Why is Creation So Central in Early Christian Teaching? | Prof. Lewis Ayres

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

This talk was given on March 6th, 2023 at Oxford University. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Lewis Ayres is Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He specializes in the study of early Christian theology, especially the history of Trinitarian theology and early Christian exegesis. He is also deeply interested in the relationship between the shape of early Christian modes of discourse and reflection and the manner in which renewals of Catholic theology during the last hundred years have attempted to engage forms of modern historical consciousness and sought to negotiate the shape of appropriate scriptural interpretation in modernity, even as they remain faithful to the practices of classical Catholic discourse and contemplation. His publications include Augustine and the Trinity (2010) and Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Trinitarian Theology (2004). He is co-editor of the Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (2004) and of the Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology (forthcoming). Professor Ayres has co-edited the Blackwell Challenges in Contemporary Theology series (since 1997), the Ashgate Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity series (since 2007), and has just co-founded with Fortress Press the Renewal: Conversations in Catholic Theology series. He serves on the editorial boards of Modern Theology, the Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Augustinian Studies. He has also served on the board of the North American Patristics Society.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.8	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.1	To learn more and to attend these events,
0:21.7	visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:28.6	Why is the creation so central in early Christian teaching?
0:35.4	The doctrine of creation plays a constant and significant role in the theology
0:39.9	of the Church Fathers. Not only is it an integral part of the very first article of the Nicene
0:46.0	Creed and of short statements of faith that preceded Nicaea, the task of imagining the creation
0:52.8	is treated over and over in the writers of the first eight centuries.
0:57.0	My aim tonight is to explain why this is so.
1:02.0	Now, there are many ways into this topic that we might have taken, and I will come back to some of those at the end of my talk.
1:10.0	The path I have chosen to take is one I hope
1:13.9	that will allow me to show you that appropriate envisioning of the created order was important
1:20.2	in the patristic period because such envisioning is an essential part of our thinking about God
1:27.1	and God's purposes in Christ.
1:30.0	The doctrine of creation, in other words, is so central a part of the period
1:34.8	because it is a hinge on which an awful lot turns.
1:39.9	In order to make this argument, I'm going to focus this evening on only three figures.
1:46.3	Irenaeus of Lyon, who flourished towards the end of the second century.
1:51.6	Augustine of Hippo, whose long career as a writer covered the period between his conversion in 386 and his death in 4.30.
2:00.6	And the mighty Alexandrian writer Cyril, Bishop of that
	...

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