For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Latest Episodes:

How the Light Gets In: Restlessness, Christ, & Belonging / Graham Ward Dec 23, 2023

Show notes

Help 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 where the divine and the human come together, trauma, restlessness, fear, the human capacity for creativity and destruction (and which will we choose?), and how the Gospels offer a new sense of belonging.

About Graham Ward

Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and is author of several books, including How the Light Gets In and Another Kind of Normal.

Show Notes

Graham Ward’s Ethical Life books under discussion in this episode: How the Light Gets In and Another Kind of Normal
Creating inner coherence through a systematic theology
Scripture as the common text all Christians return to
Reading with a sense of original language
“We do believe God speaks to us through the scriptures.”
Writing titles that invite non-Christians to the books
“There’s a lot of the church who are not in church on Sunday.”
“I always think that, one, theology lost in a sense when it became professionalized. And two…theology has got to be pastoral.”
“Good writing can find the phrasing which unlocks experiences that other people have had.”
Theology as speaking more to being human than being divine
Dogma (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) and the problem with “Buddy Jesus”
Theology that defamiliarizes Christ
The strangeness of Christ as drawing out
Balancing defamiliarization with the glory of Creation
None of us actually know what the resurrection truly means
Trauma in the early church
“What is it we're looking for in our restlessness?”
Restlessness as fundamentally connected to our fear
The conflict between losing control in Christ, and being a predatory creature
Grace breaking through in the rubbish heap, like sunlight on a violet
“This is the hard love which demanded God's sacrifice, but also demands my sacrifice of what I think love should be.”
Julian of Norwich
“I was just playing with the phrase ‘because the devil is in the detail’, and it's not, it's God that's in the detail.”
Will you be creative or will you be destructive?
The role of the church in people who are discerning
Mystagogy, living what you worship
The role of liturgy in community
Fragmentation and non-belonging within our contemporary relationships
The gospels as incorporating a new type of belonging

Production Notes

This podcast featured Graham Ward
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Advent Love: Prayer, Trauma, & the Loving Gaze of Christ / Bo Karen Lee Dec 23, 2023

Show notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.

Part 4 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. Bo Karen Lee discusses how Ignatian spirituality, contemplative prayer, and meditating on the loving gaze and deep compassion of Christ—a love that suffers with—can be a transformative experience to heal trauma, pain, and deal with powerful emotions.

About Bo Karen Lee

Bo Karen Lee, ThM '99, PhD '07, is associate professor of spiritual theology and Christian formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned her BA in religious studies from Yale University, her MDiv from Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois, and her ThM and PhD from Princeton Seminary. She furthered her studies in the returning scholars program at the University of Chicago, received training as a spiritual director from Oasis Ministries, and was a Mullin Fellow with the Institute of Advanced Catholic Studies. Her book, Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon, argues that surrender of self to God can lead to the deepest joy in God. She has recently completed a volume, The Soul of Higher Education, which explores contemplative pedagogies and research strategies. A recipient of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, she gave a series of international lectures that included the topic, “The Face of the Other: An Ethic of Delight.”

She is a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, and the American Academy of Religion; she recently served on the Governing Board of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, and is on the editorial board of the journal, Spirtus, as well as on the steering committee of the Christian Theology and Bible Group of the Society of Biblical Literature. Before joining Princeton faculty, she taught in the Theology Department at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she developed courses with a vibrant service-learning component for students to work at shelters for women recovering from drug addiction and sex trafficking. She now enjoys teaching classes on prayer for the Spirituality and Mission Program at Princeton Seminary, in addition to taking students on retreats and hosting meditative walks along nature trails.

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.
Macie Bridge and Evan Rosa introduce the episode
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola
Christ in solidarity with me
Who was Ignatius of Loyola?
The Life of Christ by Ludolf of Saxony
Four weeks: beloved, walking with Christ in his ministry, walking with Christ in his suffering, knowing the risen Christ
“Gazing upon God who gazes upon me in love.”
How does God look upon me? How do others look upon me? How do I look upon myself?
Attachment Theory in Psychology
Still Face Experiment and Trauma
Trauma is the opposite of human flourishing
Learned secure attachment
Growing in confident awareness of God’s love for me through prayer, meditation, and community.
First image of God comes through human relationships
Anger
Bo’s experience of dealing with trauma during 2022’s wave of violence against Asian Americans
Prayer, doubt, and whether God is with us
Hearing the wailing of women
Mary holding the collapsed Christ
“Bo, they killed me too.”
“I was companioned in my grief.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Bo Karen Lee
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Advent Joy: Resistance Against Despair, Celebrating the Beauty of Black Joy / Stacey Floyd-Thomas & Willie James Jennings Dec 18, 2023

Show notes

Help 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 presents a creative, communal joy characterized by fullness, connected to but transcending grief and sorrow.

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.
Macie Bridge and Evan Rosa introduce the episode
Stacey Floyd-Thomas explains Black joy
"This Joy That I Have"
"The world didn't give it / the world can't take it away."
Beauty and Blackness
Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye
Womanist Theology
Radical subjectivity
Communitarian
Redemptive self-love
Critical engagement
Female agency in the Gospels
Mary and Jesus at the Wedding in Cana
Mary and Martha
Syro-Phoenician Woman
Willie James Jennings defines joy—"an act of resistance against despair"
"Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living"
Singing a song in a strange land
Making productive use of pain, suffering, and the absurd—taking them serious
How does one cultivate joy? You have to have people who can show you how to sing a song in a strand land, laugh where all you want to do is cry, and how to ride the winds of chaos.
"In contexts where your energies have to be focused on survival, it doesn’t leave a lot of energy for overt forms of complaint—you’re spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together."
The commercialization of joy in the empire of advertising—contrasting that with the peoples serious work of joy
The work and skill of making something beautiful out of what has been thrown away
Segregated joy—joy in African diaspora communities
Joy is always embedded in community logics
The Christological center of joy
Pentecost joy—joy together
Geographies of joy: Christians tend not to think spatially, but we should
Public rituals bound to real space
Hoping for joyous infection, where the space has claimed you as its own
Where can joy be found? The church, the hospital room, the barber shop and beauty shops—“things are going to be better"

Production Notes

This podcast featured Stacey Floyd-Thomas and Willie James Jennings
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Speaking to the Unspeakable: Catastrophe, Silence, and Respect in Aboriginal Australian Life / Stan Grant Dec 18, 2023

Show notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.

How do you speak to the unspeakable? How does a people connected to place retain their sense of meaning and time when they are displaced and ignored? Indigenous Australian journalist and public intellectual Stan Grant (Monash University) joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of his experience as an Aboriginal Australian, the son of Wiradjuri and Gamilaraay people in the Outback of New South Wales, Australia. He tells the story of his family’s Christian faith and Aboriginal identity—how the two work together. He shares the sense of aboriginal homelessness and displacement and his efforts to seek justice for Aboriginal people in modern Australia, a place with no memory. He teaches us the meaning of Yindyamarra Winhanganha—which is Wiradjuri concept meaning a life of respect, gentleness, speaking quietly and walking softly, in a world worth living in. He comments on declining democracy, how to live with dignity after catastrophe, what it means to be both nothing and everything—and we learn from Stan about the power of silence to speak to the unspeakable.

About Stan Grant

Stan Grant is an indigenous aboriginal Australian journalist, former war correspondent, and an award-winning author of multiple books, including 2023's The Queen Is Dead: Time for a Public Reckoning (Harper Collins). He served in high profile roles in Australia as a current affairs and news presenter with Channel 7, CNN, SBS and the ABC. He was recently appointed inaugural Director of the Constructive Institute Asia Pacific in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.

Show Notes

To learn more about Stan Grant and the Constructive Institute, click here.
What is home in a place of exile?
Coolah, New South Wales, Australia
Entering “Australia”
What it means to be an indigenous person—an Indigenous Australian or Aboriginal in particular
Australia is a place with no memory.
Stan Grant’s Christian faith: “Waiting for God”
Simone Weil and giving voice to affliction through silence and waiting
What it is to be nothing
Suffering and meaninglessness
“We find our nothingness, which is everything.”
“I don't have to look for the meaning of affliction and I don't have to look for someone to answer for that affliction, because Christ is already there to hold the weight of that affliction.”
Biame—Aboriginal Creator God Spirit—Rainbow Serpent
Depth of spiritual connection to place
“Jesus is a tribal man, living in a place of occupation.”
Jesus’s totem: Water
Deep time, deep silence
A breaking point with modernity
“We are, at our essence, spiritual people, poetic people of place. We are not political people of enlightenment, and that, that is a hard weight to bear, to live as poetic people of God in a world of politics that seeks to kill God.”
Responsibility
Yindyamarra winangana—”respect in a world worth living in”
“I am not responsible for what I do. I'm also responsible for what you do. And that is the essence of what it is to be a First Nations person in Australia. That is the essence of It is a respect and a responsibility beyond who we are, but connects us to where we are.”
1 Peter 2:17: “Honor everyone.”
Individual identity vs communal belonging
Uluru Statement, “Makarrata”
Australia is the only Commonwealth country that has not recognized First Nations peoples politically, and given them a voice to Australian Parliament.
Secondary citizenship
Struggle of Aboriginal Australians
What is it to live with catastrophe?
“The absence of love makes us know love is real.”
The Crow People: Chief Plenty Coups: “After that, nothing happened.”
How to live with dignity after catastrophe.
Miroslav Volf on remembering rightly
“This is my quest to try to understand those things. And it's the quest of an exile. It's, it's exile that I was forced into, that my people were forced into, that I share with others, that I seek to embrace as an exile of silence, an exile of love, and an exile of belonging and not identity. James Joyce, James Baldwin, Tony Morrison, these people have shared this journey, the great poets, the great writers, the great artists who have sought to give expression to that sense of what it is to be exiled from the modernity of who we are, what we all want to be something. And maybe when we are reduced to nothing, we may find what it is to be everything.”
After Queen Elizabeth died
A people of suffering, but not tragedy
What it means to be human: Born from the dust
Self-giving and Yindyamarra
Weightlessness of liberalism
America: Can it hold the weight?
Declining democracy around the world
“There’s no ancestors in Rawls. There’s no history in Rawls.”
“For me, a life worth living is to know where I am.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured journalist Stan Grant
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Advent Peace / Non-Violent Resistance & the Uninvited Christ / David Dark Dec 11, 2023

Show notes

Part 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 Notes

Help 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 episode
Thomas Merton, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room” in Raids on the Unspeakable, pages 51-52 (check it out): “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.”
David Dark's Robot Soft Exorcism Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/DavidDark/status/1012804184868048896
Robot Soft Exorcism
Ephesians 6:12: "For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."
Walter Wink's Powers series
Turning the other cheek; demanding to be punched as an equal
"Robot soft exorcism is inviting someone to be a human being rather than just being their position."
Breaking it down: The Robot Part
Breaking it down: The Exorcism Part
Thoreau: "We all crave reality."
Buddhists surrendering a spirit of conflict or difference before parting
Karl Barth: If you don't have any solid difference with the person with whom you exchange the peace of Christ, the peace of Christ isn't there because the peace has to overcome some kind of difference."
Opinion, Posture, Position: None ever have to be confused with one's identity.
Divesting ourselves of the power we carry through the world
Breaking it down: The Soft Part
Civil Rights Movement is actually the Non-Violent Movement of America
"One human exchange at a time."
Mantra: "I wrestle not against flesh and blood." (Ephesians 6:12)
Advent/Christmas as the prototypical Robot Soft Exorcism
Bruce Coburn: "Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe."
"We're really going against the news cycle if we insist on the meaning of human history being in this manger scene. To be alive to it, to be citizens of a better future than what is being settled for by our robot overlords."

Production Notes

This podcast featured David Dark
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

How to Read as a Spiritual Practice: Books, Shared Meaning, and the Love of God in the Text / Jessica Hooten Wilson & Matthew Smith Dec 09, 2023

Show notes

To 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 Matthew J Smith (Hildegard College) join Evan Rosa to discuss the joys and perils of reading, how to make young readers, how to teach and cultivate mature readers in the university context, and the significance of reading as a Christian spiritual practice.

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.

About Jessica Hooten Wilson

Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and formerly Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas. She is the author of several books, most recently Reading for the Love of God. Her book Giving the Devil his Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov received a 2018 Christianity Today book of the year in arts and culture award and The Scandal of Holiness received a 2022 Award of Merit. In 2019 she received the Hiett Prize for Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Other awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Prague, an NEH to study Dante in Florence, a Biola University sabbatical fellowship funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and the 2017 Emerging Public Intellectual Award. She is a Senior Fellow at The Trinity Forum.

About Matthew J. Smith

Matthew J. Smith is Founder and President of Hildgard College in Southern California. He holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Southern California, an M.A. from the University of Connecticut, and a B.A. from Biola University. He taught for ten years at Azusa Pacific University before founding Hildegard College. His scholarship is on medieval and renaissance literature and especially the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Herbert, Donne, and late medieval drama. Dr. Smith is the author and editor of four books: Performance and Religion in Early Modern England: Stage, Cathedral, Wagon, Street (Notre Dame), Face to Face in Shakespearean Drama: Ethics, Performance, Philosophy (Edinburgh), Literature and Religious Experience: Beyond Belief and Unbelief (Bloomsbury), and a recently finished manuscript: Shakespearean Recognitions: Philosophies of the Post-Tragic. He is also an editor of the journal Christianity & Literature and has guest-edited three special issues: The Sacramental Text Reconsidered, Sincerity, a Literary History, and The Future of Christianity and Literature in Literary Studies.

Dr. Smith founded Hildegard College in 2022 with the conviction that higher education needs a reset. Where typical universities are growing ever larger into multi-versities, abandoning the traditional liberal arts and giving students a predominantly anonymous learning experience, Dr. Smith argues that the future of quality education, especially Christian education, is focused, tight-knit, rigorous, and recommitted to the classics of the liberal arts tradition. His vision for Hildegard College is to create an environment where young people can explore the riches of the classical tradition while also exploring and gaining experience in different areas of work—part monastery and part startup incubator. Mentorship, deep learning, and personal formation are the bedrock of a classical education.

Matt Smith lives in Fullerton, CA with his wife and three children. He serves on the boards of Veritas Classical Academy and of the Classic Learning Test. When he isn’t teaching, he cooks, plays soccer, trains in jiu jitsu, mountain bikes, plays with his dog, and writes.

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Jessica Hooten Wilson and Matthew J Smith
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Advent Hope: Darkness, Endurance, and No-Exit Situations / Miroslav Volf Dec 04, 2023

Show notes

Help 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 Notes

Evan 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 the tune without the words / And never stops at all / And sweetest in the Gale is heard / And soar must be the storm / That could abash the little bird / That kept so many warm / I've heard it in the chillest land / And on the strangest sea / And yet never an extremity, / It asked a crumb of me” – Emily Dickenson
“In hope, a future good, which isn't yet, somehow already is”
Luther – "just as love transforms the lover into the beloved, so hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for."
The present is pregnant with the future
But hope does not come from what is happening in the present, it is something entirely new
Hope lives apart from reason
Hope and God belong together
“The God who creates out of nothing, the God who makes the dead alive, that God justifies hope that is otherwise unreasonable”
“Genuine hope remains alive when there is no good reason to expect something positive in the future."
Hope transfers a person “into the unknown, the hidden, and the dark shadow, so that he does not even know what he hopes for.” Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, 25:364
"Hope is open to the difference between how we imagined fulfillment and how it arrived, openness even to recognize in the actual fulfillment what we in fact have wanted all along."
"We are most in need of hope in threatening situations which we cannot control; but it is in those same situations that it is most difficult for us not to lose hope. That is where patience and endurance come in."
"Hope needs endurance and endurance needs hope. Or: Genuine endurance is marked by hope; and genuine hope is marked by endurance."
Hope is for no-exit situations.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

N.T. Wright & Miroslav Volf / Violence in God's Name: Monotheism, Nationalism, Violence, and Our Ultimate Allegiance Dec 03, 2023

Show notes

As 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?”

In this episode, revered New Testament scholar N.T. Wright joins Miroslav Volf to discuss Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence. Together they reflect on the history and current realities of what happens when these three elements converge. The conversation was inspired by N.T. Wright's response to a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf entitled Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, which is available for download at faith.yale.edu.

Click here to download Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf, via faith.yale.edu.

“In this essay, written in form of 25 interlocking theses, I approach the problem of religiously motivated or legitimized violence by exploring the relation between monotheism and nationalism. The first is allegedly the most violent of all forms of religion and the second one of the most violent forms of political arrangements, especially when it is cut loose from universal moral commitment and tied to some form of tribal identity (“exclusive nationalism”). I argue that monotheism is a universalist creed and that it is compatible only with inclusive nationalism, a nationalism that is a form of special relations framed by a universal moral code. When monotheism is aligned with exclusive nationalism—when it becomes a “political religion” aligned with exclusivist nationalism—monotheism betrays its universality, a feature which lies at its very core, and morphs into violence, generating and legitimizing henotheism: our god of our nation in contrast and competition to other nations with their gods. Alternatively, if monotheism keeps its universality while associated as political religion with exclusive nationalism it will tend to underwrite dreams of nationalist imperialism: our god and our nation as masters of the world.”

Show Notes

Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.
Download Miroslav Volf’s short digital booklet, Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses
Volf introduces Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence
“The price monotheism always has to pay for its alliance with exclusive nationalism is the loss of its soul. When monotheism embraces exclusive nationalism, monotheism’s God morphs from the creator and lover of all people and all creatures into a selfish and violent idol of a particular nation.”
Instrumentalizing God
What is religion anyway?
Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept
Martin Riesenbrot, A Promise of Salvation, A Theory of Religion
Christians were regarded with suspicion, as atheists
Wright: “…this leads some to say religion is itself a dangerous and violent thing because it leads to people saying I have this God and he's more important than your God or whatever. And all sorts of violence stem from that. Indeed, one could argue that the Enlightenment's redefinition radical redefinition of the word religion over against its, say, early centuries use, has been part of the problem. But that, that would be perhaps a more polemical thesis.”
Religion plays an important role in political society.
How did religion work in the ancient world?
Is religion a force for evil in society? Working from a secularist paradigm or not?
Monotheism revised by Christology
Two Christian groups anathematizing each other
“Nothing hangs on the word religion.”
Ultimate allegiance, and to what?
What are the political responsibilities of the state to religion?
Naming proper allegiance
Wright on Jesus and Political Authority in John 19: “In other words, in the famous Romans 13, um, it's not a totalitarian passage, though some have read it like that. But Paul says there is no authority except from God. In other words, there is the one God, but God wants his world to be wisely governed by human authorities. But he will then call them to account. And my favorite passage on that is in John 19, when Jesus is being interviewed by Pontius Pilate. And Pilate says, don't you realize I have the right to have you killed? And Jesus says, and it's extraordinary, think of Johannine theology, that Jesus says this to Pilate. You could have no authority over me unless it was given to you from above and then the corollary is therefore the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin and that's that's a very interesting differentiation which no doubt Pilate couldn't understand at all and of course violence enters in straight away because Pilate's response is to send him off to be crucified.”
Polycarp (paraphrased by N.T. Wright): “Now I won't worship your God, but I will respect you enough to honor you if you want to have a conversation about this.”
“That one God is doing justice in the world.”
Jan Assman: creating the states in which violence in the name of God is possible
Bringing in atonement theology
“All three monotheisms in some sense affirm the freedom of religion.”
Noble ideal of the post-enlightenment world: an inclusive nationalism and inclusive monotheism.
Freedom of religion
Christianity as trinitarian monotheism
Romans 8: Spirit groaning
Jesus’s cry for dereliction
Wright: “Collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured N.T. Wright and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Interchange of Love: Gratitude, Gift, and Joyful Recognition / Miroslav Volf Nov 19, 2023

Show notes

“Gratitude enlivens the world.”

Gratitude is the emotional expression of the interchange of love between giver and receiver. So of course we’re looking for more of that in public—it’s the very evidence of giving to one another, grace with each other, beneficence for one another. In this conversation, Miroslav Volf and Evan Rosa discuss this remarkable interchange of love between giver and receiver that leads to gratitude.

They discuss the meaning of gratitude in emotional, moral, and theological terms; and he introduces a variety of views on gratitude, from the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, to Thomas Aquinas, to Anthony Kronman’s “born-again pagan” critique of Christian gratitude, and finally Martin Luther’s take on gratitude which draws on the Magnificat of Mary, which Miroslav expounds.

Special thanks to the Gratitude to God Project for helping to make this episode possible.

Show Notes

Show Art: Henry Ossawa Tanner, "The Thankful Poor", 1894
Happy Thanksgiving from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture!
Gratitude to God Project Website: Psychological, Philosophical and Theological Investigations
Gratitude as a moral emotion
“identification of the good for which we should be grateful.”
The Pharisee & the Tax Collector
Looking inside the figures of scripture.
The performance of gratitude
Why does gratitude seem so important or basic in spiritual life?
“We should be grateful to our parents for having brought us into the world, raised us, spent all these incredibly long, wakeful hours at the beginning of our lives; and many, many more, many hours and days of worries, gratitude is appropriate. How much then more not to God, to whom we owe everything?”
Repayment of a debt
Anthony Kronman, Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan
Is gratitude too heavy a burden? To somehow pay back God for the gifts of the world?
Gratitude not as repayment, but as giving an equivalent gift
John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost
Abysmal Gap Between God and Creature
Aquinas on Gratitude
Receiving a benefit
Feeling thankfulness
Repaying a favor suitably, and according to our means
The Widow’s Mites
Joyful recognition
Recognize that what we have received is in fact a gift
Recognizing the moral worth of the giver on account of the moral worth of the deed
I receive the gift not with grumpiness, but with joy—over the giver, over the gift, and spilling over into other aspects of the relationship
Understanding Martin Luther’s Theology of Gratitude
Kronman’s misreading of Luther
Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation: “The love of God does not find, but creates what is pleasing to it.”
“But if you have somebody who truly gives, selflessly, gifts—then it's a kind of insult to them if you want to treat them as if they were trying to get something out of you for that.”
Misconstruing the relationship between giver and receiver.
Thomas Hobbs
“A circle of mutual benefit” where the person who has power dominates
The dearth of gratitude in public life today
Luther on Mary’s Magnificat and “God’s gift-giving to the nobodies of the world”
“No one can love God unless God makes himself known to that person in the most lovable and intimate fashion. And God can make himself known only through those works of his which he reveals in us, and which we feel and experience within ourselves. But where there is this experience, namely, that he is a God who looks into the depths and helps only the poor, despised, afflicted, miserable, forsaken, and those who are nothing, there the hearty love for him is born. The heart overflows with gladness and goes leaping and dancing for the great pleasure it has found in God.” (from Martin Luther’s Commentary on the Magnificat)
“God is the one who, in humility, always reaches to that which is lower than God in order to lift it up. And that's how he comes to the nobodies, to the despised, which are primarily the objects of God's love.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Miroslav Volf
Special thanks to Robert Emmons, Pete Hill, and the Gratitude to God Project for helping make this episode possible
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Thanks A Lot: The Complicated Emotional World of Gratitude / Jo-Ann Tsang Nov 11, 2023

Show notes

Recent 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 in part by the support of the Gratitude to God Project.

About Jo-Ann Tsang

Jo-Ann Tsang is a social psychologist, and is Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Baylor University.

Show Notes

Gratitude to God Project Website: Psychological, Philosophical and Theological Investigations
Tryptophanic food coma dreams of John Madden ranting about football and turducken
Daniel Tiger: “Sometimes you feel two feelings at the same time, and that’s okay.”
Empirical psychological research on gratitude
Intrinsic vs instrumental reasons for being grateful
Self-determination theory
The downsides of gratitude
Gratitude in marriage: matching affective responses of support and gratitude in relationships
Gratitude toward God
Julie Exline on Spiritual Struggle (link)
“It’s not always adaptive to be happy?”
Prosocial behavior
Find, Remind, Bind Theory
What is pro-sociality?
What is adaptivity?
Happiness is not always adaptive.
What’s adaptive depends on your goal in a certain situation.
Happiness and adaptivity as malleable concepts that depend on your definition of the good.
Does gratitude reduce protest?
Increased forgiveness and willingness to accept oppression rather than oppression
Quietism and perpetuating unjust structures
Gratitude might put on the brakes for the motivation to protest or press for change
“Give thanks in all things.” vs “Give thanks for all things.”
“Life is complicated.”
Gratitude doesn’t rule out anger
“How can I feel happy when there’s all these bad things going on?”
Is gratitude related to prejudice, stigma, or discrimination?
Why is it we keep chasing after happiness?
“If you're in a bad relationship, and gratitude's making you stick more strongly with that relationship partner, then that's not good.”
The role of gratitude in a life worth living

Production Notes

This podcast featured research psychologist Jo-Ann Tsang and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge and Kaylen Yun
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give