Hearing God Here: Revelation and the Phenomenology of Place

Formations and Reformations in Catholic Thought

  • Abstract for the website: Pope Francis, inviting all people of good-will to an ecological conversion, notes the importance of our attachment to particular places. "The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, wa

  • January 29, 2025 -12:00 PM Room 225, St. Paul's College

    Speaker: Dr. Ryan Turnbull

    Dr. Ryan Turnbull is a Visiting Fellow at St John's College and serves as the Diocesan Discipleship Developer in the Diocese of Rupert's Land. He holds a BA and MA in Theology from Providence University College and Theological Seminary and a PhD in Theology and Religion from the University of Birmingham. His recent doctoral dissertation entitled "Haunted and Held: A Christian Theology of Place" derives from his deep interest in the intersection of theology, decolonization, ecology, place, and friendship. Most recently, he has published articles with the journals Metamodern Theory & Praxis and Didaskalia.

  • About the Lecture

    Pope Francis, inviting all people of good-will to an ecological conversion, notes the importance of our attachment to particular places. "The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God. The history of our friendship with God is always linked to particular places which take on an intensely personal meaning; we all remember places, and revisiting those memories does us much good." God always meets us somewhere. But the places where God encounters us are not neatly captured by our attempts to define "sacred space". What is it about the nature of the God who wills to make Godself known that allows for an incredibly ordinary experience - being somewhere - to be part of the structure of Revelation? This lecture offers a phenomenological account of place as a communicative network that weaves together the doctrines of Revelation and Creation, confirming Pope Francis' confession that everything is a caress of the God who wills to be known as our Friend.