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1st April 2006:
University of Nottingham
The Faraday Institute for Science & Religion and The Darwin Festival in Cambridge present:
Did Darwin Kill God? The BBC2 Documentary
Introduced by the presenter Conor Cunningham
Followed by questions and discussion
5.45pm, 7th July 2009
Full information available on the event poster here.
The Veritas series page has been updated to reflect the addition of three new works.
The first is for a volume just-released: J. P. Moreland's The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism.
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Endorsements:
"J. P. Moreland's new book is a tour de force. In six clear, concise and tightly-argued chapters, he raises profound objections to the attempts of modern naturalistic philosophers to accommodate human consciousness, free will, rationality, selfhood and morality within a purely physical world-view. He thereby significantly enhances the intellectual appeal of a theistic alternative. All open-minded metaphysicians, philosophers of mind and philosophical theologians should read this book." — E. J. Lowe, Professor of Philosophy, Durham University
"J.P. Moreland's book is a masterpiece of clear, compelling, accessible arguments against naturalism, and a powerful defense of a Christian understanding of persons. This should be required reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of human nature and the debate between theism and naturalism today." — Charles Taliaferro, St Olaf Collage
"The Recalcitrant Imago Dei is a wonderful read. Chapter by chapter, Moreland systematically sets forth how naturalism denies what is so obvious about ourselves, which is that we are conscious, rational souls that have the power to make undetermined choices for purposes. The power of the book lies in the way that it makes clear how human beings become unrecognizable once naturalism has worked them over. Through page after page of careful argument, Moreland shows all of us how deeply unnatural the naturalist account of ourselves is." — Stewart Goetz, St Ursinus College
"Materialistic naturalism has, for some years, been the received wisdom in philosophy, as well as amongst much of the educated public. Many serious philosophical arguments have been brought against this ideology, but usually in a series of separate controversies. J.P. Moreland's great service is to bring all these objections together, whilst adding his own original contributions, in a very effective anti-naturalist polemic. He shows us that the materialist world picture cannot accommodate the most basic phenomena of human life: It has no place for consciousness, free will, rationality, the human subject or any kind of intrinsic value. Materialism does not disprove these human realities, it is simply incapable of accounting for them in any remotely plausible way. I would add to the list of its failures that naturalism lacks even a coherent account of the physical world itself. Moreland makes a very good case for saying that, as a serious world view, naturalism is a non-starter: more traditional, theistic philosophies fare much better in the face both of the phenomena and of argument." — Howard Robinson, University Professor in Philosophy, Central European University, Budapest
The next two are for this year's forthcoming edited conference volumes:
The Pope and Jesus of Nazareth, edited by Angus Paddison and Adrian Pabst; and The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition, and Universalism, edited by Peter M. Candler Jr. and Conor Cunningham. Further information on these volumes is forthcoming.
On the occasion of the publication of The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? (by John Milbank & Slavoj Žižek; Creston Davis, ed.) comes a public debate between John Milbank and Slavoj Žižek, which took place on 18 June 2009, chaired by Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney..
Some photographs, as well as an entire audio recording in MP3 format of this event can now be found here.
The latest issue of Modern Theology has two articles of note in regard to the work of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy.
First is an essay by Todd S. Mei entitled "Economy of the Gift: Rethinking the Role of Land Enclosure in Political Economy" which interacts with the work of both Philip Goodchild and John Milbank.
Second is a review essay by Adriaan Peperzak entitled "Phenomenology--Metaphysics--Theology" wherein he reviews the Centre's two conference volumes published thus far, Phenomenology and Transcendence and Belief and Metaphysics.
In the latest issue (vol. 96) of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, there is an interview with John Betz, author of After Englightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann (Illuminations). Ken Myers talks with Betz about his recent book regarding the life and thought of J. G. Hamann.
Click here for the interview with John Betz (subscription required or issues can be purchased individually in cassette, CD, or MP3 download).
More information on After Enlightenment can be found here. [Google book preview.]
Christian Social Teaching and the Politics of Money:
An International Conference on Religion and the Recession
9 and 10 July 2009
Senate Chamber
University of Nottingham
The working hypothesis of the conference is that there is there is a 'middle' position between an exclusively religious and a strictly secular perspective: faith can lead to a strong notion of the common good and a belief that human behaviour, when disciplined and directed, can start to act more charitably. There can also be secular intimations of this: the more faith-inspired practices are successful even in secular terms (more equality, more consensus, more human happiness, a better ecology), the easier it will be for secular institutions to adopt such a regulatory framework without having fully to embrace its religious basis. [More]
Speakers: Gabriella Berloffa, Phillip Blond, Luke Bretherton, Stratford Caldecott, Peter M. Candler Jr, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, Zaki Cooper, Jon Cruddas MP, Very Revd Dr Jeffrey Cuttell, Revd Dr Andrew Davison, Donal Dorr, Shahid Ebrahim, Giuseppe Folloni, Maurice Glasman, Philip Goodchild, Revd Dr John Hughes, Rt. Revd Dr John Inge, Dr Michael Mack, Archbishop Mons. Javier Martínez, John Médaille, John Milbank, Michael Northcott, James Noyes, Simon Oliver, Adrian Pabst, Ann Pettifor, David L. Schindler, Rt. Revd Dr Peter Selby, Neil Turnbull, Norman Wirzba, Stefano Zamagni, Paul Spencer Williams [to see more information about these speakers, click here]
All are welcome. For further information, contact adrian.pabst@nottingham.ac.uk / james.noyes@nottingham.ac.uk
INSISTENCE OF THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL
How and Why Did Modern Political Philosophy and Theory Become Engaged with the Theological?
Time and place:
June 11th - 13th 2009
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
Finland
Today it seems that Max Weber's thesis of the 'disenchantment of the world' was too premature. Far from being in decline in the modern world, religion is experiencing a resurgence. Today the human desire for transcendence seems to be as vital as it ever was. Yet this resurgence has not only meant an increasing role of religion in public life. It has also meant a revival of the theological in political philosophy and theory. The Bible, God, Messiah, Day of Judgment, the sacred, grace, and angels have become legitimate subject matters and notions in philosophical and theoretical discourses. What is the meaning of this revival? Is it a consequence of the general resurgence of religion? Are philosophers, being not satisfied with the Enlightenment Reason, giving itself again up to the mystical?
Or are we witnessing something else — inasmuch as we know that also agnostic and sometimes even openly atheist philosophers appeal to the theological discourse? Are philosophers perhaps realizing that the theological has always been there: at the heart of modern political thought, as Carl Schmitt once claimed? Does then philosophy's turn to the theological mean philosophy's attempt to understand better late modern society and thereby itself? It is indeed claimed that in order to understand late modern society and its political deadlocks, we must address again the question about the relationship between the theological and the political. But is this claim justified? In sum: why and how did modern political philosophy and theory become engaged with the theological?
These are the questions being addressed in this conference — aiming at a better understanding of the insistence of the theological in political philosophy.
Keynote speakers
Please see this website for full details including the conference programme.
Lazarus-style comeback: A revival of interest in theology is evident in academic and political debate, and John Milbank and the radical orthodoxy movement are spreading the news, writes Melanie Newman
'A Secular Age': Tracing the Contours of Religion and Belief
Date: Monday 8th - Thursday 11th June 2009
Location: Mater Dei Institute of Education
The conference will explore the way in which theology and philosophy, when placed in dialogue with the social sciences, can reinvigorate public discourse. Some of the themes which will be discussed include:
Plenary Speakers
Professor Ruth Abbey (University of Notre Dame, USA)
Dr. Eoin G. Cassidy (Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin City University, Ireland)
Professor Eamonn Conway (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland)
Professor Michael Conway (Pontifical University of Maynooth, Ireland)
Professor Michael Cronin (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Dr. Conor Cunningham (University of Nottingham, UK)
Dr. Joseph Dunne (St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin City University, Ireland)
Professor Michael Paul Gallagher (Gregorian University, Rome)
Professor Patrick Hannon (Pontifical University of Maynooth, Ireland)
Dr. Padraig Hogan (National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland)
Professor Gregor McLennan (University of Bristol, UK)
Professor John Milbank (University of Nottingham, UK)
Dr. Fainche Ryan (Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin City University, Ireland)
Click here for more information on the speakers. Click here for more information on the conference itself.
Whilst this programme aired on 31 March 2009, this 1-hour documentary can now be watched here using the BBC iPlayer.
A new trailer for the documentary can be accessed here (2 min 16 sec).
The BBC's Darwin Season: marking the life and work of Charles Darwin - highlights:
BBC Two
As many of you may be aware, the BBC has launched a 'Darwin Season' on both radio and television to commemorate the double anniversary that falls this year for Charles Darwin: 200 years since his birth and 150 years since the publication of his groundbreaking book-The Origin of Species. The received view of evolution's relation with religion is that the former undermines the latter. Philosopher and theologian Conor Cunningham from the Centre of Theology and Philosophy, University of Nottingham, says this is simply nonsense.
Cunningham who has just completed a new book-Evolution: Darwin's Pious Idea, which will be published in the autumn, was approached by the BBC and asked to write and present a one hour documentary exploring Darwinism's apparent impact on Christianity. According to Conor, the cultural war between religion and evolution, most vocally represented by American creationists and scientists such as Richard Dawkins is completely unnecessary and more than that, it is damaging for both religion and science. In his documentary - Did Darwin Kill God? - Conor travels around England, America and Israel interviewing philosophers, Bible scholars and scientists in a bid to discover how this destructive conflict arose, and in the process concluding that it is based on bad science, inaccurate history, inadequate philosophy and even worse theology.
The main purpose of the documentary is to offer a critique of both Christian fundamentalists who reject evolution, doing so, Conor argues, because they display a complete lack of understanding about the Christian tradition, and Darwinian fundamentalists - those such as Dawkins who take Darwin's theory beyond the domain of science and apply it to all aspects of life, and is so doing undermine the very cogency of evolution as a science. Consequently, Darwinists such as Dawkins are as great a threat to evolution as are creationists. In addition Conor seeks to remind viewers of the orthodox understanding of Christianity's God, for it is this understanding that makes opposition between Darwin's theory of evolution and Christianity not only misplaced but impossible.
Also, the University of Nottingham podcast website has added an interview with Conor Cunningham: A plague on both houses (mp3 Friday 13 March 2009; 32.1MB, 34.41mins).
More news... Subscribe: 
OPENING OF NEW CULTURAL CENTRE, 1st September 2005.
On The 1st September 2005, the Bishop of Limerick, The Right Reverend Donal Murray, a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture, officially opened The Centre of Theology and Philosophy. Cardinal Paul Poupard, President of the Council, who gave very generous and kind support to the initiative, encouraged this arrangement. The opening coincided with the Centre’s first annual conference, which was on the theme of Transcendence and Phenomenology. Over 150 delegates from more than 19 nations were present: Philosophers, Theologians, Students, Professors, Lay-people and Priests. Also in attendance was Monsignor Javier Martinez, Archbishop of Granada, Spain, who said Grace at the conference banquet.
Bishop Murray’s speech signalled in very strong and clear terms the concerns and aims that the new Cultural Centre shared with the Pontifical Council. Speaking about Cardinal Poupard, Bishop Donal put it thus: ‘In his work as President of the Pontifical Council he has sought for almost a quarter of a century to ensure that the Church is involved in and at the forefront of intellectual debates and cultural dialogues. He sees the establishment of Cultural Centres as a particularly fruitful way of advancing that goal’. For this reason, Bishop Murray continued, ‘The establishment of this Centre of Theology and Philosophy is particularly welcome…….because the Gospel is meant to take root in and illuminate every aspect of the life of individuals and of society. But the dialogue of philosophy and theology is of crucial, irreplaceable importance’.
The Centre’s aims certainly resonate with The Pontifical Council’s concerns, for its main aim is to take as its starting-point the truth of the Gospel; and in so doing, to fearlessly, yet with due humility, carry out rigorous research covering all aspects of lived life. And it was under the finality of this intention, that the theme of the first conference was phenomenology, which takes as its object the validity of the everyday. Religion is obviously a phenomenon of the everyday, and as a result of the methods of phenomenology there has been a quite dramatic ‘turn to religion’, so-called, within this form of philosophy. Here the names of Jean-Louis Chrétien, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Paul Ricœur, Michel Henry, Stanislas Breton, and Jean-Yves Lacoste, to mention but a few, are all very important.
A major concern of the Centre is the dissolution of levels of existence- melting real difference into the homogenous language of bare matter, for instance. A move encouraged by the adoption of the method of the empirical sciences as the sole model for philosophy, and indeed of truth itself, which does science itself a grave disservice. The move to reduce the complicated to the simple is of course motivated by the idea that existence is exhausted within the particular sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics. Indeed taking biology as an example, the problem arises when we realise that it must either bracket, or presume that something exists, and then investigate it. But it is this presumption that is the point of contention. Indeed the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, makes just this point in his Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften, where he argues that the specialists in the sciences do not get past the assumptions that they use. Here, the rich form of being - of existence is being lost, and the profundity of truth deflated.
But there is, then, the question that without a ‘thicker’ (to use Gilbert Ryle’s term) understanding of existence, it is quite difficult to see how biology will not, in the end, be understood as a folk-science. And in being so, find itself translated into the terms of chemistry, which in turn gives way to the language of physics, and so on. Such a predicament appears to prohibit metaphysical questions altogether, and as result, ethics, for example, is, then, merely a matter of sociology, itself being a folk-discourse. Yet it is arguable that such a significant lacuna, leaves the popular imagination open to the appeal of colourful, but misleading stories of ‘selfish genes’, and so on; these, then, become our ersatz metaphysics. Against this, the research programme of the Centre is motivated by the possibility that Étienne Gilson may well be correct when he tells us that ‘Metaphysics buries its undertakers’, a burial we think achievable in interdisciplinary terms.
Developing certain themes from this year’s conference, and expanding the work of the Centre, in line with the above concerns, another conference is being held in Granada, Spain-15th-18th September 2006. The theme of this meeting is—Belief and Metaphysics. Invited speakers extend across the disciplines, but also across intellectual traditions: For example, philosophers, both Analytic and Continental, Thomists, and so on. The criterion has been a strong interest in the effort to forge a philosophical and theological synthesis beyond the extremes of scientistic materialism and reductionism, on the one hand, and Post-modernism, deconstructionism, and cultural relativism, on the other. Motivated by the real hope of re-presenting the depths and wonder of existence evident in the lives we actually live, rather than the philosophies we contrive to propagate.
Speakers at this year’s conference include:
Oliva Blanchette, Louis Dupré, Mark D Jordan, Merold Westphal, David Cooper, John Cottingham, E.J Lowe, Rudi te Velde, David Bentley Hart, Ludger Honnefelder, David Burrell, Massimo Borghesi, Hent de Vries, Simon Conway-Morris, Charles Taliaferro, Michael Rea, and John Milbank.
The work of the Centre is being disseminated and given focus by two book series. The first of these is being published by Blackwell, Oxford, and is called –Illuminations. This will publish major monographs in both theology and philosophy. The second series will consist in shorter volumes on single topics. For example, we have volumes coming out on EVOLUTION, NATURALISM, NOMINALISM, SUFFERING, RACE, TRINITY, SUICIDE, FOOD, ATHEISM, MEMORY, BEING, INFINITY, POWER, DECADENCE, SPEAKING, PARTICPATION, and TIME, to offer an illustrative sample. This series is called: Interventions and it is being published by Wm.B.Eerdmans. Those on the editorial advisory board include, among others:
Rowan Williams, Charles Taylor, William Desmond, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Mark D Jordan, and Rémi Brague.
As an offshoot, we are also publishing short, incisive texts on particular thinkers. For example:
Balthasar
A Very Critical Introduction.
We also have volumes on the theologian Stanley Hauerwas, and the philosopher Alain Badiou forthcoming.
Both series are inspired by what we might call ‘Catholic Humanism’. In other words, the series are endeavours to give an account of all aspects of life, doing so from a broadly Christian point-of-view, but one mediated, or informed by a number of disciplines, and indeed culture as a whole.
Dr Conor Cunningham,
Assistant Director,
Centre of Theology and Philosophy,
University of Nottingham, England
The Centre's Concerns:
‘Every doctrine which does not reach the one thing necessary, every separated philosophy, will remain deceived by false appearances. It will be a doctrine, it will not be Philosophy’, (Maurice Blondel, 1861-1949)
The COTP is a research-led institution organised at the interstices of theology and philosophy. It is founded on the conviction that these two disciplines cannot be adequately understood or further developed, save with reference to each other. This is true in historical terms, since we cannot comprehend our Western cultural legacy, unless we acknowledge the interaction of the Hebraic and Hellenic traditions. It is also true conceptually, since reasoning is not fully separable from faith and hope, or conceptual reflection from revelatory disclosure. The reverse also holds, in either case.
The Centre is concerned with:
The Theology Department of the University of Nottingham, within which the COTP is situated, was awarded the top 5* A grade in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2001). Nottingham was one of only two theology Departments who submitted all its staff and was rated 5* A.
For all enquiries, please email Conor Cunningham:
To return to the Nottingham Theology Department:
www.nottingham.ac.uk/theology
(Sculpture by Sara Cunningham-Bell)
Notable:
New Papers:
Recent Publications:
(Highfield House, new home of both Department of Theology & Religious Studies as well as the Centre of Theology and Philosophy)
For enquires please email:
