From Aberdeen to Oxford

Description

The papers in this volume, cover a period of Fergus Kerr’s writing from 1961 to 2018. The Collection of Essays covers a wide range of philosophical and theological issues, literary figures, philosophers and theologians. The list includes: DH Lawrence, M-D Chenu, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, John Henry Newman, René Descartes, Augustine, GEM Anscombe, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida, David Hume, John Webster, Yves Congar, Vatican I, the Virgin Birth, and Radical Orthodoxy.

Academic theologians often focus on their own particular projects, working for years on the books which consolidate their vision of theology, a vision that has energised them for years. But sometimes the contingencies of life and the world, the book review or the conference paper, lead to what for medieval theologians were ‘quodlibets’ — responses, quite literally, to ‘whatever’. Somewhat spontaneous, usually unexpected, sometimes random, and a much more tentative treatment than a fully worked out book. The papers in the volume which cover Fergus Kerr’s writing from 1961 to 2018 are some of these quodlibets, touching on a wide range of issues in theology and philosophy, each speaking to a particular situation, question, or problem.

Each of these essays not only speaks to a particular situation, but is rooted in the life of a friar of the Dominican order, its own history in Britain, and its theological vision, a vision which Fergus has helped to shape over many years.

In New Blackfriars, Fergus once wrote of the necessity of listening if we are to preach: ‘Preaching requires listeners. Moreover, preaching assumes that what people will hear will make sense. It may challenge and provoke but in the end, if there is to be communication, it must awaken some response in the listeners—resonate with what they already believe. But listening never comes easily.’ Listening is a discipline of the mind, the imagination and the heart, and it is because Fergus has an acute ability to listen and so speak words that resonated in his brethren, his Dominican brothers

From the Foreword by Timothy Radcliffe OP
Fergus Kerr was born in Scotland in 1931 and after studies a the University of Aberdeen and national service, entered the Order of Preachers in 1956. He has served as Regent of Studies and prior of the Dominican communities in Oxford and Edinburgh. In 1994 and 1995 he delivered the Stanton Lectures at the University of Cambridge, published as Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity (1997). While Regent of Studies at Blackfriars, Oxford he founded the Aquinas Institute, which continues to promote the theological vision of St Thomas in the University of Oxford and beyond. As a contributor to, and later Editor of New Blackfriars, he published widely on a varied range of topics, some of which are to be found in this present volume. He has been awarded honorary degrees by the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh, and he is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. Fr Fergus’ published works include: After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002) and Theology After Wittgenstein (London: SPCK, 1997).