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

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Charles Taylor & Miroslav Volf / Finding a Shared Moral Understanding: Progress, Evil, Freedom, and Solidarity (Part 2) Oct 09, 2021

Show notes

This is Part 2 of 2—don't miss the previous conversation with Charles Taylor on "What's Going Wrong with Our Democracies?"

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Part 2 of 2: Philosopher Charles Taylor joins Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz for a two-part conversation about what's gone wrong with our democracies and finding common moral understanding. In this episode, Charles Taylor explains his most recent thinking about the growth of common ethical understanding in a world that often fails to live up to those shared moral principles of respect, dignity, and care. The conversation also covers the promise of hope in its political and theological context; the response we need for the epistemological crisis of post-truth politics; how to restore trust in each other; the relation between individual freedom and public common good; the need to recover solidarity and sacred encounter between humans during our time; and finally the promise of democracy for living up to our moral ideals.

Introduction: Ryan McAnnally-Linz

We’re living at the end of a strange moral century. 100 years ago, the world was marked by a global pandemic, the end of a long war, fights over gender inequality and racial injustice, and the precipice of a broken economy. And people in 1921 simply had no idea what kind of violence, bloodshed, and upheaval was coming.

And yet, even over the course of a century filled with all-too-human evil, we can trace a faint golden thread of moral invention. Commitments to human dignity, universal human rights, suffrage and democracy, solidarity with the marginalized and suffering, equality—the spread of these ideas also mark the last 100 years. The disparity is stark. At another moment of conflict and uncertainty, the fate of that golden thread is unclear.

This is part 2 of our conversation with philosopher Charles Taylor. Author of Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity, A Secular Age, and much more, Taylor exemplifies determined, imaginative, generous intellectual commitment to a fundamental question: What is humanity for? This is one of the foundational questions of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and this podcast—seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. Following Taylor, we want to help people to better understand themselves, their world, and the significance of their lives.

Show Notes

Introduction: Ryan McAnnally-Linz
A strange moral century
Hope
How have we got as far as we've got?
The progress of ethical understanding through history
Disparity with human propensity for evil
Non-violent resistance
How non-violence shapes Miroslav Volf's approach to democracy
Miroslav's first democratic act of protest in Czechoslovakia
"Fear not" as a command; hope as an obligation
The hope that permeates Charles Taylor's work
How do you cultivate a sense of hopefulness?
The quest for moral certainty and purity
Listener question from Bonnie Kristian: "How to achieve ethical growth/gain moral knowledge in a time of epistemic crisis?"
Listener question from Jennifer Herdt: "You have written in such illuminating ways about the quest for certainty and moral purity, and about how these often end up rationalizing violence in service of the eradication of error and evil. I'm wondering how you would you relate your analysis to our contemporary post-truth historical moment, in which various groups that perceive themselves as under attack seek epistemic closure, sealing themselves off from an enemy regarded as absolutely unworthy of engagement--even at the cost of massive loss of life, as we see in politically-motivated anti-masking and anti-vaccination campaigns. What sources of hope would you name for restoring basic forms of social trust and commitment to pursuit of a common life?"
Tribalism that overtakes the sacred encounter between human beings
How the COVID pandemic has made things harder for tribalism
Democracy, freedom, choice, and the public good
Listener question from David Moe: It might be good to ask him these: "what kind of democracy the religiously pluralistic world needs today? How does religion shape the moral principle of that democracy?
What makes democracy a worthwhile pursuit for the human community?
The polis allows agents together to determine their common life by reason.
Pope Francis's Encyclicals: Solidarity, collaboration, and universal human dignity in Laudato Si, and Fratelli Tutti
"A cross-confessional ecumenical discussion about what the telos of human life is about."

Production Notes

This podcast featured philosopher Charles Taylor, theologian Miroslav Volf, and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

Charles Taylor & Miroslav Volf / What's Wrong with Our Democracies?: Fear of Replacement, Post-Truth, and Entrenched Tribal Factions (Part 1) Oct 02, 2021

Show notes

Philosopher Charles Taylor joins Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz for a two-part conversation about what's gone wrong with our democracies and finding common moral understanding. They discuss Christian nationalism, authoritarian government, the future viability of Christian faith and practice, the chaos of the post-truth epistemic crisis that’s rampant in political dialogue today, the role of social media in that crisis, and Taylor's most recent thinking about the growth of common ethical understanding in a world that often fails to live up to those shared moral principles of respect, dignity, and care.

(Part 1 of a 2-part series)

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Introduction: Ryan McAnnally-Linz

The human world today is not the same as it was three hundred years ago. Far from it. Technology, economics, politics, art, culture—all have seen transformations, even revolutions, around the globe. Thirty years ago, a triumphalist narrative of these changes was in vogue: “modernity,” it was said, had solved humanity’s perennial problems, broken through our narrow-minded ethical traditions, and set us towards a future of comfort and perpetual peace after, in Francis Fukuyama’s phrase, “the end of history.” Even three years ago, we thought the world was different. I mean, I did.

No wonder so many of us are trying to understand the revolutions and mechanics of human society. If you’re paying attention, you’re driven to understand. And so columnists and talking heads—academics and public intellectuals—not to mention your radicalized high school friend on Facebook—we all have these theories about ideal human society and culture, and, like how the hell we wound up here. Unfortunately, our desire to know and understand often exceeds our abilities to perceive and explain.

Charles Taylor is our guest for the next two episodes of For the Life of the World. He sees human life and action not as something to be explained, but to be elucidated, lived with, and made sense of. Over 7 decades, he's produced an astonishing and magisterial body of work, spanning social theory, religion, epistemology, history, politics, the self, aesthetics, science, technology, and more.

But you might be surprised to know that 30 years ago he described himself as a "monomaniac"—he meant that his ultimate concern is really singular: human life. The one issue that motivates his entire body of work is "philosophical anthropology." But answering the questions of what human persons are and what it means to live a life worthy of that humanity, he says, requires thinking along the borders and intersections of the massive diversity of human society and culture.

He has a long history of political engagement as well. As an undergraduate at Oxford in 1955, he launched one of the first campaigns to ban nuclear weapons. During the '60s he ran several times for Canadian parliament as a major-party candidate, but fell short by a small margin each time. The result for us, of course, is gratitude for the incredible body of work that came in the wake of his attempts to gain office, including Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity, A Secular Age, The Language Animal—all the way up to his 2020 book, Reconstructing Democracy: How Citizens Are Building from the Ground Up.

Taylor graciously joined Miroslav and me this summer for a long conversation about what's gone wrong with our democracies and finding common moral understanding. We cover a lot of ground, discussing Christian nationalism, authoritarian government, the future viability of Christian faith and practice, the chaos of the post-truth epistemic crisis that’s rampant in political dialogue today, the role of social media in that crisis, and Taylor’s most recent thinking about the growth of common ethical understanding in a world that often fails to live up to those shared moral principles of respect, dignity, and care.

We'll run this conversation in two parts, this week and next. Special thanks goes to many of you listeners and friends who responded with thoughtful and important questions. Those questions helped to frame this conversation. Thanks for listening.

Show Notes

Introduction: Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Charles Taylor's history of political engagement and his interest in philosophy
What role did Vatican II, especially on freedom of religion, play on Taylor's politics?
Catholic intellectuals: French philosopher and theologian Emmanuel Mounier and French priest Henri de Lubac
Integralism and Dominionism
From Constantine on, we've lived with Christendom
Christendom is a "straight jacket for spiritual growth of the Christian faith."
What is the telos of history?
The Pope Francis approach: "Stop worrying about defending what's there and you reach out and just be a Christian."
Democracy isn't functioning the way it should be.
Voting for Trump: "It'd be laughable if it weren't cryable."
"If Trump pulled off his coup d'etat, that would be so catastrophic for the Western democratic world."
Democracies worldwide aren't in good shape: in what respects and what's underlying that?
Are we seeing the erosion of (1) common sense of identity and (2) universal principles of democracy?
"Even common human nature is being called into question."
"Democracy is no longer perceived as a moral ideal, but is simply a tool of governance."
"The fear of White replacement": The problem with political alignment that resists White minoritization.
"The fear of being replaced is very profound."
Question from Peng Yin (Emory University): "In A Secular Age, you described a rather uplifting modern social imaginary. Society is a realm of mutual benefits where our purposes mesh. In the present moment, however, society is increasingly seen in conflictual terms, as no more than a theatre of competing interests. Has that social imaginary you captured more than a decade ago vanished in our current crises of democracy? If so, do you see any prospect for its recovery?"
Question from listener Lynette Roth: "In a polarized world, where the divisions are falling along religious lines (and the religions are black-and-white, take no prisoners), how is democracy (where every voice counts) possible? How can democracy and religious conservatives live together?"
Entrenched in political tribal factions.
"Fear that we're going to disappear—that our version of Christianity is going to leave the earth."
Second only to "Follow me" in the scriptures is the phrase: "Be not afraid."
"This is not the end of the story."
Hope for the future: "The evangelical virtue that we need."

Production Notes

This podcast featured philosopher Charles Taylor, theologian Miroslav Volf, and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

David Brooks & Miroslav Volf / The Road to Character Sep 25, 2021

Show notes

The world today seem to prefer politics to morality, a personal brand to inner character, resume virtues that achieve success over eulogy virtues that reveal who you truly are... and it like this from the news to Instagram, at PTA meetings and little league fields, from the grocery store line to the protest front lines. David Brooks thinks we need to find our way back on the road to character.

Today, New York Times columnist David Brooks joins Miroslav Volf for a conversation about his 2015 book The Road to Character. Together, they reflect on the central virtues in a life of flourishing that leads to joy, the importance of reintroducing the concept of sin back into public conversation, and the challenge of finding the resolve to pursue the commitments to vocation, faith, community, and family in a culture that tempts us toward individualism and idolatry of the self.

This is part 2 of a 2-part conversation on Flourishing, Character, and the Good Life. Check out Part 1 , featuring David Brooks interviewing Miroslav Volf about his 2016 book, Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World.

Show Notes

Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik: Adam 1 vs Adam 2
Resume Virtues vs Eulogy Virtues
The power of a good mom for developing character
Christian Smith and the dearth of moral dilemmas in young people, reducing everything to emotivism and individualism
Sin vs "insensitive"
"How do you introduce sin into the secular conversation?"
Brooks sense of vocation: Shifting the conversation out of politics and into morality.
Tim Keller: don't talk about depravity, talk about disordered loves.
Character development requires awareness of sinfulness, correcting where we've gone wrong.
Managing the "Big Me"
How to motivate humility
Humility: Not thinking lowly of oneself, but seeing yourself accurately.
Humanity as crooked tinder: Confront your broken nature.
Flourishing is a commitment to four things: vocation, faith/philosophy, community, spouse/family
"The tree is my only friend. ... The tree talks to me and says, 'I am life, I am life, I am eternal life.'"
Biblical imagination of the world to come: Lion with lamb; everyone sitting under their own fig tree; entering into joy.
A "deeply embedded" life
"Every day in government sucks, but the whole experience is tremendously rewarding."
Flourishing and suffering, enlarging capacity for empathy
Love to enlarge our hearts
Moments where it comes together in joy
The gratuity and deficit that comes with joy
The way David Brooks writes his column: piles of papers and notes, crawling around on the floor
Joy as advent and anticipation
Market economy, competition, self-projection as a brand, selling oneself
The rise of fame in recent years: By 2 to 1, college students prefer a life of fame to a life of sex
"You need a counter-culture within yourself."
Tough interview question about character: "Name a time you told the truth and it hurt you."
"There is a vacuum for people to think and talk about their own internal lives."
People are hungry and thirsty for a discussion of character and flourishing amidst their default lives of success and individualism.
Practices and habits to form character
Experiencing great love that fuses one with another
Overcoming challenges and suffering
Deep involvement in an act of service
"Do the reading."
Latch on to a tradition, rather than build your own system.
The role of education in being drawn toward beauty and moments of transcendence

Production Notes

This podcast featured David Brooks and Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

David Brooks & Miroslav Volf / What Is Human Flourishing? Sep 18, 2021

Show notes

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 difficult questions on their own. They require intellectual muscles we've long let atrophy; they require reading deeply and at length; they require a willingness to listen across the chasm of disagreement. But one begins to wonder: if each of us must answer these questions for ourselves, how do we even begin to have this conversation together? The fact is, we need one another. Not just to answer them well. But to ask them well.

For the coming two weeks, we'll be airing a conversation between New York Times columnist David Brooks and theologian Miroslav Volf. In this first part of the dialogue, David interviews Miroslav about his 2016 book, Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World. In next week's follow up, Miroslav and David discuss his 2015 book The Road to Character.

Show Notes

Life going well, life led well, life feeling right
"Flourishing extends over long periods of time."
"Does flourishing involve some eternal standard?"
How can we engage in meaningful debate about religion and flourishing in a globalized world?
Reading Nietzsche devotionally as a Christian theologian
The world is becoming, for ill or for good, a more religious place
What does religion offer the individual person today?
"I don't see any reason why washing the feet of the destitute... why that wouldn't be an even more noble calling than working for Goldman Sachs."
Market economy and flourishing
"Religious traditions take us out of ourselves, into something transcendent."
Can you be good without God?
"You can be good without believing in God, but you can't be without God."
If you have no connection to the transcendent realm, do you have a chance at being good?
Secularization
The state of the world: Globalization and religion are in crisis, tearing human communities and nations and cultures apart.
Global capitalism letting down our hopeful expectations, because it's not delivering on the creation or distribution of wealth
Sin and grace in public debate—"Why did the secular sermons go away?"
Life Worth Living course at Yale College
The unbearable lightness of being
Two nihilisms
Is it possible to combine the pleasure of freedom and belief in God?
Joy in and joy of the world: taking pleasure in the created order
The sacraments of relationships and admiring the good of the world
Pluralism and contending particular universalisms

Production Notes

This podcast featured journalist and columnist David Brooks and theologian Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

Miroslav Volf on 9/11 / A Grave in the Air: The Lasting Impact of 9/11 on Faith & Culture Sep 11, 2021

Show notes

As 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. "Embrace," he said that morning, "is the horizon of the struggle for justice. You will have justice only if you strive for something greater than justice, only if you strive after love."

In this episode, Miroslav talks about his experience on 9/11 with Evan Rosa, including short clips from his UN remarks 20 years ago. They consider the lasting impact of 9/11 on both American and global life, and how the event and its continuing aftermath have shaped the world.

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologian Miroslav Volf
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Evan Rosa / Courage, Control, Kairos Time, and Roasting S'mores as an Exercise in Patience / Patience Coda Sep 04, 2021

Show notes

You can't just chatter about patience. If patience moderates our sorrows, then it's ultimately a deeper spiritual virtue that can't be instrumentalized to feel better—it's more deeply connected to a joy and hope that recognizes to what and to whom we are in demand, to whom we're responsible, brings closer attention to the present moment, and acknowledges our limitations and lack of control. In this episode, Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Evan Rosa review and reflect on the six episodes that made up our series on patience: why it’s so hard, what’s good about it, and how we might cultivate it.These six episodes explored patience in its theological, ethical, and psychological context, offering cultural and social diagnosis of our modern predicament with patience, defining the virtue in its divine and human contexts, and then considering the practical cultivation of patience as a way of life.This series featured interviews with Andrew Root (Luther Seminary), Kathryn Tanner (Yale Divinity School), Paul Dafydd Jones (University of Virginia), Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School), Sarah Schnitker (Baylor University), and Tish Harrison Warren (priest, author, and New York Times columnist).Show NotesModerating sorrowsJames 5:7: "Be patient therefore beloved until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts. For the coming of the Lord is near."The patient way to make a s'moreAn unexpected s'mores tutorialKairos vs Chronos: often overdone, it applies when you're talking about patience.Time with kids at bed time is incommensurate with work productivity time; comparing the two is a category mistake."One of the things that these conversations about patients had had started to clue me into was the importance of being attuned to the proper activity or thing for which this time is—a less uniform account of time that says for instance, you know, the bedtime routine with my children that time is for that. And so thinking of it as somehow commensurate with work productivity time would be a category mistake of a sort. It would be an unfaithfulness. And so that impatience derives from a lack of attentiveness to the temporal texture of our lives in really relation to God." (Ryan)There can be "patient hurry"Patience is like audio compression: it sets a threshold that is sensitive to the sorrow in our life and moderates or mitigates it.Episode summariesPatience Part 1, Andy Root: "To say that I'm busy is to indicate that I'm in demand."Feeling busy = feeling importantRecognitionAttending to the present, accepting a different form of "being in demand."Patience Part 2, Kathy Tanner: "There's no profit in waiting."Connecting economy to patience."Something has to hold firm in order for you to take risks."Stability and the steadfast love of God.Patience Part 3, Paul Dafydd Jones: "The Psalms of lament and complaint can get, as we know, incredibly dark, incredibly bleak. One operation of divine patience could be that God gives ancient Israel the time and space to accuse God. God is patient with expressions of trauma, expressions of guilt, expressions of deep anguish. And God is so patient with them that they get included in the Canon. Like, some of the most powerful, skeptical, doubtful, angry moments are found in the Psalms. So God's letting be at this moment and letting happen includes within it God's honoring of grief and trauma, such that those moments become part of the scriptures."Psalms of complaintPsychologist Julie Exline on anger with GodAnger with God is consistent with patiencePatience Part 4, Adam Eitel: "Moderating sorrow is not to suppress it or develop an affected callousness or disenchanted, jaded relation to the things one really loves."It's hard to chatter about patience.Patience and joyPatience Part 5, Sarah Schnitker: Identify, Imagine, and SyncNormativity and a truer cognitive reappraisal of one's emotional statePatience Part 6, Tish Harrison Warren: "God intended man to have all good, but in his, God's, time and therefore all disobedience, all sin consists essentially in breaking out of time. Hence the restoration of order by the Son of God had to be the annulment of that premature snatching at knowledge, the beating down of the hand, outstretched toward eternity, the repentant return from a false, swift transfer of eternity to a true, slow confinement in time. Hence the importance of patience in the New Testament, which becomes the basic constituent of Christianity. More central, even the humility, the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one's own limitations, not to force issues by playing the hero or the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism: the meekness of the Lamb which is led."Control and Meekness: Meekness is controlled strengthProduction NotesThis podcast featured Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Evan RosaEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan JowersA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/givePart 1 Show Notes: Andrew RootDoubling down and the temptation to make up for lost timeHartmut Rosa and Modernity as AccelerationAcceleration across three categories: technology, social change, and pace of life"Decay rate” is accelerating—we can sense that things get old and obsolete much faster (e.g., phones, computers)Riding the wave of accelerated social change"We’ve become enamored with gadgets and time-saving technologies."“Getting more actions within units of time"Multi-taskingExpectations and waiting as an attack on the self"Waiting feels like a moral failure."Give yourself a break; people are under a huge amount of guilt that they’re not using their time or curating the self they could have."You’re screwing up my flow here, man."When I’m feeling the acceleration of time: “Get the bleep out of my way. My humanity is worn down through the acceleration."Busyness as an indicator of a good life“To say that I’m busy is to indicate that I’m in demand.""Stripping time of its sacred weight."Mid-life crises and the hollowness of timePatience is not just "go slower”Eric Fromm's "having mode" vs "being mode" of actionWaiting doesn’t become the absence of somethingPixar’s Soul, rushing to find purpose, failing to see the gift of connectedness to othersNot all resonance is good (e.g., the raging resonance of Capitol rioters)How would the church offer truly good opportunities for resonanceBonhoeffer and the community of resonant realityLuther's theology of the cross—being with and being for—sharing in the momentReceiving the act of being with and being forInstrumentalization vs resonanceBearing with one another in weakness, pain, and sufferingEncountering each other by putting down accelerated goals to be with and for the otherFlow or resonance in one’s relationship to timeArtists, mystics, and a correlation with psychological flowPart 2 Show Notes: Kathryn TannerListen to Patience Part 1 on Time, Acceleration, and Waiting, with Andrew Root (July 24, 2021)What does patience have to do with money?Is time money?What is finance dominated capitalism?Viewing economy and our relationship to time through past, present, and future"Chained to the past”—debt is no longer designed to be paid off, and you can’t escape it“Urgent focus on the present”—emergencies, preoccupation, short-term outlook, and anxietyWorkplace studiesPoverty, Emergency, and a Lack of Resources (Time or Money)Lack of time and resources makes you fixated on the presentA Christian sense of the urgency of the presentSufficient supply of God's graceThe right way to focus on the present"Consideration of the present for all intents and purposes collapses into concern about the future."The future is already embedded and encased in the present value of things.Stock market and collapsing the present into future expectationsPulling the future into the presentGamestop and making the future present, and the present futurePatience and elongating the presentFulsomeness, amplitude, expansiveness of God’s graceRace, savings, and dire circumstancesPatience as a means to elongating the presentStability, volatility, and waiting“There’s no profit in waiting"God's steadfast love and commitmentKierkegaard's Works of LoveAugustine’s unstable volatile world and the implication of investing only in God's love and stability"Something has to hold firm in order for you to take risks."Part 3 Show Notes: Paul Dafydd JonesGod's patienceApostle Peter: “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you.” (2 Peter 3)Tertullian and Cyprian"You need to think about who God is, and what God is doing before you think about who human beings are, and what we're called to become."Augustine: "God is patient, without any passion."Patience: Creation, providence, incarnation, TrinityCreatures are given time and space to "reward God's patience"This is not God getting out of the way; it's non-competitive between God and world.Colin Gunton: for the problem of evil, God's patience is a good place to start."God's patience occurs at a pace that is rarely congenial to us ... the world's history is not unfolding at the pace or the shape we would like.""God gives ancient Israel the time and space to accuse. God is patient with expressions of trauma, expressions of guilt, expressions of deep anguish. And God is so patient with them that they get included in the Canon.""Some of the most powerful, skeptical, doubtful, angry moments, are found in the psalms.""God patiently beholds the suffering of God's creatures, particularly with respect to ancient Israel, that somehow the traumas of creaturely life are present to God, and God in some sense has to bear or endure them."Beholding Suffering vs Enduring SufferingGod's responsibility for the entirety of the cosmos: "There's no getting God off the hook for things that happen in God's universe."And yet God doesn't approve of everything that occurs.Confident expectancy: "Moving to meet the kingdom that is coming towards us.""God's patience empowers us to act."The patience of God incarnate; Christ is patience incarnate"Israel is waiting for a Messiah."We cannot understand Christ as savior of the world without understanding him as Messiah of ancient Israel.God's solidarity with us"The pursuit of salvation runs through togetherness with creation in the deepest possible sense."Letting Be vs Letting Happen"Jesus has to negotiate the quotidian."Crucifixion as the one moment of divine impatience with sinTheology of the cross as an imperative"Christians often are not comfortable with complexity. We want to think in terms of assurance. And we want that assurance to be comforting in a fairly quick-fire away. I think theologians have the task of exposing that as an ersatz hope and insisting that faith includes complexity. It involves lingering over ambiguity. Trying to fit together. multi-dimensional beliefs that are this lattice work—none of which can be reduced to a pithy, marketing quip.""Theologians need to be patient in order to honor the complexity of Christian faith. ... That's called intellectual responsibility.""Christianity is not going to cease to be weaponized by snake-oil salespeople."Staying with complexity and ambiguity"The capacity to tell the truth is in short supply.""Human beings are called to respond to God's patience. Human beings are called to make good on God's patience. The covenant of grace, which is fulfilled in Christ and which is animated by the spirit, makes that a possibility. It's not an easy possibility of real life. I mean, not just because of sin and finitude, but because of the complexities of the world that we live in. But learning how to respond to God's patience, both through forms of waiting, through forms of activity, and sometimes through moments of intemperate resistance is I think at the heart of Christian life.""People should not get in the way of human flourishing ... brought about by the empowering patience of the Holy Spirit. ... That's a gospel moment. That's a kairos moment."Part 4 Show Notes: Adam EitelThe context for Thomas Aquinas and his friars"The friars are on the verge of being canceled."What is a virtue? "To have them is to have a kind of excellence and to be able to do excellent things."Where does patience fit in the virtues?Matter and ObjectThe matter of a virtue is the thing it's about, and the matter of patience is sorrow.Sorrow can have right or wrong objects and can be excessive or deficient.Sorrow is elicited by evil, that is, the diminishment of good.Patience is a moderating virtue for the passions, similar to courage.Patience is connected to fortitude or courage in moderating our response to "the saddest things.""Patience moderates or constrains sorrow, so that it doesn't go beyond its proper limit. When we become too absorbed in trouble or woe, alot of other things start to go wrong. That's what Gregory the Great called patience the guardian of the virtues. .... deteriorate." (or to ... guardian of the virtues in that sense.")What does it feel like to be patient on this account?You can't experience patience without experiencing joy."Joy is the antithesis of sorrow. Its remedy."Remedies: Take a bath, go to sleep, drink some wine, talk to a friend ... and at the top of the list is contemplation of God.Contemplation for Aquinas: prayer, chanting psalms, drawing one's mind to the presence of God.Experientia Dei—taste and see"This is scandalous to most virtue theorists ... but you can't have patience, or at least not much of it, without contemplation.""Moderating sorrow is not to suppress it or develop an affected callousness or disenchanted, jaded relation to the things one really loves.""Patience never means ignoring or turning away from the thing that's genuinely sorrowful."Diminishment of sorrow by nesting it among the many other goods.Modulate one's understanding of the thing that's sorrowful.The sorrow of losing a childYou can only write about it from inside of it.What is it? "Beneath the agitation, some kind of low grade anger, is there some sorrow? What has been lost? What have I been wanting that is not here? What's beneath the anger? What is it?"What scripture anchors you? "Find that scripture that anchors you in patience, and let it become yours. Let God speak to you through it.Part 5 Show Notes: Sarah SchnitkerThis episode was made possible in part by a grant from Blueprint 1543.Why study patience from a psychological perspective?Patience as notably absentCan we suffer well? Can we wait well?David Baily Harned: Has patience gone out of style since the industrial revolution (Patience: How We Wait Upon the World)Waiting as a form of sufferingDaily hassles patience, interpersonal patience, and life hardships patienceMeasuring patience is easier than measuring love, joy, or gratitude, because it isn’t as socially valued in contemporary lifeHow virtue channels tow…

Full show notes at the publisher

Adam Eitel / Taste and See / Patience Bonus Sep 02, 2021

Show notes

"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.
Psalm 34
Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 34
Finding delight in and encouragement from Psalm 34 and the feeling intellect of Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas as lumbering saint living between his ears, or tasting and seeing the sweetness of God
"Living between your ears"
"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."
Becoming a theologian can wreck your soul, when faith is merely cerebral.
Coming soon on For the Life of the World: philosopher Charles Taylor on October 2, 2021.

About Adam Eitel

Adam Eitel is Assistant Professor of Ethics at Yale Divinity School. He focuses his research and teaching on the history of Christian moral thought, contemporary social ethics and criticism, and modern religious thought. Dr. Eitel has roughly a dozen books, chapters, edited volumes, and articles published or in progress. These include an ethical analysis of drone strikes and a theological account of domination. His current book project explores the role of love in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas. A 2004 Baylor University graduate and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Fribourg, Dr. Eitel received his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, completing the latter in 2015.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Adam Eitel and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

Tish Harrison Warren / Control, Creatureliness, and the Practice of Patience / Patience Part 6 Aug 28, 2021

Show notes

"We are creatures in time."

Today, the Reverend Tish Harrison Warren explores patience as spiritual formation. She’s an Anglican priest and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which was Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep. She recently started a weekly newsletter on faith in private and public life for The New York Times.

She reflects on the human demand for control in both ordinary and extraordinary life events, from the line at the supermarket to the cancer ward; the recognition of human vulnerability and just hating the fact that we can’t control what happens next; the temptation to break out of time; and the difficult balance between the urgent need for justice and the acceptance of our human and societal limits. The entire conversation is illuminated by the beauty of what Hans Urs Von Balthasar calls “the meekness of the Lamb which is led.”

Part 6 of a 6-episode series on Patience, hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

About Tish Harrison Warren

Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which was Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep. She has worked in ministry settings for over a decade as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, as an associate rector, and with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and non-profit organizations. Currently, she is Writer in Residence at Resurrection South Austin. She is a monthly columnist with Christianity Today, and her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project and a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum. She lives with her husband and three children in the Austin, Texas area.

Show Notes

"Part of becoming more patient is noticing how impatient you are. ... It's so not-linear."
Kids will slow you down and expose your impatience
Patience often looks like other things—"it looks like contentment, it looks like trust, it looks like endurance."
Patience and humility: "We are not the President of the United States. Things can go on without us."
"Our entire life is lived in a posture of waiting."
Waiting for the eschaton, the return of Christ, and things set right
The illusion of control—James 4:13-14
Has Urs Von Balthasar: "God intended man to have all good, but in his, God's, time and therefore all disobedience, all sin consists essentially in breaking out of time. Hence the restoration of order by the Son of God had to be the annulment of that premature snatching at knowledge, the beating down of the hand, outstretched toward eternity, the repentant return from a false, swift transfer of eternity to a true, slow confinement in time. Hence the importance of patience in the New Testament, which becomes the basic constituent of Christianity. More central, even the humility, the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one's own limitations, not to force issues by playing the hero or the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism: the meekness of the Lamb which is led."
"We are creatures in time."
Robert Wilken: "singular mark of patience is hope"
Activism and patience together
"Patience can get a bad rap, that Christians are just wanting to become bovine."
Patience but not quietism, a long wait but not gradualism
The ultimate need to discern the moment
Clarence Jordan and Martin Luther King Jr.
The practices of discernment for individuals and communities
Social media trains us to be impatient
The meaning of urgent change is changing
Internet advocacy and a connected world makes us less patient people
"It takes real work to slow down and listen to another person's perspective, especially if you disagree with them."
We often don't have the patience to even understand someone else.
Real conversations with real people
Silence, solitude
"Having a body requires an enormous amount of patience."
"My kids are so slow. They're the one's teaching me to be patient!"
Little hardships of boredom and discomfort
"Life with a body and life with real people inevitably involves patience."
"Patience is something we learn our way out of through privilege and through being, you know, important adults."

Production Notes

This podcast featured priest and author the Reverend Tish Harrison Warren and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

Sarah Schnitker / The Psychology of Patience / Patience Part 5 Aug 21, 2021

Show notes

What is the place of patience in a life worth living? Evidence from psychology suggests that it plays an important role in managing life's stresses, contributing to a greater sense of well-being, and is even negatively correlated with depression and suicide risk. Psychologist Sarah Schnitker (Baylor University) explains her research on patience, how psychological methodology integrates with theology and philosophy to define and measure the virtue, and offers an evidence-based intervention for becoming more patient. She also discusses the connection between patience and gratitude, the role of patience in a meaningful life, and how acedia, a forgotten vice to modern people, lurks in the shadows when we are deficient in patience.

Part 5 of a 6-episode series on Patience, hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

This episode was made possible in part by a grant from Blueprint 1543.
Why study patience from a psychological perspective?
Patience as notably absent
Can we suffer well? Can we wait well?
David Baily Harned: Has patience gone out of style since the industrial revolution (Patience: How We Wait Upon the World)
Waiting as a form of suffering
Daily hassles patience, interpersonal patience, and life hardships patience
Measuring patience is easier than measuring love, joy, or gratitude, because it isn’t as socially valued in contemporary life
How virtue channels toward different goals
Patience can help you achieve your goals by helping you regulate emotion, allowing you to stay calm, making decisions, persist through difficulties
Patience and the pursuit of justice
Patience and assertiveness
“If you’re a doormat, it’s not because you are patient, it’s because you lack assertiveness."
Aristotelian "Golden Mean” thinking: neither recklessly pushing through or giving up and disengaging. Patience allows you to pursue the goal in an emotionally stable way
Unity of the virtues: “We need a constellation of virtues for a person to really flourish in this world."
Golden Mean, excess, deficiency, too much and too little
Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris on a forgotten vice
Acedia in relationship: “Even in the pandemic… monotony…"
The overlapping symptoms of acedia and depression
Patience is negatively correlated with depression symptoms; people with more life-hardships patience is a strength that helps people cope with some types of depression
Patience and gratitude buffer against ultimate struggles with existential meaning and suicide risk
How do you become more patient?
“It requires patience to become more patient."
Three Step Process for becoming more patient: Identify, Imagine, and Sync
Step 1: Identify your emotional state. Patience is not suppression; it begins with attention and noticing—identifying what’s going on.
Step 2: Cognitive reappraisal: one of the most effective ways to regulate our emotions. Think about your own emotions from another person’s perspective, or in light of the bigger picture. Take each particular situation and reappraise it.
Find benefits. Turn a curse into a blessing. Find opportunities.
Step 3: Sync with your purpose. Create a narrative that supports the meaning of suffering. For many this is religious faith
Reappraising cognitive reappraisal: How convinced do you have to be? You’d have to find something with “epistemic teeth”—is this something you can rationally endorse and know, and can you feel it?
Combining patience and gratitude practices, allowing for multiple emotions at once, and reimagining and reappraising one's life within your understanding of purpose and meaning.
Provide psychological distance to attenuate emotional response.
The existential relevance of faith for patience; theological background of patience
Patience and a life worth living
Love, the unity of the virtues, and "the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation" (2 Peter 3)

About Sarah Schnitker

Sarah Schnitker is Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University. She holds a PhD and an MA in Personality and Social Psychology from the University of California, Davis, and a BA in Psychology from Grove City College. Schnitker studies virtue and character development in adolescents and emerging adults, with a focus on the role of spirituality and religion in virtue formation. She specializes in the study of patience, self-control, gratitude, generosity, and thrift. Schnitker has procured more than $3.5 million in funding as a principle investigator on multiple research grants, and she has published in a variety of scientific journals and edited volumes. Schnitker is a Member-at-Large for APA Division 36 – Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, is a Consulting Editor for the organization’s flagship journal, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, and is the recipient of the Virginia Sexton American Psychological Association’s Division 36 Mentoring Award. Follow her on Twitter @DrSchnitker.

Production Notes

This podcast featured psychologist Sarah Schnitker and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

Adam Eitel / Constraining Sorrow, Contemplating Joy / Patience Part 4 Aug 14, 2021

Show notes

"So here's a fact of human life. We have sorrow and, in many ways, That's neither here nor there, neither good nor bad, but we know intuitively that there are ways in which our sorrow can become excessive or misplaced.What the virtue of patience does is it moderates sorrow or constrains it, so it doesn't go beyond its proper limit. When we become too absorbed in trouble and woe, a lot of other things start to go wrong and that's why someone like Gregory the Great called patience the guardian of the virtues, because sorrow, if it's not checked, can easily devolve into anger, hatred, and fear. ... What it means to moderate sorrow isn't to suppress it, or to develop some kind of affected callousness or disenchanted, jaded relation to the things that one actually really loves."

"You'll discover really quickly that you can't think about patience—you can't experience patience—without thinking about and experiencing joy. Joy is the antithesis of sorrow—its remedy."

Though it's tempting to think patience is a correction for hurry, busyness, scarcity of time, and haste, it's ultimately about managing your sorrow. Adam Eitel is an ethicist at Yale Divinity School who specializes in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. In this episode, he reflects on the human side of the virtue of patience and its place in the moral life—examining how it moderates our passions and responses to sorrow, finding surprising connections between patience, joy, and contemplation, and opening up toward an experiential theology that must comment on patience only from inside the struggle to receive it.

Part 4 of a 6-episode series on Patience, hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

The context for Thomas Aquinas and his friars
"The friars are on the verge of being canceled."
What is a virtue? "To have them is to have a kind of excellence and to be able to do excellent things."
Where does patience fit in the virtues?
Matter and Object
The matter of a virtue is the thing it's about, and the matter of patience is sorrow.
Sorrow can have right or wrong objects and can be excessive or deficient.
Sorrow is elicited by evil, that is, the diminishment of good.
Patience is a moderating virtue for the passions, similar to courage.
Patience is connected to fortitude or courage in moderating our response to "the saddest things."
"Patience moderates or constrains sorrow, so that it doesn't go beyond its proper limit. When we become too absorbed in trouble or woe, alot of other things start to go wrong. That's what Gregory the Great called patience the guardian of the virtues. .... deteriorate." (or to ... guardian of the virtues in that sense.")
What does it feel like to be patient on this account?
You can't experience patience without experiencing joy.
"Joy is the antithesis of sorrow. Its remedy."
Remedies: Take a bath, go to sleep, drink some wine, talk to a friend ... and at the top of the list is contemplation of God.
Contemplation for Aquinas: prayer, chanting psalms, drawing one's mind to the presence of God.
Experientia Dei—taste and see
"This is scandalous to most virtue theorists ... but you can't have patience, or at least not much of it, without contemplation."
"Moderating sorrow is not to suppress it or develop an affected callousness or disenchanted, jaded relation to the things one really loves."
"Patience never means ignoring or turning away from the thing that's genuinely sorrowful."
Diminishment of sorrow by nesting it among the many other goods.
Modulate one's understanding of the thing that's sorrowful.
The sorrow of losing a child
You can only write about it from inside of it.
What is it? "Beneath the agitation, some kind of low grade anger, is there some sorrow? What has been lost? What have I been wanting that is not here? What's beneath the anger? What is it?"
What scripture anchors you? "Find that scripture that anchors you in patience, and let it become yours. Let God speak to you through it.

About Adam Eitel

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Adam Eitel and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
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

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