Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 55

Related reading and listening

• We are not “stochastic parrots” — In this essay, Talbot Brewer argues that our understanding of the nature of words and their relationship to human nature is “teetering” due to artificial intelligence chatbot systems and large language models (LLMs). (42 minutes)
• The reclaiming of authentic liberalism — John Médaille examines the Christian roots of liberalism and how liberalism might be recovered from the heresy of secularism. (51 minutes)
• Catechesis in “Screentopia” — In this lecture, Brad East builds a case for why he believes digital technology is the greatest threat facing American Christians today. (57 minutes)
• Truth lives in language — Craig Gay reflects on how language is not merely a tool for humans to use, but is a part of our very being as creatures made in the image of the God who is the living Word. (52 minutes)
• How tech is making us less human — Christine Rosen argues that we must reckon with serious moral and ethical questions raised by the acceleration of “artificial intelligence” into almost every area of life. (31 minutes)
• Human beings as “word-bearers” — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler argues that misology — hatred for reason and contempt for language — is a deep cause of our current cultural crisis. (56 minutes)
• St. Thomas the anthropologist — G. K. Chesterton on Aquinas’s complete Science of Man
• Knowing and living our metaphysical totality — Clyde Kilby on the power of myth to bring together “the slender hints of the knowable”
• Modernity’s crisis of place — Craig Bartholomew reflects on the importance of place to our humanity. (58 minutes)
• A sampling of newly published lectures — Ken Myers introduces listeners to four recently released lectures, courtesy of our Partners. The lecturers are Jennifer Frey, Gary Saul Morson, N. T. Wright, and Andrew Kern. (27 minutes)
• The inward eye, cosmic truth, and making well — Andrew Kern takes his listeners along an “interlinear” reading of a portion of St. Augustine’s Confessions that explores the differences between how God makes and how we create. (38 minutes)
• Grace and Christian realism — Jennifer Frey explores Thomist elements in Flannery O’Connor’s theology and writing, with a particular emphasis on a Thomist understanding of art. (39 minutes)
• Divine love and human sexuality — Paul Tyson argues that views about sexuality are downstream from theological — or at least metaphysical — assumptions about human nature. (16 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)
• “Subtraction stories” and a longing for transcendence — In this lecture, James K. A. Smith explores key elements of Charles Taylor’s understanding of what it means to live in a secular age. (43 minutes)
• The primacy of the Body of Christ — FROM VOL. 134 Philip Turner reflects on how Christian ethics is misplaced if it has as its central concern individual moral behavior or social justice. (28 minutes)
• How music blesses and teaches — FROM VOL. 64 Theologian and musician Jeremy Begbie explores what we learn about time, theology, and the structure of Creation from the experience of music. (28 minutes)
• The implausibility of belief — FROM VOL. 123 James K. A. Smith discusses the evangelical and ecclesial ramifications for Christians living within Charles Taylor’s third wave of secularism. (25 minutes)
• Cosmic realities in the built world — Christopher and Christine Perrin discuss the implications of architect Christopher Alexander’s (1936–2022) discovery of patterns of building that cohere with the the created cosmos and with ourselves as human creatures. (59 minutes)
• The “book” of Creation — Alan Noble explains why the modern world makes it profoundly difficult to experience Creation as revelation, and he encourages unmediated encounters with Creation that lead to meditation. (52 minutes)
• Mystery novels with theological concerns — In these interviews from 1993, mystery author P. D. James speaks about the philosophical and theological issues woven into her novels, and Alan Jacobs discusses James’s novel The Children of Men. (23 minutes)
• Modern fictional “heroes” — FROM VOL. 141 Susanna Lee discusses moral authority in the heroes of hard-boiled crime fiction. (24 minutes)
• Technophiliac obsessions — FROM VOL. 141 Literary and media scholar Grant Wythoff talks about the “father of science fiction,” Hugo Gernsback. (26 minutes)
• Ontology and reality in fiction — Katy Carl discusses Catholic novelist Graham Greene’s skill in portraying the struggle between spiritual belief and doubt. (27 minutes)
• Sacred and Profane Love: Graham Greene and the Catholic Imagination — Katy Carl discusses novelist Graham Greene’s fiction and spiritual struggles in light of the concept of the Catholic imagination. (49 minutes)
• Humility and moral knowledge — FROM VOL. 149 Steven L. Porter discusses The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, an unfinished manuscript (which he helped to complete) by the late philosopher Dallas Willard. (22 minutes)
• Utopian dreams and cynicism — John Durham Peters discusses the history of the idea of communication, saying that our hopes are too high when we believe that the solution to social discord is just better communication. (49 minutes)
• Man as “both mystic and hobbit” — D. C. Schindler explores how building is a quintessential human activity and an expression of our view of the meaning of reality. (47 minutes)
• Setting the liberal arts free — In addressing the state of liberal arts education in the U.S., Gilbert Meilaender raises some core questions and makes some surprising proposals. (28 minutes)
• Secularization and anarchy — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the necessary connection between law, ethics, and worship
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 165 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jeffrey Bilbro, Daniel McInerny, Joseph Minich, Carl Elliott, Nadya Williams, and Don W. King
• Still connected to the land — Nadya Williams on the inescapably earthy character of human flourishing
• Clips from five extended interviews — We are pleased to share clips from five interviews that we’ve recently produced as full-length Conversations. (30 minutes)
• Georges Bernanos & the Mystery of the Human Person — Translator J. C. Whitehouse praises French novelist Georges Bernanos’s profundity in exploring the depths of the human soul through the vehicle of fiction. (58 minutes)
• Power to the people — Nathan O. Hatch on the DIY spirit of early American Christianity
• A mixed reception — FROM VOL. 162 Mark Noll discusses early critical reception of C. S. Lewis’s work in America. (29 minutes)
• A Christian understanding of human nature — FROM VOL. 35 Robert C. Roberts and Mark R. Talbot discuss the need for Christian psychologists to draw from Christianity’s deep tradition of understanding human nature. (15 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)
• Christian unity and civil society — Oliver O’Donovan introduces listeners to Dutch lay theologian Hugo Grotius, arguing that the questions he tackled relate to perennial concerns about the relationship between divine and human agency, and between civil and ecclesiastical authority. (Lecture 2 of 3; 57 minutes)
• The demoralizing effect of pagan Roman religion — Oliver O’Donovan examines St. Augustine’s critique of pagan Roman religion in Book II of his treatise City of God and asks his audience to consider what insights Augustine’s critique has for us today. (Lecture 1 of 3; 51 minutes)
• It takes a character (and a village) — Herbert McCabe, O.P. on the Aristotelian, Thomistic, and MacIntyrean account of the moral life
• The recovery of an integrated ecology — In this essay, Michael Hanby unpacks the summons of Laudato si’ to an ecological way of life based on a proper understanding of creation in its fullness and integrity. (57 minutes)
• Manners and morals — FROM VOL. 19 Film and literary critic Alan Jacobs discusses how modern audiences relate to the manners and morals portrayed in Jane Austen films. (16 minutes)
• Cultivating the Virtue of Reverence — Paul Woodruff (1943–2023) discusses the importance of reverence as a virtue that enriches relationships, elevates civic life, and helps leaders to wield power wisely. (53 minutes)
• Awakening before what is great — Romano Guardini on the proper posture of one in the presence of greatness
• Antagonism or fruitfulness? — FROM VOL. 108 Jean Porter describes how natural law justifies legal and moral authority within the life of the human person. (17 minutes)
• Natural law as “performance” — FROM VOL. 124 R. J. Snell discusses how novel ideas about natural law focus less on moral propositions and concepts and more on the thrust for meaning and value. (27 minutes)
• Politics and the good — FROM VOL. 160 D. C. Schindler argues that political order cannot be disentangled from the social, and that fundamental questions of what humans are and what the good is cannot be bracketed from politics. (30 minutes)
• The profound drama of human sexuality — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler explains the cosmological significance of human sexuality and why it is paradigmatic of the relationship between nature and freedom. (32 minutes)