
originally published 3/1/1999
For critic Roger Lundin, Emily Dickinson stands among the first people in the West to realize the modern malaise. Thus, her understanding of love, nature, religion, and mortality are modern in content. Lundin speaks to the Dickinsonian understanding of both death and Creation. In the pre-modern period, life was bounded by the judgment of a loving God for man’s sin. In the modern era, Dickinson saw that life is bounded and frustrated by death which is put on man for an unknown reason by an indifferent, uncaring, and perhaps malevolent God. Dickinson was also frustrated in her relationship to Creation. She felt that Creation was silent and impervious and did not compare to the world within herself. Thus, she was plagued by doubt and tempted, as were the Gnostics, not to affirm the Creation as good.
11 minutes
PREVIEW
The player for the full version of this Feature is only available to current members. If you have an active membership, log in here. If you’d like to become a member — with access to all our audio programs — sign up here.
Related reading and listening
- Christian culture and the myth of the secular — Ken Myers draws on T. S. Eliot to argue that Western civilization has broken down, not into a multiplicity of cultures, but into a “post-culture.” (47 minutes)
- Modernity’s crisis of place — Craig Bartholomew reflects on the importance of place to our humanity. (58 minutes)
- The epistemology of love — In this lecture, N. T. Wright examines the epistemology of love and how it counters the reductionism of Enlightenment and Epicurean ways of knowing. (63 minutes)
- The cost of “killing” God — In this October 2023 lecture, Carl Trueman explores the concept of “desecration” as a frame for understanding the nature of modernity in our time. (42 minutes)
- Cultural superiority and Medieval romance literature —
FROM VOL. 164 Tiffany Schubert argues that Jane Austen’s novels subtly incorporate some medieval literary conventions in ways that enable modern readers to experience a sense of wonder, romance, and the benevolence of Providence. (30 minutes) - A flood of images — Oliver O’Donovan describes the distinctive character of publicity in modernity, which drowns us in a flood of ever-changing representations that do not serve the common good. (37 minutes)
- Publicity and representative images in society — Oliver O’Donovan describes the nature of publicity as the force that mediates our communication with one another, creating common interests and then rapidly subsuming them into newer ones.(Lecture 3 of 3; 57 minutes)
- Mordor versus the Shire — In this lecture, Heidi White explains how the modern project is a diabolical inversion of Christendom and calls for Christians to build lives and a culture that can counter it. (53 minutes)
- Postmodern culture and the gospel —
FROM VOL. 6 Roger Lundin discusses the ethical and theological consequences of our postmodern culture. (9 minutes) - “Only a real world can save us” — Oliver O’Donovan explores how the “religion” of modernity lacks a coherent world in which one may participate with full human agency and moral purpose. (Lecture 3 of 3; 61 minutes)
- Poetry and Liturgy — Karen Dieleman explores the influence of liturgical practices on shaping the imaginations and poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Proctor. (49 minutes)
- Sacramental Poetics — Poet and Eastern Orthodox believer Scott Cairns explains how a good poem functions like an icon: it assists the process of our becoming aware of what is real, and it is generative in the ways it keeps opening up new understandings. (56 minutes)
- A poet’s relationship to time —
FROM VOL. 57 Poet Wilmer Mills (1969–2011) discusses how his agricultural and cross-cultural childhood in Brazil shaped his imagination and his relationship with modernity. (11 minutes) - Joy & sorrow, destitution & abundance — In this poetry reading and talk, poet Christian Wiman discusses his own faith journey and how his struggles worked themselves into his poems. (40 minutes)
- Seeing Creation Anew: The Life & Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins — Dana Gioia examines Gerard Manley Hopkins‘s poetic genius and dedication to Christ in spite of his personal trials and difficult cultural context. (55 minutes)
- “The essence of a moment, clearly perceived” — Haiku poet Gary Hotham reads his poetry and discusses how the form of haiku reveals the connection between creatures and creation. (45 minutes)
- The joy and mystery of poetry —
FROM VOL. 98 Jeanne Murray Walker discusses how 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. (23 minutes) - “The Emersonian elixir” —
FROM VOL. 20 Robert Richardson and Roger Lundin discuss how Ralph Waldo Emerson’s legacy lingers in American culture. (18 minutes) - The primacy of imagination —
FROM VOL. 51 Literary critic Roger Lundin situates William Blake as a descendant of the radical Protestant movement of the 17th century and as a forerunner of the late 19th and early 20th century movements that put theology and the human spirit in opposition to the natural, fragmented, fallen world. (11 minutes) - John Donne’s Passion in Life, Faith, & Verse — Poet Dana Gioia discusses the remarkable life of poet John Donne and how his spiritual and intellectual struggles created the conditions for his unique poetic voice. (53 minutes)
- Longfellow’s appeal —
FROM VOL. 53 Poet and critic Dana Gioia explains why Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) is one of the three great American poets. (30 minutes) - Modernity and the shaping of America —
FROM VOL. 48 Historian Jon Butler explains how aspects of modernity were already present and at work in colonial American life prior to 1776. (12 minutes) - Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 163 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Youngblood, R. J. Snell, Nicholas Denysenko, Nigel Biggar, Robert McNamara, and David Cayley
- Science’s need for philosophy and revelation — D. Stephen Long explores a consistent theme in the work of theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar: the relationship between Christianity, modernity, and secularity. (46 minutes)
- Touch’d with a coal from heav’n — Daniel Ritchie finds in the poetry of William Cowper (1731–1800) an anticipation of Michael Polanyi’s epistemology
- How we know the world — Daniel Ritchie argues that poet and hymnodist William Cowper was ahead of his time in critiquing the Enlightenment’s reductionist view of knowledge. (16 minutes)
- William Cowper: Reconciling the Heart with the Head — Daniel E. Ritchie discusses the life and work of poet William Cowper (1731–1800), comparing his commitment to understanding reality through personal knowledge, intuition, and rigorous contemplation with the thought of Michael Polanyi. (43 minutes)
- Augusto Del Noce’s critique of modernity —
FROM VOL. 128 Physicist and mathematician Carlo Lancellotti discusses the life and work of twentieth-century Italian philosopher, Augusto Del Noce. (25 minutes) - Faith as the pathway to knowledge — Lesslie Newbigin on authority and the Author of all being
- The integration of theoretical and mythic intelligence —
FROM VOL. 156 William C. Hackett discusses the relationships between philosophy and theology, and of both to the meaning embedded in myth. (29 minutes) - Bearing witness through poetry — Roger Lundin discusses the incarnational witness of poet Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004), exploring his service to truth and to his native tongue, Polish. (16 minutes)
- Czesław Miłosz: A Poet of Luminous Things — Roger Lundin discusses the themes, breadth, and depth of poet Czesław Miłosz‘s work, explaining how Milosz incarnated in his life and work a sense of exile and alienation so common to modern man. (43 minutes)
- A fearful darkness in mind, heart, and spirit — Roberta Bayer draws on the work of George Parkin Grant (1918–1988) to argue that our “culture of death” must be countered with an understanding of reality based in love, redemptive suffering, and a recognition of limitations to individual control. (33 minutes)
- Soundings of the human soul — Professor John H. Timmerman discusses the poetry of the late Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) and his visit to her home, Eagle Pond Farm. (16 minutes)
- Jane Kenyon: Living and Dying at Eagle Pond Farm — Biographer John H. Timmerman discusses the life and work of poet Jane Kenyon (1947–1995). (53 minutes)
- Cleansing sea breezes — Thomas C. Oden argues that rather than being conformed to contemporary ideological trends, we should be informed by 2000 years of the Church’s wisdom. And Darrell Amundsen corrects some false claims about the early Church’s views on suicide. (27 minutes)
- Divorcing the spirit of the age — Thomas C. Oden on overcoming the theological faddism of the late twentieth century
- Orienting reason and passions — In an essay titled “The Abolition of Mania” (Modern Age, Spring 2022), Michael Ward applies C. S. Lewis’s insights to the polarization that afflicts modern societies. (16 minutes)
- Faith and unbelief —
FROM VOL. 98 This Archive Feature revisits two conversations, one with Roger Lundin and one with David Bentley Hart, on what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (39 minutes) - Lessons from Leviticus — The book of Leviticus may be assumed to be irrelevant for charting a way through the challenges of modernity. Theologian Peter J. Leithart disagrees. (22 minutes)
- The rich significance of everyday life — In this interview from 2000, Roger Lundin — a frequent guest on our Journal — explains how the poetry of Richer Wilbur connects with the verse of other New England poets. (24 minutes)
- The desires of the heart, the constraints of creation — Roger Lundin describes how Richard Wilbur’s poetry connects aesthetic experience to life in the world.
- Resituating discussion of “science” and “religion” — Peter Harrison argues that modern Western culture’s partitioning of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ into distinct spheres is a novel categorical conception in history. (58 minutes)
- Sources of wisdom (and of doubt) — Roger Lundin shares what he has appreciated about Mars Hill Audio conversations, and he discusses what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (32 minutes)
- Aspects of our un-Christening — In this Friday Feature — presented courtesy of Biola University — Carlo Lancellotti talks with Aaron Kheriaty about the central ideas in Augusto Del Noce’s writings. (43 minutes)
- Remembering Roger Lundin (1949-2015) — Today’s Feature presents our first and last interviews with frequent guest Roger Lundin (1949-2015), in which he shares his love of language and discusses a Christian understanding of desire. (34 minutes)
- Music for St. Cecilia’s Day — Ken Myers introduces several poems and related musical compositions that celebrate the heavenly gift of music and thereby honor St. Cecilia. (21 minutes)
- The loss of awe, the idolatry of partial thinking — Thaddeus J. Kozinski on reading modernity’s symptoms wisely (and wonder-fully)
- The paradoxes of therapeutic culture — Stephen Gardner and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn discuss Philip Reiff’s diagnosis of how psychology replaced the social roles of religion, morality, and custom, redefining the meaning of what is public. (39 minutes)
- Confronting modernity through farming — Jesse Straight, who nurtures the life of Whiffletree Farm in Warrenton, Virginia, talks about how he decided to pursue a vocation as a farmer in an effort to discover a way of life that worked against the characteristic fragmentation so dispiriting in modern culture. (24 minutes)