Shows
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAmor Mundi Part 5: Humility and Glory of Love / Miroslav Volf's 2025 Gifford LecturesMiroslav Volf critiques ambition, love of status, and superiority, offering a Christ-shaped vision of agapic love and humble glory.“’And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?’ If you received everything you have as a gift and if your existence as the recipient is also a gift, all ground for boasting is gone. Correspondingly, striving for superiority over others, seeking to make oneself better than others and glorying in that achievement, is possible only as an existential lie. It is not just a lie that all strivers and boasters tell t...
2025-08-271h 02
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHow Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse / Miroslav VolfWhat if our relentless drive to be better than others is quietly breaking us?Miroslav Volf unpacks the core themes of his 2025 book, The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse. In this book, Volf offers a penetrating critique of comparison culture, diagnosing the hidden moral and spiritual wounds caused by competition and superiority.Drawing on Scripture, theology, philosophy, literature, and our culture’s obsession with competition and superiority, Volf challenges our assumptions about ambition and identity—and presents a deeply humanizing vision of life rooted not in being “the be...
2025-07-2333 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Scandal of Giving and Forgiving / Miroslav VolfIt’s easy to forget how utterly scandalous the concepts of grace and forgiveness are. Grace is an absolutely unmerited, undeserved benevolence. Forgiveness is an intentional miscarriage of retributive justice, ignoring of the wrong by a wrongdoer.In Miroslav Volf’s understanding, forgiveness “decouples the deed from the doer.”Today’s episode features some highlights from Miroslav’s personal reflections about each chapter of his book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, including his thoughts about one of the most painful moments in his family’s history, the death of his 5-year...
2025-02-2632 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHow to Read Henry David Thoreau / Lawrence Buell"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)In 1845, when he was 27 years old, Henry David Thoreau walked a...
2024-11-131h 00
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureCosmic Connections: Resonating with the World / Charles Taylor & Miroslav VolfHas modern humanity lost its connection to the world outside our heads? And can our experience of art and poetry help train us for a more elevated resonance with the cosmos?In today’s episode, theologian Miroslav Volf interviews philosopher Charles Taylor about his latest book, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. In it he turns to poetry to help articulate the human experience of the cosmos we’re a part of.Together they discuss the modern Enlightenment view of our relation to the world and its shortcomings; modern disenchantment and the prospects of r...
2024-11-0654 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHow to Read Teresa of Ávila / Carlos EireSt. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was a sixteenth-century Spanish nun and one of the most influential mystics in all of Church history, writing two spiritual classics still read today: The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. Her autobiography (more accurately, a confession to Spanish Inquisitors) is The Life of St. Teresa of Avila, detailing her spiritual experiences of the love of God.In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Carlos Eire (T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University) for a discussion of how to read St. Teresa of Ávila, exploring the historical, cul...
2024-10-3052 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHistory Speaks the Spirit of Justice / Jemar TisbyHistory reveals a lot of things about human nature: our innate drive towards progress, discovery, relationship, community. Often motivated by a drive to feel safe and flourish. But despite this instinct, history also shows that we’re prone to inflicting and being complicit to grave and violent injustices. We fail, regularly, at living well with our neighbors.In his new book, The Spirit of Justice, Jemar Tisby opens the centuries long history of resistance to racism in the United States through the mode of story, and with the lens of the Spirit moving for justice. He asks, wh...
2024-10-2346 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureBaseball as a Road to God / John SextonTo true fans, baseball is so much more than a sport. Some call it the perfect game. Some see it as a field of dreams. A portal to another dimension. Some see it as a road to God. Others—”heathen” we might call them—find the game unutterably boring. Too confusing, too long, too nit-picky about rules.In this episode, Yankee fan John Sexton (President Emeritus of New York University and Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law) joins Red Sox fan Evan Rosa to discuss the philosophical and spiritual aspects of baseball. John is the author of the 2013...
2024-10-111h 17
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureMusic & Joy / Daniel ChuaCan music teach us how to live? In this interview Evan Rosa invites Daniel Chua—a musicologist, composer at heart, and Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong—to discuss his latest book, Music & Joy: Lessons on the Good Life.Together they discuss the vastly different ancient and modern approaches to music; the problem with seeing music for consumption and entertainment; the ways different cultures conceive of music and wisdom: from Jewish to Greek to Christian; seeing the disciplined spontaneity of jazz improvisation fitting with both a Confucian perspective on virtue, and Christian newness of inca...
2024-09-1156 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CulturePoverty / Rev. William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-HartgroveRev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove discuss the political, moral, and spiritual dimensions of poverty. Together, they co-authored White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, and they’re collaborators at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.About Rev. William BarberBishop William J. Barber II, DMin, is a Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. He serves as President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of...
2024-08-2140 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHow to Read Julian of Norwich / Ryan McAnnally-LinzJulian of Norwich is known and loved for the lines revealed to her by God, “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” But beyond the comfort of this understandably uplifting phrase, what are theological and philosophical insights we might learn from this anonymous medieval Christian mystic and anchoress?Ryan McAnnally-Linz joins Evan Rosa to discuss the historical context of Julian of Norwich, her life and vocation as an anchoress, and the story of near-death experience and subsequent mystical visions that led her to write such theologically rich and...
2024-08-1454 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureMobilizing Hope in Women’s Prison: Discovering Agency, Community, and Creative Resilience / Sarah FarmerHow do you find hope when you can only see yourself and your future in light of your past mistakes? When you’re certain that everyone on the outside looking in is doing the same, punishing you, immobilizing you, invisibilizing you…?Seems the only way out of that spiral is the “God Who Sees.”Practical theologian Sarah Farmer joins Evan Rosa to discuss her recent book, Restorative Hope: Creating Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons. She describes the experience of prison—the ways it constrains movement, how it abridges and threatens agency, and how the constant...
2024-05-0941 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureDesire: How Avarice and Acquisition Distort Our Longing for the Sacred / Micheal O'Siadhail"Having lost a sense of the sacred, the only thing we want is acquisitiveness—more of everything. How can we break this vicious cycle of avarice? It seems to me that the only way we can possibly reign this in on ourselves is some retrieval of the sense of the sacred, something beyond ourselves. And I think that relearning humility—realizing that a parasitic pathogen can spread across the globe and wreak havoc as it did—brings us to the question again of the sacred.Dare we speak of a God who is worthy of all our...
2024-04-1753 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureA World Out of Joint: Pilgrimage and the Possibilities of Homemaking / Ryan McAnnally-LinzThis conversation is based on a free downloadable resource available at faith.yale.edu. Click here to get your copy today.“We may heed the call of Jesus to follow me and find him leading us right into the home we already have.” (Ryan McAnnally-Linz)What are the possibilities of homemaking in a world out of joint? What does it mean for Christians to be on a pilgrimage? To be sojourners in the world?Ryan McAnnally-Linz joins Evan Rosa to discuss what it means for Christian life to be a journey not from here...
2024-04-0448 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureA Voice Crying Out: Brown Church & Critical Race Theory / Robert Chao RomeroThere’s a 500-year history of social justice activism that emerged from Christianity in the Americas, and it comes to us through the Brown Church. Rev. Dr. Robert Chao Romero (Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies at UCLA) joins Evan Rosa to discuss the history of Christian racial justice efforts in the Americas, as well as a constructive and faithful exploration of Christianity & Critical Race Theory. He is a historian, legal scholar, author, a pastor, and an organizer who wants to bring the history of Christian social justice around race to bear on the systems and structures of racism we...
2024-02-2952 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureRenovating the Heart of Our Politics / Michael WearWith unflagging and unwavering hope in our civic life Michael Wear (Center for Christianity & Public Life) wants to renovate the character of Christian political engagement. He’s a former White House and presidential campaign staffer and his new book is called The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life.In this conversation with Evan Rosa, he reflects on what it means to seek the good of the public; the problem of privatization; what it means to be politically homeless and how to avoid angst about that; the meanings of political parties and ho...
2024-02-1446 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureBecoming Whole in a Fragmented Age / Anne SnyderImagine a future that brings personal and communal wholeness, a commitment to truth even when it hurts, and the beauty of pursuing integration in the wake of fragmentation. Anne Snyder joins Evan Rosa to talk about her vision and hopes for a whole-person revolution that honors our moral complexity, holds us accountable to virtue, and seeks a robust form of love in public life. In this conversation they discuss: the meaning of wholeness and what it could mean to become a whole person; the importance of character, virtue, and moral formation; our need to come to terms w...
2024-01-3137 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHow the Light Gets In: Restlessness, Christ, & Belonging / Graham WardHelp the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.How does the light get in? Leonard Cohen suggests, "There's a crack in everything / That's how..." Whether from our restlessness, our fear, or our trauma, to see the world rightly might start with the need to acknowledge the crack in everything.Only then can we see a new world of understanding and belonging and well-being.Graham Ward (University of Oxford) joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to reflect on the purpose of theology, Christology as the place...
2023-12-2351 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAdvent Joy: Resistance Against Despair, Celebrating the Beauty of Black Joy / Stacey Floyd-Thomas & Willie James JenningsHelp the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.Part 3 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. Stacey Floyd-Thomas presents a vision of Black joy—which the world can't give and the world can't take away. Looking into several depictions of female agency in the Gospels, she outlines a picture of joy that celebrates beauty, redemptive self-love, virtuous pride, and critical engagement with the world. Then Willie James Jennings offers a definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces that lead to death. He pr...
2023-12-1834 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAdvent Peace / Non-Violent Resistance & the Uninvited Christ / David DarkPart 2 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. David Dark introduces a new way of thinking about non-violent resistance, which he dubs "Robot Soft Exorcism," whereby, in an appeal to our common humanity, we call each other out of the potentially violent power structures and systems we all (knowingly or unknowingly) inhabit. Show NotesHelp the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.Evan Rosa & Macie Bridge introduce the episodeThomas Merton, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room” in Raids on the Unspeakable, pages 51-52 (c...
2023-12-1126 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHow to Read as a Spiritual Practice: Books, Shared Meaning, and the Love of God in the Text / Jessica Hooten Wilson & Matthew SmithTo read is human. Even as literacy rates or the quality of that literacy make us nervous for the future, the act of reading looks like it’s somewhere near the essence of what it means to be human. Because reading doesn’t end, or even start, with books. Reading is this search for meaning. A turning and tuning of our senses outward. Looking for symbols, looking for signs of life. It’s the longing for a message in a bottle, in hopes of discovering, making, and living in a shared meaning together. Jessica Hooten Wilson (Pepperdine University) and Matthe...
2023-12-0959 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAdvent Hope: Darkness, Endurance, and No-Exit Situations / Miroslav VolfHelp the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.A special Advent bonus episode on hope. Theologian Miroslav Volf reflects on "Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickenson, comments on the dark hope of Martin Luther & the Apostle Paul, and how hope and endurance are intrinsically connected in Christian spirituality. Show NotesEvan Rosa & Macie Bridge reflect on the theme of the first week of Advent: “Hope”“Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul / And sings t...
2023-12-0424 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureN.T. Wright & Miroslav Volf / Violence in God's Name: Monotheism, Nationalism, Violence, and Our Ultimate AllegianceAs you listen today, would you consider helping the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for 2024 podcast production? visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today."Christians are called to collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism." (N.T. Wright, from today's episode)What better way to secure the greatness of your political state (or maybe political party) than to invoke the name of God as being uniquely supportive of your team? It brings a sickening and divisive new meaning to Romans 8:31—”If God is for us, who can be against us?” ...
2023-12-0346 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThanks A Lot: The Complicated Emotional World of Gratitude / Jo-Ann TsangRecent psychological studies find that gratitude can help us create, cultivate, and maintain the kinds of relationships that make life worth living. Other studies are finding that gratitude is far more complicated, and plays a nuanced role in our complex emotional lives. Research psychologist Jo-Ann Tsang (Baylor University) joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to talk about the complicated emotional world that gratitude inhabits, the scientific study of giving thanks and the contexts where its prosocial or adaptive for us, the dark side of gratitude, and the role it plays in a life of flourishing. This episode was made possible i...
2023-11-1144 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureKelly Corrigan, Claire Danes, & Kate Bowler / The Practice of Flourishing / Life Worth Living Book Club, Part 5 of 5The final installment of our 5-part book club series on Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan, and featuring Claire Danes & Kate Bowler. Special thanks to the Warren Smoot Carter III and Meagan Carter Charitable Fund for making this series possible.Show Noteshttps://katebowler.com/about/https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/kate-bowlerhttps://www.kellycorrigan.com/podcastAbout Kelly CorriganKelly Corrigan has written four New York Times bestselling memoirs in the last decade, earning her the title of “The Poet Laureate of the ordinary” from...
2023-07-2253 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureClaire Danes, Kate Bowler, & Kelly Corrigan / Consumption, Responsibility, Failure, Repair, & Forgiveness / Life Worth Living Book Club, Part 4 of 5Show Noteshttps://katebowler.com/about/https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/kate-bowlerhttps://www.kellycorrigan.com/podcastAbout Kelly CorriganKelly Corrigan has written four New York Times bestselling memoirs in the last decade, earning her the title of “The Poet Laureate of the ordinary” from the Huffington Post and the “voice of a generation” from O Magazine. She is curious and funny and eager to go well past the superficial in every conversation. More on KellyCorrigan.com.Production NotesThis episode featured Kelly Corrigan, Kate Bowler, and Claire DanesEdited and Produced by Evan RosaH...
2023-07-1554 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureClaire Danes, Kate Bowler, & Kelly Corrigan / Envy, Desire, and Struggling with Belief / Life Worth Living Book Club, Part 3 of 5Today’s episode is part 3 of a 5-part book club series produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan. The PBS host and author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs is taking a deep dive into the latest book from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, the book is based on a Yale College course that takes up some of the most pressing questions of life, but doesn’t keep the implications, challenges, confusion, and demands of those questions at arms length. Both...
2023-07-0155 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureClaire Danes, Kate Bowler, & Kelly Corrigan / Values, Vocation, Curiosity & Dealing with Circumstance / Life Worth Living Book Club, Part 2 of 5Today’s episode is part 2 of a 5-part book club series produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan. The PBS host and author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs is taking a deep dive into the latest book from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, the book is based on a Yale College course that takes up some of the most pressing questions of life, but doesn’t keep the implications, challenges, confusion, and demands of those questions at arms length. Both...
2023-06-2554 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureLife Worth Living Book Club Part 1 of 5 / Kelly Corrigan with Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, & Ryan McAnnally-Linz"Your life is too important to be guided by anything less than what matters most."Part 1 of a 5-part book club series on Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most. Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, the book is based on a Yale College course that takes up some of the most pressing questions of life, but doesn’t keep the implications, challenges, confusion, perplexity, and demands of those questions at arms length. Both the course and the book invite life-long learners to ask, “For any idea, if that idea were true, how...
2023-06-1754 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureTapestry of Knowledge: Theology and Psychology as Truth-Seeking Partners / Oliver Crisp on Bringing Psychology to Theology"Theology is truth-apt and truth-aimed." Too often the faith-science debate ends up a zero-sum game where either science or theology overstep their bounds. But analytic theologian Oliver Crisp (University of St. Andrews, Scotland) describes a tapestry of knowledge that requires the best of both worlds. In this episode he discusses the purpose and future prospects of theology in light of empirical and experimental science. How might science, philosophy, and theology can work together to help us understand human uniqueness? Can science help us better understand the imago Dei?About Oliver CrispOliver D. Crisp (PhD, U...
2023-05-2334 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureUkrainian Pastor Speaks Out: Resist Evil, Be Present, and Remember How Little You Control / Fyodor Raychynets & Miroslav VolfImagine war becoming your new normal. Imagine getting used to things like airstrike sirens. Imagine sleeping through the distant bombs. Imagine passing through the rubble on your way to work, or school, or church.Over the past year, war has become the new normal for Ukrainian pastor and theologian Fyodor Raychynets. Most of the expectations for how tthis war might go have fallen through. Worst case scenarios have come to pass. And the precarity and fragility of life outside of wartime—well, that continues too.A year ago, 20 days into the war, Fyodor joined Miroslav Vo...
2023-03-1736 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Complicated World of Christmas / Drew Collins, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Jeff Reimer, & Matt CroasmunA conglomeration of Advent people: Drew Collins on how the Magi were pushed willingly to the edge of their knowledge, open to the giving spirit of God. Frederica Mathewes-Green with an illustration of Mary, living in prayer, which proves just enough to know to say "yes" when met with her call. Jeff Reimer on W.H. Auden's common Joseph, asked only and profoundly to believe. And Matt Croasmun on St. Paul, offering an invitation to Christian joy that, well, differs from Santa's offer just a little.Show NotesEPISODE 44: The Reason We Follow the Star: Learning...
2022-12-2432 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Story of a Global Icon: The Virgin of the Passion / Matthew Milliner on the Theological Aesthetics of Suffering Love, Powerless Compassion, and Mournful SilenceArt historian Matthew Milliner (Wheaton College) reflects on one of the most powerful and moving Christian icons: “The Virgin of the Passion,” AKA, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” which he develops in his book, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. First painted as a response to failed Christian Empire and the violence of the Crusades, then mass produced and proliferated as a norm of Christian aesthetic worship, the icon offers a unique filter for contemporary understanding of faith and power; the Christian temptation to nationalism, empire, and violence; the meaning and visual expression of suffering love; an...
2022-12-181h 04
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureMiroslav Volf / Beautiful, Humane, & Hospitable: Dwelling in the Home of God (In Memoriam, Phil Love)"If the goal of God in creating the world is to make it the home of God and humans together, then it is the intention of God to make this place as beautiful and as humane—as hospitable—to human life as it can possibly be." Miroslav Volf reflects on why he wrote his latest book, The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything. He also celebrates and eulogizes his friend Phil Love, to whom the book is dedicated.Click here to buy The Home of God for 30% off!Production NotesThis podcast featu...
2022-10-2222 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureFostering the Knowledge and Love of God / Yale Divinity School BicentennialThe mission of Yale Divinity School is "to foster the knowledge and love of God through scholarly engagement with Christian traditions in a global, multifaith context." A variety of Yale Divinity School faculty and alumni have been featured as guests on For the Life of the World, and this episode highlights some of those contributions, including Krista Tippett, Willie Jennings, Keri Day, Kathryn Tanner, and David Kelsey (not to mention Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz). Current Yale Divinity Student Luke Stringer introduces each highlight segment. Special thanks to Harry Attridge and Tom Krattenmaker.Show NotesOur fi...
2022-10-1543 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureKelly Corrigan & Miroslav Volf / Experts at Means, Amateurs at Ends: Talking About Success & Flourishing at College“We’ve become experts at means but amateurs at ends.” Miroslav Volf and Kelly Corrigan discuss the role of education in seeking a flourishing life; the risks and rewards endemic to asking questions of meaning and existential import in the higher educational context; the meaning of success to college students, and how the specter of success drives our cultural narrative; what it takes to live a life based on one's deepest -held values; Miroslav shares his own personal experience of approaching what makes life worth living within a particular Christian vision; what made him decide to be the only openly...
2022-10-0358 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAdam Eitel / Character As Authority: Theology as a Lived, Embodied Experience"Somewhere is better than anywhere." (Flannery O'Connor, as quoted by Wendell Berry in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community) Today, Christian ethicist Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School) sits with Matt Croasmun for a conversation on ethics and theology. Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Together, he and Matt discuss the demands of teaching and learning theology on personal character—holiness even; the relationship between ethics and theology; the locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics; and the rooted, framing question, that animates Adam Eitel's writing and teaching: "What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"...
2022-09-1926 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureGeorge Marsden / The Outrageous Idea of Theological Education: How Deep Teaching in Theology Might Work in and for the Church and the WorldA pervasive anti-intellectual tradition seems to haunt American Christianity. Paired with nationalism, xenophobia—a fear of the other, and an hypersensitive oscillation between defensiveness and jingoism in the culture war—it's worth asking what in the world happened to this religion which was founded by a peaceful, humble homeless preacher who healed the poor, the lame, and the blind.But the over-correction to an intellectualizing of theology, to the exclusion of lived experience, swings the pendulum back in another erroneous direction. A merely cognitive theology that stays relevant only at abstract academic levels would be stale and dead...
2022-08-2719 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureKatie Grimes / Theology's Human Context: Jesus, Exemplarity, and Theologizing Through the Lens of Flourishing"You can be, at least according to Christian thought, the only sinless person in human history, and you can still be tortured and crucified in your early thirties."From the perspective of Christian theology, it's probably not going too far to say that both the moral exemplarity and the suffering life of Jesus should be central to the Christian understanding of flourishing. Here's another way to put it. Jesus was morally perfect and sinless, but encountered immense suffering, poverty, marginalization, and eventual torture and death. Tempted, yet without sin. But also counted among the sinners, according to...
2022-08-2019 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureJamie Tworkowski / To Be Known & Loved: Surprise, Hope, Resilience, and IdentityAs we're knit in the womb, a primal cry emerges from the very fact of our being, the very fact of our dependence, the fact of our contingency, the fact of our ultimate need: Do you love me? Jamie Tworkowski, the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms and bestselling author of If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For, joins Evan Rosa for a discussion about the hope and resilience and human identity that emerges from being known and loved; what it means to live a life worth living; his own...
2022-07-3036 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureKeri Day / Targeting Normative Theology: Lived Experience, Practice, and Confessional TheologyMiroslav Volf has said that every Christian is a theologian. This is important not so much because it demands of an individual Jesus-follower to exert the best of her cognitive abilities, but because it demands of theologians that theology take seriously the experience, perception, and lived realities of human life. As part of our Future of Theology series, Keri Day (Princeton Theological Seminary) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss the purpose and promise of theology today, honing in on this phenomena and the temptation to see theology as an abstract exercise cut off from the particularities of faith. K...
2022-05-2816 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAristotle Papanikolaou / Russian Christian Nationalism and Eastern Orthodoxy (and How Culture Wars Contributed to the War in Ukraine)"Real wars always begin with culture wars." Theologian Aristotle Papanikolaou discusses Eastern Orthodox perspectives on war and violence; the impact of Communism on Eastern Orthodox theology; the complicated ecclesial structures of Eastern Orthodoxy, where bishops, patriarchs, and nation-states interact in unpredictable ways; he reflects on Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and Ukraine, the ways Christianity is enmeshed and caught up in the authoritarian, nationalist regime under Putin, and the idea of "Russkii Mir" (the Russian world), which has come to motivate and justify a great deal of violence and aggression in the name of peace and unity.About
2022-04-0438 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureJemar Tisby / Holistic and Historical Racial Justice: Awareness, Relationships, CommitmentJemar Tisby, author of the NYT bestseller The Color of Compromise, explains the complicity and compromise of American Christians; the narrative war that confederate monuments wage (and how they were erected much later than you might think); the ugly theological justifications of racism and the shameful history of Christian white supremacy; the fraught project of selectively naming heroes and villains and then memorializing them; and the practical problem of how to go forward rightly from this moment of increased attention to racial injustice.Get Jemar Tisby's book! The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s...
2022-02-1220 minFor the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureBlack Joy / Howard Thurman's Civil Rights Theology, Stacey Floyd-Thomas on Vicious Humility and Black Joy, and David Walker's Christian AbolitionismSameer Yadav comments on Howard Thurman's Civil Rights Theology, Ryan McAnnally-Linz reflects on the spiritual and moral significance of David Walker's "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World," and Stacey Floyd-Thomas talks about racial oppression via vicious humility and the life-giving dignity of Black joy. #BlackHistoryMonthShow NotesThree themes that impacted Thurman’s early religious life:Divine common groundSocial injusticeHumanity of Jesus and black joy“ Human life is one, and all humans are members of one another, and this insight is spiritual and it is the hard core of religious experience. My roots are deep...
2022-02-0518 minFor the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureMarilynne Robinson, Charles Taylor, et al / Making or Breaking DemocracyDemocracy in America and abroad is under threat. Authoritarian regimes, nationalisms of many stripes, a loss sense of the value of democratic participation among younger generations, and a growing cynicism and suspicion of our neighbors all threaten freedom and flourishing. In this episode, Miroslav Volf, Marilynne Robinson, Charles Taylor, Kevin Lau, and Andrew Kwok comment on what makes or breaks democracy around the world. NOTE: For the Life of the World is running highlights, readings, lectures, and other best-of features until May 1, 2022, when we'll be back with new conversations.Show NotesThe concern is with healing...
2022-01-0827 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureJanine Di Giovanni / The Vanishing: War Correspondence, Humanitarian Journalism, and the Twilight of Christianity in the Middle EastCan Christianity survive in the Middle East? Ancient communities of Christian faithful are currently being decimated not just by religious violence, persecution, and war—but the economic factors that motivate emigration and refuge. Janine Di Giovanni is an award-winning journalist and war correspondent, and is Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. She joins Evan Rosa to discuss her journalistic style and approach to human rights reporting, the alarming decimation of the Christian population in the Middle East, the difference between survival and flourishing, and what it means to adapt to being an outsider. Her latest bo...
2021-11-0644 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureDavid Brooks & Miroslav Volf / What Is Human Flourishing?What is the shape of a flourishing human life? Once upon a time this question came pre-answered—by culture or tribe, by religion or philosophy, by tradition or way of life—but these days, given our increasingly individualized world and its emphasis on autonomy and self-expression, given the breakdown of social trust and the increasing degree of polarization and suspicion of the other: we each have to ask and answer these questions for ourselves: What is the good life?What does it mean to live a flourishing life, and how can we actually do it? These are diff...
2021-09-1842 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureMiroslav Volf on 9/11 / A Grave in the Air: The Lasting Impact of 9/11 on Faith & CultureAs the first plane was crashing into the World Trade Center, Miroslav Volf was giving an address at the UN headquarters along the East River in Manhattan, just blocks away from Ground Zero. As the first plane shook the first tower and smoke rose into the sky, Miroslav was quoting Romanian poet Paul Celan. Specifically, his poem "Death Fugue"—which paints a dark picture of human suffering during the Holocaust and the living death that was the concentration camps. "We shovel a grave in the air." Miroslav went on to outline the features of reconciliation as embrace. "Emb...
2021-09-1130 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAdam Eitel / Taste and See / Patience Bonus"It's just that I know it's real. The Lord is ever present in trouble. And you can know, and be known, and love, and be loved by God. And that's different than thinking about God." Ethicist Adam Eitel on the tasting and seeing of Psalm 34, Thomas Aquinas's interpretation of that psalm, and the foundation of experience for theological reflection.Bonus episode from our 6-part podcast series on patience.Show Notes"When the Psalmist says "taste and see how sweet," he's urging us toward an experience. He's exhorting us to experience dwelling together with God...
2021-09-0209 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureKathryn Tanner / Money, Markets, and the Economy of Grace / Patience Part 2What does patience have to do with money? It's much more than timing the market just right. The economic factors of our market economy hold great sway over our relationship to the past, present, and future. Theologian Kathryn Tanner reflects on the ways finance-dominated capitalism controls our experience of time, and offers insights for a Christian approach to living in the present, informed by an economy of abundant grace. Part 2 of a 6-episode series on Patience hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.Show NotesListen to Patience Part 1 on Time, Acceleration, and Waiting, with Andrew Root (July 24, 2021)What...
2021-07-3129 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAndrew Root / Time, Acceleration, and Waiting / Patience Part 1Modern life presents a crisis of time, bringing the value of patience into question. Andrew Root joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to provide some context for our modern patience predicament. As a professor of youth ministry at Luther Seminary, he has years of both experience and careful thinking about what it means for kids, families, churches, and communities to flourish in an impatient world, cultivating the mindset, the virtues, and the community we need to wait well. Part 1 of a 6-episode series on Patience hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.Show NotesDoubling down and the temptation to make up...
2021-07-2536 minFor the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureLife Riffs: Improvisation in Poetry, Theology, and Flourishing / Micheal O'Siadhail & David Ford"Be with me, Madam Jazz, I urge you now, / Riff in me so I can conjure how / You breathe in us more than we dare allow." (Micheal O'Siadhail, The Five Quintets)Irish poet Micheal O'Siadhail and theologian David Ford discuss the improvisational jazz that emerges in the interplay of poetry and theology, riffing on life and love, the meaning of covenant, retrieving wisdom from history, and imagining a future by letting go in communion with Madam Jazz. Interview by Drew Collins.About Micheal O'SiadhailMicheal O'Siadhail is a poet. His Collected Poems was...
2021-07-1748 minFor the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThink Again: Changing Your Mind, Political-Religious Conversion, and the Emotional Life / Nichole Flores & Matt CroasmunIs it possible for anyone to change their mind anymore? Matt Croasmun welcomes theologian and ethicist Nichole Flores (University of Virginia) onto the show for a discussion of changing our minds in political and religious contexts. They discuss the meaning of intellectual, political, and religious conversion; how aesthetic and emotional experience of beauty is often the key ingredient in changing one's mind and behavior; the value of open-mindedness and intellectual humility as well as the value of a firm sturdiness and courageous conviction; and the role of changing one's mind in a life worth living.A...
2021-07-0343 minFor the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureJuneteenth: Looking Back to Step Forward / Charles B. Copher and Anne Streaty WimberlyIn celebration of Juneteenth, Jamal-Dominique Hopkins and Angela Gorrell offer appreciation Old Testament scholar Charles B. Copher and Christian Educator Anne Streaty Wimberly. About Charles B. CopherCharles Buchanan Copher (1913-2003), a United Methodist minister and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Scholar, held an illustrative academic career at his alma mater, Gammon Theological Seminary, which later became part of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) consortium. A respected educator and beloved by his students, he was Professor for Biblical Studies and Languages from 1958-1978. Following his death in 2003, ITC honored his life work by creating the Charles B...
2021-06-1921 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureCollapse and Rebuild: How Spirituality Informs Social Action in Hong Kong / Kevin Lau & Andrew Kwok"It's not just internal peace. It's internal healing. Healing of your memory." (Kevin Lau)After suffering a brutal knife attack that nearly killed him, journalist Kevin Lau, then editor-in-chief of Ming Pao, chose to forgive his two attackers. Since then, he has continued to support social participation through deep Christian spirituality. In this episode, he is joined by theologian Andrew Kwok of Hong Kong Baptist University. Together they reflect on the spirituality of social participation in a society that is experiencing censorship, political disagreement and disenfranchisement that leads to violence, increasing polarization, and tribalized media consumption curated o...
2021-06-0750 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureEverything Wrong Can Be Made Right: Racial History, Reparations, and Belonging / Lisa Sharon Harper & Miroslav Volf"I am because they were." Lisa Sharon Harper joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the significance of narrative history for understanding ourselves and our current cultural moment; the sequence of repeated injustices that have haunted America's past and directly impacted Black Americans for hundreds of years; the Christian nationalist temptation to hoard power; the necessary conditions for true repair, the role of reparations in the pursuit of racial justice, and the goodness of belonging.About Lisa Sharon HarperFrom Ferguson to New York, and from Germany to South Africa to Australia, Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings...
2021-05-1552 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureYou Do You: Ethics of Authenticity in Disney's Frozen and Moana / Matt Croasmun and Ryan McAnnally-LinzEnroll now for our 7-week Life Worth Living Course through Grace Farms: http://gracefarms.org/life-worth-living. The course runs from May 4 to June 15, and we expect it to fill up quickly, so don’t wait to sign up!One of the most prominent visions of the good life present in Disney films could be called "expressive individualism," perhaps best captured by the phrase "you do you." In this episode Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Matt Croasmun interpret and unpack the ethics of the authentic self, belonging, and the implicit visions of flourishing life in two contemporary classics from Disney: Fro...
2021-03-2947 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Gravity of Joy / Angela GorrellTheologian Angela Gorrell discusses her book The Gravity of Joy, a theological memoir that lays bare the experience of finding the bright sorrow of joy alongside devastating grief, suffering, and pain. The book recounts her experience of joining the Yale Center for Faith & Culture in 2016 as an Associate Research Scholar for our Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project and to teach our Yale undergraduate course, Life Worth Living. That winter, the reality, the extent, and the dangerous potential of joy would become devastatingly clear. The highly abstract question of what it means to live a life worth...
2021-03-1334 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureBefriending Reality: Engaging Otherness with Hospitality, Artfulness, and Particularity at Depth / Krista Tippett & Miroslav Volf“For me, the spiritual task is to befriend reality in all its mess and complexity—to do that with grace." Krista Tippett joins Miroslav Volf for a conversation on the importance of engaging otherness on the grounds of our common humanity; her personal faith journey from small town Baptists in Oklahoma, to a secular humanism in a divided Cold-War Berlin, and then back to her spiritual homeland and mother tongue of Christianity in an expansive and engaging new way; the art of conversation, deep listening, cultivating hospitality; the spiritual task of befriending reality; and the challenge of being alone and...
2021-03-0642 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureJoy and the Act of Resistance Against Despair / Willie Jennings and Miroslav Volf"I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces. ... Joy in that regard is a work, that can become a state, that can become a way of life." Willie Jennings joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair, the counterintuitive nature of cultivating joy in the midst of suffering, the commercialization of joy in Western culture, joy segregated by racism and slavery, how Jesus expands and corrects our understanding of joy.Support For the Life of the World by making a gift to the...
2021-02-2824 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Dignity of Work: Poverty, Property, and Fraternity in Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti (Brothers & Sisters All) / Martin Schlag"There is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work. In a genuinely developed society, work is an essential dimension of social life, for it is not only a means of earning one’s daily bread, but also of personal growth, the building of healthy relationships, self-expression and the exchange of gifts. Work gives us a sense of shared responsibility for the development of the world, and ultimately, for our life as a people." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 162)In the resurgence of worldwide populism, Pope Francis has said that employment is th...
2021-02-2037 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThis Economy Kills: Healing the Human Environment in Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti (Brothers & Sisters All) / Sister Helen AlfordSupport For the Life of the World, give to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/giveShortly after Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis in March 2013, he released an exhortation, very similar to an encyclical, but addressed to a Christian audience. "Evangelii Guadium” or the "Joy of the Gospel,” begins by articulating the most pressing challenges for the contemporary Church. First on his list is the economy of exclusion. What does he mean by that? He writes:Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard...
2021-02-1337 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureRadical Humility: Forgetting Oneself as a Path to FlourishingPhilosopher Kent Dunnington exposes the radical roots of Christian humility, exploring the centrality of humility to Christian ethics, the goal of humility in eliminating one’s own self-concern, why humility remains so appealing and so appalling, and how to respond to the abuse and weaponizing of humility to oppress. Interview with Evan Rosa.Join us in taking hold of life that is truly life.Will you partner with us in helping people envision and pursue lives worthy of our shared humanity?Give to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give
2021-01-3141 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureViolence, Shame, Fear, Anger, and Lost Civic Friendship / Willie Jennings, David French, Marilynne Robinson, Robert George, and moreWhat is the state of Christianity and Democracy in America? We mined the past 6 months of episodes for the most timely, relevant, and even strangely prescient reflections on faith and politics in America. Past guests Willie Jennings, David French, Marilynne Robinson, Robert George, and Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, and Arlie Hochschild each offer perspectives we need to understand the political moment through the eyes of faith and culture. Here’s the breakdown of our episode today—it’s really a “best of" for faith and politics in America today.Episode Contents / Show Notes3:33 - Theolog...
2021-01-0956 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureSedition in the Capitol: Wounded Pride, Lies that Incite Violence, Losing Connection to Reality, and Longing for Peace / Miroslav Volf & ColleaguesMiroslav Volf and the staff of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture respond to the lies, provocation, and violence at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.Show Notes"The most responsible thing to say about the President’s and the attackers’ actions is that they were without qualification wrong. To praise, to condone, to excuse, or to ignore them is to 'call evil good… put darkness for light… put bitter for sweet' (Isaiah 5:20)."At the heart of the current effort to deny and overturn the results of the presidential election is the wounded pride of a man who cann...
2021-01-0710 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureIgnore These Walls: Faith that Leads to Freedom in Zimbabwe / Evan Mawarire & Miroslav VolfEvan Mawarire is a Pentecostal minister and democratic activist in Zimbabwe. He is founder of #ThisFlag Citizen's Movement and has been instrumental in standing up to corruption, injustice, and poverty in Zimbabwe. Miroslav Volf interviews Pastor Evan about his story of faith that leads to activism; the transformation he experience while being unjustly arrested, detained, and tortured in maximum security prison; and what it means to live a life worthy of our humanity.Show NotesIntroduction and clip from #ThisFlag viral videoHow Evan Mawarire became a Pentecostal minister#ThisFlag movement - united around the symbolism of...
2020-12-2048 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureStrangers in Our Own Land: Empathy Walls, Deep Stories, and Shelters from Shame / Arlie HochschildArlie Hochschild discusses her book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, reflecting on how 2020 has made our mutual political alienation worse, and how we can implement deep listening, emotion management, hospitality, and create shelters from shame. Interview by Evan Rosa.How to Give to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give We’re passionate about making this work consistently accessible to a people who are genuinely concerned with he viability of faith in a world wracked with division, contested views about what it means to be hum...
2020-12-0553 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureN.T. Wright on Weeping, Waiting, and Working with God in the Pandemic / Miroslav Volf and N.T. WrightMiroslav Volf interviews N.T. Wright about his latest book, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath. They discuss: Jesus, the God who weeps; the problem with focusing on rational responses to the problem of evil rather than empathic presence and action; the proper translation of Romans 8:28 (hint, it’s not “All things work together for good to those who love God"); waiting for God through the crises of human life; the patience of unknowing; lament as a way of hoping in the dark; Friedrich Nietzsche on our tendency to misinterpret the pain and...
2020-07-1853 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureMy Anger, God's Righteous Indignation / Willie Jennings (Response to the Death of George Floyd)Guest contributor Willie Jennings (Yale) offers a response to the death of George Floyd and the black experience of racism and police brutality. In order to practice the discipline of hope, he suggests that we must take hold of a shared anger, hate what God hates, reshape communities with attention to the violence of segregation, and rethink the formation of police officers and our understanding of criminality.faith.yale.eduShow NotesDr. Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of RaceJenning’s first time being pulled over by a white police of...
2020-06-0224 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Need to Listen / Miroslav Volf"Before speaking about victims and to victims I need to listen. We all who are not victims need to listen." In a follow-up to his May 30 response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, Miroslav Volf speaks frankly about the necessity of listening to black perspectives about racism, police brutality, and the history and continuous experience of black suffering.faith.yale.eduShow NotesPolice brutality and the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George FloydMiroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of IdentityExclusion’s specific expression in racism in this countryThe bo...
2020-06-0108 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureRacism, Exclusion, & Embrace / Miroslav VolfMiroslav Volf responds to the recent killing of unarmed black men, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. Exclusion takes many forms, but is marked by both a pursuit of false purity and a failure to see the other as fully human. Visit faith.yale.edu for more information.Show NotesA brief response to the recent killings of unarmed black men, Ahmad Arbery and George Floyd.Exclusion’s many forms are all a pursuit of false purity and failure to see another’s humanity.Ahmad Aubrey and George Floyd’s deaths embody what happens when we close...
2020-05-3009 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHope Pt. 2, Hope Against Hope / Miroslav VolfMiroslav Volf investigates the darker side of hope, explaining what it means to “hope against hope” (Romans 4:18) and “hope in what we do not see” (Romans 8:25). He concludes with hope’s connection to patient endurance. This is the second of a two-part series on hope.For comments, questions, suggested topics, or just to say hello, email faith@yale.edu.Visit faith.yale.edu for more information.Show Notes“Genuine hope remains alive when there is no good reason to expect something positive in the future."“We hope in what we do not see.” (Romans...
2020-05-2318 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Art of Living and Dying During COVID-19 / Lydia Dugdale, MDFor the Life of the World is produced by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. For more info, visit faith.yale.eduDr. Lydia Dugdale, MD is a New York City internal medicine primary care doctor and medical ethicist. She is Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University. Prior to her 2019 move to Columbia, she was the Associate Director of the Program for Biomedical Ethics and founding Co-Director of the Program for Medicine, Spirituality, and Religion at Yale School of Medicine. She edited Dying in the Twenty-First Century...
2020-04-2544 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Promise and Peril of Home / Miroslav Volf & Ryan McAnnally-LinzWarning: Hello friends, during a part of this episode on the complicated nature of home during a pandemic, the topic of domestic violence comes up. This is a serious and sensitive matter. If you or someone you know is suffering from abuse, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or if you’re unable to speak safely, you can log onto thehotline.org or text LOVEIS to 22522.For more information about the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, visit faith.yale.edu.Follow Miroslav Volf on Twitter: @MiroslavVolfFollow Rya...
2020-04-1838 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureHow to Be Afraid: Easter in the Time of COVID-19 / Miroslav VolfFor the Life of the World is produced by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. For more info, visit faith.yale.eduFollow Miroslav Volf on Twitter: @MiroslavVolf-1:37 Introductory summary of the Podcast-3:35 A diagnosis of the role of fear in our culture today and how we should respond to it--pulling from an earlier podcast.-5:50 Miroslav reflects on how Christians should respond to fear. -6:15 Jesus’ injunction “fear not!” and how we are to properly contextualize that phrase: “It is not a call to disregard or minimize p...
2020-04-1136 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Wrong Kind of Social Distance / Ryan McAnnally-LinzShow NotesFor more information about the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, visit faith.yale.edu.Follow Ryan McAnnally-Linz on Twitter @RJMLinz-0:35 Introduction to the podcast topic and speaker. -1:40 Beginning of Ryan’s reflection on human vulnerability, the response of Stoicism, and the call to Christian love.-1:45 In his book, Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari suggests that, once basic human survival is secured by overcoming famine, war, and pandemics, the natural progression of the human species will be to seek a god-like existence of immortal happiness.
2020-04-0911 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Culture of Fear / Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, Drew CollinsFor the Life of the World is produced by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. For more info, visit faith.yale.eduFollow Miroslav Volf on Twitter: @MiroslavVolfShow Notes-0:12 Introductory Teaser-0:57 Summary and introduction to the topic of this podcast—fear. -3:35 Miroslav begins. -3:40 Thoughts from Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety-4:15 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” Proverbs 9:10 -4:50 The two questions we should have toward fear: 1. What do we fear for? 2. What are we afra...
2020-04-0427 minFor the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureTrailer / A Message from Miroslav Volf: Faith in a Time of PandemicFor the Life of the World is produced by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. For more info, visit faith.yale.eduFollow Miroslav Volf on Twitter: @MiroslavVolf-0:45 Introduction to the podcast (Evan Rosa)-2:22 Beginning of Miroslav’s thoughts. -3:30 What responding to the pandemic looks like for those professions that directly engage with tangible issues. -4:20 What responding to the pandemic looks like for theologians and non-working Christians. -6:00 “The question for all of us is how do we live with this disruption? How do we l...
2020-03-2813 min