Doctoral and Post-Doctoral INPR Seminar

California—January 8 th to 12 th 2024 St. Edward Retreat Center

God, Nature, and the Intimate Self

Deus interior intimo meo

Saint-Augustin

God is both “within me” and “outside of me.” This is a paradox Augustine describes perfectly when he speaks of the God who is “more intimate to me than I am to myself” (Deus interior intimo meo). Here it is not a matter of God being within me and also outside. Augustine presents instead the paradox of God within the paradox of the self: my inmost interior opens to a radical exterior, namely, God, the wholly other. If the author of the Confessions is properly speaking the inventor of subjectivity through a return to oneself, it is not in the sense of remaining trapped within oneself. The “intimate self” cannot be thought of independently of nature, even of creation, where God is also made manifest. This new doctoral and postdoctoral INPR seminar, this time on the West Coast of the United States, invites us to “open our eyes to the world,” but to see the world differently. In the challenges it poses to us, particularly through the climate disruptions to which it is subject, nature summons us to think differently about ourselves, including our relationship with God, in order to safeguard creation.

PROGRAM

January 8th —Monday

15h— Arrival at St. Edward retreat center

20h

Dinner

January 9th —Tuesday

Session 1: God and Nature

Moderator: William Woody 8h45-9h00—Welcome. Opening: The Sense of an INPR Seminar—Prof. Falque

9h00-9h15—Taylor Knight—Problematic: God, Nature, and the Intimate Self. Deus interior intimo meo

9h15 –10h15—Tom Carlson—Nature and the Religious Existential in American Thought: From Walt Whitman to Galway Kinnell 10h15-11h15—Matthew Peterson—Toward a Paleontology of the Trace 11h15-11h45 Pause 11h45-12h45—Luke McCracken—Christianity's Addiction: Self-Disownment and the Divided Will 12h45 Lunch

Session 2: God, Affectivity and Image

Moderator: Matthew Peterson 14h30-15h30—Matthew Farley—Gift, Love, and Surprise: The Phenomenon of Christian Joy in Aquinas. C.S Lewis, and Anthony Steinbock 15h30-16h30—Bruce Benson—Deconstruction and the Evangelical Self 16h30h-17h Pause 17h-18h—Taylor Knight—Between Lens and Image: Cinema and Interior Space

20h

Dinner January 10th —Wednesday

Session 3: Spirituality and Creation

Moderator: Taylor Knight 9h-10h—William Woody—Charged with Grace and Grandeur: Reawakening through Ecological Conversion 10h-11h—William Connelly—A Spirituality of the Sensible: Blondel's Harvest of French Spiritualism 11h-11h30 Pause 11h30-12h30—Jared Batchelor—Reconciling Kant through Howard Thurman’s Mysticism 12h30-13h30—Manuel Diaz Cruz—Building the Universe: One Grain of Sand at a Time

13hr30

Lunch

Hiking with snow shows (if snow) and Dinner

15h—Depart—Hike 17hr30—Special Dinner—David Albertson’s Father’s House

20h00

Dinner January 11th —Thursday

Session 4: God and the Intimate Self

Moderator: Matthew Farley 9h-10h—Donald Boyce—Wind and Breath in Augustine's Confessions: A Descent to Rethink Anaximenes’ Err in Book X 10h-11h—Jeronimo Ayesta—Attention and Access to the Intimate Self in Augustine's Confessions and De Trinitate 11h-11h30 Pause 11h30-12h30—Victor Emma-Adamah—The Originary Solitude: Levinas and the Temporality of the Instant 12h30-13r30—Optional Mass

13hr30

Lunch

Session 5: Mysticism and Evil

Moderator: Tom Carlson 15h00h-16h—David Albertson—The Task of Remaining in Augustine and Hadewijch of Brabant (fl. 1275) 16h00-16h30 Pause 16h30h-17h30—Emmanuel Falque—The Kiss of Satan: Reading Bernanos (Under the Sun of Satan) 17h30-18h30—Final Discussion

18h30-19h30—Apero—Projects of INPR and the Bosko Foundation

20h30

Festive Dinner

January 12th —Friday

9h—Exit from St. Edward retreat center.

10h30—Visit to Los Angeles Contact:

The INPR California Organizing Group –

William Connelly wconnelly25@gmail.com Taylor Knight taylorscottknight@gmail.com Matthew Farley matthewfarley@gmail.com Matthew Peterson mjpeterson@uchicago.edu Donald Boyce donaldnboyce@gmail.com

inprcalifornia@gmail.com

www.network-INPR.org secretary@network-INPR.org