Thurber Lecture on C.S. Lewis’ Images of New Creation

A few weeks ago, I gave a Thurber Lecture at the American Church in Paris on Images of New Creation in C.S. Lewis.

Many of C.S. Lewis’s stories – Narnia, Perelandra, The Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces — are inspired by images of new creation. We will be discussing what makes these images so rich and vibrant, and how they shape C.S. Lewis’s Christian outlook. We will discuss the ideas – both religious and literary – that Lewis draws upon in crafting these images of new creation, and how they can inspire us, too, as we seek to shape our life and our world according to God’s promise.

You can watch the lecture on Vimeo:

Oxford Handbook of 19th-Century Christian Thought

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OUP has just announced the Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, to be published in June 2017, on which Joel Rasmussen, Johannes Zachhuber and I have been working for the last four years. Visit the catalogue or see the Table of Contents below.

Table of Contents

List of contributors
Introduction, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Judith Wolfe, and Johannes Zachhuber
Part I: Changing Paradigms
1: The Transformation of Metaphysics, Joel D. S. Rasmussen
2: Political Transformations, Mark Chapman
3: The History Turn, Johannes Zachhuber
4: Criticism and Authority, David Lincicum
5: The Science of Life, Donovan O. Schaefer
Part II: Human Nature and the Nature of Religion
6: Immanence and Transcendence, Merold Westphal
7: Selfhood and Relationality, Jacqueline Mariña
8: Gender, Lori Pearson
9: Faith and Reason, Russell Re Manning
10: Experience, Simeon Zahl
11: Myth, George S. Williamson
12: Virtue and Character, Paul Martens
Part III: Culture and Society
13: State and Church, Ian Tregenza
14: The Nation and Nationalism, Halvor Moxnes
15: Capitalism and Socialism, Philip Lockley
16: Mission and Colonialism, Michael Gladwin
17: Education and Its Institutions, Zachary Purvis
18: Recreation and Leisure, Paul Heintzman
19: Other Religions, Bernhard Maier
20: Race and Emancipation, Martin Halliwell
21: The Natural World, Malcolm Clemens Young
22: War, James Turner Johnson
Part IV: Christianity and the Arts
23: The Novel, Andrew Tate
24: Poetry, Rosalind Powell
25: Theatre, Linzy Brady and Jolyon Mitchell
26: Painting, George Pattison
27: Music, Bennett Zon
28: Architecture, William Whyte
Part V: Christianity and Christianities
29: Roman Catholicism, Daniel Menozzi
30: Protestantism, Annette G. Aubert
31: Anglicanism, Frances Knight
32: Orthodoxy, Norman Russell
33: Christian Minorities, Peter Lineham
Part VI: Doctrinal Themes
34: God, Richard H. Roberts
35: Christ, Robert Morgan
36: Church, Shao Kai Tseng
37: Scripture, William J. Abraham
38: Sin and Reconciliation, Paul T Nimmo
39: Life in the Spirit, Peter C. Hodgson
40: Eschatology, Judith Wolfe

Theology & Arts Initiatives

In September, St Vladimir’s Seminary (New York) hosted an unscripted workshop of a dozen scholars to think through the possibilities for a Sacred Arts Initiative within the Orthodox Church. Participants included composer Ivan Moody, iconographer George Kordis, Helen Evans (Curator of Byzantine Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), as well as scholars in literature (Mary Carruthers), art history (Annemarie Weyl Carr, Vasileios Marinis), music (Margot Fassler, Peter Jefferey), philosophy (Gordon Graham) and theology (Peter Bouteneff and Richard Schneider, organizers; me). The workshop concluded with a public panel entitled ‘Rethinking Sacred Arts’.

A report about the workshop, and links to a podcast of the public panel and to a photo gallery, can be found on the Orthodox Church in America website.
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Earlier this summer, I was in London for the first of two colloquia on Image as Theology organized by Casey Strine (Sheffield),Alexis Torrance (Notre Dame), and Mark McInroy (St Thomas), and bringing together Biblical scholars and theologians around questions of images functioning as theology.

At home in the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts, we are starting our own ‘theological art’ initiative, TheoArtistry, spearheaded by my colleague George Corbett and involving our part-time professor Sir James MacMillan, which aims to bring together practising artists and our theologians to create, perform and curate new art. More information is available here.

 

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Colloquium: “The Doctrine of God – Conversations with Paul S. Fiddes”

On Saturday, 16 April 2016, the School of Divinity at St Andrews is hosting a one-day colloquium on the Doctrine of God in conversation with Paul Fiddes.

In conversation with Paul Fiddes, we will discuss pre-circulated papers by

Steve Holmes (St Andrews)
Ian McFarland (Cambridge)
Andrew Moore (Oxford)
John Webster (St Andrews)
Judith Wolfe (St Andrews)

If you would like to participate, please email me (my address can be found on the staff page linked to in the right-hand menu).

Full information is available at the School website.

Reading Group on C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

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From April to June, John Perry and I are convening a reading group on C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man for graduates and faculty in theology, philosophy and literature at the University of St Andrews.

We will meet once per week, and read through the book critically, drawing in parallel or supplementary sources such as Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein as appropriate.

After last year’s reading group on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method, this is the second series of Readings in Modern Theology & Philosophy. Next year, I hope to read Edith Stein or Gillian Rose.