You Tube Theology

Please enjoy this recording from the first day of a two-day virtual colloquium with Lewis Ayres, Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the UK, hosted on July 22, 2021 by Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture and The Augustinian Institute at Villanvoa University. The aim of these two seminars was to think about a knot of interrelated problems that theologians today face, including the separations between theological disciplines, the lack of an adequate theology of the theological task, the difficulty of theology's relationship with the modern university, the lack of attention paid in training and in theological practice to the range of intellectual habits that theologians should seek to cultivate. Featured in this recording is Prof. Lewis Ayres's opening lecture on the first day of the colloquium: "The Theologian as Curator." It asks in what ways theologians should see themselves as curators, as organizing for display that which is handed down, as creators of relationships with the past. To ask this question in this way is certainly to ask perennial theological questions - how one should reason using authorities?, or how should one participate in pre-existing debates? - but is also to ask far wider questions about appropriate patterns of attention toward and desire for those authorities. It is also to ask how we organize our theological sub-disciplines such that they nurture appropriate attention. In a Catholic context consideration of "tradition" as both content handed down, and as act of handing on, has been the place where argument about the character of our curation begins. One of the most important places where this question becomes concrete concerns the relationship between early and medieval Christian theology and modern "systematic" theology. Dr. Ayres will suggest that a radical rethink of such relationships is essential. Dr. Lewis Ayres previously taught at Emory University in the US, and a long time ago at Trinity College, Dublin. He writes on early Christian theology and modern Catholic theology. In 2019 he co-edited, with Medi Ann Volpe, the Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology, which was described in The Tablet as "encyclopaedic" and as "a welcome addition to the prestigious series of Oxford Handbooks." He is currently working on two books, As It Is Written: Ancient Literary Criticism and the Rise of Scripture AD 100-250 (Princeton), and On Theology: Tradition, Scripture, University (Cambridge), but attempting to finish two books means that neither will be finished on time.' To learn more about Collegium Institute, please visit collegiuminstitute.org. To learn more about the Augustinian Institute at Villanova University, please visit https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/provost/institutes/augustinianinstitute.html.