Julian of Norwich – Christian Imagination Series

The Christian Literary Imagination Series

Continuing from the previous academic year, over the course of the 2021-22 academic year the Future of the Humanities Project is sponsoring a series of webinars on the Christian literary imagination in collaboration with Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. The ‘Christian Literary Imagination Series’ will explore the role and function of the arts and humanities in the development of the individual and society.

The hour-long virtual events will be followed by a Q & As chaired by Professor Michael Scott. These events are free and hosted on Zoom by Georgetown University.

Julian of Norwich on the Incarnation

Julian of Norwich (c. 1342 – 1416) is perhaps most widely known for her refrain “all will be well, and every manner of thing will be well” and for her image of God as mother. Both of these ideas were ultimately rooted in her understanding of the incarnation and God’s “kinde love.” This presentation by Julia Lamm focuses on Julian’s reflections on the Annunciation, on God’s eternal love for humanity in the second person of the Trinity, and on Christ’s radical identity with humanity at its most vulnerable in the wake of the plague and the social upheaval it brought. The result of this incarnational theology is a form of Christian humanism. Michael Scott, director of the Future of the Humanities Project, will provide opening and closing remarks, and Rev. Joseph Simmons, S.J. will moderate a Q&A session following the presentation.

Featured

Julia A. Lamm is a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and the founding director of the James M. and Margaret H. Costan Lecture in Early Christianity at Georgetown University. Lamm is a historical and systematic theologian with specializations in Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834); Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – 1416); Christian mysticism; the doctrine of God, the doctrine of grace, and Christology; the history of Christian thought; and the relation between theology and philosophy. She is the author, most recently, of two monographs: God’s ‘Kinde’ Love: Julian of Norwich’s Vernacular Theology of Grace (2019) and Schleiermacher’s Plato (2021). She is also editor of The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism (2012).

Rev. Joseph Simmons, S.J., (moderator) is an American Catholic priest currently writing his doctoral thesis at Campion Hall, Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Graham Ward. He is exploring the Christian imagination and the fertile place where belief and unbelief touch in the fiction of Virginia Woolf and Marilynne Robinson. Simmons previously studied theology at Boston College and the Harvard Divinity School. His Licentiate in Sacred Theology thesis, “Via Literaria: Marilynne Robinson’s Theology Through a Literary Imagination,” explored the convergence of literary and Christian imaginations.

 

Upcoming events:

18^th January
Barbara Mujica – Teresa d’ Avila

1^st February
Mark Bosco – Graham Greene

15^th February
Hester Jones – TBC

1^st March
Mike Collins – Two Welsh Poets: R S Thomas and John Ormond

15^th March
Bridget Keegan – Jane Barker + Elizabeth Inchbald: Overt and Covert Catholicism

Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk