Bernard Lonergan Trinitarian theology
What is Trinitarian theology?
What is Trinitarian theology?
While at the Gregorian University, Lonergan composed a two-volume Latin textbook, De Deo Trino (third edition, 1964). It has recently appeared in the Collected Works together with an interleaf English translation under the title The Triune God: Doctrines (2009) and The Triune God: Systematics (2007). In The Triune God: Doctrines, Lonergan begins with an examination of the dialectical process by which the dogma of the Trinity developed in the first four centuries. This section was previously published in English as The Way to Nicea. The second section of the work advances dogmatic theses on (1) the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, (2) the divinity of the Holy Spirit, (3) the distinction of the divine persons by relations of origin, and (4) the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (the Filioque). The fifth and final thesis is that the Trinity is a theological mystery in the strict sense and can only be understood analogically. A concluding scholion presents New Testament evidence in favor of the "psychological" analogy of the Trinity. In The Triune God: Systematics, Lonergan develops the theory of intelligible (or spiritual) emanations in God as propounded by Thomas Aquinas. The volume begins with a discussion of the method of systematic theology which seeks an imperfect but highly fruitful understanding of the mysteries of faith by means of analogies. The following chapters develop an analogical conception of the divine processions (as intelligible emanations), relations, persons, and the two missions of the Word and Spirit. CANNOTANSWER
a two-volume Latin textbook, De Deo Trino (
Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan  (17 December 1904 – 26 November 1984) was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian, regarded by many as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.

Lonergan's works include Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), as well as two studies of Thomas Aquinas, several theological textbooks, and numerous essays, including two posthumously published essays on macroeconomics. The projected 25-volume Collected Works with the University of Toronto Press is now complete. Lonergan held appointments at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Regis College, Toronto, as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Boston College, and as Stillman Professor of Divinity at Harvard University.

Aims

Lonergan set out to do for human thought in our time what Thomas Aquinas had done for his own time. Aquinas had successfully applied Aristotelian thought to the service of a Christian understanding of the universe. Lonergan's program was to come to terms with modern scientific, historical, and hermeneutical thinking in a comparable way. He pursued this program in his two most fundamental works, Insight and Method in Theology.

The key to Lonergan's project is self-appropriation, that is, the personal discovery and personal embrace of the dynamic structure of inquiry, insight, judgment, and decision. By self-appropriation, one finds in one's own intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility the foundation of every kind of inquiry and the basic pattern of operations undergirding methodical investigation in every field.

He is often associated—with his fellow Jesuits Karl Rahner and Joseph Maréchal—with "transcendental Thomism", i.e., a philosophy which attempts to combine Thomism with certain views or methods commonly associated with Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism. However, Lonergan did not regard this label as particularly helpful for understanding his intentions.

Life 

Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan was born on December 17, 1904, in Buckingham, Quebec, Canada. After four years at Loyola College (Montreal), he entered the Upper Canada (English) province of the Society of Jesus in 1922, and made his profession of vows on the Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, July 31, 1924. After two further years of formation and education, he was assigned to study scholastic philosophy at Heythrop College, then at Oxfordshire, in 1926. Lonergan respected the competence and honesty of his professors at Heythrop, but was deeply dissatisfied with their Suarezian philosophy. While at Heythrop, Lonergan also took external degrees in mathematics and classics at the University of London. In 1930 he returned to Canada where he taught for three years at Loyola College, Montreal.

In 1933, Lonergan was sent for theological studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1936. After a year of Jesuit formation ("tertianship") in Amiens, France, Lonergan returned to the Gregorian University in 1937 to pursue doctoral studies in theology. Due to the Second World War, he was whisked out of Italy and back to Canada in May, 1940, just two days before the scheduled defence of his doctoral dissertation. He began teaching theology at College de l'Immaculee Conception, the Jesuit theology faculty in Montreal in 1940, as well as the Thomas More Institute in 1945–46. In the event, he would not formally defend his dissertation and receive his doctorate until a special board of examiners from the Immaculee Conception was convened in Montreal on December 23, 1946.

Lonergan taught theology at Regis College (a theological school attached to the University of Toronto) from 1947 to 1953, and at the Gregorian University from 1953 to 1964. At the Gregorian, Lonergan taught Trinity and Christology in alternate years, and produced substantial textbooks on these topics. In 1964, he made another hasty return to North America, this time to be treated for lung cancer. He was appointed again to Regis College from 1965 to 1975, was Stillman Professor of Divinity at Harvard University in 1971–72, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Boston College from 1975 until 1983. He died at the Jesuit infirmary in Pickering, Ontario, on 26 November 1984.

Influences 
Lonergan names Augustine and John Henry Newman as major influences upon his early thinking. J. A. Stewart's study of Plato's doctrine of ideas was also influential.

In the epilogue to Insight, Lonergan mentions the important personal transformation wrought in him by a decade's apprenticeship to the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He produced two major exegetical studies of Thomas Aquinas: Grace and Freedom, and Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas.

Works 
The University of Toronto Press has published Lonergan's work in a 25-volume series, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan.

Grace and Freedom
Lonergan's doctoral dissertation was an exploration of the theory of operative grace in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. His director, Charles Boyer, S.J., pointed him to a passage in the Summa theologiae and suggested that the received interpretations were mistaken. A study of Thomas Aquinas on divine grace and human freedom was well-suited to his interest in working out a theoretical analysis of history. The dissertation was completed in 1940; it was rewritten and published as a series of articles in the journal Theological Studies. The articles were edited into a book by J. Patout Burns in 1972, and both the revised and the original version of his study were subsequently published in his Collected Works as Grace and Freedom:  Operative Grace in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas
After his return from Rome, Lonergan wrote a series of four articles for Theological Studies on the inner word in Thomas Aquinas which became highly influential in the study of St. Thomas' accounts of knowledge and cognition.  The articles were later collected and published under the title Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas.

Insight: A Study of Human Understanding
In 1945 Lonergan gave a course at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal that extended from September to April 1946 entitled "Thought and Reality," and the success of that course was the inspiration behind his decision to write the book Insight.  While teaching theology at Collegium Christi Regis, now Regis College federated with the University of Toronto, Lonergan wrote Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, inaugurating the generalized empirical method (GEM).  GEM belongs to the movement of "transcendental Thomism" inaugurated by Joseph Maréchal.  This method begins with an analysis of human knowing as divided into three levels – experience, understanding, and judgment – and, by stressing the objectivity of judgment more than Kant had done, develops a Thomistic vision of Being as the goal of the dynamic openness of the human spirit.

Method in Theology
In 1973, Lonergan published Method in Theology, which divides the discipline into eight "functional specialties." Method is a phenomenon which applies across the board in all disciplines and realms of consciousness. Through his work on method, Lonergan aimed, among other things, to establish a firm basis for agreement and progress in disciplines such as philosophy and theology. Lonergan believed that the lack of an agreed method among scholars in such fields has inhibited substantive agreement from being reached and progress from being made, whereas in the natural sciences, for example, widespread agreement among scholars on the scientific method has enabled remarkable progress. The chapter on "Religious Commitment" in Method in Theology was delivered in a lecture at The Villanova University Symposium and published in: The Pilgrim People: A Vision with Hope, Volume IV (ed. Joseph Papin, Villanova University Press, 1970). Karl Rahner, S.J., however, criticized Lonergan's theological method in a short article entitled: "Some Critical Thoughts on 'Functional Specialties in Theology'" where he states: "Lonergan's theological methodology seems to me to be so generic that it really fits every science, and hence is not the methodology of theology as such, but only a very general methodology of science." Lonergan's thinking in Method was, indeed, inspirational in bringing theological and psychology together in a unique way, e.g., Bernard J. Tyrrell, "Christotherapy: A Theology of Christian Healing and Enlightenment Inspired by the Thought of Thomas Hora and Bernard Lonergan" in The Papin Festschrift: Wisdom and Knowledge, Essays in Honour of Joseph Papin, Volume II (ed. Joseph Armenti, Villanova University Press, 1976, pp. 293–329).

Trinitarian theology
While at the Gregorian University, Lonergan composed a two-volume Latin textbook, De Deo Trino (third edition, 1964). It has recently appeared in the Collected Works together with an interleaf English translation under the title The Triune God: Doctrines (2009) and The Triune God: Systematics (2007).

In The Triune God: Doctrines, Lonergan begins with an examination of the dialectical process by which the dogma of the Trinity developed in the first four centuries. This section was previously published in English as The Way to Nicea. The second section of the work advances dogmatic theses on (1) the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, (2) the divinity of the Holy Spirit, (3) the distinction of the divine persons by relations of origin, and (4) the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (the Filioque). The fifth and final thesis is that the Trinity is a theological mystery in the strict sense and can only be understood analogically. A concluding scholion presents New Testament evidence in favor of the "psychological" analogy of the Trinity.

In The Triune God: Systematics, Lonergan develops the theory of intelligible (or spiritual) emanations in God as propounded by Thomas Aquinas. The volume begins with a discussion of the method of systematic theology which seeks an imperfect but highly fruitful understanding of the mysteries of faith by means of analogies. The following chapters develop an analogical conception of the divine processions (as intelligible emanations), relations, persons, and the two missions of the Word and Spirit.

Christology
Lonergan produced two textbooks in Christology. In 1956 he produced a supplemental volume De Constitutione Christi Ontologica et Psychica; the fourth and final edition of 1964 was presented in the Collected Works with an interleaf translation as The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ (2002). Lonergan clarifies the metaphysical principles of Christ's constitution as one person in two distinct natures, and transposes that framework to address the consciousness of Christ as a single subject of two distinct conscious subjectivities.

Beginning with an edition of 1960, Lonergan introduced his own textbook for his Christology course, De Verbo Incarnato. Subsequent editions were published in 1961 and in 1964.  De Verbo Incarnato is divided into four parts. The first part is an interpretation of the divinity and humanity of Christ as presented in the New Testament (thesis 1). The second part recapitulates the formation of the dogmatic theological tradition of Christology up through the monothelite controversy in the seventh century (theses 2–5). The third part, which covers much the same material as The Constitution of Christ but in a somewhat different manner, formulates what Lonergan calls "theological conclusions" from the hypostatic union regarding the ontological constitution of Christ as one person in two natures (theses 6–9), and his psychological constitution as a single subject of two subjectivities (thesis 10). The fourth part concerns "what belongs to Christ" (de iis quae christi sunt), including his grace, knowledge, sinlessness, and freedom (theses 11–14). The fifth and final section regards the redemptive work of Christ, in three theses: redemption in the New Testament (thesis 15), the satisfaction given by Christ (thesis 16), and "Understanding the Mystery: The Law of the Cross," presenting Lonergan's synthetic understanding of Christ's work (thesis 17).

He also produced a separate treatise on the Redemption, of uncertain date and never published. This treatise treats, in six chapters divided into 45 articles, good and evil, divine justice, the death and resurrection of Christ, the cross of Christ, the satisfaction given by Christ, and the work of Christ.

Among Lonergan's more noteworthy contributions to Christology include his theory about the ontological and psychological constitution of Christ, his interpretation of Christ's human knowing, and his interpretation of Christ's redemptive work.

Both De Verbo Incarnato and the supplement on Redemption are in preparation for the Collected Works. The plan is to present two volumes, The Incarnate Word, which would include theses 1–14 in Latin with an interleaf English translation, and The Redemption, which would include theses 15–17 and the supplement on Redemption.

Macroeconomics
In the 1930s and early 1940s, Lonergan developed an intense interest in macroeconomic analysis, but never published the manuscript he developed. In later life while teaching at Boston College, Lonergan returned his attention to the economic interests of his younger days. The University of Toronto Press has published his two works on economics: For a New Political Economy and Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis.

Philosophy: generalized empirical method 
Lonergan described his philosophical program as a generalization of empirical method (GEM) to investigate not only data given through exterior sensation, but also the internal data of consciousness. More specifically, objects are known while considering the corresponding operations of the subject and vice versa, experiencing and the subsequent operations of the intellect being components of both knowing and reality. Method, for Lonergan, is not a technique but a concrete pattern of operations.

Lonergan maintained what he called critical realism. By realism, he affirmed that we make true judgments of fact and of value, and by critical, he based knowing and valuing in a critique of consciousness. GEM traces to their roots in consciousness the sources of all the meanings and values that make up personality, social orders, and historical developments. A more thorough overview of Lonergan's work is available at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Lonergan's ideas include radical unintelligibility, theological critical realism, and functional specialization. Given the fact that no science can today be mastered by a single individual, Lonergan advocated sub-division of the scientific process in all fields. One of the leading voices in the effort to implement functional specialization is Philip McShane.

Hermeneutics 
Frederick G. Lawrence has made the claim that Lonergan's work may be seen as the culmination of the postmodern hermeneutic revolution begun by Martin Heidegger. Heidegger replaced Edmund Husserl's phenomenology of pure perception with his own linguistic phenomenology. Hans-Georg Gadamer worked out this seminal insight into his philosophical hermeneutics. According to Lawrence, however, Heidegger, and in a lesser way Gadamer, remained under the influence of Kant when they refused to take seriously the possibility of grace and redemption. Lawrence makes the observation that Heidegger—influenced also by Augustine's inability to work out a theoretical distinction between grace and freedom—conflated finitude and fallenness in his account of the human being. "Sin" is therefore absorbed into "fallenness," and fallenness is simply part of the human condition. Lonergan builds on the "theorem of the supernatural" achieved in medieval times as well as on the distinction between grace and freedom worked out by Thomas Aquinas, and so is able to remove all the brackets and return to the truly concrete, with his unique synthesis of "Jerusalem and Athens."

Honours
In 1970 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

In 1971, Loyola College, one of Concordia University's founding institutions, awarded the Loyola Medal to Lonergan. Concordia also awarded Lonergan an honorary doctorate in 1977.

Conferences and journals 
An annual Lonergan Workshop is held at Boston College, under the leadership of Frederick G. Lawrence. The proceedings of the Workshop are published under the same name, Lonergan Workshop, edited by Frederick G. Lawrence. The Workshop began in Lonergan's lifetime and continued after his death. The West Coast Methods Institute sponsors the annual Fallon Memorial Lonergan Symposium at Loyola Marymount University. The Lonergan Symposium has been meeting for 32 years.

Boston College has a Lonergan Institute, and also publishes the bi-annual Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies. The journal was founded, and edited until 2013, by Mark D. Morelli. The Lonergan Studies Newsletter is put out four times a year by the Lonergan Research Institute, Toronto; it provides the most up-to-date bibliographical information on the Lonergan movement. Recently, Seton Hall University has put out The Lonergan Review.

Lonergan Centres have been set up in various places (see below, External links). The Lonergan Research Institute at Toronto holds the Lonergan archives as well as a good collection of secondary material, including a complete collection of dissertations on Lonergan's work. Much of the primary archival material is available online at the Bernard Lonergan Archive (see below, External links), and a site for secondary material has also been set up, thanks to the work of Robert M. Doran.

See also
 John F. X. Knasas

References

External links

 Bernard Lonergan Archive A collection of works by Lonergan
 Lonergan Resource A collection of works about Lonergan
 Lonergan Forum Discussion board
 Bernard Lonergan profile and books on Goodreads
 The Lonergan Website - Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
 Lonergan Research Institute, Toronto
 Lonergan Institute, Boston College
 Lonergan Centre, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
 Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan at The Canadian Encyclopedia
 Commentary and Notes on Insight (includes podcast)
 Lonergan Institute "for the good under construction", Washington, DC
 The Lonergan Society at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

 
1904 births
1984 deaths
Writers from Gatineau
Quebec people of Irish descent
20th-century Jesuits
Loyola College (Montreal) alumni
Pontifical Gregorian University alumni
Thomists
Boston College faculty
Jesuit philosophers
Jesuit theologians
Catholic philosophers
20th-century Roman Catholic theologians
20th-century Canadian philosophers
University of Toronto faculty
Canadian Jesuits
Companions of the Order of Canada
Rhetoric theorists
20th-century Canadian Roman Catholic priests
Canadian Roman Catholic theologians
Concordia University faculty
Harvard Divinity School faculty
Canadian philosophers
Hermeneutists
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy
Michel René Barnes has been, since May, 2018, Associate Professor emeritus of Historical Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.   He focuses on Latin and Greek Patristic Theology, in particular, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo, and pneumatological development in the early church. He now works as principal research fellow at the "Augustine Agency", a privately-financed research library outside Milwaukee (and wholly unaffiliated with Marquette University).

Biography
Barnes attended St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1969-1973), and earned his PhD under the direction of John Rist and Joanne McWilliam at the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto. He also holds an M. Div., a Th. M., and a Ph. D. from St. Michael's in Toronto. His doctorate is in Systematic Theology, with a major in development of doctrine and a minor in hermeneutics.

Barnes lives in Milwaukee with his wife, Julia, and one of his three daughters.

Theological project
Barnes’s research first focused on fourth century Trinitarian theology on which he published several articles and the monograph, The Power of God: A Study of Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology.  He co-edited with Daniel H. Williams, a colleague and friend from St. Michael’s, Arianism After Arius: Essays on the Development of Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts.  he was working on a monograph on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the early church -- "Jewish and Christian Pneumatologies from 200-200" is the working title. In 2014 he will finish that work and, during his sabbatical in the academic year of 2014-15 Barnes will write a monograph on Pre-Nicene Trinitarian theology. .

Barnes wrote a paper on the narrative that developed from nineteenth-century scholar Theodore DeRégnon’s characterization of Eastern and Western Trinitarian theology as starting from distinction and unity, respectively.  DeRégnon had said that Western Trinitarian theology had emphasized God's oneness, while Eastern Trinitarian theology had emphasized his threeness. In the Harvard Theological Review Khaled Anatolios acknowledged that “The assertion of a substantive rift between Eastern and Western trinitarian theologies… is not found in either Hanson or Simonetti ... and its genealogy ... has been famously exposed by Michel Barnes.”  Matthew Drever also noted the attempt by Barnes, Ayres, and others to argue that many of the traditional categories for analyzing pre- and post-Nicene thought were inadequate. This paper is probably Barnes's most influential publication to date.

Barnes proceeded, with Lewis Ayres in particular, to cast Pro-Nicene Trinitarian theologies (found in the East and West) as possessing a harmonious logic, as seen in the independent accounts of Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo. He then focussed on two different, though connected, pursuits: the development of Latin Trinitarian theology in the third and early fourth centuries, and the development of pneumatology in the early church.  His article, "Irenaeus' Trinitarian Theology", in Nova et Vetera, covered these topics. While Barnes can be fiercely critical of some scholarly work of other scholars, his own work has often developed in cooperation with other scholars: Dan Williams, Alexander Golitzin, and Lewis Ayres come to mind as examples of cooperative research.

Collaboration with Lewis Ayres
Along with Lewis Ayres, professor of Catholic and historical theology in the University of Durham, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Barnes is part of a rereading of Augustine's trinitarian theology that contradicts the older, neoplatonic-centered account. In his 2007 doctoral dissertation, Keith Edward Johnson referred to his new reading as "New Canon" Augustine scholarship.   From a footnote in Johnson's dissertation (p. 108 n. 189), that name would appear to have been taken from a publication by Barnes; however, the bibliography does not provide further details. Barnes's and Ayres's work suggests that Augustine has been read primarily with a non-theological focus, and needs a theological or doctrinal re-reading. Some have expressed hope that their work will eventually result in a new theological biography of Augustine.  The basis of the New Canon reading of Augustine was worked out from 1995 to 2000, during which Ayres and Barnes conducted an almost daily common reading and discussion, via e-mail, of Augustine's trinitarian writings.

The mutuality of Barnes' and Ayres' partnership  is evident from the following comments in their respective papers, "Remember you are Catholic" and "Rereading Augustine on the Trinity":

In 2015 Barnes returned to the question of the lingering influence of Nineteenth Century doctrinal narratives upon later receptions of Patristic theology. In 2015 Barnes began his focus on the Christologies of the “Life of Jesus” genre that was so characteristic of the Nineteenth Century German  “Quest for the Historical Jesus”. More recently Barnes’ interest in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Christology has included the literature of German and English Pietism, as well as proponents of “universal salvation” – e.g., Isaak Dorner.  The two major projects that await publication are: Barnes’ study of the continuity of Pneumatology between Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity; and a book of essays on Pro-Nicene Trinitarian theologies. The expected monograph on Augustine’s Trinitarian theology has been postponed in the wake of the numerous studies on that topic published in the last ten years, but the project has definitely not been abandoned: a preliminary version of this study exists as the secondary source text for Barnes’s doctoral seminars at Marquette University on Augustine.

Upon retirement Barnes sought to re-kindle old interests held at bay by the responsibilities of teaching – principally questions of doctrine and hermeneutics. He is currently researching congruency between early twentieth century French Catholic theology and early twentieth century French Phenomenology.

Circumstances have also led Barnes to return to the subject of some of his earlier publications: the moral psychology of Gregory of Nyssa. [ See, e.g., “The Polemical Context and Content of Gregory of Nyssa's Psychology,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 4 (1994), 1-28.] The unexpected death in 2012 of his colleague, Dr. Ralph Dell Colle, led to an article on the link for Gregory between mortality and sexuality; research on Life of Macrina and On the Soul and Resurrection was further developed in 2016 for the Chicago Theology Initiative, and that work is in press (Spring, 2017). 

Barnes is the grandson of the French artists, Joseph Henri Ponchin, and the great grandson of Antoine Ponchin, and he has significant art holdings from both artists, particularly those painted in French Indochina. He acts as the sole western hemisphere Agent for the available paintings from three generations of Ponchin arts. He holds both American and French citizenships.

References

20th-century American Roman Catholic theologians
21st-century American Roman Catholic theologians
Marquette University faculty
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people Lewis Ayres, a lay Catholic theologian, is Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the United Kingdom.  Between 2009 and 2013 he served as the inaugural holder of the Bede Chair of Catholic Theology at Durham.

Biography 

Lewis Ayres was born and educated in the UK, completing his M.A. at the University of St. Andrews (1988) and his D.Phil. at Merton College, Oxford University (1994). He has taught in the UK, in Ireland at Trinity College Dublin and in the United States at Duke University and Emory University.

Research 

The core of his research has been Trinitarian theology in Augustine and in the Greek writers of the 4th century.  Ayres's period of research into patristic pneumatology has resulted in a collaborative translation of patristic texts on the Holy Spirit, but as yet the much anticipated monograph on the subject has not appeared. Besides Trinitarian theology in this pivotal period he is also interested in the later development of Trinitarian theology and in the place of Scripture in Early Christianity – both the history of Christian reading practices from the late 2nd century and the history of what can be termed the theology of Scripture itself.  He is at present writing a monograph that will concern the shifts in Patristic exegesis between AD 150 and 250. It is provisionally entitled As It Is Written: Ancient Literary Criticism and the Rise of Scripture AD 100-250.

Ayres claims "a number of interests in modern Catholic fundamental and dogmatic theology – as will be evident from the last chapter of Nicaea and some of the articles I have published." That chapter of Ayres's book was subject to sustained critical attention by Maurice Wiles, in the latter's review of the book (Journal of Theological Studies 56.2 (2005): 670–675). Wiles's sharpest criticism is that Ayres fails to show that his approach "is compatible with modern changes in our understanding of the scriptural grounds of the doctrine [sc., of the Trinity] and its development in the early patristic period." With reference to two specific examples, Wiles characterises Ayres's 'way of reading  the scriptural text' as 'forced and unconvincing'. Wiles connected these interpretive practices with Ayres's underlying conception of the Church.

Ayres also declares strong interest in the place of Scripture (and Tradition) in modern Catholic theology and the fundamental structure of Catholic theology. He is convinced that the ideological and professional divisions that have arisen between Scripture scholars, "systematic" and "historical" theologians have served Catholic theology ill.  He believes that ressourcement theologians have offered us many resources that can move us beyond these divisions, but much further work is necessary for their agenda to be taken forward.  In the hopes of contributing to this debate he is working on a book for Blackwells entitled Resting in the Word.  With his wife, Medi Ann Volpe (PhD: Duke University, 2006), he co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology.  He has co-edited the Blackwells series Challenges in Contemporary Theology for the past 18 years. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Early Christian Studies, Modern Theology and Augustinian Studies.

Collaboration with Michel Barnes 

Together with Michel Barnes, Associate Professor of Theology at Marquette University, Rowan Williams, and several others, Ayres is part of a rereading of Augustine's trinitarian theology that breaks with the older neoplatonic-centered account. In his 2007 doctoral dissertation, Keith Edward Johnson referred to this new reading as "New Canon" Augustine scholarship. From a footnote in Johnson's dissertation (p. 108 n. 189), that name would appear to have been taken from a publication by Barnes; however, the bibliography does not provide further details. The basis of the New Canon reading of Augustine was worked out in the years 1995–2000, during which Ayres and Barnes conducted an almost daily common reading and discussion, via e-mail, of Augustine's trinitarian writings.

The mutuality of Barnes' and Ayres' partnership is evident from the following comments in their respective papers, "Remember you are Catholic" and "Rereading Augustine on the Trinity":

Main publications

Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Trinitarian Theology (Oxford, 2004/6).
Ed. (With Frances Young and Andrew Louth) The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 2004).
Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge, 2010).
(with Andrew Radde-Gallwitz and Mark DelCogliano) Works on the Spirit: Athanasius and Didymus the Blind (Crestwood NY, 2012).

References

Academics of Durham University
Duke University faculty
Emory University faculty
Living people
Academics of Trinity College Dublin
21st-century British Roman Catholic theologians
Year of birth missing (living people)
Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
Alumni of the University of St Andrews