AMERICAN theologian Dr John Norris will discuss how the Church might retain its doctrinal authority through insights of theology and biology on 8 July.
Dr Norris, Professor of Theology at the University of Dallas, will give the Slattery Lecture at the University of Notre Dame Australia’s Tannock Hall in Fremantle at 7.30pm, speaking on The Church as Body of Christ: Insights from Science into the History and Identity of the Church. Dr Norris, whose primary field of research is Augustinian exegesis, is developing courses that link faith and science.
He will discuss how the analogy of the Church as the Body of Christ features in the letters of St Paul, Pius XII’s Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi and the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church from Vatican II, Lumen Gentium.
Dr Norris believes that taking this analogy seriously and combining it with the insights of modern biology, one can see how the Church can maintain her individual and essential identity yet develop in time in such a way that determines her historically.
His Slattery Lecture will combine the insights of modern biology with the biological study of embryological development and evolution.
In doing so the analogy of the body, brought into dialogue with modern science of the body, shows a way in which we can comprehend how the Church might retain the constancy of its doctrinal authority despite the historical witness to change in the formulation of her teaching,” a UNDA statement said.
Dr Norris, a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, received his Bachelor’s degree in Theology from the University of Dallas and a PhD in Historical Theology from Marquette University, studying under Fr Joseph Lienhard SJ.