Augustine’s Theology of Love
Cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop
Evolution and the Catholic Faith
REGISTER HERE Many people imagine that the Catholic Church was historically opposed to the theory of evolution or that there is something dangerous or dubious about Darwinian evolution from the viewpoint of Catholic theology. These ideas are based on a variety of confusions and misconceptions. This talk will show how Catholic thinkers and Catholic Church authorities looked at evolution. It will also respond to the arguments some Christians make against it, and examine some of the more subtle issues, such as the relation of chance to divine providence, and the questions surrounding human origins and human distinctiveness.
Dei Verbum: Persons and Propositions
Presented by St. Procopius Abbey, Benedictine University, and the Lumen Christi Institute Free and open to the public. Contact Fr. Becket Franks, O.S.B. with any questions.
What Does it Mean to Say the Son of God is ‘Consubstantial’ with the Father? New Insights about Augustine’s Debt to Aristotle
REGISTER HERE Cosponsored by the Department of Philosophy It is commonly accepted that Aristotelian ideas did not inform Latin-language metaphysics until the translation of Aristotle in the 12th century. However, this opinion has arisen from a failure to understand how the metaphysics of Augustine fundamentally depends upon Victorinus’ assimilation of Aristotelian concepts and distinctions. Victorinus, mentioned by Augustine in Confessions Book 7, was a Christian convert, an eminent rhetor, and one of the last philosophers in the western Roman Empire who was fully bilingual in Greek and Latin. In the 350’s he wrote metaphysical treatises defending the Council of Nicea’s doctrine…
Master Class: Augustine on Human Freedom and Divine Grace: What is Really Going on in the ‘Conversion Scene’ in Augustine’s Confessions?
REGISTER HERE This master class is open to graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies of the readings will be made available online to all participants. Although the part of Augustine’s Confessions that describes his conversion to Christianity is arguably the most famous passage in his influential corpus, scholars have long disagreed about how to understand this important section of Book 8. I will argue that the hermeneutical key to the passage is knowledge of the philosophical psychology that Augustine assumes in the passage, which is a…
The Book of Judges
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture Open to current students and faculty. Others interested in attending please contact info@lumenchristi.org. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. The Book of Judges is a collection of loosely connected accounts of the loosely connected Israelite tribes in the period between the death of the general Joshua and the establishment of the first kingdom. This time of religious and military crisis brought to the fore a series of heroes called šōṕēṭîm (judges) who, as emergency agents of God’s deliverance and chastisement, reconnected the Israelites to the promises made in the covenants. In…
Tracing our Shared Deep History: Evolutionary Anthropology and Theo-Drama
Cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop While theology and biological science often seem to be at odds, there are productive ways of telling the Christian story of who we are as human beings which resonate with newer evolutionary theories. This lecture will argue that the most convincing theological approach is theo-drama, where insights from the dramatic stage inform our theological reflections in relation to the drama of evolution. Such exchanges can be highly creative for theology and anthropology; neither party in the dialogue is reduced to the other, and both are enriched in new and interesting ways.
Master Class on The Wisdom of Bernard of Clairvaux
REGISTER HERE This master class is open to current students and faculty. PDFs of the readings will be made available for participants. This one-time Seminar will study selected writings of the great Cistercian theologian and mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1157). Bernard was one of the most remarkable figures of the twelfth century—monastic leader, ecclesiastical politician, and noted theologian. His most important legacy, however, was as a mystic and mystical writer. His mystical treatises, such as On Loving God (De diligendo Deo), and especially his eighty-six sermons on the biblical Song of Songs (Sermones super Cantica Canticorum), are among the most…
Catholic and Protestant Reformations and the Genealogy of Modernity
REGISTER HERE Open to current graduate students and faculty At this master class seminar, participants will read and discuss Professor Carlos Eire’s essay “Incombustible Weber: How the Protestant Reformation Really Disenchanted the World” from Faithful Narratives: Historians, Religion, and the Challenge of Objectivity, ed. Andrea Stark and Nina Caputo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). A PDF copy of the reading will be provided. This chapter discusses how challenges to traditional beliefs about death and purgatory in the Protestant Reformation caused significant material consequences, triggering a so-called “economic revolution.” Focusing on the issue of secularization in a present-day understanding of Protestant…
The Only Way To Truth Is By Love
A lecture on the occasion of the publication of Believing In Order To See (Fordham University Press, 2017). Copies of the book will be available for purchase. Cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop and the Seminary Coop Bookstore. “Non intratur in veritatem nisi per caritatem” -St. Augustine Believing does not always mean to make up for a deficit of knowledge, but rather attaining the right stance to see that which appears. This rule applies not only to common perception, but most of all to what Pascal, following St. Augustine, calls “divine things.” In faith, as in beholding a…