The Symposium Continues...

Last night, we had a talk from Fr. David Barrett on St. Hilary of Poitiers - 'The Fore-Ordination of Man in Christ. Very, very good - I knew almost nothing of St. Hilary. I was very interested to discover that he was responsible for writing hymns in Latin for the Divine Office, that he was the first Latin Church Father to write a commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew, and that he was nicknamed the 'Hammer of the Arians' and the 'Athanasius of the West'.

This morning's session covered Contraception and the Meaning of Sex. Fr. Dylan James gave the talk, which was as excellent as all the preceeding ones had been. The discussions afterwards are almost more interesting than the initial talks - no reflection on the speakers, but there is a real excitement in being present when some pretty hard theology is being bashed out, almost through people ruminating out loud!

I'm pretty sure that Fr. Tim will have a more in-depth coverage of the talks than anything I can manage - he appeared to be typing away furiously during this morning's session - so I shall refer you to his blog if you want more details and analysis.

This afternoon we are in for another dose of St. Hilary... this time considering 'Christ's Risen Body - the Future of Man. Tomorrow morning's session will be given by Fr. Stephen Dingley: Hawking, Relativism and Self-Creating Universes: A Critique of 'The Grand Design'. I'm really looking forward to that one, especially as Fr. Stephen entertained us by explaining some of the stuff concerning the relativity of time and space in the bar on Monday night...