Date: 29th September 2025
Venue: Research Centre, Christ Church, University of Oxford
This colloquium will explore the diversity of early modern natural law thinking, and the implications for understanding Churches and states in a period of religious Reformations, political conflict, and new interest in irenicism.
Our starting point is the renewed interest in ideas of natural law in the early sixteenth century. These ideas often developed in parallel to new accounts of theological anthropology and human agency, framing the relationship between the individual and both ecclesial and political societies in new ways. As a result, natural law could be used to offer strongly contrasting visions for religious and political communities, within and between the confessions. Papers will discuss the genesis and implications of natural law ideas from a range of geographical, political and religious perspectives; a full programme will be published in the Spring.
Confirmed Speakers: Anna Becker (University of Aarhus), Ian Campbell (Queen’s University Belfast), Samuel Head (University of Oxford), David Lantigua (University of Notre Dame), Hannah Dongsun Lee (Tokyo Metropolitan University), Reginald Lynch (Dominican House of Studies, Washington DC), Sarah Mortimer (University of Oxford), Tim Stuart-Buttle (University of York)
Organisers: Reginald Lynch, Sarah Mortimer, and Samuel Head.
Supported by Christ Church and the Oxford Centre for Intellectual History.
