The Theological Imagination

Experience the Event

Presented by de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture

Is our imagination merely a retreat into fiction, or is it the very mechanism by which we perceive the truth? Join Judith Wolfe as she explores how we navigate the world’s unseen depths. Discover how faith and art unveil the “wholes” of reality, transforming our vision through the theological imagination.

Men and women of faith continue to draw on the wisdom, wonder, and beauty of the evergreen Catholic tradition to inform a particular mode of understanding and engaging with the world around them. Inspired by a sacramental vision of reality, the Catholic arts in particular grapple with the mystery and meaning that permeate the created order, giving shape and expression to the transcendent.

At its 24th annual Fall Conference, the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture considered the idea of the Catholic imagination, its enduring and inexhaustible nature, and how it continues to illumine our modern world. With a particular focus on the literary arts, the conference explored unique expressions of the Catholic imagination in more than 150 presentations, performances, and discussions across the disciplines, including philosophy, theology, ethics, law, history, and the natural and social sciences, as well as the creative domains of film, music, theater, and the visual arts.

For 2024’s Fall Conference, the de Nicola Center was pleased to partner with the Biennial Catholic Imagination Conference, which aims to enhance the understanding and appreciation of the richness and variety of contributions by Catholic artists; to explore the critical and theoretical foundations of the Catholic imagination; and to foster community and collaboration among writers and readers who share a knowledge of and respect for the Catholic tradition.

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Meet the Speaker: Judith Wolfe

Judith Wolfe is Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of St. Andrews’ School of Divinity, where she works in systematic theology, philosophical theology, the European tradition, and theology and the arts. She joined the School of Divinity in 2014, after previous appointments as Director of Studies in Theology at St John’s College, Oxford, and post-doctoral fellow at the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin.

Her most recent book is The Theological Imagination (Cambridge University Press 2024), based on her Hulsean Lectures 2022, and her next (edited) volume is Theologians in Conversation: Formation and Vision in Continental Philosophical Theology (Bloomsbury 2026), based on interviews conducted with leading philosophical theologians during her TRT-funded project Widening Horizons in Philosophical Theology (2019-2024). She is co-leading a three-year project entitled Art as Revelation (2022-2025), building on the recently completed Mapping the Imagination (2020-2022), as well as a five-year project entitled Theologies of Catholicity. She is also co-editing the three-volume Oxford History of Modern German Theology (with D. Lincicum and J. Zachhuber, Oxford University Press, 2022).

Professor Wolfe’s previous books include the Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought (ed. with J. Rasmussen and J. Zachhuber, Oxford University Press 2017), C.S. Lewis and His Circle (ed. with R. White and B. Wolfe, Oxford University Press 2015), Heidegger and Theology (T&T Clark 2014), and Heidegger’s Eschatology (Oxford University Press 2013). Her articles have appeared in Modern Theology, the International Journal of Systematic Theology, the European Journal of Philosophy of Religion, Nova et Vetera, New Blackfriars, the Heythrop Journal, Theology and Literature, Philosophy and Literature, in Companions and Handbooks, and in numerous other collections. She is also founding General Editor of the Journal of Inklings Studies.

Meet the Moderator: Jennifer Newsome Martin '07 M.T.S, '12 Ph.D.

Jennifer Newsome Martin ’07 M.T.S., ’12 Ph.D. is a systematic theologian with areas of interest in 19th and 20th century Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thought, trinitarian theology, theological aesthetics, religion and literature, French feminism, ressourcement theology, and the nature of religious tradition. Her first book, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), was one of ten winners internationally of the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She is co-editor of An Apocalypse of Love:  Essays in Honor of Cyril O’ Regan (Herder & Herder, 2018) and the second edition of the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Catholicism. Over twenty articles and book chapters have appeared in such venues as Modern Theology, Communio: International Catholic Review, The Newman Studies Journal, International Journal of Systematic Theology, and in a number of edited volumes and collections of essays. She serves on the editorial board of Religion & Literature and the University of Notre Dame Press, as well as steering committees of the Hans Urs von Balthasar Consultation of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Christian Systematic Theology Unit in the American Academy of Religion.