In this episode of For Your Consideration, we are sharing a talk delivered by our director, Mike Sacasas, during our spring semester open house on January 23rd. The talk was titled “To See the World Whole.” We live in what the poet Richard Wilbur called a "scattering time." The most powerful forces at work within us and without appear to be disintegrating forces. These trends are long-standing even if their unfortunate consequences are only now becoming apparent in an increasingly polarized...

In this episode of For Your Consideration, we are delighted to bring you a lecture on the role of faith in our reasoning about the good life, which was delivered at the Center by Dr. Meghan Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame on October 5th. Dr. Sullivan is the Wilsey Family Collegiate Professor of Philosophy. She serves as Director of the NDIAS, a university-wide research institute that supports faculty, doctoral students, undergraduates and visiting fellows pursuing cross-disciplinary...

On April 13th, the Christian Study Center was pleased to host a public lecture by Andy Crouch titled “Beyond Boring Robots: Find the Path to Flourishing in a Technological World.” The talk drew on and developed themes from Crouch’s most recent book, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World. Every new advance in technology — this spring the headlines are about ChatGPT — is heralded as a magical new dawn in the human story. Yet more than one hundred years...

With ChatGPT, and AI more generally, very much in the news, our director Michael Sacasas talked with Dr. Scott Hawley about recent trends in generative AI and its possible consequences across a variety of domains. Dr. Scott Hawley is Professor of Physics at Belmont University and Technical Fellow at Harmonai. He has worked extensively on machine learning in the field of audio engineering, and also writes on the intersection of ethics, faith, and AI. You can also listen to Dr. Hawley’s March...

In this episode, our director, Michael Sacasas, talks with Dr. Benjamin Lipscomb about the work of the 20th-century philosopher and novelist, Iris Murdoch. During the Fall 2022 semester, the Study Center hosted a reading group on The Sovereignty of Good, a collection of three lectures by Murdoch. In this conversation, Sacasas and Lipscomb walk through the major themes of that work with a focus on what we can learn from Murdoch about moral formation. Dr. Lipscomb is Professor of Philosophy...

Welcome to “For Your Consideration,” a podcast of the Christian Study Center. The podcast features audio from our events as well as occasional interviews with scholars and writers. This episode features a lecture delivered by Christine Emba at the Study Center on October 13th. Ms. Emba is a columnist for The Washington Post writing about ideas and society. Prior, she was the Hilton Kramer Fellow in Criticism at the New Criterion and a deputy editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, focusing...

Welcome to “For Your Consideration,” a podcast of the Christian Study Center. The podcast features audio from our events as well as occasional interviews with scholars and writers. In this episode, you can listen to a talk by Dr. Michael Allen presented at the Study Center on September 19th. Dr. Allen is Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. He is presently writing a four-volume systematic theology to be published with Baker Academic. He is also preparing a new...

Welcome to “For Your Consideration,” a podcast of the Christian Study Center. The podcast features audio from our events as well as occasional interviews with scholars and writers. For this episode, our director, Michael Sacasas, had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Stephanie Bennett. Dr. Bennett is Professor of Communication and Media Ecology at Palm Beach Atlantic University in South Florida, where for nearly 20 years she has been teaching, writing, and mentoring undergraduate students....

In this episode of our podcast, we are pleased to bring you audio of a lecture delivered on Tuesday, April 12th by our director, Dr. Richard Horner. Here is how Dr. Horner described the talk: Perhaps no book in the Hebrew Bible has been more difficult to interpret and translate than the book of Ecclesiastes. To what reality does the famous opening phrase point? Exactly what question is the author trying to address? What answers does he give? What wisdom does this book have to offer to us...

In this episode of our podcast, we are pleased to bring you audio of a lecture delivered on Tuesday, March 29th by our director, Dr. Richard Horner. Here is how Dr. Horner described the talk: Why does Matthew tell the story of Jesus differently from Mark and Luke? Perhaps he is confused or mistaken, but if not, then what is he doing? Come join us for a brief exploration of this problem, for a glimpse of how the four gospels relate to each other, and for a taste of what we’ve been offering...

On March 17th, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Scott Hawley of Belmont University at the Study Center for a second talk titled “Taming Chaos: Generative Modeling As a Foil to Human Creativity.” Dr. Hawley is a Professor of Physics at Belmont, and his research interests include machine learning, neural networks, and the ethics of A.I. Last week, we posted his talk on machine learning and classification. Today, we are glad to post his reflections on generative models and creativity. Here...

On March 17th, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Scott Hawley of Belmont University at the Study Center for a talk titled “Curves and Categories: Machine Learning, AI, and the Nature of Classification.” Dr. Hawley is a Professor of Physics at Belmont, and his research interests include machine learning, neural networks, and the ethics of A.I. He joined us to explore the fascinating and complex nature of classification and what it reveals about intelligence, human and machine. “Machine...

Dr. Benjamin Lipscomb is professor of philosophy specializing in contemporary ethical theory at Houghton College. He is the author of The Women Are Up To Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics, which was published in November 2021. Mike Sacasas had the pleasure of talking to Prof. Lipscomb about his book, these four remarkable philosophers, the story of ethics in the 20th century, C. S. Lewis’s famous debate with Anscombe, and...

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine dominating the headlines and the specter of nuclear conflict darkening our imagination, we’re glad to bring you a conversation with Dr. Jonathan Askonas, associate professor of politics at the Catholic University of America and an expert in Russian-American military affairs. The conversation covers a lot of ground, beginning with a discussion of the origins of the present crisis and going on to consider the religious dimensions of the Russian nuclear...

It was my pleasure to speak with Dr. Alan Noble about his recently published book, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World. Dr. Noble is Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and the founder and former editor of Christ and Pop Culture. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vox, Buzzfeed, First Things, Christianity Today, and The Gospel Coalition.  Noble’s first book, Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age, likewise explored the...

The Christian Study Center hosted a kick-off event to launch the spring semester this week, and as part of the event Dr. Richard Horner, our executive director, presented a talk titled, “Why Pascal?—One More Time.” Audio of that talk and an engaging Q/A session that followed is included here. The talk explored the continuing relevance of the thought of Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth century French philosopher and mathematician, who has played a critical role in Dr. Horner’s own thinking about...

In late October, the study center hosted an event for local clergy and ministry leaders. The theme of the event was Rest: What It Is and How to Find It. Even before the pandemic, it was clear that burnout was a widely distributed symptom of a restless culture. After the experience of the past year and a half, it was the all the more clear that we needed to rethink how we are ordering our lives. It was important, too, to think of rest not only as something we do on occasion to renew bodies,...

On September, 14th, the Christian Study Center hosted a kick-off event to launch the fall semester. As part of the event, Dr. Richard Horner, our executive director, presented a talk titled, “What Frames What?—One More Time.” The talk revisits a critical diagnostic question, which Dr. Horner has been ask for nearly two decades. Through this question Dr. Horner explores the defining features of modernity and the point to which they have now brought us. It is an exploration not so much of...

Listen now | During the summer months, we will be posting a series of interviews with scholars and writers whose work we believe will be of interest to our listeners. In this installment, I’m delighted to share my conversation with Grace Olmstead. Get on the email list at christianstudycenter.substack.com

This semester, our associate director, Michael Sacasas, gave three lectures on the thought of the 20th-century Christian scholar and social critic, Ivan Illich. The third lecture, “Reclaiming the Senses: Ivan Illich and the History of Perception,” was delivered as a Zoom webinar on Wednesday, March 24th. The audio of that lecture is included here. Get on the email list at christianstudycenter.substack.com

In this installment, you can listen to the tenth and penultimate session of Dr. Horner’s director’s class for this semester, “Reading the Gospels: The Road to the Cross.” Get on the email list at christianstudycenter.substack.com

This is the eighth and final session of Mike Sacasas’s director’s class on the life and work of Ivan Illich. The topic of this class is Illich’s interpretation of the relationship between Christianity and the modern world as presented in Get on the email list at christianstudycenter.substack.com

In this installment, you can listen to the ninth session of Dr. Horner’s director’s class for this semester, “Reading the Gospels: The Road to the Cross.” Get on the email list at christianstudycenter.substack.com

This is the seventh session of Mike Sacasas’s director’s class on the life and work of Ivan Illich. The topic of this class is Illich’s last book, In the Vineyard of the Text. This week’s audio includes a time of Q&A. Get on the email list at christianstudycenter.substack.com