PUSEY HOUSE RECOLLECTIONS LECTURES MICHAELMAS 2017
3.30pm Tea and Coffee, Hood Room
4pm Lecture, Ursell Room
Wednesday 18 October, 2nd Week
Jesus Christ in Martin Luther and Cyril of
Alexandria
Johannes Zachhuber, Professor of Historical and Systematical Theology, University of Oxford
In this lecture, Martin Luther’s Christology will be explored in its historical context, its relation to the Chalcedonian tradition, and in its current, theological significance.
Wednesday 8 November, 5th Week
Augustine’s Women
Kate Cooper, Head of History, Royal Holloway, University of London
It is a truth universally acknowledged that with the inimitable Monnica
Augustine’s Confessions proposes one of the most memorable heroines of ancient literature, but less well understood are the other women of Augustine’s life, including those whom we know through his letters. What did Augustine learn from the women in his life? And what can we learn from Augustine about the lives of ancient women?
Wednesday 15 November, 6th Week
How the Spirit which works in us is known: the science of spiritual states according to Joseph Hazzaya
Jim Barlow Mission Priest and Interim Minister in the Bracknell Team Ministry
Joseph Hazzaya (the Seer) was a spiritual director and abbot of the 8th century. Born a Zoroastrian, at age seven he was enslaved and made a Muslim. By his own choice he later became a Christian monk and lived much of his life as a mountain solitary. Although, shortly before his death, his writings where anathemized by a synod of the East Syrian Church, under Patriarch Timothy I, that judgement was always contested and Joseph continued to be held in the highest esteem by many. Due to his condemnation and the brutal vicissitudes of history in that region, only a small part of his work has survived. What does remain reveals a luminous synthesis of the mystical theology of the 7th and 8th centuries with its characteristic combination of noetic and charismatic elements.
Wednesday 29 November, 8th Week
Church Fathers versus Modern Commentators on the Works of Mercy in the New Testament
Nathan Eubank Associate Professor in New Testament Studies and Laing Fellow in Theology and Religion, Keble College Oxford
In late antiquity Jews and Christians alike found many proofs in the Scriptures that almsgiving was a strict sine qua non for those hoping to know God and enter into eternal life. According to most scholars who focus on the New Testament, however, the canonical collection of twenty-seven books grants far less theological importance to works of mercy than did other ancient Jews or Christians. Eubank explores some of the characteristic differences between ancient and modern biblical interpretation in order to query common assumptions of the latter.
ANGLICAN HISTORY LECTURE
3.45pm Tea and Coffee, Hood Room
4pm Lecture, Ursell Room
26 October- 3rd Week
The Cloister-Madness of the Monk’: Establishing the Religious Life for Men in the Church of England
Dr Serenhedd James St Stephen’s House, Director of the Cowley Project
Special one off lecture, see here: talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/9820137f-af75-4575-a45a-ae9b3033a1f1
Richard Meux Benson established his Society of St John the Evangelist in 1866, at a time when the Tractarians and their successors were still viewed with suspicion by many in the Church of England. The Cowley Fathers, as the members of the SSJE became known, went on to become the first stable religious community for men in the Anglican Communion. Dr James is the Director of the Cowley Project, the first major exploration of the SSJE’s history, and will discuss the issues leading up to its establishment at a time when a number of attempts at founding the male religious life were floundering.
