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

A conglomeration of Advent people: Drew Collins on how the Magi were pushed willingly to the edge of their knowledge, open to the giving spirit of God. Frederica Mathewes-Green with an illustration of Mary, living in prayer, which proves just enough to know to say "yes" when met with her call. Jeff Reimer on W.H. Auden's common Joseph, asked only and profoundly to believe. And Matt Croasmun on St. Paul, offering an invitation to Christian joy that, well, differs from Santa's offer just a little.Show NotesEPISODE 44: The Reason We Follow the Star: Learning from the Magi How to Give, How to Receive, and How to Be Human / Drew CollinsEPISODE 98: Frederica Mathewes-Green / Mary Theotokos: Her Bright Sorrow, Her Suffering Faith, and Her CompassionEPISODE 97: Jeff Reimer / W.H. Auden's For the Time Being: Post-Christmas Blues, the Darkness of Modernity, and the Human Response to IncarnationEPISODE 43: Matt Croasmun / Santa, God, and the Obligation to RejoiceProduction NotesThis podcast featured art historian Matthew MillinerEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaA 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

Art historian Matthew Milliner (Wheaton College) reflects on one of the most powerful and moving Christian icons: “The Virgin of the Passion,” AKA, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” which he develops in his book, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. First painted as a response to failed Christian Empire and the violence of the Crusades, then mass produced and proliferated as a norm of Christian aesthetic worship, the icon offers a unique filter for contemporary understanding of faith and power; the Christian temptation to nationalism, empire, and violence; the meaning and visual expression of suffering love; and the beauty of engaged, solidarity and prophetic witness. This episode was made possible by a grant from the Tyndale House Foundation.Support the Yale Center for Faith & Culture's $25,000 End of Year Matching Campaign by giving online today: https://faith.yale.edu/giveShow NotesClick to view: “Virgin of the Passion, late 15th century” Andrea Rico di Candia, Cretan, active 1451–1492, tempera on wood panel (Princeton University Art Museum)Click to get a copy of Matthew Milliner’s Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global IconAbout Matthew MillinerMatthew Milliner is Associate Professor of Art History at Wheaton College. He holds an M.A. & Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University, and an M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is author is author most recently of The Everlasting People: G.K. Chesterton and the First Nations and Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. His scholarly specialization is Byzantine and medieval art, with a focus on how such images inform contemporary visual culture. He teaches across the range of art history with an eye for the prospects and pitfalls of visual theology. He is a five-time appointee to the Curatorial Advisory Board of the United States Senate, and a winner of Redeemer University’s Emerging Public Intellectual Award. He has written for publications ranging from The New York Times to First Thing_s. He recently delivered the Wade Center’s Hansen lecture series on Native American Art, and was awarded a Commonwealth fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. to complete his forthcoming book, _Mother of the Lamb (Fortress Press). Follow @Millinerd on TwitterProduction NotesThis podcast featured art historian Matthew MillinerEdited 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

[Help us reach our $25,000 end of year goal! Give online to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture today.]We often think that telling the truth only applies to words. But American painter Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) told the truth in pencil, water color, and famously, oil paintings. Coming of age in antebellum America, starting his artistic career as the Civil War began, and dramatically painting truth to power during the complicated and failed Reconstruction era—Winslow Homer looked long and hard at America in its moral complications and struggle toward justice. But he also looked long and hard at the natural world—a harsh, sometimes brutal, but nonetheless ordered world. Sometimes red in tooth and claw, sometimes shining rays of grace and glory upon human bodies, Homer's depiction of the human encounter with the world as full of energy and full of spirited struggle, and therefore dignity.William Cross is author and biographer of Winslow Homer: American Passage—a biography of an artist who painted America in conflict and crisis, with a moral urgency and an unflinching depiction of the human spirit's struggle for survival and search for grace.  As a consultant to art and history museums, a curator, and an art critic and scholar, when Bill sees the world, he's looking long for beauty and grace, and often finding it in art. In this conversation, Bill Cross and I discuss the morally urgent art and perspective of Winslow Homer. We talk about the historical context of American life before, during, and after the Civil War. Including the role of Christianity and religious justification of the Confederacy and the institution of slavery. Bill comments on the beautiful and bracing expression of Black life in Winslow Homer's work—truly radical for the time. But Homer's work goes beyond human social and political struggles. We also discuss the role of nature in his work—particularly the human struggle against the power and indifference of the ocean and the wild, untamed animal kingdom.Throughout, you might consider referencing each of the paintings we discuss, all of which are available in the show notes and can be found online for further viewing and reflection.Show NotesGive toward the Yale Center for Faith & Culture $25,000 matching campaign. Donate online here, or send a William R. Cross, Winslow Homer: American Passage (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022)Winslow Homer: CrosscurrentsPaintingsClick below for painting referencesPrisoners from the Front (1866)The Brush Harrow (1866)Dressing for the Carnival (1877)Visit from the Old Mistress (1876)The Gulf Stream (1885)Fox Hunt (1893)About William CrossWilliam R. Cross is an independent scholar and a consultant to art and history museums. He served as the curator of Homer at the Beach: A Marine Painter’s Journey, 1869–1880, a nationally renowned 2019 exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum on the formation of Winslow Homer as a marine painter. He is the chairman of the advisory board of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Cross and his wife, Ellen, the parents of two grown sons, live on Cape Ann, north of Boston, Massachusetts.About Winslow Homer: American PassageThe definitive life of the painter who forged American identity visually, in art and illustration, with an impact comparable to that of Walt Whitman and Mark Twain in poetry and prose—yet whose own story has remained largely untold.In 1860, at the age of twenty-four, Winslow Homer (1836–1910) sold Harper’s Weekly two dozen wood engravings, carved into boxwood blocks and transferred to metal plates to stamp on paper. One was a scene that Homer saw on a visit to Boston, his hometown. His illustration shows a crowd of abolitionists on the brink of eviction from a church; at their front is Frederick Douglass, declaring “the freedom of all mankind.”Homer, born into the Panic of 1837 and raised in the years before the Civil War, came of age in a nation in crisis. He created multivalent visual tales, both quintessentially American and quietly replete with narrative for and about people of all races and ages. Whether using pencil, watercolor, or, most famously, oil, Homer addressed the hopes and fears of his fellow Americans and invited his viewers into stories embedded with universal, timeless questions of purpose and meaning.Like his contemporaries Twain and Whitman, Homer captured the landscape of a rapidly changing country with an artist’s probing insight. His tale is one of America in all its complexity and contradiction, as he evolved and adapted to the restless spirit of invention transforming his world. In Winslow Homer: American Passage, William R. Cross reveals the man behind the art. It is the surprising story of a life led on the front lines of history. In that life, this Everyman made archetypal images of American culture, endowed with a force of moral urgency through which they speak to all people today.Production NotesThis podcast featured William R. CrossEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaA 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

Help Miroslav Volf and the Yale Center for Faith & Culture reach our end-of-year goal $25,000 Matching Challenge for 2022! How to donate to YCFC and support the For the Life of the World podcast:Click here to give onlineMail a check made out to "Yale Center for Faith and Culture" (409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511).Dear Friend,Inspired by faith in Christ in whom God became one of us, at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture we help people discern and pursue lives worthy of our shared humanity. Our fragile, finite, fallible—but nevertheless beautiful and immeasurably precious—humanity.This work matters so much to me personally because I believe it matters to God and it matters for the world.And today, I am excited to tell you about a tremendous new opportunity for us to fund this important work.Members of our Advisory Board have established a $25,000 challenge gift. If we raise $25,000 by December 31st we will unlock an additional $25,000, doubling the impact of your gift.To put that in perspective: Meeting our goal would be enough to fund our For the Life of the World podcast and support two student fellows for all of 2023.Would you consider a donation to our work today? Simply click here to give online, or mail a check made out to "Yale Center for Faith and Culture" (409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511).Lifting up my heart with gratitude, Miroslav VolfDirector, Yale Center for Faith & CultureHenry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale Divinity School

"If the goal of God in creating the world is to make it the home of God and humans together, then it is the intention of God to make this place as beautiful and as humane—as hospitable—to human life as it can possibly be." Miroslav Volf reflects on why he wrote his latest book, The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything.  He also celebrates and eulogizes his friend Phil Love, to whom the book is dedicated.Click here to buy The Home of God for 30% off!Production NotesThis podcast featured Miroslav VolfSpecial thanks to Patty & Phil LoveEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaA 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

The mission of Yale Divinity School is "to foster the knowledge and love of God through scholarly engagement with Christian traditions in a global, multifaith context." A variety of Yale Divinity School faculty and alumni have been featured as guests on For the Life of the World, and this episode highlights some of those contributions, including Krista Tippett, Willie Jennings, Keri Day, Kathryn Tanner, and David Kelsey (not to mention Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz). Current Yale Divinity Student Luke Stringer introduces each highlight segment. Special thanks to Harry Attridge and Tom Krattenmaker.Show NotesOur first segment features Yale Divinity School alum Krista Tippett, the founder and CEO of the On Being Project. She's a nationally syndicated journalist who has become known for curating conversations on the art of being human, civil conversations, and social healing. Miroslav Volf invited Krista onto the show to talk about the importance of engaging otherness on the grounds of our common humanity, her personal faith journey from small town Baptists in Oklahoma, to a secular humanism in a divided Cold-War Berlin, and then back to her spiritual homeland and mother tongue of Christianity.For the Life of the World launched in 2020 during an immensely chaotic and troubling year. The painful and confusing early days of the pandemic gave way to the horrifying footage of George Floyd's murder. In the days following this event, we aired a reflection by Yale Divinity School professor Willie Jennings and a conversation with Princeton Theological Seminary theologian and Yale Div school alum Keri Day. First, an excerpt from Willie Jennings' reflection on the murder of George Floyd. And then, theologian Keri Day shares the core motivations of Christians to embrace the other across lines of difference.This next segment features theologian, Kathryn Tanner, who spoke to Ryan McAnnally-Linz about the virtue of patience through the lens of economy and capitalism. She's the Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School and her latest book is Christianity in the New Spirit of Capitalism.This final highlight segment features theologian David Kelsey, who is the Luther A. Weigel Professor Emeritus of Theology at Yale Divinity School, where he taught for 40 years. Ryan McAnnally-Linz, himself an alum of Yale Divinity School, brings Kelsey onto the show to talk about the wild and inexplicable grip of evil on earthly creatures, and the analogously wild and inexplicable nature of God's grace—and God's immediate, if silent, witness and presence to human anguish.Production NotesThis podcast featured Krista Tippett, Willie Jennings, Keri Day, Kathryn Tanner, and David Kelsey (not to mention Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz)Edited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan Rosa and Luke StringerA 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

“We’ve become experts at means but amateurs at ends.” Miroslav Volf and Kelly Corrigan discuss the role of education in seeking a flourishing life; the risks and rewards endemic to asking questions of meaning and existential import in the higher educational context; the meaning of success to college students, and how the specter of success drives our cultural narrative; what it takes to live a life based on one's deepest -held values; Miroslav shares his own personal experience of approaching what makes life worth living within a particular Christian vision; what made him decide to be the only openly Christian kid in his high school; and how suffering grief, forgiveness, and living faith informed his early childhood and shaped his family's life.Show NotesListen to Kelly Corrigan Wonders on Apple PodcastsAbout Kelly CorriganKelly Corrigan has written four New York Times bestselling memoirs in the last decade, earning her the title of “The Poet Laureate of the ordinary” from the Huffington Post and the “voice of a generation” from O Magazine.  She is curious and funny and eager to go well past the superficial in every conversation.  More on KellyCorrigan.com.Production NotesThis podcast featured Kelly Corrigan and Miroslav VolfEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaSpecial thanks to Kelly Corrigan and Tammy StedmanA 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

"Somewhere is better than anywhere." (Flannery O'Connor, as quoted by Wendell Berry in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community) Today, Christian ethicist Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School) sits with Matt Croasmun for a conversation on ethics and theology. Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Together, he and Matt discuss the demands of teaching and learning theology on personal character—holiness even; the relationship between ethics and theology; the locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics; and the rooted, framing question, that animates Adam Eitel's writing and teaching: "What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"About Adam EitelAdam Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School.Show NotesTeaching theology as a vocation"Authority is linked to character"Instruction in holinessThe millennial demand for personal character to matter in academic authorityFormation"I see my work as a professor of Christian ethics as a theological vocation."Millennial entitlement, juxtaposed with vulnerabilityTheology as a lived, embodied enterpriseThe lines between the personal and the pedagogicalProblems for Christian ethicsIt's hard for Christian ethics to stay theologicalCan Christian ethics appropriately express social criticism?"The temptation for Christian ethics to bracket the theological commitments, that fund a specifically Christian moral imaginary."Dichotomy between tradition and critique"So we end up sawing off the branch that we're sitting on..."Declaration of Independence's "All men are created equal." as both the impetus for reform and the object of reform."When we're doing theology, when we're doing ethics, we are always looking backwards in some respect, concatenating texts, bringing their different manners of speaking together and to, in order to see what can now be said on the basis of what's been said, that doesn't require an uncritical attitude toward the text or the social arrangements they endorse."Locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics"What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"Production NotesThis podcast featured Adam Eitel and Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaA 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

"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 TomlinThe 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 NotesThe Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington.What's going well with theologyTheology connecting in the church; the church as context for theologySpiritual theology deepening and nurturing human lifeEllen Charry and thinking about eudaimonia in theological contextChallenges to theologyFragmentationThree audiences for theology: God, Church, and WorldAudience 1: God. Theology as prayer and worshipAudience 2: Church. Theology as reform and referendum, enabling the church to be the churchAudience 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 religionLived experience and inhabiting faith to understand it.Theology's connection to every other academic endeavorTheos, Logos: Words about GodGod as the source of our being and the one to which we return.Three aspects of Theology: Worship, Reform, and WitnessThe God who reveals himself to usThinking holistically about the worldEngaging heart and mindAbout St. MellitusTheology 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 NotesThis podcast featured Graham TomlinEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaA 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

Food and meals are hidden in plain sight throughout the Bible, providing a background context for Christian spirituality and flourishing. Matt Croasmun joins me on the podcast today to talk about his new book co-authored with Miroslav Volf, The Hunger for Home: Food and Meals in the Gospel of Luke. For them, a meal is a site of nourishing mutual encounter. It's this definition of a meal that makes that riddle work I think. It's also incredibly illuminating (and even delightfully surprising, really) to consider how that nourishing mutual encounter—a meal—provide a context that spans thousands of years and the whole of human history from creation to fall to redemption. It can all be understood as a site of nourishing mutual encounter with God, family, neighbor, world—everything. From the fruitful multiplying of living creatures to the forbidden fruit—from the passover seder, manna from heaven, water from the rocks, and feasts in the fields—to the Lord's table prepared before our enemies, turning water into wine, multiplying loaves and fish—from the Last Supper before the Crucifixion, and the final wedding supper of the Lamb. It's all a meal that we hunger for always; it's a meal that wherever we are, we're still home.This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.AboutMatt Croasmun (PhD, Yale University) is Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He is the co-author, with Miroslav Volf, of For the Life of the World and The Hunger for Home and directs the Yale Life Worth Living Initiative. Follow him on Twitter @MattCroasmun.Show NotesBuy the book: The Hunger for Home: Food and Meals in the Gospel of Luke (Enter 17FALL22 for 20% off + Free Shipping)What is home?What is hunger?Jesus fasting in the wilderness: "One does not live by bread alone..."The human needs bread that is not only bread.Word and world is one thing. Allow your bread to become an encounter with the creator of all good things.Life, staying sustained, and feastingMaterial life, sustained by the life of the LordFalse choice: word or bread. It's actually one thing, issuing from the mouth of the Lord.Sinners at the Table: "The only kind of meals are meals among sinners.""Sinners all."Jesus dines with sinners because he's a doctor who comes to heal sinners. We dine with sinners because we're all patients of that doctor.Rich and Poor at the TableThe eschatological feastThe Rich Man and LazarusThe Unjust Steward (or, The Dishonest Manager)"We're looking for homes to be invited into. And it may be the poor who have these homes."MutualityLeveraging houses and the wealth they represent for entry into homes.The Last Supper / Eucharist"Made known in the breaking of bread"The Road to Emmaus: "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel."Jesus as the ultimate Bible Study Leader: "The best bible study ever."The eucharist is making sense later.Recognition: It wasn't the bible study with Jesus on the road. It was the meal.Norman Wirzba, Food & Faith"Made known in the breaking of bread"Production NotesThis podcast featured Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaSpecial thanks to David Aycock and Baylor University PressA 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