Paradise and Utopia

In this episode Father John explores the way in which the loss of sacramental experience among Calvinists led to the rise of a political ideology that would unintentionally lay the foundation for utopia.

In this episode Fr. John discusses Reformed attitudes toward worship, and the ways in which western Christendom's liturgical and sacramental foundations were eroded when they were put into practice.

In this episode Fr. John discusses ways in which Reformed cosmology represented a shift from the heavenly immanence of paradisiacal Christendom toward the heavenly transcendence of utopian Christendom.

Fr. John looks at a couple of consequences of St. Augustine's anthropology in the West.

Fr. John continues to discuss St. Augustine by looking first at his notorious doctrine of original sin and its impact on the conception of man in the West.

Fr. John addresses the foundations in the West of a growing pessimism about man's condition, paying particular attention to Augustine.

Fr. John contends that to understand the coming of the Renaissance and its humanism, one really needs to understand how in the West the doctrines about man became increasingly pessimistic.

Fr. John discusses the dignity of man according to the Greek Fathers

In the first episode of part two of his four-part podcast "Paradise and Utopia," Fr. John Strickland, a professor of history at Saint Katherine Orthodox College, describes how Pope Nicholas I paved the way for the rapid development of the papal theory of empire.

In this episode Father John discusses a few tendencies in Calvinism that would serve to undermine the place of paradise in Reformation Christendom, especially the doctrine of "total depravity" and the spiritual anxiety that accompanied it.