The Vocation of the Patristic Theologian: Teaching Nicaea

Khaled Anatolios is interested in all aspects of the theology of the early Church, with special emphases on the Trinitarian, Christological, and soteriological doctrines of the Greek fathers and Augustine; early Christian biblical exegesis; and the development of theological methodology in Patristic and medieval theology. He has published on a variety of early Christian theologians including Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa. A particular focus of  his work is the engagement between early Christian theological reflection and contemporary theological concerns.

Erin Galgay Walsh is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She teaches courses on a variety of themes surrounding biblical literature, the history of Christianity, and the ongoing role of biblical interpretation within the modern world. Her research focuses on biblical interpretation, asceticism, and religious literature in the late antique and early medieval world. She has published articles and chapters within edited volumes as well as translations of late antique Christian poetry composed in classical Syriac. Currently, she is working on a book project examining the role of biblical women and female figures in the writings of Narsai of Nisibis, Jacob of Serugh, and Romanos Melodos.

Paul Blowers is the Dean E. Walker Professor of Church History. He is a scholar of patristics and early Christianity and has written also on the Stone-Campbell heritage.

Dr. Blowers graduated from Milligan College and Emmanuel Christian Seminary, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a John O’Brien Fellow. He is a former President of the North American Patristics Society and Associate Editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies, and in 2017-18 was a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology. Among other works Paul has authored are Visions and Faces of the Tragic: The Mimesis of Tragedy and the Folly of Salvation in Early Christian Literature (2020), Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (2016), Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety (2012), Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor (1991). He is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation (2019) and has two works of translation of early Christian texts, Moral Formation and the Virtuous Life (2019), and On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings of St. Maximus the Confessor (2003). He also has articles in the Journal of Early Christian Studies, Vigiliae Christianae, Studia Patristica, Pro Ecclesia, Church History, Modern Theology, and Studies in Christian Ethics. He has also produced long essays for The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, the Cambridge History of Christianity, the Oxford Handbook to Maximus the Confessor, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation. He edited and translated The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity (1997) and was a general editor of The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (2004).

Paul has presented papers and lectures for the North American Patristics Society, Oxford Patristics Conference, and various specialized conferences including the International Symposium on Maximus the Confessor in Belgrade, Serbia (2012) and the Seventh International Conference on Maximus the Confessor in the Republic of Georgia (2019).

Beyond the classroom, Paul is an active member of Grandview Christian Church and a volunteer chaplain. He and his wife Sandy, a nurse and teacher, have four children and fourteen grandchildren.

Lewis Ayres, a lay Catholic theologian, holds the McDonald Agape Distinguished Chair in Early Christian Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas – Angelicum, Rome. Previously, he served as the inaugural holder of the Bede Chair of Catholic Theology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He has also served as a Distinguished Fellow of Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study. The core of his research has been Trinitarian theology in Augustine and in the Greek writers of the 4th century. Ayres’s period of research into patristic pneumatology has resulted in a collaborative translation of patristic texts on the Holy Spirit, but as yet the much-anticipated monograph on the subject has not appeared. Besides Trinitarian theology in this pivotal period he is also interested in the later development of Trinitarian theology and in the place of Scripture in Early Christianity – both the history of Christian reading practices from the late 2nd century and the history of what can be termed the theology of Scripture itself. He is at present writing a monograph that will concern the shifts in Patristic exegesis between AD 150 and 250. It is provisionally entitled As It Is Written: Ancient Literary Criticism and the Rise of Scripture AD 100-250.