Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 66

Related reading and listening

• The true places aren’t on any map — Clyde Kilby on C. S. Lewis’s claim that the Gospel is the greatest myth
• Knowing and living our metaphysical totality — Clyde Kilby on the power of myth to bring together “the slender hints of the knowable”
• Savoring the taste of Reality — C. S. Lewis on the transporting, illuminating capacity of Myth
• When myth becomes fact — In this 1976 interview, Clyde Kilby (1902–1986) discusses C. S. Lewis’s critique of scientism and rationalism, his belief in the primacy of the imagination, and his mythic vision. (37 minutes)
• A great Reality at the core of things — Clyde Kilby on the nature and need for myths
• “A Myth Retold” — Literary critic Thomas Howard explains why he considers C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces to be one of the author’s richest and most rewarding works. (18 minutes)
• The destructive perils of speech without a real partner — Josef Pieper and Marc Barnes on how chatbots pervert the nature of conversation
• How to make war on nothingness? — David Bentley Hart argues that if it rejects Christ, the only remaining option for a post-Christian culture is conscious or “narcotic” nihilism, which takes the form of absolute, meaningless volition. (66 minutes)
• Machines and misanthropy — Nicholas Carr on how technology has transformed our understanding of progress (and people)
• Alienation and autoamputation: the price of power — Nicholas Carr on the numbing effect of technology
• Disengagement from the world — Nicholas Carr encourages us to consider how automation technologies impact our ability to engage with the world and whether — like a good tool — they present a more inviting world or close us off from that world. (30 minutes)
• 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)
• 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)
• A “cosmological omnibus” — George Grant recounts the fascinating history of Hernando Colón’s attempt in the 16th century to curate a universal library of the world’s knowledge. (41 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)
• 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)
• The “sovereign uselessness of moral reflection” — Calling on the wisdom of St. Augustine, Oliver O’Donovan reminds his listeners that all knowledge participates in the eternal Logos of God and is rooted in love, not disinterested moral judgement.(Lecture 1 of 3; 52 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)
• Beyond a reasonable doubt — From a 1980 interview with Ken Myers, Mortimer J. Adler discusses his argument that belief in the existence of God is rational. (14 minutes)
• Life more abundantly — Jeanne Schindler advocates for a return to an understanding and prioritizing of sensory experience — real engagement with the real world — as foundational to learning and living. (35 minutes)
• Technophiliac obsessions — FROM VOL. 141 Literary and media scholar Grant Wythoff talks about the “father of science fiction,” Hugo Gernsback. (26 minutes)
• The Heav’ns and All the Powers Therein — In this extended interview, Michael Ward makes a compelling case that the qualities attributed to the seven planets in the cosmology of antiquity and the Middle Ages are embodied in C. S. Lewis’s seven books about Narnia. (68 minutes)
• Heaven and earth are full of His glory — Gerald R. McDermott examines the typological tradition of the Church, particularly through Jonathan Edwards’s thought, and he argues for a recovery of the Christian understanding of the universe as an “immense Trinitarian symbol.” (61 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)
• Alert to the magic in the world — Junius Johnson discusses the importance of teaching stories, particularly fairy stories, in classical education. (25 minutes)
• “Earth-shaking” and “heart-breaking” beauty — FROM VOL. 151 Junius Johnson warns that the pursuit of beauty is both perilous and an experience that points to the desire for God. (25 minutes)
• A false dichotomy — In this conversation from 2009, Dallas Willard (1934–2013) discusses the truth of spiritual knowledge and its epistemological validity. (63 minutes)
• All trees, no forest — Richard Weaver on the attenuating of knowledge
• Christian belief as real knowledge — Dallas Willard on the modern divorce between faith and knowledge
• 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)
• Harbinger of disorder — Mark Mitchell on Michael Polanyi’s recognition of the dangerous dead-end of materialistic reductionism
• Universities as the hosts of reciprocating speech — Robert Jenson on how the Christian understanding of Truth in a personal Word shaped the Western university
• The vice of curiosity — Stanley Hauerwas on the warning from Paul Griffiths about desiring to own knowledge
• University or “utiliversity”? — In this essay, Reinhard Hütter examines in depth John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University and argues that its insights and prescriptions are urgently relevant to the current status of higher education. (87 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)
• Thinking Together — Alan Jacobs discusses some principles he’s compiled to help us think well (and charitably) in our cultural context, and he warns us to be attentive to the ways technology displaces previously fixed communities. (53 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)
• Students as arbiters of knowledge — FROM VOL. 94 Tim Clydesdale discusses the experience of freshmen year at college, suggesting that by that time students have been effectively inoculated against a love of knowledge. (21 minutes)
• What adolescence misses — FROM VOL. 94 Mark Bauerlein talks about the ways of learning and living practiced by contemporary youth, how they impact the acquisition and use of knowledge and form intellectual habits, and what this means for the future of our society. (16 minutes)
• Helping boys become virtuous men — Teacher and chaplain Mark Perkins describes forms of formation that take the body seriously 50 minutes
• The temptations of talismanic technologies — Jeffrey Bilbro on the persistence of techno-utopianism
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 165 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jeffrey Bilbro, Daniel McInerny, Joseph Minich, Carl Elliott, Nadya Williams, and Don W. King
• Living in a tool-i-fied world — Joseph Minich on how the ubiquity of technology makes atheism entirely plausible
• Still connected to the land — Nadya Williams on the inescapably earthy character of human flourishing
• Pathologizing personalities — FROM VOL. 41 David Healy discusses how definitions of health are shaped not just by medical science, but also by intertwining social, cultural, and economic forces. (16 minutes)
• Immediately yours — Todd Gitlin on the effect of media on our sense of time