Lincoln Theological Institute

 

Samuel Ferguson Presentation, Manchester Cathedral, 5 March 2026, 12 noon

 

In its encounter with different cultures through the ages, Christian theology has had to rise to the challenge of communicating its vision of God into new systems of thought and practice. How authors in the patristic era succeeded in carving out a space for the God of creation and redemption, compassion and agency in history, thus transforming the framework of Greek metaphysics, was analyzed by Wolfhart Pannenberg, the first Ferguson Lecturer, in the late 1950s. But already the biblical conceptions of God have undergone change. Their journey from a tribal to a universal God has been highlighted by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, comparing verses in Deuteronomy, in the Psalms and in Isaiah. How was the freedom of a God distinct from nature and humanity conceptualized in subsequent eras,  e.g., in 1300 by John Duns Scotus? What role does human freedom play? And how is the link between the Bible and subsequent theologizing to be judged: as a history of decline against which only “contemporaneity” can help (Kierkegaard)? Or as  efforts of rethinking salvation in new constellations which encourage us to take a stance?   

 

Samuel Ferguson Lecture, University of Manchester, 5 March 2026, 4 PM

 

A theology interested in keeping in dialogue with fellow-citizens in the public realm of a pluralist society encounters different approaches to the human person, to institutions, to religious and cultural traditions. Theology needs to analyze the premises of these frameworks and the connections they envisage between reason as a universal human faculty and religions in the particularity of their origins and normative cores.  Both the German discourse ethicist Jürgen Habermas and the French hermeneutical philosopher Paul Ricoeur value highly what religious traditions can contribute to the public space. Both point to their resources for a human agency that is threatened by “defeatism” in complex and increasingly fragile political systems, yet differ in their conceptions of religion. For Habermas, religion is “extraterritorial”, the “Other” of reason, marked above all by ritual, even if members are able to “translate” their religious intuitions and convictions into a language that secular citizens can open up to. A different dialogue partner for theology can be found in Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology of a “wounded” but “capable” self in its receptivity, imagination, will and reflection. How do the two thinkers critique and supplement each other? 

 

 

 

Date: 4 March 2027, 4 p.m., and earlier at Manchester Cathedral

Venue: Manchester Cathedral/University of Manchester