The Mars Hill Audio Journal piece that finally made me a paying subscriber
A lecture from D. Stephen Long on what Hans Urs von Balthasar and his premodern sources still have to teach us about humanity and our place in the cosmos
Well, I’m a long long long time fan of the Mars Hill Audio Journal and have been interviewed by Ken for the journal, but these days I’m also poor and unemployed, so it’s taken me a long time to come around to becoming a paying subscriber. But here’s the email promo that led me to shell out my hard-earned dough. This particular piece on Balthasar gets to several current research interests of mine, and I can’t wait to listen to it today:
In a 2018 lecture, D. Stephen Long explores a consistent theme in the work of theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar: the relationship between Christianity, modernity, and science. Balthasar’s critique of modernity is complex, as he believes Christians have not properly addressed the unique questions modernity and modern science pose to theology. Balthasar saw the role of philosophy as necessary to integrate science and theology, but also that revelation is needed for a full account of what it means to be human. Here’s an excerpt of Dr. Long’s talk:
“Giving shape to humanity and the rest of Creation is part of God’s providential ordering. It was given to us before the Fall, and it remains ours afterwards. Science can assist us in this vocation, yet this ‘fearful responsibility’ . . . can go horribly awry — as it had. It does so, Balthasar argues, when it not only misunderstands God, but, even more importantly, when it misunderstands what it means to be human. The greatest danger of our time, he said, ‘is that large sections of mankind are guided by false and outdated concepts of man. . . .’”
Members can listen to this lecture on our app or here.
Yes, subscription to the journal will put me out $7/month or $77/year. But the “related reading and listening” list at the page linked immediately above reminds me that subscribing to MHAJ is like enrolling in a richly textured, interlocking faith-and-learning experience without leaving the comfort of one’s home (or paying the skyrocketing tuition prices at any of the fine institutions dedicated to faith and learning!). And I’m all about that!
Here are a few reasons I’m so interested in what Long has to say about this topic:
The 20th-century Ressourcement movement in Roman Catholic theology. Balthasar has often been identified with the movement. Since the retrieval of older Christian wisdom is my vocation, I’ve been delighted for many years to learn about the ressourcement movement’s themes from my friend Hans Boersma, among other sources.
20th-century Christian humanism. For the past 4 years or so I’ve been picking up a lot about Christian humanism from my friend Jens Zimmermann, and I’m currently writing a substantial article on “Twentieth-century Christian humanism as premodern retrieval” for a special issue of Modern Theology conceived and organized by Jens. In this Mars Hill piece, Long is clearly addressing Balthasar on science, theology, and philosophy as sources of knowledge about “what it means to be human”—the uber-theme of 20th-century Christian humanism.
One important characteristic of ressourcement absorbed by such 20th-century Christian humanists as C S Lewis is fidelity to the premodern, antimodernist Christian understanding of creation and humanity called “participatory ontology.” (Boersma has done a lot of important work on this.) My most recent three posts here, which explore this topic in the thought and work of CS Lewis, were taken from a talk at the huge Undiscovered Lewis conference of a couple weeks ago at George Fox University—and a much more detailed version will appear next year in Sehnsucht, the C S Lewis journal. It looks like in this MHAJ piece, Long is addressing Balthasar’s thought in the categories of participatory ontology.
If MHAJ interests you, check out this quotation from their “about” page. Note that the themes that excite me in the Long piece are close to the heart of Ken Myers’s vision for the journal:
Long before atheism became plausible or fashionable, influential early modern thinkers (many of them professing Christians) believed that social and political life could be ordered as if the triune God didn’t exist. Believers and unbelievers could thrive in a system “which pushes God to the margins or private gaps of culture.”
The dehumanizing practical atheism of modernity seems to be on its last legs. It has been a social experiment that is already discredited, though few are willing to say so in public. As its edifices collapse, the rebuilding that must follow will be the work of generations.
Sadly, a majority of American believers still intuitively embrace a faith that is essentially private, and so their hope cannot take cultural form. One of the main goals of the interviews and commentary offered by Mars Hill Audio is to provide Christian imaginations with confidence in the cosmic dimensions of Christ’s lordship. In offering a disciplined way of reading the signs of the times, we hope to provide a rich theological framework for understanding how cultural life could take forms that honor and reflect the form of Christ’s love.
If you’re interested in the journal and its vision, browse a few of the editorial letters linked below (this page contains not only a full list but also a brief quotation from each letter):
Two or three times a year, Ken Myers has written letters to our listeners exploring some theme related to our editorial mission. Below are links to download pdf copies of some of the most recent of these letters. . . .
2023 Year-end letter on the Incarnation of the Logos
2022 Year-end letter on God’s rule & our response
2022 Summer letter on thinking in radically different ways
2021 Year-end letter on Advent and the End
2021 Summer letter on modern dualisms
2020 Year-end letter on contemporary irrationality
2020 Summer letter on racism, liberalism, and religion
2019 Year-end letter on what dooms quests for unity
2019 Gift subscription letter on theology and liberalism
2019 Summer letter on Lewis and the West’s “un-christening”
2018 Year-end letter on truth vs. truthiness
2018 Summer letter on the common good and the Source of the Good
2017 Year-end letter on the Logos and Creation’s intelligibility
Oh, and as a bonus, if you subscribe you’ll get access to this short talk I did recently at Anselm House Christian Study Center at the University of Minnesota—“Reading C S Lewis with blinders on,” in which I give the top ten reasons we know C S Lewis was a Christian humanist!