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

Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Drew Collins, Evan Rosa
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. Theological insight, cultural analysis, and practical guidance for personal and communal flourishing. Brought to you by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.

  1. Letters to a Future Saint / Brad East & Drew Collins

    21 NOV.

    Letters to a Future Saint / Brad East & Drew Collins

    “For those of us who are drawn into church  history and church tradition and to reading theology,  there is very little as transformative as realizing that history is populated by women and men like us who tried to follow Christ in their own time and place and culture and circumstances,  some of whom succeeded. … Looking at the saints, they make me want to be a better Christian. They make me want to be a saint.” (Brad East, from the episode) In his recent book, Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry, theologian Brad East addresses future generations of the Church, offering a transmission of Christian faith from society today to society tomorrow. Written as a fellow pilgrim and looking into the lives of saints in the past, he’s writing to that post-literate, post-Christian society, where the highest recommendation of faith is in the transformed life. Today, Drew Collins welcomes Brad East to the show, and together they discuss: the importance of being passed and passing on Christian faith—its transmission; the post-literacy of digital natives (Gen Z and Gen Alpha) and the role of literacy in the acquisition and development of faith; the significance of community in a vibrant Christian faith; the question of apologetics and its effectiveness as a mode of Christian discourse; the need for beauty and love, not just truth, in Christian witness; how to talk about holiness in a world that believes less and less in the reality of sin; the difference between Judas and Peter; and what it means to study the saints and to be a saint.

    54 min
  2. How to Read Henry David Thoreau / Lawrence Buell

    13 NOV.

    How to Read Henry David Thoreau / Lawrence Buell

    "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden) In 1845, when he was 27 years old, Henry David Thoreau walked a ways from his home in Concord, MA and built a small house on a small lake—Walden Pond. He lived there for two years, two months, and two days, and he wrote about it. Walden has since become a classic. A treasure to naturalists and philosophers, historians and hipsters, conservationists and non-violent resistors. Something about abstaining from society and its affordances, reconnecting with the land, searching for something beyond the ordinary, living independently, self-reliantly, intentionally, deliberately. Since then, Thoreau has risen to a kind of secular sainthood. Perhaps the first of now many spiritual but not religious, how should we understand Thoreau’s thought, writing, actions, and way of life? In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Lawrence Buell (Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus, Harvard University) for a conversation about how to read Thoreau. He is the author of many books on transcendentalism, ecology, and American literature. And his latest book is *Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently,* a brief philosophical biography and introduction to the thought of Thoreau through his two most classic works: “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience.” In today’s episode Larry Buell and I discuss Thoreau’s geographical, historical, social, and intellectual contexts; his friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson; why he went out to live on a pond for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days and how it changed him; the difference between wildness and wilderness; why we’re drawn to the simplicity of wild natural landscapes and the ideals of moral perfection; the body, the senses, attunement and attention; the connection between solitude and contemplation; the importance of individual moral conscience and the concept of civil disobedience; Thoreau’s one night in jail and the legacy of his political witness; and ultimately, what it means to think disobediently.

    1 h
  3. History Speaks the Spirit of Justice / Jemar Tisby

    23 OCT.

    History Speaks the Spirit of Justice / Jemar Tisby

    History reveals a lot of things about human nature: our innate drive towards progress, discovery, relationship, community. Often motivated by a drive to feel safe and flourish. But despite this instinct, history also shows that we’re prone to inflicting and being complicit to grave and violent injustices. We fail, regularly, at living well with our neighbors. In his new book, *The Spirit of Justice*, Jemar Tisby opens the centuries long history of resistance to racism in the United States through the mode of story, and with the lens of the Spirit moving for justice. He asks, what manner of people are those who courageously confront racism? Presenting the lives and witness of over 50 individuals, Tisby examines the way faith threads the life work of these advocates together: not only inspiring their resistance in the first place, but continuing to move through the weariness that so often arises in this work. In this episode, Jemary Tisby joins Macie Bridge on the podcast to discuss the manifestations of the Spirit of Justice in figures such as H. Ford Douglas, Sister Thea Bowman, David Walker, Myrlie Evers-Williams, and many more; the problem of *historical* appropriation with figures such as Martin Luther King Jr.; the women whose stories too often fall into the shadow of their husbands’ legacies, like Anna Murray Douglas or Coretta Scott King; and the ever-present question of why we might look to history as we determine our own ways forward. Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is a public historian, speaker, and advocate, and is Professor of History at Simmons College, an HBCU in Kentucky. Photo Credits: Fannie Lou Hamer, Phyllis Wheatley, Charles Morgan Jr., Anna Murray Douglass, David Walker, Sister Thea Bowman, Myrlie & Darrell Evers. Production Notes This podcast featured Jemar Tisby Hosted by Macie Bridge Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, & Zoë Halaban 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

    46 min
  4. Baseball as a Road to God / John Sexton

    11 OCT.

    Baseball as a Road to God / John Sexton

    To true fans, baseball is so much more than a sport. Some call it the perfect game. Some see it as a field of dreams. A portal to another dimension. Some see it as a road to God. Others—”heathen” we might call them—find the game unutterably boring. Too confusing, too long, too nit-picky about rules. In this episode, Yankee fan John Sexton (President Emeritus of New York University and Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law) joins Red Sox fan Evan Rosa to discuss the philosophical and spiritual aspects of baseball. John is the author of the 2013 bestselling book Baseball as a Road to God, which is based on a course he has taught at NYU for over twenty years. Image Credit: “The American National Game of Base Ball: Grand Match for the Championship at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, N. J.” Published by Currier & Ives, 1866 About John Sexton John Sexton hasn’t always been a Yankee fan. He once was a proud acolyte of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. A legal scholar by training, he served as president of New York University from 2001 through 2015. He is now NYU’s Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law and dean emeritus of the Law School, having served as dean from 1988 through 2002. He is author of Standing for Reason: The University in a Dogmatic Age (Yale University Press, 2019) and Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game (Gotham Books, 2013) (with Thomas Oliphant and Peter J. Schwartz), among other books in legal studies. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of 24 honorary degrees, President Emeritus Sexton is past chair of the American Council on Education, the Independent Colleges of NY, the New York Academy of Science, and the Federal Reserve Board of NY. In 2016, Commonweal Magazine honored Sexton as the Catholic in the Public Square. The previous year, the Arab-American League awarded him its Khalil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Award; and the Open University of Israel gave him it’s Alon Prize for “inspired leadership in the field of education.” In 2013, Citizens Union designated him as “an outstanding leader who enhances the value of New York City.” He received a BA in history and a PhD in the history of American religion from Fordham University, and a JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Before coming to NYU in 1981, he clerked for Judges Harold Leventhal and David Bazelon of the DC Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger. He married Lisa Goldberg in 1976. Their two children are Jed and Katie Sexton. And their grandchildren are Julia, Ava, and Natalie.

    1 h 17 min
  5. Love and Judaism / Rabbi Shai Held with Miroslav Volf

    2 OCT.

    Love and Judaism / Rabbi Shai Held with Miroslav Volf

    There’s a common misconception that Judaism is a religion of law and Christianity is a religion of love. But the very love commandments at the heart of Jesus’s teaching are direct quotes from Deuteronomy 6. Jesus, after all, was Jewish. Joining Miroslav Volf in this episode is one of the most important Jewish thinkers alive today: Rabbi Shai Held—theologian, educator, author—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute in New York City. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence and The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes. His latest book is Judaism is about Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life. Image Credit: “Vienna Genesis”, 6th century, Manuscript (Codex Vindobonensis theol. graec. 31), 333 x 270 mm, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna About Shai Held Rabbi Shai Held—theologian, educator, author—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute in New York City. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence and The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes. His most recent book is Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life. Show Notes Get your copy of Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life Two stories that set the course for Judaism Is About Love Deuteronomy 6 and the Love Commands Is Judaism really a “loveless religion”? Christian students who don’t realize what wells Jesus drank from “The very inclination to dichotomize between love and law leads almost, I think, ineluctably to a misunderstanding of traditional Jewish spirituality, for which law is never an alternative to love,  but a manifestation of love.” “The deed is an expression of a posture of love. The deed cannot replace the posture. It has to express it.” “A majority culture telling a minority  culture that it is inferior and loveless.” Interpreting both Judaism and Christianity through a moral or ethical lens, rather than the mystical, affective, and spiritual dimensions of both Unconditionality of God’s love Obedience to law vs unconditionality of love “My argument is that divine love, biblically speaking, comes without conditions, but with expectations. God does not say, do this or I will stop loving you. God says, I love you and I want you to do this.” Analogy to parental love for children “God believes in the centrality and urgency of human agency.” Eliezer Berkovits: embrace of human agency in Judaism Zero sum games and God’s will and human agency Performance-oriented society, and “measuring up” Competition and being better than others Not earning, but striving to live up to Grace What objectives exist for us to John Levinson Choseness Moshe Weinfeld: “you were not chosen because you were wonderful.” Election isn’t earned, but don’t let grace become capricious. Abraham’s blessing and God’s love for Israel Rabbi Akiva: “Every human being on the face of the earth is loved simply by being created in the divine image.” Centering theology around creation Noah’s flood and a universal covenant with humanity as a whole God and Moses’s chutzpah to ask for forgiveness because Israel is so stubborn Grace is a Jewish idea, not invented by Christianity or the New Testament “Culture stripped of grace” Arbitrariness of election Exodus 34 Psalm 145:9 God is good to  all. God's mercies are upon all of God's  creations. Mercy on everything that God has made, including animals and all sentient beings “Very good” and God’s assessment of creation Love for stranger and love for the enemy Judaism and expanding circles of concern “The temptation  to dehumanize is one that must always and everywhere be resisted. … every human being on the face of the earth is infinitely valuable without exception.” John Levinson’s “universal horizon of biblical particularism” Just Wa

    1 h 2 min
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Seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. Theological insight, cultural analysis, and practical guidance for personal and communal flourishing. Brought to you by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.

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