The Lumen Christi Institute

A conversation between University of Chicago professors, and scholars of medieval Christianity, Bernard McGinn and Willemien Otten. This event was broadcast live on May 19, 2020. Plague, political turmoil, famine—throughout Christian history, local catastrophes spurred on a sense of cosmic crisis, judgement, and prophetic fulfillment. What role has this apocalyptic imagination played for Christian...

A webinar delivered by Professor Katie Bugyis (University of Notre Dame) on May 14th, 2020. Presented as part of a spring webinar series on "Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought" Julian of Norwich (d. ca. 1416) was a widely respected and sought-out English thinker and spiritual counsellor. She lived as an anchorite, enclosed in a cell attached to a church in Norwich, Julian’s Showings a...

A webinar delivered by Professor Willemien Otten (University of Chicago) on May 7, 2020. Part of a spring webinar series on "Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought" Peter Abelard (d. 1142) and Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) were contemporaries who both emerged from the new twelfth-century schools. But their dispositions, personalities, and eventual conflict have come to represent a confli...

A conversation between economists Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde (Penn), Joseph Kaboski (Notre Dame) and Casey Mulligan (University of Chicago) on Economics, Catholic Social Thought, and the cost of the pandemic. This webinar was live-streamed and recorded on May 5, 2020. --- Description: COVID-19 has put much of the world on standstill for the sake of reducing the risk to some of its citizens. What h...

A web event with professors Steven Meredith (University of Chicago) and Jeffrey Bishop (Saint Louis University). Broadcast Tuesday, April 28, 2020. Cosponsored by America Media, the Society of Catholic Scientists, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Collegium Institute, the Nova Forum, and the Program on Religion and Medicine at the University of Chicago. This program is made...

A webinar lecture with Professor Brian Carl (University of St. Thomas), presented April 23, 2020. Part of Lumen Christi's 2020 Spring Webinar Series. Thomas was a friar of the Order of Preachers whose capacious mind bequeathed many treasures for the Christian tradition, including scriptural commentaries, philosophical treatises and commentary, his Summa theologiae, and devotional and liturgical te...

An online webinar with Aaron Canty (Saint Xavier University), delivered April 16, 2020. This is the second installment of our 2020 Spring Webinar Series. Anselm was a startlingly original monastic writer and thinker who drank deeply of Augustinian and patristic theology but formulated his own theological and philosophical writings in spare and compelling chains of reasoning. His Why God Became Man...

A web panel discussion held April 17, 2020, upon the 5th anniversary of the death of Cardinal Francis George O.M.I. After his appointment as archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal George emerged as an intellectual leader within the Church, nationally and world-wide, and served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. His thought on American culture and society—expressed in numero...

A lecture by French writer, medievalist, philologist and professor, Michel Zink, delivered March 5th 2009, at the University of Chicago. Michel Zink is Chair of Medieval Literature at the Collège de France. One of the preeminent medievalists of his generation, he has authored groundbreaking books on topics such as literary subjectivity in the medieval period, medieval literature and culture, and a...

A lecture by Regina M. Schwartz (Northwestern University) given on January 14, 2016 at the University of Chicago The law presumes not only the right but the duty to punish: it does not ask whether it should punish, but how much, who, when, and how. In contrast, Christianity offers a different response to wrongdoing: Jesus engaged in a polemical attack on “the reciprocity code,” the assumption that...

A webinar recording from April 7, 2020, featuring Professor Bernard McGinn. Part of our 2020 Spring Webinar Series on "Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought." For more information about this lecture series, visit http://lumenchristi.org/spring-webinar-series

A symposium with Rémi Brague (Sorbonne/University of Munich)and Jean-Luc Marion (University of Chicago), which took place November 6, 2014, at the University of Chicago. For more information in this event, see our event page: http://lumenchristi.org/event/2014/11/does-christianity-need-metaphysics-remi-brague-jean-luc-marion

A lecture by theologian John Cavadini (Notre Dame), given at the University of Chicago on February 2, 2012. In this talk, Professor Cavadini gives his response to a then-recent statement by acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking that philosophy was dead, and that science is the only reasonable method for securing knowledge. In response, Professor Cavadini argues that philosophy is rooted in man’s won...

This talk was delivered February 21, 2015, by John F. Haught, Distinguished Research Professor and Professor Emeritus of Theology at Georgetown University. His area of specialization is systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to science, cosmology, evolution, ecology, and religion. - The bestselling books by the “New Atheists” Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet...

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 by University of Delaware physicist, Dr. Stephen M. Barr, explores how Catholic thinkers and Catholic Church...

The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 has revolutionized our ability to edit genomes, the human genome included. How do faith-based ethicists maneuver the landscape of human genetic engineering? What challenges do biotechnological advances pose to the dignity of the human person? Should genetic editing be celebrated? Cautiously advanced? Ruled out? In this lecture, biologist and Dominican Priest Nicanor Au...

A lecture by Stephen M. Barr (University of Delaware) at the University of Chicago on April 9, 2015. In many ways, the supposed conflict between science and religion is really a conflict between “scientific materialism” and religion. The lecture reviews the story of the relation between Christianity and science, discusses several discoveries of the twentieth century (primarily in physics), and arg...

A palimpsest is a manuscript or painting produced over a previous work. This lecture by Stephen Meredith, Professor in Pathology at the University of Chicago, examines “the modern scientist” as a palimpsest of three versions of the Faust story: The Faust Chapbook by an unknown author (1586), Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808/1832), and the late masterpiece by Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus (1...

It is often thought that modern science developed largely independently of, or even in opposition to, religion. Some historians, however, have suggested that religious factors played a key role in the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century, and were important in establishing a permanent and prominent place for scientific activity at the heart of modern Western culture. This lecture...

Flannery O’Connor is one of the most celebrated American fiction writers. Yet she has often been misunderstood by the very critics who praise her. O’Connor was sometimes called a hillbilly nihilist, but she responded that she was simply “a hillbilly Thomist.” In this talk, delivered February 13, 2020, at the University Club of Chicago, Dr. Jennifer Frey (University of South Carolina) explores the...

A conversation with theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, from a 2015 event with students on contemplation and action.

A public lecture by Orthodox theologian, Fr. John Behr (St. Vladimir's Seminary), presented on January 16th, 2020 at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Father Behr drew on two of his recent books, "Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image" (2013), and "John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel" (2019), exploring how the Gospel of John alludes back...

A symposium on Notre Dame Professor of Theology Robin M. Jensen's 2017 book "The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy" (Harvard University Press) held at the University of Chicago on May 23, 2019. Panelists included Jensen, Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago, emeritus), and Karin Krause (University of Chicago). To watch the video of the lecture, which includes the Q and A session, visit http://...

A public lecture delivered by Andrew Prevot (Boston College) on May 9, 2019 at the University of Chicago. To watch the video of Prevot's lecture, which includes Q and A, and to view photos visit http://lumenchristi.org/event/2019/05/hope-of-exodus-in-black-womanist-theology-andrew-prevot

A panel discussion held May 2, 2019 at Skadden Arps Chicago on the life and legacy of Notre Dame's Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, on the occasion of the publication of "American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame's Father Ted Hesburgh" by Fr. Wilson (Bill) D. Miscamble, CSC. Moderated by John Breen (Loyola University Chicago School of Law), the panel consisted of Fr....