detachable idea or moral. Guroian lists examples of fairy tales that embody both great virtue and narrative value, such as John Ruskin’s “The King of the Golden River,” the Grimm Brothers’ original “Cinderella,” and the theologically sacramental tales of George MacDonald. ⇧
Michael Dominic Taylor
“Metaphysics is a difficult term. On the one hand, you’ve got all sorts of eclectic and obscurantist ideas about what metaphysics is . . . but I still insist on using the term metaphysics because I do think it deserves a retrieval of its original meaning which is simply a reference to our Greek heritage and the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. . . . And metaphysics as part of philosophy has always been a question of how to live well. So that idea that metaphysics is somehow abstract or obtuse or gets away from what’s most real couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Michael Dominc Taylor, author of The Foundations of Nature: Metaphysics of Gift for an Integral Ecological Ethic (Cascade Books, 2020)
Michael Dominic Taylor argues that we can only orient ourselves within and toward the natural world by recovering the classical understanding of metaphysics, which, far from being obscure and abstract, is a pursuit of wisdom about how to live well. He explains that every person holds their own metaphysical presuppositions about reality and its functions. In modernity, what is regarded as “real”reality is the pure product of empirical, quantitative science, and thus functions mechanistically. Humans, as a part of nature, are similarly atomically structured and are therefore isolated and self-serving, with personal autonomy as their highest goal. Taylor challenges this selfish, purposeless metaphysics with the sacrificial, self-giving love of Christ. He asserts that this is aided by reclaiming wonder as a positive disposition, one that orients us towards the transcendent reality that lies beyond our own empirical faculties, the reality that gives us purpose and life. ⇧
Thomas Pfau
“Plato ultimately realizes, especially in the Sophist, that the idea of truth that is utterly self-contained — a kind of kernel or cocoon that is in no way susceptible [to] any kind of interpretation — would ultimately cause philosophy to grind to a halt. In the end, all truth must be . . . mediated in some form. And this is where images actually become quite crucial.”
Thomas Pfau, author of Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022)
Thomas Pfau asserts that images are a necessary and uniquely gifted means of realizing truth in creation. Plato’s awareness that all truth must be realized through mediation provides the foundation for refuting iconoclasm: while not coinciding with the prototype it depicts, an image nonetheless fulfills it, after the model of Christ's incarnation. In this way, the visible image must be an anticipation of the divine; otherwise visible creation becomes the antithesis of divine truth, putting creation at odds with God. Pfau describes how images do not merely factually render their meaning, but instead, like truth, always reveal more than could have been predicted — a new facet of the reality of the prototype. Images, then, are harbingers of truth, sacramentally calling us to participate in their beauty and to know, differently now than before, what it is they manifest. ⇧
Jason Paone
“[Aquinas] thought that, of all the gospels, John’s gospel peers deepest into the mysteries of Christ’s divine nature. And that’s sort of at the center of his understanding of what scripture does and what scripture reveals. It reveals God and God’s saving work in the world. And Christ is sort of the epicenter of God and God’s saving work in the world. And specifically, Christ as the son of God — Christ as divine. [Aquinas] says the gospel of John is most attentive to Christ’s divine nature. Whereas the other three gospels are symbolized by terrestrial animals — a man, a bull calf, and a lion — John is symbolized by an eagle because he flies highest in peering into the divine nature of Christ.”
Jason Paone, editor of Thomas Aquinas, Selected Commentaries on the New Testament (Word on Fire Academic, 2022)
Jason Paone discusses the insights readers can obtain from reading St. Thomas’s biblical commentaries. Paone explains how many scholars overlook St. Thomas's commentaries as they study his philosophical and theological works and appropriate his wisdom in the interest of confronting aspects of modern thought. But Paone argues that St. Thomas’s Summae are best understood in light of his spiritually rich biblical exegesis. Paone focuses especially on St. Thomas’s love of the Gospel of John, which he views as a microcosm of all the Gospels — portraying Christ as the source of grace (as in the New Testament collectively), the power of Christ’s grace (emphasized in Paul’s epistles), and the effect of that grace (summarized in Revelation). Paone explains how reading St. Thomas’s commentaries can give readers a feel for the saint’s personality, rhetorical flair, and Christocentric vision that underlie all his work. ⇧
Matthew Levering
“Over the past decade, I’ve noticed that, in the popular sphere, at least, there seems to be less and less appeal to conscience. Conscience itself seems to be fading itself a little bit. Even in the theological realm . . . sometimes you find people avoiding the word conscience and it’s just kind of like, ‘do your own thing.’ . . . It’s really becoming ‘do your own thing’ in an open way, whereas before they could camouflage it a little bit with the word conscience, but now they might just talk about discernment, or experience, or the arc of history, or something else.”
Matthew Levering, author of The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology (Eerdmans, 2021)
Matthew Levering describes how pre-Vatican II moral manuals resulted in readers pushing their freedoms to the limit of law, fostering a minimalist morality. Levering explains that this approach to the moral life ignores the glorious, charitable life in Christ, and does so largely because it has lost a proper view of the conscience. For Levering, the conscience delivers Divine Law, which must subsequently be enacted by a charitable prudence. In this way, conscience is not mere individual discernment, but is the Law to be followed in order to grow in virtue. This view of conscience also rebuffs the Existentialist movement toward personal authenticity. Levering argues that conscience centers the individual on Christ, not one’s own personal desires or feelings, and drives humans towards their proper end, rather than sanction their worldly whims. ⇧
Guests on Volume 159
• KIRK FARNEY on the pioneering broadcasting ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier
• ANDREW WILLARD JONES on how the fact of the Incarnation affects political realities
• JAMES L. NOLAN, JR. on the moral dynamics of the Manhattan Project
• ANDREW KAETHLER on the theology of personhood in Alexander Schmemann and Joseph Ratzinger
• PETER RAMEY on the Christian imagination in Beowulf
• KATHRYN WEHR on Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Man Born to Be King
Guests on Volume 160
• JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON on engaging an unfinished novel by Flannery O’Connor
• GIL BAILIE on how modern nihilism arises because the essentially religious nature of human being is ignored
• KYLE HUGHES on lessons from the Patristics about spiritual formation in the classroom
• D. C. SCHINDLER on why fundamental questions about the human and the good cannot be bracketed from politics
• PAUL TYSON on philosopher William Desmond’s ideas on knowledge, nature, and wonder
• HOLLY ORDWAY on the religious life of J. R. R. Tolkien
Guests on Volume 161
• ANDREW WILSON on the post-Christian West and the fruits of Christendom
• KYLE EDWARD WILLIAMS on the history of the corporation and implications of corporate "personhood"
• ANDREW SPENCER on a proper understanding of the relationship between humans and Creation
• LANDON LOFTIN on Owen Barfield and the evolution of consciousness
• ESTHER LIGHTCAP MEEK on generative encounters with reality
• ANDREW DAVISON on the work of E. L. Mascall
Guests on Volume 20
• ELIZABETH FOX-GENOVESE on the benefits of single-sex education, and the confusion of "elite" feminism
• ROBERT D. RICHARDSON, JR., on why the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson continues to attract certain religious seekers
• ROGER LUNDIN on Emerson's assertion of alternatives to Christianity, and how they have seeped under the American cultural skin
• WILFRED MCCLAY on individualism and collectivism in American society
• ANDREW A. TADIE on learning to love and learn from G. K. Chesterton
• ROBERT JENSON on why the life of the mind matters to the Church, and how it should take shape in the world
• TED PRESCOTT on why artists have been attracted to abstraction, and what viewers should look for in abstract art
• TED LIBBEY on Haydn's The Creation
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
On January 17, 1996, the Supreme Court heard arguments in United States v. the Commonwealth of Virginia. At stake in the case was the question of whether or not the Virginia Military Institute was guilty of violating federal regulations on gender discrimination by maintaining its male-only admission policy. One of the expert witnesses on behalf of the Citadel and Virginia Military Institute was Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, professor of Humanities and History at Emory University. Her 1991 book, Feminism without Illusions, challenges many of the inconsistencies and blind spots of contemporary feminism. A graduate of an all-women's college, she is an ardent advocate of single-sex education for men and women.
• • •
Robert D. Richardson, Jr.
The figure of the sage-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson is a commanding presence in American culture. The answers he sketched out to questions of meaning, society, and individual identity continue to inform the American way of life. Those who worry that the nineteenth century figure inaugurated an unprecedented spirit of relativism and self-centeredness remember that it was Emerson who first uttered the maxim, "Do your own thing." Robert Richardson published a masterful study of Emerson's life, Emerson: The Mind on Fire. It is an intellectual biography which examines the way Emerson's ideas germinated, took root, and manifested themselves in his life.
• • •
Roger Lundin
Roger Lundin is a professor of English at Wheaton College, a cultural historian, and the author of The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World. One of the chapters in his book looks at the influence of Emerson's ideas on contemporary literary theory and on society at large. Lundin presents an audio essay, a musing on why Emerson's influence lingers in American culture. Specifically, he examines Emerson's assertion of alternatives to Christianity and how they have been adopted by the American people.
• • •
Wilfred McClay
American culture has long struggled with the paradox of radical individualism coexisting with a tendency to institutionalization and bland conformism. The spirit of the 1960s and the spirit of the 1950s are both essentially American. Historian Wilfred McClay's book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America traces the history of the vacillating fortunes of these two tendencies. On the one hand, the individualism of Emerson, Andrew Jackson, Charles Finney, and the frontier; on the other, the growing consolidation of power in national government and of experience in national culture. His book tells the story of a society that does not know quite what to make of authority.
• • •
Andrew Tadie
One of the most quoted and quotable writers on matters of society and culture is G. K. Chesterton. Dr. Andrew Tadie teaches English at Seattle University and has served as co-editor of two collections of essays concerning Chesterton, the more recent entitled Permanent Things. Tadie talks about his own difficulties with Chesterton as a young man and the way he has attempted to make Chesterton accessible for his students. He gives some critique of The Napoleon of Notting Hill, one of Chesterton's works of fiction, and examines its message about community and neighborhoods.
• • •
Robert Jenson
Dr. Robert Jenson is a professor of religion at St. Olaf College, and his essay, "On the Renewing of the Mind: Reflections on the Calling of Christian Intellectuals," is part of a new anthology of short pieces called Essays in Theology of Culture. Dr. Jenson suggests that the crisis of modern higher education cannot be explained in terms of funding, politicization, or overspecialization but that the modern university has forgotten from where it came. The present-day university upholds the Enlightenment vision of individual and autonomous reason rather than the original vision of thinkers in communion and conversation.
• • •
Ted Prescott
Art critic Ted Prescott offers a primer for understanding abstract art. For many people, abstract painting and sculpture is at best a highly specialized and technical interest, and at worst a joke. If, however, one is interested in comprehending the dynamics of twentieth-century culture, it is imperative to have some understanding of the rise of abstraction-how ideas about abstraction have evolved and how numerous social and cultural forces outside the art world influence its development.
• • •
Ted Libbey
The Creation, written by Haydn in 1796, is a compilation of settings from Genesis, the Psalms, and Milton's Paradise Lost. Much historical evidence exists to suggest that Haydn considered this project one of the most meaningful efforts of his career. The musical style is reminiscent of Handel's oratorios. Haydn had heard a lot of Handel during a visit to London in 1791 and had been very impressed. In The Creation, Haydn uses a great deal of dramatic orchestral coloring to evoke the feeling of various events in the narrative. Music critic Ted Libbey points out that in addition to this obvious musical expression, Haydn used a number of musical devices to make up for not having sets, scenery, or stage action.
Guests on Volume 40
• JOSEPH EPSTEIN on writing essays and education through magazines
• JOHN GRAY on the cultural contradictions of global capitalism
• KENNETH R. CRAYCRAFT, JR. on why the First Amendment doesn't really protect Christian liberty
• WILLIAM T. PIZZI on Trials without Truth: Why Our System of Criminal Trials Has Become an Expensive Failure and What We Need to Do to Rebuild It
• PAMELA WALKER LAIRD on how nineteenth-century advertising promoted progress
• ALBERT BORGMANN on how technology disengages us from experiencing reality
• NEAL STEPHENSON on the "eureka" moments with codes and computers
• ALAN JACOBS on why Harry Potter's magic shouldn't trouble Christians
Joseph Epstein, essayist and editor, speaks about the art of writing. Epstein briefly tells of finding the form of the essay while in college while reading the intellectual magazines. He comments on the role of editors in the writing process. He criticizes writing on the Internet for its lack of style and notes the difference between writing on the computer versus writing for the computer. The interview concludes with comments on the educational value of magazines and the difference between editor and writer-driven composition in magazines.
John Gray, author of False Dawn, argues that the globalization of the world economies according to the model of free market capitalism will have unseen and unfavorable effects on the social and political orders of the world's various nation-states. Gray argues that free markets depend on the laws and habits of a civil society; however, the relationship is parasitic because the demands of the free market deplete the foundation of those laws and habits. The demands of the free market should be tempered and understood in order to restrain this depletion. Gray fears that if cultural restraints do not curtail free market economic ideals, nations will react with large scale protectionism.
Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr., author of The American Myth of Religious Freedom, discusses the four myths of American religious freedom which he sees in the culture. One of his fundamental beliefs is that a theologically rich definition of religious liberty is at odds with the American definition of religious liberty. During the interview he details the myths which are so commonly held by American Christians and analyzes their fallacies.
William T. Pizzi comments on the defects in America's legal system. He postulates that many of the problems of the system come from values which the system embodies: a desire for procedure and a fixation on the rules. Pizzi argues that the many rules get in the way of delivering justice. The question that exposes the flaws in the system is "What is the object of the system?" It is not a game nor an exhibition of brilliance but rather a search for the truth. The complications of litigation obfuscate the search for truth. The rich can manipulate the system, while the poor often plea-bargain to avoid the cost of a trial. Pizzi compares the American system with others regarding the role of lawyers. Other systems do not closely identify a lawyer with his client. Thus, the defendant is more active and the trial more spontaneous and interactive.
Pamela Walker Laird, author of Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing, speaks about the theme of progress in advertising in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ads in this age were a toast to the progress that producers had made. Thus, ads featured the wonders of factories running on electricity or a factory owner in his finely furnished home. For consumers who were enthusiastic about the fine products produced by progressive technology, products from a modern factory, or that arrived on new transportation technologies, had a sacramental nature that could link them with progress. Laird explains that ads reflect, even now, the values of their creators, who were originally the advertisers themselves, before advertising agents intervened in the process. Advertisers portrayed life as easier, more wholesome, and more prestigious if only consumers possessed the correct and progressive new products.
Albert Borgmann, most recently author of Holding onto Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, speaks briefly about the history of technology and the ephemeral rewards new technology brings. Borgmann notes that Pre-modern technology required people with skill to produce a product where modern technology requires skill only for its construction not its use. Thus, in pre-modern times music required skilled musicians whereas now it only requires the flip of a switch. Borgmann gives three reasons for the promise of greater information and says that the combination of these accounts for our disappointment. He also dismisses the techno-utopia proposed by many and concludes that technology tends to detach people from a true experience of life.
Neal Stephenson, author of Cryptonomicon, talks about the context of his novel: the subculture of those who work to "crack" computer codes. Often, those who crack these codes have a feeling that they have touched something deeper than the problem. At times, the solutions come to the thinkers in an almost intuitive way. Thus, many often have a platonic sense that they are discovering the nature of things.
Alan Jacobs interprets the magic aspect of the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling. Jacob argues that framing the magic in these children's novels in the believable, coherent, yet alternative world of the novel should calm the fears of those concerned about their children reading about wizards and magic. In this world, magic is not innately evil but, like technology in ours, must be judged by the end to which it is put to use.
Guests on Volume 51
- NIGEL CAMERON on the challenges of bioethics and how Christians ignore them
- DAVID BLANKENHORN on the public meaning of marriage and the private sector and the family
- ROBERT WUTHNOW on creativity and faith
- MORTIMER ADLER on philosophical theism and How to Think about God
- ROGER LUNDIN on the vision of William Blake
- DANA GIOIA on the place of poetry and the way words work
- MARY MIDGLEY on the ways science explains reality
- TED LIBBEY on the life and music of Edmund Rubbra
Guests 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, on theologian Thomas F. Torrance's understanding of the Incarnation; R. A. Herrera, on how the Christian view of Creation and Incarnation shapes an understanding of history; Margaret Visser, on learning to recognize the deep meaning in the design of Christian churches; and Joseph Pearce, on Tolkien's other writings and on his view of myth and story.
"Reform tends to be something that brings Islam back to its roots, and creates a movement that's even more antithetical to Western society in its secular form, as we know it now. It's often been said--going back to the issue of tolerance--that Islam in its early centuries was very tolerant. You often hear it said it was more tolerant than the Christianity of the time was. But what it was tolerant of was a Medieval and Ancient form of Christianity."
— Lawrence Adams
Political philosopher Lawrence Adams discusses why some strains of Islam are threatened by the concept of a secular "New World Order." The Islamic worldview divides the world into places where Islam is practiced and places where it is not practiced. These are two distinct realms which ought not be conflated. Western states, however, seek homogenization, mixing religious and non-religious souls in pluralistic, secular communities. This is deeply offensive to many Islamists who do not share the West's understandings of tolerance and pluralism.
"Longfellow is not simply part of American literature, he's part of American history."
— Dana Gioia
Poet and critic Dana Gioia explains why Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) is one of the three great American poets. He was one of the first to understand that accounts of American nationality had to recognize the country's "extraordinary diversity" in order to be truly representative of the nation. He practiced what he believed and wrote about French Canadian Catholics in the Midwest, early British Puritans in New England, and Native Americans before the "white man" settled in North America. He was a master at developing atmosphere in his works and was very popular even in his own lifetime; his poetry appealed to readers across every age, social class, and region in the United States. Gioia says, "He . . . Was an extraordinarily sophisticated intellectual poet, but his gift was to take all of that learning and wear it lightly . . . And it's that combination . . . Of profound intelligence and the common touch that was Longfellow's calling card."
"If [the] triune God is not a solitary God, but a being in communion . . . And if in the Incarnation Christ assumes our broken humanity and restores it to union and communion to God, than we have to think of our humanity as radically relational. We can't be fully human without being in relationships, with God and one another."
— Elmer Colyer
Professor Elmer Colyer discusses Thomas F. Torrance's doctrine of the Incarnation and how it could influence the disorder found in contemporary culture. Colyer is author of How to Read T. F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian and Scientific Theology. Contemporary culture does not fully appreciate what it means to be human; Torrance understands the Incarnation as an indication of how greatly God appreciates humanity. When Christ became incarnate he assumed humanity in its brokenness and alienation from God, restoring humanity to full communion with God. Colyer explains the importance of this reality for contemporary culture, noting particularly that humanity is made for fellowship with God and one another.
"Once the world is created, then the philosophy of history becomes a possibility."
— R. A. Herrera
Philosopher R. A. Herrera explains why a linear view of history is such an important Judeo-Christian legacy for the West. Herrera is author of Reasons for Our Rhymes: An Inquiry into the Philosophy of History. While the Greeks had "wonderful philosophers and historians," history had no sense or meaning for them because they had nothing by which to order it; it was merely one cycle following another. The Judeo-Christian notion of Creation, of history as a story with a beginning and end, established an order for history while enabling an understanding of its meaning.
"We think of ourselves as so rich, but in many ways we're very, very, very poor. And I think we should reclaim the riches that are lying there waiting to be looked at in everyday life."
— Margaret Visser
In her book The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church, writer Margaret Visser asks questions of a small church in Rome in order to discover the story it tells. Visser explains that church buildings sustain memory and meaning and have stories to tell. The memories, meaning, and stories can be discerned by attending to how the buildings are put together. Her book is an example of what it means to attend to the "plot" of a church, discovering meaning in what appears to be "banal and trivial." Visser explains how her work considers and refutes modernity's insistence that there is no meaning in matter.
"It's paradoxical, but really myth--at least good myth, in the way that The Lord of the Rings is good myth-- can be more realistic than a factually based novel."
— Joseph Pearce
Biographer Joseph Pearce discusses the paradoxical nature of myth and what J. R. R. Tolkien believed about human creativity. Pearce, author of Tolkien: Man and Myth, explains that myth deals with realistic issues (theological, ethical, or philosophical, for example) in a setting that is not realistic. The advantage of mythology, he says, is that one can get to the core of truth without having the whole message become "foggy with fact." Pearce also names some of the works in which Tolkien articulated why humanity is compelled to create and to tell stories. As images of The Creator and Storyteller, people can do no less.
On this CD bonus track, Dana Gioia talks about 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.
Guests on Volume 66: Leon Kass, on how various biotechnologies promise to fulfill certain legitimate human desires in illegitimate ways, and on how new technologies have changed the assumptions many people have about their children; Nigel Cameron, on why American churches have been negligent in promoting robust thinking about the current bioethical crisis; Susan Wise Bauer, on how adults can acquire many of the benefits of a classical education long after leaving school by reading wisely and well; Esther Lightcap Meek, on belief, doubt, certainty, authority, and how knowledge (of God and other matters) is acquired, sustained, and properly recognized; John Shelton Lawrence, on how John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Superman, and the governor of California all embody a great American myth; and Ralph C. Wood, on the disappointing discrepancies between Peter Jackson's films and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
Certain desires — such as those to have children or to be happy and healthy — are natural for people to have, but until recently medical technologies could do nothing more to meet those desires than to offer therapy by making people well or eliminating pain, says bioethicist Leon Kass. Now, however, biotechnologies can to a limited extent — and to a larger extent will soon be able to — make people better than well. This pending state of affairs prompted the President’s Council on Bioethics to examine the benefits and liabilities of “beyond therapy” uses of biotechnologies in a recent report titled Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. Kass, chairman of the Council, explains that, contrary to common belief, biotechnologies are not neutral; they will have an effect on people whether or not they choose to avail themselves of the technologies. The report, which is organized according to the fancies biotechnologies promise to satisfy, addresses what is at stake when people consider the possibility of fulfilling their desires through the use of biotechnologies.
Theologian Nigel Cameron states that the biggest issue facing the Church and society today concerns how people use their bio- and medical-technologies on themselves and the concomitant consequences for human nature and well-being, subjects richly addressed in a recent report from the President’s Council on Bioethics. The report, titled Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, is part of a cultural discussion about bioethics in which the Church has thus far been surprisingly and regretfully silent, says Cameron. Instead of rigorously taking up the issues facing humanity in conjunction with biotechnology, Christian pastors and theologians have been content to let non-Christians do the thinking — from their various points of view outside the Church — for the Church. Cameron explains that the Church has neglected fully engaging this issue and others like it in part because it has been focusing on adding numbers “to the colors” instead of “adding disciples to the kingdom of God.” He distinguishes between the emphasis required for teaching non-believers about the gospel and that required for teaching believers to discern God's will for the Church in the current era.
In her book The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, professor Susan Wise Bauer discusses how adults who have not had a classical education can make up for it through reading and studying classical works of literature on their own. Bauer contradicts those who say they are too old to gain an understanding of the classics. Adults, she states, may actually understand the works better than younger readers who have a thinner understanding of the subjects — such as personal weakness and persistence — written about in the classics. She emphasizes that reading is about gaining a glimpse into the human condition, a condition which cannot be understood quickly or without effort. And she explains how to read intelligently and wisely by reading slowly, in chronological order, while taking notes.
In her book Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People, professor Esther Lightcap Meek challenges the modernist view of knowledge. This view, which is closely related to scientism, prefers the figure of the autonomous knower — one who comes to knowledge without aid — to the figure of a steward of knowledge. Stewards of knowledge, Meek explains, guard and cultivate what others — be the others texts or people — give them. The image of the steward better accounts for the reality of how people come to know something than does the modernist view’s image of the autonomous knower; people inevitably come to knowledge (a term for which she offers a definition in her book) through authoritative guides, notes Meek. The process involves the normative element to be known — who Michael Polanyi is, for example — and navigating between multiple guides — one’s parents, a teacher, or a book — that help one arrive at knowledge of the normative element.
In their book The Myth of the American Superhero, John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett describe the conventions of the American hero myth that colors society’s expectations of politicians and that is perpetuated in comic books and movies. Jewett, professor emeritus of philosophy at Morningside College, explains that the American pattern of the “monomyth hero” — which is different from the original monomyth pattern as author and speaker Joseph Campbell described it — is an unsuitable framework for understanding politics, especially in a democracy. In the original and universal pattern of heroic tales, a young person typically has a crisis, is expelled from the community, faces and overcomes difficult challenges while wandering and maturing, and then returns to the community to serve it. In the American pattern of the hero myth, however, a fully-matured individual who is estranged from all society — and who is pure in motive and actions, untouchable in strength and moral judgment — comes to the aid of a helpless community, returning to the wilderness after defeating the opponent. This pattern does not account for the tragic complexities of human or political life, states Lawrence, and its emphasis on the annihilation of enemies is particularly ill-suited for a democracy, which thrives on the exercise of quiet compromise.
Professor Ralph Wood, author of The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle Earth, discusses how director Peter Jackson represented Tolkien well in his Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, but also how he compromised J. R. R. Tolkien’s moral vision for the sake of exciting his audience. Jackson aptly captured the epic grandeur of the Fellowship's quest through the imposing scenery of New Zealand, and he drew a satisfying picture of world of Lorien. He was not as deft, laments Wood, in capturing the moral and religious essence of Tolkien’s life work, which takes shape as the plot unfolds and as the true nature of the characters is revealed. Jackson, unlike Tolkien, favored battle scenes (which could be categorized as spectacle) to character development, while also shying away from opportunities to illustrate the destructive strength and magnitude of evil. In spite of the film version’s shortcomings, however, Wood states that he was impressed with the one place where Jackson improved on Tolkien (in portraying the Company’s grief after Gandalf dies); he is also grateful for all the viewers who will (hopefully) become readers.
Leon Kass, member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, discusses the main concern of a recent report from the Council; Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness attends to the increased use of mood-, memory-, and behavior-enhancing drugs and the effects of the improper use of such drugs. Kass is quick to explain that the report is not condemning the proper use of psychotropic drugs for proper diagnoses; for those who truly have disorders the drugs work wonders, restoring those taking them to a normal capacity that allows them to attempt to achieve their full potential. But the danger of over-prescription of psychotropic drugs for improper diagnoses is real because they have a performance-improving effect even in cases where those taking them do not have a disorder. A capricious use of these drugs, states Kass, sends the message that all of life's problems can be solved by a magic pill, and it distracts people from addressing the cause of the symptoms the drugs are ameliorating. The abuse of performance-enhancing drugs also distorts the meaning of human activity and achievement, encouraging the already all-too-common tendency to thrill not to un-aided human accomplishments but to accomplishments brought about by machines or substances.
Guests on Volume 67: Eric O. Jacobsen, on urban churches and taking the concrete realities of community seriously; Allan C. Carlson, on the family in American culture and in government policy; Terence L. Nichols, on a sacramental view of Creation as an alternative to naturalism; R. R. Reno, on spiritual lethargy and sloth and the need for a more heroic vision for spiritual possibility; David Bentley Hart, on a Christian understanding of beauty rooted in the reality of the divine gift that is Creation; and J. A. C. Redford & Scott Cairns, on the making of “The Martyrdom of Polycarp.”
In Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, pastor Eric O. Jacobsen discusses the “false gods” of individualism, independence, and freedom and the influence they have had on the physical order of American cities. He contrasts pre-World War II environments, which were designed with the perambulator in mind, to post-World War II environments, which were designed to maximize efficiency and automobile use; in the latter — unlike in the former — those who cannot drive are cut off from important functions of communal life. He also addresses excessive fossil fuel use as another example of the hold the “false gods” have on Americans: people have determined that they should use less fuel, but instead of meeting as communities and determining how to design their neighborhoods so that they do not have to use fuel by driving to stores, parks, or churches, they are trying to solve the problem individually, deciding to buy fuel efficient cars but remaining too far away to walk to the institutions they frequent on a daily basis. Jacobsen states that people can lean against these trends of larger culture if they have a strong opposing influence in their lives, for example, the authority of the church. For churches to leave an imprint, however, they need to be situated where people will rub against them — and meet their members — daily, in cities and traditional neighborhoods.
Historian Allan Carlson explains that the division in the feminist movement between equity feminists and maternalists existed before women secured the right to vote, and that it became even more prominent afterwards. In his book The “American Way”: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity he depicts the fundamental difference between the two groups as one about who or what is the basic unit of society and economics: for equity feminists the basic unit is individuals but for maternalists it is the household. Equity feminists, he states, pursued the vote for women as part of a larger project to eliminate patriarchy while bringing full equality for women in the marketplace and business world — they viewed the home and children as barriers, for women, to full economic equality. Maternalists, however, pursued the vote for women in order to vote for public policy that would protect motherhood and children from the marketplace and from the pressures of business associations that wanted to employ women. They were concerned not with integrating women into the corporate economy, but with preserving the health and autonomy of the household.
In his book The Sacred Cosmos: Christian Faith and the Challenge of Naturalism, professor of theology Terence Nichols addresses the importance — for faithful Christian discipleship — of seeing nature as infused with God’s presence. Nichols — who measures Christian commitment not merely by how many people attend church but by what people believe about the afterlife, and by whether or not their posture towards nature is in accordance with what they believe about the afterlife — suspects that Christian commitment in America is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” While it may seem as if commitment is strong because attendance is strong, many of those who attend church, he explains, order their lives as if there is no afterlife, as if nature devoid of God’s presence and hope is all that exists. Nichols advocates re-emphasizing a sacramental view of nature as a corrective. The sacramental view, which has historically been tied to the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican traditions, sees nature as imperfect, yet full of the presence of God.
Theologian R. R. Reno elucidates the concerns of the Postmodern era in an effort to help the Church understand how to disciple its members in this age in his book In the Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished Christianity. Reno claims that the waning of Modernity brought with it the end of the Western culture of existential heroism, which he describes as the struggle of individuals to pursue virtue and to conform their souls to an authority beyond themselves. The spirit of the Postmodern age, he explains, is characterized not by this painful struggle to “climb the mountain of virtue,” but by fear of personal change and a desire for a comfortable, peaceful life. Like the ancient Roman satirist Petronius (who died ca. 66 A.D.), people today question whether or not there is any authority outside of themselves to which it is worth conforming; they prefer to “carve out a zone of sanity” in their souls and for their lives than to undertake the wrenching journey of self-transformation that the Modern age commended. The challenge for the Church, then, is to discern how to witness to those who are more interested in living lives of quiet conformity than in living lives upset by life-changing ideas (people full of Petronian humanism rather than Promethean ambition).
In his book The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart discusses the language of beauty, the Triune God, and Creation. He states that 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. In an effort to explain this latter vision and to elucidate the difference between it and the former, Hart contrasts the music of Richard Wagner (1813-1883), which he cites as an example of the pagan or fatalist vision of reality, with that of J. S. Bach (1685-1750), Hart’s example of the Christian vision of reality. Whereas Wagner’s music has to end when and how it does, Bach’s music contains infinite possibility and could have ended (if he had been immortal) in any number of fashions. Hart adds that Bach’s music further demonstrates the Christian vision of reality in how it accounts for dissonance; the music makes room for it, he states, without degenerating into mere discord.
Composer J. A. C. Redford and poet Scott Cairns discuss their commission from First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, to compose an oratorio on the martyrdom of Saint Polycarp, a bishop of Smyrna during the first century; the work had its premiere performance in April 2004 at the church. Polycarp, who knew Saint John and other eye-witnesses to the life of Christ, was martyred when he was in his late 80s. His friend Marcion (not the heretic associated with gnosticism) wrote a letter about the martyr’s death to the church at Smyrna, and it is this letter on which Redford and Cairns’s “The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp” is based. Both Redford and Cairns studied Marcion’s letter and various other letters about and by Polycarp for the commission, and both said that composing the music and libretto for the oratorio stretched and deepened their faith. Redford talked of meditating on the balance of evil and good as he struggled with how to depict it rightly in the work, and Cairns discussed how the sweetness of the letters infused his life as he dwelt with them.
Guests on Volume 68: Murray Milner, Jr., on American teenagers, schools, and the culture of consumption, and on how the choices of parents create the institutional framework for the lives of adolescents; Steven C. Vryhof, on faith-based schools and the maintaining of community; Douglas J. Schuurman, on recovering the Reformation's vision of vocation as neighbor-love and instrument of providence; Robert Gagnon, on Biblical teaching about homosexuality and how it is being ignored; Richard Stivers, on the role of technologies and “technique” in creating a sense of loneliness; and Quentin Schultze, on the role of religious paradigms in the American understanding of mass media.
In his book Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption, professor Murray Milner, Jr., studies the relationships between teenagers, schools, and consumerism. When Milner began to study teenagers and their school environments in order to better understand the former’s consumerist tendencies, he found that the current structure of schools and education renders increased adolescent spending nearly inevitable; the current structure makes many decisions about the lives of teens for teens—how many years they will attend school, what curriculum they will study, what teachers the schools will employ, and who will attend which schools. Because teenagers expect more autonomy and freedom in their lives than that which they retain, they exercise tight control over the one area of their lives that is not controlled for them: who is cool, and who is not. They can and do control their peer status systems, and, consequently, often become obsessively preoccupied with who is making the A-list. Criteria for inclusion induce considerable spending habits, Milner explains, as more often than not status depends on ownership of the moment’s fashionable goods.
In his book Between Memory and Vision: The Case for Faith-Based Schooling, professor Steven C. Vryhof describes three faith-based schools that are members of Christian Schools International, an organization of schools within the Reformed Christian tradition. While Vryhof does compare the performance of the three schools to that of public, Catholic, private religious, and private non-religious schools, his main focus is the social and cultural effect of CSI schools on the communities that support them. The schools have strong ties to their communities, he says, and work not only to impart skills and knowledge to the young, but also to bequeath the memory, values, and worldview of the community to them. These schools act contrary to many of today’s institutions, which shy away from imparting the faith and worldview of older generations to younger ones. In embracing just such a transmission, the schools that Vryhof depicts endeavor to build intergenerational relationships so that the identity of the community will be preserved.
Professor Douglas J. Schuurman discusses the classic Protestant notion of calling, which entails being called not merely to a particular type of work, but to seeing one's life and how one lives as a response to God’s grace. In his book, Vocation: Discerning Our Callings in Life, he explains that the orientation of one’s heart either prompts or impedes one in developing a sense of calling. He names several experiences and emotions that generate sensitivity to calling, including an awareness of obligation, dependence, and gratitude, along with a need for meaning. Schuurman outlines two ideas that are central to the idea of vocation, the first concerning how one sees one’s own life, and the second, how one understands providence; historically the Protestant notion of calling suggests that one first understands one’s own life as shaped by God through providence, an understanding which then prods one to ask: “Considering all that God has given and made me to be, how can I serve him in a distinct way in my life?” The notion also suggests, he continues, that God provides for his creation and creatures through the work of both those who knowingly cooperate with him, and those who unknowingly do so.
Professor Robert Gagnon set out to write an article explaining the “clear sense” meaning of the biblical text regarding homosexual intercourse, and ended up with a full-length book. The intended article developed into the substantial The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics as Gagnon confronted an increasing number of arguments from scholars that obscured the meaning he was trying to explain; before he could attend to why the biblical text is opposed to same-sex intercourse, he first had to clear away the arguments that decry that opposition. The Bible’s disapproval of same-sex intercourse, Gagnon says, is based in the guidelines laid out for human sexuality in Genesis. Both Paul and Jesus refer to the First Book of Moses when they discuss matters pertaining to sexual purity and impurity because it offers normative and prescriptive wisdom for human sexual relationships. Gagnon states that universal reasons for objecting to homosexual intercourse, and all improper sexual behavior, depend on those structural prerequisites for such relationships.
In his book Shades of Loneliness: Pathologies of a Technological Society, professor Richard Stivers addresses the relationships between mental and emotional disorders and loneliness, and between technological society and loneliness. Stivers refers to the work of J. H. van den Berg when discussing the former; van den Berg, he explains, argues that loneliness is the cause of most mental and emotional disorders. In turn such disorders reveal widespread loneliness, and it is no mere coincidence, says Stivers, that they are rife in today's technological society. Unlike some psychologists and psychiatrists who ignore society as a contributing factor when treating people with mental and emotional illnesses (focusing instead on their individual personality types and family relationships), Stivers pays it much heed. He asserts that the very organization of technological society ought to bear much of the blame for the loneliness that leads to the disorders.
In Christianity and the Mass Media in America: Toward a Democratic Accommodation professor Quentin Schultze explores the role of the mass media in public communication in America. Americans put their collective hope, fear, and concern about public communication in the mass media, states Schultze, and the rhetoric they have applied to it has been religiously pitched. Schultze names the various religious metaphors people have used for the media and its work, including the metaphors of conversion, discernment, communion, and being “set apart.” He also notes how highly Americans praise technological tools. Schultze recognizes that this tendency to view media in a religious light is found mainly in America, but that it is also beginning to emerge in other areas of the world where evangelicalism is gaining momentum, which suggests that it may be an evangelical and protestant phenomenon.
In Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption, professor Murray Milner, Jr., attends to the complex social structures found among high school students. Milner, who is interested in how people achieve social status and what role it plays in society at large, did not intend to pause long in the world of high schoolers when he set out to study an environment which could help him to understand and to explain various theories of status. His plans changed, however, when he realized the extent to which the hierarchical social worlds of these students explain the workings of the broader society. He set to work examining how teenagers order their social lives and how they attempt entry into the in crowd, and to determining how parents unwittingly support their children's obsessions with popularity and consumerist habits. Milner suggests that amending these trends will require multiple and varied changes to the current structure of high schools.
Guests on Volume 69: John McWhorter, author of Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, on the death of formal speech; Douglas Koopman, on the mis-steps and misunderstandings that hampered the Bush administration’s implementation of Faith-Based Initiatives; Daniel Ritchie, on the survival of “Great Books” programs at religious colleges; Vincent Miller, on how the commodification of everything affects our sense of religious faith and practice (and on how we can resist); and Barrett Fisher, on the sources of humor in the two versions of The Ladykillers, and on the history of very serious thinking about what makes something funny.
Linguist John McWhorter has, for a number of years, been interested in the major change in the usage of language and speech that took place in the 1960s in America. In his book Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, he notes that before the change there were at least two languages that people learned: the casual language of everyday life (or, in McWhorter’s words, beer-drinking speech), and formal language, which was reserved for public speaking occasions and writing. To the post-1960s mind it may seem as if formal language was necessarily detached and distant, but McWhorter explains that, rather, it could be just as intimate as casual language. Since the 1960s, however, which ushered in an unprecedented and persisting rebellion against authority, Americans have largely abandoned formal usage of language. Now casual language dominates spheres of discourse, and people find formal language boring and insincere.
In Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives, Professor Douglas Koopman and his co-authors Amy Black and David Ryden record the story of what happened when the President’s administration tried to make public assistance more readily available to faith-based aid agencies. Koopman discusses the difficulty of securing bi-partisan support for policies that would ensure such aid and the media coverage that helped to frustrate the administration's efforts. He states that, early on, the administration lost support from groups such as Sojourners because they perceived the White House’s attempts to be partisan and, in response, affirmed their own partisan affiliations. Media coverage did nothing to dissuade the perception, focusing on the political divisions over faith-based initiatives instead of working to explain the substantive issues behind the fledgling policy. In addition to neglecting those issues, the media also perpetuated misconceptions about how religion is defined and about why one with religious convictions would help those in need; misconceptions which, states Koopman, added to the lackluster development of charitable choice policy.
College and university curricula organized around the study of great books from Western civilization are thriving in many Christian colleges and universities even as they are deteriorating in secular schools, states professor Daniel Ritchie. Such programs are a relatively recent development in America, having their origins in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. They were employed to unify the disciplines taught in higher education once colleges and universities lost the theological foundation that had performed that task up until the early nineteenth century. Now great books programs, or humanities core curriculum, survive mainly in Christian institutions where theology — not only the study of God but also the study of man, creation, and the good life — still plays an important role in education. In attending to the great books of Western civilization, Ritchie explains, these colleges and universities hope to encourage students to enter into conversation with earlier eras, gleaning wisdom from them along the way.
In his book Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, Professor Vincent Miller examines how habits assumed in a consumer culture help to explain the breakdown of organized religious communities. Miller states that religious believers do not understand themselves as members of a church community, or as preservers of a tradition, partly because they are used to thinking of themselves as individual consumers. The habits they have developed as consumers guided only by their desires include consuming commodities, which Miller defines as objects separated from their origin and history. This practice of consuming something while remaining ignorant about its origins is unwittingly transferred from the marketplace to the spheres of religion and culture, and it renders people happy to accept cultural and religious beliefs and customs without having any sense of what they meant in their original context, or how the beliefs and customs may or may not be compatible with each other. One result, says Miller, is an incoherent pastiche of beliefs and traditions that are, sometimes, incompatible.
Professor Barrett Fisher discusses the death, violence, and humor in the 1955 original and 2004 remake of the movie The Ladykillers. The movies, which belong to the genre of comedy, follow a band of criminals as they plan and pull off a heist and, consequently, try to off an elderly woman who witnessed their crime. Rife with (relatively tame) violence and death, the films get their humor from the criminals and how they undo their own success because of their — to quote a character from the earlier version — “human element.” It is the follies and fumbles of the group, which lead to the demise of the group, that spark laughter, says Fisher, not the violence members of the group perpetrate along the way. Fisher explains that even evil individuals can be comic when their human foolishness is caricatured, giving viewers something to identify with and at which to laugh; historically in comedy, he explains, it is those who can laugh at their foolishness who experience redemption.
Laughter, says professor Barrett Fisher, springs from various wells. Among the many he names is that of unmasked deception, or the revelation of the truth behind appearances. When people see the reality of situations they initially thought were otherwise, they laugh for joy and for how they were deceived. Take, for example, the scene at the end of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night when Sebastian and Viola — siblings who had each thought the other was dead — discover that the other is alive and well and affianced. It is a scene at which Fisher laughs heartily, and to which Fisher looks forward in anticipation, knowing that the laughter will be all the sweeter for the disaster the scene so narrowly avoids.
Guests on Volume 70: W. Wesley McDonald, on the significance of Russell Kirk’s themes of the “permanent things” and “the moral imagination”; C. Ben Mitchell, on law, wisdom, and the possibilities of pastoral guidance on bioethical decisions, and on why and how the Church should be more welcoming toward the elderly; Carl Elliott, on the medical industry’s move from healing to enhancing self-esteem and identity formation; Richard Weikart, on the rise of “evolutionary ethics,” the embrace toward ethical relativism, and the slide toward eugenics; Christine Rosen, on how and why early twentieth-century American religious leaders encouraged eugenics in the name of moral progress; and Dana Gioia, on the decline in literary reading in America and on the cultural loss it signifies.
Professor W. Wesley McDonald is one of the first to offer a book-length study of the philosophical themes in writer Russell Kirk’s works. In Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology, McDonald introduces Kirk (1918-1994) — a writer and lecturer whose intellectual heroes included Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, and T. S. Eliot — as a conservative who was equally critical of neoconservatives, capitalism, libertarians, and liberals. Kirk’s legacy lays in part, states McDonald, in his revival and application of the ideas of the “permanent things” and the “moral imagination.” Burke, Babbitt, and Eliot all referred to the permanent things, by which they meant those fundamental moral realities in creation and human nature that are binding on all people in all times. McDonald explains that the permanent things come to be known through the exercising of the moral imagination, a faculty that aids people in navigating the moral dilemmas of life.
Professor of bioethics and contemporary culture C. Ben Mitchell discusses the Church's ability to give wise counsel regarding the bioethical issues members face regularly. Mitchell is co-editor of Aging, Death, and The Quest for Immortality, an anthology that seeks to encourage wisdom for bioethical decisions. He explains that many members of the Church at this moment in history are used to living by rules, not by wisdom or prudence. Because the Bible does not offer a set of rules about how to employ (or not employ) biotechnologies, many in the Church do not know what to do when faced with the possibility of using infertility treatments or life support systems; nor, adds Mitchell, do many pastors know how to guide the sheep in their flocks through making those choices. Mitchell suggests attending to the wisdom literature of the Scriptures for training in how to think through decisions for which there are no easy rules, and he states that studying what it means to be made in the image of God is a worthy starting point for those who wish to learn to make wise decisions about biotechnologies.
Bioethicist Carl Elliott explains that he first became interested in studying more about anti-depressants and other personality-altering drugs after reading about people who claimed that Prozac helped them to become who they wanted to be. In his book Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream, he attends to how and why people use medical technologies such as anti-depressants, the American Dream, and some of the complications that arise as the former are employed along the way to achieving the latter. He tells the story of one young man, Sam Fussell, who used medicine to complete his conversion from a shy, slight, bookish fellow to a belligerent, bulky, muscle man. After transforming his physique and bearing into that of a body builder through physical discipline alone, Fussell began ingesting steroids to complete the development of his new identity. In doing so, states Elliott, he assumed the personality traits of those of whom he was originally afraid, nearly losing touch with who he was before his metamorphosis.
In his book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, professor Richard Weikart describes evolutionary ethics and examines the ties between national racism and the eugenics movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eugenics movements, he states, were promoted in order to cultivate “superior races.” He explains that the idea of “superior races” is intimately tied to the origins of the theory of evolution, as it is one of the two ideas that Darwin presented when making his case for the plausibility of evolution. He and other theorists claimed not only that there were various races among the different species, but also that some of those races were superior to others and that, in order for evolutionary progress to continue, the lower races (which were more ape-like than human-like) needed to be eliminated. These ideas, which preyed upon the nineteenth century prejudices between races, did make evolution seem possible; they also encouraged people to support the national eugenics movements established in the early twentieth century.
In her book Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement, writer and editor Christine Rosen studies the connection between eugenics laws in the early 1900s and current “participatory evolution” practices. While the former were state-sponsored and the latter are consumer driven, the same disposition animates both: intoxication with science as the means that will make life better than it is. She explains that during the earlier age of eugenics, science was used to improve the population mainly through forced sterilization. Now, however, it is being used to screen embryos for genetic defects before implantation, thus enabling the disposal of those which test positive for genetic defects. Current eugenics procedures, states Rosen, have the potential to be even more harrowing than those utilized here and in Germany in the early twentieth century because — being market driven — they are regulated and restricted only by the whims of individual consumers.
National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia discusses the important role literary reading plays in society and the recent publication from the NEA about such reading. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America reports statistics about the reading levels of various groups of Americans from the past twenty years and presents evidence of a marked decline in literary reading across all demographics. One of its most sobering statistics reveals that young adults between the ages of 18 to 24, who were once the most likely to read plays, poems, or fiction, are now the least likely to read. Electronic devices are partly to blame for the decrease in reading, says Gioia. He laments the decline while applauding rich narratives and the effect they can have on a people and a society; stories teach people, he explains, while simultaneously exciting their minds, hearts, memories, and senses.
Professor C. Ben Mitchell, co-editor of Aging, Death, and the Quest for Immortality, discusses the benefits of living in multi-generational communities and what the modern West thinks about the process of aging and the elderly. He recalls memories from childhood of his Grandmother living with his family after Grandfather died; the experience benefited and shaped him, he states, in ways that are still evident. Having her with the family taught him how to appreciate and learn from the elderly while dispelling tendencies to pitying or disdaining them. Now, years later, he maintains that intergenerational communities enrich the lives of both the older and younger generations. Sadly, he states, the West — in large part — no longer values this truth; it has segregated itself accordingly, by age, with the younger generations viewing gray hair as a sign that one’s life is over, not as a signifier of wisdom. He notes that the endeavor to avoid aging has permeated nearly all institutions of culture, even the church.
Guests on Volume 71: Peter Augustine Lawler, on Luther, Locke, liberty, and the American Founding Fathers; David Koyzis, on the modern denial of objective meaning and the exaltation of individual will; Roger Lundin, on the incarnational vision of Czeslaw Milosz, and on his poetry of exile and modern boundlessness; Craig Gay, on how the nature of money affects our sense of attributing value to things; Steven Rhoads, on Taking Sex Differences Seriously (and why it’s hard to do so); and R. Larry Todd, on the life and music of Felix Mendelssohn.
Political philosopher Peter Augustine Lawler responds to Michael P. Zuckert in the essay “Religion, Philosophy, and the American Founding,” which is published in Protestantism and the American Founding. In the lead essay of the anthology, “Natural Rights and Protestant Politics,” Zuckert (one of the book’s two editors) writes that the Christian understanding of freedom and government, especially as it was known at the time of America’s founding, is similar to the understanding of freedom and government that philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) held. Lawler, however, contends with Zuckert’s thesis, explaining that the two systems of thought cannot be considered complementary. “Christian Lockeanism” is an unstable philosophy, he states, because the two components are incompatible with each other. While Lockean thought defines people as a-social beings and government as a human institution established for the purposes its subjects deem worthy, Christian thought describes people as communal beings and government as a God-ordained institution established to achieve God-given ends.
Political science professor David Koyzis identifies and critiques various political ideologies in his book Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies, one chapter of which is dedicated to liberalism. Liberalism, he states, has as its philosophical antecedent nominalism, which claims that reality is named by those who have the power to enforce their definitions. In other words, nominalism declares that reality is not fixed to a transcendent point of reference. This declaration helps to explain the shift in liberalism away from law as rooted in transcendent principles, to law as rooted in the will of the sovereign governing body. Because of its presuppositions and logic, liberalism, states Koyzis, tends to exult the autonomy of the individual; that exultation leads, in turn, to the neglect of the responsibilities concomitant with rights, and to an insipid understanding of authority.
Readers often miss the deeper themes in the late poet Czeslaw Milosz’s work, says professor Roger Lundin, because they focus instead on his political reputation. As Lundin discusses those themes and reads from Milosz’s work, he notes that Milosz’s career spanned seventy years — a fact evidenced in the publication of New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 in 2003 — only a portion of the writing from which encompasses political themes. Instead of merely praising ideologies above all else in his poetry, he chronicled the particulars of life. He understood the work of the poet (and poetry) as that of bearing witness to the ordinariness and goodness of life, to the beauty of creation and cultural memory. Milosz (1911-2004) called poets secretaries (readily donning that title himself), states Lundin, and devoted himself to dictating the intimate details of the world around him for posterity’s sake.
Sociologist Craig Gay discusses the capitalist market system and how it measures value; increasingly, he says, value is measured solely through money. His book Cash Values: Money and the Erosion of Meaning in Today’s Society notes that this is a relatively new phenomenon — money as the standard and preferred tool for measuring worth — arising from the accounting practices that were developed and perfected in the twentieth century. The drawback, explains Gay, is that other goods upon which people used to place value are no longer worth anything and many people care more about how much money someone has or something is worth than about those other goods (a disposition that would have been considered unsightly in earlier times, Gay indicates). This myopic vision of meaning can be enlarged, however. Gay thus encourages people to pay attention to goods that do not have monetary value even as they participate in the market system, and to consciously acknowledge that everything they possess is, ultimately, a gift.
Contemporary wisdom about the sexes, says professor Steven Rhoads, espouses no differences between men and women other than those that are socially constructed. Rhoads’s book Taking Sex Differences Seriously collects data from several studies that disprove the conventional wisdom, demonstrating that differences between the two sexes have biological roots. Many people, Rhoads states, are eager to deny biological differences and to claim that men and women are androgynous. They fear that if they do not do so, women will be marginalized in the workplace and disrespected in their marriages. But by denying the differences and claiming androgyny, society is doing a disservice to women and itself: it is not valuing the work women have traditionally done in shaping society, nor is it acknowledging the nurturing they provide it.
Professor R. Larry Todd discusses his biography of composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), titled Mendelssohn: A Life in Music. Mendelssohn composed sacred music based on Protestant themes, settings of Catholic texts, anthems for the French Huguenot Church (his wife’s father was a French Huguenot minister), and music that represented the connections between his Christian faith and Jewish heritage. Todd illuminates the role Mendelssohn played in the revival of Bach’s music and his contributions to the art of conducting. Many have overlooked Mendelssohn’s music partly because of the titles publishers applied in the late nineteenth century to his “Lieder ohne Worte,” states Todd, but it does him no justice to regard him as a sentimentalist or his music as saccharine. Mendelssohn considered music deeply powerful and more definite than words, and he believed that it filled the soul “with a thousand things better than words.”
The late poet Czeslaw Milosz, who was born in Vilnius in 1911 and who died in Krakow in 2004, lived outside of his homeland for most of his adult life. Consequently, notes professor Roger Lundin, his poetry bears the stamp of the longings and sensibilities unique to those who have known exile. Lundin reads one of Milosz's poems that testifies to his dedication to the Polish language while in a foreign land, “My Faithful Mother Tongue.” In addition to demonstrating that Milosz paid tribute to his native language in his poetry, it also captures Milosz’s understanding of the balance between the urgency and importance of the poetic task, and a realistic humility about the capacity of the poet. Milosz knew people need order and beauty in the midst of misfortune; while the poet is not capable of eradicating misfortune, he can provide measures of order and beauty by setting “little bowls of color” before a language.
Guests on Volume 72: John Polkinghorne, on lessons for theology learned from the inductive nature of the work of science; Francesca Aran Murphy, on the efforts of twentieth-century Catholic and French philosopher Étienne Gilson to reconcile faith and reason; James Hitchcock, on the history of the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding religious practice and liberty; Wilfred McClay, on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s vision of the intractability of human failings and the possibilities of the American experiment, and on the theme of place and communal obligation in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing; Philip McFarland, on how Hawthorne’s sensitivity to the darker side of human nature makes him perennially instructive; and David Hackett Fischer, on the history of how Americans have understood and symbolized freedom and liberty.
In Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality, Sir John Polkinghorne attends to the ways both science and theology achieve knowledge and understanding. Polkinghorne, the Canon Theologian of Liverpool, was a physicist before he began his theological studies in the early 1980s, and he has written several books reconciling science and theology since he became an ordained minister. In Science and the Trinity he explains that both science and theology are “bottom up” disciplines. They gain knowledge of reality through observation and experience, and move up towards understanding from there. Polkinghorne is concerned with building a strong foundation for understanding God and thus encourages believers not to overemphasize “bookishness” in their faith; in addition to reading about God, he explains, that strong foundation is built through worshipping and experiencing Him.
Professor Francesca Aran Murphy examines the work and thought of the French philosopher Étienne Gilson (1884-1978). Gilson came of age in a time when studies in theology elevated rational arguments about a God of timeless truths over attention to an active and dynamic God who can be known through observation of reality. While he appreciated what such arguments brought to the study of theology, he emphasized the importance of beginning with reality and faith when forming theses. After all, Aquinas’s faith inspired his reasoning about God and His nature, noted Gilson. Murphy states that Gilson also wrote about the origin of beauty; he — unlike the Greeks who understood beauty to be revealed in perfection — understood the crucified Christ as the ultimate revelation of beauty.
In The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life: Vol. 1, The Odyssey of the Religion Clauses, Professor James Hitchcock records the history of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the religion clauses of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Earlier rulings about what the amendment establishes regarding the separation of church and state differ dramatically from those of later times, he says. In previous eras, society and the Court assumed that religion had a legitimate role to play in public life, even though the national government could not establish a state church. As time passed, however, and various cases about the practice of religion in public life were argued before the Supreme Court, the Court delivered rulings restricting the influence of religion on public policy. As it did so, it also increased individuals’ rights for their private practice of their religious beliefs.
Professor Wilfred McClay reviewed two of the biographies about Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) published during last year’s bicentennial celebration of the author. Both Philip McFarland’s Hawthorne in Concord and Brenda Wineapple’s Hawthorne: A Life depict well the communities and people that shaped Hawthorne and his writings, states McClay. Hawthorne, who portrayed himself as more of an isolationist than he actually was, wrote in various forms, but his talent was at its best in his short stories. While those stories reveal Hawthorne's skepticism about humanity’s attempts to achieve perfection, they also bear witness to the fact that he was not a cynic. McClay explains that Hawthorne shared the sense prevalent in his times that there was something special about America and its creativity in politics, and that he worked to develop its creativity in literature, writing the first American novel to command international attention and esteem, The Scarlet Letter.
Author and historian Philip McFarland discusses his biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and the features that render Hawthorne’s “gorgeous prose” attractive to modern readers. Hawthorne in Concord records both Hawthorne’s development as a writer, and the development of Concord, over three decades’ time from the early 1840s through the mid 1860s. Hawthorne’s stories, while considered morbid by his contemporaries, are appealing to later readers because of their frankness about the dark side of human nature, notes McFarland. He culled his stories not from his experiences, but from his imagination, and was more concerned with telling them in fantastical ways that would highlight the drama under the surface than with concentrating on making the surface details realistic. As a result, the tales are time-less and invite varied interpretations; McFarland says, “It’s the richness of interpretation that grows out of these stories that accounts in part for why Hawthorne is so highly valued as one of our very greatest writers.”
Professor David Hackett Fischer discusses what Americans since the Revolution have thought about liberty and freedom, a subject he explored through a study of the images citizens have used to represent both ideas. His book, Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas is the third of a four-volume cultural history of the country. It came, in part, from his research directly following the completion of the first volume, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, which revealed that at the time of the Revolution, different regions of the country had their own images to represent liberty and freedom. Fischer discovered, when he asked why this might be the case, that the two words have different, and almost opposite, origins: while both connote being unlike a slave, the Latin root of liberty means being separate, autonomous, and independent, whereas the Indo-European root of freedom means friend or beloved, tied by kinship or affection to other free people. English speakers, notes Fischer, are the only ones who use both words in common speech; Liberty and Freedom demonstrates how Americans have combined that dual heritage.
Many modern readers are reluctant to confront the works of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), says professor Wilfred McClay, because his stories challenge their “move on, get over it” ethos towards the past. Hawthorne's stories, instead of depicting neglect of place and the past, reveal the beauty of what can be when one embraces these goods. McClay illustrates Hawthorne's concerns with a reading from the latter’s story of adultery and its aftermath, The Scarlet Letter. The chosen passage articulates Hester Prim’s return home to her New England town where she cannot escape her history; where, rather, she owns it and becomes a well-respected advisor in the community. Prim’s character, states McClay, embodies Hawthorne’s own ambivalence about New England and his heritage there.
Guests on Volume 73: Richard John Neuhaus, Nigel Cameron, Carlos F. Gomez, and Michael Uhlmann, on the meaning and value of human life, the vocation of medicine, the logic of autonomous individualism, and the temptation of suicide and euthanasia; Patrick Carey, on the perceptive (and peregrinating) thought of Orestes Brownson; John W. O’Malley, on the prophetic, academic, humanistic, and artistic vectors of Western culture; Patricia Owen, on what makes good children’s books and on how the Newbery Medal winners have changed over time; Susan Srigley, on the sacramental and incarnational fiction of Flannery O’Connor; and Ralph C. Wood, on Flannery O’Connor as “hill-billy Thomist” and sympathizer with backwoods religion.
The deaths of Terri Schiavo (1963-2005) and Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) raised questions about moral, ethical, and legal concerns tied to end-of-life issues, questions that several guests have addressed on previous issues of the Journal. In order to identify and clarify these concerns, some of the guests’ interviews have been republished in part; the interviews of Father Richard John Neuhaus, bioethicist Nigel Cameron, physician Carlos F. Gomez, and legal scholar Michael Uhlmann offer wisdom for thinking through the Schiavo and Pope John Paul II cases, and also for contemplating other similar matters. Neuhaus and Cameron discuss how modern abilities to “take” and “make” life threaten the age-old understanding and definition of human nature, and suggest that society, in order to retain and strengthen that understanding, needs to reclaim the notion of the inherent dignity of human life. Gomez notes that the state has had, traditionally, a vested interest in protecting and preserving vulnerable and innocent human life but, in recent years, that interest has waned. Uhlmann confirms Gomez’s observations, explaining that America’s legal institutions, the Supreme Court included, have neglected legally protecting innocent human life as they have been trying to accommodate a modern philosophy that elevates individual freedom and autonomy above other goods.
Patrick Carey, professor and author of Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane explains why Brownson could be likened to a weathervane. Brownson (1803-1876) was an American intellectual who wrote essays, tracts, and magazine articles on matters of philosophy, theology, and politics. Late in life he converted to Roman Catholicism, but he ascribed to other religious doctrines before being received — he was first a Presbyterian, but then wandered through Methodism, Universalism, Unitarianism, and Transcendentalism on the way to becoming Roman Catholic. While Brownson’s allegiances in his religious convictions did shift over the years, his allegiances in his work only seemed to shift; his thought is dialectic, states Carey, and has continuity even as one side of it is emphasized while the other is not. For example, although there were times when he wrote about the necessity for freedom instead of authority and order, and other times when he wrote about the necessity for the latter instead of the former, he actually always believed that they both need the other if either is to thrive without becoming distorted.
Embedded in the history of the West are four distinct styles of thought and expression that explain much about the tensions at work in today’s culture. Professor John W. O’Malley discusses these four styles and his book, The Four Cultures of the West. The first of the four cultures, he says, the prophetic, makes proclamations about the need for social change; the last of the four is that of art and performance. The second culture, which is keen on argument and analysis, thrives on perpetual questioning and finds its home in the academy and the professions. It is intent on pursuing progress and scientific and technological knowledge, O’Malley states, and has co-opted culture three, the literary and humanistic culture of poetry, rhetoric, and service to the public good.
Children’s book critic Patricia Owen describes the major literary award for children’s books, how winners of the award have changed in character since its inception, and what to keep in mind when choosing a book for a child. The Newbery Medal, awarded yearly beginning in 1922, honors children’s books for their literary merit. Early winners of the award portrayed strong communities, with their protagonists either settling into a community during the tale, or already belonging to one at the beginning of the story; but starting in the 1970s and 1980s, says Owen, the books became more individualistic in tone, portraying their protagonists as separate from communities and not in need of others to make it through troublesome times. Owen states that medal winners are supposed to be appropriate for children ages nine to fourteen, but not all of them are. Although they all are literarily excellent, some are more appropriate for older teenagers than they are for pre- and early teenagers.
Professor Susan Srigley discusses the ethical vision at the heart of author Flannery O’Connor’s work. In Flannery O’Connor’s Sacramental Art Srigley notes that O’Connor’s fiction is, in part, trying to make sense of why people act as they do. In order to understand this, she depicts how they interact with the world and people around them. Such concrete realities as these, she understood, point to the divine, mysterious source of creation that evokes actions and reactions from people and which is manifested in the material. Because O’Connor’s work acknowledges that the spiritual is present in the material, it is called sacramental, says Srigley; and it is known as incarnational, she adds, because it understands that the spiritual can only be known through the physical.
Professor Ralph Wood discusses his introduction to Flannery O’Connor’s fiction and his book, Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South. When Wood first read O’Connor in college, he was dually impressed with how she was funny and “devoutly Christian,” and with how she turned the world he knew — the world of the Baptist, rural, fundamentalist South — into world-class literature. Wood identifies the dominant mode of O’Connor’s work, and he distinguishes between satire and humor. Satire is laughter at another, and while it does exist in O’Connor’s work, she is more humorous than satiric. In other words, explains Wood, she spends more time laughing at herself (and characters who are similar to her) than at others.
Embedded in the history of the West are four distinct styles of thought and expression that explain much about the tensions at work in today’s culture. Professor John W. O’Malley discusses these four styles and his book, The Four Cultures of the West. The first of the four cultures, he says, the prophetic, makes proclamations about the need for social change; the last of the four is that of art and performance. The second culture, which is keen on argument and analysis, thrives on perpetual questioning and finds its home in the academy and the professions. It is intent on pursuing progress and scientific and technological knowledge, O’Malley states, and has co-opted culture three, the literary and humanistic culture of poetry, rhetoric, and service to the public good.
Guests on Volume 74: Russell Moore, on the struggles at Baylor University, “soul competency,” and the Baptist culture of autonomy; W. Bradford Wilcox, on the characteristics of “soft patriarchy” in evangelical families; Joseph E. Davis, on sexual abuse, how it is explained, and how a sense of identity is thereby formed; Barrett Fisher, on the remarkable achievement of film producer Ismail Merchant; Jeanne Murray Walker and Darryl Tippens, on overcoming the neglect of literature that highlights the spiritual dimension of human experience; and Paul Walker, on the life and music of English organist and composer Thomas Tallis, 1505-1585.
Professor of theology Russell Moore describes how two doctrines have evolved in Southern Baptist theology and discusses Baylor University’s efforts to strengthen its commitment to Christian scholarship. In some Southern Baptist circles, “soul competency” and “priesthood of the believer” have come to mean that members of the church cannot be held accountable for what they believe about, or how they practice, the faith. These doctrines have not always denoted such individualism. Late in the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth, Moore explains, Southern Baptists sought to embrace the modern world and in so doing adopted tenets of liberal Protestant theology. These tenets encouraged individualism in the church, which is manifest still when members of the church reject the work of others trying to uphold an orthodox Baptist doctrine, states Moore.
Professor W. Bradford Wilcox, author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, addresses why many in contemporary society are suspicious of the authoritative structure of evangelical Protestant families. They assume, he explains, that structures of authority necessarily lead to the abuse of women and children; but in active evangelical families (as opposed to nominal ones), such is not the case. The data Wilcox gathered for his book demonstrate that the families in question have fewer instances of domestic abuse and more instances of hugging and praising their children than other families. Wilcox notes where the stereotype, to which his evidence is contrary, comes from. He also describes what many in sociology think will become of the family as an institution as society becomes increasingly egalitarian.
In his book Accounts of Innocence: Sexual Abuse, Trauma, and the Self, professor Joseph Davis studies the stories adults tell about surviving sexual abuse as children in order to determine what motivates people to tell stories about being victims. His conclusion, he states, is that people tell the stories in order to purge their “true” selves, leave behind the self that has been damaged, and move on with life unburdened. Accounts of such trauma began to permeate society in the 1960s; since then the nature of the accounts has changed, notes Davis. They now tend to be uniform—implying that all people respond the same way to abuse—and to revel in “displays of pathology.” Absent from the tales are both unique descriptions of how people dealt with abuse, and mention of the growth, strength, and healing that victims of sexual abuse can experience.
Professor Barrett Fisher discusses the films of producer and director Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. While some critics dismiss their films as insubstantial because of their opulence and popularity, asserting that they belong to the “Laura Ashley school of filmmaking,” not all critics would agree with that characterization. Fisher is in the latter camp and states why the films ought not be so easily dismissed. He sites Merchant and Ivory’s commitment, from the beginning of their 44-year run together, to multiculturalism; their intricate portrayal of various cultures, complete with their dedication to shooting on location in order to better capture a culture; and their insistence on producing well-written and well-acted works. Merchant and Ivory began their filmmaking career together with films shot and set in India, and eventually became famous for their productions of great works of literature such as Howard’s End and Room with a View.
Professors Jeanne Murray Walker and Darryl Tippens discuss the disappearance of references to the sacred from the canon of literature taught in colleges and universities. They, together with professor Steven Weathers, are the editors of Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith, a selection of readings not included in other anthologies. Walker and Tippens state that it is important to introduce students to stories, novels, and poems about spiritual quests and the transcendent. They note the challenges of training minds unused to reading allegories or metaphors. They also describe students’ reactions to allegory once they know how to read it, and their hunger for the portrayals literature provides of spiritual quests.
Professor and music director Paul Walker discusses the talents of English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585). Tallis, who was employed under four successive monarchs, inherited a choral tradition with “long roots” but lived during a time when the requirements for music used in the church were changing. Both the Reformation and the revival of humanism on the Continent encouraged musicians to write short anthems with English texts that moved people emotionally as well as intellectually. Tallis, who was capable of composing complicated pieces with page-long melismas (as in his Gaude gloriosa), responded to the changing requirements with finesse, producing works with clear structure and straightforward texts. Walker describes two of Tallis’s songs that are considered standards of English anthem writing, “If ye love me,” and “Hear the voice and prayer.”
Composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) is a seminal figure in the history of English music states organist and musicologist Paul Walker. The Protestant Reformation was establishing itself in England during Tallis’s tenure and with it came demands for music different from the traditional. Anthems there had been Medieval in style and written in languages other than English for large, Gothic spaces. In order to comply with both appeals for change from the monarchs he worked under and the spirit of the Reformation, Tallis considered the works of European composers. For years before he came of age they had been writing works for small spaces, in the language of those who would be singing and hearing the songs, and crafted to the text the music was to convey; Tallis adopted and adapted their techniques and thus ushered in a new age for the English choral tradition.
Guests on Volume 74: Russell Moore, on the struggles at Baylor University, “soul competency,” and the Baptist culture of autonomy; W. Bradford Wilcox, on the characteristics of “soft patriarchy” in evangelical families; Joseph E. Davis, on sexual abuse, how it is explained, and how a sense of identity is thereby formed; Barrett Fisher, on the remarkable achievement of film producer Ismail Merchant; Jeanne Murray Walker and Darryl Tippens, on overcoming the neglect of literature that highlights the spiritual dimension of human experience; and Paul Walker, on the life and music of English organist and composer Thomas Tallis, 1505-1585.
Professor of theology Russell Moore describes how two doctrines have evolved in Southern Baptist theology and discusses Baylor University’s efforts to strengthen its commitment to Christian scholarship. In some Southern Baptist circles, “soul competency” and “priesthood of the believer” have come to mean that members of the church cannot be held accountable for what they believe about, or how they practice, the faith. These doctrines have not always denoted such individualism. Late in the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth, Moore explains, Southern Baptists sought to embrace the modern world and in so doing adopted tenets of liberal Protestant theology. These tenets encouraged individualism in the church, which is manifest still when members of the church reject the work of others trying to uphold an orthodox Baptist doctrine, states Moore.
Professor W. Bradford Wilcox, author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, addresses why many in contemporary society are suspicious of the authoritative structure of evangelical Protestant families. They assume, he explains, that structures of authority necessarily lead to the abuse of women and children; but in active evangelical families (as opposed to nominal ones), such is not the case. The data Wilcox gathered for his book demonstrate that the families in question have fewer instances of domestic abuse and more instances of hugging and praising their children than other families. Wilcox notes where the stereotype, to which his evidence is contrary, comes from. He also describes what many in sociology think will become of the family as an institution as society becomes increasingly egalitarian.
In his book Accounts of Innocence: Sexual Abuse, Trauma, and the Self, professor Joseph Davis studies the stories adults tell about surviving sexual abuse as children in order to determine what motivates people to tell stories about being victims. His conclusion, he states, is that people tell the stories in order to purge their “true” selves, leave behind the self that has been damaged, and move on with life unburdened. Accounts of such trauma began to permeate society in the 1960s; since then the nature of the accounts has changed, notes Davis. They now tend to be uniform—implying that all people respond the same way to abuse—and to revel in “displays of pathology.” Absent from the tales are both unique descriptions of how people dealt with abuse, and mention of the growth, strength, and healing that victims of sexual abuse can experience.
Professor Barrett Fisher discusses the films of producer and director Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. While some critics dismiss their films as insubstantial because of their opulence and popularity, asserting that they belong to the “Laura Ashley school of filmmaking,” not all critics would agree with that characterization. Fisher is in the latter camp and states why the films ought not be so easily dismissed. He sites Merchant and Ivory’s commitment, from the beginning of their 44-year run together, to multiculturalism; their intricate portrayal of various cultures, complete with their dedication to shooting on location in order to better capture a culture; and their insistence on producing well-written and well-acted works. Merchant and Ivory began their filmmaking career together with films shot and set in India, and eventually became famous for their productions of great works of literature such as Howard’s End and Room with a View.
Professors Jeanne Murray Walker and Darryl Tippens discuss the disappearance of references to the sacred from the canon of literature taught in colleges and universities. They, together with professor Steven Weathers, are the editors of Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith, a selection of readings not included in other anthologies. Walker and Tippens state that it is important to introduce students to stories, novels, and poems about spiritual quests and the transcendent. They note the challenges of training minds unused to reading allegories or metaphors. They also describe students’ reactions to allegory once they know how to read it, and their hunger for the portrayals literature provides of spiritual quests.
Professor and music director Paul Walker discusses the talents of English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585). Tallis, who was employed under four successive monarchs, inherited a choral tradition with “long roots” but lived during a time when the requirements for music used in the church were changing. Both the Reformation and the revival of humanism on the Continent encouraged musicians to write short anthems with English texts that moved people emotionally as well as intellectually. Tallis, who was capable of composing complicated pieces with page-long melismas (as in his Gaude gloriosa), responded to the changing requirements with finesse, producing works with clear structure and straightforward texts. Walker describes two of Tallis’s songs that are considered standards of English anthem writing, “If ye love me,” and “Hear the voice and prayer.”
Composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) is a seminal figure in the history of English music states organist and musicologist Paul Walker. The Protestant Reformation was establishing itself in England during Tallis’s tenure and with it came demands for music different from the traditional. Anthems there had been Medieval in style and written in languages other than English for large, Gothic spaces. In order to comply with both appeals for change from the monarchs he worked under and the spirit of the Reformation, Tallis considered the works of European composers. For years before he came of age they had been writing works for small spaces, in the language of those who would be singing and hearing the songs, and crafted to the text the music was to convey; Tallis adopted and adapted their techniques and thus ushered in a new age for the English choral tradition.
Guests on Volume 75: Mark Malvasi, on John Lukacs, the meaning of the modern, and how to think about history; John Lukacs, on the roles of curiosity and language in the vocation of historians; Steve Talbott, on how communications technologies divert language from its richest possibilities; Christian Smith, on the spiritual lives and theological assumptions of American teenagers; Eugene Peterson, on the essential relationship between theology and spirituality, and on the narrative life of congregations; and Rolland Hein, on the life and imagination of George MacDonald.
Professor Mark Malvasi discusses one of the themes on which historian John Lukacs has spent much of his time reflecting, the end of the Modern era of history. Malvasi is one of the two editors of an anthology of Lukacs’s works titled Remembered Past: John Lukacs on History, Historians, and Historical Knowledge. The collection contains essays spanning some forty years of the historian’s career along with a complete bibliography of his published writings. Malvasi explains that Lukacs links the decline of the Modern age to the decline of the bourgeois class and culture it developed. He also attends to the scholar's understanding and opinion of democracy.
Historian John Lukacs discusses the recording of the past and the importance of articulate, honest language for that task. Lukacs, a Hungarian who immigrated to the United States in 1946, has spent his career teaching and writing; his most recent book is Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred. All of his works demonstrate one of the main traits necessary for studying history — curiosity. Lukacs states that in earlier days a historian was known as “one who is curious.” He adds that one working within the discipline also ought to be mindful of speech and use of language, as “every choice of a word is essentially a moral choice.”
Steve Talbott, author of The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, discusses language, communication, and how technology affects the former two. It influences them negatively, he explains, when it ceases to be “out there” and instead “becomes our own habit of thinking.” Technology utilizes precise language meant to relay information, and it tempts people to use more of the same for all communication. But when people think mechanically and communicate in kind, they neglect the significant meanings conveyed through metaphors and the spaces between words, along with the new understandings figurative expressions can open up to them. In other words, they fail to realize language's real potential, which can be seen, says Talbott, when words are employed creatively, both indicating a “vast realm of yet unsaid things” and simultaneously teaching people how to say those unsaid things.
Sociologist Christian Smith is co-author of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, a book based on The National Study of Youth and Religion, which took four years to interview and survey thousands of teenagers from across the country. Smith discusses the findings of the study and the language teenagers use to talk about their faith. While religion and spirituality are important to a majority of youth, an informed vocabulary for talking about these matters is not. Even if teenagers belong to a specific religious tradition, Smith says, most cannot articulate the particulars of that tradition. Narrow vocabularies enable adolescents to avoid conflict with others who believe differently from them, states Smith; consequently, youth are not learning how to constructively engage those others.
Theologian and former pastor Eugene Peterson discusses his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. Peterson notes the impetus for the volume (his desire to develop a theological base for pastoral work), and describes the difference between pastoral theology as taught in many seminaries and spiritual theology. He explains what he means when he emphasizes thinking “narrativally.” He also commends the work of writer Wendell Berry as witnessing to the importance and recovery of, among other goods, storytelling. Peterson concludes that Christians especially — because of their understanding of the world as created through the Word — ought to be “shepherds of language”; “take care of those words,” he says, “make sure they’re clean, well fed.”
Adjunct professor emeritus Rolland Hein tells the story of his first encounter with the work of novelist George MacDonald, naming the characteristics of the literature that contributed to the indelibility of the meeting. Hein, who has written George MacDonald: Victorian Mythmaker and The Harmony Within: The Spiritual Vision of George MacDonald, was a young man when a professor of his introduced him to MacDonald’s writings. None of the reading he had done before the encounter spoke to him in the way those sermons and fantasies did, on a level other than that of the mind. That, states Hein, is what MacDonald does well: he employs images that incite readers’ imaginations and speak to the desires hidden within their hearts. Hein explains that MacDonald is a writer of myth functioning rightly, and that such myth affects people a-rationally, stirring something in them much deeper than intellect or emotion alone.
“We live in a very rhythmic world, universe, but our culture just shreds it, doesn’t it?”
—Eugene Peterson
Eugene Peterson describes in G.M. Hopkins’ poetry the “fullness of life through metaphor” and “enormous attention [Hopkins] paid to the way language works.” Peterson goes on to discuss the importance of ritual and rhythm in Christian writing and community.
Guests on Volume 75: Mark Malvasi, on John Lukacs, the meaning of the modern, and how to think about history; John Lukacs, on the roles of curiosity and language in the vocation of historians; Steve Talbott, on how communications technologies divert language from its richest possibilities; Christian Smith, on the spiritual lives and theological assumptions of American teenagers; Eugene Peterson, on the essential relationship between theology and spirituality, and on the narrative life of congregations; and Rolland Hein, on the life and imagination of George MacDonald.
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Professor Mark Malvasi discusses one of the themes on which historian John Lukacs has spent much of his time reflecting, the end of the Modern era of history. Malvasi is one of the two editors of an anthology of Lukacs’s works titled Remembered Past: John Lukacs on History, Historians, and Historical Knowledge. The collection contains essays spanning some forty years of the historian’s career along with a complete bibliography of his published writings. Malvasi explains that Lukacs links the decline of the Modern age to the decline of the bourgeois class and culture it developed. He also attends to the scholar's understanding and opinion of democracy.
Historian John Lukacs discusses the recording of the past and the importance of articulate, honest language for that task. Lukacs, a Hungarian who immigrated to the United States in 1946, has spent his career teaching and writing; his most recent book is Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred. All of his works demonstrate one of the main traits necessary for studying history — curiosity. Lukacs states that in earlier days a historian was known as “one who is curious.” He adds that one working within the discipline also ought to be mindful of speech and use of language, as “every choice of a word is essentially a moral choice.”
Steve Talbott, author of The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, discusses language, communication, and how technology affects the former two. It influences them negatively, he explains, when it ceases to be “out there” and instead “becomes our own habit of thinking.” Technology utilizes precise language meant to relay information, and it tempts people to use more of the same for all communication. But when people think mechanically and communicate in kind, they neglect the significant meanings conveyed through metaphors and the spaces between words, along with the new understandings figurative expressions can open up to them. In other words, they fail to realize language's real potential, which can be seen, says Talbott, when words are employed creatively, both indicating a “vast realm of yet unsaid things” and simultaneously teaching people how to say those unsaid things.
Sociologist Christian Smith is co-author of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, a book based on The National Study of Youth and Religion, which took four years to interview and survey thousands of teenagers from across the country. Smith discusses the findings of the study and the language teenagers use to talk about their faith. While religion and spirituality are important to a majority of youth, an informed vocabulary for talking about these matters is not. Even if teenagers belong to a specific religious tradition, Smith says, most cannot articulate the particulars of that tradition. Narrow vocabularies enable adolescents to avoid conflict with others who believe differently from them, states Smith; consequently, youth are not learning how to constructively engage those others.
Theologian and former pastor Eugene Peterson discusses his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. Peterson notes the impetus for the volume (his desire to develop a theological base for pastoral work), and describes the difference between pastoral theology as taught in many seminaries and spiritual theology. He explains what he means when he emphasizes thinking “narrativally.” He also commends the work of writer Wendell Berry as witnessing to the importance and recovery of, among other goods, storytelling. Peterson concludes that Christians especially — because of their understanding of the world as created through the Word — ought to be “shepherds of language”; “take care of those words,” he says, “make sure they’re clean, well fed.”
Adjunct professor emeritus Rolland Hein tells the story of his first encounter with the work of novelist George MacDonald, naming the characteristics of the literature that contributed to the indelibility of the meeting. Hein, who has written George MacDonald: Victorian Mythmaker and The Harmony Within: The Spiritual Vision of George MacDonald, was a young man when a professor of his introduced him to MacDonald’s writings. None of the reading he had done before the encounter spoke to him in the way those sermons and fantasies did, on a level other than that of the mind. That, states Hein, is what MacDonald does well: he employs images that incite readers’ imaginations and speak to the desires hidden within their hearts. Hein explains that MacDonald is a writer of myth functioning rightly, and that such myth affects people a-rationally, stirring something in them much deeper than intellect or emotion alone.
“We live in a very rhythmic world, universe, but our culture just shreds it, doesn’t it?”
—Eugene Peterson
Eugene Peterson describes in G.M. Hopkins’ poetry the “fullness of life through metaphor” and “enormous attention [Hopkins] paid to the way language works.” Peterson goes on to discuss the importance of ritual and rhythm in Christian writing and community.
Guests on Volume 76: D. H. Williams on the Church’s rootedness in its Tradition, why some Protestants remain suspicious, and on the excluding character of Christian conversion; Catherine Edwards Sanders on the spiritual hunger behind the rise of modern witchcraft; Ted Prescott on changing images of beauty and the human figure in twentieth century art; Martin X. Moleski on the life, times, and remarkable insights of Michael Polanyi; Stephen Prickett on George MacDonald and the tasks of imagination; and Barrett Fisher on the relative artistic assets of film and literature.
Professor D. H. Williams, author of Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church, discusses the early church and its understanding of how belief and practice relate to each other in the life of faith. The early church taught that if one believes rightly, one will do rightly, says Williams. Because it understood right belief as essential to right living, it spent time immersing new converts in, and teaching them about, the Scriptures and the traditions of the Church. The catechesis taught converts the vocabulary of the culture to which they were new-comers, while also instructing their assumptions about what constitutes the Good and the Beautiful. Although instruction such as this does not occur in many evangelical Protestant churches today, Williams states, a longing for it is evident “in Protestant hearts.”
Journalist Catherine Edwards Sanders spent a year traveling the country, interviewing Wiccans and pagans in order to write Wicca’s Charms: Understanding the Spiritual Hunger behind the Rise of Modern Witchcraft and Pagan Spirituality. Sanders discusses her findings and explains why Wicca is popular with American teenagers. Many are drawn to it because they long to be deliberate about spirituality but also wish to craft their own way of practicing spirituality. Wicca, because it has no orthodoxy, allows them to do just that. Sanders notes that the increased interest in pagan spirituality should not be surprising; America’s culture has “tilled the soil” for it, she says.
Sculptor and critic Ted Prescott discusses twentieth-century American art, how the human figure has been portrayed in art historically, and the book and gallery show titled A Broken Beauty. The book, which Prescott edited and to which he contributed, studies in print the themes the show attends to in images; the latter comprises the work of fifteen artists, all of whom present alternatives to the depictions of beauty and the body that have dominated different ages. In the Classical period (as in modern advertising), Prescott explains, bodies are shown as perfect forms that deny the reality of mortality and the Fall. In the twentieth century, however, art depicts the human figure as distorted and dismembered. Prescott and the others involved in the Broken Beauty project acknowledge mortality and the Fall in their work, but illustrate beauty in the midst of suffering, loss, and brokenness.
Professor Martin X. Moleski explains why Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) left his career in science to become a philosopher; Moleski is co-author of Michael Polanyi: Scientist and Philosopher. Polanyi was trained and worked as a scientist and physical chemist until he realized the totalitarian regimes of Europe were basing their destructive and dehumanizing view of humanity on a faulty definition of knowledge. Polanyi knew the definition was inadequate; he became a philosopher in order to study why. He dedicated himself, notes Moleski, to explicating a system of personal knowledge that considers the body important and attends to what knowing the world through the body entails. He also espoused the dignity of the person, the love of truth, and — among other goods — justice.
Professor Stephen Prickett, author of Victorian Fantasy, discusses the Scottish culture that formed writer George MacDonald (1824-1905). Scotland, says Prickett, is “a country that's always punched above its weight in world history” when it comes to the influence it has had through its writers and philosophers. It is known for its practical spirit, but also has a mystical tendency. MacDonald, author of many books including Lilith and Phantastes, embodied both sides of the nation’s split-personality: he studied science and chemistry in school yet also had visions of his grandfather — years after the man’s death — walking along the road. Prickett notes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) influenced MacDonald greatly, which explains in part why MacDonald believed the imagination a necessary faculty for knowing the world.
Professor and film critic Barrett Fisher notes that literature and film provide very different experiences for the imagination. In honor of the cinematic re-telling of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Fisher discusses what is involved in linking the two experiences when making a movie based on a book. He explains that many tensions are at work when people undertake an adaptation. For instance, some of the concerns that may have troubled the makers of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” include how to remain faithful to the original and how to maintain both the allegorical plot and the meaning behind the allegory. Fisher most admires those representations that respect the original material without adhering to it slavishly.
Professor D. H. Williams discusses his book Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church and the argument he makes therein. Up until the modern period, Williams states, the Trinitarian, Christological, and Scriptural teachings and doctrines of the Patristics were the recognized foundation of Christian identity. When members of the church talked of faith, they called these things to mind. Now, however, when Christians refer to faith, most picture first an experiential encounter with God. Williams notes that the early church excluded from its community those who would not affirm the doctrines it affirmed; in this, he says, it was unlike both much of the church since the modern period, and other communities of the Greco-Roman world.
Guests on Volume 76: D. H. Williams on the Church’s rootedness in its Tradition, why some Protestants remain suspicious, and on the excluding character of Christian conversion; Catherine Edwards Sanders on the spiritual hunger behind the rise of modern witchcraft; Ted Prescott on changing images of beauty and the human figure in twentieth century art; Martin X. Moleski on the life, times, and remarkable insights of Michael Polanyi; Stephen Prickett on George MacDonald and the tasks of imagination; and Barrett Fisher on the relative artistic assets of film and literature.
Professor D. H. Williams, author of Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church, discusses the early church and its understanding of how belief and practice relate to each other in the life of faith. The early church taught that if one believes rightly, one will do rightly, says Williams. Because it understood right belief as essential to right living, it spent time immersing new converts in, and teaching them about, the Scriptures and the traditions of the Church. The catechesis taught converts the vocabulary of the culture to which they were new-comers, while also instructing their assumptions about what constitutes the Good and the Beautiful. Although instruction such as this does not occur in many evangelical Protestant churches today, Williams states, a longing for it is evident “in Protestant hearts.”
Journalist Catherine Edwards Sanders spent a year traveling the country, interviewing Wiccans and pagans in order to write Wicca’s Charms: Understanding the Spiritual Hunger behind the Rise of Modern Witchcraft and Pagan Spirituality. Sanders discusses her findings and explains why Wicca is popular with American teenagers. Many are drawn to it because they long to be deliberate about spirituality but also wish to craft their own way of practicing spirituality. Wicca, because it has no orthodoxy, allows them to do just that. Sanders notes that the increased interest in pagan spirituality should not be surprising; America’s culture has “tilled the soil” for it, she says.
Sculptor and critic Ted Prescott discusses twentieth-century American art, how the human figure has been portrayed in art historically, and the book and gallery show titled A Broken Beauty. The book, which Prescott edited and to which he contributed, studies in print the themes the show attends to in images; the latter comprises the work of fifteen artists, all of whom present alternatives to the depictions of beauty and the body that have dominated different ages. In the Classical period (as in modern advertising), Prescott explains, bodies are shown as perfect forms that deny the reality of mortality and the Fall. In the twentieth century, however, art depicts the human figure as distorted and dismembered. Prescott and the others involved in the Broken Beauty project acknowledge mortality and the Fall in their work, but illustrate beauty in the midst of suffering, loss, and brokenness.
Professor Martin X. Moleski explains why Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) left his career in science to become a philosopher; Moleski is co-author of Michael Polanyi: Scientist and Philosopher. Polanyi was trained and worked as a scientist and physical chemist until he realized the totalitarian regimes of Europe were basing their destructive and dehumanizing view of humanity on a faulty definition of knowledge. Polanyi knew the definition was inadequate; he became a philosopher in order to study why. He dedicated himself, notes Moleski, to explicating a system of personal knowledge that considers the body important and attends to what knowing the world through the body entails. He also espoused the dignity of the person, the love of truth, and — among other goods — justice.
Professor Stephen Prickett, author of Victorian Fantasy, discusses the Scottish culture that formed writer George MacDonald (1824-1905). Scotland, says Prickett, is “a country that's always punched above its weight in world history” when it comes to the influence it has had through its writers and philosophers. It is known for its practical spirit, but also has a mystical tendency. MacDonald, author of many books including Lilith and Phantastes, embodied both sides of the nation’s split-personality: he studied science and chemistry in school yet also had visions of his grandfather — years after the man’s death — walking along the road. Prickett notes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) influenced MacDonald greatly, which explains in part why MacDonald believed the imagination a necessary faculty for knowing the world.
Professor and film critic Barrett Fisher notes that literature and film provide very different experiences for the imagination. In honor of the cinematic re-telling of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Fisher discusses what is involved in linking the two experiences when making a movie based on a book. He explains that many tensions are at work when people undertake an adaptation. For instance, some of the concerns that may have troubled the makers of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” include how to remain faithful to the original and how to maintain both the allegorical plot and the meaning behind the allegory. Fisher most admires those representations that respect the original material without adhering to it slavishly.
Professor D. H. Williams discusses his book Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church and the argument he makes therein. Up until the modern period, Williams states, the Trinitarian, Christological, and Scriptural teachings and doctrines of the Patristics were the recognized foundation of Christian identity. When members of the church talked of faith, they called these things to mind. Now, however, when Christians refer to faith, most picture first an experiential encounter with God. Williams notes that the early church excluded from its community those who would not affirm the doctrines it affirmed; in this, he says, it was unlike both much of the church since the modern period, and other communities of the Greco-Roman world.
Guests on Volume 77: Eric Miller on the conserving radicalism and revolutionary traditionalism of Christopher Lasch; Lisa de Boer on the depiction of everyday humanity in northern European post-Renaissance painting; Peter J. Schakel on seeing The Chronicles of Narnia as fairy tales, not just Christian allegory; and Alan Jacobs on how The Chronicles of Narnia reveal much of C. S. Lewis’s thinking on almost everything, and on how Lewis's imagination was prepared to write such books.
Historian Eric Miller discusses the concerns of cultural commentator Christopher Lasch (1932-1994), who is the subject of his essay “Pilgrim in an Unknown Land: Christopher Lasch’s Journey.” The work is included in an anthology Wilfred McClay edited, titled Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past. Lasch was the author of several books and hundreds of articles and essays; he had insatiable intellectual curiosity, states Miller, and was a radical in the true sense of the term, always honing his previously published arguments. He spent most of his career observing how American culture resists neat ideological explanations. Miller notes that Lasch was looking for a way to preserve morality without relying on religion and theology.
In an essay titled “A Comic Vision? Northern Renaissance Art and the Human Figure,” professor Lisa de Boer studies Northern European painters during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and their understanding of the human figure and its place in the world. De Boer is one of the artists whose work appears in the collection A Broken Beauty, which is a companion piece to the art show of the same name. Both the show and the anthology attend to the beauty found in the midst of suffering, loss, and brokenness. De Boer discusses her contribution to the book and describes one of the paintings she wrote about, “The Harvesters” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569). She explains how his vision and work were different from that of Southern European artists of the same era.
Professor of literature Peter Schakel discusses his book The Way into Narnia: A Reader’s Guide and the charms of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. In The Way into Narnia, Schakel argues that Lewis intended the books to be read as fairy stories, not as straight representations of the Christian story. The former work on the imagination differently than the latter and — while they can include Christian themes — also include universal themes. Fairy stories are those tales that take place in enchanted worlds full of strange creatures and magic. The Chronicles of Narnia work well as such says Schakel, successfully weaving elements from other genres into their fabric, portraying well-conceived imaginary worlds in a creative and structured fashion.
In this extended interview, Professor Alan Jacobs discusses his book The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis and what it means to say that Lewis (1898-1963) had a “pre-modern consciousness.” In his biography, Jacobs explores the images and themes found in both the Narnia stories and Lewis’s nonfiction works. He explains that Lewis’s thought and imagination were integrated in a way foreign to the modern mindset, which bisects reason to the public sphere and imagination to the private with neither informing the other. In a disenchanted world, Lewis cultivated a willingness to be enchanted. He trained his imagination on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, probing the images and feelings that that developed and embodied them.
Guests on Volume 77: Eric Miller on the conserving radicalism and revolutionary traditionalism of Christopher Lasch; Lisa de Boer on the depiction of everyday humanity in northern European post-Renaissance painting; Peter J. Schakel on seeing The Chronicles of Narnia as fairy tales, not just Christian allegory; and Alan Jacobs on how The Chronicles of Narnia reveal much of C. S. Lewis’s thinking on almost everything, and on how Lewis's imagination was prepared to write such books.
Historian Eric Miller discusses the concerns of cultural commentator Christopher Lasch (1932-1994), who is the subject of his essay “Pilgrim in an Unknown Land: Christopher Lasch’s Journey.” The work is included in an anthology Wilfred McClay edited, titled Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past. Lasch was the author of several books and hundreds of articles and essays; he had insatiable intellectual curiosity, states Miller, and was a radical in the true sense of the term, always honing his previously published arguments. He spent most of his career observing how American culture resists neat ideological explanations. Miller notes that Lasch was looking for a way to preserve morality without relying on religion and theology.
In an essay titled “A Comic Vision? Northern Renaissance Art and the Human Figure,” professor Lisa de Boer studies Northern European painters during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and their understanding of the human figure and its place in the world. De Boer is one of the artists whose work appears in the collection A Broken Beauty, which is a companion piece to the art show of the same name. Both the show and the anthology attend to the beauty found in the midst of suffering, loss, and brokenness. De Boer discusses her contribution to the book and describes one of the paintings she wrote about, “The Harvesters” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569). She explains how his vision and work were different from that of Southern European artists of the same era.
Professor of literature Peter Schakel discusses his book The Way into Narnia: A Reader’s Guide and the charms of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. In The Way into Narnia, Schakel argues that Lewis intended the books to be read as fairy stories, not as straight representations of the Christian story. The former work on the imagination differently than the latter and — while they can include Christian themes — also include universal themes. Fairy stories are those tales that take place in enchanted worlds full of strange creatures and magic. The Chronicles of Narnia work well as such says Schakel, successfully weaving elements from other genres into their fabric, portraying well-conceived imaginary worlds in a creative and structured fashion.
In this extended interview, Professor Alan Jacobs discusses his book The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis and what it means to say that Lewis (1898-1963) had a “pre-modern consciousness.” In his biography, Jacobs explores the images and themes found in both the Narnia stories and Lewis’s nonfiction works. He explains that Lewis’s thought and imagination were integrated in a way foreign to the modern mindset, which bisects reason to the public sphere and imagination to the private with neither informing the other. In a disenchanted world, Lewis cultivated a willingness to be enchanted. He trained his imagination on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, probing the images and feelings that that developed and embodied them.
Guests on Volume 78: Mark Bauerlein on the causes of disengagement of college students from concern for intellectual and civic life; Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn on television, children, and acquiring a sense of reality; Sam Van Eman on the view of the good life advanced by advertising; Thomas de Zengotita on Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, and on postmodern individualism and “reality" TV; Eugene McCarraher on how American management theory became an influential source of religious meaning and practice; and John Witte, Jr. on how law embodies a view of human nature, and why religious viewpoints have often been ignored.
Professor Mark Bauerlein discusses his article about the current state of higher education, titled “A Very Long Disengagement,” published in the January 6, 2006, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Today’s students spend an exceptional amount of time communicating with their peers and paying attention to popular culture; additionally, they have unprecedented access to knowledge via the internet. Even so, states Bauerlein, they are making no great strides towards increasing their knowledge of history, politics, literature, or other matters that comprise the wisdom of culture, nor are they learning to engage the responsibilities concomitant with adulthood. Bauerlein notes that students alone are not responsible for the sustained trek into adolescence. Colleges and universities are partly to blame, as are other cultural and societal structures.
Historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn studies television and how it affects children in her essay “A Stranger’s Dream: The Virtual Self and the Socialization Crisis,” published in the anthology Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Person in the American Past. Lasch-Quinn discusses her essay and states that in the 1970s there were many critiques published about the world television portrays and how exposure to it might affect the development of children’s imagination. She laments the current dearth of similar works and attends to some of the issues raised in the earlier ones. She focuses on the type of messages propagated in television’s content (messages such as old people are unattractive), and on the medium itself. She notes that if children spend their time with television they will have less time to play in nature, which means they will have less time to discover and stand in awe of things larger than themselves.
Author Sam Van Eman discusses what he has learned about advertising as he has worked with college students to help them integrate what they say they believe with how they live. His findings are published in his book, On Earth As It Is in Advertising? Moving from Commercial Hype to Gospel Hope. Van Eman explains that through his work with students he has become increasingly aware of how advertising shapes their worlds. Advertisements offer them an alternative gospel, an alternative account of the well-lived life; they sell products but also identities. Ads can have a powerful effect in people's lives, he states, because they flatter those who see them and because they can make viewers feel recognized in a way that people who work or live with them often do not.
In his book Mediated professor Thomas de Zengotita examines, as the subtitle so deftly puts it, How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It. He identifies and explains three key concepts in the work: Representation, Flattery, and Performance. The first of the three shapes the environment in which people live, while the second and third describe how people are treated in that environment and how they respond to it. De Zengotita explains that media manufacture symbols and messages that are self-conscious about what they represent and for whom they are intended (i.e., a representation is designed to convey specific ideas or moods to certain people). The receivers of the messages and symbols feel flattered at being so addressed and respond to the attention, performing the roles they perceive they should fulfill.
Historian Eugene McCarraher discusses the role corporations play in American culture and his essay “Me, Myself, and Inc.: ‘Social Selfhood,’ Corporate Humanism, and Religious Longing in American Management Theory 1908-1956,” published in the anthology Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Person in the American Past. McCarraher explains the term “social selfhood,” noting that in the early twentieth century Progressives were optimistic about how corporate labor would shape people's understanding of their place in society. They thought it would foster interdependence instead of individualism. Those who wrote about corporations in the early days were hopeful that they would come to fill the space religion and art vacated at the moral and cultural center of American life. In many ways, he says, corporations have done just that, donning religious language in their operations, setting the standards for how many contemporary churches look and operate.
Professor of law John Witte, Jr., discusses a two-volume collection he co-edited with Frank S. Alexander, titled The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, which includes writings from Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic thinkers. He notes the role religion and theology play in the public discussion about how people live together in a society under constitutional law. While the two disciplines have not been welcomed to the discourse for most of the twentieth century, in recent decades such is not the case. Witte says Christianity has a rich variety of voices to contribute; his and Alexander’s works demonstrate that reality. Witte also attends to how contemporary law reflects understandings about human nature.
Professor Thomas de Zengotita discusses the defining characteristics of contemporary culture and why he offers no solutions to the problems of the moment. In his book Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It he critiques the self-consciousness of the era: people no longer act without realizing what their actions say about them. Now when people act they do so purposefully, choosing how to perform in order to both present themselves as they wish to be seen, and to communicate what they wish to communicate. De Zengotita notes that this level of “hyper self-consciousness” emerged in the 1960s. Because it is relatively new, society is not yet in a position to know how to counteract it; people must live longer with the problem, he says, before starting to see the consequences and imagining how to respond.
Guests on Volume 78: Mark Bauerlein on the causes of disengagement of college students from concern for intellectual and civic life; Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn on television, children, and acquiring a sense of reality; Sam Van Eman on the view of the good life advanced by advertising; Thomas de Zengotita on Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, and on postmodern individualism and “reality" TV; Eugene McCarraher on how American management theory became an influential source of religious meaning and practice; and John Witte, Jr. on how law embodies a view of human nature, and why religious viewpoints have often been ignored.
Professor Mark Bauerlein discusses his article about the current state of higher education, titled “A Very Long Disengagement,” published in the January 6, 2006, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Today’s students spend an exceptional amount of time communicating with their peers and paying attention to popular culture; additionally, they have unprecedented access to knowledge via the internet. Even so, states Bauerlein, they are making no great strides towards increasing their knowledge of history, politics, literature, or other matters that comprise the wisdom of culture, nor are they learning to engage the responsibilities concomitant with adulthood. Bauerlein notes that students alone are not responsible for the sustained trek into adolescence. Colleges and universities are partly to blame, as are other cultural and societal structures.
Historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn studies television and how it affects children in her essay “A Stranger’s Dream: The Virtual Self and the Socialization Crisis,” published in the anthology Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Person in the American Past. Lasch-Quinn discusses her essay and states that in the 1970s there were many critiques published about the world television portrays and how exposure to it might affect the development of children’s imagination. She laments the current dearth of similar works and attends to some of the issues raised in the earlier ones. She focuses on the type of messages propagated in television’s content (messages such as old people are unattractive), and on the medium itself. She notes that if children spend their time with television they will have less time to play in nature, which means they will have less time to discover and stand in awe of things larger than themselves.
Author Sam Van Eman discusses what he has learned about advertising as he has worked with college students to help them integrate what they say they believe with how they live. His findings are published in his book, On Earth As It Is in Advertising? Moving from Commercial Hype to Gospel Hope. Van Eman explains that through his work with students he has become increasingly aware of how advertising shapes their worlds. Advertisements offer them an alternative gospel, an alternative account of the well-lived life; they sell products but also identities. Ads can have a powerful effect in people's lives, he states, because they flatter those who see them and because they can make viewers feel recognized in a way that people who work or live with them often do not.
In his book Mediated professor Thomas de Zengotita examines, as the subtitle so deftly puts it, How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It. He identifies and explains three key concepts in the work: Representation, Flattery, and Performance. The first of the three shapes the environment in which people live, while the second and third describe how people are treated in that environment and how they respond to it. De Zengotita explains that media manufacture symbols and messages that are self-conscious about what they represent and for whom they are intended (i.e., a representation is designed to convey specific ideas or moods to certain people). The receivers of the messages and symbols feel flattered at being so addressed and respond to the attention, performing the roles they perceive they should fulfill.
Historian Eugene McCarraher discusses the role corporations play in American culture and his essay “Me, Myself, and Inc.: ‘Social Selfhood,’ Corporate Humanism, and Religious Longing in American Management Theory 1908-1956,” published in the anthology Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Person in the American Past. McCarraher explains the term “social selfhood,” noting that in the early twentieth century Progressives were optimistic about how corporate labor would shape people's understanding of their place in society. They thought it would foster interdependence instead of individualism. Those who wrote about corporations in the early days were hopeful that they would come to fill the space religion and art vacated at the moral and cultural center of American life. In many ways, he says, corporations have done just that, donning religious language in their operations, setting the standards for how many contemporary churches look and operate.
Professor of law John Witte, Jr., discusses a two-volume collection he co-edited with Frank S. Alexander, titled The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, which includes writings from Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic thinkers. He notes the role religion and theology play in the public discussion about how people live together in a society under constitutional law. While the two disciplines have not been welcomed to the discourse for most of the twentieth century, in recent decades such is not the case. Witte says Christianity has a rich variety of voices to contribute; his and Alexander’s works demonstrate that reality. Witte also attends to how contemporary law reflects understandings about human nature.
Professor Thomas de Zengotita discusses the defining characteristics of contemporary culture and why he offers no solutions to the problems of the moment. In his book Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It he critiques the self-consciousness of the era: people no longer act without realizing what their actions say about them. Now when people act they do so purposefully, choosing how to perform in order to both present themselves as they wish to be seen, and to communicate what they wish to communicate. De Zengotita notes that this level of “hyper self-consciousness” emerged in the 1960s. Because it is relatively new, society is not yet in a position to know how to counteract it; people must live longer with the problem, he says, before starting to see the consequences and imagining how to respond.
Guests on Volume 79: Carson Holloway on why sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are inadequate bases for sustaining political ideals; Peter Augustine Lawler on why we are more than “individuals” narrowly defined; Hadley Arkes on the difference, in law, between evidence from social scientific data and moral truths; Ben Witherington, III on why The Da Vinci Code’s implausible account of history seems credible to many people; Christopher Shannon on Ivan Illich (Medical Nemesis) and the loss of belief in the possibility that suffering can be meaningful; Roger Lundin on how nature and experience replaced revelation as a source of authority (and why they fail to serve as such), and on the necessity of humility in writing biographies.
Professor Carson Holloway discusses his book The Right Darwin? Evolution, Religion, and the Future of Democracy and Darwinian conservatism. He compares the views of those who ascribe to Darwinian conservatism with those of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) on human flourishing and democracy. The former group sees democracy as the political environment in which people will best thrive. Tocqueville, however, was concerned that it would inhibit the development of human nobility. For people to blossom spiritually, their attention needs to be directed beyond their material existence; democracy, however, tends to distract people “from looking heavenward.” Holloway explains why he is more sympathetic to Tocqueville than to Darwinian conservatism.
Professor Peter Augustine Lawler describes the way modern people think about God and themselves, and how the principles of abstract individualism are the rule against which America's governing bodies measure their policies. In his book Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future, he studies various misrepresentations of human nature, defining three dominant accounts and their influence on the public square. Lawler explains that many Americans think of themselves not as members of a larger whole but as individuals free to pursue freedom, comfort, and security as they see fit. Virtue is not something these people would cultivate for its own sake, although they may employ it as a means to another end. This mentality has come to the fore of American public consciousness in relatively recent times, he says, ever since the history of America has been defined as the emancipation of the individual.
Political philosopher Hadley Arkes discusses the subject of his essay “The Family and the Laws,” which is published in the anthology edited by Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain titled The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals. He summarizes how the laws about marriage become confused when they separate the notion of what wedlock is from sex and procreation. In Massachusetts, for example, consummation is not a decisive test for marriage. Yet the courts there would not permit just any two people with the desire to be wedded to marry. One question that arises from confusion such as this, says Arkes, is how will political bodies support their claim that matrimony cannot accommodate all possible relationships while allowing for same-sex unions and while denying that procreation is central to the institution?
Professor Ben Witherington, III, discusses why it is not surprising that The Da Vinci Code caused many Christians to question the historical details of the faith. Witherington writes about The Da Vinci Code in his book The Gospel Code: Novel Claims about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci. Therein he studies not only the matters mentioned in the subtitle, but also how the canon of the New Testament was chosen. Witherington says that part of the reason Dan Brown’s novel swayed people so is because they are historically illiterate when it comes to the tradition of the faith. The book also exploited people’s deep suspicions about major institutions and their proclivity for conspiracy theories, and the dissatisfaction with traditional Christianity that is wide-spread among believers today.
Historian Christopher Shannon discusses Ivan Illich (1926-2002) and his writings about suffering. Shannon’s essay on the subject, “The Politics of Suffering,” is published in the anthology Wilfred McClay edited, Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past. Shannon notes that Illich studied how traditional cultures understand suffering and its meaning in his 1976 work, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. Traditional cultures illuminate the meaning of pain, suffering, and healing by situating them in a larger story. Modern cultures, on the other hand, see suffering not as part of a larger whole, but as meaningless sensation, merely something to control and alleviate.
Professor Roger Lundin describes how Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays illuminate the contemporary disregard for nearly any source of authority other than the self. He studies what they reveal in his book From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority, the idea for which took shape as he recognized that the development in Emerson's writings mirrored a development in American life in the nineteenth century. Emerson (1803-1882), Lundin explains, was the first major writer in the American tradition who worked to discard all ties to historic Christian belief and practice. As he did so, he sought a source for moral authority first in nature and later in the individual’s experience of life. Emerson’s pilgrimage was similar to that of a handful of others during his time (many of whom were Protestants) who tried to maintain personal morality without sustaining the theological authority upon which it is built.
Guests on Volume 79: Carson Holloway on why sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are inadequate bases for sustaining political ideals; Peter Augustine Lawler on why we are more than “individuals” narrowly defined; Hadley Arkes on the difference, in law, between evidence from social scientific data and moral truths; Ben Witherington, III on why The Da Vinci Code’s implausible account of history seems credible to many people; Christopher Shannon on Ivan Illich (Medical Nemesis) and the loss of belief in the possibility that suffering can be meaningful; Roger Lundin on how nature and experience replaced revelation as a source of authority (and why they fail to serve as such), and on the necessity of humility in writing biographies.
Professor Carson Holloway discusses his book The Right Darwin? Evolution, Religion, and the Future of Democracy and Darwinian conservatism. He compares the views of those who ascribe to Darwinian conservatism with those of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) on human flourishing and democracy. The former group sees democracy as the political environment in which people will best thrive. Tocqueville, however, was concerned that it would inhibit the development of human nobility. For people to blossom spiritually, their attention needs to be directed beyond their material existence; democracy, however, tends to distract people “from looking heavenward.” Holloway explains why he is more sympathetic to Tocqueville than to Darwinian conservatism.
Professor Peter Augustine Lawler describes the way modern people think about God and themselves, and how the principles of abstract individualism are the rule against which America's governing bodies measure their policies. In his book Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future, he studies various misrepresentations of human nature, defining three dominant accounts and their influence on the public square. Lawler explains that many Americans think of themselves not as members of a larger whole but as individuals free to pursue freedom, comfort, and security as they see fit. Virtue is not something these people would cultivate for its own sake, although they may employ it as a means to another end. This mentality has come to the fore of American public consciousness in relatively recent times, he says, ever since the history of America has been defined as the emancipation of the individual.
Political philosopher Hadley Arkes discusses the subject of his essay “The Family and the Laws,” which is published in the anthology edited by Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain titled The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals. He summarizes how the laws about marriage become confused when they separate the notion of what wedlock is from sex and procreation. In Massachusetts, for example, consummation is not a decisive test for marriage. Yet the courts there would not permit just any two people with the desire to be wedded to marry. One question that arises from confusion such as this, says Arkes, is how will political bodies support their claim that matrimony cannot accommodate all possible relationships while allowing for same-sex unions and while denying that procreation is central to the institution?
Professor Ben Witherington, III, discusses why it is not surprising that The Da Vinci Code caused many Christians to question the historical details of the faith. Witherington writes about The Da Vinci Code in his book The Gospel Code: Novel Claims about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci. Therein he studies not only the matters mentioned in the subtitle, but also how the canon of the New Testament was chosen. Witherington says that part of the reason Dan Brown’s novel swayed people so is because they are historically illiterate when it comes to the tradition of the faith. The book also exploited people’s deep suspicions about major institutions and their proclivity for conspiracy theories, and the dissatisfaction with traditional Christianity that is wide-spread among believers today.
Historian Christopher Shannon discusses Ivan Illich (1926-2002) and his writings about suffering. Shannon’s essay on the subject, “The Politics of Suffering,” is published in the anthology Wilfred McClay edited, Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past. Shannon notes that Illich studied how traditional cultures understand suffering and its meaning in his 1976 work, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. Traditional cultures illuminate the meaning of pain, suffering, and healing by situating them in a larger story. Modern cultures, on the other hand, see suffering not as part of a larger whole, but as meaningless sensation, merely something to control and alleviate.
Professor Roger Lundin describes how Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays illuminate the contemporary disregard for nearly any source of authority other than the self. He studies what they reveal in his book From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority, the idea for which took shape as he recognized that the development in Emerson's writings mirrored a development in American life in the nineteenth century. Emerson (1803-1882), Lundin explains, was the first major writer in the American tradition who worked to discard all ties to historic Christian belief and practice. As he did so, he sought a source for moral authority first in nature and later in the individual’s experience of life. Emerson’s pilgrimage was similar to that of a handful of others during his time (many of whom were Protestants) who tried to maintain personal morality without sustaining the theological authority upon which it is built.
Guests on Volume 80: Stephen A. McKnight on The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought; Tim Morris and Don Petcher on science, Christology, and why segregating nature from supernature doesn’t do justice to either; Vigen Guroian on the mystical character of fragrance and on why working in his garden is an imitation of the Master Gardener; Paul Valliere on Orthodox theology’s engagement with questions concerning law, politics, and human nature, and on the ideas of Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900); Vigen Guroian on the importance of personality and community in the thought of Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948); and Calvin Stapert on the affirmation of Creation and intimations of transcendence in the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Professor emeritus Stephen A. McKnight discusses his book The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon's Thought and the term that is essential for understanding what Bacon (1561-1626) thought about his own work: instauration. Bacon is credited as the developer of the modern scientific method and was influenced greatly by scientists from the Renaissance era. He understood himself as a man with a religious vocation, states McKnight. Lost knowledge about how the universe functions was being restored to humanity during his lifetime, he thought, and it was his task to discover and demonstrate how that restoration was occurring in nature and how people might put the knowledge to use to have dominion over nature. McKnight notes that “instauration” had rich connotations for those reading the scientist during Bacon’s era.
Professors Tim Morris and Don Petcher discuss their book Science and Grace: God's Reign in the Natural Sciences and the perceived chasm between science and religion. They explain that many Christians who study or practice the former do so thinking that religion is not concerned with creation, but only with the salvation of souls. Morris and Petcher explore the flaws of this understanding and how it affects the practice of science. They note that one of the main themes in Scripture is that of Jesus Christ as mediator of both redemption and creation. If Christians approached the discipline understanding that, they explain, their work or perceptions would be shaped by an attitude different from the one that currently prevails in the field.
Gardener and Orthodox theologian Vigen Guroian discusses the lessons he has learned gardening. Guroian, author of The Fragrance of God, says that he started gardening for practical purposes — not for the love or discipline of it — shortly after his wedding. Over the years his garden has taught him many lessons about beauty and God. Now, states Guroian, he enjoys spending time in the garden more than he enjoys its produce. Guroian mentions what he has learned about fragrance while working in his gardens.
Professor Paul Valliere discusses the themes of his two essays published in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. The first of the two is titled “Introduction to the Modern Orthodox Tradition,” the second of the two “Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900).” Valliere explains why—as compared to the Western Church—the Orthodox tradition had a dearth before the modern era of meditations on church, state, and society. Soloviev, he says, is one of the modern thinkers within the tradition who developed a philosophy for the public square. Soloviev's thought emphasizes that healthy societies correlate three separate orders: the material, that of law and justice, and the mystical — or love-inspired — order.
Professor Vigen Guroian discusses the work of Nicholas Berdyaev, an Orthodox philosopher who wrote about society. Guroian’s essay “Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948)” is published in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. Guroian compares Berdyaev’s work to the works of Western philosophers during his time. He explains how Berdyaev’s philosophy of human beings, which is known as personalism, is different from the others’, known as existentialism. Guroian also notes the role that law plays in Berdyaev’s vision for the body politic.
Professor of music Calvin Stapert discusses Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music and what theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) thought about it. Stapert wrote an article about Mozart (1756-1791) for the April 2006 issue of Theology Today titled “Does God Manifest Himself in the World in Trickles of Music?” Barth, says Stapert, would answer yes and point to Mozart’s music, which is full of seemingly contradictory realities but which is always ultimately directed towards light, resolution, harmony, and reconciliation. Barth’s book about Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was reprinted this year in honor of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Stapert notes that Mozart’s music demonstrates both the sheer goodness of being and the truth that people were made to take delight in — and play in — creation.
Professor of music history Calvin Stapert discusses the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and its relation to the Transcendent. Stapert wrote an article in honor of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, which was published in the April 2006 issue of Theology Today, titled “Does God Manifest Himself in the World in Trickles of Music?” Stapert notes that Mozart’s music does bear “traces of transcendence,” and that it can be difficult to appreciate the music without idolizing it or its composer. Gratitude and adoration for the God who gives such music are key for striking the balance. Stapert names the marks of the Divine that appear in Mozart’s compositions and explains how they compare to the works of Romantic composers.
Guests on Volume 80: Stephen A. McKnight on The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought; Tim Morris and Don Petcher on science, Christology, and why segregating nature from supernature doesn’t do justice to either; Vigen Guroian on the mystical character of fragrance and on why working in his garden is an imitation of the Master Gardener; Paul Valliere on Orthodox theology’s engagement with questions concerning law, politics, and human nature, and on the ideas of Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900); Vigen Guroian on the importance of personality and community in the thought of Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948); and Calvin Stapert on the affirmation of Creation and intimations of transcendence in the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Professor emeritus Stephen A. McKnight discusses his book The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon's Thought and the term that is essential for understanding what Bacon (1561-1626) thought about his own work: instauration. Bacon is credited as the developer of the modern scientific method and was influenced greatly by scientists from the Renaissance era. He understood himself as a man with a religious vocation, states McKnight. Lost knowledge about how the universe functions was being restored to humanity during his lifetime, he thought, and it was his task to discover and demonstrate how that restoration was occurring in nature and how people might put the knowledge to use to have dominion over nature. McKnight notes that “instauration” had rich connotations for those reading the scientist during Bacon’s era.
Professors Tim Morris and Don Petcher discuss their book Science and Grace: God's Reign in the Natural Sciences and the perceived chasm between science and religion. They explain that many Christians who study or practice the former do so thinking that religion is not concerned with creation, but only with the salvation of souls. Morris and Petcher explore the flaws of this understanding and how it affects the practice of science. They note that one of the main themes in Scripture is that of Jesus Christ as mediator of both redemption and creation. If Christians approached the discipline understanding that, they explain, their work or perceptions would be shaped by an attitude different from the one that currently prevails in the field.
Gardener and Orthodox theologian Vigen Guroian discusses the lessons he has learned gardening. Guroian, author of The Fragrance of God, says that he started gardening for practical purposes — not for the love or discipline of it — shortly after his wedding. Over the years his garden has taught him many lessons about beauty and God. Now, states Guroian, he enjoys spending time in the garden more than he enjoys its produce. Guroian mentions what he has learned about fragrance while working in his gardens.
Professor Paul Valliere discusses the themes of his two essays published in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. The first of the two is titled “Introduction to the Modern Orthodox Tradition,” the second of the two “Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900).” Valliere explains why—as compared to the Western Church—the Orthodox tradition had a dearth before the modern era of meditations on church, state, and society. Soloviev, he says, is one of the modern thinkers within the tradition who developed a philosophy for the public square. Soloviev's thought emphasizes that healthy societies correlate three separate orders: the material, that of law and justice, and the mystical — or love-inspired — order.
Professor Vigen Guroian discusses the work of Nicholas Berdyaev, an Orthodox philosopher who wrote about society. Guroian’s essay “Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948)” is published in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. Guroian compares Berdyaev’s work to the works of Western philosophers during his time. He explains how Berdyaev’s philosophy of human beings, which is known as personalism, is different from the others’, known as existentialism. Guroian also notes the role that law plays in Berdyaev’s vision for the body politic.
Professor of music Calvin Stapert discusses Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music and what theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) thought about it. Stapert wrote an article about Mozart (1756-1791) for the April 2006 issue of Theology Today titled “Does God Manifest Himself in the World in Trickles of Music?” Barth, says Stapert, would answer yes and point to Mozart’s music, which is full of seemingly contradictory realities but which is always ultimately directed towards light, resolution, harmony, and reconciliation. Barth’s book about Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was reprinted this year in honor of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Stapert notes that Mozart’s music demonstrates both the sheer goodness of being and the truth that people were made to take delight in — and play in — creation.
Professor of music history Calvin Stapert discusses the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and its relation to the Transcendent. Stapert wrote an article in honor of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, which was published in the April 2006 issue of Theology Today, titled “Does God Manifest Himself in the World in Trickles of Music?” Stapert notes that Mozart’s music does bear “traces of transcendence,” and that it can be difficult to appreciate the music without idolizing it or its composer. Gratitude and adoration for the God who gives such music are key for striking the balance. Stapert names the marks of the Divine that appear in Mozart’s compositions and explains how they compare to the works of Romantic composers.
Guests on Volume 81: Nigel Cameron on the lack of ethical reflection in public policy on technology; Joel James Shuman on beliefs about God’s nature and purposes informing how we think about sickness and medicine; Brian Volck on embodied life, stories, and how medical practice involves attending to the stories of the bodies of patients; Russell Hittinger on the modern state giving rise to modern Catholic social thought; Mark Noll on learning to think about law and politics from earlier Christians who lived in very different political circumstances; and Stephen Miller on the factors that sustain the art of conversation, and why it’s a dying art.
Bioethicist Nigel Cameron discusses nanotechnology and the potential it holds for reinventing the human race. Cameron co-wrote a book on newly developing bio- and nano-technologies titled How to Be a Christian in a Brave New World. In it Cameron and co-author, Joni Eareckson Tada address issues as diverse as embryo research and intellectual property rights, issues that go beyond taking human life made in God’s image to making that life in humanity’s image. They write to encourage and to equip Christians for the challenges concomitant with the prospect of patenting and commodifying people and their genes. Cameron explains how and why Christians should prepare themselves for meeting those challenges.
Professor Joel Shuman discusses medical ethics and the book he co-wrote with Brian Volck, MD, on the matter, Reclaiming the Body: Christians and the Faithful Use of Modern Medicine. Shuman mentions the range of questions that medical ethics should address. He also notes that how people think about the issues will depend on the sorts of practices that shape their lives (shopping or praying, for example) and on the health of the community in which they live. Shuman explains how the poet and cultural critic Wendell Berry has influenced his teaching. In his classes, he says, he particularly focuses on teaching about well-ordered communities and their members.
Pediatrician Brian Volck, co-author of Reclaiming the Body: Christians and the Faithful Use of Modern Medicine, discusses stories, bodies, and the medical profession. He notes that the medical profession is one of the few occupations that still requires learners to apprentice to masters in order to learn how to care for patients. He also states that the practice of medicine embodies concern for people. Part of how that concern is embodied is through practitioners listening to the stories patients tell. Volck explains the importance of attending to stories not only for expressing concern for patients, but also for proper, thorough diagnoses.
Professor Russell Hittinger discusses topics from both of his essays published in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. Hittinger's two essays are titled “Introduction to Modern Catholicism” and “Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903).” In the first of the two he studies the mid-nineteenth century and the development of Catholic theology and philosophy during that time. He describes three separate “social unities” and how the State tries to account for them. Hittinger also mentions Pope Leo XIII and his encyclicals, the subject of the second of his two essays.
Professor Mark Noll discusses how Protestant thinking about politics has changed since America’s founding. Noll’s essay on the matter, “Introduction to Modern Protestantism,” is published in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. Noll notes that Protestants in earlier times inhabited the public square as Christians but without thinking seriously about how it should be shaped. In more recent years, however, they began realizing the value of “thinking long and hard” about how the body politic should be ordered (thanks in part to their interactions with Catholics and Catholicism). Noll also mentions certain giants of the faith, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), and how their lives bear witness to the connection between personal piety and cultural formation.
Writer Stephen Miller discusses his book Conversation: A History of a Declining Art, along with trends in society that work against cultivating that art. Miller defines conversation as the free exchange of ideas. He locates the acme of fine conversation in the eighteenth century in the coffee houses and salons in England. Conversation today is a pale shadow of what it was then, consisting more of the exchange of anecdotes than of people sharing discussion of something other than themselves. Miller names a handful of the factors contributing to this deterioration of conversation.
On this edition’s bonus track, bioethicist Nigel Cameron is concerned that discussion of the moral significance of the embryo is lacking in public debate about stem cell research. He raises questions of where boundaries fall in our treatment of the embryo, and finds that no clear limit seems to have been established. The case against stem cell research is more subtle than mere “pro-life craziness.” Does being pro-science mean that we must do whatever science allows us to do? Cameron makes the case that false arguments are an inevitable political ploy when serious ethical reflection is abandoned.
Guests on Volume 81: Nigel Cameron on the lack of ethical reflection in public policy on technology; Joel James Shuman on beliefs about God’s nature and purposes informing how we think about sickness and medicine; Brian Volck on embodied life, stories, and how medical practice involves attending to the stories of the bodies of patients; Russell Hittinger on the modern state giving rise to modern Catholic social thought; Mark Noll on learning to think about law and politics from earlier Christians who lived in very different political circumstances; and Stephen Miller on the factors that sustain the art of conversation, and why it’s a dying art.
Bioethicist Nigel Cameron discusses nanotechnology and the potential it holds for reinventing the human race. Cameron co-wrote a book on newly developing bio- and nano-technologies titled How to Be a Christian in a Brave New World. In it Cameron and co-author, Joni Eareckson Tada address issues as diverse as embryo research and intellectual property rights, issues that go beyond taking human life made in God’s image to making that life in humanity’s image. They write to encourage and to equip Christians for the challenges concomitant with the prospect of patenting and commodifying people and their genes. Cameron explains how and why Christians should prepare themselves for meeting those challenges.
Professor Joel Shuman discusses medical ethics and the book he co-wrote with Brian Volck, MD, on the matter, Reclaiming the Body: Christians and the Faithful Use of Modern Medicine. Shuman mentions the range of questions that medical ethics should address. He also notes that how people think about the issues will depend on the sorts of practices that shape their lives (shopping or praying, for example) and on the health of the community in which they live. Shuman explains how the poet and cultural critic Wendell Berry has influenced his teaching. In his classes, he says, he particularly focuses on teaching about well-ordered communities and their members.
Pediatrician Brian Volck, co-author of Reclaiming the Body: Christians and the Faithful Use of Modern Medicine, discusses stories, bodies, and the medical profession. He notes that the medical profession is one of the few occupations that still requires learners to apprentice to masters in order to learn how to care for patients. He also states that the practice of medicine embodies concern for people. Part of how that concern is embodied is through practitioners listening to the stories patients tell. Volck explains the importance of attending to stories not only for expressing concern for patients, but also for proper, thorough diagnoses.
Professor Russell Hittinger discusses topics from both of his essays published in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. Hittinger's two essays are titled “Introduction to Modern Catholicism” and “Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903).” In the first of the two he studies the mid-nineteenth century and the development of Catholic theology and philosophy during that time. He describes three separate “social unities” and how the State tries to account for them. Hittinger also mentions Pope Leo XIII and his encyclicals, the subject of the second of his two essays.
Professor Mark Noll discusses how Protestant thinking about politics has changed since America’s founding. Noll’s essay on the matter, “Introduction to Modern Protestantism,” is published in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. Noll notes that Protestants in earlier times inhabited the public square as Christians but without thinking seriously about how it should be shaped. In more recent years, however, they began realizing the value of “thinking long and hard” about how the body politic should be ordered (thanks in part to their interactions with Catholics and Catholicism). Noll also mentions certain giants of the faith, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), and how their lives bear witness to the connection between personal piety and cultural formation.
Writer Stephen Miller discusses his book Conversation: A History of a Declining Art, along with trends in society that work against cultivating that art. Miller defines conversation as the free exchange of ideas. He locates the acme of fine conversation in the eighteenth century in the coffee houses and salons in England. Conversation today is a pale shadow of what it was then, consisting more of the exchange of anecdotes than of people sharing discussion of something other than themselves. Miller names a handful of the factors contributing to this deterioration of conversation.
On this edition’s bonus track, bioethicist Nigel Cameron is concerned that discussion of the moral significance of the embryo is lacking in public debate about stem cell research. He raises questions of where boundaries fall in our treatment of the embryo, and finds that no clear limit seems to have been established. The case against stem cell research is more subtle than mere “pro-life craziness.” Does being pro-science mean that we must do whatever science allows us to do? Cameron makes the case that false arguments are an inevitable political ploy when serious ethical reflection is abandoned.
Guests on Volume 82: Stephen Gardner on how modern culture weakens religion and establishes a new definition of the public; Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn on Tom Wolfe and Philip Rieff’s diagnosis of cultural disorder; Wilfred McClay on how Philip Rieff’s brilliant critique of modern disorder kept him from realizing a way out of our dilemma; David Wells on how Western culture has eclipsed fundamental assumptions about human nature and God; James K. A. Smith on the postmodern insight that our experience in the world requires interpretation (and that some interpretations are better than others); and Robert Littlejohn on how education should encourage wisdom and eloquence in students.
“[T]herapy in Plato means not so much the care for us but our care for the gods, the assumption [being] that our care for the gods or for the Divine is what cures us of the intrinsic difficulties of human life.”
—Stephen Gardner
Professor Stephen Gardner discusses Philip Rieff’s analysis of modern culture and how he appropriated Sigmund Freud’s work in the prescient The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. Gardner explains that Rieff and Freud both address what happens to people and society when they no longer orient themselves toward the transcendent. Rieff observed that people’s ultimate aim becomes the fulfillment of desires while culture becomes an anti-culture, bent on liberating people so they might fulfill their desires, offering them therapy along the way. Gardner notes the difference between these understandings and those of the ancient world. He offers Plato’s definition of therapy to demonstrate the incompatibility.
“I think what’s so intriguing about Rieff’s work is that all of this emphasis on self and fulfillment of the self and satisfaction leads [to] a profound loss of self and therefore loss of any basis of satisfaction or fulfillment.”
—Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn
Professor Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn notes that Philip Rieff addressed, in The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, the self-obsession that results when faith and the sacred no longer order society. The concerns of Rieff’s work are also addressed by novelist Tom Wolfe. Both attend to the re-orienting of society but, Lasch-Quinn states, they each offer different critiques of the change. She explains Rieff’s distinction between religion and religiosity, and also discusses the need for culture to place restrictions on individuals. She summarizes the great irony addressed in his work, which is that people become profoundly unsatisfied the more they pursue satisfaction.
“The more that you assume the analytic attitude is possible, the more that madness is the product, the more you are a prisoner of the world and of the world’s preconceptions.”
—Wilfred McClay
Professor Bill McClay summarizes a strength and weakness of sociologist Philip Rieff’s work, and discusses what the weakness indicates about contemporary culture. Rieff, author of The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, demonstrates relentlessly that the emphasis on the therapeutic in society trivializes human experiences. However, he is not able to imagine a solution to the problem. McClay states that Rieff’s analytic method and language are at least in part to blame, and explains the origins of the analytic habit along with the role “demystification” plays in it. He notes the risks involved in assuming an analytic attitude.
“We [in the West] today are asking ourselves whether there is even such a thing as truth, and if there is whether we can know it. Now Christian faith simply cannot sustain itself without a belief in truth.”
—David Wells
Professor David Wells explains his assertion that contemporary culture in the Western world is more hostile to the Christian faith than it was before the 1960s. Wells is author of Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World. Christian faith, he says, is predicated upon certain timeless and changeless truths; Western culture, however, does not believe in truth. Nor does it assume that there is a Supreme Being or moral absolutes. Wells notes which additional truths of the Christian faith have been eclipsed in the West.
“What you get in this picture of postmodernism is the sense that, look we’re all telling stories about the world, but they’re stories about the world . . . These are still stories about a givenness that pushes up against us.”
—James K. A. Smith
Professor James K. A. Smith evaluates the suspicions many people harbor about postmodernism. Smith, author of Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, names postmodernism’s central problems while also identifying which components of the philosophy might encourage the Church to greater faithfulness. He explains that loss of confidence in logical demonstrations of universal, objective truths is not necessarily bad for Christian theology. He also discusses why the fact that postmodernism promotes particular stories over universal truths does not mean that the reality those truths describe no longer exists. Smith notes what it would mean for the Church to take postmodernism seriously for the sake of faithful obedience, rather than for cultural relevancy.
“Studying the liberal arts and sciences provides you with the skills you need to tackle virtually anything in life.”
—Robert Littlejohn
Robert Littlejohn, headmaster of a classical Christian school, discusses the end goal of a classical liberal arts and sciences education, and how classical schools order their curriculum. Littlejohn is co-author of Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning. The book attends to logic and rhetoric and how training in these disciplines equips students for naming the world Christianly. Littlejohn states that schools with classical arts and sciences education understand their purpose as preparing students not only for college, but also for life-long learning and living well in the world after their formal schooling. In order to establish their curriculum, the schools determine which knowledge, skills, and virtues their graduates should have; the material for each grade is then oriented towards developing such graduates.
“We need a much more holistic picture of how we inhabit culture, which is why I'm now talking in terms of cultural institutions as comprising liturgies that form us in certain ways; the question is, ‘What kind of people are we being made into by these liturgies?’”
—James K. A. Smith
Professor James K. A. Smith discusses the relationship between practices and ideas. Smith, author of Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, explains that postmodern thought highlights how ideas and practices shape each other dialectically. In other words, participating in certain practices influences the ideas people have about the world and their place in it; those ideas, in turn, help to determine which practices people adopt. Smith notes that the dialogue between practice and reflection characterizes the process of sanctification. He also attends to the tools postmodernity offers for critiquing modernity.
Guests on Volume 82: Stephen Gardner on how modern culture weakens religion and establishes a new definition of the public; Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn on Tom Wolfe and Philip Rieff’s diagnosis of cultural disorder; Wilfred McClay on how Philip Rieff’s brilliant critique of modern disorder kept him from realizing a way out of our dilemma; David Wells on how Western culture has eclipsed fundamental assumptions about human nature and God; James K. A. Smith on the postmodern insight that our experience in the world requires interpretation (and that some interpretations are better than others); and Robert Littlejohn on how education should encourage wisdom and eloquence in students.
“[T]herapy in Plato means not so much the care for us but our care for the gods, the assumption [being] that our care for the gods or for the Divine is what cures us of the intrinsic difficulties of human life.”
—Stephen Gardner
Professor Stephen Gardner discusses Philip Rieff’s analysis of modern culture and how he appropriated Sigmund Freud’s work in the prescient The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. Gardner explains that Rieff and Freud both address what happens to people and society when they no longer orient themselves toward the transcendent. Rieff observed that people’s ultimate aim becomes the fulfillment of desires while culture becomes an anti-culture, bent on liberating people so they might fulfill their desires, offering them therapy along the way. Gardner notes the difference between these understandings and those of the ancient world. He offers Plato’s definition of therapy to demonstrate the incompatibility.
“I think what’s so intriguing about Rieff’s work is that all of this emphasis on self and fulfillment of the self and satisfaction leads [to] a profound loss of self and therefore loss of any basis of satisfaction or fulfillment.”
—Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn
Professor Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn notes that Philip Rieff addressed, in The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, the self-obsession that results when faith and the sacred no longer order society. The concerns of Rieff’s work are also addressed by novelist Tom Wolfe. Both attend to the re-orienting of society but, Lasch-Quinn states, they each offer different critiques of the change. She explains Rieff’s distinction between religion and religiosity, and also discusses the need for culture to place restrictions on individuals. She summarizes the great irony addressed in his work, which is that people become profoundly unsatisfied the more they pursue satisfaction.
“The more that you assume the analytic attitude is possible, the more that madness is the product, the more you are a prisoner of the world and of the world’s preconceptions.”
—Wilfred McClay
Professor Bill McClay summarizes a strength and weakness of sociologist Philip Rieff’s work, and discusses what the weakness indicates about contemporary culture. Rieff, author of The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, demonstrates relentlessly that the emphasis on the therapeutic in society trivializes human experiences. However, he is not able to imagine a solution to the problem. McClay states that Rieff’s analytic method and language are at least in part to blame, and explains the origins of the analytic habit along with the role “demystification” plays in it. He notes the risks involved in assuming an analytic attitude.
“We [in the West] today are asking ourselves whether there is even such a thing as truth, and if there is whether we can know it. Now Christian faith simply cannot sustain itself without a belief in truth.”
—David Wells
Professor David Wells explains his assertion that contemporary culture in the Western world is more hostile to the Christian faith than it was before the 1960s. Wells is author of Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World. Christian faith, he says, is predicated upon certain timeless and changeless truths; Western culture, however, does not believe in truth. Nor does it assume that there is a Supreme Being or moral absolutes. Wells notes which additional truths of the Christian faith have been eclipsed in the West.
“What you get in this picture of postmodernism is the sense that, look we’re all telling stories about the world, but they’re stories about the world . . . These are still stories about a givenness that pushes up against us.”
—James K. A. Smith
Professor James K. A. Smith evaluates the suspicions many people harbor about postmodernism. Smith, author of Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, names postmodernism’s central problems while also identifying which components of the philosophy might encourage the Church to greater faithfulness. He explains that loss of confidence in logical demonstrations of universal, objective truths is not necessarily bad for Christian theology. He also discusses why the fact that postmodernism promotes particular stories over universal truths does not mean that the reality those truths describe no longer exists. Smith notes what it would mean for the Church to take postmodernism seriously for the sake of faithful obedience, rather than for cultural relevancy.
“Studying the liberal arts and sciences provides you with the skills you need to tackle virtually anything in life.”
—Robert Littlejohn
Robert Littlejohn, headmaster of a classical Christian school, discusses the end goal of a classical liberal arts and sciences education, and how classical schools order their curriculum. Littlejohn is co-author of Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning. The book attends to logic and rhetoric and how training in these disciplines equips students for naming the world Christianly. Littlejohn states that schools with classical arts and sciences education understand their purpose as preparing students not only for college, but also for life-long learning and living well in the world after their formal schooling. In order to establish their curriculum, the schools determine which knowledge, skills, and virtues their graduates should have; the material for each grade is then oriented towards developing such graduates.
“We need a much more holistic picture of how we inhabit culture, which is why I'm now talking in terms of cultural institutions as comprising liturgies that form us in certain ways; the question is, ‘What kind of people are we being made into by these liturgies?’”
—James K. A. Smith
Professor James K. A. Smith discusses the relationship between practices and ideas. Smith, author of Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, explains that postmodern thought highlights how ideas and practices shape each other dialectically. In other words, participating in certain practices influences the ideas people have about the world and their place in it; those ideas, in turn, help to determine which practices people adopt. Smith notes that the dialogue between practice and reflection characterizes the process of sanctification. He also attends to the tools postmodernity offers for critiquing modernity.
Guests on Volume 83: Barrett Fisher, on film noir and its revealing portrayal of human moral confusion; Dick Keyes, on contemporary cynicism, how it's destructive, and how it might be resisted; Richard Lints, on a distinctively theological approach to understanding human identity; Paul McHugh, on how the discipline of psychiatry needs to mature, and on stories as diagnostic tools; Paul Weston, on lessons from Lesslie Newbigin on interfaith dialogue and the attacks on Christianity from scientism; and Paul Walker, on how the forms of Renaissance choral music communicate rich theological concerns.
“In a way, that’s what noir is about; it’s about the strangeness of human nature. An account of noir which only talks about the darkness of human nature misses the mark because noir characters are mixed characters.”
—Barrett Fisher
Professor Barrett Fisher discusses the intrigue and satisfaction of film noir. The genre — the movies of which are both visually and morally dark — received its name in France after World War II when its movies opened in theaters there, surprising audiences with how uncharacteristic they were of earlier American movies. Fisher references the titles and stories of several classics as he explains why the films are psychologically fascinating. Take any of the characters out of the time and place in which they are living out their stories, and the moral dilemmas which torment them remain; the films, he notes, are artistically rich examinations of human nature and how strange it is. Fisher also mentions the three reasons he does not become depressed while watching noir.
“Cynicism is so dangerous interpersonally because it just pushes people away. The people who are well-motivated toward you, who do love you, you are seeing through them and rejecting the positive efforts they are making to love you.”
—Dick Keyes
L'Abri Fellowship worker Dick Keyes discusses the danger of cynicism and how postmodern ideas about human beings and self-interest encourage suspicion. Cynicism, says Keyes, author of Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, is the confidence that one can see through how people present themselves to the motivations and intentions at their core. It is one of two extreme responses to the brokenness of the world. Contrary to sentimentalism, which refuses to look at the effects of sin in the world, cynicism looks only at those effects and refuses to acknowledge that good exists alongside of them. Keyes notes that a proper response to brokenness is limited suspicion coupled with the virtues of faith, hope, and love.
“The biblical material provides us with safeguards against the abuses that have been played out in Western culture in the last century or so. A check on the unfettered human will is precisely why the Christian faith needs a new hearing in a time like ours.”
—Richard Lints
Professor Richard Lints discusses the need for a reinvigorated biblical account of human nature. Lints is co-editor of the anthology Personal Identity in Theological Perspective and author of two of the essays therein. While an authoritative account of human nature will seem out of place in this pluralistic age, he says, a theological anthropology would help the West to recover notions of human dignity. Keyes also attends to the correlation between consumption and idolatry. He notes how the practices of consumption influence the practices of religion.
“Sometimes the sterner virtues of, well, being truthful, being just, have to come along with the kindness and support virtues. Psychotherapists sometimes have to use judgment even when they can be accused of being judgmental, since certain kinds of behavior are, in themselves, destructive to the person, their future, and the people around them.”
—Paul McHugh
Psychiatrist Paul McHugh discusses how he is trying to reform psychiatry and why a new system would be helpful for therapists and patients. McHugh is author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry. He states that the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is akin to Roger Tory Peterson’s field guide for birds, which identifies what warblers look like and how to tell them apart but does not address how they came into being or what factors have contributed to their development; the DSM identifies symptoms of diseases without addressing their causes. McHugh explains why psychiatry ought to categorize mental disorders in ways which account for their causes. If psychiatrists know which type of depression their patients have and what is causing it, for example, they will have a better understanding of how to heal the depression and not just its symptoms, and they will also know of which sorts of virtues their patients are in need.
“Newbigin owned for himself [this assumption from Karl Barth that] there isn’t something more basic than the revelation of God in Jesus Christ philosophically, from which one can argue for the Gospel, there isn’t some place that is deeper, more foundational . . . The Gospel is its own plausibility structure, it creates the world in which one thinks.”
—Paul Weston
Professor Paul Weston discusses theologian Lesslie Newbigin’s time in India and how it influenced his thought and work. Weston, editor of the anthology Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian, explains that Newbigin traveled to India after completing his theological training, which had taught him to argue for the validity of the Gospel using the tools of the Enlightenment, reason and rational discourse. Those tools did not get him far with his hosts, however, because they did not use the same sorts of tools in dialogue. Newbigin returned to the West, read Karl Barth, and affirmed that one’s foundation for discussing the Gospel and culture ought to be the Gospel itself. Weston notes that Newbigin’s work challenges the Church to remember that foundation when engaging culture and to ask, and act from, this question: What would it mean to relate to culture with the revelation of God in Christ as the guiding light?
“There’s not a way in the world that Josquin [des Prez] could’ve [composed the music] and then put the text to it later. He had the text; he looked at it; he decided how, in a musical way, he was going to project that text so . . . The music deepens the words and really takes you right through the whole narrative.”
—Paul Walker
Conductor and professor Paul Walker tells the story of how his choral ensemble, Zephyrus, learned to sing Praeter rerum seriem, a song about the Incarnation by composer Josquin des Prez (ca. 1440-1521). The title of the text, which is also its first line, translates as “Outside the normal order of things”; the way the music that accompanies the text sounds imitates the idea of the text, and it is this integrity of sound and content that suggested to Zephyrus how they ought to sing the piece. Walker explains that Renaissance music does not include notations about dynamics but because the music was composed to fit the text, singers can take their clues about dynamics from the text itself. He describes how Praeter rerum seriem conveys the story of the Incarnation in both word and sound. Walker also notes why it is difficult to find Christmas music from eras before the nineteenth century.
“The marriage vows themselves [are] profoundly suspicious; they’re asking this poor couple to imagine a worse-case future for themselves — in finance, in health, and in everything in general — right there on their wedding day and in their wedding ceremony, and to promise that they’ll love each other anyway.”
—Dick Keyes
On this bonus track, Dick Keyes discusses the difference between cynicism and suspicion and how contemporary culture encourages cynicism to fester. Keyes states that cynicism is suspicion without limits. It erupts when unrealistic hopes and expectations meet with the reality of sin and brokenness in the world; but brokenness is not the last word for the world, says Keyes, so people ought to guard against succumbing to cynicism. The antidote for it begins with a biblical understanding of properly limited suspicion. He mentions two institutions into which such suspicions are built.
Guests on Volume 83: Barrett Fisher, on film noir and its revealing portrayal of human moral confusion; Dick Keyes, on contemporary cynicism, how it's destructive, and how it might be resisted; Richard Lints, on a distinctively theological approach to understanding human identity; Paul McHugh, on how the discipline of psychiatry needs to mature, and on stories as diagnostic tools; Paul Weston, on lessons from Lesslie Newbigin on interfaith dialogue and the attacks on Christianity from scientism; and Paul Walker, on how the forms of Renaissance choral music communicate rich theological concerns.
“In a way, that’s what noir is about; it’s about the strangeness of human nature. An account of noir which only talks about the darkness of human nature misses the mark because noir characters are mixed characters.”
—Barrett Fisher
Professor Barrett Fisher discusses the intrigue and satisfaction of film noir. The genre — the movies of which are both visually and morally dark — received its name in France after World War II when its movies opened in theaters there, surprising audiences with how uncharacteristic they were of earlier American movies. Fisher references the titles and stories of several classics as he explains why the films are psychologically fascinating. Take any of the characters out of the time and place in which they are living out their stories, and the moral dilemmas which torment them remain; the films, he notes, are artistically rich examinations of human nature and how strange it is. Fisher also mentions the three reasons he does not become depressed while watching noir.
“Cynicism is so dangerous interpersonally because it just pushes people away. The people who are well-motivated toward you, who do love you, you are seeing through them and rejecting the positive efforts they are making to love you.”
—Dick Keyes
L'Abri Fellowship worker Dick Keyes discusses the danger of cynicism and how postmodern ideas about human beings and self-interest encourage suspicion. Cynicism, says Keyes, author of Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, is the confidence that one can see through how people present themselves to the motivations and intentions at their core. It is one of two extreme responses to the brokenness of the world. Contrary to sentimentalism, which refuses to look at the effects of sin in the world, cynicism looks only at those effects and refuses to acknowledge that good exists alongside of them. Keyes notes that a proper response to brokenness is limited suspicion coupled with the virtues of faith, hope, and love.
“The biblical material provides us with safeguards against the abuses that have been played out in Western culture in the last century or so. A check on the unfettered human will is precisely why the Christian faith needs a new hearing in a time like ours.”
—Richard Lints
Professor Richard Lints discusses the need for a reinvigorated biblical account of human nature. Lints is co-editor of the anthology Personal Identity in Theological Perspective and author of two of the essays therein. While an authoritative account of human nature will seem out of place in this pluralistic age, he says, a theological anthropology would help the West to recover notions of human dignity. Keyes also attends to the correlation between consumption and idolatry. He notes how the practices of consumption influence the practices of religion.
“Sometimes the sterner virtues of, well, being truthful, being just, have to come along with the kindness and support virtues. Psychotherapists sometimes have to use judgment even when they can be accused of being judgmental, since certain kinds of behavior are, in themselves, destructive to the person, their future, and the people around them.”
—Paul McHugh
Psychiatrist Paul McHugh discusses how he is trying to reform psychiatry and why a new system would be helpful for therapists and patients. McHugh is author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry. He states that the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is akin to Roger Tory Peterson’s field guide for birds, which identifies what warblers look like and how to tell them apart but does not address how they came into being or what factors have contributed to their development; the DSM identifies symptoms of diseases without addressing their causes. McHugh explains why psychiatry ought to categorize mental disorders in ways which account for their causes. If psychiatrists know which type of depression their patients have and what is causing it, for example, they will have a better understanding of how to heal the depression and not just its symptoms, and they will also know of which sorts of virtues their patients are in need.
“Newbigin owned for himself [this assumption from Karl Barth that] there isn’t something more basic than the revelation of God in Jesus Christ philosophically, from which one can argue for the Gospel, there isn’t some place that is deeper, more foundational . . . The Gospel is its own plausibility structure, it creates the world in which one thinks.”
—Paul Weston
Professor Paul Weston discusses theologian Lesslie Newbigin’s time in India and how it influenced his thought and work. Weston, editor of the anthology Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian, explains that Newbigin traveled to India after completing his theological training, which had taught him to argue for the validity of the Gospel using the tools of the Enlightenment, reason and rational discourse. Those tools did not get him far with his hosts, however, because they did not use the same sorts of tools in dialogue. Newbigin returned to the West, read Karl Barth, and affirmed that one’s foundation for discussing the Gospel and culture ought to be the Gospel itself. Weston notes that Newbigin’s work challenges the Church to remember that foundation when engaging culture and to ask, and act from, this question: What would it mean to relate to culture with the revelation of God in Christ as the guiding light?
“There’s not a way in the world that Josquin [des Prez] could’ve [composed the music] and then put the text to it later. He had the text; he looked at it; he decided how, in a musical way, he was going to project that text so . . . The music deepens the words and really takes you right through the whole narrative.”
—Paul Walker
Conductor and professor Paul Walker tells the story of how his choral ensemble, Zephyrus, learned to sing Praeter rerum seriem, a song about the Incarnation by composer Josquin des Prez (ca. 1440-1521). The title of the text, which is also its first line, translates as “Outside the normal order of things”; the way the music that accompanies the text sounds imitates the idea of the text, and it is this integrity of sound and content that suggested to Zephyrus how they ought to sing the piece. Walker explains that Renaissance music does not include notations about dynamics but because the music was composed to fit the text, singers can take their clues about dynamics from the text itself. He describes how Praeter rerum seriem conveys the story of the Incarnation in both word and sound. Walker also notes why it is difficult to find Christmas music from eras before the nineteenth century.
“The marriage vows themselves [are] profoundly suspicious; they’re asking this poor couple to imagine a worse-case future for themselves — in finance, in health, and in everything in general — right there on their wedding day and in their wedding ceremony, and to promise that they’ll love each other anyway.”
—Dick Keyes
On this bonus track, Dick Keyes discusses the difference between cynicism and suspicion and how contemporary culture encourages cynicism to fester. Keyes states that cynicism is suspicion without limits. It erupts when unrealistic hopes and expectations meet with the reality of sin and brokenness in the world; but brokenness is not the last word for the world, says Keyes, so people ought to guard against succumbing to cynicism. The antidote for it begins with a biblical understanding of properly limited suspicion. He mentions two institutions into which such suspicions are built.
Guests on Volume 84: Harry R. Lewis, on higher education’s amnesia about its purposes, and how that shortchanges students; Nicholas Wolterstorff, on Abraham Kuyper (1837-1927), the French Revolution, worldviews, and “sphere sovereignty”; Brendan Sweetman, on why religious worldviews should not be excluded from political life; James Turner Johnson, on the development of Christian thought about the meaning of marriage; David Martin, on how the 1960s replayed themes of the 1890s and 1930s; and Edward Ericson, Jr., on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s beginnings and legacy.
“There is a great role that the arts play in lifting the human spirit in a way that few other things in life do.”
—Harry R. Lewis
Professor Harry R. Lewis discusses the state of contemporary university education and what it could offer students. Lewis is author of Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. He explains that universities in America have forgotten that their task is in part to educate students about humanity and about what it means to be a citizen; they focus instead on providing them “a good experience.” Lewis describes how universities are becoming globalized and why that concerns him. He also addresses why the humanities are an important component of university education.
“Calvinism in particular and Christianity in general is not just a set of beliefs about eternity and how to get to eternity and how to be pious.”
—Nicholas Wolterstorff
Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses two concepts prevalent in the theology of Abraham Kuyper. Wolterstorff is author of the essay “Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)” published in the anthology The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. Kuyper is well-known for his work on worldview and sphere sovereignty. Wolterstorff describes how Kuyper’s first parish influenced his thinking on worldview. Close observation of the French Revolution, he explains, is partly responsible for the development of Kuyper’s thought on sphere sovereignty. Wolterstorff attends to what both terms mean.
“The belief that all human beings are created equally, in the image of God, has political implications.”
—Brendan Sweetman
Professor Brendan Sweetman discusses the relationship between worldviews and politics. Sweetman, author of Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square, says that he has been interested in how worldviews shape political discussions and decisions since his time in graduate school. Whether people realize it or not, some sort of worldview informs their thoughts about what should be debated in the public square and the premises that should be used in the debates. Sweetman notes that the primary worldview guiding public dialogues in pluralistic democracies is secular. He states that a religious worldview should bear equal weight in political discourse.
“The man is the helper for the woman, the woman is the helper for the man. The proper marriage relationship is one in which each gives help to the other to enable him or her to be what he or she ought to be and to complete one another in that whole process of reciprocal self-giving.”
—James Turner Johnson
Professor James Turner Johnson discusses the Puritan comprehension of marriage as a covenant between friends of the opposite sex. Johnson is author of the essay “Marriage As Covenant in Early Protestant Thought: Its Development and Implications,” which is published in the anthology Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective. He explains that the English Puritans drew on the history of thought about marriage from Augustine to the Middle Ages in order to develop their understanding of it. Johnson states that they emphasize reciprocity in marriage. He also notes what Anne Bradstreet’s poetry indicates about how the Puritans thought of marriage as the truest of friendships.
“The pope [has] identified narcissism as the core problem of Western Europe.”
—David Martin
Sociologist David Martin defends his claim that the 1960s were a turning point in Western culture. Martin is author of On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. He notes that the 1960s saw a full flowering of hostility towards, and rejection of, the constrictions institutions place on individuals. The seeds of this antinomianism were sown decades earlier, particularly in the 1890s and 1930s, says Martin. He explains that the fruit of the flowering is skepticism and narcissism.
“But now what is true about the [The Gulag Archipelago] is true about [One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich], first of all he was wanting to say: see humanity in extremis . . . You cannot drive humanity entirely out of human beings.”
—Edward Ericson, Jr.
Professor Edward Ericson, Jr., tells the story of the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s first work and discusses the difference between how his work was perceived and what he intended with it. Ericson is editor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005. When the editor who first published Solzhenitsyn read his manuscript, he changed from his pajamas into formal office attire because he knew he was in the presence of a new world masterpiece. When that masterpiece was published, and for decades afterwards, readers and critics presumed that Solzhenitsyn’s writings were intended primarily for political purposes. Ericson explains why such presumptions are wrong and illuminates the “perennial values” of the novels.
“We don’t have a principle about what our job is with students other than to make sure they’re happy and satisfied with their college experience.”
—Harry R. Lewis
Professor Harry R. Lewis describes how colleges are discouraging their students from becoming responsible adults. Lewis is author of Excellence without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. The current trend in colleges and universities, which is similar to the trend in other institutions, is to give students what they want rather than what they need. So instead of routinely prompting students to address questions about their motivations and the types of lives they wish to lead, universities are busy providing soft beds and pubs so that students might have an enjoyable college experience. Lewis attends to the role colleges and faculty could play in students’ lives.
Guests on Volume 84: Harry R. Lewis, on higher education’s amnesia about its purposes, and how that shortchanges students; Nicholas Wolterstorff, on Abraham Kuyper (1837-1927), the French Revolution, worldviews, and “sphere sovereignty”; Brendan Sweetman, on why religious worldviews should not be excluded from political life; James Turner Johnson, on the development of Christian thought about the meaning of marriage; David Martin, on how the 1960s replayed themes of the 1890s and 1930s; and Edward Ericson, Jr., on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s beginnings and legacy.
“There is a great role that the arts play in lifting the human spirit in a way that few other things in life do.”
—Harry R. Lewis
Professor Harry R. Lewis discusses the state of contemporary university education and what it could offer students. Lewis is author of Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. He explains that universities in America have forgotten that their task is in part to educate students about humanity and about what it means to be a citizen; they focus instead on providing them “a good experience.” Lewis describes how universities are becoming globalized and why that concerns him. He also addresses why the humanities are an important component of university education.
“Calvinism in particular and Christianity in general is not just a set of beliefs about eternity and how to get to eternity and how to be pious.”
—Nicholas Wolterstorff
Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses two concepts prevalent in the theology of Abraham Kuyper. Wolterstorff is author of the essay “Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)” published in the anthology The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. 1. Kuyper is well-known for his work on worldview and sphere sovereignty. Wolterstorff describes how Kuyper’s first parish influenced his thinking on worldview. Close observation of the French Revolution, he explains, is partly responsible for the development of Kuyper’s thought on sphere sovereignty. Wolterstorff attends to what both terms mean.
“The belief that all human beings are created equally, in the image of God, has political implications.”
—Brendan Sweetman
Professor Brendan Sweetman discusses the relationship between worldviews and politics. Sweetman, author of Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square, says that he has been interested in how worldviews shape political discussions and decisions since his time in graduate school. Whether people realize it or not, some sort of worldview informs their thoughts about what should be debated in the public square and the premises that should be used in the debates. Sweetman notes that the primary worldview guiding public dialogues in pluralistic democracies is secular. He states that a religious worldview should bear equal weight in political discourse.
“The man is the helper for the woman, the woman is the helper for the man. The proper marriage relationship is one in which each gives help to the other to enable him or her to be what he or she ought to be and to complete one another in that whole process of reciprocal self-giving.”
—James Turner Johnson
Professor James Turner Johnson discusses the Puritan comprehension of marriage as a covenant between friends of the opposite sex. Johnson is author of the essay “Marriage As Covenant in Early Protestant Thought: Its Development and Implications,” which is published in the anthology Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective. He explains that the English Puritans drew on the history of thought about marriage from Augustine to the Middle Ages in order to develop their understanding of it. Johnson states that they emphasize reciprocity in marriage. He also notes what Anne Bradstreet’s poetry indicates about how the Puritans thought of marriage as the truest of friendships.
“The pope [has] identified narcissism as the core problem of Western Europe.”
—David Martin
Sociologist David Martin defends his claim that the 1960s were a turning point in Western culture. Martin is author of On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. He notes that the 1960s saw a full flowering of hostility towards, and rejection of, the constrictions institutions place on individuals. The seeds of this antinomianism were sown decades earlier, particularly in the 1890s and 1930s, says Martin. He explains that the fruit of the flowering is skepticism and narcissism.
“But now what is true about the [The Gulag Archipelago] is true about [One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich], first of all he was wanting to say: see humanity in extremis . . . You cannot drive humanity entirely out of human beings.”
—Edward Ericson, Jr.
Professor Edward Ericson, Jr., tells the story of the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s first work and discusses the difference between how his work was perceived and what he intended with it. Ericson is editor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005. When the editor who first published Solzhenitsyn read his manuscript, he changed from his pajamas into formal office attire because he knew he was in the presence of a new world masterpiece. When that masterpiece was published, and for decades afterwards, readers and critics presumed that Solzhenitsyn’s writings were intended primarily for political purposes. Ericson explains why such presumptions are wrong and illuminates the “perennial values” of the novels.
“We don’t have a principle about what our job is with students other than to make sure they’re happy and satisfied with their college experience.”
—Harry R. Lewis
Professor Harry R. Lewis describes how colleges are discouraging their students from becoming responsible adults. Lewis is author of Excellence without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. The current trend in colleges and universities, which is similar to the trend in other institutions, is to give students what they want rather than what they need. So instead of routinely prompting students to address questions about their motivations and the types of lives they wish to lead, universities are busy providing soft beds and pubs so that students might have an enjoyable college experience. Lewis attends to the role colleges and faculty could play in students’ lives.
Guests on Volume 85
• C. JOHN SOMMERVILLE on how higher education, divorced from higher realities, has become socially irrelevant
• CATHERINE ALBANESE on American “metaphysical religion,” varieties of gnosticism, and the quest for spiritual energy
• CHRISTOPHER SHANNON on how social scientists encouraged the rise of autonomous individualism in twentieth-century America
• MICHAEL G. LAWLER on the development of the idea of marriage as covenant in Roman Catholic thought
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on lessons from Augustine in defining proper expectations for the Christian life
• MATTHEW DICKERSON on J. R. R. Tolkien’s vision of stewardship of the earth: the glory of trees and the shepherdhood of Ents
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
C. John Sommerville
"Faith belongs in the academy in ways that would still be surprising to people."
—C. John Sommerville, author of The Decline of the Secular University (Oxford University Press, 2006)
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, with the exception perhaps of sports teams. He argues that this is because they are secular, while clarifying that he does not think religious schools are the only ones with a right to exist. Enlightenment thinking distrusted religious authority, but Sommerville argues in his book The Decline of the Secular University that universities will continue to be irrelevant as long as they insist on avoiding sustained reflection on what it means to be human. He sees in the academy the beginnings of a criticism of Enlightenment ideals, which he hopes may soon lead them to rediscover the relevance of religion. ⇧
• • •
Catherine Albanese
"Our human world is a small-scale model of that larger reality."
—Catherine Albanese, author of A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (Yale University Press, 2007)
Early American history was suffused with a variety of fervent religious experimentations, from alchemy and astrology to the Transcendentalists’ intuitive knowledge. Catherine Albenese is professor and chair of the department of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, and has written A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. She describes this "metaphysical religion" as progressive and democratic, unlike the often overused term "gnosticism" which in its ancient sense was too elitist to fit the American way. Stemming from experimentation in such things as magic and numerology, this metaphysical awareness lives on today in many forms, including aura healing, acupuncture, and the quest for spiritual energy. ⇧
• • •
Christopher Shannon
"There is a greater sense that what it means to be an American is to be someone who is master of [his] own destiny."
—Christopher Shannon, author of Conspicuous Criticism: Tradition, the Individual, and Culture in Modern American Social Thought (University of Scranton Press, 2007)
Professor Christopher Shannon discusses how early twentieth-century social scientists encouraged the American idea that individual identity works against communal membership. Newcomers to America sought the best of old and new worlds by not giving up culture and tradition, but seeking economic success. In the end, however, their traditions were abandoned for a sense of individual fulfillment. As Shannon puts it, "the official acceptance of diversity is a first step toward a more insidious assimilation." Detachment becomes a way of life as the individual asserts power over his traditional culture in order to recreate himself. ⇧
• • •
Michael G. Lawler
"If marriage is indeed a symbol of the great covenant, then perhaps we could talk about marriage itself as a covenant."
—Michael G. Lawler, co-author of Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective (Eerdmans, 2005)
In the 1930's, theologians began to complain that the Catholic Church’s language concerning marriage was too juridical, "like buying a car." As Michael G. Lawler points out in his book Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective, the covenant between Israel and God is of the same type as that between man and woman, and the latter should employ similar oaths. The Vatican council’s conclusion in the 1960's altered the language to emphasize the intimacy and fidelity appropriate to a covenantal understanding. Lawler discusses the difference between contract and covenant, the implications to the parties involved, and the seriousness with which it should be entered into. ⇧
• • •
Gilbert Meilaender
"What's terrible about hell is that you've lost God."
—Gilbert Meilaender, author of The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life (Eerdmans, 2006)
Discussions of ethics tend to insist on decisive answers. Yet the most important questions persist and cannot be quickly answered. Gilbert Meilaender’s discussion of lessons learned from Augustine begins with the insight that thought must be shaped over time, and books should be savored and revisited. In The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life, Meilaender maintains that in order to follow God we must be prepared not to be happy. This is central to Augustine’s concern with how we understand ourselves in relation to God. God himself, and his presence, is our delight; if we keep in mind that he is not merely an instrument we use for our happiness, we will understand why relief of suffering is not the highest good. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Dickerson
"For Tolkien it was a very holistic thing: you consider the meaning and purpose of the earth in the same breath that you consider how you live on it and how you interact with it."
—Matthew Dickerson, co-author of Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien (University Press of Kentucky, 2006)
Author Matthew Dickerson discusses how the resonance of the ideas of Wendell Berry and others with the holistic vision of Tolkien's works inspired his book Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien. Dickerson argues that Tolkien’s treatment of wilderness is very much at odds with our modern way of talking about nature. Even the term "natural resource" is a value judgement, seeing the earth merely as a tool to be used up. Dickerson sees the Creation story behind The Lord of the Rings—The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s lifelong and greatest project—as an example of the purposefulness he sees in creation; an indisputable reason to keep away from the abuse of it. The Silmarils’ beauty is a metaphor for nature itself, and Dickerson discusses the connectedness between every area of our lives and every piece of creation, and the necessity for sustainability in our stewardship of the environment.
"He saw the beauty and the value of the physical, created world . . . the earth itself is important. It is the creation of a good creator.
—Matthew Dickerson
In this bonus track, Matthew Dickerson discusses how Tolkien was strongly anti-Gnostic in his care for nature. Tolkien implies in The Lord of the Rings that the cutting down of trees can fall into two levels of evil: utilitarian destruction, and, even worse, purposeless destruction. Such evil destruction is not merely unpleasant to some, nor inconvenient to many, but is morally judged. Meditation on beautiful architecture also provides a legitimate type of drawing closer to God, but Tolkien was especially taken with the Psalms that give moral weight to trees. He clearly saw how these elements of nature (trees, water) draw us through the Psalmist to our Creator. ⇧
Guests on Volume 85
• C. JOHN SOMMERVILLE on how higher education, divorced from higher realities, has become socially irrelevant
• CATHERINE ALBANESE on American “metaphysical religion,” varieties of gnosticism, and the quest for spiritual energy
• CHRISTOPHER SHANNON on how social scientists encouraged the rise of autonomous individualism in twentieth-century America
• MICHAEL G. LAWLER on the development of the idea of marriage as covenant in Roman Catholic thought
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on lessons from Augustine in defining proper expectations for the Christian life
• MATTHEW DICKERSON on J. R. R. Tolkien’s vision of stewardship of the earth: the glory of trees and the shepherdhood of Ents
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
C. John Sommerville
"Faith belongs in the academy in ways that would still be surprising to people."
—C. John Sommerville, author of The Decline of the Secular University (Oxford University Press, 2006)
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, with the exception perhaps of sports teams. He argues that this is because they are secular, while clarifying that he does not think religious schools are the only ones with a right to exist. Enlightenment thinking distrusted religious authority, but Sommerville argues in his book The Decline of the Secular University that universities will continue to be irrelevant as long as they insist on avoiding sustained reflection on what it means to be human. He sees in the academy the beginnings of a criticism of Enlightenment ideals, which he hopes may soon lead them to rediscover the relevance of religion. ⇧
• • •
Catherine Albanese
"Our human world is a small-scale model of that larger reality."
—Catherine Albanese, author of A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (Yale University Press, 2007)
Early American history was suffused with a variety of fervent religious experimentations, from alchemy and astrology to the Transcendentalists’ intuitive knowledge. Catherine Albenese is professor and chair of the department of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, and has written A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. She describes this "metaphysical religion" as progressive and democratic, unlike the often overused term "gnosticism" which in its ancient sense was too elitist to fit the American way. Stemming from experimentation in such things as magic and numerology, this metaphysical awareness lives on today in many forms, including aura healing, acupuncture, and the quest for spiritual energy. ⇧
• • •
Christopher Shannon
"There is a greater sense that what it means to be an American is to be someone who is master of [his] own destiny."
—Christopher Shannon, author of Conspicuous Criticism: Tradition, the Individual, and Culture in Modern American Social Thought (University of Scranton Press, 2007)
Professor Christopher Shannon discusses how early twentieth-century social scientists encouraged the American idea that individual identity works against communal membership. Newcomers to America sought the best of old and new worlds by not giving up culture and tradition, but seeking economic success. In the end, however, their traditions were abandoned for a sense of individual fulfillment. As Shannon puts it, "the official acceptance of diversity is a first step toward a more insidious assimilation." Detachment becomes a way of life as the individual asserts power over his traditional culture in order to recreate himself. ⇧
• • •
Michael G. Lawler
"If marriage is indeed a symbol of the great covenant, then perhaps we could talk about marriage itself as a covenant."
—Michael G. Lawler, co-author of Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective (Eerdmans, 2005)
In the 1930's, theologians began to complain that the Catholic Church’s language concerning marriage was too juridical, "like buying a car." As Michael G. Lawler points out in his book Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective, the covenant between Israel and God is of the same type as that between man and woman, and the latter should employ similar oaths. The Vatican council’s conclusion in the 1960's altered the language to emphasize the intimacy and fidelity appropriate to a covenantal understanding. Lawler discusses the difference between contract and covenant, the implications to the parties involved, and the seriousness with which it should be entered into. ⇧
• • •
Gilbert Meilaender
"What's terrible about hell is that you've lost God."
—Gilbert Meilaender, author of The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life (Eerdmans, 2006)
Discussions of ethics tend to insist on decisive answers. Yet the most important questions persist and cannot be quickly answered. Gilbert Meilaender’s discussion of lessons learned from Augustine begins with the insight that thought must be shaped over time, and books should be savored and revisited. In The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life, Meilaender maintains that in order to follow God we must be prepared not to be happy. This is central to Augustine’s concern with how we understand ourselves in relation to God. God himself, and his presence, is our delight; if we keep in mind that he is not merely an instrument we use for our happiness, we will understand why relief of suffering is not the highest good. ⇧
• • •
Matthew Dickerson
"For Tolkien it was a very holistic thing: you consider the meaning and purpose of the earth in the same breath that you consider how you live on it and how you interact with it."
—Matthew Dickerson, co-author of Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien (University Press of Kentucky, 2006)
Author Matthew Dickerson discusses how the resonance of the ideas of Wendell Berry and others with the holistic vision of Tolkien's works inspired his book Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien. Dickerson argues that Tolkien’s treatment of wilderness is very much at odds with our modern way of talking about nature. Even the term "natural resource" is a value judgement, seeing the earth merely as a tool to be used up. Dickerson sees the Creation story behind The Lord of the Rings—The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s lifelong and greatest project—as an example of the purposefulness he sees in creation; an indisputable reason to keep away from the abuse of it. The Silmarils’ beauty is a metaphor for nature itself, and Dickerson discusses the connectedness between every area of our lives and every piece of creation, and the necessity for sustainability in our stewardship of the environment.
"He saw the beauty and the value of the physical, created world . . . the earth itself is important. It is the creation of a good creator.
—Matthew Dickerson
In this bonus track, Matthew Dickerson discusses how Tolkien was strongly anti-Gnostic in his care for nature. Tolkien implies in The Lord of the Rings that the cutting down of trees can fall into two levels of evil: utilitarian destruction, and, even worse, purposeless destruction. Such evil destruction is not merely unpleasant to some, nor inconvenient to many, but is morally judged. Meditation on beautiful architecture also provides a legitimate type of drawing closer to God, but Tolkien was especially taken with the Psalms that give moral weight to trees. He clearly saw how these elements of nature (trees, water) draw us through the Psalmist to our Creator. ⇧
Guests on Volume 86
• ROGER LUNDIN on why, after Vietnam, American literary critics forgot about American religion
• LAWRENCE BUELL on diverse visions of America and Nature
• HAROLD K. BUSH, JR. on the glorification of the American way as a civil religion
• ROGER LUNDIN on the transformation of the nature of belief in the late nineteenth century
• KATHERINE SHAW SPAHT on radical autonomy, marriage, divorce, and law
• STEVEN L. NOCK on how broadly shared cultural assumptions affect laws regulating marriage and divorce
• NORMAN KLASSEN and JANS ZIMMERMAN on the Incarnation and humanism, and on how various dualisms affect our assumptions about faith, knowledge, and higher education
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Roger Lundin
"In the 1970’s there emerged a strong and vigorous critique of all things American in the study of American literature, at the center of the discipline, and that critique included a very skeptical look at the role that religion had played and continued to play both in the production of American literature and the reception of it."
—Roger Lundin, editor of There Before Us: Religion, Literature and Culture from Emerson to Wendell Berry (Eerdmans, 2007)
Roger Lundin reflects on the religious overtones and influences in American literature in the past two centuries, influences that have been largely ignored by the academy. He discusses why so little recent scholarly attention has been given to the role of religion in American literature, and moves on to consider the nature of those influences. Lundin notes how writers’ divergent understandings of the immanence and transcendence of God, the distance between God and man, were mirrored by changes in the fundamental questions the writers were asking themselves. He then talks about the role of religious community in the life and work of authors such as Flannery O’Conner and John Updike. ⇧
• • •
Lawrence Buell
"Wilderness doesn’t take on a positive connotation before urbanization, before people start feeling not only safe but impounded within their urban and suburban enclaves, so wilderness, as an honorific, really takes about 200 years after the beginning of settlement to develop."
—Lawrence Buell, author of The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (Blackwell, 2005)
Lawrence Buell, the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University and author of The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and The Formation of American Culture (1995) and Writing for an Endangered World (2001) talks about the interplay between religion, environmental concerns and American ideals in the literary imagination of nineteenth and twentieth century writers. He talks about the public influence of the writings of American authors on nature and man’s relation to the environment. Buell also considers the conflicting attitudes towards technology many American writers struggled with, especially as urbanization developed over larger portions of the nation, and the tension between preservation and usage in religious views of nature. His essay in There Before Us is entitled “Religion and the Environmental Imagination in American Literature.” ⇧
• • •
Harold K. Bush, Jr.
"But one of the preoccupations of the Transcendentalists, for example in the writings of Emerson and others, is that we are enslaved to the culture, to the status quo with our minds, and we need to be liberated from those things. And so there’s a sense in which Ingersoll’s more popular and vernacular expressions of this desire to 'break free from the chains enslaving the mind' and so forth is really a kind of pop reduction of Emersonianism.”
—Harold K. Bush, Jr., author of Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age (University of Alabama, 2007)
Harold K. Bush, Jr. converses about the religious conceptions of American ideals shaping the spiritual crisis surrounding Mark Twain, and the impact of this crisis on Twain’s work. Bush argues that the free-thinking influences on Mark Twain, as seen in the ideas of Robert Ingersoll, were tinged with religious understandings of the nature of humanity and the redemptive value of American freedom, or to be more precise, liberty. Twain shared in this glorification of American ideals for all humanity, as well as in suspicions of institutions that might enslave the minds of the common people and hold back human progress. Slavery, in fact, was a prominent theme used to communicate a new sort of American civil religion that was developing since Transcendentalism, a civil religion whose adherents struggled with internal contradictions during this period of transition. ⇧
• • •
Roger Lundin
"I find it fascinating to think about the implications of the fact that it was between 1850 and 1870 or 1880 that open unbelief emerged as a fully viable intellectual and social option."
—Roger Lundin
Later in Volume 86, we return to Roger Lundin to talk about his goals in assembling the anthology. Lundin wanted to study the period in American history which saw a transition from the acceptance of traditional Christianity to a spirituality free from the tethers of institutional authority. He argues that this transition mirrored a similar transition from struggles with religious belief centering around morality to struggles with religious belief centering around epistemological questions. As epistemological doubt rendered certain belief implausible, the social acceptance of unbelief became a reality, and the literature of the time reflected these issues. ⇧
• • •
Katherine Shaw Spaht
"If you look at our law at the beginning of the twentieth century and you look at the law regulating the family, and what we’ve seen is law withdrawal from regulating the family. That has been interpreted by a very legalistic society as meaning that it’s no longer immoral to do these things that are no longer in the law. They equate the two."
—Katherine Shaw Spaht, author of "The Modern American Covenant Marriage Movement: Its Origins and Future," published in Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective (Eerdmans, 2005)
Katherine Shaw Spaht, the Jules F. and Frances L. Landry Professor of Law at the Louisiana State University law school, discusses the cultural and legal roots of the contemporary vulnerability of marriage. Spaht argues that the weakening of laws reinforcing marriage and the family serves to undermine public sensibilities of the importance of marital stability, and that legal structures giving expression to the value of lasting marriage, such as Louisiana’s covenant marriage, are necessary to support the institution of marriage. She also comments on the difficulties faced in enacting such measures in current legal and political situations. Lastly, she discusses the legal and cultural impact of no-fault divorce on the way marital and familiar legal battles are carried out on the ground. ⇧
• • •
Steven L. Nock
"Every institution has its own dominant belief system, its domain assumptions. And if one of those assumptions is that relationships are temporary or potentially temporary, then everything follows from that."
—Steven L. Nock, co-author of "What Does Covenant Mean for Relationships?," published in Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective (Eerdmans, 2005)
Steven Nock, professor of sociology and the director of the Marriage Matters project at the University of Virginia, examines marriage law in contemporary American society. Nock argues that law is more a reflection and embodiment of public values rather than a tool for cultural change. He thus regards the covenant marriage laws in Louisiana (and now Arkansas and Arizona) as regimes that allow and support those with higher standards of commitment in marriage to make a decision to reflect those values. Nock further discusses contemporary views of relationships and the embodiments of these assumptions in legal structures and policies which spill over to other spheres of society. ⇧
• • •
Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmerman
"The nature of reason needs to be at the forefront of discussion, and I would say even at the university level. What is rationality? Do we have a common rationality with others? What is the Christian concept of reason; and I think that precisely the Christian concept of reason is broad enough to include reason, emotion, fact and value, to put them together."
—Jens Zimmermann, co-author of The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education (Baker Academic, 2006)
Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann, professors at Trinity Western University, converse about the purpose of the university and the role of the humanities in higher education. Their intention in writing this book was to stir thoughtful reflection on the nature of the intellectual life of Christians. Their experience with Christian students in higher education has shown them that most students lack a coherent understanding of the purpose of learning, and this book is an attempt to reclaim a Christian passion for learning. Klassen and Zimmermann address some of the main institutional and conceptual culprits in preventing such an appreciation of knowledge and of the life of the mind in historical and contemporary philosophical and religious circles. They trace some problems of how learning and education is understood through some of the main historical developments in epistemology.
"The glory of God is a human being fully alive."
—Irenaeus, cited by Norman Klassen, co-author of The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education (Baker Academic, 2006)
In this bonus segment, Klassen and Zimmermann continue their discussion on the implications of the Incarnation on the meaning of humanity and on learning. They discuss various sources of humanism, their strengths and their weaknesses, and end with encouraging remarks for students pursuing higher education. ⇧
Guests on Volume 86
• ROGER LUNDIN on why, after Vietnam, American literary critics forgot about American religion
• LAWRENCE BUELL on diverse visions of America and Nature
• HAROLD K. BUSH, JR. on the glorification of the American way as a civil religion
• ROGER LUNDIN on the transformation of the nature of belief in the late nineteenth century
• KATHERINE SHAW SPAHT on radical autonomy, marriage, divorce, and law
• STEVEN L. NOCK on how broadly shared cultural assumptions affect laws regulating marriage and divorce
• NORMAN KLASSEN and JANS ZIMMERMAN on the Incarnation and humanism, and on how various dualisms affect our assumptions about faith, knowledge, and higher education
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Roger Lundin
"In the 1970’s there emerged a strong and vigorous critique of all things American in the study of American literature, at the center of the discipline, and that critique included a very skeptical look at the role that religion had played and continued to play both in the production of American literature and the reception of it."
—Roger Lundin, editor of There Before Us: Religion, Literature and Culture from Emerson to Wendell Berry (Eerdmans, 2007)
Roger Lundin reflects on the religious overtones and influences in American literature in the past two centuries, influences that have been largely ignored by the academy. He discusses why so little recent scholarly attention has been given to the role of religion in American literature, and moves on to consider the nature of those influences. Lundin notes how writers’ divergent understandings of the immanence and transcendence of God, the distance between God and man, were mirrored by changes in the fundamental questions the writers were asking themselves. He then talks about the role of religious community in the life and work of authors such as Flannery O’Conner and John Updike. ⇧
• • •
Lawrence Buell
"Wilderness doesn’t take on a positive connotation before urbanization, before people start feeling not only safe but impounded within their urban and suburban enclaves, so wilderness, as an honorific, really takes about 200 years after the beginning of settlement to develop."
—Lawrence Buell, author of The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (Blackwell, 2005)
Lawrence Buell, the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University and author of The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and The Formation of American Culture (1995) and Writing for an Endangered World (2001) talks about the interplay between religion, environmental concerns and American ideals in the literary imagination of nineteenth and twentieth century writers. He talks about the public influence of the writings of American authors on nature and man’s relation to the environment. Buell also considers the conflicting attitudes towards technology many American writers struggled with, especially as urbanization developed over larger portions of the nation, and the tension between preservation and usage in religious views of nature. His essay in There Before Us is entitled “Religion and the Environmental Imagination in American Literature.” ⇧
• • •
Harold K. Bush, Jr.
"But one of the preoccupations of the Transcendentalists, for example in the writings of Emerson and others, is that we are enslaved to the culture, to the status quo with our minds, and we need to be liberated from those things. And so there’s a sense in which Ingersoll’s more popular and vernacular expressions of this desire to 'break free from the chains enslaving the mind' and so forth is really a kind of pop reduction of Emersonianism.”
—Harold K. Bush, Jr., author of Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age (University of Alabama, 2007)
Harold K. Bush, Jr. converses about the religious conceptions of American ideals shaping the spiritual crisis surrounding Mark Twain, and the impact of this crisis on Twain’s work. Bush argues that the free-thinking influences on Mark Twain, as seen in the ideas of Robert Ingersoll, were tinged with religious understandings of the nature of humanity and the redemptive value of American freedom, or to be more precise, liberty. Twain shared in this glorification of American ideals for all humanity, as well as in suspicions of institutions that might enslave the minds of the common people and hold back human progress. Slavery, in fact, was a prominent theme used to communicate a new sort of American civil religion that was developing since Transcendentalism, a civil religion whose adherents struggled with internal contradictions during this period of transition. ⇧
• • •
Roger Lundin
"I find it fascinating to think about the implications of the fact that it was between 1850 and 1870 or 1880 that open unbelief emerged as a fully viable intellectual and social option."
—Roger Lundin
Later in Volume 86, we return to Roger Lundin to talk about his goals in assembling the anthology. Lundin wanted to study the period in American history which saw a transition from the acceptance of traditional Christianity to a spirituality free from the tethers of institutional authority. He argues that this transition mirrored a similar transition from struggles with religious belief centering around morality to struggles with religious belief centering around epistemological questions. As epistemological doubt rendered certain belief implausible, the social acceptance of unbelief became a reality, and the literature of the time reflected these issues. ⇧
• • •
Katherine Shaw Spaht
"If you look at our law at the beginning of the twentieth century and you look at the law regulating the family, and what we’ve seen is law withdrawal from regulating the family. That has been interpreted by a very legalistic society as meaning that it’s no longer immoral to do these things that are no longer in the law. They equate the two."
—Katherine Shaw Spaht, author of "The Modern American Covenant Marriage Movement: Its Origins and Future," published in Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective (Eerdmans, 2005)
Katherine Shaw Spaht, the Jules F. and Frances L. Landry Professor of Law at the Louisiana State University law school, discusses the cultural and legal roots of the contemporary vulnerability of marriage. Spaht argues that the weakening of laws reinforcing marriage and the family serves to undermine public sensibilities of the importance of marital stability, and that legal structures giving expression to the value of lasting marriage, such as Louisiana’s covenant marriage, are necessary to support the institution of marriage. She also comments on the difficulties faced in enacting such measures in current legal and political situations. Lastly, she discusses the legal and cultural impact of no-fault divorce on the way marital and familiar legal battles are carried out on the ground. ⇧
• • •
Steven L. Nock
"Every institution has its own dominant belief system, its domain assumptions. And if one of those assumptions is that relationships are temporary or potentially temporary, then everything follows from that."
—Steven L. Nock, co-author of "What Does Covenant Mean for Relationships?," published in Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective (Eerdmans, 2005)
Steven Nock, professor of sociology and the director of the Marriage Matters project at the University of Virginia, examines marriage law in contemporary American society. Nock argues that law is more a reflection and embodiment of public values rather than a tool for cultural change. He thus regards the covenant marriage laws in Louisiana (and now Arkansas and Arizona) as regimes that allow and support those with higher standards of commitment in marriage to make a decision to reflect those values. Nock further discusses contemporary views of relationships and the embodiments of these assumptions in legal structures and policies which spill over to other spheres of society. ⇧
• • •
Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmerman
"The nature of reason needs to be at the forefront of discussion, and I would say even at the university level. What is rationality? Do we have a common rationality with others? What is the Christian concept of reason; and I think that precisely the Christian concept of reason is broad enough to include reason, emotion, fact and value, to put them together."
—Jens Zimmermann, co-author of The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education (Baker Academic, 2006)
Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann, professors at Trinity Western University, converse about the purpose of the university and the role of the humanities in higher education. Their intention in writing this book was to stir thoughtful reflection on the nature of the intellectual life of Christians. Their experience with Christian students in higher education has shown them that most students lack a coherent understanding of the purpose of learning, and this book is an attempt to reclaim a Christian passion for learning. Klassen and Zimmermann address some of the main institutional and conceptual culprits in preventing such an appreciation of knowledge and of the life of the mind in historical and contemporary philosophical and religious circles. They trace some problems of how learning and education is understood through some of the main historical developments in epistemology.
"The glory of God is a human being fully alive."
—Irenaeus, cited by Norman Klassen, co-author of The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education (Baker Academic, 2006)
In this bonus segment, Klassen and Zimmermann continue their discussion on the implications of the Incarnation on the meaning of humanity and on learning. They discuss various sources of humanism, their strengths and their weaknesses, and end with encouraging remarks for students pursuing higher education. ⇧
Guests on Volume 87
• JOHN WITTE, JR. on law and religion in the Western tradition
• STEVEN KEILLOR on God’s judgments and history
• PHILIP BESS on New Urbanism and natural law
• SCOTT CAIRNS on words and poetry’s work
• ANTHONY ESOLEN on literary critics and Christian belief
BONUS TRACK: John Witte, Jr. on four different configurations of church and state during western history
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Witte, Jr.
“It's now fatuous to say that law and morality are separate. Law, even in its secularized Enlightenment form, is dripping with moral prescriptions and presuppositions."
—John Witte, Jr., author of God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Eerdmans, 2006)
The historical relationship between law and religion has not always been peaceful, but there was an assumed similarity between the two. John Witte, Jr. points out the dualistic tendencies in the teaching and practice of law in our society: students learn to practice law with very little deep reflection on its meaning. Witte hopes to encourage a universal understanding of law as it relates to other disciplines, and to rediscover the relationship and guidance religion offers to fundamental moral questions. ⇧
• • •
Steven Keillor
“God is an active investigator as well as a judge, so that he is testing and probing . . . the judge simply receives evidence brought by others, whereas the Hebrew concept was of an active God.”
—Steven Keillor, author of God's Judgements: Interpreting History and the Christian Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2007)
Keillor discusses how and why Christianity is an interpreter of history as a whole, not simply of individual human actions. He argues that the Old Testament judgment of nations can be carried forward into the New Testament, dismissing the idea that Christianity only has to do with the individual rather than an entire nation. Within this broader framework, he sees Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address as an example of what is now an unthinkable approach to understanding the suffering of a nation. Keillor says that humility is a necessity when asserting that any event is due to divine action, but maintains that such assertion is natural to any historically based interpretation of events. ⇧
• • •
Philip Bess
“New Urbanism . . . has an implicit natural law structure.”
—Philip Bess, author of Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred (ISI Books, 2007)
Philip Bess sees our modern-day confusion and moral illiteracy worked out visibly in the cities and buildings our architects create. From this standpoint, he discusses the secular roots and pragmatic tendencies of some New Urbanists. He also talks about how Christians used to assume that cities were places to live out the good life, whereas today, we have mostly abandoned them for the suburbs, leaving cities emptied of true community and no more than economically-driven entertainment zones. Bess points out a common contradiction in thinking among architects, who on the one hand wish for community and meaning, and on the other insist on artistic freedom at the expense of human flourishing. ⇧
• • •
Scott Cairns
“Words are not just names for things . . . they have power, they have energy, they have agency.”
—Scott Cairns, author of Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected (Paraclete Press, 2006)
Poet Scott Cairns reflects on the beauty of language and the power of words. He says languages can "haunt" one another, and describes the manner in which one word can lead to another. Poetry is not so much about saying something definite as about discovering the artistic potential of the word as a medium. Cairns describes the relationship the poet has with his work as a means of that discovery. As proof of the stand-alone power of words, he argues that the meaning of the poem can transcend the original scope of its author. ⇧
• • •
Anthony Esolen
“The universe is a deep and rich place for someone who believes in God the creator, God a personal creator, who enters into the lives of the human beings that he made in his own image and likeness. . . . Without that, the universe is rather flat.”
—Anthony Esolen, author of Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature (ISI Books, 2007)
Anthony Esolen describes the shallow manner in which modern literary critics approach the writings of Christians in past centuries. The richness of Shakespeare's worldview, for instance, cannot fully be grasped unless these critics are willing to set aside their own presuppositions and consider the ideas as they were put forward: with sincerity.
“If your view of love does not involve the entire human race past, present, and future, and the entire cosmos we live in, and all the angels and saints, and the three-personed God almighty . . . then your view of love, if you are a Christian, is too cramped. . . . And if you are reducing God to a pleasant feeling, then you do not understand God.”
—Anthony Esolen
Anthony Esolen here discusses three elements of Christian belief that are badly misconstrued by Western literary critics. Time, power, and love are central topics to any philosophical discussion, and Esolen shows how flat these discussions become without Christianity's richness and complexity. In fact, Christianity turns their assumptions upside-down: where modern critics talk about empowerment, the gospel claims instead that God chooses the foolish and weak things of the world to overcome the strong. ⇧
• • •
John Witte, Jr.
“In Practical Deism . . . there's a heavy compartmentalization of knowledge altogether in which holistic theology of the pre-eighteenth-century variety becomes a victim.”
—John Witte, Jr.
In this bonus segment John Witte, Jr. explains four different configurations of church and state during western history. The oldest of these is “Church versus State” which pits the kingdom of light against the kingdom of darkness, expressed by monasticism and Anabaptism. Second, the Imperialist model claims the State is superior to the church, as seen in the Anglican synthesis of Henry VIII and the concept of the Divine right of Kings. Lutheran thought on the other hand Witte describes as the Two Powers theory, which places equal powers side by side with their own calling and jurisdiction. Finally, the fourth model stems from the twelfth century Papalist model, in which the Church is above the State — thus Canon law superior to Civil law. Witte goes on to discuss the Enlightenment and the theory of church/state relation ultimately influential on the American experiment. ⇧
Guests on Volume 87
• JOHN WITTE, JR. on law and religion in the Western tradition
• STEVEN KEILLOR on God’s judgments and history
• PHILIP BESS on New Urbanism and natural law
• SCOTT CAIRNS on words and poetry’s work
• ANTHONY ESOLEN on literary critics and Christian belief
BONUS TRACK: John Witte, Jr. on four different configurations of church and state during western history
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Witte, Jr.
“It's now fatuous to say that law and morality are separate. Law, even in its secularized Enlightenment form, is dripping with moral prescriptions and presuppositions."
—John Witte, Jr., author of God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Eerdmans, 2006)
The historical relationship between law and religion has not always been peaceful, but there was an assumed similarity between the two. John Witte, Jr. points out the dualistic tendencies in the teaching and practice of law in our society: students learn to practice law with very little deep reflection on its meaning. Witte hopes to encourage a universal understanding of law as it relates to other disciplines, and to rediscover the relationship and guidance religion offers to fundamental moral questions. ⇧
• • •
Steven Keillor
“God is an active investigator as well as a judge, so that he is testing and probing . . . the judge simply receives evidence brought by others, whereas the Hebrew concept was of an active God.”
—Steven Keillor, author of God's Judgements: Interpreting History and the Christian Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2007)
Keillor discusses how and why Christianity is an interpreter of history as a whole, not simply of individual human actions. He argues that the Old Testament judgment of nations can be carried forward into the New Testament, dismissing the idea that Christianity only has to do with the individual rather than an entire nation. Within this broader framework, he sees Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address as an example of what is now an unthinkable approach to understanding the suffering of a nation. Keillor says that humility is a necessity when asserting that any event is due to divine action, but maintains that such assertion is natural to any historically based interpretation of events. ⇧
• • •
Philip Bess
“New Urbanism . . . has an implicit natural law structure.”
—Philip Bess, author of Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred (ISI Books, 2007)
Philip Bess sees our modern-day confusion and moral illiteracy worked out visibly in the cities and buildings our architects create. From this standpoint, he discusses the secular roots and pragmatic tendencies of some New Urbanists. He also talks about how Christians used to assume that cities were places to live out the good life, whereas today, we have mostly abandoned them for the suburbs, leaving cities emptied of true community and no more than economically-driven entertainment zones. Bess points out a common contradiction in thinking among architects, who on the one hand wish for community and meaning, and on the other insist on artistic freedom at the expense of human flourishing. ⇧
• • •
Scott Cairns
“Words are not just names for things . . . they have power, they have energy, they have agency.”
—Scott Cairns, author of Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected (Paraclete Press, 2006)
Poet Scott Cairns reflects on the beauty of language and the power of words. He says languages can "haunt" one another, and describes the manner in which one word can lead to another. Poetry is not so much about saying something definite as about discovering the artistic potential of the word as a medium. Cairns describes the relationship the poet has with his work as a means of that discovery. As proof of the stand-alone power of words, he argues that the meaning of the poem can transcend the original scope of its author. ⇧
• • •
Anthony Esolen
“The universe is a deep and rich place for someone who believes in God the creator, God a personal creator, who enters into the lives of the human beings that he made in his own image and likeness. . . . Without that, the universe is rather flat.”
—Anthony Esolen, author of Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature (ISI Books, 2007)
Anthony Esolen describes the shallow manner in which modern literary critics approach the writings of Christians in past centuries. The richness of Shakespeare's worldview, for instance, cannot fully be grasped unless these critics are willing to set aside their own presuppositions and consider the ideas as they were put forward: with sincerity.
“If your view of love does not involve the entire human race past, present, and future, and the entire cosmos we live in, and all the angels and saints, and the three-personed God almighty . . . then your view of love, if you are a Christian, is too cramped. . . . And if you are reducing God to a pleasant feeling, then you do not understand God.”
—Anthony Esolen
Anthony Esolen here discusses three elements of Christian belief that are badly misconstrued by Western literary critics. Time, power, and love are central topics to any philosophical discussion, and Esolen shows how flat these discussions become without Christianity's richness and complexity. In fact, Christianity turns their assumptions upside-down: where modern critics talk about empowerment, the gospel claims instead that God chooses the foolish and weak things of the world to overcome the strong. ⇧
• • •
John Witte, Jr.
“In Practical Deism . . . there's a heavy compartmentalization of knowledge altogether in which holistic theology of the pre-eighteenth-century variety becomes a victim.”
—John Witte, Jr.
In this bonus segment John Witte, Jr. explains four different configurations of church and state during western history. The oldest of these is “Church versus State” which pits the kingdom of light against the kingdom of darkness, expressed by monasticism and Anabaptism. Second, the Imperialist model claims the State is superior to the church, as seen in the Anglican synthesis of Henry VIII and the concept of the Divine right of Kings. Lutheran thought on the other hand Witte describes as the Two Powers theory, which places equal powers side by side with their own calling and jurisdiction. Finally, the fourth model stems from the twelfth century Papalist model, in which the Church is above the State — thus Canon law superior to Civil law. Witte goes on to discuss the Enlightenment and the theory of church/state relation ultimately influential on the American experiment. ⇧
Guests on Volume 88
• DIANA PAVLAC GLYER on the influence of the Inklings on each others’ writings
• MICHAEL J. LEWIS on Body Worlds, human nature and Western Art
• STEVE TALBOTT on how the aims of education are distracted by technology
• DARRYL TIPPENS on why we sing
• EVERETT FERGUSON on the place of music in the Early Church
• ALEXANDER LINGAS on the tradition of music in the Eastern churches
• CALVIN STAPERT on the nature of meaning in music
BONUS TRACKS: Diana Pavlac Glyer on Owen Barfield's work and Michael J. Lewis on representations of the human body in art
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Diana Pavlac Glyer
“What we know about Tolkien is that, without the Inklings, probably we wouldn’t have any finished work at all. It was unusual for Tolkien to finish anything: he was a great beginner, but not a good ender.”
—Diana Pavlac Glyer, author of The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Kent State University Press, 2007)
The Inklings were “brutally frank” in their critique of one another’s work. Yet many critics say these regular encounters did not have much influence on these authors’ work. Diana Pavlac Glyer disagrees, in spite of the fact that the Inklings themselves mostly claimed to not have an influence on each other. Glyer explains that in imitation of style, there were many acknowledged differences: yet there was a great impact as the Inklings worked together. She explains this as a subtle difference between coaching and mere imitation: coaches tend to get us to do what we do best, and the result can be quite different in style from the coach’s own work. Glyer looked closely at letters, diaries and rough drafts as well as revised versions of their work to see what kind of changes were made. She concludes that even in major literary choices (such as Lewis’s ultimate decision to write fiction rather than poetry) the Inklings had a tremendous influence on each other. ⇧
• • •
Michael J. Lewis
“Every product is immaculate. Dust has settled on nothing. And this is what made it palatable to people who otherwise would feel an instinctive dread. The sheer intensity of the candy, neon colors, is part of the shininess of advertising, which does a tremendous job of causing our instincts to snooze when they should be at their most alert.”
—Michael J. Lewis, author of Body and Soul, published in Commentary (January 2007)
Michael J. Lewis examines what, besides basic anatomy, is being taught at the Body Worlds art exhibit using the technique of plastination by Gunther von Hagens. Lewis insists that our moral imagination is being shaped by a disturbing tendency of our time: the treatment of the human body as a mechanical contrivance with no higher meaning. The highly antiseptic, immaculate appearance of the exhibit makes it palatable to people who would otherwise feel a natural dread, citing the tendency of children to find the exhibit hilarious. From the perspective of the history of art, Lewis makes insightful comments regarding the historic treatment of the human body. He insists that there is an essential moral component to reverencing human bodies while alive which carry over into the complex rituals which attend the treatment of the body in death. Lewis explains that historically in the use of a human body for the purposes of science, there have always been strict ethical protocols regarding how the body could be used. He contrasts this with the Body Worlds exhibit’s undeniable orientation toward entertainment. ⇧
• • •
Steve Talbott
“The distancing of ourselves, and particularly of our children, from reality — if you can just stop for a minute, step back and look at it — is absolutely horrifying. You wonder, where will the grounding for these children come from when they have no grounding in reality?”
—Steve Talbott, author of Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines (O'Reilly, 2007)
Steve Talbott argues for an education that introduces young people to a wise and intelligent encounter with reality. In relating a story of a father who takes his son on a hike in the woods (observing a rattlesnake in its natural habitat along the way), Talbott explains what he means by an embodied and interactional means of education. The father in his story is a mentor for the boy, showing him how to appreciate the beauty of the snake in ways a nature video never could. Talbott argues that education involves a genuine embodied interaction with reality: the role of the mentor is crucial in teaching how reality should be interacted with in a moral way. All too often, education is viewed as merely the assembling of information, but Talbott concludes that the forms through which knowledge is conveyed is directly related to the meaning of what is learned. ⇧
• • •
Daryl Tippens
“There’s something innate about human nature that requires music. . . . I would argue the law of singing is the law of belief.”
—Darryl Tippens, author of That's Why We Sing: Reclaiming the Wonder of Congregational Singing (Leafwood Publishing, 2007)
The unlikeliness of men and women singing together in today’s world is an example of the fragmenting nature of modernity. Darryl Tippens is an organizer of a music festival at Pepperdine University for acapella sacred music called “The Ascending Voice.” Tippens reminds us of Scriptural texts in which a person is moving closer to God when music breaks out (such as Mary’s Magnificat.) He discusses the history of music in the church, and hopes we can turn around the current view of singing within the church. ⇧
• • •
Everett Ferguson
“Simple singing awakens the soul to a fervent desire for that which is described in the songs. It quiets the passions which arise from the flesh. It removes the evil thoughts that are implanted in us by invisible foes. It waters the soul to make it fruitful in the good things of God. It makes the soldiers of piety strong to endure hardships. It becomes for the pious medicine to cure all the pains of life.”
—Theodorate (Bishop of Syria; church father), cited by Everett Ferguson, author of Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Eerdmans, 2003)
Everett Ferguson contrasts “living instruments” (human beings) with “dead instruments” (which by nature all instruments are). He relates the uniting effect music was always understood to have on a congregation: how can one speak evil of another with whom they’ve united their voice in spiritual song? Ferguson relates Augustine’s comment on seeing the church in Milan, portraying a fear of the power of beauty to beguile the listener. Ferguson encourages Christian musicians to struggle with the tension between the melody and harmony adding to versus distracting from the power of the words. ⇧
• • •
Alexander Lingas
“It was really singing services day in and day out which made those fine distinctions between the different types of scales possible for me.”
—Alexander Lingas
Choral conductor Alexander Lingas relates his background and upbringing in Western music, learning chant from that perspective and then continuing his journey into a more thoroughly Eastern tradition. He describes the surprising continuity in music during the Ottoman period when the Turks ruled Eastern Europe. Western music changed more during this period, whereas Middle East monophonic singing is closer in some ways to the original Gregorian chant. ⇧
• • •
Calvin Stapert
“Wherever we have record of civilization and their music, people have thought that music matters and it matters greatly.”
—Calvin Stapert, author of A New Song for an Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Church (Eerdmans, 2007)
Musicologist Calvin Stapert introduces John Calvin’s teachings on music’s power and the importance of care in dealing with that power. The idea that music could have a “pernicious” effect, as Calvin thought, is completely incomprehensible to most people today — whether or not they are Christian. Composers often say that the meaning of their music is “up to the listener,” and Calvin Stapert admits that the whole question of musical meaning is a difficult one. Yet he encourages a consideration of music which lies within a definable sphere of meaning. He argues that the relativism of our age has influenced us so deeply that we are fearful of something that gives us pleasure being criticized in any way. ⇧
• • •
Bonus Tracks
“Well, if you asked [Lewis and Barfield], they’d say they disagreed on everything.”
—Diana Pavlac Glyer
In this bonus track, Diana Pavlac Glyer describes Owen Barfield’s work, which is largely unknown since his writing tends to be technical and philosophical. Lewis and Barfield were exact contemporaries at Oxford, and became close friends very early in their careers. One central idea of Barfield’s that Glyer claims influenced the other Inklings such as Tolkien and Lewis was the importance of the relationship between language and perception. Barfield also encouraged Lewis to avoid “chronological snobbery,” whereby the present moment is assumed to be better than other times. She comments on how Tolkien’s creative process unusually started with language, which is also a Barfieldian idea.
“It is sometimes thought by secularists that when the Renaissance broke in Italy in the fifteenth century, that was the end of religious faith. And you couldn’t be further from the truth. Michelangelo was as deep a believer as any artist ever was.”
—Michael J. Lewis
In this bonus track, Michael J. Lewis comments on the changing view of the human body present in the history of art. For instance, he contrasts the way hands and eyes were emphasized in Western Medieval art compared with the inner-looking eyes of Eastern statuary. For a discussion of the application of Christian belief applied to the body of pagan antiquity, Lewis recommends Kenneth Clark’s book on the history of the body in art. The fatalism and pessimism that clings to all classical art is very different, he says, from the optimistic, forward-looking Christian representations in art. Christians see the body as image of God: the site of suffering, but redeemable. The beauty of the suffering body, such as the body of Christ, is uniquely Christian, whereas there was no compassion for the suffering or for the deformed in Roman culture. ⇧
Guests on Volume 88
• DIANA PAVLAC GLYER on the influence of the Inklings on each others’ writings
• MICHAEL J. LEWIS on Body Worlds, human nature and Western Art
• STEVE TALBOTT on how the aims of education are distracted by technology
• DARRYL TIPPENS on why we sing
• EVERETT FERGUSON on the place of music in the Early Church
• ALEXANDER LINGAS on the tradition of music in the Eastern churches
• CALVIN STAPERT on the nature of meaning in music
BONUS TRACKS: Diana Pavlac Glyer on Owen Barfield's work and Michael J. Lewis on representations of the human body in art
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Diana Pavlac Glyer
“What we know about Tolkien is that, without the Inklings, probably we wouldn’t have any finished work at all. It was unusual for Tolkien to finish anything: he was a great beginner, but not a good ender.”
—Diana Pavlac Glyer, author of The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Kent State University Press, 2007)
The Inklings were “brutally frank” in their critique of one another’s work. Yet many critics say these regular encounters did not have much influence on these authors’ work. Diana Pavlac Glyer disagrees, in spite of the fact that the Inklings themselves mostly claimed to not have an influence on each other. Glyer explains that in imitation of style, there were many acknowledged differences: yet there was a great impact as the Inklings worked together. She explains this as a subtle difference between coaching and mere imitation: coaches tend to get us to do what we do best, and the result can be quite different in style from the coach’s own work. Glyer looked closely at letters, diaries and rough drafts as well as revised versions of their work to see what kind of changes were made. She concludes that even in major literary choices (such as Lewis’s ultimate decision to write fiction rather than poetry) the Inklings had a tremendous influence on each other. ⇧
• • •
Michael J. Lewis
“Every product is immaculate. Dust has settled on nothing. And this is what made it palatable to people who otherwise would feel an instinctive dread. The sheer intensity of the candy, neon colors, is part of the shininess of advertising, which does a tremendous job of causing our instincts to snooze when they should be at their most alert.”
—Michael J. Lewis, author of Body and Soul, published in Commentary (January 2007)
Michael J. Lewis examines what, besides basic anatomy, is being taught at the Body Worlds art exhibit using the technique of plastination by Gunther von Hagens. Lewis insists that our moral imagination is being shaped by a disturbing tendency of our time: the treatment of the human body as a mechanical contrivance with no higher meaning. The highly antiseptic, immaculate appearance of the exhibit makes it palatable to people who would otherwise feel a natural dread, citing the tendency of children to find the exhibit hilarious. From the perspective of the history of art, Lewis makes insightful comments regarding the historic treatment of the human body. He insists that there is an essential moral component to reverencing human bodies while alive which carry over into the complex rituals which attend the treatment of the body in death. Lewis explains that historically in the use of a human body for the purposes of science, there have always been strict ethical protocols regarding how the body could be used. He contrasts this with the Body Worlds exhibit’s undeniable orientation toward entertainment. ⇧
• • •
Steve Talbott
“The distancing of ourselves, and particularly of our children, from reality — if you can just stop for a minute, step back and look at it — is absolutely horrifying. You wonder, where will the grounding for these children come from when they have no grounding in reality?”
—Steve Talbott, author of Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines (O'Reilly, 2007)
Steve Talbott argues for an education that introduces young people to a wise and intelligent encounter with reality. In relating a story of a father who takes his son on a hike in the woods (observing a rattlesnake in its natural habitat along the way), Talbott explains what he means by an embodied and interactional means of education. The father in his story is a mentor for the boy, showing him how to appreciate the beauty of the snake in ways a nature video never could. Talbott argues that education involves a genuine embodied interaction with reality: the role of the mentor is crucial in teaching how reality should be interacted with in a moral way. All too often, education is viewed as merely the assembling of information, but Talbott concludes that the forms through which knowledge is conveyed is directly related to the meaning of what is learned. ⇧
• • •
Daryl Tippens
“There’s something innate about human nature that requires music. . . . I would argue the law of singing is the law of belief.”
—Darryl Tippens, author of That's Why We Sing: Reclaiming the Wonder of Congregational Singing (Leafwood Publishing, 2007)
The unlikeliness of men and women singing together in today’s world is an example of the fragmenting nature of modernity. Darryl Tippens is an organizer of a music festival at Pepperdine University for acapella sacred music called “The Ascending Voice.” Tippens reminds us of Scriptural texts in which a person is moving closer to God when music breaks out (such as Mary’s Magnificat.) He discusses the history of music in the church, and hopes we can turn around the current view of singing within the church. ⇧
• • •
Everett Ferguson
“Simple singing awakens the soul to a fervent desire for that which is described in the songs. It quiets the passions which arise from the flesh. It removes the evil thoughts that are implanted in us by invisible foes. It waters the soul to make it fruitful in the good things of God. It makes the soldiers of piety strong to endure hardships. It becomes for the pious medicine to cure all the pains of life.”
—Theodorate (Bishop of Syria; church father), cited by Everett Ferguson, author of Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Eerdmans, 2003)
Everett Ferguson contrasts “living instruments” (human beings) with “dead instruments” (which by nature all instruments are). He relates the uniting effect music was always understood to have on a congregation: how can one speak evil of another with whom they’ve united their voice in spiritual song? Ferguson relates Augustine’s comment on seeing the church in Milan, portraying a fear of the power of beauty to beguile the listener. Ferguson encourages Christian musicians to struggle with the tension between the melody and harmony adding to versus distracting from the power of the words. ⇧
• • •
Alexander Lingas
“It was really singing services day in and day out which made those fine distinctions between the different types of scales possible for me.”
—Alexander Lingas
Choral conductor Alexander Lingas relates his background and upbringing in Western music, learning chant from that perspective and then continuing his journey into a more thoroughly Eastern tradition. He describes the surprising continuity in music during the Ottoman period when the Turks ruled Eastern Europe. Western music changed more during this period, whereas Middle East monophonic singing is closer in some ways to the original Gregorian chant. ⇧
• • •
Calvin Stapert
“Wherever we have record of civilization and their music, people have thought that music matters and it matters greatly.”
—Calvin Stapert, author of A New Song for an Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Church (Eerdmans, 2007)
Musicologist Calvin Stapert introduces John Calvin’s teachings on music’s power and the importance of care in dealing with that power. The idea that music could have a “pernicious” effect, as Calvin thought, is completely incomprehensible to most people today — whether or not they are Christian. Composers often say that the meaning of their music is “up to the listener,” and Calvin Stapert admits that the whole question of musical meaning is a difficult one. Yet he encourages a consideration of music which lies within a definable sphere of meaning. He argues that the relativism of our age has influenced us so deeply that we are fearful of something that gives us pleasure being criticized in any way. ⇧
• • •
Bonus Tracks
“Well, if you asked [Lewis and Barfield], they’d say they disagreed on everything.”
—Diana Pavlac Glyer
In this bonus track, Diana Pavlac Glyer describes Owen Barfield’s work, which is largely unknown since his writing tends to be technical and philosophical. Lewis and Barfield were exact contemporaries at Oxford, and became close friends very early in their careers. One central idea of Barfield’s that Glyer claims influenced the other Inklings such as Tolkien and Lewis was the importance of the relationship between language and perception. Barfield also encouraged Lewis to avoid “chronological snobbery,” whereby the present moment is assumed to be better than other times. She comments on how Tolkien’s creative process unusually started with language, which is also a Barfieldian idea.
“It is sometimes thought by secularists that when the Renaissance broke in Italy in the fifteenth century, that was the end of religious faith. And you couldn’t be further from the truth. Michelangelo was as deep a believer as any artist ever was.”
—Michael J. Lewis
In this bonus track, Michael J. Lewis comments on the changing view of the human body present in the history of art. For instance, he contrasts the way hands and eyes were emphasized in Western Medieval art compared with the inner-looking eyes of Eastern statuary. For a discussion of the application of Christian belief applied to the body of pagan antiquity, Lewis recommends Kenneth Clark’s book on the history of the body in art. The fatalism and pessimism that clings to all classical art is very different, he says, from the optimistic, forward-looking Christian representations in art. Christians see the body as image of God: the site of suffering, but redeemable. The beauty of the suffering body, such as the body of Christ, is uniquely Christian, whereas there was no compassion for the suffering or for the deformed in Roman culture. ⇧
Guests on Volume 89
• JEROME WAKEFIELD on how psychiatry began ignoring causes of mental suffering and so defined sadness as a disease
• CHRISTOPHER LANE on the complex characteristics of anxiety and the tendency to treat the absence of ease with drugs
• DAN BLAZER on why psychiatric disorders require attention to the story of patients’ lives
• FRED TURNER on 1960s dreams of countercultural change and the rise of the Whole Earth Catalog
• BARRETT FISHER on the films of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman
• THOMAS HIBBS on the theme of the possibility of redemption in film noir and similar film genres
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jerome Wakefield
"If you include context, it makes things more fuzzy . . . after all once you’re looking into the context, you also have to look into the person's meaning system, what they value, because that determines whether the context itself would have an impact on them."
—Jerome C. Wakefield, author of The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sadness into Depressive Disorder (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Jerome Wakefield examines the trend in clinical psychiatry towards ignoring social causes of behavior in favor of strictly biological frameworks focusing on physical and chemical changes in the brain, and diagnosing disorders based on quantifiable, scientifically reliable measures of symptoms isolated from the patient's social context and value system. Wakefield describes the field's movement away from the time-consuming and inexact process of taking into consideration the often murky existential and social context of the patient's life in order to create a common, more scientific, systematic language and methodology for clinical practice. Wakefield and Ken Myers reflect on the implications of this way of considering and dealing with psychiatry patients for the effectiveness of treatment and how it relates to cultural tendencies to view humans in reductive terms. ⇧
• • •
Christopher Lane
"Gregariousness in itself is charming, it's something that one should welcome; the problem occurs when... it's the only option, when it's represented as the most normative state of being, anything that mildly varies from it is considered suspicious, and strikingly in our culture which places so much emphasis appropriately on diversity, this is one of the areas where we're very, strangely, intolerant."
—Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (Yale University Press, 2007)
Professor Christopher Lane of Northwestern University talks about the scientific development of approaches to understanding anxiety, and recent attempts to reduce complex and large existential experiences to more easily handled biological mechanisms. Lane converses about American gregariousness and cultural responses to shyness which restrict the range of behaviors considered normal in such a way to bring enormous pressures on individuals to behave and be a certain way. According to Lane, with the growing number of drugs becoming available to "treat" these behaviors — once considered appropriate responses to strenuous, strange or difficult situations — more thought must be given to the effects of changing understandings of social behavior and experience on mental and physical health and the role of economic forces in driving these changes. ⇧
• • •
Dan Blazer
"Psychiatry in the past was based totally on being able to hear what the patients had to say. Now we see. We see magnetic resonance imaging scans, we see scores on symptom scales … so that we have actually moved in a very strange way to being somewhat of a visible as opposed to an audible specialty."
—Dan G. Blazer, author of The Age of Melancholy: "Major Depression" and Its Social Origins (Routledge, 2005)
Dan G. Blazer, J. P. Gibbons Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University, explains how psychiatric practice in the past focused on bringing out the story of the patient, often seeing their patients over longer periods of time to consider the developments in their lives over time. Blazer suggests that the tendency to see health as an static snapshot instead of a temporal reality is reinforced by the ease of medical technologies that often replaces time-consuming engagement with the patient, and methodologies that try to clarify and simplify phenomena by reducing them to easily categorizable and thus easily treatable disorders. ⇧
• • •
Fred Turner
"The notion was that if we could find the right tools, change consciousness, arrive at a shared consciousness, we could build an alternative kind of society, a new communal kind of society that could stand against the Vietnam era military-industrial world that seemed to be mainstream America."
—Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago, 2007)
Fred Turner discusses his recent work From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. In it, Turner describes the development of the cultural perception of technology and computers from the 1960s negativity associated with the military-industrial complex to the utopian optimism of technology — rather than politics — as the means to change social consciousness and create a new kind of communal society. He discusses the implications for common "tool use" as the site of social change on community interactions, self-understanding and politics. ⇧
• • •
Barrett Fisher
"It's memory that really becomes key in how people do or don't change."
—Barrett Fisher
English professor Barrett Fisher discusses the works of Charlie Kaufman, considered by many film critics among the most intellectually challenging writers in Hollywood. One of the film themes considered is the role of psychological interdependence and even love in forming one's identity; another is the role of memory and self-consciousness in the inevitable development — the adaptation — of the human self. Fisher goes on to comment on the forebears of Kaufman's artistic style and content as demonstrated in specific examples from his films. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Hibbs
"There's an attempt by the character as it were looking backward to try and make sense out of what's happened, and so despite the fact that it seems that there's nothing there to be found, nothing of ultimate significance, there's nonetheless this drive in the protagonist to attempt to articulate, to communicate the human condition, and to understand for himself and for others how things went awry."
—Thomas Hibbs, author of Arts of Darkness: American Noir and the Quest for Redemption (Spence, 2008)
Thomas Hibbs, professor of philosophy at Boston College, gives us the rationale behind Arts of Darkness, his newest book about film. He discusses what characterizes or distinguishes the genre of noir, and how recent American films can be seen to draw out themes and stylistic elements of familiar film noir, and yet add some twists as contemporary screenplay writers take new directions with old motifs. He develops his ideas with respect to the films of Christopher Nolan, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Lynch, among others, showing how they bring the audiences into the story of a quest through moral and visual confusion towards an ending of revelation. ⇧
Guests on Volume 89
• JEROME WAKEFIELD on how psychiatry began ignoring causes of mental suffering and so defined sadness as a disease
• CHRISTOPHER LANE on the complex characteristics of anxiety and the tendency to treat the absence of ease with drugs
• DAN BLAZER on why psychiatric disorders require attention to the story of patients’ lives
• FRED TURNER on 1960s dreams of countercultural change and the rise of the Whole Earth Catalog
• BARRETT FISHER on the films of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman
• THOMAS HIBBS on the theme of the possibility of redemption in film noir and similar film genres
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jerome Wakefield
"If you include context, it makes things more fuzzy . . . after all once you’re looking into the context, you also have to look into the person's meaning system, what they value, because that determines whether the context itself would have an impact on them."
—Jerome C. Wakefield, author of The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sadness into Depressive Disorder (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Jerome Wakefield examines the trend in clinical psychiatry towards ignoring social causes of behavior in favor of strictly biological frameworks focusing on physical and chemical changes in the brain, and diagnosing disorders based on quantifiable, scientifically reliable measures of symptoms isolated from the patient's social context and value system. Wakefield describes the field's movement away from the time-consuming and inexact process of taking into consideration the often murky existential and social context of the patient's life in order to create a common, more scientific, systematic language and methodology for clinical practice. Wakefield and Ken Myers reflect on the implications of this way of considering and dealing with psychiatry patients for the effectiveness of treatment and how it relates to cultural tendencies to view humans in reductive terms. ⇧
• • •
Christopher Lane
"Gregariousness in itself is charming, it's something that one should welcome; the problem occurs when... it's the only option, when it's represented as the most normative state of being, anything that mildly varies from it is considered suspicious, and strikingly in our culture which places so much emphasis appropriately on diversity, this is one of the areas where we're very, strangely, intolerant."
—Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (Yale University Press, 2007)
Professor Christopher Lane of Northwestern University talks about the scientific development of approaches to understanding anxiety, and recent attempts to reduce complex and large existential experiences to more easily handled biological mechanisms. Lane converses about American gregariousness and cultural responses to shyness which restrict the range of behaviors considered normal in such a way to bring enormous pressures on individuals to behave and be a certain way. According to Lane, with the growing number of drugs becoming available to "treat" these behaviors — once considered appropriate responses to strenuous, strange or difficult situations — more thought must be given to the effects of changing understandings of social behavior and experience on mental and physical health and the role of economic forces in driving these changes. ⇧
• • •
Dan Blazer
"Psychiatry in the past was based totally on being able to hear what the patients had to say. Now we see. We see magnetic resonance imaging scans, we see scores on symptom scales … so that we have actually moved in a very strange way to being somewhat of a visible as opposed to an audible specialty."
—Dan G. Blazer, author of The Age of Melancholy: "Major Depression" and Its Social Origins (Routledge, 2005)
Dan G. Blazer, J. P. Gibbons Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University, explains how psychiatric practice in the past focused on bringing out the story of the patient, often seeing their patients over longer periods of time to consider the developments in their lives over time. Blazer suggests that the tendency to see health as an static snapshot instead of a temporal reality is reinforced by the ease of medical technologies that often replaces time-consuming engagement with the patient, and methodologies that try to clarify and simplify phenomena by reducing them to easily categorizable and thus easily treatable disorders. ⇧
• • •
Fred Turner
"The notion was that if we could find the right tools, change consciousness, arrive at a shared consciousness, we could build an alternative kind of society, a new communal kind of society that could stand against the Vietnam era military-industrial world that seemed to be mainstream America."
—Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago, 2007)
Fred Turner discusses his recent work From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. In it, Turner describes the development of the cultural perception of technology and computers from the 1960s negativity associated with the military-industrial complex to the utopian optimism of technology — rather than politics — as the means to change social consciousness and create a new kind of communal society. He discusses the implications for common "tool use" as the site of social change on community interactions, self-understanding and politics. ⇧
• • •
Barrett Fisher
"It's memory that really becomes key in how people do or don't change."
—Barrett Fisher
English professor Barrett Fisher discusses the works of Charlie Kaufman, considered by many film critics among the most intellectually challenging writers in Hollywood. One of the film themes considered is the role of psychological interdependence and even love in forming one's identity; another is the role of memory and self-consciousness in the inevitable development — the adaptation — of the human self. Fisher goes on to comment on the forebears of Kaufman's artistic style and content as demonstrated in specific examples from his films. ⇧
• • •
Thomas Hibbs
"There's an attempt by the character as it were looking backward to try and make sense out of what's happened, and so despite the fact that it seems that there's nothing there to be found, nothing of ultimate significance, there's nonetheless this drive in the protagonist to attempt to articulate, to communicate the human condition, and to understand for himself and for others how things went awry."
—Thomas Hibbs, author of Arts of Darkness: American Noir and the Quest for Redemption (Spence, 2008)
Thomas Hibbs, professor of philosophy at Boston College, gives us the rationale behind Arts of Darkness, his newest book about film. He discusses what characterizes or distinguishes the genre of noir, and how recent American films can be seen to draw out themes and stylistic elements of familiar film noir, and yet add some twists as contemporary screenplay writers take new directions with old motifs. He develops his ideas with respect to the films of Christopher Nolan, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Lynch, among others, showing how they bring the audiences into the story of a quest through moral and visual confusion towards an ending of revelation. ⇧
Guests on Volume 90
• J. MARK BERTRAND on how the language of worldviews can mean something richer than it often does
• MICHAEL P. SCHUTT on how the day-to-day practice of Christian lawyers can reflect a Christian view of the nature of law
• MICHAEL WARD on how C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia were shaped by medieval cosmological beliefs about the seven planets
• DANA GIOIA on the disturbing trends in the reading (non)habits of Americans
• MAKOTO FUJIMURA on reading, painting, and attending to the world
• GREGORY EDWARD REYNOLDS on lessons about reading from the study of media ecology
• CATHERINE PRESCOTT on why portrait painters often depict their subjects with books in their hands
• EUGENE PETERSON on the place of reading in the spiritual lives of Christians.
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
J. Mark Bertrand
"I was guilty myself of instilling an overweening confidence in students and giving them the false idea that being equipped with a few bullet points would give them the ability to hold their own in an argument against anyone on any topic on any day of the week."
—J. Mark Bertrand, author of (Re)thinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World (Crossway Books, 2007)
Author and teacher J. Mark Bertrand talks about the concept of a "worldview." He reflects on a kind of mental fatigue that develops when worldview becomes a shorthand for dissecting and deconstructing how people think for narrowly apologetic purposes. Bertrand believes the reduction of the idea of worldview can prevent us from having an openness to gaining wisdom and learning to witness in our world. Worldview discourse often has the unfortunate side-effect of making thinkers too comfortable with the intellectual safety of the familiar and known to be able to gain valuable insight into the varied breadth of the world. ⇧
• • •
Michael P. Schutt
"They want a shark. They want a hired gun. They want someone who will bend every rule possible in order to win. And so part of what the task of the Christian lawyer is is to educate his or her clients in thinking properly about the nature of the legal system and why this particular client is coming to a lawyer in the first place. And in order to do that, you have to think of your clients as human beings and not just legal problems that walk in the door."
—Michael P. Schutt, author of Redeeming Law: Christian Calling and the Legal Profession (InverVarsity Press, 2007)
Michael P. Schutt, associate professor of law at Regent University Law School, discusses the ways secular law schools tend to ignore a Christian understanding of the nature of law and treat law as a wholly human artifact, instrumental to the fulfillment of human desires. For Schutt, an essential distinction is whether law has a transcendent nature that binds human authorities or whether law is merely an instrument of those in power for the enacting of their wills. From there, Christians must come to understand the jurisprudential distinction between law and morality embodied in human institutions with their own spheres of authority. Schutt is concerned not simply with the theoretical basis of law, but with how a proper understanding of it is embodied in Christian practice, how lawyers live out the profession which has been entrusted to them in the legal and general communities of which they are a part. ⇧
• • •
Michael Ward
"I thought I knew these books. I'd been reading these books for nearly thirty years by this point. And I'd been studying them for ten years and more and at quite a high level. And I knew that people had gone looking for some kind of hidden thread or theme to the books. Critics have suggested all sorts of possible governing ideas like the seven sacraments or the seven deadly sins or the seven virtues or the seven books of Spencer's Fairy Queen, but none of those explanations had ever convinced anyone."
—Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Scholar and Anglican clergyman Michael Ward discusses his groundbreaking book on C. S. Lewis entitled Planet Narnia. Ward describes how he came to discover one night the connection between Lewis's conception of the seven Ptolemaic planets and the seven Narnian chronicles. Contrary to some critics, the Chronicles of Narnia are artistically rich and precise as a whole series, and Lewis's vision behind it coherent in its imagination. The full interview with Michael Ward is available as a MARS HILL AUDIO Conversation entitled The Heav'ns and All the Powers Therein: The Medieval Cosmos and the World of Narnia. ⇧
• • •
Dana Gioia
"Reading is not a natural activity. Reading is not like walking. It's like playing the piano. It requires an ongoing practice and mastery which is to the end that you can sit and you can play the piano without even thinking about it, but that reflects years of sustained attention and practice."
—Dana Gioia, speaking about To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence (National Endowment for the Arts, 2007)
Dana Gioia, the Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, explains the results of the recently released NEA report on reading in America. Gioia believes the report highlights literacy trends that show a decreasing ability in young and adult Americans to sustain the attention in reading required to deal with complex, multi-dimensional issues and problems. The growing educational focus on the literacy of children is not being followed through to the adolescent and adult years, precisely when other commercial media step up their influence. Gioia discusses possible ways that schools and churches and other communities and cultural institutions can navigate adolescent and adult Americans back to learn the complex joys of literature and the arts. ⇧
• • •
Makoto Fujimura
"People do say 'I am a visual learner,' but what I find as a visual artist is that people are not taking in much information at all...they're scanning. What the internet does is create this pseudo-learning experience where you think you are engaged with something but at the end of the day you haven't really thought deeply about much of anything, so you end up with a very superficial understanding of the world."
—Makoto Fujimura
What relationship does verbal literacy have to visual literacy? Accomplished painter Makoto Fujimura addresses that question in this interview. Fujimura suggests that the practice and discipline of reading has a kind of unity with the visual arts due to the need for the active, focused use of intelligence for the appreciation of both forms and the depth of truths represented therein. To the extent that both reading and the visual arts allow human beings to grow out of themselves and engage with the world, the decline in literacy represents the gradual transformation of intelligent engagement into a superficial, disengaged, reductive kind of scanning that can actually hinder understanding of the objects in view. ⇧
• • •
Gregory E. Reynolds
"Substantive reading, good reading, entering into the conversation of the ages as it were, and of our own culture, is going to expand your soul, it's going to deepen your soul, so that you will not be detached from the people around you."
—Gregory E. Reynolds, author of The Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Preaching in the Electronic Age (Wipf & Stock, 2000)
Rev. Gregory Reynolds discusses the kind of healthy disengagement reading encourages in allowing readers to take the time to think deeply about a subject to better engage reality. By contrast, visual media often encourages a kind of engagement whose immersive qualities prevent the distance necessary for an intentional engagement between the person and the subject. Reynolds warns against the unthinking acceptance of new technological media that can shape our lives in powerful ways. ⇧
• • •
Catherine Prescott
"But her interiority is shaped by books that she reads, and she expresses that. When she speaks, she speaks with words that she's read in books."
—Catherine Prescott
Catherine Prescott talks about painting portraits of people reading. She describes the reasons she chooses certain individuals as her portrait subjects and discusses how the interior life of a person is expressed through the body as meaningful manifestations. What we read can play an important part in forming our interior lives and in this way, painting people reading can be more interesting and meaningful with respect to who they are and who they are becoming. ⇧
• • •
Eugene Peterson
"By reading slowly and paying attention to a writer, you learn how words work and how much space words need around them before there's a conversation that develops."
—Eugene Peterson
Pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson reflects on the place of reading in his childhood and growing up. He describes the kind of spiritual reading that has nothing to do with the content, but is about relating meaningfully to the text and allowing the reading to be a participation in the text that can form one's life. Reflecting on things he's learned about reading, Peterson expresses concerns about the how the way we approach books in general affects the way we approach Scripture and communicating with others. ⇧
Guests on Volume 90
• J. MARK BERTRAND on how the language of worldviews can mean something richer than it often does
• MICHAEL P. SCHUTT on how the day-to-day practice of Christian lawyers can reflect a Christian view of the nature of law
• MICHAEL WARD on how C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia were shaped by medieval cosmological beliefs about the seven planets
• DANA GIOIA on the disturbing trends in the reading (non)habits of Americans
• MAKOTO FUJIMURA on reading, painting, and attending to the world
• GREGORY EDWARD REYNOLDS on lessons about reading from the study of media ecology
• CATHERINE PRESCOTT on why portrait painters often depict their subjects with books in their hands
• EUGENE PETERSON on the place of reading in the spiritual lives of Christians.
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
J. Mark Bertrand
"I was guilty myself of instilling an overweening confidence in students and giving them the false idea that being equipped with a few bullet points would give them the ability to hold their own in an argument against anyone on any topic on any day of the week."
—J. Mark Bertrand, author of (Re)thinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World (Crossway Books, 2007)
Author and teacher J. Mark Bertrand talks about the concept of a "worldview." He reflects on a kind of mental fatigue that develops when worldview becomes a shorthand for dissecting and deconstructing how people think for narrowly apologetic purposes. Bertrand believes the reduction of the idea of worldview can prevent us from having an openness to gaining wisdom and learning to witness in our world. Worldview discourse often has the unfortunate side-effect of making thinkers too comfortable with the intellectual safety of the familiar and known to be able to gain valuable insight into the varied breadth of the world. ⇧
• • •
Michael P. Schutt
"They want a shark. They want a hired gun. They want someone who will bend every rule possible in order to win. And so part of what the task of the Christian lawyer is is to educate his or her clients in thinking properly about the nature of the legal system and why this particular client is coming to a lawyer in the first place. And in order to do that, you have to think of your clients as human beings and not just legal problems that walk in the door."
—Michael P. Schutt, author of Redeeming Law: Christian Calling and the Legal Profession (InverVarsity Press, 2007)
Michael P. Schutt, associate professor of law at Regent University Law School, discusses the ways secular law schools tend to ignore a Christian understanding of the nature of law and treat law as a wholly human artifact, instrumental to the fulfillment of human desires. For Schutt, an essential distinction is whether law has a transcendent nature that binds human authorities or whether law is merely an instrument of those in power for the enacting of their wills. From there, Christians must come to understand the jurisprudential distinction between law and morality embodied in human institutions with their own spheres of authority. Schutt is concerned not simply with the theoretical basis of law, but with how a proper understanding of it is embodied in Christian practice, how lawyers live out the profession which has been entrusted to them in the legal and general communities of which they are a part. ⇧
• • •
Michael Ward
"I thought I knew these books. I'd been reading these books for nearly thirty years by this point. And I'd been studying them for ten years and more and at quite a high level. And I knew that people had gone looking for some kind of hidden thread or theme to the books. Critics have suggested all sorts of possible governing ideas like the seven sacraments or the seven deadly sins or the seven virtues or the seven books of Spencer's Fairy Queen, but none of those explanations had ever convinced anyone."
—Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Scholar and Anglican clergyman Michael Ward discusses his groundbreaking book on C. S. Lewis entitled Planet Narnia. Ward describes how he came to discover one night the connection between Lewis's conception of the seven Ptolemaic planets and the seven Narnian chronicles. Contrary to some critics, the Chronicles of Narnia are artistically rich and precise as a whole series, and Lewis's vision behind it coherent in its imagination. The full interview with Michael Ward is available as a MARS HILL AUDIO Conversation entitled The Heav'ns and All the Powers Therein: The Medieval Cosmos and the World of Narnia. ⇧
• • •
Dana Gioia
"Reading is not a natural activity. Reading is not like walking. It's like playing the piano. It requires an ongoing practice and mastery which is to the end that you can sit and you can play the piano without even thinking about it, but that reflects years of sustained attention and practice."
—Dana Gioia, speaking about To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence (National Endowment for the Arts, 2007)
Dana Gioia, the Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, explains the results of the recently released NEA report on reading in America. Gioia believes the report highlights literacy trends that show a decreasing ability in young and adult Americans to sustain the attention in reading required to deal with complex, multi-dimensional issues and problems. The growing educational focus on the literacy of children is not being followed through to the adolescent and adult years, precisely when other commercial media step up their influence. Gioia discusses possible ways that schools and churches and other communities and cultural institutions can navigate adolescent and adult Americans back to learn the complex joys of literature and the arts. ⇧
• • •
Makoto Fujimura
"People do say 'I am a visual learner,' but what I find as a visual artist is that people are not taking in much information at all...they're scanning. What the internet does is create this pseudo-learning experience where you think you are engaged with something but at the end of the day you haven't really thought deeply about much of anything, so you end up with a very superficial understanding of the world."
—Makoto Fujimura
What relationship does verbal literacy have to visual literacy? Accomplished painter Makoto Fujimura addresses that question in this interview. Fujimura suggests that the practice and discipline of reading has a kind of unity with the visual arts due to the need for the active, focused use of intelligence for the appreciation of both forms and the depth of truths represented therein. To the extent that both reading and the visual arts allow human beings to grow out of themselves and engage with the world, the decline in literacy represents the gradual transformation of intelligent engagement into a superficial, disengaged, reductive kind of scanning that can actually hinder understanding of the objects in view. ⇧
• • •
Gregory E. Reynolds
"Substantive reading, good reading, entering into the conversation of the ages as it were, and of our own culture, is going to expand your soul, it's going to deepen your soul, so that you will not be detached from the people around you."
—Gregory E. Reynolds, author of The Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Preaching in the Electronic Age (Wipf & Stock, 2000)
Rev. Gregory Reynolds discusses the kind of healthy disengagement reading encourages in allowing readers to take the time to think deeply about a subject to better engage reality. By contrast, visual media often encourages a kind of engagement whose immersive qualities prevent the distance necessary for an intentional engagement between the person and the subject. Reynolds warns against the unthinking acceptance of new technological media that can shape our lives in powerful ways. ⇧
• • •
Catherine Prescott
"But her interiority is shaped by books that she reads, and she expresses that. When she speaks, she speaks with words that she's read in books."
—Catherine Prescott
Catherine Prescott talks about painting portraits of people reading. She describes the reasons she chooses certain individuals as her portrait subjects and discusses how the interior life of a person is expressed through the body as meaningful manifestations. What we read can play an important part in forming our interior lives and in this way, painting people reading can be more interesting and meaningful with respect to who they are and who they are becoming. ⇧
• • •
Eugene Peterson
"By reading slowly and paying attention to a writer, you learn how words work and how much space words need around them before there's a conversation that develops."
—Eugene Peterson
Pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson reflects on the place of reading in his childhood and growing up. He describes the kind of spiritual reading that has nothing to do with the content, but is about relating meaningfully to the text and allowing the reading to be a participation in the text that can form one's life. Reflecting on things he's learned about reading, Peterson expresses concerns about the how the way we approach books in general affects the way we approach Scripture and communicating with others. ⇧
Guests on Volume 91
• JOHN WITTE, JR. on the life and work of legal historian Harold Berman and on the revolutionary changes throughout the history of law in the West
• HUGH BROGAN on Alexis de Tocqueville’s understanding of democracy, equality, liberty, free association, social status, and the dangers of centralized government
• DANIEL RITCHIE on Tocqueville’s analysis of the dangers of individualism (and how they might be avoided)
• DANIEL WALKER HOWE on the confidence in progress and Providence in early nineteenth-century America
• GEORGE MCKENNA on how the Puritan understanding of God’s purposes in history shaped American political culture
• PATRICK DENEEN on the differences between Aristotelian and modern political philosophy and on how Wendell Berry’s thought demonstrates his identity as a “Kentucky Aristotelian.”
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Witte, Jr.
"What we are in now is in many ways a negotiation about the legitimacy of the Western project altogether and a seeking to gain wisdom from our increasing understanding of the world and its globalized polity, what really are the enduring lessons of the West and what are the insights of non-Western traditions that need to be brought to bear on law today."
—John Witte, Jr., author of God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Eerdmans, 2006)
Professor and legal historian John Witte, Jr. talks about the legal mind and scholarship of famed law and religion scholar, the late Harold J. Berman. John Witte, Jr. worked for years with Dr. Berman at Emory University Law School and during that time became familiar with the development of Berman's legal thought. Witte then discusses the framework of legal history involving bursts of development or watersheds in the development of the tradition of Western law from Greek and Roman times to the present day crisis of the Western tradition. ⇧
• • •
Hugh Brogan
"Tocqueville was a strong French nationalist in many respects, but at the same time he could see this argument between centralization and localism ran right through French history."
—Hugh Brogan, author of Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (Yale University Press, 2006)
Hugh Brogan, Research Professor of History at the University of Essex and author of a recent biography of Alexis de Tocqueville, discusses the insightful Frenchman who visited the United States in the nineteenth century and went on to write a penetrating review of American society. In this interview, Brogan explains what Tocqueville thought of liberty and equality in America, and especially what these ideas meant to Tocqueville with respect to French political and cultural history. He also describes Tocqueville's observations concerning a free society's relationship to a central government. ⇧
• • •
Daniel Ritchie
"The solution to the problem of individualism really is in the right use of liberty, and Americans use their liberty in four or five different ways, according to Tocqueville."
— Daniel Ritchie
English professor Daniel Ritchie reflects on the relationship between individualism and equality as the democratic displacement of social place. The link that Tocqueville saw between democracy and a kind of self-indulgent abandonment of communal public life concerned him, for Tocqueville greatly admired the ability of Americans to associate with each other to accomplish shared goals. Ritchie highlights a number of Tocqueville's observations of the ways in which Americans accomplished this kind of association. ⇧
• • •
Daniel Walker Howe
"Morse himself and certainly many, many other people expected that the telegraph would not only make for greater commercial efficiency and report the news more rapidly and accurately, but it would be a force for good. It would promote social reform, Christian missions, and facilitate America's role as a model democracy."
—Daniel Walker Howe, author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Daniel Walker Howe examines about the dynamic forces at work in nineteenth-century America that undergirded American faith in progress. He highlights the role of transportation and communications technologies and biblical religion and calling. Many Americans, whether Whig or Democrat, understood the nation as one with a divine mission to the world, differing only in what constituted this mission. The impetus to social and religious progress and the spread of cultural and material wealth was driven partially by such a mission, which institutions of higher education encouraged in the elite populations of students they served. ⇧
• • •
George McKenna
"It's the Exodus story. It's been a powerful myth in our history."
—George McKenna, author of The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism (Yale University Press, 2007)
Professor George McKenna gives an overview of religious paradigms during the American colonial era. McKenna describes how the Puritans saw their own faithfulness and national flourishing as bound up in God's providence and plans for the people of America. This sense of God's providence was as an immanent presence that would respond to faithfulness and lack of faithfulness with favor and punishment, and this concern for the divine response undergirded their sense of mission. This mission was, in fact, not a mission to build a new nation per se, but instead to renew and reform the church community. During the American Revolution, this mission was reconstructed to tell a myth of pilgrims escaping from England to create a new nation founded on democratic freedoms. But this myth would have been strange to the Puritans, who instead understood themselves to be enacting a vision of the faithful church, and many of whom were simply waiting for England to be reformed, at which point they would return to their homeland. ⇧
• • •
Patrick Deneen
"We cannot become naturally what we are, except through the avenues of culture, through the avenues of a kind of collective life lived through and with other people."
—Patrick Deneen, author of "Wendell Berry and the Alternative Tradition in Political Thought," an essay in Wendell Berry: Life and Work (Kentucky University Press, 2007)
Political theorist Patrick Deneen converses about the implicit assumptions undergirding modern Western political sensibilities, assumptions regarding the nature of humans stemming from Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. In contrast to their view of human beings as essentially isolated and independent individuals using the natural environment for subjective chosen ends, Aristotelian political thinkers understood the end or finality of human beings as being inextricably natural and cultural, in accord with and dependent on nature, including other human beings. The modern divorce of human beings from the rest of the creation — the natural world — has implications for how we treat the natural world and understand our own independence.
"It's the extraordinary productivity of our economy as a result of high degrees of specialization that our workplaces are defined by, and even governed by...that's the hallmark of the modern economic system."
—Patrick Deneen
Patrick Deneen continues his conversation with Ken Myers and focuses on Wendell Berry's observations of the consequences of democratic individualism and specialization. Berry and Deneen worry about the modern tendency to elevate specialization in many spheres of life to the point where the general whole suffers from fragmentation and incoherence; divisions of labor, people, and academic disciplines, while allowing a kind of tremendous mechanical efficiency, tend to harm the enterprises of building community, knowledge and economies, enterprises which require a coherent, organic vision to flourish. When the parts lose sight of the whole, the whole suffers and the parts lose meaning. ⇧
Guests on Volume 91
• JOHN WITTE, JR. on the life and work of legal historian Harold Berman and on the revolutionary changes throughout the history of law in the West
• HUGH BROGAN on Alexis de Tocqueville’s understanding of democracy, equality, liberty, free association, social status, and the dangers of centralized government
• DANIEL RITCHIE on Tocqueville’s analysis of the dangers of individualism (and how they might be avoided)
• DANIEL WALKER HOWE on the confidence in progress and Providence in early nineteenth-century America
• GEORGE MCKENNA on how the Puritan understanding of God’s purposes in history shaped American political culture
• PATRICK DENEEN on the differences between Aristotelian and modern political philosophy and on how Wendell Berry’s thought demonstrates his identity as a “Kentucky Aristotelian.”
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
John Witte, Jr.
"What we are in now is in many ways a negotiation about the legitimacy of the Western project altogether and a seeking to gain wisdom from our increasing understanding of the world and its globalized polity, what really are the enduring lessons of the West and what are the insights of non-Western traditions that need to be brought to bear on law today."
—John Witte, Jr., author of God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Eerdmans, 2006)
Professor and legal historian John Witte, Jr. talks about the legal mind and scholarship of famed law and religion scholar, the late Harold J. Berman. John Witte, Jr. worked for years with Dr. Berman at Emory University Law School and during that time became familiar with the development of Berman's legal thought. Witte then discusses the framework of legal history involving bursts of development or watersheds in the development of the tradition of Western law from Greek and Roman times to the present day crisis of the Western tradition. ⇧
• • •
Hugh Brogan
"Tocqueville was a strong French nationalist in many respects, but at the same time he could see this argument between centralization and localism ran right through French history."
—Hugh Brogan, author of Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (Yale University Press, 2006)
Hugh Brogan, Research Professor of History at the University of Essex and author of a recent biography of Alexis de Tocqueville, discusses the insightful Frenchman who visited the United States in the nineteenth century and went on to write a penetrating review of American society. In this interview, Brogan explains what Tocqueville thought of liberty and equality in America, and especially what these ideas meant to Tocqueville with respect to French political and cultural history. He also describes Tocqueville's observations concerning a free society's relationship to a central government. ⇧
• • •
Daniel Ritchie
"The solution to the problem of individualism really is in the right use of liberty, and Americans use their liberty in four or five different ways, according to Tocqueville."
— Daniel Ritchie
English professor Daniel Ritchie reflects on the relationship between individualism and equality as the democratic displacement of social place. The link that Tocqueville saw between democracy and a kind of self-indulgent abandonment of communal public life concerned him, for Tocqueville greatly admired the ability of Americans to associate with each other to accomplish shared goals. Ritchie highlights a number of Tocqueville's observations of the ways in which Americans accomplished this kind of association. ⇧
• • •
Daniel Walker Howe
"Morse himself and certainly many, many other people expected that the telegraph would not only make for greater commercial efficiency and report the news more rapidly and accurately, but it would be a force for good. It would promote social reform, Christian missions, and facilitate America's role as a model democracy."
—Daniel Walker Howe, author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Daniel Walker Howe examines about the dynamic forces at work in nineteenth-century America that undergirded American faith in progress. He highlights the role of transportation and communications technologies and biblical religion and calling. Many Americans, whether Whig or Democrat, understood the nation as one with a divine mission to the world, differing only in what constituted this mission. The impetus to social and religious progress and the spread of cultural and material wealth was driven partially by such a mission, which institutions of higher education encouraged in the elite populations of students they served. ⇧
• • •
George McKenna
"It's the Exodus story. It's been a powerful myth in our history."
—George McKenna, author of The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism (Yale University Press, 2007)
Professor George McKenna gives an overview of religious paradigms during the American colonial era. McKenna describes how the Puritans saw their own faithfulness and national flourishing as bound up in God's providence and plans for the people of America. This sense of God's providence was as an immanent presence that would respond to faithfulness and lack of faithfulness with favor and punishment, and this concern for the divine response undergirded their sense of mission. This mission was, in fact, not a mission to build a new nation per se, but instead to renew and reform the church community. During the American Revolution, this mission was reconstructed to tell a myth of pilgrims escaping from England to create a new nation founded on democratic freedoms. But this myth would have been strange to the Puritans, who instead understood themselves to be enacting a vision of the faithful church, and many of whom were simply waiting for England to be reformed, at which point they would return to their homeland. ⇧
• • •
Patrick Deneen
"We cannot become naturally what we are, except through the avenues of culture, through the avenues of a kind of collective life lived through and with other people."
—Patrick Deneen, author of "Wendell Berry and the Alternative Tradition in Political Thought," an essay in Wendell Berry: Life and Work (Kentucky University Press, 2007)
Political theorist Patrick Deneen converses about the implicit assumptions undergirding modern Western political sensibilities, assumptions regarding the nature of humans stemming from Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. In contrast to their view of human beings as essentially isolated and independent individuals using the natural environment for subjective chosen ends, Aristotelian political thinkers understood the end or finality of human beings as being inextricably natural and cultural, in accord with and dependent on nature, including other human beings. The modern divorce of human beings from the rest of the creation — the natural world — has implications for how we treat the natural world and understand our own independence.
"It's the extraordinary productivity of our economy as a result of high degrees of specialization that our workplaces are defined by, and even governed by...that's the hallmark of the modern economic system."
—Patrick Deneen
Patrick Deneen continues his conversation with Ken Myers and focuses on Wendell Berry's observations of the consequences of democratic individualism and specialization. Berry and Deneen worry about the modern tendency to elevate specialization in many spheres of life to the point where the general whole suffers from fragmentation and incoherence; divisions of labor, people, and academic disciplines, while allowing a kind of tremendous mechanical efficiency, tend to harm the enterprises of building community, knowledge and economies, enterprises which require a coherent, organic vision to flourish. When the parts lose sight of the whole, the whole suffers and the parts lose meaning. ⇧
Guests on Volume 92
• JAKE HALPERN on the ecosystem of celebrity and the complicated reasons why people seek to become famous
• STEPHEN J. NICHOLS on how the dynamics of American culture have shaped our understanding of who Jesus is
• RICHARD M. GAMBLE on resources for and the outlines of a theology of education
• PETER J. LEITHART on how concerns from some postmodern thinkers echo the eschatological perspective of Solomon (as presented in the book of Ecclesiastes)
• BILL VITEK on how wise living on the Earth requires the humble recognition of our ignorance as well as the application of knowledge
• CRAIG HOLDREGE on lessons from Goethe about how we understand the rest of Creation as participants, not detached and potentially omniscient observers, and also on the “conversational” quality of our engagement with Creation
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jake Halpern
"At some point you're going to get tired or . . . unenthused with the accolades that you're getting simply from your teacher, who again and again is telling you how special you are — or your parents — and the next logical step is the embrace, the applause, the adulation of the world at large."
—Jake Halpern, author of Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America's Favorite Addiction (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
Jake Halpern, a journalist whose first-hand investigations into the system of celebrity creation, brought him to convention centers and talent searches across the United States. His findings on the road, as well as psychological and sociological research, illustrate a wide-spread cultural fixation among the youth for the kind of fame and importance that celebrity brings. He links this fixation to an increase in a therapeutic ethic for building self-esteem that is prevalent in public schools, unintentionally resulting in adolescents infused with self-importance and narcissism. Parents, in Halpern's experience, are often guilty of facilitating their children's narcissism in the name of success and well-being. ⇧
• • •
Stephen J. Nichols
"Theology, confessions help us see the whole picture of Scripture…. But when we're just a biblicist and we just take 'Scripture only' to what can be a negative extreme, then we end up getting awash in a sea of texts, and what happens is people just sort of land on a text they like, so they see Jesus as a friend or Jesus as loving with children, and they don't pay attention to Jesus as judge…. That's far from what the Reformers meant when they said sola Scriptura."
—Stephen J. Nichols, author of Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to The Passion of the Christ (InterVarsity Press, 2008)
Stephen Nichols talks about the tendency for American culture to shape who we understand Jesus to be. All cultures tend to affect theology and Christology, but Nichols suggests that in an American culture that is always shifting at a fast pace, and biased toward the new and against the old traditions, we stand particularly vulnerable to new movements and moods in Christianity. He adds that evangelical Christianity's Reformation sola Scriptura heritage can be misinterpreted and abused in a way that allows evangelicals to pick and choose which biblical passages to emphasize for their conception of Jesus. "The Bible alone" can also facilitate negligence to the cultural baggage evangelicals bring into their study rooms along with their Bibles. Nichols then surveys a number of manifestations Jesus has taken over the course of American history. ⇧
• • •
Richard Gamble
"We are not brains in a vat. We are certainly not just bodies. But we are a complex [that includes] emotion, will, imagination . . . we are multi-dimensional human beings."
—Richard Gamble, author of The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being (ISI Books, 2007)
Richard Gamble discusses what makes for a good education. Gamble explains how Christian thinkers such as Augustine understood classical knowledge and education as a kind of Egyptian gold that ought to be appropriated and turned to its proper use. In this way, educators ought to take the good that God has created wherever it may be found and put it to God-honoring use. Gamble discusses the coherence of oratory and logic, when they are at their best, in contrast to the opposition that many would put them in. He relates this to the tendency to divorce and then diminish the importance of either the mind or body to our humanity. ⇧
• • •
Peter J. Leithart
“Ecclesiastes is the book of the Bible that seems to me to speak most elaborately in what could be seen as a Postmodern kind of idiom. And yet it also departs in significant ways from that.”
—Peter J. Leithart, author of Solomon Among the Postmoderns (Brazos Press, 2008)
Peter J. Leithart discusses his book Solomon Among the Postmoderns, addressing both those who are suspicious and those who are unreservedly enthusiastic about Postmodernity, Leithart discusses how the Enlightenment and modernity regards the objective world as though we have arrived at the “beatific vision of the object.” Postmodernity rightly protests this, yet tends to have no eschatological consciousness whatsoever. Leithart maintains that New Testament eschatology contains a healthy sense of ‘already-not yet’ balance that avoids both extremes. Although its primary inspiration is not in being counter-cultural, Leithart concludes that the church will end up being counter-cultural if it maintains the truth. ⇧
• • •
Bill Vitek
“Knowledge is something that rarely is any more used for its own sake. It is something that must have a purpose. That purpose is almost always about control.”
—Bill Vitek, editor of The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge (University of Kentucky Press, 2008)
Bill Vitek discusses the provocatively titled book, The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge. Vitek explains his definition of the terms “knowledge” and “ignorance.” Our human knowledge, he argues, is always dwarfed by what we cannot (or should not) know. And in our culture, the purpose of knowledge is almost always about control. Vitek admits that knowledge is a useful tool, yet insists that it is not sufficient to run the world because of the great deal of harm it can cause. He concludes that ignorance describes a philosophical perspective that can wisely inform our lives. ⇧
• • •
Craig Holdrege
“After [the 1960s] it became clearer and clearer that all of this is a complete oversimplification of biological reality, so that genes are interwoven within the living context of the cell and the whole organism . . . they are contextual.”
—Craig Holdrege, co-author of Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering (University of Kentucky Press, 2008)
Scientist Craig Holdrege talks about Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering, which he co-authored with Steve Talbott. The book has been praised by critics such as Michael Pollan for its insightful critique of the assumptions and unintended consequences of genetic engineering. The gene, Holdrege argues, is an abstract concept rather than a concrete thing — a common misunderstanding. Addressing philosophical questions, Holdrege and Myers discuss whether the world should be seen as a problem to be solved by mathematical means, or rather as a gift apprehended by reverent engagement. Turning then toward science’s approach to genetics, Holdrege argues that the reductionism of reality to the gene drives the technology of genetic engineering. This false picture of what the gene actually is leads to unintended consequences of genetic engineering, and Holdrege explains that the organism as a whole is affected in unintended ways.
“We can’t live without participating in nature: we draw from the rest of the world in order to live like every organism does....Some people would argue: you’re going to kill the cow. Is that respectful? I’m not saying there’s no tension in these things. There is no easy answer, and all you can do is to engage in the conversation and realize we’ve got to take the other seriously.”
—Craig Holdrege
Craig Holdrege cites as a central problem in our culture the reduction of human experience to the realm of plants and beasts. In this segment, he argues that the same conversational engagement we know is healthy in human relationships should be a picture of how we engage with the natural order of creation. Holdrege explains what he means by a healthy balance between the extremes of either mechanistic or overly humanistic view of animals and plants. Man is part of creation, yet transcendent over other creatures — a gardener over his garden. Only by fully engaging with nature can we be encouraged to take our own nature seriously. Holdrege concludes that a healthy development of technologies is possible: it should be defined by a sense of ongoing conversation that is engaged in and responsible for everything we do with and think about creation. ⇧
Guests on Volume 92
• JAKE HALPERN on the ecosystem of celebrity and the complicated reasons why people seek to become famous
• STEPHEN J. NICHOLS on how the dynamics of American culture have shaped our understanding of who Jesus is
• RICHARD M. GAMBLE on resources for and the outlines of a theology of education
• PETER J. LEITHART on how concerns from some postmodern thinkers echo the eschatological perspective of Solomon (as presented in the book of Ecclesiastes)
• BILL VITEK on how wise living on the Earth requires the humble recognition of our ignorance as well as the application of knowledge
• CRAIG HOLDREGE on lessons from Goethe about how we understand the rest of Creation as participants, not detached and potentially omniscient observers, and also on the “conversational” quality of our engagement with Creation
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Jake Halpern
"At some point you're going to get tired or . . . unenthused with the accolades that you're getting simply from your teacher, who again and again is telling you how special you are — or your parents — and the next logical step is the embrace, the applause, the adulation of the world at large."
—Jake Halpern, author of Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America's Favorite Addiction (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
Jake Halpern, a journalist whose first-hand investigations into the system of celebrity creation, brought him to convention centers and talent searches across the United States. His findings on the road, as well as psychological and sociological research, illustrate a wide-spread cultural fixation among the youth for the kind of fame and importance that celebrity brings. He links this fixation to an increase in a therapeutic ethic for building self-esteem that is prevalent in public schools, unintentionally resulting in adolescents infused with self-importance and narcissism. Parents, in Halpern's experience, are often guilty of facilitating their children's narcissism in the name of success and well-being. ⇧
• • •
Stephen J. Nichols
"Theology, confessions help us see the whole picture of Scripture…. But when we're just a biblicist and we just take 'Scripture only' to what can be a negative extreme, then we end up getting awash in a sea of texts, and what happens is people just sort of land on a text they like, so they see Jesus as a friend or Jesus as loving with children, and they don't pay attention to Jesus as judge…. That's far from what the Reformers meant when they said sola Scriptura."
—Stephen J. Nichols, author of Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to The Passion of the Christ (InterVarsity Press, 2008)
Stephen Nichols talks about the tendency for American culture to shape who we understand Jesus to be. All cultures tend to affect theology and Christology, but Nichols suggests that in an American culture that is always shifting at a fast pace, and biased toward the new and against the old traditions, we stand particularly vulnerable to new movements and moods in Christianity. He adds that evangelical Christianity's Reformation sola Scriptura heritage can be misinterpreted and abused in a way that allows evangelicals to pick and choose which biblical passages to emphasize for their conception of Jesus. "The Bible alone" can also facilitate negligence to the cultural baggage evangelicals bring into their study rooms along with their Bibles. Nichols then surveys a number of manifestations Jesus has taken over the course of American history. ⇧
• • •
Richard Gamble
"We are not brains in a vat. We are certainly not just bodies. But we are a complex [that includes] emotion, will, imagination . . . we are multi-dimensional human beings."
—Richard Gamble, author of The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being (ISI Books, 2007)
Richard Gamble discusses what makes for a good education. Gamble explains how Christian thinkers such as Augustine understood classical knowledge and education as a kind of Egyptian gold that ought to be appropriated and turned to its proper use. In this way, educators ought to take the good that God has created wherever it may be found and put it to God-honoring use. Gamble discusses the coherence of oratory and logic, when they are at their best, in contrast to the opposition that many would put them in. He relates this to the tendency to divorce and then diminish the importance of either the mind or body to our humanity. ⇧
• • •
Peter J. Leithart
“Ecclesiastes is the book of the Bible that seems to me to speak most elaborately in what could be seen as a Postmodern kind of idiom. And yet it also departs in significant ways from that.”
—Peter J. Leithart, author of Solomon Among the Postmoderns (Brazos Press, 2008)
Peter J. Leithart discusses his book Solomon Among the Postmoderns, addressing both those who are suspicious and those who are unreservedly enthusiastic about Postmodernity, Leithart discusses how the Enlightenment and modernity regards the objective world as though we have arrived at the “beatific vision of the object.” Postmodernity rightly protests this, yet tends to have no eschatological consciousness whatsoever. Leithart maintains that New Testament eschatology contains a healthy sense of ‘already-not yet’ balance that avoids both extremes. Although its primary inspiration is not in being counter-cultural, Leithart concludes that the church will end up being counter-cultural if it maintains the truth. ⇧
• • •
Bill Vitek
“Knowledge is something that rarely is any more used for its own sake. It is something that must have a purpose. That purpose is almost always about control.”
—Bill Vitek, editor of The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge (University of Kentucky Press, 2008)
Bill Vitek discusses the provocatively titled book, The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge. Vitek explains his definition of the terms “knowledge” and “ignorance.” Our human knowledge, he argues, is always dwarfed by what we cannot (or should not) know. And in our culture, the purpose of knowledge is almost always about control. Vitek admits that knowledge is a useful tool, yet insists that it is not sufficient to run the world because of the great deal of harm it can cause. He concludes that ignorance describes a philosophical perspective that can wisely inform our lives. ⇧
• • •
Craig Holdrege
“After [the 1960s] it became clearer and clearer that all of this is a complete oversimplification of biological reality, so that genes are interwoven within the living context of the cell and the whole organism . . . they are contextual.”
—Craig Holdrege, co-author of Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering (University of Kentucky Press, 2008)
Scientist Craig Holdrege talks about Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering, which he co-authored with Steve Talbott. The book has been praised by critics such as Michael Pollan for its insightful critique of the assumptions and unintended consequences of genetic engineering. The gene, Holdrege argues, is an abstract concept rather than a concrete thing — a common misunderstanding. Addressing philosophical questions, Holdrege and Myers discuss whether the world should be seen as a problem to be solved by mathematical means, or rather as a gift apprehended by reverent engagement. Turning then toward science’s approach to genetics, Holdrege argues that the reductionism of reality to the gene drives the technology of genetic engineering. This false picture of what the gene actually is leads to unintended consequences of genetic engineering, and Holdrege explains that the organism as a whole is affected in unintended ways.
“We can’t live without participating in nature: we draw from the rest of the world in order to live like every organism does....Some people would argue: you’re going to kill the cow. Is that respectful? I’m not saying there’s no tension in these things. There is no easy answer, and all you can do is to engage in the conversation and realize we’ve got to take the other seriously.”
—Craig Holdrege
Craig Holdrege cites as a central problem in our culture the reduction of human experience to the realm of plants and beasts. In this segment, he argues that the same conversational engagement we know is healthy in human relationships should be a picture of how we engage with the natural order of creation. Holdrege explains what he means by a healthy balance between the extremes of either mechanistic or overly humanistic view of animals and plants. Man is part of creation, yet transcendent over other creatures — a gardener over his garden. Only by fully engaging with nature can we be encouraged to take our own nature seriously. Holdrege concludes that a healthy development of technologies is possible: it should be defined by a sense of ongoing conversation that is engaged in and responsible for everything we do with and think about creation. ⇧
Guests on Volume 93
• ALAN JACOBS on practical consequences of belief in original sin (and the five distinct components of that belief)
• JAMES A. HERRICK on redemptive myths advanced by science fiction and speculative science and on evolution as a religion
• ROBERT C. ROBERTS on the role of emotions in ethical and spiritual life
• J. DARYL CHARLES on the commitment by the magisterial Reformers to the idea of natural law
• ALLAN C. CARLSON on how the industrial revolution changed the shape of households (including their floor plans) and the understanding of marriage
• SHEILA O'CONNOR-AMBROSE on the work of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in defending marriage against the various claims of individualism
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Alan Jacobs
"The key challenge [for Rousseau's educational philosophy] is how do I protect an innocent, noble child from the perversions and corruptions of this world . . . Wesley says okay the first thing you have to understand about children is that they come here tainted by original sin, they're selfish, they're cruel . . . and so what you have to do is to break the spirit of these rebellious children if you're going to have any hope of instructing them in anything."
—Alan Jacobs, author of Original Sin: A Cultural History (HarperCollins, 2008)
Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College, discusses the divergent views of the nature of humanity implicit in various educational philosophies and policies. Regardless of how aware or unaware teachers and administrators are of the implicit assumptions embedded in kinds of educational practices, those assumptions dictate the approach teachers take in educating children. Jacobs uses this example to elaborate on how thinkers in the pre-modern and modern eras understood the evil that arises in daily human life, evil that transpires across the ages and distances between human cultures. Original sin, in the Christian conception, has five distinct components that have been shared in part or in whole by a number of philosophers in history, and what people believe about this has had radical influences on the course of Western civilization. ⇧
• • •
James A. Herrick
""[There is a kind of] redemptive mythology: we will redeem ourselves through technologies, through enhancement of the human body and brain, and through various blendings of technology and an enhanced humanity, and so this is an effort to realize some of the visions that have been in the forefront of science fiction writing… of a kind of coming human race."
—James A. Herrick, author of Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs (InverVarsity Press, 2008)
James Herrick talks about the myriad ideas and mythologies in popular consciousness that find their origins in science fiction. These ideas range from science as the only source of knowledge, to the beginning of human civilizations, to the destiny and salvation of mankind. Just as the line between science and science fiction is often blurry, the line between science fiction and religious belief is often porous as well. One of the reasons for this overlap is the tremendous motivating power of religions and mythologies which many science fiction writers recognize and utilize.
To Herrick, much of the language of proponents of scientific progress is not strictly scientific, but resembles animistic or pantheistic expressions of an over-arching vision that gives history meaning and a sense of purpose necessarily absent from strictly materialistic conceptions of reality. Herrick gives examples of ways that some popularizers of science have rhetorically treated the concept of evolution as a pseudo-deity that, in some sense, guides and directs history as it unfolds. Others create or adapt modern mythologies of space and extra-terrestrials, linking them to progressive development in power and human self-understanding. ⇧
• • •
Robert C. Roberts
"So I think it is healthier for psychologists really to study the positive traits, rather than just having some vague conception in the background of what it is to function properly and then concentrating on all the dysfunction."
—Robert C. Roberts, author of Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues (Eerdmans, 2007)
Robert C. Roberts, Distinguished Professor of Ethics at Baylor University, discusses the importance of emotions in the Christian life. He points out that through history, the Church has had to engage various psychologies, from that of the Stoics to current academic skepticism, and to seek to properly place emotions within the context of biblical obedience. Roberts describes the relationship between character virtues and emotions and the place of both in ethical life that is about more than simply following rules. Academic interest in the place of virtues in ethics received a boost from the publication of Alastair McIntyre's After Virtue, and Roberts explains how the influence of the virtue tradition has seeped into positive systems of contemporary psychology, as opposed to simply documenting and treating negative disorders. ⇧
• • •
J. Daryl Charles
"The worry was that natural law does not take sin seriously enough. Now that is a legitimate concern, that there is an overly sanguine or optimistic view of reason and human nature that then undermines the issue of human depravity…. But I would say that's not the case, and if that were the case, then the magisterial Reformers would have denied and renounced natural law on explicit grounds."
—J. Daryl Charles, author of Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things (Eerdmans, 2008)
J. Daryl Charles examines the recent resurgence of natural law thinking among some conservative Protestants who had been generally disposed to suspicion concerning the idea. In Charles's research, he found that the magisterial Reformers, while having deep theological discontinuities with the Roman Catholic magisterium, nonetheless shared the basic ethical bedrock of a natural law rooted in God's creation of the world. Post-magisterial Reformers likewise shared a common conception of the basis for moral order. Since then, Protestants grew opposed to the natural law tradition because of fears that natural law does not take original sin and man's depravity into account. But Charles traces the idea back through history and argues that John Calvin himself affirmed the reality of a natural law while holding to human depravity, and that the stereotype of anti-natural law Reformed thinking was a later development aided by thinkers like Jacques Ellul, who believed that the Fall had not broken the image of God, but completed eradicated it. ⇧
• • •
Allan Carlson
"The separation of workplace and home was a fundamental social consequence of industrialization. Central power sources, be it steam or water power, drew adults and children away, and now you lived and you worked in different places."
—Allan Carlson, author of Conjugal America (Transaction Publishers, 2007)
From natural law, we turn to the natural family. Dr. Allan Carlson talks about the substance of what natural means and cites historical Christian uses as well as United Nations documents in contrast to Rousseau. Carlson argues that the Industrial Revolution changed the shape not simply of the economy at large, but of family life, in so far as the economic life that was once tightly bound to the home was gradually sourced out of the home. The de-functionalization of the home rendered the home increasing void of the substance of what people did in life. Governments were complicit in this transformation of the home through housing policy and regulations that incentivized structural changes in the home corresponding to the loss of economic functionality. As family and home life was reduced to places of mere emotional bonding, the public understanding of marriage followed suit. Consequently, acceptance of sexual relations based solely on emotional fulfillment (as well as of the breaking of those relations when emotional needs were not being met) became socially normative. ⇧
• • •
Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose
"The separation of workplace and home was a fundamental social consequence of industrialization. Central power sources, be it steam or water power, drew adults and children away, and now you lived and you worked in different places."
—Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose
Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose shares her thoughts about her mentor Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. After describing her first encounter with Dr. Fox-Genovese, O'Connor-Ambrose talks about the how the organic web of social relationships uniting human beings is marginalized by the way our society even discusses issues relating to life and family. One culprit is the rampant assumption of individualistic autonomy that elevates individual pleasure and subjective right to the extent that the legitimacy of non-individualistic social entities and communities is called into question and sometimes denied. The very concept of authority, whether natural or divine, is implicated as illegitimate in the face of the moral and social autonomy of the self. The irony is that the loss of communal authority does not actually free individuals, but simply opens up the individual to the dominance of political and economic forces writ large. ⇧
Guests on Volume 93
• ALAN JACOBS on practical consequences of belief in original sin (and the five distinct components of that belief)
• JAMES A. HERRICK on redemptive myths advanced by science fiction and speculative science and on evolution as a religion
• ROBERT C. ROBERTS on the role of emotions in ethical and spiritual life
• J. DARYL CHARLES on the commitment by the magisterial Reformers to the idea of natural law
• ALLAN C. CARLSON on how the industrial revolution changed the shape of households (including their floor plans) and the understanding of marriage
• SHEILA O'CONNOR-AMBROSE on the work of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in defending marriage against the various claims of individualism
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Alan Jacobs
"The key challenge [for Rousseau's educational philosophy] is how do I protect an innocent, noble child from the perversions and corruptions of this world . . . Wesley says okay the first thing you have to understand about children is that they come here tainted by original sin, they're selfish, they're cruel . . . and so what you have to do is to break the spirit of these rebellious children if you're going to have any hope of instructing them in anything."
—Alan Jacobs, author of Original Sin: A Cultural History (HarperCollins, 2008)
Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College, discusses the divergent views of the nature of humanity implicit in various educational philosophies and policies. Regardless of how aware or unaware teachers and administrators are of the implicit assumptions embedded in kinds of educational practices, those assumptions dictate the approach teachers take in educating children. Jacobs uses this example to elaborate on how thinkers in the pre-modern and modern eras understood the evil that arises in daily human life, evil that transpires across the ages and distances between human cultures. Original sin, in the Christian conception, has five distinct components that have been shared in part or in whole by a number of philosophers in history, and what people believe about this has had radical influences on the course of Western civilization. ⇧
• • •
James A. Herrick
""[There is a kind of] redemptive mythology: we will redeem ourselves through technologies, through enhancement of the human body and brain, and through various blendings of technology and an enhanced humanity, and so this is an effort to realize some of the visions that have been in the forefront of science fiction writing… of a kind of coming human race."
—James A. Herrick, author of Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs (InverVarsity Press, 2008)
James Herrick talks about the myriad ideas and mythologies in popular consciousness that find their origins in science fiction. These ideas range from science as the only source of knowledge, to the beginning of human civilizations, to the destiny and salvation of mankind. Just as the line between science and science fiction is often blurry, the line between science fiction and religious belief is often porous as well. One of the reasons for this overlap is the tremendous motivating power of religions and mythologies which many science fiction writers recognize and utilize.
To Herrick, much of the language of proponents of scientific progress is not strictly scientific, but resembles animistic or pantheistic expressions of an over-arching vision that gives history meaning and a sense of purpose necessarily absent from strictly materialistic conceptions of reality. Herrick gives examples of ways that some popularizers of science have rhetorically treated the concept of evolution as a pseudo-deity that, in some sense, guides and directs history as it unfolds. Others create or adapt modern mythologies of space and extra-terrestrials, linking them to progressive development in power and human self-understanding. ⇧
• • •
Robert C. Roberts
"So I think it is healthier for psychologists really to study the positive traits, rather than just having some vague conception in the background of what it is to function properly and then concentrating on all the dysfunction."
—Robert C. Roberts, author of Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues (Eerdmans, 2007)
Robert C. Roberts, Distinguished Professor of Ethics at Baylor University, discusses the importance of emotions in the Christian life. He points out that through history, the Church has had to engage various psychologies, from that of the Stoics to current academic skepticism, and to seek to properly place emotions within the context of biblical obedience. Roberts describes the relationship between character virtues and emotions and the place of both in ethical life that is about more than simply following rules. Academic interest in the place of virtues in ethics received a boost from the publication of Alastair McIntyre's After Virtue, and Roberts explains how the influence of the virtue tradition has seeped into positive systems of contemporary psychology, as opposed to simply documenting and treating negative disorders. ⇧
• • •
J. Daryl Charles
"The worry was that natural law does not take sin seriously enough. Now that is a legitimate concern, that there is an overly sanguine or optimistic view of reason and human nature that then undermines the issue of human depravity…. But I would say that's not the case, and if that were the case, then the magisterial Reformers would have denied and renounced natural law on explicit grounds."
—J. Daryl Charles, author of Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things (Eerdmans, 2008)
J. Daryl Charles examines the recent resurgence of natural law thinking among some conservative Protestants who had been generally disposed to suspicion concerning the idea. In Charles's research, he found that the magisterial Reformers, while having deep theological discontinuities with the Roman Catholic magisterium, nonetheless shared the basic ethical bedrock of a natural law rooted in God's creation of the world. Post-magisterial Reformers likewise shared a common conception of the basis for moral order. Since then, Protestants grew opposed to the natural law tradition because of fears that natural law does not take original sin and man's depravity into account. But Charles traces the idea back through history and argues that John Calvin himself affirmed the reality of a natural law while holding to human depravity, and that the stereotype of anti-natural law Reformed thinking was a later development aided by thinkers like Jacques Ellul, who believed that the Fall had not broken the image of God, but completed eradicated it. ⇧
• • •
Allan Carlson
"The separation of workplace and home was a fundamental social consequence of industrialization. Central power sources, be it steam or water power, drew adults and children away, and now you lived and you worked in different places."
—Allan Carlson, author of Conjugal America (Transaction Publishers, 2007)
From natural law, we turn to the natural family. Dr. Allan Carlson talks about the substance of what natural means and cites historical Christian uses as well as United Nations documents in contrast to Rousseau. Carlson argues that the Industrial Revolution changed the shape not simply of the economy at large, but of family life, in so far as the economic life that was once tightly bound to the home was gradually sourced out of the home. The de-functionalization of the home rendered the home increasing void of the substance of what people did in life. Governments were complicit in this transformation of the home through housing policy and regulations that incentivized structural changes in the home corresponding to the loss of economic functionality. As family and home life was reduced to places of mere emotional bonding, the public understanding of marriage followed suit. Consequently, acceptance of sexual relations based solely on emotional fulfillment (as well as of the breaking of those relations when emotional needs were not being met) became socially normative. ⇧
• • •
Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose
"The separation of workplace and home was a fundamental social consequence of industrialization. Central power sources, be it steam or water power, drew adults and children away, and now you lived and you worked in different places."
—Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose
Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose shares her thoughts about her mentor Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. After describing her first encounter with Dr. Fox-Genovese, O'Connor-Ambrose talks about the how the organic web of social relationships uniting human beings is marginalized by the way our society even discusses issues relating to life and family. One culprit is the rampant assumption of individualistic autonomy that elevates individual pleasure and subjective right to the extent that the legitimacy of non-individualistic social entities and communities is called into question and sometimes denied. The very concept of authority, whether natural or divine, is implicated as illegitimate in the face of the moral and social autonomy of the self. The irony is that the loss of communal authority does not actually free individuals, but simply opens up the individual to the dominance of political and economic forces writ large. ⇧
Guests on Volume 94
• MAGGIE JACKSON on how multitasking exalts efficiency and promises the overcoming of bodily limitations as time is restructured, and on the importance of attentiveness in sustaining personal and social order
• MARK BAUERLEIN on how technologies have rearranged the social lives of teens (and their expectations of education)
• TIM CLYDESDALE on what the first year in college means for teens
• ANDY CROUCH on the physical basis of cultural life and how “culture making” is done
• JEREMY BEGBIE on how music is a way of engaging with the order in Creation and on how writing and hearing music involves a recognition of likenesses in Creation and the exercise of “hyper-hearing"
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Maggie Jackson
"Multitasking is just a way of layering the moment and . . . overcoming our bodily limitations and cognitive limitations."
—Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (Prometheus Books, 2008)
Author Maggie Jackson talks about our society's predilection towards multitasking and what that means for our culture. She reflects on how contemporary success corresponds to a kind of control over time that enhances efficiency through speed and the fracturing of attention. A number of factors contribute to how people have developed these kinds of sensibilities, and they can lead to profound social and relational strain. Jackson comments that even as humans are primed for novelty and for freedom and space, their flourishing also requires ritual, repetition, and pause to create depth of thought and relationship. She fears we've gone too far in one direction at the expense of our attentive faculties.
"All of this we're wrestling with didn't come in with the Blackberry, the cell phone, the iPod; we really have to look deeper to see where our neo-nomadic, mobile, split-focused world came from."
—Maggie Jackson
Maggie Jackson continues her discussion about the importance of attention. Jackson argues that attention is essential to the highest relational and intellectual capacities of human beings, functions that bond people together at the deepest levels. And this attention needs to be sustained by more than just individual effort. It needs to be sustained and cultivated in the public spaces of our lives by public communities because we live and give attention in communities. Young people feel this need even as they are inundated with distractions and accept them, and this need should be acknowledged by people willing to give thought to the social impact of new (and old) cultural artifacts and technologies. ⇧
• • •
Mark Bauerlein
"One of their [the stewards of culture] jobs was to stand for the passage of knowledge and understanding, better tastes. And they had a duty. It was their responsibility as the elders to induct seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds into better things, into more serious endeavors."
—Mark Bauerlein, auther of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Tarcher/Penguin, 2008)
Mark Bauerlein talks about the ways of learning and living practiced by contemporary youth, how they impact the acquisition and use of knowledge and form intellectual habits, and what this means for the future of our society. Bauerlein is concerned that the level of immediate and continual connection between youths made possible and reinforced by modern technologies so absorbs and entrenches them in the minutiae of their peers that it is difficult to present and address aspects of life missing from their adolescent experience. Because of the ubiquity of this environment, how it pervades their existence in all the places where mobile communications reach, the particular nature and qualities of teen experience and the effects of this continual experience is greatly magnified to the exclusion of steadfast attentiveness, focused reading of literature, and personal and social maturation over time. Institutions and authorities which cultivate the latter fall by the wayside in the face of cultural forces that cater to, reinforce, and exploit natural adolescent inclinations. ⇧
• • •
Tim Clydesdale
"Hanging over the top of every professor's lectern are two questions. The one is 'So what?' and the other is 'Who cares?' And if you don't realize that those are there from Day 1 in a classroom and you don’t address those consistently and regularly with your students, you're not likely to get through."
—Tim Clydesdale, author of The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
Tim Clydesdale discusses the experience of freshmen year at college. He reflects on his own experience of leaving home and coming to Wheaton and joining a community of scholars of the wider world, and he contrasts his experience with the research he collected over a year of study contemporary freshmen. For many students through primary and secondary schools, the dominant paradigm of learning is bulimic: studying and gaining knowledge is for the sake of checking off boxes on the way to getting somewhere, as opposed to enjoying studies and being nourished in their minds as part of a process of maturation. After taking in the minimum amount of information necessary, students then regurgitate the information back at teachers. By the time they enter college, Clydesdale suggests they've been effectively inoculated against a love of knowledge, and professors face an uphill battle to teach them to learn. He connects this mode of learning with a particular American moral culture that is skeptical and antagonistic of authority. In this culture, students are the autonomous arbiters of moral knowledge, deciding what is good or evil without regard to moral authorities, if they are even recognized as such. Similarly, students are the autonomous arbiters of their education, the final judge of what ought to be learned or not, and authorities are distrusted in comparison to the self. Clydesdale connects this moral culture to a suspicion of history and a bias toward the new, as well as to the centrality of niceness in college society. Instead of cultivating reflection on the deep questions of meaning and life, students are overwhelmed with developing and using techniques to manage their lives without reference to the ends or purposes toward which their lives should be oriented. ⇧
• • •
Andy Crouch
"To be a farmer is different from having a theory of agriculture."
—Andy Crouch, author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (InterVarsity Press, 2008)
Andy Crouch reflects on what is missing in contemporary discourse on culture. Crouch argues that talk of culture often portrays it as an abstract, monolithic entity 'out there' separate from us. Seen in this way, it is difficult to grasp how we are embedded in culture and how the Lord might be calling his people to engage it. Crouch suggests that we see culture as made of cultural goods which Christians are called not merely to critique, but also to create and cultivate, and that the creation of physical goods and artifacts is part of what God created humans to do and part of the trajectory of our redemption. ⇧
• • •
Jeremy Begbie
"[Music] is a way of engaging with the integrities of the created order."
—Jeremy Begbie, author of Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Baker Academic, 2007)
Theologian Jeremy Begbie on explains how music as more than simply pleasant or less pleasant collections of sounds, but as a way to engaging with the integrities of the created order, from our bodies to the rest of the world. This latter sense has in some ways been lost in the modern age in favor of a view of music that sees transcendent humans as simply imposing their designs upon a meaningless, unordered creation. Instead, Begbie argues that because God created all of Creation —including ourselves, attuning ourselves to the structures and order within Creation is key to discovering the joy and beauty and meaning God meant the Creation to provide and display.
"Love achieves its creativity by being perceptive."
—Jeremy Begbie
Jeremy Begbie continues his discussion on music and its essential relationship with Creation. He talks of artists and composers who are able to see incredible possibilities latent within the materials of Creation. In their attentiveness and perception, they creatively love that which they are given. Begbie also discusses the difference between seeing and hearing, and implications of and lessons from the metaphor of hearing on theology and knowledge and freedom. ⇧
Guests on Volume 94
• MAGGIE JACKSON on how multitasking exalts efficiency and promises the overcoming of bodily limitations as time is restructured, and on the importance of attentiveness in sustaining personal and social order
• MARK BAUERLEIN on how technologies have rearranged the social lives of teens (and their expectations of education)
• TIM CLYDESDALE on what the first year in college means for teens
• ANDY CROUCH on the physical basis of cultural life and how “culture making” is done
• JEREMY BEGBIE on how music is a way of engaging with the order in Creation and on how writing and hearing music involves a recognition of likenesses in Creation and the exercise of “hyper-hearing"
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Maggie Jackson
"Multitasking is just a way of layering the moment and . . . overcoming our bodily limitations and cognitive limitations."
—Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (Prometheus Books, 2008)
Author Maggie Jackson talks about our society's predilection towards multitasking and what that means for our culture. She reflects on how contemporary success corresponds to a kind of control over time that enhances efficiency through speed and the fracturing of attention. A number of factors contribute to how people have developed these kinds of sensibilities, and they can lead to profound social and relational strain. Jackson comments that even as humans are primed for novelty and for freedom and space, their flourishing also requires ritual, repetition, and pause to create depth of thought and relationship. She fears we've gone too far in one direction at the expense of our attentive faculties.
"All of this we're wrestling with didn't come in with the Blackberry, the cell phone, the iPod; we really have to look deeper to see where our neo-nomadic, mobile, split-focused world came from."
—Maggie Jackson
Maggie Jackson continues her discussion about the importance of attention. Jackson argues that attention is essential to the highest relational and intellectual capacities of human beings, functions that bond people together at the deepest levels. And this attention needs to be sustained by more than just individual effort. It needs to be sustained and cultivated in the public spaces of our lives by public communities because we live and give attention in communities. Young people feel this need even as they are inundated with distractions and accept them, and this need should be acknowledged by people willing to give thought to the social impact of new (and old) cultural artifacts and technologies. ⇧
• • •
Mark Bauerlein
"One of their [the stewards of culture] jobs was to stand for the passage of knowledge and understanding, better tastes. And they had a duty. It was their responsibility as the elders to induct seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds into better things, into more serious endeavors."
—Mark Bauerlein, auther of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Tarcher/Penguin, 2008)
Mark Bauerlein talks about the ways of learning and living practiced by contemporary youth, how they impact the acquisition and use of knowledge and form intellectual habits, and what this means for the future of our society. Bauerlein is concerned that the level of immediate and continual connection between youths made possible and reinforced by modern technologies so absorbs and entrenches them in the minutiae of their peers that it is difficult to present and address aspects of life missing from their adolescent experience. Because of the ubiquity of this environment, how it pervades their existence in all the places where mobile communications reach, the particular nature and qualities of teen experience and the effects of this continual experience is greatly magnified to the exclusion of steadfast attentiveness, focused reading of literature, and personal and social maturation over time. Institutions and authorities which cultivate the latter fall by the wayside in the face of cultural forces that cater to, reinforce, and exploit natural adolescent inclinations. ⇧
• • •
Tim Clydesdale
"Hanging over the top of every professor's lectern are two questions. The one is 'So what?' and the other is 'Who cares?' And if you don't realize that those are there from Day 1 in a classroom and you don’t address those consistently and regularly with your students, you're not likely to get through."
—Tim Clydesdale, author of The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
Tim Clydesdale discusses the experience of freshmen year at college. He reflects on his own experience of leaving home and coming to Wheaton and joining a community of scholars of the wider world, and he contrasts his experience with the research he collected over a year of study contemporary freshmen. For many students through primary and secondary schools, the dominant paradigm of learning is bulimic: studying and gaining knowledge is for the sake of checking off boxes on the way to getting somewhere, as opposed to enjoying studies and being nourished in their minds as part of a process of maturation. After taking in the minimum amount of information necessary, students then regurgitate the information back at teachers. By the time they enter college, Clydesdale suggests they've been effectively inoculated against a love of knowledge, and professors face an uphill battle to teach them to learn. He connects this mode of learning with a particular American moral culture that is skeptical and antagonistic of authority. In this culture, students are the autonomous arbiters of moral knowledge, deciding what is good or evil without regard to moral authorities, if they are even recognized as such. Similarly, students are the autonomous arbiters of their education, the final judge of what ought to be learned or not, and authorities are distrusted in comparison to the self. Clydesdale connects this moral culture to a suspicion of history and a bias toward the new, as well as to the centrality of niceness in college society. Instead of cultivating reflection on the deep questions of meaning and life, students are overwhelmed with developing and using techniques to manage their lives without reference to the ends or purposes toward which their lives should be oriented. ⇧
• • •
Andy Crouch
"To be a farmer is different from having a theory of agriculture."
—Andy Crouch, author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (InterVarsity Press, 2008)
Andy Crouch reflects on what is missing in contemporary discourse on culture. Crouch argues that talk of culture often portrays it as an abstract, monolithic entity 'out there' separate from us. Seen in this way, it is difficult to grasp how we are embedded in culture and how the Lord might be calling his people to engage it. Crouch suggests that we see culture as made of cultural goods which Christians are called not merely to critique, but also to create and cultivate, and that the creation of physical goods and artifacts is part of what God created humans to do and part of the trajectory of our redemption. ⇧
• • •
Jeremy Begbie
"[Music] is a way of engaging with the integrities of the created order."
—Jeremy Begbie, author of Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Baker Academic, 2007)
Theologian Jeremy Begbie on explains how music as more than simply pleasant or less pleasant collections of sounds, but as a way to engaging with the integrities of the created order, from our bodies to the rest of the world. This latter sense has in some ways been lost in the modern age in favor of a view of music that sees transcendent humans as simply imposing their designs upon a meaningless, unordered creation. Instead, Begbie argues that because God created all of Creation —including ourselves, attuning ourselves to the structures and order within Creation is key to discovering the joy and beauty and meaning God meant the Creation to provide and display.
"Love achieves its creativity by being perceptive."
—Jeremy Begbie
Jeremy Begbie continues his discussion on music and its essential relationship with Creation. He talks of artists and composers who are able to see incredible possibilities latent within the materials of Creation. In their attentiveness and perception, they creatively love that which they are given. Begbie also discusses the difference between seeing and hearing, and implications of and lessons from the metaphor of hearing on theology and knowledge and freedom. ⇧
Guests on Volume 95
• STEWART DAVENPORT on how nineteenth-century Christians separated the moral and practical aspects of economic life
• WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH on how theology and economics are necessarily intertwined and on how a larger understanding of the meaning of freedom would change our economic actions
• J. MATTHEW BONZO and MICHAEL R. STEVENS on Wendell Berry's concern for the dislocating and fragmenting forces in modern life
• CRAIG GAY on how language — specifically the spoken word — is central to our human experience
• EUGENE PETERSON on how Jesus’s use of ambiguous language encouraged active spiritual engagement
• BARRY HANKINS on how the late Francis Schaeffer moved from being a defensive fundamentalist to a prophet of cultural engagement
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Stewart Davenport
"What is first and foremost for these clerical economists is that they simply wanted stability. They love order . . . They didn’t want [the U.S.] to go the way of France: poverty-stricken and potentially revolutionary."
—Stewart Davenport, author of Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860 (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
Stewart Davenport identifies the beginnings of a transformation in economic understanding with the birth of modern capitalism. The nineteenth century saw the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and Davenport wanted to understand the response of Christians during this transformative period. He found that clergy and laymen had a number of responses to the new economic thinking and social structures that developed in that time. Some of these responses resonated the popular Enlightenment notions of autonomy and scientific objectivity to the exclusion or marginalization of moral concerns. The roots of contemporary dualism between economics and morality and ethics among Christians can be traced in part to this separation of facts and values in discussing Smith's theories. Many Christian contemporaries of Smith believed that if Smith's economics rested on purely objective observations about natural laws and scientific principles, they need not bother with thinking about ethical and moral concerns when discussing economics. Indeed, opposing this new science could render God and religion irrelevant in the face of changing times. Others saw in capitalism a stabilizing force that would ensure social health and promote the strength of America and, in so far as America promoted the kingdom of God, the reign of the kingdom of God as well. ⇧
• • •
William T. Cavanaugh
"Professors are constantly admonishing [students] to stick to the subject and to separate these things. But I think they have a very good and real sense that in real life things are not separated: that the way you buy has a lot to do with the way you worship and who you worship and what you worship."
—William Cavanaugh, author of Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Eerdmans, 2008)
William T. Cavanaugh explains how theology shapes how we understand and evaluate economics. Cavanaugh discusses the particular temptation that Christians face to compartmentalize parts of their lives so that finance or business or economics or politics is separate from religion and theology. In many ways, such compartmentalization makes it easier to cope in contemporary society. One example of compartmentalization is how greed is good in economics though it is evil in the religious aspect of our lives. Another is the way freedom is understood as different concepts when we're being religious compared to when we're being political. The "freedom" that autonomous individuals have in modern democratic societies contrasts with the Christian understanding of freedom as rightly attached to our God and neighbor in love.
"Churches ought to have a role in creating local economics spaces where discernment about what the human good is can go on in a real concrete way. So it's not a matter of churches making monetary policy or whatever; it's really much more a matter of scaling the economy down and trying to make these kinds of face-to-face interactions."
—William Cavanaugh
William Cavanaugh continues his conversation with Ken Myers on economics by questioning some of the typical assumptions underlying contemporary economics. He questions whether freedom is best understood without reference to the ends one can desire and wonders whether the two options of a individualistic economic free-for-all on the one hand or statist collectivism on the other exhaust the possibilities for economies. Might there be a substantive place for churches and other non-government groups in our economics? He also talks about Thomas Aquinas's view of property, advertising's cultivation of perpetual dissatisfaction, and the need for communities to embrace interdependence as part of human flourishing. ⇧
• • •
J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael R. Stevens
"One thing that Berry stresses over and over again that really resonated with students was this idea of 'How do you create a home not as a retreat from work, but as a place where you can do meaningful work?'"
—J. Matthew Bonzo, co-author of Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader's Guide (Brazos Press, 2008)
J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael Stevens discuss themes from their recent book on the life and thought of Wendell Berry. Berry's main concerns are related to the ways in which community is undermined and destroyed by the ways modern people live in and treat the land and the rest of creation. Because community is tied to the creation as the realm in which we live our lives, the exploitation of creation by rationalistic approaches to controlling and dominating nature in our work and life serves to fragment relationships and dislocate men and women from community. In divorcing our humanity from creation, the relational reality of created humanity itself is denied in the breaking of relationships and the reduction of the world to mere raw material that must be antagonistically mastered for profit. ⇧
• • •
Craig Gay
"Where we are and who we are and what it means to live and how we ought to live . . . these are not questions that can be answered simply by making careful observations of our circumstances, but there are rather questions that can only be answered by listening . . . to what God has said."
—Craig Gay, author of Dialogue, Catalogue & Monologue: Personal, Impersonal & Depersonalizing Ways to Use Words (Regent College Publishing, 2008)
Craig Gay reflects on the essential linguistic nature of humanity: how our growth (or decline) in life is tied to words. Language is not merely a tool for humans to use, but it is a part of our very being as creatures made in the image of the God who is the living Word. Because of this, words are essential to our life. Gay further discusses the distinction between "seeing" and "hearing" as metaphors of knowledge and understanding. Gay stresses that our culture does not encourage us to know by receiving words from a person or a personal God, but by making impersonal observations. For Gay, this mode of understanding, while extraordinarily valuable and necessary, is nevertheless partial and insufficient for life. ⇧
• • •
Eugene Peterson
"Poets don't make things plain. They makes things more complex. But as they become more complex, they start to resonate all over the place."
—Eugene Peterson, author of Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Eerdmans, 2008)
Pastor Eugene Peterson talks about the kinds of language Jesus used when talking to people. He points out that Jesus rarely gave sermons in the gospels, but spent most of his time speaking normally and conversationally, and the Spirit infused this normal speech. He observes that many Christians generally do not understand their everyday language to be a participation in spirituality; for them, spiritual language is a contrived, churchy kind of language. For Jesus, Peterson reflects, there was no such division or distinction: his normal, everyday speech was always seasoned by the Spirit without artificiality. Moreover, Jesus's language was often ambiguous, radiating meaning on different levels and encouraging listeners to pursue and participate in multi-dimensional, personal truth, rather than one-dimensional, impersonal data. In this way, Jesus's language conformed to the nature of truth as personal and complex as reality itself. ⇧
• • •
Barry Hankins
""[W]hereas in America the intellectual stuff of fundamentalism was used primarily to defend the faith [against theological liberalism], in Europe Schaffer could use the intellectual stuff of fundamentalism to evangelize. In other words when he would sit down with European young people from universities, he had to intellectually make a case for the veracity of the Christian faith, not with regard to defending it against liberalism, but with regard to making it coherent to people who were intellectually searching for a philosophy that made sense."
—Barry Hankins, author of Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Eerdmans, 2007)
Professor Barry Hankins talks about the American missionary Francis Schaeffer. Hankins describes Schaeffer as, after Billy Graham, the second greatest influence on evangelicalism in the twentieth century. He started off a disciple of Carl MacIntyre and saw himself as a general for fundamentalist orthodoxy whose war front would be in Europe. As a leader of fundamentalism, he advocated separation from secular culture and the positive, militant defense of the faith against theological liberalism. But when Schaeffer arrived in Europe, he found that there wasn't much Christianity, orthodox or not, to defend; consequently, his mission of defending the purity of the faith was replaced by a mission to re-evangelize a post-Christian Europe. Schaeffer channeled his intellect to understanding the cultural moment in Europe, and his efforts led him to engage the existentialist philosophies and cultural institutions expressing those philosophies in order to provide answers to the questions plaguing the young Europeans he encountered. ⇧
Guests on Volume 95
• STEWART DAVENPORT on how nineteenth-century Christians separated the moral and practical aspects of economic life
• WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH on how theology and economics are necessarily intertwined and on how a larger understanding of the meaning of freedom would change our economic actions
• J. MATTHEW BONZO and MICHAEL R. STEVENS on Wendell Berry's concern for the dislocating and fragmenting forces in modern life
• CRAIG GAY on how language — specifically the spoken word — is central to our human experience
• EUGENE PETERSON on how Jesus’s use of ambiguous language encouraged active spiritual engagement
• BARRY HANKINS on how the late Francis Schaeffer moved from being a defensive fundamentalist to a prophet of cultural engagement
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Stewart Davenport
"What is first and foremost for these clerical economists is that they simply wanted stability. They love order . . . They didn’t want [the U.S.] to go the way of France: poverty-stricken and potentially revolutionary."
—Stewart Davenport, author of Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860 (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
Stewart Davenport identifies the beginnings of a transformation in economic understanding with the birth of modern capitalism. The nineteenth century saw the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and Davenport wanted to understand the response of Christians during this transformative period. He found that clergy and laymen had a number of responses to the new economic thinking and social structures that developed in that time. Some of these responses resonated the popular Enlightenment notions of autonomy and scientific objectivity to the exclusion or marginalization of moral concerns. The roots of contemporary dualism between economics and morality and ethics among Christians can be traced in part to this separation of facts and values in discussing Smith's theories. Many Christian contemporaries of Smith believed that if Smith's economics rested on purely objective observations about natural laws and scientific principles, they need not bother with thinking about ethical and moral concerns when discussing economics. Indeed, opposing this new science could render God and religion irrelevant in the face of changing times. Others saw in capitalism a stabilizing force that would ensure social health and promote the strength of America and, in so far as America promoted the kingdom of God, the reign of the kingdom of God as well. ⇧
• • •
William T. Cavanaugh
"Professors are constantly admonishing [students] to stick to the subject and to separate these things. But I think they have a very good and real sense that in real life things are not separated: that the way you buy has a lot to do with the way you worship and who you worship and what you worship."
—William Cavanaugh, author of Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Eerdmans, 2008)
William T. Cavanaugh explains how theology shapes how we understand and evaluate economics. Cavanaugh discusses the particular temptation that Christians face to compartmentalize parts of their lives so that finance or business or economics or politics is separate from religion and theology. In many ways, such compartmentalization makes it easier to cope in contemporary society. One example of compartmentalization is how greed is good in economics though it is evil in the religious aspect of our lives. Another is the way freedom is understood as different concepts when we're being religious compared to when we're being political. The "freedom" that autonomous individuals have in modern democratic societies contrasts with the Christian understanding of freedom as rightly attached to our God and neighbor in love.
"Churches ought to have a role in creating local economics spaces where discernment about what the human good is can go on in a real concrete way. So it's not a matter of churches making monetary policy or whatever; it's really much more a matter of scaling the economy down and trying to make these kinds of face-to-face interactions."
—William Cavanaugh
William Cavanaugh continues his conversation with Ken Myers on economics by questioning some of the typical assumptions underlying contemporary economics. He questions whether freedom is best understood without reference to the ends one can desire and wonders whether the two options of a individualistic economic free-for-all on the one hand or statist collectivism on the other exhaust the possibilities for economies. Might there be a substantive place for churches and other non-government groups in our economics? He also talks about Thomas Aquinas's view of property, advertising's cultivation of perpetual dissatisfaction, and the need for communities to embrace interdependence as part of human flourishing. ⇧
• • •
J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael R. Stevens
"One thing that Berry stresses over and over again that really resonated with students was this idea of 'How do you create a home not as a retreat from work, but as a place where you can do meaningful work?'"
—J. Matthew Bonzo, co-author of Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader's Guide (Brazos Press, 2008)
J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael Stevens discuss themes from their recent book on the life and thought of Wendell Berry. Berry's main concerns are related to the ways in which community is undermined and destroyed by the ways modern people live in and treat the land and the rest of creation. Because community is tied to the creation as the realm in which we live our lives, the exploitation of creation by rationalistic approaches to controlling and dominating nature in our work and life serves to fragment relationships and dislocate men and women from community. In divorcing our humanity from creation, the relational reality of created humanity itself is denied in the breaking of relationships and the reduction of the world to mere raw material that must be antagonistically mastered for profit. ⇧
• • •
Craig Gay
"Where we are and who we are and what it means to live and how we ought to live . . . these are not questions that can be answered simply by making careful observations of our circumstances, but there are rather questions that can only be answered by listening . . . to what God has said."
—Craig Gay, author of Dialogue, Catalogue & Monologue: Personal, Impersonal & Depersonalizing Ways to Use Words (Regent College Publishing, 2008)
Craig Gay reflects on the essential linguistic nature of humanity: how our growth (or decline) in life is tied to words. Language is not merely a tool for humans to use, but it is a part of our very being as creatures made in the image of the God who is the living Word. Because of this, words are essential to our life. Gay further discusses the distinction between "seeing" and "hearing" as metaphors of knowledge and understanding. Gay stresses that our culture does not encourage us to know by receiving words from a person or a personal God, but by making impersonal observations. For Gay, this mode of understanding, while extraordinarily valuable and necessary, is nevertheless partial and insufficient for life. ⇧
• • •
Eugene Peterson
"Poets don't make things plain. They makes things more complex. But as they become more complex, they start to resonate all over the place."
—Eugene Peterson, author of Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Eerdmans, 2008)
Pastor Eugene Peterson talks about the kinds of language Jesus used when talking to people. He points out that Jesus rarely gave sermons in the gospels, but spent most of his time speaking normally and conversationally, and the Spirit infused this normal speech. He observes that many Christians generally do not understand their everyday language to be a participation in spirituality; for them, spiritual language is a contrived, churchy kind of language. For Jesus, Peterson reflects, there was no such division or distinction: his normal, everyday speech was always seasoned by the Spirit without artificiality. Moreover, Jesus's language was often ambiguous, radiating meaning on different levels and encouraging listeners to pursue and participate in multi-dimensional, personal truth, rather than one-dimensional, impersonal data. In this way, Jesus's language conformed to the nature of truth as personal and complex as reality itself. ⇧
• • •
Barry Hankins
""[W]hereas in America the intellectual stuff of fundamentalism was used primarily to defend the faith [against theological liberalism], in Europe Schaffer could use the intellectual stuff of fundamentalism to evangelize. In other words when he would sit down with European young people from universities, he had to intellectually make a case for the veracity of the Christian faith, not with regard to defending it against liberalism, but with regard to making it coherent to people who were intellectually searching for a philosophy that made sense."
—Barry Hankins, author of Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Eerdmans, 2007)
Professor Barry Hankins talks about the American missionary Francis Schaeffer. Hankins describes Schaeffer as, after Billy Graham, the second greatest influence on evangelicalism in the twentieth century. He started off a disciple of Carl MacIntyre and saw himself as a general for fundamentalist orthodoxy whose war front would be in Europe. As a leader of fundamentalism, he advocated separation from secular culture and the positive, militant defense of the faith against theological liberalism. But when Schaeffer arrived in Europe, he found that there wasn't much Christianity, orthodox or not, to defend; consequently, his mission of defending the purity of the faith was replaced by a mission to re-evangelize a post-Christian Europe. Schaeffer channeled his intellect to understanding the cultural moment in Europe, and his efforts led him to engage the existentialist philosophies and cultural institutions expressing those philosophies in order to provide answers to the questions plaguing the young Europeans he encountered. ⇧
Guests on Volume 96
• DAVID A. SMITH on the beginnings of the National Endowment for the Arts and the capacity of the arts in a democracy for combatting atomistic individualism
• KIKU ADATTO on how images, words, and ideas interact in a visually saturated culture and on how the image of a person's face in a photograph has the capacity for intimate representation of inner personhood
• ELVIN T. LIM on how presidential speeches have been dumbed down for decades and why presidents like it
• DAVID NAUGLE on the deeper meaning of happiness, the disordering effects of sin, and the reordering of love made possible in our redemption
• RICHARD STIVERS on the technologizing of all of life
• JOHN BETZ on the critique of the Enlightenment offered by Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), and why it still matters to us
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
David A. Smith
"To the extent that art is understood just to be personal expression and therefore, in an egalitarian society, unquestionable in its validity, it seals itself off from playing these broader social roles, which is an irony because these artists who do this kind of provocative art intend for their art to be social, but it doesn't work that way when it becomes so freighted with political identity."
—David A. Smith, author of Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy (Ivan R. Dee, 2008)
Professor David A. Smith discusses the role of the arts in American democracy since the 1960's. Smith tells the story of how the American world of art, having lost its artistic direction, was taken over by political agendas of individuals. The legislative founders of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) believed that the art they would fund would play a social role in promoting the unity of the nation. They wanted the artistic world, funded by the NEA, to combat individualism, elevate society above crass materialism, and provide a counterweight to the dominance of science. Artists, however, had a different idea of the role of their art, and showed it in the critical nature of their work. Not realizing that the trajectory of the artistic world was one of political challenge and criticism, politicians were surprised to see how politically divisive art could be. Smith argues that the artistic world neglected to realize that the very politicization of the art rendered it powerless to play a role in bringing about human solidarity for the common good. ⇧
• • •
Kiku Adatto
"We might disagree with the censorship part, but the part [Plato] was right about is how potent culture is, and specifically, how primary our visual sensibility is; that images have meaning and they affect you. They get right inside you."
—Kiku Adatto, author of Picture Perfect: Life in the Age of the Photo Op (Princeton University Press, 2008)
Kiku Adatto talks about the rise of a new kind of image consciousness in modern society. Adatto begins by identifying how images are intelligible only within a larger narrative or context, a frame of reference on which the meaning of an image is more or less contingent. But what happens when images are subject — and known to be subject — to almost ubiquitous manipulation? Adatto explains that it is now necessary to be conscious of an additional layer of meaning that makes the image the beginning of the story rather than its totality. Yet, it is not obvious that such discernment is happening, despite our general awareness of constant image manipulation. It is basic to the human condition to be impacted and influenced by images, which are perhaps more powerful than we would rationally apprehend.
"All over the world there's a sense of saying there isn't simply a self there, there's a soul there. That it isn't a body we're talking about. We'>re talking about the dignity and respect for the person that extends to the treatment of their body, and I would extend that to the photographic image."
—Kiku Adatto
Kiku Adatto continues her conversation with Ken Myers by discussing the intimacy that images can contain. She notes that a picture of a person creates and carries something more than mere color and lines, but a representation of the self that commands a sense of intimacy which is most deeply honored and appreciated by those in relationship to the person and rather not by strangers. Pregnant with the potential for intimate connection, images raise the question of appropriate use in a culture where images are displayed everywhere for everyone to see. From advertisements to Facebook, personal images are being exhibited with little concern as to the power of seeing a representation of a human being. ⇧
• • •
Elvin T. Lim
"Common sense is not enough for us to make the decisions that we do in life, although there are important intuitions that help and guide the intellect."
—Elvin T. Lim, author of The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Elvin Lim talks about the decline of the content of presidential rhetoric. He attributes part of this decline to a rejection of constitutional authority in favor of an electoral mandate. Presidents who derive their agendas and draw their power not from the laws of the land but from popularity are concerned with polls and keeping their approval ratings high. But popularity is not necessarily related to the wisdom necessary to govern well, and the consequences of this presidential focus on popularity manifest in presidential rhetoric, which Lim argues has become increasing driven by emotional appeals to intuitive intelligence; to the exclusion of higher order deliberations of the intellect in order to persuade more people. Lim explains that the problem with persuasion by emotional appeal is twofold. First, because emotional appeals bypass higher order thought which is necessary for the proper analysis of complex and important issues of the day, such appeals rest on reductive and oversimplified reasonings that are often false in significant ways. Persuasion based on such emotional appeals is necessarily shallow and often does not do justice to the issues at stake. The second problem with persuasion by emotional appeal arises when one considers that common sense intuitions are different from person to person. Lim points out that rhetoric that appeals to such common sense intuitions fails when sensibilities are not shared, and only higher order thought and rational disputation can bridge the divisions that exist between people whose gut reactions are different. Abandoning rational content in rhetoric entails the hardening of political divisions that might be bridged by rational argument, especially when such oversimplified rhetoric presents only one side of the story (well). ⇧
• • •
David Naugle
"The concept of happiness more or less lost its backbone; in the past, I think it was refreshingly embracing: a human being's greatest good, the summum bonum."
—David Naugle, author of Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Eerdmans, 2008)
David Naugle reviews the ways in which we understand happiness. Naugle comments on how happiness morphed from a deep and comprehensive theological concept to a political concept we could pursue as a nation to a superficial implication of the modern, sovereign self. Naugle draws on an Augustinian formulation of happiness that roots it in the blessing of God in both delight and human fulfillment. Augustine has in mind not only a subjective feeling of pleasure, but an objective conformation to the created order which loves in properly greater and lesser ways in accordance with the objects of love, God being preeminent. Naugle concludes with a discussion of "The Seven Deadly Sins." ⇧
• • •
Richard Stivers
"Is technology just machines … or are there other types of technologies? … Several of us have talked then about both organizational and psychological techniques such as advertising, public relations, propaganda, and a whole number of other techniques—the self-help books … that [promise] greater effectiveness or efficiency in one's relationships. If one regards these non-material technologies as technology, it's only then that you can see the full implication, the full significance of what is sometimes called 'the technological system.'"
—Richard Stivers, author of The Illusion of Freedom and Equality (State University of New York Press, 2008)
Richard Stivers discusses some insights from Jacques Ellul and Max Weber regarding the dominance of technology in our lives. Technologies, in the sense of "techniques" which may manifest in material forms (machines, computers, etc.) or non-material forms (practices, techniques, procedures, protocols, etc.), have as their goal the increase of power for the sake of efficiency. Technology as technique, then, is a hallmark value of modern society. Stivers comments that even our economic system of capitalism can be understood not as merely using technologies, but being the very economic form of technology. Modern society's technical language of information similarly tends to ignore the morality of practices and beliefs in its pursuit of knowledge and, fundamentally, power. The pursuit of information and power can then take on a self-justifying moral imperative of its own that denies moral limits of the pursuit of power. Under a technological regime, freedom and equality is illusory. ⇧
• • •
John Betz
“It’s somehow the peculiar dialect of God that combines majesty with abasement, glory with this most incredible self-emptying. And [Hamann] sees this in creation, in Christ, and in the Scriptures, and so everywhere when he’s meditating on the Holy Trinity he sees this combination of glory and humility.”
—John Betz, author of After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008)
Theologian John Betz discusses the eighteenth-century philosopher and translator, Johann Georg Hamann, critic and contemporary of Immanuel Kant and other prominent figures of the German Enlightenment. Hamann, even from the early stages of the Enlightenment, saw and argued that the project of modernity would lead to its own destruction. Hamann argued that reason could not, by itself in a pure form, give a complete account of reality, for he saw that the modern ideal of “pure reason” is a fiction. Reason, he argued, is always embedded within an historical culture and language from which one can never fully be detached. In his evaluation, Hamann anticipates the postmodern critics of the twentieth century; however, he avoids the nihilism of postmodernism by observing the revelatory character of language and history. By focusing on the divine kenosis or humility of God, who creates, reveals, and condescends to humanity through His Word, Hamann maintained that man’s pursuit of truth is always contingent on God’s Word in special and general revelation through history and creation. Throughout the interview, Professor Betz describes the centrality of God’s condescension in Hamann’s understanding of knowledge and reason. It is through the humility of God in his condescension to communicate to man that Hamann recognizes the Promethean project of modernity to attain enlightenment from man’s resources alone. ⇧
Guests on Volume 96
• DAVID A. SMITH on the beginnings of the National Endowment for the Arts and the capacity of the arts in a democracy for combatting atomistic individualism
• KIKU ADATTO on how images, words, and ideas interact in a visually saturated culture and on how the image of a person's face in a photograph has the capacity for intimate representation of inner personhood
• ELVIN T. LIM on how presidential speeches have been dumbed down for decades and why presidents like it
• DAVID NAUGLE on the deeper meaning of happiness, the disordering effects of sin, and the reordering of love made possible in our redemption
• RICHARD STIVERS on the technologizing of all of life
• JOHN BETZ on the critique of the Enlightenment offered by Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), and why it still matters to us
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
David A. Smith
"To the extent that art is understood just to be personal expression and therefore, in an egalitarian society, unquestionable in its validity, it seals itself off from playing these broader social roles, which is an irony because these artists who do this kind of provocative art intend for their art to be social, but it doesn't work that way when it becomes so freighted with political identity."
—David A. Smith, author of Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy (Ivan R. Dee, 2008)
Professor David A. Smith discusses the role of the arts in American democracy since the 1960's. Smith tells the story of how the American world of art, having lost its artistic direction, was taken over by political agendas of individuals. The legislative founders of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) believed that the art they would fund would play a social role in promoting the unity of the nation. They wanted the artistic world, funded by the NEA, to combat individualism, elevate society above crass materialism, and provide a counterweight to the dominance of science. Artists, however, had a different idea of the role of their art, and showed it in the critical nature of their work. Not realizing that the trajectory of the artistic world was one of political challenge and criticism, politicians were surprised to see how politically divisive art could be. Smith argues that the artistic world neglected to realize that the very politicization of the art rendered it powerless to play a role in bringing about human solidarity for the common good. ⇧
• • •
Kiku Adatto
"We might disagree with the censorship part, but the part [Plato] was right about is how potent culture is, and specifically, how primary our visual sensibility is; that images have meaning and they affect you. They get right inside you."
—Kiku Adatto, author of Picture Perfect: Life in the Age of the Photo Op (Princeton University Press, 2008)
Kiku Adatto talks about the rise of a new kind of image consciousness in modern society. Adatto begins by identifying how images are intelligible only within a larger narrative or context, a frame of reference on which the meaning of an image is more or less contingent. But what happens when images are subject — and known to be subject — to almost ubiquitous manipulation? Adatto explains that it is now necessary to be conscious of an additional layer of meaning that makes the image the beginning of the story rather than its totality. Yet, it is not obvious that such discernment is happening, despite our general awareness of constant image manipulation. It is basic to the human condition to be impacted and influenced by images, which are perhaps more powerful than we would rationally apprehend.
"All over the world there's a sense of saying there isn't simply a self there, there's a soul there. That it isn't a body we're talking about. We'>re talking about the dignity and respect for the person that extends to the treatment of their body, and I would extend that to the photographic image."
—Kiku Adatto
Kiku Adatto continues her conversation with Ken Myers by discussing the intimacy that images can contain. She notes that a picture of a person creates and carries something more than mere color and lines, but a representation of the self that commands a sense of intimacy which is most deeply honored and appreciated by those in relationship to the person and rather not by strangers. Pregnant with the potential for intimate connection, images raise the question of appropriate use in a culture where images are displayed everywhere for everyone to see. From advertisements to Facebook, personal images are being exhibited with little concern as to the power of seeing a representation of a human being. ⇧
• • •
Elvin T. Lim
"Common sense is not enough for us to make the decisions that we do in life, although there are important intuitions that help and guide the intellect."
—Elvin T. Lim, author of The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Elvin Lim talks about the decline of the content of presidential rhetoric. He attributes part of this decline to a rejection of constitutional authority in favor of an electoral mandate. Presidents who derive their agendas and draw their power not from the laws of the land but from popularity are concerned with polls and keeping their approval ratings high. But popularity is not necessarily related to the wisdom necessary to govern well, and the consequences of this presidential focus on popularity manifest in presidential rhetoric, which Lim argues has become increasing driven by emotional appeals to intuitive intelligence; to the exclusion of higher order deliberations of the intellect in order to persuade more people. Lim explains that the problem with persuasion by emotional appeal is twofold. First, because emotional appeals bypass higher order thought which is necessary for the proper analysis of complex and important issues of the day, such appeals rest on reductive and oversimplified reasonings that are often false in significant ways. Persuasion based on such emotional appeals is necessarily shallow and often does not do justice to the issues at stake. The second problem with persuasion by emotional appeal arises when one considers that common sense intuitions are different from person to person. Lim points out that rhetoric that appeals to such common sense intuitions fails when sensibilities are not shared, and only higher order thought and rational disputation can bridge the divisions that exist between people whose gut reactions are different. Abandoning rational content in rhetoric entails the hardening of political divisions that might be bridged by rational argument, especially when such oversimplified rhetoric presents only one side of the story (well). ⇧
• • •
David Naugle
"The concept of happiness more or less lost its backbone; in the past, I think it was refreshingly embracing: a human being's greatest good, the summum bonum."
—David Naugle, author of Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Eerdmans, 2008)
David Naugle reviews the ways in which we understand happiness. Naugle comments on how happiness morphed from a deep and comprehensive theological concept to a political concept we could pursue as a nation to a superficial implication of the modern, sovereign self. Naugle draws on an Augustinian formulation of happiness that roots it in the blessing of God in both delight and human fulfillment. Augustine has in mind not only a subjective feeling of pleasure, but an objective conformation to the created order which loves in properly greater and lesser ways in accordance with the objects of love, God being preeminent. Naugle concludes with a discussion of "The Seven Deadly Sins." ⇧
• • •
Richard Stivers
"Is technology just machines … or are there other types of technologies? … Several of us have talked then about both organizational and psychological techniques such as advertising, public relations, propaganda, and a whole number of other techniques—the self-help books … that [promise] greater effectiveness or efficiency in one's relationships. If one regards these non-material technologies as technology, it's only then that you can see the full implication, the full significance of what is sometimes called 'the technological system.'"
—Richard Stivers, author of The Illusion of Freedom and Equality (State University of New York Press, 2008)
Richard Stivers discusses some insights from Jacques Ellul and Max Weber regarding the dominance of technology in our lives. Technologies, in the sense of "techniques" which may manifest in material forms (machines, computers, etc.) or non-material forms (practices, techniques, procedures, protocols, etc.), have as their goal the increase of power for the sake of efficiency. Technology as technique, then, is a hallmark value of modern society. Stivers comments that even our economic system of capitalism can be understood not as merely using technologies, but being the very economic form of technology. Modern society's technical language of information similarly tends to ignore the morality of practices and beliefs in its pursuit of knowledge and, fundamentally, power. The pursuit of information and power can then take on a self-justifying moral imperative of its own that denies moral limits of the pursuit of power. Under a technological regime, freedom and equality is illusory. ⇧
• • •
John Betz
“It’s somehow the peculiar dialect of God that combines majesty with abasement, glory with this most incredible self-emptying. And [Hamann] sees this in creation, in Christ, and in the Scriptures, and so everywhere when he’s meditating on the Holy Trinity he sees this combination of glory and humility.”
—John Betz, author of After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008)
Theologian John Betz discusses the eighteenth-century philosopher and translator, Johann Georg Hamann, critic and contemporary of Immanuel Kant and other prominent figures of the German Enlightenment. Hamann, even from the early stages of the Enlightenment, saw and argued that the project of modernity would lead to its own destruction. Hamann argued that reason could not, by itself in a pure form, give a complete account of reality, for he saw that the modern ideal of “pure reason” is a fiction. Reason, he argued, is always embedded within an historical culture and language from which one can never fully be detached. In his evaluation, Hamann anticipates the postmodern critics of the twentieth century; however, he avoids the nihilism of postmodernism by observing the revelatory character of language and history. By focusing on the divine kenosis or humility of God, who creates, reveals, and condescends to humanity through His Word, Hamann maintained that man’s pursuit of truth is always contingent on God’s Word in special and general revelation through history and creation. Throughout the interview, Professor Betz describes the centrality of God’s condescension in Hamann’s understanding of knowledge and reason. It is through the humility of God in his condescension to communicate to man that Hamann recognizes the Promethean project of modernity to attain enlightenment from man’s resources alone. ⇧
Guests on Volume 97
• MARK NOLL on how Christian higher education is aided by a commitment to something like Christendom, a commitment to the assumption that the Gospel has consequences for all of life and all of social experience
• STANLEY FISH on how university professors should refrain from bringing their own political, philosophical, and religious commitments into the classroom
• JAMES PETERS on how Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Pascal, and many others had an understanding of the nature and purpose of reason quite different from the common modern understanding
• SCOTT MOORE on cultivating an understanding of politics that goes beyond mere statecraft, and on the limits of the notion of rights
• MAKOTO FUJIMURA on how his work as a painter is enriched by writing, why artists need to cultivate an attentiveness to many things, and how visual language expresses experience
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Mark Noll
"At its best, the Christendom ideal argued, or took for granted, that everything held together in Christ."
—Mark Noll, author of The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue (Brazos, 2008)
Mark Noll shares his thoughts concerning the future of Christian education. As a historian, Noll sees how Christian education flourished in times of Christendom; he is careful to note he is not suggesting a return to the entirety of the political forms and institutions of that era would be desirable, but merely pointing out that the education of Christians — among other significant cultural institutions and achievements, including that of philosophy and music — flourished greatly during that time in part due to the support of the Christendom civilization. Specifically, Noll believes that those Christian groups and populations that have taken seriously the public implications of the gospel for all of creation and all of life and the continuity of the Church in history have been the populations that have best succeeded in developing social and educational institutions that strengthen the Church. Noll suggests there are signs that evangelicals, who have tended to be suspicious of institutions and relatively uninterested in history, are moving toward a recognition that pursuit of faithfulness requires attentiveness to the history from which we come and the institutions that form us. ⇧
• • •
Stanley Fish
"The next step is the one that I resist, and that says, 'Therefore, you're now a better person than the person who did not undergo that literary training.' That's the step that I don't want to take, and that's the humanist step."
—Stanley Fish, author of Save the World on Your Own Time (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Stanley Fish talks about the boundaries of the classroom. He argues that the academic vocation is rightly limited to conveying truths concerning subject material, rather than including particular implications for social action or individual morality. He insists those types of implications or instrumental uses of academic knowledge are beyond the expertise and responsibility of academics, though they should certainly be taken up by institutions outside the university. Fish points out that this kind of "academicizing" is consistent with liberalism, which separates public behavior and communications from private religious beliefs for the sake of liberal political order. ⇧
• • •
James Peters
"The first principles of ethical reason aren't these self-evident, immediately known, knowable to any rational being, they're not those sorts of foundations. You have to become a person who can esteem and acknowledge those first principles, and that requires a moral community."
—James Peters, author of The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal, and the Rationality of Faith (Baker Academic, 2009)
James Peters discusses historical understandings of reason and rationality and how they differ from the modern notion of rationality which is imbued with autonomy and impersonal, universal objectivity. Such a modern notion was alien to Plato and Aristotle both, who understood rationality as inextricably tied to the pursuit of the good through the imagination, first and necessarily formed through participation in a moral community. One is not simply born rational, nor does one develop rationality as an autonomous individual such that all individuals, universally, are endowed with rationality merely by virtue of their consciousness. On the contrary, rationality is formed in the context of moral communities that may differ across space and time. Reason, then, is not a-historical and abstract, but situated in history and community. ⇧
• • •
Scott Moore
"It shouldn't surprise us that in a world in which all preferences are designs towards some sort of personal fulfillment, that marriage is a sort of contract for security and prosperity, that all of a sudden we would have people wanting to say that this shouldn't be denied to homosexuals."
—Scott Moore, author of The Limits of Liberal Democracy: Politics and Religion at the End of Modernity (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
Scott Moore talks about "extraordinary" times in history where particular fields of inquiry are shaken at the foundations. He argues that contemporary politics is at that point for American Christians. Increasingly, Christians are questioning the extent to which their American identity is at odds with their Christian identity. According to Moore, the cracks have always been there but have been papered over because the issues have seemed to be marginal. Over 300 years, those cracks have grown. Moore argues that what Christians need to do is to recover a deeper and broader conception of politics that is not restricted to modern statecraft and the enforcement of rights, which tends to lead to dead ends because it ignores other more fundamental considerations appropriate to the nature of the particular communities and situations involved. Such a recovery involves an awareness and consideration of myriad commitments in life in the context of the redemptive language and history of the Church. ⇧
• • •
Makoto Fujimura
"There's a sense in which language and poetry draw us out into the intuitive domains that we're not really aware of until we write or paint."
—Makoto Fujimura, author of Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture (NavPress, 2009)
Artist Makoto Fujimura reflects on the role of writing in his life as a painter. Fujimura observes that artists often write because they're contemplative. The motivations and mental processes involved in creating art are conducive to writing as well, though the visual arts are distinct languages. The kind of language a particular type of painting constitutes depends on the nature of the painting, the materials and methods and media used. The way painting communicates, then, is particular to its form and so makes possible the expression of thoughts and desires and joys that are real though they have no precise verbal articulation. ⇧
Guests on Volume 97
• MARK NOLL on how Christian higher education is aided by a commitment to something like Christendom, a commitment to the assumption that the Gospel has consequences for all of life and all of social experience
• STANLEY FISH on how university professors should refrain from bringing their own political, philosophical, and religious commitments into the classroom
• JAMES PETERS on how Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Pascal, and many others had an understanding of the nature and purpose of reason quite different from the common modern understanding
• SCOTT MOORE on cultivating an understanding of politics that goes beyond mere statecraft, and on the limits of the notion of rights
• MAKOTO FUJIMURA on how his work as a painter is enriched by writing, why artists need to cultivate an attentiveness to many things, and how visual language expresses experience
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Mark Noll
"At its best, the Christendom ideal argued, or took for granted, that everything held together in Christ."
—Mark Noll, author of The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue (Brazos, 2008)
Mark Noll shares his thoughts concerning the future of Christian education. As a historian, Noll sees how Christian education flourished in times of Christendom; he is careful to note he is not suggesting a return to the entirety of the political forms and institutions of that era would be desirable, but merely pointing out that the education of Christians — among other significant cultural institutions and achievements, including that of philosophy and music — flourished greatly during that time in part due to the support of the Christendom civilization. Specifically, Noll believes that those Christian groups and populations that have taken seriously the public implications of the gospel for all of creation and all of life and the continuity of the Church in history have been the populations that have best succeeded in developing social and educational institutions that strengthen the Church. Noll suggests there are signs that evangelicals, who have tended to be suspicious of institutions and relatively uninterested in history, are moving toward a recognition that pursuit of faithfulness requires attentiveness to the history from which we come and the institutions that form us. ⇧
• • •
Stanley Fish
"The next step is the one that I resist, and that says, 'Therefore, you're now a better person than the person who did not undergo that literary training.' That's the step that I don't want to take, and that's the humanist step."
—Stanley Fish, author of Save the World on Your Own Time (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Stanley Fish talks about the boundaries of the classroom. He argues that the academic vocation is rightly limited to conveying truths concerning subject material, rather than including particular implications for social action or individual morality. He insists those types of implications or instrumental uses of academic knowledge are beyond the expertise and responsibility of academics, though they should certainly be taken up by institutions outside the university. Fish points out that this kind of "academicizing" is consistent with liberalism, which separates public behavior and communications from private religious beliefs for the sake of liberal political order. ⇧
• • •
James Peters
"The first principles of ethical reason aren't these self-evident, immediately known, knowable to any rational being, they're not those sorts of foundations. You have to become a person who can esteem and acknowledge those first principles, and that requires a moral community."
—James Peters, author of The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal, and the Rationality of Faith (Baker Academic, 2009)
James Peters discusses historical understandings of reason and rationality and how they differ from the modern notion of rationality which is imbued with autonomy and impersonal, universal objectivity. Such a modern notion was alien to Plato and Aristotle both, who understood rationality as inextricably tied to the pursuit of the good through the imagination, first and necessarily formed through participation in a moral community. One is not simply born rational, nor does one develop rationality as an autonomous individual such that all individuals, universally, are endowed with rationality merely by virtue of their consciousness. On the contrary, rationality is formed in the context of moral communities that may differ across space and time. Reason, then, is not a-historical and abstract, but situated in history and community. ⇧
• • •
Scott Moore
"It shouldn't surprise us that in a world in which all preferences are designs towards some sort of personal fulfillment, that marriage is a sort of contract for security and prosperity, that all of a sudden we would have people wanting to say that this shouldn't be denied to homosexuals."
—Scott Moore, author of The Limits of Liberal Democracy: Politics and Religion at the End of Modernity (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
Scott Moore talks about "extraordinary" times in history where particular fields of inquiry are shaken at the foundations. He argues that contemporary politics is at that point for American Christians. Increasingly, Christians are questioning the extent to which their American identity is at odds with their Christian identity. According to Moore, the cracks have always been there but have been papered over because the issues have seemed to be marginal. Over 300 years, those cracks have grown. Moore argues that what Christians need to do is to recover a deeper and broader conception of politics that is not restricted to modern statecraft and the enforcement of rights, which tends to lead to dead ends because it ignores other more fundamental considerations appropriate to the nature of the particular communities and situations involved. Such a recovery involves an awareness and consideration of myriad commitments in life in the context of the redemptive language and history of the Church. ⇧
• • •
Makoto Fujimura
"There's a sense in which language and poetry draw us out into the intuitive domains that we're not really aware of until we write or paint."
—Makoto Fujimura, author of Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture (NavPress, 2009)
Artist Makoto Fujimura reflects on the role of writing in his life as a painter. Fujimura observes that artists often write because they're contemplative. The motivations and mental processes involved in creating art are conducive to writing as well, though the visual arts are distinct languages. The kind of language a particular type of painting constitutes depends on the nature of the painting, the materials and methods and media used. The way painting communicates, then, is particular to its form and so makes possible the expression of thoughts and desires and joys that are real though they have no precise verbal articulation. ⇧
Guests on Volume 98
• STANLEY HAUERWAS on the public witness of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and on why Neuhaus abandoned his 1960s radicalism to become a leading “theoconservative”
• CLARKE FORSYTHE on why prudence is a lost political virtue and on why and how the pro-life movement needs to broaden its educational efforts
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on the necessity of a concept of human dignity and on why Americans no longer seem able to defend it
• JEANNE MURRAY WALKER on how her students learn to understand poetry and on how metaphors are at the heart of poetic expression
• ROGER LUNDIN on how the disenchantment of the world led to new forms of doubt and self-expression
• DAVID BENTLEY HART on the feeble and confused arguments of the recent crop of outspoken atheists and on how a misunderstanding of the nature of freedom is at the heart of their revulsion at religion
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Stanley Hauerwas
"People forget that Richard was very prominent in the protests against [the] Vietnam [War]… and he assumed that when the Supreme Court decision about abortion was delivered, that the allies that he had had in the civil rights campaign and the anti-Vietnam campaign… would be allies against abortion. And he was stunned to discover that they thought the Supreme Court's abortion ruling was just fine, and that they supported it. And I think that's when Richard began to decisively shift his politics. That changed. He was no longer on the left. He was clearly on the right. And he was on the right for the same reasons he had been on the left, namely that's where he found the coalitions necessary to be in support of the dignity of life."
—Stanley Hauerwas
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas discusses the late Richard John Neuhaus, who passed away on January 8, 2009. Despite their, at times, deep disagreements, they shared a desire to keep the Church from succumbing to forms of cultural accommodation. Hauerwas comments on Neuhaus's extraordinary faith that gave him hope for the country in which he lived, hope that energized his labors of love in the public sphere. He reminds us that Neuhaus was an anti-war and pro-civil rights activist in the 1960s and 70s, and only came to be known as a conservative when abortion became legalized in 1973. It was a shock to Neuhaus that his allies in the anti-war movement and civil rights movement took the pro-choice side. Hauerwas observes that despite Neuhaus's more visible work in politics, Neuhaus had a fundamentally pastoral heart that showed in his personal relationships, his reflections on Scripture, and his pastoral writings. ⇧
• • •
Clarke Forsythe
"Back in 1973, the Supreme Court assumed that abortion was safer than childbirth. . . . Today . . . we now know of the five best medically documented risks: heightened risk of pre-term birth, heightened risk of placenta previa, heightened incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, heightened incidence of suicide and psychiatric admission, and fifth, the loss of the protective effect of a first full-term pregnancy against breast cancer."
—Clarke Forsythe, author of Politics for the Greatest Good: The Case for Prudence in the Public Square (InverVarsity Press, 2009)
Clarke Forsythe explains the ways the pro-life movement in the United States can more wisely navigate politics in pursuit of its ends. He takes note of the fears and misgivings many people have concerning politics and the possibility of achieving good things without being morally compromising. The idea of compromise, Forsythe believes, is often misunderstood as moral failure in and of itself rather than a mutual concession to reach agreement on a limited good. Prudence, for Forsythe, is key. It requires an understanding of what is good but also the ability to act on that knowledge. He believes that educational efforts concerning pro-life issues should be targeted to the broad swath of "middle America" which is neither consistently pro-life nor pro-choice, but lean towards pro-life beliefs. As with slavery in the days of William Wilberforce, many Americans consider abortion to be a sort of "necessary evil"; Forsythe believes this sense of an evil's necessity is a key obstacle to reform, but that this obstacle can be overcome by bringing new knowledge into the public debate concerning the health problems and risks associated with abortion that medical science has learned over the past few decades. ⇧
• • •
Gilbert Meilaender
"We remain committed to the equal dignity of persons . . . though it's not clear that we have a rationale any longer for that commitment to the equal personal dignity; historically, I think, the rationale was a religious one. And in public we try to get along without that these days, and I'm not altogether sure we can."
—Gilbert Meilaender, author of Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person (Encounter Books, 2009)
Moral philosopher Gilbert Meilaender examines the question of human dignity and its place within political discourse. Because what we believe about human dignity influences what we believe should be done to and for people in society, Meilaender believes people need to be discussing what human dignity is in politics. Meilaender suggests that those in politics who wish to bracket that discussion because it seems to be concerning a religious or metaphysical question are fundamentally mistaken in their desire, not least because, regardless of whether or not they wish to recognize it, the religious or metaphysical question does influence their decision. This is something he saw repeatedly over the course of his membership on the President's Council on Bioethics. Meilaender goes on to describe two distinct ideas concerning human dignity which he believes are at work whenever people use the term; he then describes some of the reasons for confusion in American society concerning the dignity of the human person, including some developments in biotechnology. ⇧
• • •
Jeanne Murray Walker
"If every age allows poems, goes back to the poems, they find new things in them. I think that we just have to face the fact that there is such a thing as mystery. It's joyful, it's playful, it's full of excitement and you have to rest in that and trust in that rather than trusting in some paraphrase."
—Jeanne Murray Walker, author of New Tracks, Night Falling (Eerdmans, 2009)
Poet Jeanne Murray Walker talks about learning to read poetry. Walker discusses some of the ways she helps students approach and appreciate poetry as the mysteriously meaningful literature it is, rather than as a linguistic cage containing static meaning to be abstracted from the words of the poem. The meaning is rooted in the metaphors in the poetry, which resonate in the imagination and eventually resolve as truth. The segment ends with a reading of selected poems from Walker's new book. ⇧
• • •
Roger Lundin
"It pits a woman with a vast, expansive inner life, filled with desire and a sense of possibility and self-discovery, but she lives in a natural world . . . that doesn't care one whit about her hopes, her dreams. Indeed, the doctor tells her that any hope, any dream, any sense of possibility that she has is simply an illusion."
—Roger Lundin, author of Believing Again: Doubt and Faith in a Secular Age (Eerdmans, 2009)
What makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers? In this segment, Roger Lundin discusses his book Believing Again: Doubt and Faith in a Secular Age. Distinctively modern unbelief is defined as a socially accepted and intellectually viable shift that saw faith in God as optional. Beginning in the seventeenth century, the romanticization of the human imagination resulted from the steady disenchantment of the world as rendered by the physical sciences and later the biological sciences. Lundin explains that this world seems increasingly indifferent to or even hostile to the world that human beings imagine, the world that they dream of and desire to live in. As an example of this in literature, he discusses the understanding of inner life and outward realities present in literature such as Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Lundin praises the imaginative possibilities in poetry and literature, but warns against the assumption that we all possess deep imaginations that are more powerful and meaningful than anything we could find in the natural world. ⇧
• • •
David Bentley Hart
"The sort of atheism you get from the current group is so complacent and so lacking in any deep thought that it's sort of the People magazine approach to atheism, and so it has a certain marketability."
—David Bentley Hart, author of Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2009)
David Bentley Hart discusses his book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. Hart describes these delusions as a sense that the human race has been emancipated by agents of reason and tolerance. This is popularized atheism's founding myth, he says, and it’s captivating and easy to follow. Hart’s book exposes the falseness of this revisionist and self-serving modern myth in vivid detail. He lists these atheists' three basic arguments: 1) Empirical science is better able to explain existence than theology and metaphysics; 2) There are no rational grounds for belief and therefore it is of its nature contrary to reason; and 3) The history of Christianity is shown to be oppressive and cruel. Hart sees the first two arguments as basic category mistakes, and the third as nothing less than bad historical research. He concludes that the irrational moralism of these atheists has no basis in truth and is fundamentally incoherent. ⇧
Guests on Volume 98
• STANLEY HAUERWAS on the public witness of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and on why Neuhaus abandoned his 1960s radicalism to become a leading “theoconservative”
• CLARKE FORSYTHE on why prudence is a lost political virtue and on why and how the pro-life movement needs to broaden its educational efforts
• GILBERT MEILAENDER on the necessity of a concept of human dignity and on why Americans no longer seem able to defend it
• JEANNE MURRAY WALKER on how her students learn to understand poetry and on how metaphors are at the heart of poetic expression
• ROGER LUNDIN on how the disenchantment of the world led to new forms of doubt and self-expression
• DAVID BENTLEY HART on the feeble and confused arguments of the recent crop of outspoken atheists and on how a misunderstanding of the nature of freedom is at the heart of their revulsion at religion
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Stanley Hauerwas
"People forget that Richard was very prominent in the protests against [the] Vietnam [War]… and he assumed that when the Supreme Court decision about abortion was delivered, that the allies that he had had in the civil rights campaign and the anti-Vietnam campaign… would be allies against abortion. And he was stunned to discover that they thought the Supreme Court's abortion ruling was just fine, and that they supported it. And I think that's when Richard began to decisively shift his politics. That changed. He was no longer on the left. He was clearly on the right. And he was on the right for the same reasons he had been on the left, namely that's where he found the coalitions necessary to be in support of the dignity of life."
—Stanley Hauerwas
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas discusses the late Richard John Neuhaus, who passed away on January 8, 2009. Despite their, at times, deep disagreements, they shared a desire to keep the Church from succumbing to forms of cultural accommodation. Hauerwas comments on Neuhaus's extraordinary faith that gave him hope for the country in which he lived, hope that energized his labors of love in the public sphere. He reminds us that Neuhaus was an anti-war and pro-civil rights activist in the 1960s and 70s, and only came to be known as a conservative when abortion became legalized in 1973. It was a shock to Neuhaus that his allies in the anti-war movement and civil rights movement took the pro-choice side. Hauerwas observes that despite Neuhaus's more visible work in politics, Neuhaus had a fundamentally pastoral heart that showed in his personal relationships, his reflections on Scripture, and his pastoral writings. ⇧
• • •
Clarke Forsythe
"Back in 1973, the Supreme Court assumed that abortion was safer than childbirth. . . . Today . . . we now know of the five best medically documented risks: heightened risk of pre-term birth, heightened risk of placenta previa, heightened incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, heightened incidence of suicide and psychiatric admission, and fifth, the loss of the protective effect of a first full-term pregnancy against breast cancer."
—Clarke Forsythe, author of Politics for the Greatest Good: The Case for Prudence in the Public Square (InverVarsity Press, 2009)
Clarke Forsythe explains the ways the pro-life movement in the United States can more wisely navigate politics in pursuit of its ends. He takes note of the fears and misgivings many people have concerning politics and the possibility of achieving good things without being morally compromising. The idea of compromise, Forsythe believes, is often misunderstood as moral failure in and of itself rather than a mutual concession to reach agreement on a limited good. Prudence, for Forsythe, is key. It requires an understanding of what is good but also the ability to act on that knowledge. He believes that educational efforts concerning pro-life issues should be targeted to the broad swath of "middle America" which is neither consistently pro-life nor pro-choice, but lean towards pro-life beliefs. As with slavery in the days of William Wilberforce, many Americans consider abortion to be a sort of "necessary evil"; Forsythe believes this sense of an evil's necessity is a key obstacle to reform, but that this obstacle can be overcome by bringing new knowledge into the public debate concerning the health problems and risks associated with abortion that medical science has learned over the past few decades. ⇧
• • •
Gilbert Meilaender
"We remain committed to the equal dignity of persons . . . though it's not clear that we have a rationale any longer for that commitment to the equal personal dignity; historically, I think, the rationale was a religious one. And in public we try to get along without that these days, and I'm not altogether sure we can."
—Gilbert Meilaender, author of Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person (Encounter Books, 2009)
Moral philosopher Gilbert Meilaender examines the question of human dignity and its place within political discourse. Because what we believe about human dignity influences what we believe should be done to and for people in society, Meilaender believes people need to be discussing what human dignity is in politics. Meilaender suggests that those in politics who wish to bracket that discussion because it seems to be concerning a religious or metaphysical question are fundamentally mistaken in their desire, not least because, regardless of whether or not they wish to recognize it, the religious or metaphysical question does influence their decision. This is something he saw repeatedly over the course of his membership on the President's Council on Bioethics. Meilaender goes on to describe two distinct ideas concerning human dignity which he believes are at work whenever people use the term; he then describes some of the reasons for confusion in American society concerning the dignity of the human person, including some developments in biotechnology. ⇧
• • •
Jeanne Murray Walker
"If every age allows poems, goes back to the poems, they find new things in them. I think that we just have to face the fact that there is such a thing as mystery. It's joyful, it's playful, it's full of excitement and you have to rest in that and trust in that rather than trusting in some paraphrase."
—Jeanne Murray Walker, author of New Tracks, Night Falling (Eerdmans, 2009)
Poet Jeanne Murray Walker talks about learning to read poetry. Walker discusses some of the ways she helps students approach and appreciate poetry as the mysteriously meaningful literature it is, rather than as a linguistic cage containing static meaning to be abstracted from the words of the poem. The meaning is rooted in the metaphors in the poetry, which resonate in the imagination and eventually resolve as truth. The segment ends with a reading of selected poems from Walker's new book. ⇧
• • •
Roger Lundin
"It pits a woman with a vast, expansive inner life, filled with desire and a sense of possibility and self-discovery, but she lives in a natural world . . . that doesn't care one whit about her hopes, her dreams. Indeed, the doctor tells her that any hope, any dream, any sense of possibility that she has is simply an illusion."
—Roger Lundin, author of Believing Again: Doubt and Faith in a Secular Age (Eerdmans, 2009)
What makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers? In this segment, Roger Lundin discusses his book Believing Again: Doubt and Faith in a Secular Age. Distinctively modern unbelief is defined as a socially accepted and intellectually viable shift that saw faith in God as optional. Beginning in the seventeenth century, the romanticization of the human imagination resulted from the steady disenchantment of the world as rendered by the physical sciences and later the biological sciences. Lundin explains that this world seems increasingly indifferent to or even hostile to the world that human beings imagine, the world that they dream of and desire to live in. As an example of this in literature, he discusses the understanding of inner life and outward realities present in literature such as Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Lundin praises the imaginative possibilities in poetry and literature, but warns against the assumption that we all possess deep imaginations that are more powerful and meaningful than anything we could find in the natural world. ⇧
• • •
David Bentley Hart
"The sort of atheism you get from the current group is so complacent and so lacking in any deep thought that it's sort of the People magazine approach to atheism, and so it has a certain marketability."
—David Bentley Hart, author of Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2009)
David Bentley Hart discusses his book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. Hart describes these delusions as a sense that the human race has been emancipated by agents of reason and tolerance. This is popularized atheism's founding myth, he says, and it’s captivating and easy to follow. Hart’s book exposes the falseness of this revisionist and self-serving modern myth in vivid detail. He lists these atheists' three basic arguments: 1) Empirical science is better able to explain existence than theology and metaphysics; 2) There are no rational grounds for belief and therefore it is of its nature contrary to reason; and 3) The history of Christianity is shown to be oppressive and cruel. Hart sees the first two arguments as basic category mistakes, and the third as nothing less than bad historical research. He concludes that the irrational moralism of these atheists has no basis in truth and is fundamentally incoherent. ⇧
Guests on Volume 99
• MARILYN CHANDLER McENTYRE on how the abuse of language creates distrust in the power of words and on how we can be better stewards of the gift of language
• PAUL A. RAHE on the heresy of progressivism, which abandons vital convictions about human nature and political order and invites the advent of “soft despotism”
• JAMES L. NOLAN, JR. on how European countries have adopted the American model of problem-solving courts (and what they also get in the bargain)
• ANDREW J. CHERLIN on why the twin American commitments to marriage and to expressive individualism hurt families
• DALE KEUHNE on the faulty assumption that intimate relationships demand sexual involvement, and on how the essentially relational nature of the Gospel is ignored
• ALISON MILBANK on how the fantasy writings of G. K. Chesterton and J. R. R. Tolkien are intended to reconnect readers with reality
This Volume is also available on CD
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
"Part of the church’s call is to be countercultural and right now the word of proclamation and even the word of admonition is a countercultural act. And to assemble people, to see each other face to face instead of through the medium of a screen is becoming countercultural as we have a generation coming up who text each other from across the hall. . . . I think that the gathering and the conversation that can only happen in the Church needs to be a preservation issue."
— Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, author of Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (Eerdmans, 2009)
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre discusses the complex ecosystem of language — both spoken and written — and how the health of our languages affects our thoughts, our relationships, and our capacities for conversation, prayer, and contemplation. While a well-turned phrase and a facility for eloquent argument may be viewed as a dangerous form of social power, McEntyre argues that anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism are poor defenses against such abuses through language. Instead, McEntyre proposes that we should foster habits of stewardship and preservation which seek to honor language by allowing ourselves to be addressed by it, to pause around it, and to dwell in it, rather than commanding and wielding our words as weapons. ⇧
• • •
Paul A. Rahe
"The problem was: can you have liberty in a large territory, say the size of the United States? And the initial answer that Montesquieu offers is 'No, you cannot' because in a large territory there are a thousand things that have to be dealt with, there are always emergencies. This leads to a concentration of power in the hands of the executive. Montesquieu suggested, however, that there were two ways that you could sustain liberty on an extended territory."
— Paul A. Rahe, author of Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect (Yale University Press, 2009)
Paul Rahe locates a significant shift in attitudes concerning political governance that developed under the influence of nineteenth-century Hegelian historical progressivism. In contrast to what Rahe calls “the heresy of progressivism,” political philosophers prior to Hegel often recognized that throughout history, despotism had been the normal form of government and that modes of political liberty were rare. For this reason, eighteenth-century political philosophers sought methods for separating powers according to federal and state jurisdictions, various functioning branches, and according to the principles of scale and the character of localized lands. ⇧
• • •
James L. Nolan, Jr.
"In the U. S., the courts are characterized by enthusiasm, boldness and pragmatism; and the other countries' are characterized by deliberation, moderation and restraint."
— James L. Nolan, Jr., author of Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: The International Problem-Solving Court Movement (Princeton University Press, 2009)
In his book Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing, sociologist James Nolan compares the attitudes of U.S. judicial courts with those from four other English speaking court systems in Canada, England, Scotland, and Australia. Historically, Nolan comments, court systems and their judges have not been concerned with solving the personal problems of offenders, but rather with the role of adjudicating. One factor leading to this shift in judiciary role is a growing sense of futility felt among judges who see offenders cycle through their courts repeatedly. However, Nolan questions the wisdom of redirecting resources to refashion the criminal court systems at the expense of rebuilding institutions that have typically assumed responsibility for solving personal problems. Nolan attributes the American reorientation of the judiciary role to American cultural values such as pragmatism, entrepreneurial skills, charisma, and therapeutic individualism. While the European court systems are much more modest and restrained about their expectations from their judicial branches, they are, nonetheless, sympathetic to the idea of a problem-solving court. Nolan offers the reminder, however, that legal institutions are cultural products as well and that to adopt an institution as radical as the problem-solving courts may be to embrace many more American cultural assumptions than the European courts are comfortable with. ⇧
• • •
Andrew Cherlin
"I think Americans have two conflicting values in their heads about marriage. On the one hand, they really want to be married. We have one of the highest marriage rates of any country. On the other hand, they think of their marriages in a very personal sense. Am I getting what I need? Am I developing enough as a person in my marriage? And if the answer is no, they feel justified in leaving."
— Andrew Cherlin, author of The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today (Knopf, 2009)
Sociologist Andrew Cherlin identifies a surprising disparity between American divorce rates and European divorce rates. Despite widespread religious sentiments among Americans, American marriages and cohabiting partnerships seem to be more fragile than their secular European counterparts. Cherlin locates a correlation between American divorce rates and American religion as taught in the flourishing mega-churches, in which people are encouraged to seek personal growth and fulfillment. Cherlin notes that while some European countries, such as Spain and Italy, are highly religious and other European countries, such as those in Scandinavia, are highly individualistic, the United States is the only country where one finds both a strong value on religion and a strong value on individualistic ways of thinking. ⇧
• • •
Dale Keuhne
"But what I realized was that this idea that sexuality was necessary for human fulfillment was something that comes mostly from the sexual revolution in the 60's, and until then that assumption was not part of Western society, and as a result, not only was same-sex marriage off the table, but the idea of fulfillment and sexuality being connected wasn't part of the equation."
— Dale Kuehne, author of Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationship Beyond an Age of Individualism (Baker, 2009)
Dale Kuehne discusses the relatively recent view that deep personal and relational fulfillment requires sexual intimacy. Though sexual deviancy has existed throughout history, societies that have been defined less by individualism and more by issues of public and communal virtue, viewed sex as an appetite that should be restrained, typically within marriage between a man and a woman. For instance, contrary to contemporary assumptions, in which sexual intimacy is requisite for the deepest form of human fulfillment, the ancient Greeks viewed male to male friendship as the highest form of relationship because it was seen as the most rational and least enslaved to the sexual appetite. Kuehne argues that individualism is detrimental to human relationships and to our capacity to imagine intimacy because it undermines more complex, communal structures for relationships. ⇧
• • •
Alison Milbank
"Chesterton saw that in order to restore the real, you did have to take a journey away from it."
— Alison Milbank, author of Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real (T & T Clark, 2009)
Theologian Alison Milbank discusses the influence that G. K. Chesterton had upon J. R. R. Tolkien. Both writers saw fantasy as an escape from reality, but also a journey that would ultimately restore one’s perception of what was truly real. Tolkien, in particular, wanted his fantasies to enable readers to see the objects of this world as meaningful things apart from ourselves, rather than dead objects subject entirely to our manipulation and control. Milbank comments that Tolkien’s fantasies reflect a desire to return to a medieval view in which objects participate in reality as we participate in reality, with their own kind of form and integrity. For both authors, the things we perceive in the world present themselves as intentional, personal, and given. ⇧
Guests on Volume 99
• MARILYN CHANDLER McENTYRE on how the abuse of language creates distrust in the power of words and on how we can be better stewards of the gift of language
• PAUL A. RAHE on the heresy of progressivism, which abandons vital convictions about human nature and political order and invites the advent of “soft despotism”
• JAMES L. NOLAN, JR. on how European countries have adopted the American model of problem-solving courts (and what they also get in the bargain)
• ANDREW J. CHERLIN on why the twin American commitments to marriage and to expressive individualism hurt families
• DALE KEUHNE on the faulty assumption that intimate relationships demand sexual involvement, and on how the essentially relational nature of the Gospel is ignored
• ALISON MILBANK on how the fantasy writings of G. K. Chesterton and J. R. R. Tolkien are intended to reconnect readers with reality
A digital edition of this Volume is also available
Click here to download a pdf file with the contents listing and bibliographic information about this Volume.
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
"Part of the church’s call is to be countercultural and right now the word of proclamation and even the word of admonition is a countercultural act. And to assemble people, to see each other face to face instead of through the medium of a screen is becoming countercultural as we have a generation coming up who text each other from across the hall. . . . I think that the gathering and the conversation that can only happen in the Church needs to be a preservation issue."
— Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, author of Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (Eerdmans, 2009)
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre discusses the complex ecosystem of language — both spoken and written — and how the health of our languages affects our thoughts, our relationships, and our capacities for conversation, prayer, and contemplation. While a well-turned phrase and a facility for eloquent argument may be viewed as a dangerous form of social power, McEntyre argues that anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism are poor defenses against such abuses through language. Instead, McEntyre proposes that we should foster habits of stewardship and preservation which seek to honor language by allowing ourselves to be addressed by it, to pause around it, and to dwell in it, rather than commanding and wielding our words as weapons. ⇧
• • •
Paul A. Rahe
"The problem was: can you have liberty in a large territory, say the size of the United States? And the initial answer that Montesquieu offers is 'No, you cannot' because in a large territory there are a thousand things that have to be dealt with, there are always emergencies. This leads to a concentration of power in the hands of the executive. Montesquieu suggested, however, that there were two ways that you could sustain liberty on an extended territory."
— Paul A. Rahe, author of Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect (Yale University Press, 2009)
Paul Rahe locates a significant shift in attitudes concerning political governance that developed under the influence of nineteenth-century Hegelian historical progressivism. In contrast to what Rahe calls “the heresy of progressivism,” political philosophers prior to Hegel often recognized that throughout history, despotism had been the normal form of government and that modes of political liberty were rare. For this reason, eighteenth-century political philosophers sought methods for separating powers according to federal and state jurisdictions, various functioning branches, and according to the principles of scale and the character of localized lands. ⇧
• • •
James L. Nolan, Jr.
"In the U. S., the courts are characterized by enthusiasm, boldness and pragmatism; and the other countries' are characterized by deliberation, moderation and restraint."
— James L. Nolan, Jr., author of Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: The International Problem-Solving Court Movement (Princeton University Press, 2009)
In his book Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing, sociologist James Nolan compares the attitudes of U.S. judicial courts with those from four other English speaking court systems in Canada, England, Scotland, and Australia. Historically, Nolan comments, court systems and their judges have not been concerned with solving the personal problems of offenders, but rather with the role of adjudicating. One factor leading to this shift in judiciary role is a growing sense of futility felt among judges who see offenders cycle through their courts repeatedly. However, Nolan questions the wisdom of redirecting resources to refashion the criminal court systems at the expense of rebuilding institutions that have typically assumed responsibility for solving personal problems. Nolan attributes the American reorientation of the judiciary role to American cultural values such as pragmatism, entrepreneurial skills, charisma, and therapeutic individualism. While the European court systems are much more modest and restrained about their expectations from their judicial branches, they are, nonetheless, sympathetic to the idea of a problem-solving court. Nolan offers the reminder, however, that legal institutions are cultural products as well and that to adopt an institution as radical as the problem-solving courts may be to embrace many more American cultural assumptions than the European courts are comfortable with. ⇧
• • •
Andrew Cherlin
"I think Americans have two conflicting values in their heads about marriage. On the one hand, they really want to be married. We have one of the highest marriage rates of any country. On the other hand, they think of their marriages in a very personal sense. Am I getting what I need? Am I developing enough as a person in my marriage? And if the answer is no, they feel justified in leaving."
— Andrew Cherlin, author of The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today (Knopf, 2009)
Sociologist Andrew Cherlin identifies a surprising disparity between American divorce rates and European divorce rates. Despite widespread religious sentiments among Americans, American marriages and cohabiting partnerships seem to be more fragile than their secular European counterparts. Cherlin locates a correlation between American divorce rates and American religion as taught in the flourishing mega-churches, in which people are encouraged to seek personal growth and fulfillment. Cherlin notes that while some European countries, such as Spain and Italy, are highly religious and other European countries, such as those in Scandinavia, are highly individualistic, the United States is the only country where one finds both a strong value on religion and a strong value on individualistic ways of thinking. ⇧
• • •
Dale Keuhne
"But what I realized was that this idea that sexuality was necessary for human fulfillment was something that comes mostly from the sexual revolution in the 60's, and until then that assumption was not part of Western society, and as a result, not only was same-sex marriage off the table, but the idea of fulfillment and sexuality being connected wasn't part of the equation."
— Dale Kuehne, author of Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationship Beyond an Age of Individualism (Baker, 2009)
Dale Kuehne discusses the relatively recent view that deep personal and relational fulfillment requires sexual intimacy. Though sexual deviancy has existed throughout history, societies that have been defined less by individualism and more by issues of public and communal virtue, viewed sex as an appetite that should be restrained, typically within marriage between a man and a woman. For instance, contrary to contemporary assumptions, in which sexual intimacy is requisite for the deepest form of human fulfillment, the ancient Greeks viewed male to male friendship as the highest form of relationship because it was seen as the most rational and least enslaved to the sexual appetite. Kuehne argues that individualism is detrimental to human relationships and to our capacity to imagine intimacy because it undermines more complex, communal structures for relationships. ⇧
• • •
Alison Milbank
"Chesterton saw that in order to restore the real, you did have to take a journey away from it."
— Alison Milbank, author of Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real (T & T Clark, 2009)
Theologian Alison Milbank discusses the influence that G. K. Chesterton had upon J. R. R. Tolkien. Both writers saw fantasy as an escape from reality, but also a journey that would ultimately restore one’s perception of what was truly real. Tolkien, in particular, wanted his fantasies to enable readers to see the objects of this world as meaningful things apart from ourselves, rather than dead objects subject entirely to our manipulation and control. Milbank comments that Tolkien’s fantasies reflect a desire to return to a medieval view in which objects participate in reality as we participate in reality, with their own kind of form and integrity. For both authors, the things we perceive in the world present themselves as intentional, personal, and given. ⇧
In this article, John Desmond uses the novels of Walker Percy to critique the increasing trend in today’s medical fields and in secular society as a whole to affirm, even if tacitly, that suicide is a decision belonging to each individual as a right. Desmond examines how the influence of existentialist philosophers, Albert Camus and Søren Kierkegaard, informed the theme of suicide in Percy’s novels. As a philosophical novelist, Percy was not merely interested in the narrative effect of suicide, but more deeply wanted to probe how modern man finds himself living a form of “spiritual suicide” or “sickness unto death” (in the words of Kierkegaard). Percy’s critique of modernity was — following Alexis de Tocqueville — a critique of Cartesian dualisms that separated mind from body and man from nature, leading eventually to an existential man isolated both from himself and his neighbor.
This article was originally published in Modern Age, Winter 2005. Read by Ken Myers. 24 minutes.
Much public attention is given to the decline of marriage and the family in America, but few have thought to relate this decline to the changing ways in which Americans understand and practice courtship. The cultural wisdom and conventions that once guided young men and women in their efforts to find and win suitable partners for marriage are vanishing. Modesty and sexual restraint are ridiculed, while previously stigmatized behaviors such as casual sexual "hook-ups" and premarital cohabitation have become commonplace. “Wandering toward the Altar” explores the broader cultural changes behind the end of traditional American courtship, including the rise of youth culture and dating; the demise of the productive family household; careerism and the later age of first marriage; the replacement of romantic imagination with youthful cynicism about love and marriage; and the exclusion of home and family from the practices of courting. This program features studio interviews with Leon and Amy Kass, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Wendy Shalit, Allan C. Carlson, Beth Bailey, Steven Nock, Kay Hymowitz, and Douglas Wilson, as well as extensive field reporting.
4 hours 30 minutes. $15.
“God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners.” William Wilberforce, a young parliamentarian, recorded these audacious ambitions in his diary on October 28, 1787. Forty-six years later and three days before his death, slavery was abolished throughout the entire British empire. Over the course of these years he went from being one of the most vilified men in Europe to one of the most loved and revered in the world. This biographical account of Wilberforce's life and work was written by John Pollock, and is introduced by J. Douglas Holladay.
This article was originally published as a Trinity Forum Reading,1996. Read by Ken Myers. 50 minutes.
Mardi Keyes, from the Southborough, Massachusetts branch of L’Abri Fellowship, explains how modern assumptions about the nature of adolescence differ from a biblical understanding of human development. She also describes ways in which intergenerational fellowship within the Church can deter many adolescent crises. Then pastor Mark DeVries describes the ideas in his book Family-Based Youth Ministry.
74 minutes.
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