News & Media

It was a homecoming for philosopher Jennifer Frey, who gave a downtown lecture and two campus presentations sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute in February.

The assistant professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina contributed to the mission of the Lumen Christi Institute as assistant director while completing her doctorate, from 2010 to 2012, and then, upon the completion of her studies, as a consultant for the next three years. 
 

More than 175 university students packed into the Ida Noyes Hall of the University of Chicago, Feb. 12, to hear Frey participate in a public forum with University of Chicago law professor Jonathan Masur on the topic, “What Good is Happiness?”

Frey argued that happiness is the highest good and the result of a moral life. She drew from the practical philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, whose aims were to “make people be good and live well.”

Everyone wants to be happy, fulfilled, and satisfied with their lives, said Frey. To this end, people question what will make them happy, how they should live, and what kind of a person they want to be.

Aristotle and Aquinas’s view of happiness is concerned with self-transcendence, that is, the ability to go beyond one’s self-interest and to engage in loving, human relationships. Happiness, therefore, is not a private good, but a common good. This philosophical view also connects happiness to virtue, and the exercise of this virtue within the context of human friendship.
 

“I come to see my happiness as inextricably bound up with the happiness of my friends,” said Frey. “It is a vision of happiness in which we flourish together.”

Masur, instead, took a subjectivist approach and argued that happiness has nothing to do with morality, but with positive feelings that give people the sense that their “life is going better” and that they have a lot of personal wellbeing. The negative feelings are what people would call unhappiness, he said.

He made the important distinction that “living a life that is good for you” and that allows one to experience a lot of happiness and wellbeing, “is not the same as living a life that is good in a moral or virtuous sense.”

He agreed with Frey that one’s happiness is closely associated with the happiness of others, but qualified that it is mostly intertwined with the happiness of those who are one’s closest relations, and much less so with the people outside of that immediate circle. 

In the dialogue and engaging Q&A that followed the scholars’ individual presentations, Frey disputed the notion that happiness is “just a lump of positive experiences.”

“Happiness involves a sense of deep fulfillment… which is connected to your ability to make sense of your life as a whole and to see it as something valuable and noble,” she said. 

Masur insisted that moral actions do not lead to happiness. Rather, it is entirely possible to do a morally good thing “that makes you less happy,” he said. Many people choose to act morally and well towards others for no other reason but the positive feelings it generates, he added.

At this point, the two scholars admitted to having a “deep conceptual disagreement” about the definition of happiness, how the concept should be reflected upon, and how it should be used. 

The forum was co-sponsored by the Veritas Forum, Cana, Cru, Graduate Christian Fellowship, Holy Trinity Church, Intervarsity, Living Hope Church, the Lumen Christi Institute, MakeNew and Calvert House Catholic Center. 

FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S REALISM

The following day, Frey gave a luncheon lecture at the University Club of Chicago on the theme, “Flannery O’Connor and the Vision of Grace.”

The American author’s Catholic vision of grace is understood in the particulars of her life, formation and education, said Frey, who traced the salient moments of O’Connor growing up Catholic in the post-War South. Her father’s untimely death from lupus gave her a sense of God’s grace working in the world, which she experienced as more dramatic and violent than gentle. Regarding her father’s death, she wrote: “The reality of death has come upon us and a consciousness of the power of God has broken our complacency like a bullet in the side. A sense of the dramatic, of the tragic, of the infinite, has descended upon us, filling us with
grief, but even above grief, wonder.”

Early in her career, O’Connor cemented her reputation for genius with the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Frey offered an analysis of this story, which like many of O’Connor’s stories juxtaposes faith and violence. 

O’Connor considered herself a “hillbilly Thomist,” said Frey. She read Aquinas every night and claimed that theology made her writing “bolder.” Frey said the Thomist influence in O’Connor’s work is evident in its intense realism. Frey sees this Christian realism as essential for O’Connor’s moral vision and aesthetic.

GREAT ART AND LITERATURE

A more intimate group of University of Chicago students and invited guests gathered at Gavin House Feb. 14 for a luncheon seminar on British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch and her key influence on Frey’s philosophical interests in great works of literature.

Great literature can reveal a lot about the human being and the meaning of the moral life—a topic she explores regularly on her podcast, “Sacred and Profane Love,” she said.

Murdoch understood that at the core of good fiction is the ability to see the world for what it really is, and then to look beyond it to the heart of things, said Frey.

“Art removes the veil or mist of subjectivity and arrests the flux of life and makes us see the real world and this shock is the experience of beauty,” Frey said, citing Murdoch.

Good literature, distinct from philosophical analysis, contains truths about human beings and puts them on full display in the particularities of narration, said Frey. 

Moral vision requires more than philosophy and theology, and art and literature serve to give a fuller picture of the good life, she said.

In an interview after her speaker series, Frey shared how the Lumen Christi Institute was an “intellectual home” for her while she completed her doctoral dissertation in Chicago and how it had an “enormous” impact on her personal and professional development. 

“It connected me to so many scholars in my field. It was the source of so many deep friendships that I still maintain in my life,” she said.

Lumen Christi’s executive director, Thomas Levergood, was “especially supportive” of her academic work, she added.

Frey noted the considerable number of local Catholics, outside of academia and from across Chicagoland, who attend Lumen Christi events, looking to deepen their faith and learn about the Catholic intellectual tradition. Their participation “gave me a sense of the value of the work that Lumen Christi is doing for the Church,” she said.

Frey also expressed her appreciation of how the institute’s public events help to correct the common misperception among Catholics “that the universities are totally against the Church.”

“I think it’s important for people outside the university to know, in case they didn’t, that there are plenty of us Catholics in the academy,” she said.

The Lumen Christi Institute hosted world-renowned Orthodox theologian Father John Behr for a three-day ecumenical program that led into the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, observed each year from Jan. 18-25.

Father Behr is the director of the master of theology program at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and the Father Georges Florovsky Distinguished Professor of Patristics. He recently accepted an appointment by Queen Elizabeth II to the Regius Professor of Humanity at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where he will begin this summer.

The first day of Father Behr’s program included a one-hour public lecture on the theme, “Becoming Human in the Light of the Gospel of John.” Students, clergy, and laity from a number of Christian churches, including Bishop Paul Gassios of the Diocese of the Midwest of the Orthodox Church in America, gathered in Breasted Hall of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Jan. 16. 

Father Behr drew on two of his recent books for his lecture, Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image (2013) and John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel (2019).

The patristics scholar began by citing St. Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote in a letter to the Romans that they must not impede his martyrdom, for in his suffering and death, he “shall become a human being…(and) follow the example of the passion of my God.” In this way, St. Ignatius says, he shall truly live.

Father Behr said the martyr echoes the message of the Gospel of John: that a human being finds his true perfection by participating in the paschal death of Christ.

He said the divine project of creating a perfect human being, which begins in Genesis, culminates in the words Jesus pronounces on the cross, “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). The Greek word the evangelist uses, which has been translated into English as “finished,” connotes completion or perfection. 

He explained how these words of Christ in John’s Gospel are in direct reference and response to the words God speaks in Genesis, “Let us make a human being” (Gn 1:26). The human being is the only aspect of creation that comes into existence with a subjunctive phrase, rather than with the imperative, “Let it be,” which God speaks as regards the rest of creation.
 

the martyr echoes the message of the Gospel of John: that a human being finds his true perfection by participating in the paschal death of Christ.

Christ’s words on the cross are not, as often interpreted, a reference to the completion of Jesus’ earthly life or mission. Rather, they respond to the divine project of the human being, created in the beginning by the Father and accomplished by the Son through the crucifixion. Whereas Adam is the starting point of what it is to be human, Jesus Christ is the fullness of what it is to be human, Father Behr said. 

He concluded by sharing his assertion that Jesus Christ defines what it is to be human, so that being human is to voluntarily take up the cross and to live a life of self-sacrificial love for one’s neighbor. Christ depicts both what it is to be God and what it is to be human “by dying as a human being” on the cross, he said. 

In one’s voluntary self-sacrificial love for the other, “Christ is born, inviting all to come to the fullness of the stature of the humanity of Christ being his Body,” he said.

MASTER CLASS

The following day, Father Behr gave a three-hour master class on Maximus the Confessor to about 20 graduate students and invited guests at Gavin House.

The discussion focused on questions of Christian anthropology and asceticism. Using the texts of Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, Father Behr discussed the paradoxical question, “Why in Adam are we made male and female, and in Christ there is neither male nor female?” 

He led participants through two patristic texts that deal specifically with this question: Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominiis opificio and Maximus the Confessor’s “Ambiguum 41”. For the former, he used a new translation that he is currently preparing for publication. 

He underlined that Gregory’s text has been largely misunderstood as saying that the physical division of male and female was not intended from the beginning, but was a concession in light of the fall. In this way, sexual division functioned as a “Plan B” after the lapse of Adam and Eve. Father Behr contrasted this view with his own reading of the text. He divided De hominiis opificio into two parts: the first, he said, describes the glory and nature of the human being made in the image of God, and the second considers how humanity reflects this image of God as male and female. 

Father Behr then referred to Maximus’s text, which discusses a difficult passage from Gregory the Theologian’s “Oration 39,” in which Christ is said to “institute natures afresh.” Maximus introduces five divisions of being in response to Gregory: created and uncreated nature; intelligible and perceptible nature; heaven and earth; paradise and the inhabited world; the division of male and female. 

Maximus contends that the vocation of the human being is to unite these divisions, yet human beings have failed to do so. However, Christ fulfills this vocation of “instituting natures afresh”; he overcomes these divisions through his salvific activity as a human being and uniting them in himself. Father Behr concluded by advocating for a close reading of patristic texts as essential for contemporary theology.

FACULTY COLLOQUIUM

The final day in the series, Jan. 18, gathered faculty from across the United States, including the University of Chicago, Fordham, Marquette, Villanova, and Notre Dame, to discuss Father Behr’s recent book, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel.

Margaret M. Mitchell, a professor in the University of Chicago Divinity School, offered a positive review of the 416-page book, calling it “fantastic for its close reading of the Gospel according to John and its astoundingly broad purview and intent.” 

She discussed at length Father Behr’s concern throughout the book that the Incarnation should not be considered simply as “an episode in the biography of the Word,” but rather that Christology must depart from the economy of Jesus’ revelation as man. 

A robust conversation ensued regarding Mitchell’s presentation, which included a questioning of Father Behr’s heavy claim that John is the theologian of the Pascha of Christ. “Is not Paul the first theologian of the Pascha?” she asked. 

Jean-Luc Marion, a professor and Catholic philosopher at the University of Chicago Divinity School, also offered a positive evaluation of the book’s critical theological content. He then followed up with comments on Father Behr’s use of the work of the late French philosopher Michel Henry, whom Marion considered a personal friend. 

Marion spoke of how Henry converted to Christianity later in life, inspiring Henry to publish three books, drawing from the Gospel of John: I am the Truth, Incarnation, and The Word of Christ. Henry showed how the body and the flesh of the human being possess a phenomenality that has both invisible and visible characteristics, said Marion. 

For Henry, when Christ says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he is manifesting an internal, invisible, real truth about himself, and it is in the earthly life of Christ that the flesh of Jesus manifests the Word of God, explained Marion.

The daylong faculty colloquium concluded with Vespers, led by St. Makarios Orthodox Mission in Hyde Park.

The Lumen Christi Institute began a new series this quarter called, “The Great Books and the Christian Tradition,” for undergraduate students at the University of Chicago. 

Many of the Great Books that students read in the university’s Core Education program are rooted in the Christian intellectual tradition. However, discussions held in secular classrooms often fail to mine the deep theological and existential themes that are explicitly a part of the texts. This new series offers students a chance to discuss and fully appreciate the Great Books in their own context. 
 

The importance of the Great Books at the University of Chicago goes back to formative university president Robert Maynard Hutchins, who observed that the Christian intellectual tradition intertwines with the great tradition of liberal education. 
 

“The Catholic Church has the longest intellectual tradition of any institution in the contemporary world, the only uninterrupted tradition and the only explicit tradition; that is, it is the only institution which is conscious of its tradition,” he wrote in 1937. 

Hutchins was vital in the formation of the University of Chicago’s famous Core Education. The university had put the Core in place before Hutchins’s arrival, but Hutchins was concerned that it merely gushed information at students that they would soon forget. In partnership with Mortimer Adler, Hutchins made reforms to emphasize the Great Books of the past and championed seminar-style discussion courses, bringing students into conversation with the great authors and ideas of history.

Growing out of Christian scholarship at universities, and particularly the Christian scholarship of the University of Chicago, the Lumen Christi Institute continues to foster liberal education that encourages students to see and converse with the intellectual riches of history. 

Liberal arts education is not alien to the Christian tradition. The early Church Fathers, including Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, Origen, Ambrose of Milan, Basil of Caesarea, and Augustine of Hippo, considered the liberal arts and classic books to be useful in training servants and preachers of the Gospel. The Christian tradition of the liberal arts prizes not just the mind—the intellectual understanding of ideas and propositions—but also the heart—the emotions and one’s response to the truth. From the Catechetical School of Alexandria to monastic education, through medieval universities and Renaissance academies, Christians have developed and evolved methods of binding the liberal arts and Great Books to form the minds and hearts of students.

In line with other programming that fosters this education, Lumen Christi held four events in “The Great Books and the Christian Tradition” series this past quarter. 

The first was a lively discussion with Professor Jared Ortiz, Jan. 18, on the topic, “Are the Great Books good for us? Liberal Education and the Christian Tradition.” You can watch Ortiz’s 2017 lecture on “All Things Hold Together: A Great Books Education and the Catholic Tradition” about his educational experience.

Professor Elizabeth Corey led the second discussion, Jan. 21, on the theme, “Achievement and the Christian Life: What is Education For?” 

The series came to a peak as E. John Ellison, a graduate student in the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, led a crowded room in discussion over dinner Feb. 8. This event examined Augustine of Hippo’s treatment of curiosity and the uses and abuses of the intellect in his Confessions. 

Dr. Jason Cather closed the series with a discussion on skeptical Enlightenment philosopher David Hume’s attempted refutation of belief in miracles and on how to view belief in miracles from a philosophical perspective. 

“The Great Books and the Christian Tradition” has effectively introduced programming for undergraduates that complements the university’s commitment to the Great Books, while enrichening students’ engagement with them.