The central themes for the year 2022 is: "Research in Patristic Studies in the 21st century: Challenges, Possibilities and New Methods"
Speakers: Vito Limone (Research Fellow at the Faculty of Philosophy, University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan); Ilaria Vigorelli (Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome); Giulio Maspero (Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Roma); Claudio Moreschini (Emeritus Professor of Early Christian Literature at the University of Pisa).
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During the session, a research project involving the Relational Ontology Research (ROR) group together with the Genesis Centre of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan was presented. The project will be expressed through the publication of the journal Chrêsis to be released in the year 2024. The new journal presented during the meeting was born from the common intention of professors from different disciplines (dogmatic theologians, philosophers, historians of religion, patrologists, anthropologists, etc.) to explore the relationship between philosophy and theology in antiquity, overcoming the reductionist approach of different epistemological options.
A reflection on what modernity has understood of the relationship between those two distinct and in some ways very close disciplines, continually in dialogue with each other due to the coincidence of their respective fields of enquiry, appears to be of profound interest with respect to the challenges posed by post-modern society. With regard to reciprocal influences, it seems particularly rewarding the interdisciplinary intention of offering such a reinterpretation in continuity with Christian Gnilka’s work, Chrêsis. Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur. Gnilka presented the method of the Fathers from the term chrêsis, use, or rather ‘good use’ or ‘right use’ of pagan sources of a religious and philosophical nature. Furthermore, he highlighted a metaphysical operation that developed in parallel with the composition process of the Holy Scripture. The journal is therefore open to contributions that orient research around questions such as: How did the Fathers manage to utilise the philosophical and religious sources at their disposal? How did the development of philosophical thought interact with the development of theological thought? And again, what kind of epistemology made this mutual influence between theology and philosophy possible? How has this influence impacted on the history of thought and how can it help in the present time?
ROR’s main intention is to trace a path – or at least to open a trail – in the crisis of contemporary Western culture that can lay the foundations for overcoming it. The solution is certainly not to look back to the past, or to return to the pre-modern era in which the two disciplines stood in relation to each other, but it is worth attempting an extension of metaphysics to a new relational dimension. Putting in place a truly and viscerally ontological work that makes such a dialogue possible again is a fundamental part of the soul of the ROR. This aim can be achieved from different fronts: from the perspective of patristic thought to that of anthropology; from an awareness of the fundamental role of hermeneutics and the social sciences: with this aim in mind, the ROR presents its profitable collaboration with the Genesis Centre, their intentions having a lowest common denominator.
