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Prof Lewis Ayres

Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology in the Department of Theology and Religion

Biography

Although I was born and educated in the UK, I have taught for most of my career abroad, in Ireland and most recently in the US at Emory University. I arrived at Durham in 2009. The core of my research has been Trinitarian theology in Augustine and in the Greek writers of the fourth century. On this theme I have published a number of articles and Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford University Press, 2004/6). In 2010 I also published Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge University Press). My current research concerns the development of Early Christian Exegesis between 150 and 250. The same project will include a small book on modern debates about "theological interpretation". Many of the ideas for these two books were given their first airing in my Fisher Lectures at Cambridge in 2011.

I have also edited or co-edited a number of books, including (with Andrew Louth and Frances Young) the Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (2004). With two colleagues I recently published an English translation of and introduction to Didymus the Blind's On the Holy Spirit and Athanasius's Letters to Serapion (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2012).

I also have a number of interests in modern Catholic fundamental and dogmatic theology — as will be evident from the last chapter of Nicaea and some of the articles I have published. I am interested in the modern reception of Patristic Trinitarian theology and in the modern use of post-idealist themes in the supposed "revivals" of Trinitarian theology that we have seen over the last two centuries. I also have a strong interest in the place of Scripture (and Tradition) in modern Catholic theology and the fundamental structure of Catholic theology. I am convinced that the ideological and professional divisions that have arisen between Scripture scholars, "systematic" and "historical" theologians have served Catholic theology ill. Ressourcement theologians have offered us many resources that can move us beyond these divisions, but much further work is necessary for their agenda to be taken forward. With Medi Ann Volpe I am also co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology (forthcoming in 2014). I am involved in co-editing a number of book series, including the Blackwells series Challenges in Contemporary Theology. I also serve on the editorial boards of the Journal of Early Christian Studies and Modern Theology.

Between 2009-2012 I was the inaugural holder of the Bede Chair in Catholic Theology.

Publications

Book chapters: online

Ayres, Lewis (2010). "The Holy Spirit as the 'Undiminished Giver': Didymus the Blind's De Spiritu Sancto and the Development of Nicene Pneumatology". In The Holy Spirit in the Fathers of the Church. Twomey, Vincent & Rutherford, Janet Four Courts Press. 57-72.

Books: authored

Ayres, Lewis, DelCogliano, Mark & Radde-Gallwitz, Andrew (2012). Works on the Spirit: St. Athanasius the Great and Didymus the Blind. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.
Ayres, Lewis (2010). Augustine and the Trinity. Cambridge University Press.

Journal papers: academic

Ayres, Lewis (Published). "At the Origins of Patristic Exegesis: Anti-Valentinian Polemic and Exegetical Practice in Irenaeus and Clement".
Ayres, Lewis (2010). "Augustine on the Spirit as the Soul of the Body, or Fragments of a Trinitarian Ecclesiology". Augustinian Studies 41(1): 165-182.
Ayres, Lewis (2009). "Into the Poem of the Universe: Exempla, Conversion, and Church in Augustine's Confessiones". Zeitschrift fur Antikes Christentum 13(2): 263-281.