Hans Urs von Balthasar on Mystical Theology and “The Metaphysics of the Saints”
To view photos of the master class, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page. Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided for registrants. Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) was one of the most prolific and controversial Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. Responses to his work have ranged from the effusive to the dismissive. Instead of favoring any such one-sided judgments, however, I invite participants in this seminar to focus on two tasks that require considerably more scholarly effort. First, there is the task simply of understanding Balthasar—that is, making sense of his claims, their historical…
Weekly Non-Credit Course: “The Prophets and Christian Prayer”
REGISTER HERE 6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject. In its broadest sense, biblical prophecy—in both the Old and New Testaments—includes the activities and utterances of seers, dreamers, ecstatics, diviners, mystics, and declaimers of unmediated divine discourse: oracles, instruction, admonition, consolation. This course will examine literary and non-literary prophecy as a supernaturally accomplished conduit of God’s will, along with the various instruments by which that will is communicated….
Symposium on “The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy”
Listen to the symposium as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music. To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page. Cosponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, the Medieval Studies Workshop, the Early Christian Studies Workshop, and the Research in Art and Visual Evidence Workshop. Free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event by the Seminary Coop Bookstore. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887…
Mary at the Art Institute
REGISTER HERE Open to all university students. Registration Required. Cosponsored with Calvert House. Mary is the most-depicted woman in the history of Western art, which means that images of her are both ubiquitous and bewildering in their variety. Marian images are used in the Christian liturgy, for private devotion, for political statements, and for pushing boundaries—and for almost everything else as well. Join University of Chicago graduate students Fr. Gabriel Torretta, OP, and Lauren Beversluis for a visit to the Chicago Art Institute as they explain the building blocks of Marian images by discussing works that span both Mary’s own…
Master Class on “The Writings of Meister Eckhart”
You can view photos of the event HERE. In this one-off seminar, participants will read and discuss the writings of late medieval German mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) with Bernard McGinn, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School and leading expert on the history of Christian spirituality and mysticism. Session 1. An Introduction to Eckhart “Introductions” in The Essential Sermons, pp. 5-61 German Sermon 52 in The Essential Sermons, pp. 199-203 The Sequence “Granum sinapis” (Handout) Session 2. Eckhart on Justice German Sermon 6 in The Essential Sermons, pp. 185-189 Commentary on the Gospel of John,…
Reason, Revelation, Tradition: The Limits of Leo Strauss?
You can view photos of the event HERE. Leo Strauss is well known for both his critique of modernity and his insistence on the productive (but irreconcilable) tension between reason and revelation. Even if Strauss’ recovery of the pre-modern philosophical life also opened a vista for the life of the saint to re-emerge, Strauss always contended that any synthesis between the two was theoretically untenable. Catholic students of political philosophy have therefore found themselves in an uneasy alliance with Strauss: in accepting his critical project, must they also accept his account of the natures of philosophy and faith? This two-day master class…
What St. Benedict Taught the Dark Ages: His and Ours
REGISTER HERE Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the John U. Nef Commitee on Social Thought. Cardinal Newman, who will be canonized on October 13, is well known for his philosophy of education, especially for his masterwork The Idea of University (1853). But his most profound reflections on education are in his minor work “The Mission of St. Benedict” (1858), in which Newman treats the question of how to teach a beginner, even a beginner under the most unfavorable circumstances. Not a novice in dialectic and rhetoric, or in the theoretical or practical sciences, but a beginner in the quotidian…
The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute. A luncheon talk with Professor Carlos Eire (Yale) on the recent book on the life and many afterlives of one of the most enduring mystical testaments ever written: The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila. Saint Teresa of Avila’s Life is among the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine. The Life is not really an autobiography at all, but rather a confession written for inquisitors by a nun whose raptures and mystical claims had aroused suspicion. Despite its…
Symposium on “The Life of Teresa of Avila: A Biography”
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the Divinity School, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Medieval Studies Workshop. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute. Copies of The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2019) are available for sale by the Seminary Coop Bookstore. Saint Teresa of Avila’s Life is among the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine. The Life is not really an autobiography at all,…
John Henry Newman’s Path to Sainthood
This event was cosponsored by Mundelein Seminary, the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University, the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago, the Department of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, the Calvert House Catholic Center at the University of Chicago, and the John Paul II Newman Center at UIC. What makes a modern saint? On October 13th, Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), English theologian, philosopher and cardinal, was officially canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. This event at Holy Name Cathedral was a presentation on the life and sanctity of John Henry Newman by…