Lumen Christi Institute

The Contemplation of God in Medieval Literature
2009-03-05 17:30 (America/Chicago) | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

The Solzhenitzyn Question
2008-11-19 17:30 | University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn left a vast body of work, an inestimable influence on Russian culture, and a deeply divided public opinion. He documented the Soviet prison system, developed forms of literary representation for describing the experiences of prisoners, and was courageous in the face of repression. But doubts linger about him as artist, thinker and person, and thus prompt us to raise the Solzhenitsyn question.

Thomas Aquinas, Scientist: How Might He Approach 21st Century Biotechnology
2008-11-12 17:30 | University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Despite flaws in his biology, Aquinas’ writings offer us guidance in our approach to 21st century biotechnology. Aquinas’ notion of a Just War provides us with a way for thinking about biotechnology, since both use morally ambiguous means to address evils in an imperfect world. A comparison of these two disparate issues can yield criteria for an ethics of biotechnology.

Sketch of a Phenomenological Concept of Sacrifice
2008-05-29 16:30 | University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
In this lecture, Jean-Luc Marion advances a phenomenological notion of sacrifice that is distinct from the notion of sacrifice typically discussed in Sociology or even Religious Studies. He argues that sacrifice restores the gift from the side of the givee, much as he has argued previously that forgiveness restores the gift from the side of the giver. He develops both notions within the framework of a phenomenology of givenness, advancing the thesis that sacrifice requires neither destruction, nor restitution, nor even exchange, and still less contract. Sacrifice surpasses all this because sacrifice does not arise as an economic notion (one that would make an economy of the gift), but rather from the gift itself. The function of sacrifice is only to permit acknowledgment of the giver and thereby the entire process of givenness, by reducing the given.

Faith, Reason and the Eucharist
2008-05-14 16:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Between doubts about “natural theology” and post-modern polemics against “modernity”, an older view that the existence of God can be known “by the natural light of reason” gets little hearing. Perhaps it is time to revisit these older views in light of Aquinas’ understanding of the rational powers as “bodily presence”, analogous to the power of signification found in music and, more profoundly, in the Eucharist; only within this broader conception of human reason can we speak of the existence of God as demonstrable by rational proof.

The Christian Identity of Europe
2008-04-17 16:00 | Kent Hall, Room 120, 1020 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Europe is suffering from a spiritual identity crisis. Some countries rejected the historical preambulum to a European Constitution because Christianity was mentioned as one of the founding elements of the union… At the heart of the crisis is the loss of the spiritual basis on which the Continent had been united, mostly the idea of a Christian civilization. This address investigates the growth of this idea through the centuries as well as the causes of its recent decline and, in some areas, even loss. Can a European union survive without its founding idea? Are other models available, such as for instance that of a United States of Europe, on a purely economic basis? What is the difference between Europe and the USA in this respect? Louis Dupré is the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor Emeritus in Yale University’s religious studies department.

Reason & Regensburg: Pope Benedict and the Dialogue of Cultures
2008-04-08 16:30 | University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
To bridge the cultural rift between Islam and the West, there is an urgent need to reestablish the mutually reinforcing dialogue between faith and reason in the West, and to support moderate Muslim scholars attempting to retrieve a non-voluntarist interpretation of Islam, often at risk to their own lives.
