
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.
Latest episodes

Jan 8, 2024 • 54min
Power & American Evangelicalism: Sword or Cross? / Tim Alberta
American Christianity enjoys a great deal of power and influence at home and abroad. Is the church better for it? Is the world better for it? Or is Christian Nationalism just another idolatry—a temptation to take up the sword instead of taking up the cross? Journalist Tim Alberta (The Atlantic, POLITICO) joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of his new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Tim explains his reporting on American Evangelicalism from 2019 through 2023 as well as his own Christian faith and spiritual background. He also reflects on a variety of challenging issues that influence life far upstream from political theatre, including:how faith matures or erodesthe impact of Constantinian Christianity and the Christian embrace of power, influence, and glory in American public lifethe difference between Christ and Christendom, and our allegiance to one or the otherand the meaning and unique threat of idolatry—which takes on a unique form in contemporary American life.Show ArtGrégoire Guérard, “The Arrest of Christ”, circa 1520-1522, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, FranceAbout Tim AlbertaVisit Tim’s personal website for more of his writing, or follow him on X/Twitter.Tim Alberta is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. He formerly served as chief political correspondent for POLITICO. In 2019, he published the critically acclaimed book, "American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump" and co-moderated the year's final Democratic presidential debate aired by PBS Newshour.Hailing from Brighton, Michigan, Tim attended Schoolcraft College and later Michigan State University, where his plans to become a baseball writer were changed by a stint covering the legislature in Lansing. He went on to spend more than a decade in Washington, reporting for publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Hotline, National Journal and National Review. Having covered the biggest stories in national politics—the battles over health care and immigration on Capitol Hill; the election and presidency of Donald Trump; the ideological warfare between and within the two parties—Tim was eager for a new challenge.In 2019, he moved home to Michigan. Rather than cover the 2020 campaign through the eyes of the candidates, Tim roved the country and reported from gun shows and farmers markets, black cookouts and white suburbs, crowded wholesale stores and shuttered small businesses. He wrote a regular "Letter to Washington" that kept upstream from politics, focusing less on manifest partisan divisions and more on elusive root causes: the hollowing out of communities, the diminished faith in vital institutions, the self-perpetuating cycle of cultural antagonism, the diverging economic realities for wealthy and working-class citizens, the rapid demographic makeover of America—and the corollary spikes in racism and xenophobia.Tim joined The Atlantic in March 2021 with a mandate to keep roaming and writing and telling stories that strike at the heart of America's discontent. His work has been featured in dozens of other publications nationwide, including Sports Illustrated and Vanity Fair, and he frequently appears as a commentator on television programs in the United States and around the world. Tim's first book, "American Carnage," debuted at No. 1 and No. 2 on the Washington Post and New York Times best-seller lists, respectively. He lives in southeast Michigan with his wife, three sons, and German Shepherd.Show NotesTim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the GloryIntellectually re-examining the faith of childhoodA generational disillusionment in today’s exit from ChristianityGenerational break in attitude & behaviorDistance from the moral majority generation to evaluate criticallyInverse relationship where the more one learns about Christ, the less they like ChristianityThe creation of the secular, evil “other”“They created this other, this outsider, this enemy that had to be defeated.”Current American Christianity is often looking to find our identities on the good side of zero-sum equation.Shrinking our theology into something pathetic and miniscule.St. Augustine, St. Paul, and C.S. Lewis“One way to find meaning is to locate an enemy.”From Cal Thomas’s Blinded by Might” —”Unless you have the power to right every wrong and cure every ill and what better way to do that than with An all powerful God on your side.”The church most often seems to thrive when it is at the margins.“We can understand the relationship between this lust for dominance in our, in a society, the inverse relationship between that lust for dominance and the health of the church.”Satan’s temptation of Christ in the Gospel of Luke—the temptation to bow down.St. Peter, “Blessed are you Simon bar Jonah…” and then… “Get behind me Satan.”Reaching for the sword versus reaching for the crossThe impact of Constantinian ChristianityJohn Dixon’s Bullies and SaintsConstantine wielding Christianity to dominate—the imposition of Christian faith“Is Christianity an end or is it a means to an end?”“It's easy to forget about the teachings of Christ if you are preoccupied with the, crusades of Christianity”“An idol is something that starts as a good and healthy thing, but then becomes the ultimate thing.”America as a kingdomAmerican Christendom as a source of idolatryBaptizing the American experience and pastE.g., Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump, and Paula White“The other part of it that I find to be uniquely problematic and sometimes just downright gross, is this willful merging of scripture with the American mythos.”Mike Pence, and “Let us set our eyes on Old Glory.”“Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.”An age of gnawing unknownsTim Alberta’s reflections on his father“Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.”The influence of Jesus’s life and teaching“We are in sales, not management.”Production NotesThis podcast featured Tim AlbertaEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim BergelandA 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/give

Dec 23, 2023 • 22min
Advent Love: Prayer, Trauma, & the Loving Gaze of Christ / Bo Karen Lee
Bo Karen Lee, associate professor of spiritual theology and Christian formation, discusses the transformative power of contemplative prayer and meditating on God's loving gaze. She explores the healing effect of love, the impact of trauma on human flourishing, and finding solace and compassion through contemplative prayer.

Dec 23, 2023 • 51min
How the Light Gets In: Restlessness, Christ, & Belonging / Graham Ward
In this podcast, Graham Ward from the University of Oxford explores theology, trauma, fear, restlessness, and the human capacity for creativity and destruction. They discuss the purpose of theology, the significance of pastoral theology, the transformative power of the gospels, and the concept of belonging in a fragmented world. The podcast also touches on original sin, control, grace, repentance, and the presence of love in suffering. Overall, it offers a thought-provoking reflection on understanding and connecting with the world around us.

Dec 18, 2023 • 35min
Advent Joy: Resistance Against Despair, Celebrating the Beauty of Black Joy / Stacey Floyd-Thomas & Willie James Jennings
Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.Part 3 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. Stacey Floyd-Thomas presents a vision of Black joy—which the world can't give and the world can't take away. Looking into several depictions of female agency in the Gospels, she outlines a picture of joy that celebrates beauty, redemptive self-love, virtuous pride, and critical engagement with the world. Then Willie James Jennings offers a definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces that lead to death. He presents a creative, communal joy characterized by fullness, connected to but transcending grief and sorrow.Show NotesHelp the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.Macie Bridge and Evan Rosa introduce the episodeStacey Floyd-Thomas explains Black joy"This Joy That I Have""The world didn't give it / the world can't take it away."Beauty and BlacknessToni Morrison's The Bluest EyeWomanist TheologyRadical subjectivityCommunitarian Redemptive self-loveCritical engagementFemale agency in the GospelsMary and Jesus at the Wedding in CanaMary and MarthaSyro-Phoenician WomanWillie James Jennings defines joy—"an act of resistance against despair""Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living"Singing a song in a strange landMaking productive use of pain, suffering, and the absurd—taking them seriousHow does one cultivate joy? You have to have people who can show you how to sing a song in a strand land, laugh where all you want to do is cry, and how to ride the winds of chaos."In contexts where your energies have to be focused on survival, it doesn’t leave a lot of energy for overt forms of complaint—you’re spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together."The commercialization of joy in the empire of advertising—contrasting that with the peoples serious work of joyThe work and skill of making something beautiful out of what has been thrown awaySegregated joy—joy in African diaspora communitiesJoy is always embedded in community logicsThe Christological center of joyPentecost joy—joy togetherGeographies of joy: Christians tend not to think spatially, but we shouldPublic rituals bound to real spaceHoping for joyous infection, where the space has claimed you as its ownWhere can joy be found? The church, the hospital room, the barber shop and beauty shops—“things are going to be better"Production NotesThis podcast featured Stacey Floyd-Thomas and Willie James JenningsEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie BridgeA 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/give

Dec 18, 2023 • 1h 28min
Speaking to the Unspeakable: Catastrophe, Silence, and Respect in Aboriginal Australian Life / Stan Grant
Help the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.How do you speak to the unspeakable? How does a people connected to place retain their sense of meaning and time when they are displaced and ignored? Indigenous Australian journalist and public intellectual Stan Grant (Monash University) joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of his experience as an Aboriginal Australian, the son of Wiradjuri and Gamilaraay people in the Outback of New South Wales, Australia. He tells the story of his family’s Christian faith and Aboriginal identity—how the two work together. He shares the sense of aboriginal homelessness and displacement and his efforts to seek justice for Aboriginal people in modern Australia, a place with no memory. He teaches us the meaning of Yindyamarra Winhanganha—which is Wiradjuri concept meaning a life of respect, gentleness, speaking quietly and walking softly, in a world worth living in. He comments on declining democracy, how to live with dignity after catastrophe, what it means to be both nothing and everything—and we learn from Stan about the power of silence to speak to the unspeakable.About Stan GrantStan Grant is an indigenous aboriginal Australian journalist, former war correspondent, and an award-winning author of multiple books, including 2023's The Queen Is Dead: Time for a Public Reckoning (Harper Collins). He served in high profile roles in Australia as a current affairs and news presenter with Channel 7, CNN, SBS and the ABC. He was recently appointed inaugural Director of the Constructive Institute Asia Pacific in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.Show NotesTo learn more about Stan Grant and the Constructive Institute, click here.What is home in a place of exile?Coolah, New South Wales, AustraliaEntering “Australia”What it means to be an indigenous person—an Indigenous Australian or Aboriginal in particularAustralia is a place with no memory.Stan Grant’s Christian faith: “Waiting for God”Simone Weil and giving voice to affliction through silence and waitingWhat it is to be nothingSuffering and meaninglessness“We find our nothingness, which is everything.”“I don't have to look for the meaning of affliction and I don't have to look for someone to answer for that affliction, because Christ is already there to hold the weight of that affliction.”Biame—Aboriginal Creator God Spirit—Rainbow SerpentDepth of spiritual connection to place“Jesus is a tribal man, living in a place of occupation.”Jesus’s totem: WaterDeep time, deep silenceA breaking point with modernity“We are, at our essence, spiritual people, poetic people of place. We are not political people of enlightenment, and that, that is a hard weight to bear, to live as poetic people of God in a world of politics that seeks to kill God.”ResponsibilityYindyamarra winangana—”respect in a world worth living in”“I am not responsible for what I do. I'm also responsible for what you do. And that is the essence of what it is to be a First Nations person in Australia. That is the essence of It is a respect and a responsibility beyond who we are, but connects us to where we are.”1 Peter 2:17: “Honor everyone.”Individual identity vs communal belongingUluru Statement, “Makarrata”Australia is the only Commonwealth country that has not recognized First Nations peoples politically, and given them a voice to Australian Parliament.Secondary citizenshipStruggle of Aboriginal AustraliansWhat is it to live with catastrophe?“The absence of love makes us know love is real.”The Crow People: Chief Plenty Coups: “After that, nothing happened.”How to live with dignity after catastrophe.Miroslav Volf on remembering rightly“This is my quest to try to understand those things. And it's the quest of an exile. It's, it's exile that I was forced into, that my people were forced into, that I share with others, that I seek to embrace as an exile of silence, an exile of love, and an exile of belonging and not identity. James Joyce, James Baldwin, Tony Morrison, these people have shared this journey, the great poets, the great writers, the great artists who have sought to give expression to that sense of what it is to be exiled from the modernity of who we are, what we all want to be something. And maybe when we are reduced to nothing, we may find what it is to be everything.”After Queen Elizabeth diedA people of suffering, but not tragedyWhat it means to be human: Born from the dustSelf-giving and YindyamarraWeightlessness of liberalismAmerica: Can it hold the weight?Declining democracy around the world“There’s no ancestors in Rawls. There’s no history in Rawls.”“For me, a life worth living is to know where I am.”Production NotesThis podcast featured journalist Stan GrantEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie BridgeA 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/give

Dec 11, 2023 • 26min
Advent Peace / Non-Violent Resistance & the Uninvited Christ / David Dark
Part 2 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. David Dark introduces a new way of thinking about non-violent resistance, which he dubs "Robot Soft Exorcism," whereby, in an appeal to our common humanity, we call each other out of the potentially violent power structures and systems we all (knowingly or unknowingly) inhabit. Show NotesHelp the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.Evan Rosa & Macie Bridge introduce the episodeThomas Merton, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room” in Raids on the Unspeakable, pages 51-52 (check it out): “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.” David Dark's Robot Soft Exorcism Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/DavidDark/status/1012804184868048896Robot Soft ExorcismEphesians 6:12: "For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."Walter Wink's Powers seriesTurning the other cheek; demanding to be punched as an equal"Robot soft exorcism is inviting someone to be a human being rather than just being their position."Breaking it down: The Robot PartBreaking it down: The Exorcism PartThoreau: "We all crave reality."Buddhists surrendering a spirit of conflict or difference before partingKarl Barth: If you don't have any solid difference with the person with whom you exchange the peace of Christ, the peace of Christ isn't there because the peace has to overcome some kind of difference."Opinion, Posture, Position: None ever have to be confused with one's identity.Divesting ourselves of the power we carry through the worldBreaking it down: The Soft PartCivil Rights Movement is actually the Non-Violent Movement of America"One human exchange at a time."Mantra: "I wrestle not against flesh and blood." (Ephesians 6:12)Advent/Christmas as the prototypical Robot Soft ExorcismBruce Coburn: "Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe.""We're really going against the news cycle if we insist on the meaning of human history being in this manger scene. To be alive to it, to be citizens of a better future than what is being settled for by our robot overlords."Production NotesThis podcast featured David DarkEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie BridgeA 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/give

6 snips
Dec 9, 2023 • 59min
How to Read as a Spiritual Practice: Books, Shared Meaning, and the Love of God in the Text / Jessica Hooten Wilson & Matthew Smith
Jessica Hooten Wilson and Matthew Smith discuss the joys and perils of reading, the transformative power of reading well, dialogic engagement, the evolution of reading, and the importance of reading as a spiritual practice. They emphasize the value of physically engaging with books, forming relationships through reading, and the search for meaning and connection. They also explore the influence of subject position on reading, the trinitarian approach to interpretation, the power of narrative literature, and the responsibility and imitation of the word.

Dec 4, 2023 • 24min
Advent Hope: Darkness, Endurance, and No-Exit Situations / Miroslav Volf
Theologian Miroslav Volf reflects on the dark hope of Martin Luther and the Apostle Paul, emphasizing how hope and endurance are intrinsically connected in Christian spirituality. Exploring the power of hope in the midst of darkness, chaos, and evil, Volf discusses its connection to God's power to create and bring about new beginnings. He also highlights the transformative power of hope in seemingly hopeless situations.

5 snips
Dec 3, 2023 • 47min
N.T. Wright & Miroslav Volf / Violence in God's Name: Monotheism, Nationalism, Violence, and Our Ultimate Allegiance
As you listen today, would you consider helping the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for 2024 podcast production? visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today."Christians are called to collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism." (N.T. Wright, from today's episode)What better way to secure the greatness of your political state (or maybe political party) than to invoke the name of God as being uniquely supportive of your team? It brings a sickening and divisive new meaning to Romans 8:31—”If God is for us, who can be against us?” In this episode, revered New Testament scholar N.T. Wright joins Miroslav Volf to discuss Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence. Together they reflect on the history and current realities of what happens when these three elements converge. The conversation was inspired by N.T. Wright's response to a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf entitled Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, which is available for download at faith.yale.edu.Click here to download Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf, via faith.yale.edu.“In this essay, written in form of 25 interlocking theses, I approach the problem of religiously motivated or legitimized violence by exploring the relation between monotheism and nationalism. The first is allegedly the most violent of all forms of religion and the second one of the most violent forms of political arrangements, especially when it is cut loose from universal moral commitment and tied to some form of tribal identity (“exclusive nationalism”). I argue that monotheism is a universalist creed and that it is compatible only with inclusive nationalism, a nationalism that is a form of special relations framed by a universal moral code. When monotheism is aligned with exclusive nationalism—when it becomes a “political religion” aligned with exclusivist nationalism—monotheism betrays its universality, a feature which lies at its very core, and morphs into violence, generating and legitimizing henotheism: our god of our nation in contrast and competition to other nations with their gods. Alternatively, if monotheism keeps its universality while associated as political religion with exclusive nationalism it will tend to underwrite dreams of nationalist imperialism: our god and our nation as masters of the world.”Show NotesHelp the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.Download Miroslav Volf’s short digital booklet, Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 ThesesVolf introduces Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence“The price monotheism always has to pay for its alliance with exclusive nationalism is the loss of its soul. When monotheism embraces exclusive nationalism, monotheism’s God morphs from the creator and lover of all people and all creatures into a selfish and violent idol of a particular nation.”Instrumentalizing GodWhat is religion anyway?Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern ConceptMartin Riesenbrot, A Promise of Salvation, A Theory of ReligionChristians were regarded with suspicion, as atheistsWright: “…this leads some to say religion is itself a dangerous and violent thing because it leads to people saying I have this God and he's more important than your God or whatever. And all sorts of violence stem from that. Indeed, one could argue that the Enlightenment's redefinition radical redefinition of the word religion over against its, say, early centuries use, has been part of the problem. But that, that would be perhaps a more polemical thesis.”Religion plays an important role in political society.How did religion work in the ancient world?Is religion a force for evil in society? Working from a secularist paradigm or not?Monotheism revised by ChristologyTwo Christian groups anathematizing each other“Nothing hangs on the word religion.”Ultimate allegiance, and to what?What are the political responsibilities of the state to religion?Naming proper allegianceWright on Jesus and Political Authority in John 19: “In other words, in the famous Romans 13, um, it's not a totalitarian passage, though some have read it like that. But Paul says there is no authority except from God. In other words, there is the one God, but God wants his world to be wisely governed by human authorities. But he will then call them to account. And my favorite passage on that is in John 19, when Jesus is being interviewed by Pontius Pilate. And Pilate says, don't you realize I have the right to have you killed? And Jesus says, and it's extraordinary, think of Johannine theology, that Jesus says this to Pilate. You could have no authority over me unless it was given to you from above and then the corollary is therefore the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin and that's that's a very interesting differentiation which no doubt Pilate couldn't understand at all and of course violence enters in straight away because Pilate's response is to send him off to be crucified.”Polycarp (paraphrased by N.T. Wright): “Now I won't worship your God, but I will respect you enough to honor you if you want to have a conversation about this.”“That one God is doing justice in the world.”Jan Assman: creating the states in which violence in the name of God is possibleBringing in atonement theology“All three monotheisms in some sense affirm the freedom of religion.”Noble ideal of the post-enlightenment world: an inclusive nationalism and inclusive monotheism.Freedom of religionChristianity as trinitarian monotheismRomans 8: Spirit groaningJesus’s cry for derelictionWright: “Collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism.”Production NotesThis podcast featured N.T. Wright and Miroslav VolfEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie BridgeA 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/give

Nov 19, 2023 • 41min
Interchange of Love: Gratitude, Gift, and Joyful Recognition / Miroslav Volf
“Gratitude enlivens the world.” Gratitude is the emotional expression of the interchange of love between giver and receiver. So of course we’re looking for more of that in public—it’s the very evidence of giving to one another, grace with each other, beneficence for one another. In this conversation, Miroslav Volf and Evan Rosa discuss this remarkable interchange of love between giver and receiver that leads to gratitude. They discuss the meaning of gratitude in emotional, moral, and theological terms; and he introduces a variety of views on gratitude, from the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, to Thomas Aquinas, to Anthony Kronman’s “born-again pagan” critique of Christian gratitude, and finally Martin Luther’s take on gratitude which draws on the Magnificat of Mary, which Miroslav expounds. Special thanks to the Gratitude to God Project for helping to make this episode possible.Show NotesShow Art: Henry Ossawa Tanner, "The Thankful Poor", 1894Happy Thanksgiving from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture!Gratitude to God Project Website: Psychological, Philosophical and Theological InvestigationsGratitude as a moral emotion“identification of the good for which we should be grateful.”The Pharisee & the Tax CollectorLooking inside the figures of scripture.The performance of gratitudeWhy does gratitude seem so important or basic in spiritual life?“We should be grateful to our parents for having brought us into the world, raised us, spent all these incredibly long, wakeful hours at the beginning of our lives; and many, many more, many hours and days of worries, gratitude is appropriate. How much then more not to God, to whom we owe everything?”Repayment of a debtAnthony Kronman, Confessions of a Born-Again PaganIs gratitude too heavy a burden? To somehow pay back God for the gifts of the world?Gratitude not as repayment, but as giving an equivalent giftJohn Milton’s Satan in Paradise LostAbysmal Gap Between God and CreatureAquinas on GratitudeReceiving a benefitFeeling thankfulnessRepaying a favor suitably, and according to our meansThe Widow’s MitesJoyful recognitionRecognize that what we have received is in fact a giftRecognizing the moral worth of the giver on account of the moral worth of the deedI receive the gift not with grumpiness, but with joy—over the giver, over the gift, and spilling over into other aspects of the relationshipUnderstanding Martin Luther’s Theology of GratitudeKronman’s misreading of LutherLuther’s Heidelberg Disputation: “The love of God does not find, but creates what is pleasing to it.”“But if you have somebody who truly gives, selflessly, gifts—then it's a kind of insult to them if you want to treat them as if they were trying to get something out of you for that.”Misconstruing the relationship between giver and receiver.Thomas Hobbs“A circle of mutual benefit” where the person who has power dominatesThe dearth of gratitude in public life todayLuther on Mary’s Magnificat and “God’s gift-giving to the nobodies of the world”“No one can love God unless God makes himself known to that person in the most lovable and intimate fashion. And God can make himself known only through those works of his which he reveals in us, and which we feel and experience within ourselves. But where there is this experience, namely, that he is a God who looks into the depths and helps only the poor, despised, afflicted, miserable, forsaken, and those who are nothing, there the hearty love for him is born. The heart overflows with gladness and goes leaping and dancing for the great pleasure it has found in God.” (from Martin Luther’s Commentary on the Magnificat)“God is the one who, in humility, always reaches to that which is lower than God in order to lift it up. And that's how he comes to the nobodies, to the despised, which are primarily the objects of God's love.”Production NotesThis podcast featured Miroslav VolfSpecial thanks to Robert Emmons, Pete Hill, and the Gratitude to God Project for helping make this episode possibleEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie BridgeA 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/give