Truth lives in language

Related reading and listening

• Layers in “Logos” — Peter Kreeft on the metaphysical, psychological, and linguistic referents of logos
• Creation, in harmony with the Logos — Rowan Williams on the Logos and the diverse logoi that mirror it
• 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)
• 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)
• “Your life is a miracle” — In this lecture, L. M. Sacasas questions whether Byung-Chul Han’s critique of modern life as a “burnout society” is still accurate. (40 minutes)
• On disposable experience — Todd Gitlin argues that we simultaneously resent and crave the experience of media saturation, and that it ultimately cheapens our lives. (33 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)
• Turning Petrarchan love poetry on its head — Dr. Benedict Whalen examines the influence of Petrarchan love poetry on Europe, and he reveals through a close read of Romeo and Juliet how Shakespeare subverted key features of Petrarch’s love poems to rich effect. (54 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)
• 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)
• 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)
• To be at home in the world — D. C. Schindler examines how rituals enable us to experience time in a meaningful way — how they actually make time habitable for us. (41 minutes)
• A letter from Ken Myers — Ken Myers examines the cultural implications of the Incarnation and the deep-seated dualism of modernity that divorces spirituality from our material experience. (22 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)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 166 — FEATURED GUESTS: William Cavanaugh, Kent Burreson, Beth Hoeltke, Jeffrey Barbeau, Jason Baxter, John Betz, and Bruce Herman
• 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)
• 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)
• How to illustrate music and mystery — FROM VOL. 164 Illustrator Joonas Sildre discusses his graphic biography of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. (19 minutes)
• Media as agencies of order — Media theorist John Durham Peters wants us to reexamine the purposes of media and how fundamental media are. (59 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)
• 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)
• Pathways of the Mind: The Joy of the Essay — Alan Jacobs thinks Christians should embrace the potential in the literary form of the essay, because of the way it corresponds to the navigation and journey of a Christian life. (48 minutes)
• Good News for All Creation — Theologian Norman Wirzba helps us rethink the category of nature in terms of the Christian doctrine of creation. (66 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)
• What it means to be a creature — Fred Sanders offers a Trinitarian analysis of the doctrinal significance of the biblical Adam, explaining how his creaturehood is paradigmatic for human beings and their relationship with the Triune God. (46 minutes)
• 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)
• The Transformed Vision of Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Poet Malcolm Guite explores the dramatic and even prophetic parallels between the life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and that of the titular character in his famous poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” (59 minutes)
• The hatred of logos — D. C. Schindler draws on Plato to argue that in its very form, social media evidences a general contempt for logos — reason and language — which defines man. (26 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)
• Speaking the word in love — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler examines core insights from Ferdinand Ulrich on the central vocation of man and the meaning of being. (32 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)
• Personhood and the gift of the self — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler examines the concept of self-gift which was central to Karol Wojtyła’s thought. (39 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)
• The downward spiral of all technocracies — Andrew Willard Jones explains the two paths that exist with the development of new technologies: one which leads to an expansion of the humane world and one which exploits and truncates both Creation and humanity. (65 minutes)
• To see people as people — Anthony Bradley argues that a recovery of Christian personalism is needed to counter the dehumanization, polarization, and tribalism of our day. (45 minutes)
• Sacramental correspondence — FROM VOL. 51 Poet Dana Gioia discusses the state of contemporary poetry and the sacramental relationship between language and reality. (15 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 164 — FEATURED GUESTS: Dana Gioia, Brady Stiller, Robert Royal, Richard DeClue, Tiffany Schubert, and Joonas Sildre
• Ethical issues in neurobiological interventions — William Hurlbut explores current neurobiological advancements and the ethics and dangers of biotechnology interventions that go beyond therapy. (62 minutes)
• How social media truncates relationships — In this lecture, Felicia Wu Song explains how social media industrializes and monetizes our relationships, forming us in modes of relationships and identity that are detrimental to ourselves and to society. (41 minutes)
• Gratitude and stewardship as political postures — FROM VOL. 118 Mark Mitchell explores the consequences of four concepts that are sadly missing from most political debates today: creatureliness, gratitude, human scale, and place. (18 minutes)