Lunch Discussion: “Are We Falling Back Into Paganism?”
Gavin House 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, ILOpen to current students and faculty. Others interested in participating should contact info@lumenchristi.org.
Open to current students and faculty. Others interested in participating should contact info@lumenchristi.org.
Open to current students and faculty. Others interested in participating should contact info@lumenchristi.org. Registrants will receive copies of the prepared reading. In an era of outstanding theologians who made the teachings of Vatican II possible, Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) and Karl Rahner (1904-84) emerge as titans. Both were German speaking: Rahner came from Baden and Balthasar from Switzerland. Rahner died as a Jesuit, having taught in Innsbruck, Munich, and Muenster. Balthasar left the order in mid-life to serve as chaplain to a secular institute in Basel. Both were prolific writers. Rahner’s chief works are Spirit in the World (1957),...
The In Lumine Network consists of six independent institutes for Catholic Thought located at elite research universities in the United States. Funded by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the In Lumine network aims to advance dialogue between theology, philosophy, and the natural and social sciences on the campuses they serve. The founding members of the network include: the Lumen Christi Institute at the University of Chicago, the Nova Forum at the University of Southern California, the Saint Anselm Institute at the University of Virginia, COLLIS at Cornell University, the Collegium Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and the...
APPLY HERE This intensive seminar will discuss St. Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways of proving the existence of a God and the conception that he thinks they yield: that of a God who is at once utterly simple and utterly perfect, and therefore utterly beyond our comprehension. The sessions will center on Summa theologiae, I, qq. 2-4—especially, of course, I, q. 2, a. 3, which contains the Five Ways themselves—and on selected texts from I, qq. 12 & 13. Participants will also discuss relevant passages from other works of St. Thomas, as well as his historical influences and some related contemporary...
A master class with poet and professor James Matthew Wilson (University of St. Thomas, Houston). Open to current graduate students, faculty, and advanced University of Chicago undergraduate students. Others interested in participating should contact us. Registrants will receive copies of the prepared reading. Generally regarded as the greatest poem of the twentieth century, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets is not only an important poem but a masterful modern contribution to the long Christian-Platonist tradition of the West. It is at once a work of art and a suggestive vision of Christian humanist metaphysics, ethics, and mystical theology, one to which perhaps only Dante's Divine...
Open to current students and faculty. Others interested in joining should contact us. Lunch will be served. Join us for a lunch discussion with poet and professor James Matthew Wilson (University of St. Thomas, Houston) Poetry is, at best, a marginal art form in contemporary America, and yet its craft, technique, and tradition are all provocations to reconsider what it means to live a whole, formed life and what it means to encounter, contemplate, and understand reality. In this informal conversation, Professor Wilson will share his own experience of discovering the craft and vocation of verse and we'll consider what poetry has to...
A final Lumen Christi Master Class, with Jean-Luc Marion. Open to current graduate students, faculty, and advanced University of Chicago undergraduate students. Others interested in participating should contact us. Registrants will receive copies of the prepared reading. Texts: Descartes, Méditations on first philosophy, a latin-english edition by J. Cottingham, Cambridge, 2013, or the bare latin text. (With focus on book 3 & 5) Pascal, Pensées, ed. R. Ariew, Hackett, 2005. (Entirety, but especially Chapter 3) Marion, Jean-Luc On descartes’ metaphysical Prism, Chicago U.P., 1999, Chapter 3 (ch.IV & V optional).
A master class with Brian Patrick McGuire (Roskilde University). Open to current graduate students, faculty, and advanced University of Chicago undergraduate students. Others interested in participating should contact us. Registrants will receive copies of the prepared reading. Friendship has been apparent in our culture as a concern ever since the time of the Greeks. Today it is often ignored or taken for granted. Some readings of the Gospels would indicate that friendship is secondary. We are saved not because of our friendships but because we find how to love our enemies. For Augustine, the architect of friendship, converting to the Christian...
Due to circumstances outside our control, this event has been canceled. We hope to schedule events with Fr. Fields in future quarters. Open to current students. Others interested in participating should contact us. Lunch will be provided for registrants. What does theology have to say about erotic love? Better yet, what is love? How can one distinguish between good loves and bad? In this lunchtime discussion, Fr. Stephen Fields (Hackett Professor of Theology, Georgetown University) will offer some brief reflections on the nature of love from the perspective of philosophy and theology. Then we will open the floor for a wide-ranging...
Open to current students and faculty. Box lunches will be served. Prof. Blowers will also give a lecture on "Negotiating Tragedy and the Tragic: Discursive, Performative, and Interpretive Strategies in Late Ancient Christian Literature" on March 30. For all events held at Gavin House, the Lumen Christi Institute follows Chicago Department of Public Health Guidance for in-person gatherings. Please see here for the city’s most up-to-date guidelines. These are guidelines subject to change. If you have any questions, please contact us.
Open to current students and faculty. Others interested in joining should contact us. Lunch will be served. Is John Wick only a guilty pleasure? Or is there, at the heart of these movies, a desire for justice—however roughly delivered? This lecture proposes that at the heart of the movies is indeed the desire for retributive justice: the payment of punishment for those who do wrong or reward for those who do right. It will defend the understanding of retributive justice as a real good and indicate how an appreciation of this virtue can aid human beings in pursuing the good...
Open to current students and faculty. Others interested in joining should contact us. Lunch will be served. Join us for a lunch discussion with Prof. Jennifer Frey on the the work of novelist Walker Percy. Suggested readings from Signposts in a Strange Land "Naming and Being" (pp 130-138) "Physician as Novelist" (pp 191-196) "Why are you a Catholic?" (pp 304-315) A PDF of the readings will be provided to registrants. Prof. Frey will also give a lecture on Walker Percy at a hybrid event on Wednesday, February 23. For all events held at Gavin House, the Lumen Christi Institute follows Chicago Department...
