released 11/5/2025

In this third of three lectures given in November 2001, Oliver O’Donovan describes the distinctive character of modernity as it regards communication and representation. While each culture throughout history has chosen and used representative images that mediate its particular loves and traditions, modernity is unique in its representations. Because we have lost faith in our previously shared images that help create social unity and cohesion, we are drowning in a flood of representations that keep changing. 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. Publicity homogenizes people and events, making them all into types. It leads, O’Donovan says, to social numbness and a crisis of representation. Believers must encourage one another in alertness, patience, and worship as a response to living in and with the real brokenness of society. O’Donovan concludes by reminding his listeners that the Church itself is and must be a representative image of the kingdom of God.

This lecture is provided courtesy of the Stob Lecture Series at Calvin Theological Seminary. Listen to the first lecture here and the second lecture here.

57 minutes

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