Contact
Biography
The best way to introduce myself is through what I write. These two recent papers are on open access - you can download them for free!
Celebrating Synodality: Synodality as a Fundamental Aspect of Christian Liturgy
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nbfr.12807
and Equality as a Theological Principle within Roman Catholic Ecclesiology
https://brill.com/view/journals/ecso/18/1/article-p35_35.xml
Born in Dublin, I began my life in universities when I did a B.A. in philosophy and medieval history in University College Dublin. Immediately after that I began work on my B.D. in theology from St Patrick's College, Maynooth. By this stage I knew I wanted to do research in early medieval thought, and did an M. Phil. in medieval studies concentrating on the cultural influences on the thought of Plotinus and Augustine. During the time I was doing the M.Phil. I became increasingly aware of the need to be skilled in languages of late antiquity and in palaeography - and entering the world of manuscripts was, though I did not realize it at the time, going to be a major step in my way of looking at the world, while at the same time my interests were moving ever more towards historical theology.
I was subsequently offered a research fellowship in the Department of Late Latin and Palaeography in University College Dublin, and later again I was made a Scholar in School of Celtic Studies of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, and this led to my Ph.D. which was devoted to the tradition of Genesis interpretation in Latin between the death of Augustine and the Carolingians.
While doing research for my M.Phil. and, later, for the Ph.D. I held various teaching positions (in University College Dublin, the Milltown Institute, Dublin, and the Dominican Studium in Dublin) teaching traditional logic, the history of theology, patristics, and church history. This teaching not only gave me a perspective on the topics I was researching, but exerted a constant pressure to reflect on my own theological method and to recognize that while my teaching might be valued by others as 'history of theology' or 'the history of ideas,' my own impulse to teach and research was rooted in the discipline and perspective of historical theology.
Teaching has also influenced the content of my research in a variety of ways. I have become fascinated with how earlier teachers taught theology and how the tools they developed to help them in that task had an impact on the theology they taught. Likewise, theology is a discipline that reflects its modes of communication far more than other academic pursuits: 'gospel' is communicated as 'the gospels' and, in turn, 'the gospels' become the core of 'gospel'; the early churches used codices rather than scrolls - the effects are still with us; theology became a university discipline when it moved out of a primarily oral environment and Christianity became a book-based religion; now what will happen in the new orality that arises with the web? These questions about communication fascinate me and crop up again and again in what I write.
While a Scholar the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies I was offered a post in the Dept of Theology and Religious Studies in the University of Wales, Lampeter beginning in January 1997. That appointment allowed me to develop a distinctive style of historical theology focused on the dynamics of tradition within theology. This work led eventually to my being made the first Professor of Historical Theology in the University of Wales in February 2006; and to the award of a D.D. by Bangor University in 2010. I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries; the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; and of the Royal Historical Society. In 2017 I was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in recognition of my contribution to our understanding of the Latin culture of early medieval Ireland.
I was invited to accept the post of Professor of Historical Theology here in the University of Nottingham in 2009, and remained in post until my retirement in 2020. At that point I was appointed Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology here - and this allows me to continue my connection with the department and the University.
Now that I am Emeritus I continue to engage in academic research and in communicating that research.
I am leading three publication projects:
1. Studia Traditionis Theologiae.
This is a series of monographs - it began in 2009 and its 55th volume is about to appear - dedicated to the evolution of theology in the early and medieval periods across the Christian world. If you have a monograph on how theology evolved in its tradition, then you might consider it as a destination for your research.
For more information go to https://www.brepols.net/series/stt
2. The Brepols Library of Christian Sources.
This series is dedicated to producing bi-lingual editions of key texts from the Christian tradition from the earliest times until the thirteenth century. The series includes texts in both Greek and Latin, and in addition to what one expects in such bi-lingual texts, there is an emphasis on providing auxiliary materials to make them user-friendly for use in the classroom. Six volumes have appeared since 2021, and another five are in the press.
If you are interested in producing a translation of a Greek or Latin Christian text - not necessarily a 'theological' text - with commentary, then I would like to hear from you.
3. Explorations.
This is a new series of collections of essays aiming at drawing together new thinking on current issues in theology. The series is under the auspices of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain. I am part of three-person editorial team: the other editors are Prof. Stephen McKinney (Glasgow) and Dr Patricia Kelly.
The first volume will appear in February 2024 and will be devoted to synodality.
I also press ahead with research and am academic consultant to several theological faculties and organizations. I continue to do some teaching - usually in the form of intensive modules - most recently, in January 2023, I gave a one-week MA module to the students of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute in Dublin introducing the methodology of historical theology - and making use of the excellent manuscript and artifact resources of the Chester Beatty Library and of the National Museum of Ireland. It was fun to be back in Dublin, near where I grew up, teaching.
I continue to face each day the key challenges of the academic theologian: on the one hand, one must be constantly seeking new knowledge by investigating historical material and subjecting well-known materials to new critical examination; on the other hand, communicating the fruits of one's research, training the next generation of researchers, and transmitting the dialogue of theology through teaching - an activity that can take many shapes.
This task of communication is also complex in that one has to dialogue with others in the research community through the publication of academic papers, and one must also communicate with the wider public - for theology and its history is of concern far beyond the academy - through other publications and media. One can see my attempts to so communicate with these various audiences through the range of items in my list of publications.
My most recent attempt to speak to both audiences is my latest book (2023): In Christ now meet both East and West: On Catholic Eucharistic Action. Here is a link to it https://www.bookdepository.com/In-Christ-Now-Meet-Both-East-and-West-Thomas-OLoughlin/9780814668757
Some publications are intended only for a handful of specialists, others are attempts to distill the understanding of the origins of Christianity that has been built up since the discipline came into existence in Germany in the nineteenth century. Moreover, in recent years I have become ever more interested in how we are entering a new age of orality - learning is taking place through listening and watching - which is based not around the hearth in the household nor in the village church, but on the internet. If you want to see and hear what I mean by this, then just click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj-8Uy1BJIQ&list=PL52C4CE0B7593CFC8
The other 'slow burn' activity I am engaged in is seeking out new sources for historical theology, and sources that have not attracted attention from this angle in the past. In particular I am interested in how the activity of the Christian cult - liturgy - has played a complex role in the growth of Christian self-understanding and had interacted with formal theology in a myriad of ways - and ways that are far more complex and surprising than the old adage of lex orandi legem credendi statuat might suggest. Another area that interests me is how believers have used maps over the centuries to give expression to their faith and how their maps are the expressions of their world, which includes their religious world.
Despite the fact that historical theology tends to look at the distant past, it is one of the younger theological disciplines - when I was an undergraduate it was still fashionable in some quarters to dismiss it as little more than 'context of' or noise in an 'unchanging' body of doctrines - and, therefore, one of the more exciting approaches to take in the study of Christianity.
I have placed some of my papers on Academic.edu - here is a link: https://nottingham.academia.edu/ThomasOLoughlin
Expertise Summary
Historical theology is one less well know approach to theology when compared with better known approaches of systematic theology and philosophical theology on the one hand, and the disciplines of church history or biblical exegesis on the other - yet historical theology has links with all of these approaches. Its basis lies in the reality of change: what any group of Christians, now or in the past, profess and how they imagine the world and their pace in it, is always changing. Historical theology investigates this phenomenon, the factors that lead to specific changes and developments, how that group then realign their 'take' on Christianity with the past (usually through a re-reading of history) and then the impact that has on the groups that come after them. So historical theology seeks to know what Christians believe and why they believe certain things at certain times by looking at particular point and situating it against the larger patterns of Christian belief. So when biblical scholars look at the work of the Chronicler, re-reading his history to make a theological point, and then describe the Chronicler's theology vis-a-vis other understandings of Israel's faith, those biblical scholars are acting as historical theologians. Likewise, when a systematician seeks to understand how western Christians could tear themselves asunder in the sixteenth century over 'sacraments' and seeks to explain this by noting how the notion of 'seven sacraments' began in twelfth-century canon law, and therefore all to do with the notion has to be seen as a function of that period's view of the universe, that systematician is using the methods of historical theology.
It would be fair to say that one of the characteristics of historical theologians is that they prefer empirically founded statements about what a specific group believed - which can then be studied - to vast statements that take the form: 'faith demands ... '
Areas of Interest:
- Early Christian communities and the documents they produced
- Patristic and Medieval Theology
- History of Scriptural Interpretation
- Method in Historical Theology
- How Christians today use, re-use, and re-cycle their histories
To understand how historical theologians approach questions, probably the easiest route it to watch historical theologians at work. You can see historical theology being done in these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlh6yirUcPo&list=PLFC4121E00BB41795&index=5&feature=plpp_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvDKxtHI5bY&list=PLFC4121E00BB41795&index=6&feature=plpp_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiEh1bPnJd0&list=PL52C4CE0B7593CFC8&index=38&feature=plpp_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRbm3N4efrE&list=PL52C4CE0B7593CFC8&index=9&feature=plpp_video
Historical theology is often at the intersection between what is studied by theologians and what is found in the preaching of the churches and the opinions in the pews - this makes it an interesting place of intellectual dialogue.
Research Summary
The Eucharist
To see my overall approach, look at my 2015 monograph The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings (T. & T Clark / Bloomsbury) which examines how developments and discoveries over the last century in the fields of early Christian studies make it essential that the churches subject their inherited views on the Eucharist - inherited mainly from the scholastic Late Medieval and Reformation periods - to a profound reappraisal. Such reappraisals are always difficult as there is usually a great deal of emotional investment in the theologies we inherit from the past, but part of the service of theologians is to help people formulate new and more comprehensive visions of what they believe.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-eucharist-9780567384591/
You can get a taste of this book in these articles:
'Another post-resurrection meal, and its implications for the early understanding of the Eucharist' (details can be found under my 'PUBLICATIONS' but it is also on open access at http://trn.sagepub.com/content/25/1/1.full.pdf+html ); and 'Eucharistic Celebrations: the Chasm between Idea and Reality' (details can be found under my 'PUBLICATIONS' but it is also on open access at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-2005.2009.01322.x/full ). I hope you enjoy reading both pieces!
Also, you might like to watch this video: Why study the Eucharist?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNSMbOCKoMY&list=PL52C4CE0B7593CFC8&index=68
To get a free download of an article of mine on Lk 1:1 and what it tell us about ministry and books in the early churches, go to:
http://gorgiaspress.com/bookshop/t-openaccess_repository.aspx
and you will find some excellent articles by other scholars besides!
Late patristic / early medieval theology
In 2012 I published a study of the sixth-century British theologian, Gildas, and how he used and interpreted the Christian scriptures. While many books are written on the exegesis of many theologians, such as Augustine (354-430), most actual theology, and virtually the whole of the teaching of theology was done by far less famous teachers - and it is their perceptions of what they were doing that had the greatest impact on the on-going development of Christianity. Unfortunately, most of these 'schoolmasters' left us no record to see what they were doing, and those that did leave a trace, such as Gildas, are often seen as too 'obscure' to merit study - so our understanding of Christian tradition remain defective! So this book is as much an experiment in method as it is an analysis of one Latin theologian from a period that is often presented as a 'dark age.'
This book is called Gildas and the Scriptures; Seeing the World through a Biblical Lens and is published by Brepols in the series Studia traditionis theologiae.
Current Writing Projects
1
I am working at present on the origins of the notion of 'apostolic succession' in Christianity.
2
The developing theology of synodality.
Here is a list of the volume published to date in Studia Traditionis Theologiae:
I. A. Steward-Sykes, The Didascalia apostolorum: An English Version with introduction and Annotation (2009).
II. R. Aist, The Christian Topography of Early Islamic Jerusalem: The Evidence of Willibald of Eichstätt (700-787 CE)((2009).
III. K. Ritari, Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland: Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba(2010).
IV. D. Jenkins, 'Holy, Holier, Holiest': The Sacred Topography of the Early Medieval Irish Church (2010).
V. I. Warntjes and D. Ó Cróinín eds, Computus and its Cultural Context in the Latin West, AD 300-1200 (2010).
VI. J. Siemens, The Christology of Theodore of Tarsus: The Laterculus Malalianus and the Person and Work of Christ(2010).
VII. E. Narinskaya, Ephrem, a 'Jewish' sage: A comparison of the Exegetical Writings of St Ephrem the Syrian and Jewish Traditions (2010).
VIII. A. Andreopoulos, A. Casiday, and C. Harrison eds, Meditations of the Heart: The Psalms in Early Christian Thought and Practice (2011).
IX. N.L. Thomas, Defending Christ: The Latin Apologists before Augustine (2011).
X. I. Warntjes and D. Ó Cróinín eds, The Easter Controversy of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (2012).
XI. C.A. Cvetkovic, Seeking the Face of God: The Reception of Augustine in the Mystical Though of Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St Thierry (2012).
XII. T. O'Loughlin, Gildas and the Scriptures: Seeing the World through a Biblical Lens (2012).
XIII. C.L. Lubinsky, Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood: The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity (2013).
XIV. P. Moran and I. Warntjes eds, Early Medieval Ireland and Europe: Chronology, Contacts, Scholarship: A Festschrift for Daíbhí Ó Cróinín (2015).
XV. B.D. Wayman, Diodore the Theologian: Pronoia in his Commentary on Psalms 1-50 (2014).
XVI. G.T. Dempsey, Aldhelm of Malmesbury and the Ending of Late Antiquity (2015).
XVII. M.F.M. Clavier, Eloquent Wisdom: Rhetoric, Cosmology and Delight in the Theology of Augustine of Hippo(2014).
XVIII. D. De Bruyne, Summaries, Divisions and Rubrics of the Latin Bible (reprint of the volume from 1914 with introductions by P.-M. Bogaert and T. O'Loughlin) (2014).
XIX. D. De Bruyne, Prefaces to the Latin Bible (reprint of the volume from 1914 with introductions by P.-M. Bogaert and T. O'Loughlin) (2015).
XX. B. Walker, Memory, Mission, and Identity: Orality and the Apostolic Miracle Tradition (2015).
XXI. D. Clark, The Lord's Prayer: Origins and Early Interpretations (2016).
XXII. S. Lanzi, The Stations of the Cross: The Placelessness of Medieval Christian Piety (2016).
XXIII. K. Ritari, Pilgrimage to Heaven: Eschatology and Monastic Spirituality in Early Medieval Ireland (2016).
XXIV. W.M. Stevens, Rhetoric and Reckoning in the Ninth Century: The Vademecum of Walahfrid Strabo (2018).
XXV. W. Kursawa, Healing not Punishment: the Historical and Pastoral Networking of the Penitentials between the Sixth and the Eighth Centuries (2017).
XXVI. I. Warntjes and D. Ó Cróinín eds, Late Antique Calendrical Thought and its Reception in the Early Middle Ages(2017).
XXVII. E.M.G. Krajewski, Archetypal Narratives: Pattern and Parable in the Lives of Three Saints (2017).
XXVIII. N. Loudovikos, Analogical Identities: The Creation of the Christian Self - Beyond Spirituality and Mysticism in the Patristic Era (2019).
XXIX. Chun Ling Yu, Bonds and Boundaries among the Early Churches: Community Maintenance in the Letter of James and the Didache (2018).
XXX. R. Aist, From Topography to Text: The Image of Jerusalem in the Writings of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede(2018).
XXXI. J. Hawkes and M. Boulton eds, All Roads Lead to Rome: The Creation, Context, and Transmission of the Codex Amiatinus (2019).
XXXII. L. Holford-Strevens, The Disputatio Chori et Praetextati: The Roman Calendar for Beginners (2019).
XXXIII. A. Osborne, A Cosmic Liturgy: Qumran's 364-Day Calendar (2019).
XXXIV. S. Towers, Constructions of Gender in Late Antique Manichaean Cosmological Narrative (2019).
XXXV. L. Cerioni, Revealing Women: Feminine Imagery in Gnostic Christian Texts (2021).
XXXVI. W. Sadowski and F. Marsciani eds, The Litany in Arts and Cultures (2020).
XXXVII. P. Pylvänäinen, Agents in Liturgy, Charity and Communication: The Tasks of Female Deacons in the Apostolic Constitutions (2020).
XXXVIII. A. Chouliaras, The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body (2020).
XXXIX. H. Goren, 'The loss of a minute is just so much loss of life': Edward Robinson and Eli Smith in the Holy Land(2020).
XL. G. Hermanin de Reichenfeld, The Spirit, the World and the Trinity: Origen's and Augustine's Understanding of the Gospel of John (2021).
XLI. P.M. Rumsey, 'Lest She Pollute the Sanctuary': The Influence of the Protevangelium Iacobi on Women's Status in Christianity (2020).
XLII. J.G. Sabak. 'Oremus et Vigilemus': The Theological Significance of 'Keeping Vigil' in Rome from the Fourth to the Eighth Century (2021).
XLIII. E. Bartzis, 'My God, my God, why have you abandoned me': The Experience of God's Withdrawal in Late Antique Exegesis, Christology and Ascetic Literature (2021).
XLIV. L. Misiarczyk, Eight Logismoi in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (2021).
XLV. L. Hellsten, Through the Bone and Marrow: Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe(2021).
XLVI. A. Renberg, The Son is Truly Son: The Trinitarian and Christological Theology of Eusebius of Caesarea (2021).
XLVII. J.R. O'Brien, Heralds of Hope: The Three Advent Hymns of the Roman Office (2022).
XLVIII. P.J. Brown, Friendship as Ecclesial Binding: A Reading of St Augustine's Theology of Friendship from his In Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus (2022).
XLIX. W. Trent Foley, Bede and the Beginnings of English Racism (2022).
L. S.E. Lied, Participation in Heavenly Worship: From Apocalyptic Mysticism to the Eucharistic Sanctus (2022).
LI. Lal Dingluaia, "The Letter Killeth": Redeeming Time in Augustine's Understanding of the Authority of Scripture (2022).
LII. I. van 't Spijker, Homo Interior and Vita Socialis: Patristic Patterns and Twelfth-Century Reflections (2022).
Past Research
Over the years I have worked on a number problems and texts. These have ranged from the significance the young Augustine attached to astrology to how someone on the very eve of Columbus's landing in the new world could still imagine the world in terms of 'the three continents' derived from Genesis 10. I have worked on the world of the earliest churches - I seem to keep being drawn back to the Didache and am always amazed how it throws yet more light on what we think we know - and the churches on the north-west fringes of Europe in the early middle ages where the Celtic languages were spoken. One can move between people, languages, and texts: but often the underlying questions that push one to do research remain curiously similar!
A collection of fifteen of my articles on these themes, written in the 1990s, has recently appeared in the Variorum series under the title Early Medieval Exegesis in the Latin West: Sources and Forms.
But the historian looking back at a distant time - and I have often worked on topics where the body of evidence was anything but large - is also part of the history of her/his own time, and so I have been drawn more than once into historiography and its place in the formation of identities. This is an interest that often seems 'too vague' to be of importance - but if you want to see why I attach such importance to it, look at what my colleague, Prof. Alan Ford, said about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCKW26Up9Dc&list=PL52C4CE0B7593CFC8&index=30&feature=plpp_video
Many problems, many periods, many texts: the best guide to my past research is a browse through my list of publications!
Future Research
I am planning two pieces of research.
First, a monograph on the origins and hermeneutic of the Eusebian Apparatus. You can get a taste of this work in:
- 'Harmonizing the Truth: Eusebius and the Problem of the Four Gospels,' Traditio 65(2010)1-29;
- 'St Augustine's view of the place of the Holy Spirit in the formation of the gospels,' in D. Vincent Twomey and Janet E. Rutherford eds, The Holy Spirit in the Fathers of the Church (Four Courts Press, Dublin 2010), pp. 86-95; and
- 'The Biblical Text of the Book of Deer (C.U.L. Ii.6.32): Evidence for the Remains of a Division System from its Manuscript Ancestry,' Scriptorium 63(2009)30-57.
Second, work on 'mapping the early Christians.' This will be an examination of how we can use cartography to understand aspects of the spread of Christianity, and also of how the maps we use for the early churches and their texts have influenced our perceptions of them.
This research is a longer term goal.