Jesus's teaching to be in but not of the world (John 17:14-15) has gone from a mode of prophetic witness that could lead to martyrdom, to bumper sticker ethics that either feeds the trolls or fuels the tribe. We're in a moment where the ways that Christianity's influence on culture—and vice versa—are writ large and undeniable. And yet, how are we to understand it? How are we to live in light of it? How does that relationship change from political moment to political moment? In this conversation, ethicist Luke Bretherton (Duke Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun to reflect on the purpose of theology as a way of life committed to loving God and neighbor; the essential virtue of listening and its role in public theology; the interrelation between Church and World; the temptation to see the other as an enemy to be defeated rather than a neighbor to be loved; and how best to understand secularism and religiosity today.

Show Notes

• Do you call yourself a theologian?
• “You can't understand the water you're swimming in without understanding something of the theological frameworks that have helped shape it”
• Where does the idea that our contemporary context is secular come from?
• “The world is as furiously religious as ever”
• People think that our modern age is like a shower, that we can just “step into the shower and be washed clean from the foul accretions of superstition and step out enlightened, rational men and women,” but we're actually in a ‘jacuzzi’ of ideas
• The internet and plurality of opinion
• What happens when we step away from the institutional framework of the Church?
• “Who tells the children what Christianity is, who tells the children, what Islam is?”
• Do you actually want to show up on a Sunday?
• Then tension between believing and belonging
• Sacrality and its many guises
• “The many forms of life which we don't necessarily name as religious, but they're functioning in that way”
• How do we name them?
• If you talk to an atheist, they feel marginalized in this country, but if you talk to an Evangelical Christian they feel the same way
• “Everyone feels under threat, whether you're a humanist or an atheist or a Christian or Muslim”
• “But if you take the victim view, it generates a failure of imagination, a failure of patience, and a failure of paying attention”
• Churches talk a lot about how to speak but not about how to listen
• “What does Christian listening look like in a pluralistic context?”
• Learning something about God by talking to an atheist
• Listening is pointing to what is already there: “We point to what Christ and the Spirit are already doing. And it is a privilege is to participate in that.”
• What is truth?
• “It is how well you love God and neighbor. And the apprehension of the truth is measured by the quality of the relationships”
• “So, I think faith begins with hearing and listening first”
• What’s right with theology?
• How can we have a synthesis of tradition and critique?
• Having a sensitivity to political order and whether it is constructive or destructive is theological work
• Epistemic humility and interdisciplinary study
• The beauty in becoming aware of what you don’t know
• What is the state of the field right now?
• The overemphasis on the hermeneutics of suspicion, and the world as it is versus the world as it should be
• Cynicism and redundancy
• “If all we’re saying is that wolves eat sheep, well, we kind of knew that already”
• What is a realistic hopefulness? What does ‘the world as it should be’ feel, taste, smell like?
• What is the purpose of theology?
• It “articulates what it means to heal a particular form of life in the light of who we understand God to be”
• “There shouldn't be an over-inflation of what theology, as a technical act, does. But neither is it nothing”
• “It is a cultivation of a faithful, hopeful and loving way of being alive”

About Luke Bretherton

Luke Bretherton is Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Before joining the Duke faculty in 2012, he was reader in Theology & Politics and convener of the Faith & Public Policy Forum at King's College London. His latest book is Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Eerdmans, 2019). His other books include Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship and the Politics of a Common Life (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which was based on a four-year ethnographic study of broad-based community organizing initiatives in London and elsewhere; Christianity & Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities o...

A pervasive anti-intellectual tradition seems to haunt American Christianity. Paired with nationalism, xenophobia—a fear of the other, and an hypersensitive oscillation between defensiveness and jingoism in the culture war—it's worth asking what in the world happened to this religion which was founded by a peaceful, humble homeless preacher who healed the poor, the lame, and the blind.

But the over-correction to an intellectualizing of theology, to the exclusion of lived experience, swings the pendulum back in another erroneous direction. A merely cognitive theology that stays relevant only at abstract academic levels would be stale and dead—unlivable.

Perhaps what this moment needs is a widened perspective on the global, universal potential of theology, especially as it meets particular contexts and communities and the individual human life, where the transcendent meets the immanent and real human concerns inform the theological task. In other words, theology for the life of the world.

In today's conversation, Matt Croasmun discusses the purpose of theology with George Marsden, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame, and author of many books, including his celebrated biography of Jonathan Edwards, The Soul of the American University, and The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. Together they discuss the relationship between theology and the church, the meaning of theological education in the university, the definition of human flourishing, pluralism and representation in higher education, the danger of privilege and prejudice in Christian theological teaching, and ultimately how theological perspectives gain plausibility in public life.

Production Notes

• This podcast featured George Marsden and Matt Croasmun
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• 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

"If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."

"Words make worlds," says one of my podcasting heroes, Krista Tippett. Ask any poet, priest, or politician, and they'll agree. Language does have that power, for better or for worse.

But whatever power our words have to make a world that we can then ourselves inhabit—that power is drawn from the archetypal Word—the Word made flesh, by whom all things are made and in whom all things are held together, and for whom all tongues confess.

So this simple definition offered by Bishop Graham Tomlin, that theology is just "words about God" is actually quite expansive. When our words about God are directed first toward God, but then toward the church and the world, theology lives up to its purpose of worship, reform, and witness. Graham Tomlin is President of St. Mellitus College and author of many books of theology and Christian spirituality. He recently completed his tenure as Bishop of Kensington and now leads the Church of England's Center for Cultural Witness. He joins Matt Croasmun today for a conversation about the meaning and potential of theology. Thanks for listening.

About Graham Tomlin

The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington. He served a curacy in the diocese of Exeter, and among past roles he has served as Chaplain of Jesus College, Oxford and Vice Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, where he taught within the Theology Faculty of Oxford University on Historical Theology, specializing in the Reformation period. He was closely involved in the foundation, and was appointed the first Dean, of St Mellitus College, a position he held for the first eight years of the College’s life, before being made Bishop of Kensington in 2015. He has spoken and lectured across the world, and in 2016 was awarded the Silver Rose of St Nicholas, a global award recognizing a significant contribution to theological education and learning. He was very involved in the response to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. He is married to Janet and has two married children and three grandchildren. He is a keen follower of various kinds of music and sport, suffering a lifelong addiction to Bristol City Football Club.

Show Notes

• The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington.
• What's going well with theology
• Theology connecting in the church; the church as context for theology
• Spiritual theology deepening and nurturing human life
• Ellen Charry and thinking about eudaimonia in theological context
• Challenges to theology
• Fragmentation
• Three audiences for theology: God, Church, and World
• Audience 1: God. Theology as prayer and worship
• Audience 2: Church. Theology as reform and referendum, enabling the church to be the church
• Audience 3: World. Theology as witness, declaring what life looks like, seen through the lens of the gospel.
• Theology for the World: Pluralism and Secularity
• "If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."
• Religious studies and objectivity vs subjectivity in studying religion
• Lived experience and inhabiting faith to understand it.
• Theology's connection to every other academic endeavor
• Theos, Logos: Words about God
• God as the source of our being and the one to which we return.
• Three aspects of Theology: Worship, Reform, and Witness
• The God who reveals himself to us
• Thinking holistically about the world
• Engaging heart and mind
• About St. Mellitus
• Theology in the church doesn't mean dumbing it down or removing academic seriousness.
• Theologians with a passion for the church and see the connection between theology and Christian life.
• Churches don't always see the need for theology; they stay pragmatic.

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Graham Tomlin
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• 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

Julian Reid explores the way music and scripture can come together to create a sacred space. Extending metaphors of music as architecture and dwelling and spiritual experience as a river, the jazz pianist, producer, writer, and performer explains a recent project of his, "Notes of Rest," combining African-American spirituals with classical hymns for an experience of spiritual hospitality, gratitude, and proclamation of the Gospel into the full spectrum of human experience, in all its pain, frustration, frenzy, stillness, and joy. Throughout the conversation you'll hear Julian play along to accompany his points; he also graciously provided beautiful meditative interludes, much like the kind you'd experience in one of his "Notes of Rest" sessions. Interview by Matt Croasmun.

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

Show Notes

• Click here to learn more about Julian Reid's "Notes of Rest"
• Introduction: Evan Rosa
• "God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble... The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart... Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful." (Friedrich Nietzsche at 14 years old; see Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography by Julian Young; h/t Brain Pickings)
• Bringing together music and scripture
• Engendering wonder and trust as a seedbed for a life of faith
• Creating space, the architecture that music creates
• Weekly liturgical practices
• The ends and uses of music in sacred spaces
• Living in a tent, motel—a musical spiritual hotel
• Scripture is like a cathedral or museum.
• Performance: "Thank You, Lord"
• Gratitude—the way we enter into hospitality, "what it means to be hosted by God"
• Hotel art—the artwork invites and calms rather than jarring and provoking
• Curiosity vs calmness
• Invoking a different kind of response
• Sanitizing the Psalms
• Performance: "Give Me Jesus"
• Speaking to different registers
• Aimed at an encounter with the living God
• Grace
• Proclamation: music and preaching
• Taking risks over the pulpit
• Karl Barth: "God tempts the church through God's absence."
• Kerygma: "proclamation"
• Performance: "Lord, Hear My Prayer" (Taize)
• Word and Water
• The metaphor of water utilized in "Notes of Rest"
• Black musical idioms
• Finding the use of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)
• Balm in Gilead
• The Hymns of Isaac Watts, colonizing, historical context
• Combining musical genealogies
• Braxton Shelly's Healing for the Soul
• Imaginative fuel from the mystics
• Cistercian monastics: worshipping in silence and solitude; "a long-standing faith"
• Performance: "Lord, Hear My Prayer / Give Me Jesus" (Medley)

Introduction (Evan Rosa)

One of the most gripping and influential philosophers of the last 200 years once wrote:

"God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble... The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart... Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful."

That Friedrich Nietzsche, written when he was 14 years old.

There is plenty of "vain ostentation" in popular music today, and certainly not excluding the music played in church.

But the unitive depth and invitation into transcendence that music offers us of course pairs beautifully with scripture. And whatever else might have changed in Nietzsche's thinking, even at the end of his life in Twilight of the Idols, he suggested that "Without music life would be a mistake. The German imagines even God as a songster." And I say: Well, not just the German, but the human.

In today's episode, ...

Can we find joy in our world? It's hard enough to find genuine, death-defying joy in the wake of the failure of the modern utopian project, the expectation that human reason and technology and political revolution might save us all. Overlay the malaise of modernity with this dumb pandemic, and the prospects for joy seem bleak. But for N.T. Wright, joy doesn't depend on the whims of circumstance or the proper function of the world. He speaks of the hardy resilience of joy, even in the midst of tragic, terrible, and untimely death. He speaks of the groanings of the Spirit, laboring and working in us even and especially when we can't find the words to explain the circumstances away. Today we're sharing Miroslav Volf's 2014 interview with the New Testament scholar, theologian, and Anglican bishop N.T. Wright. He's the former Bishop of Durham, he's Emeritus Professor University of St Andrews, and is Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

NOTE: For the Life of the World is running highlights, readings, lectures, and other best-of features until May 1, 2022, when we'll be back with new conversations.

About

N.T. Wright is a New Testament scholar, theologian, and Anglican bishop. He's the former Bishop of Durham, he's Emeritus Professor University of St Andrews, and is Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He's the author of many books, including Surprised by Hope, Paul: A Biography, God and the Pandemic, Simply Christian, The World the New Testament, and many more.

Show Notes

• The connection between joy and God's deliverance and rescue
• Joy at what God has done
• Resurrection joy
• Navigating "the now and the not yet"
• What happens to joy in "the now and the not yet"
• Waiting, suffering, and joy
• Acts 12: James is killed by Herod's men, and Peter gets out of jail free
• Differentiating types of suffering
• Romans 8: The whole creation groaning as a woman in childbirth
• 2 Corinthians 2:1-7 (NRSV) / So I made up my mind not to make you another painful visit. 2For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? 3And I wrote as I did, so that when I came, I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice; for I am confident about all of you, that my joy would be the joy of all of you. 4For I wrote to you out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you. 5 But if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but to some extent—not to exaggerate it—to all of you. 6This punishment by the majority is enough for such a person; 7so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
• "Yet behold: Here I am"
• I have no idea what's going on, but I believe.
• N.T. Wright on the presiding over his father's funeral
• The death of a child: there is no
• Early church love is "agape"—holistic love
• The emotive dimensions of joy
• What kind of seeing is involved in rejoicing?
• "All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me."
• "It's a matter of thinking into the world in which divine authority is constituted by self-giving love."
• Jesus on a donkey vs. Pontius Pilate on a war horse—the redefinition of power and authority
• "Religion is what you do to keep the fabric of society together."
• Treating Christianity as a private matter
• Is there any joy in the world today?
• The confused world that comes from believing the utopian lie of modernity

Production Notes

• This podcast featured New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright and theologian Miroslav Volf
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Martin Chan
• 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