Areopagus Lectures
The Areopagus Lectures were inaugurated to extend the mission of MARS HILL AUDIO into our local community. In launching the Areopagus Lectures, MARS HILL AUDIO hopes to stimulate conversation among our neighbors about how to navigate this time in the Church’s history with wisdom, courage, and hope. By recording these important presentations and the subsequent live discussion, we can share what we are learning here in central Virginia with a wider audience.
Paul Tyson: Escaping the Silver Chair
For the fall 2018 Areopagus Lecture, philosopher Paul Tyson, in his talk entitled “Escaping the Silver Chair: Renewed Minds and Our Vision of Reality,” explored how the Christian responsibility “to repent” involves more than expressing feelings of regret for moral wrong-doing and the desire to reform. Rather, the New Testament call to “repentance,” the English rendition of the Greek word metanoia, is inseparable from radically reenvisioning what is “really real.” St. Paul’s admonition that we be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” — in other words, metanoia — invokes a process that demands the recognition and rejection of various false enchantments of this world. With the help of C. S. Lewis’s story The Silver Chair, however, we realize that identifying and then escaping the ways in which we are bewitched is no easy task.
Alison Milbank: Imaginative Apologetics beyond C. S. Lewis
The spring 2019 Areopagus Lecture featured theologian Alison Milbank. In her talk “Imaginative Apologetics beyond C. S. Lewis,” Milbank offered an approach to defending the Christian faith that restores the imagination as a faculty inseparable from reason. By using C. S. Lewis as a conversation partner — along with Owen Barfield, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, G. K. Chesterton, and Novalis — Milbank explored how the imagination is not just an instrumental means to an objective end, but the ecstatic and receptive means by which we participate in what is True and Real.
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.
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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.
D. C. Schindler: “For Freedom Set Free”
In the fall 2019 Areopagus Lecture, “‘For Freedom Set Free’: Retrieving Genuine Religious Liberty,” philosopher D. C. Schindler spoke about the Christian notion of religious liberty as a synthesis of the Jewish, Roman, and Greek traditions. In the Jewish tradition, one receives a theological understanding of freedom understood as freedom from bondage and from sin in order to more fully enter into a loving covenant with God. In the Roman tradition, freedom exists in relation to one’s membership within a polis and is established through legal codes. This objective political presence is internalized and personalized through the education of virtuous citizens. And in the Greek tradition, freedom is understood in relation to nature, on the one hand through membership in a tribe by kinship, and on the other hand, through participation in the Good, which is at the source of all being. Christianity, argues Schindler, is precisely the “receiving, healing, and transforming [of these] three distinct traditions” and Christian freedom is their “flourishing integration.”
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.
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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.
Simon Oliver: Creation, Modernity, & Public Theology
Many contemporary discussions that make reference to creation are framed in light of assumed conflicts between science and religion and are frequently concerned with giving an account of the earth’s origins. But is talking about origins synonymous with what the church fathers meant by the act of creation? Does providing scientifically plausible accounts of how the earth began or pointing to staggering probabilities as evidence for intelligent design provide an adequate understanding of the relationship between God and creation? Do we as modern Christians truly understand what the church fathers meant by “nothing” in the phrase creation ex nihilo?
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.
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.
Peter Leithart: The Cultural Consequences of Christian Division
In our Inaugural Areopagus Lecture, pastor-theologian Peter J. Leithart presented a lecture entitled “The Cultural Consequences of Christian Division.” In this talk, Dr. Leithart focuses on the pivotal role that the 1529 Marburg Colloquy played in Christian division among Protestants, particularly in the debate between Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli over the Real Presence in the Eucharist. As a result of the impasse between Luther and Zwingli (and their subsequent refusal to commune at the Lord’s table), the Colloquy of Marburg shifted the Eucharist from something that Christians primarily do together to something about which Christians think or believe a certain way.
Gisela Kreglinger: Victorian Wisdom for Contemporary Plights
Current protests and debates make us acutely aware of abuses fueled by unhealthy gender stereotypes and a culture infatuated with sex and coercive power. The desire to break free from the confinement of societal norms is especially strong among women. For the spring 2018 Areopagus Lecture, theologian Gisela Kreglinger, in a talk entitled “Victorian Wisdom for Contemporary Plights: George MacDonald, Gender, & Freedom” discussed how George MacDonald’s perspective on gender roles might guide us through some of the questions, problems, and concerns we face today.
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.
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.
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