Human nature

In this lecture, Orthodox theologian John Behr draws from the book of Genesis and early Church Fathers Irenaeus, Ignatius, Maximus to answer the question, What is a human being? (53 minutes)

Angela Franks explains the history of the modern concept of identity as a project and shows how it falls short of a holistic Christian view of the self. (minutes)

Jens Zimmermann reflects on why a defense of personhood is a crucial task for the future of humanity. (47 minutes)

David L. Schindler (1943–2022) explores the implications for a civilization that discards the reality that being is grounded in God. (minutes)

David Cayley (1946–2026) describes Ivan Illich’s insights into the “instrumental attitude” that defines modernity, in particular the blurring of the distinction between mechanisms and organisms. (39 minutes)

FROM VOL. 118 Gilbert Meilaender explains why anti-aging research cannot be a metaphysically neutral topic, and argues against the utopianism of escaping the body. (23 minutes)

FROM VOL. 140 James Herrick discusses the “post-human” aspirations of the transhumanist movement, and how its plausibility is established by stories. (28 minutes)

Bishop Robert Barron explores the misanthropic and inherently unstable anthropology at the heart of the modern university and offers an alternative for human flourishing. (46 minutes)

In this lecture, Marc Barnes critiques the current reigning system of gender for its ironies, internal inconsistencies, and failure to satisfy or “work” on its own terms. (32 minutes)

In this 2026 lecture, Mary Harrington explores modernity’s “Thomophobic epistemological straitjacket” that bans serious inquiry into the nature of things. (41 minutes)

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)

In this lecture, Brad East builds a case for why he believes digital technology is the greatest threat facing American Christians today. (57 minutes)

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)

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)

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)

G. K. Chesterton on Aquinas’s complete Science of Man

Clyde Kilby on the power of myth to bring together “the slender hints of the knowable”

Craig Bartholomew reflects on the importance of place to our humanity. (58 minutes)

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)

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)