Publications
Members of The Heythrop Institute are working in a range of areas in theology, philosophy and religious history. A sample of recent publications by members can be found below.
Stuart Jesson, 'Being with others and the practice of theodicy'
Forthcoming in Studies in Christian Ethics 37: 4 (2024).
This paper highlights one aspect of what it is like to address the problem of evil. The discussion shows that the suffering of others comes to matter, in part, because of the way in which we are with others, and they with us. Through a sustained discussion of the film 12 Years a Slave, and drawing on the idea of joint attention, it suggests that the possibility of sharing attitudes with others is central to our experience of the meaning of suffering.
Nicolete Burbach and Lisa Sowle Cahill (eds), Trans Life and the Catholic Church Today
Published August 2024, by T&T Clark (Bloomsbury).
This volume considers the various questions to do with trans people in the life of the Church from an interdisciplinary, Catholic, ecumenical perspective, reaching out to academics, clergy and educated lay readers. It brings together perspectives from a variety of disciplines to provide a rigorous, wide-ranging engagement with these pressing issues; and includes a number of trans contributors, making their voices present in these discussions, which are about them, but from which they are often excluded.
Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, Jewish Christians in Puritan England
Published August 2022.
Among the proliferation of Protestant sects across England in the seventeenth century, a remarkable number began adopting demonstratively Jewish ritual practices. From circumcision to Sabbath-keeping and dietary laws, their actions led these movements were labelled by their contemporaries as Judaizers, with various motives proposed. This book proposes a new analysis of the phenomenon of Judaizing Christianity in seventeenth-century England.
Michael Barnes SJ, Waiting on Grace: A Theology of Dialogue
Published March 2020, by Oxford University Press.
Whereas much theology of religions regards 'the other' as a problem to be solved, this book begins with a Church called to witness to its faith in a multicultural world by practising a generous yet risky hospitality. A theology of dialogue takes its rise from the Christian experience of being-in-dialogue. Taking its rise from the biblical narrative of encounter, call and response, such a theology cannot be fully understood without reference to the matrix of faith that Christians share in complex ways with the Jewish people.