Life’s Paradox

• The American Academy of Religion (AAR) conference is coming to San Diego this year November 17-20th. It looks like there will be plenty of interesting panels to check out (not to mention cheap books from publishers), and, as I have already mentioned, a smashing reception on the Monday night of the conference centered around good friends and the release of two new book series. The event is for any who would like to come (just be sure to give Conor Cunningham the head’s up, as the instructions say).
• Via Ben Myers over at the Faith & Theology blog, I just found out about the following:
  

  …I was delighted to hear that Doug Harink – author of the brilliant study, Paul among the Postliberals – is organising a conference to explore the theological significance of the new readings of Paul by contemporary philosophers (e.g. Agamben, Badiou, Žižek) – and of Paul’s “readings” of them! The conference will be entitled “St Paul’s Journeys into Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements,” and it will be held in Vancouver, 4-6 June 2008.

  It doesn’t seem, however, like there is an official website yet, but this looks to be especially interesting.

• I was also just notified of the following:
  

  Philosophy and Liturgy: Ritual, Practice, and Embodied Wisdom
  May 20-22, 2008
  Hosted by James K.A. Smith, John Witvliet, and Nicholas Wolterstorff
  Prince Conference Center at Calvin College
  Sponsored by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship; funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc.Plenary speakers: Sarah Coakley, Terence Cuneo, Reinhard Hütter, Peter Ochs, James K.A. Smith, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.

  The renaissance in Christian philosophy has engendered sustained philosophical reflection on a number of key aspects of Christian theology, but there has been a notable paucity of philosophical engagement with a central aspect of Christian practice: worship and liturgy. This conference brings together leading scholars in philosophy and theology to investigate key themes in worship with the tools of philosophy, with the ultimate goal of informing Christian practice. There is also the reciprocal goal of letting Christian liturgical practice become a fund for philosophical reflection on classic questions and themes. The conference will thus stage a reciprocal encounter between philosophy and liturgy, with the goal of generating a liturgical philosophy, and a philosophically-informed liturgy.

  For more details, including the information on the call-for-papers, see here.

• And of significant interest to me is an upcoming conference on the analogia entis, or “analogy of being”:
  Academic Conference
  
  The Analogy of Being:
  Invention of the Anti-Christ or
  the Wisdom of God?
  
  A Theological Symposium
  Date: April 4—6, 2008
  Place: Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington , D.C.

  The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Anti-Christ, or the Wisdom of God?

  Is there any ‘natural’ knowledge of God available to the human person, apart from Christian revelation, or is all knowledge of God given to human beings uniquely in Christ? Is Christianity irrevocably wed to the classical metaphysical tradition, or can God’s nature and character be rethought in distinctly modern ways, based upon a renewed reading of Scripture? What relationship or likeness, if any, exists between created nature and the grace of God? Does Christian theology presuppose a natural philosophical ‘capacity’ for knowledge of God in the human person?

  All of these fundamental theological questions are situated at the heart of the famous 20th century debate between Erich Przywara S.J. and Karl Barth, and were treated in Przywara’s famous work Analogia Entis. These topics were also revisited by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his ecumenical landmark, The Theology of Karl Barth. On the occasion of a forthcoming English translation of Analogia Entis by John Betz and David Bentley Hart, this symposium will invite contemporary theologians indebted to Aquinas, Przywara, Barth and Balthasar to discuss these issues. Is the theological concept of the ‘analogy of being’ in fact an ‘invention of the anti-Christ’ as Karl Barth suggested, or is it a truth about creation revelatory of the wisdom of God?

  
  
  Featured Speakers:

  John Betz
  Martin Bieler
  Peter Casarella
  Michael Hanby
  David Bentley Hart
  Reinhard Hütter
  Bruce McCormack
  Bruce Marshall
  Richard Schenk O.P.
  John Webster
  Thomas Joseph White O.P.

  Sponsored by:

  The Dominican House of Studies
  Pope John Paul II Cultural Center
  Eerdmans Press

I’ll definitely be at the first — we shall see about the rest!

~ by Eric Lee on September 11, 2007.