When: Thurs, Feb 8, 2018 at 7:00 pm

Where: Penn Newman Center, Upper Lounge

3720 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA, 19104

2nd Annual John Henry Newman Lecture featuring Professor Thomas Pfau, Duke Divinity School

This lecture will explore J. H. Newman’s understanding of tradition and its relevance for humanistic and theological inquiry today. Newman is the first to contest the Enlightenment’s critique of tradition as backward, static, and as inherently prejudicial to social, political, and intellectual progress. Moving beyond the prevailing cultural and intellectual movements of the Romantic era – those of historicism and sentimentalism – Newman’s 1845 Idea of Development of Christian Doctrine outlines an understanding of tradition that proved remarkably prescient of developments in twentieth-century philosophical theology and scriptural hermeneutics. Above all, Newman shows that the many voices that comprise a tradition amount to a gift of sorts. We honor it by receiving it, not as a possession but as a temporary trust, a palimpsest of voices inviting us to interact with them and, in so doing, discover and cultivate our own voice and reason.

Join the Collegium Institute and the Penn Newman Center for this annual lecture marking the legacy of the University of Pennsylvania as the first Newman club in the United States.