The Centre for Theology, Law, & Culture
An overview.
About
The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture is an academic institute dedicated to enriching contemporary intellectual and cultural life by a rigorous engagement with Theology and related academic disciplines.
Based at Pusey House, the Centre draws upon Oxford’s longstanding and exceptional scholarship in Law and the Humanities, and in particular upon the Catholic tradition as received in the Church of England. The Centre hosts colloquia, lectures, and seminars, and supports scholars and scholarship in the pursuit of truth within the academy, and for the renewal of the Church within a pluralistic civic society.
The work of the Centre has recently been much extended by the generous donation of Mr Marek Matraszek.
Donations can be made online here.
The Centre's Director is Dr Jonathan Price, the Matraszek Fellow of Pusey House & St Cross College, University of Oxford.
Please see the 'Lectures' and 'Conferences' tabs on this website's banner to see the full range of our upcoming events, or consult our termcard.
Events
The Centre works within Pusey House to help organise academic events which bring together academics, students, clergy, public servants, and the general public.
Upcoming events
Natural Law & War
Thursday, 18 June 2026
In The Law of War and Peace (1625), Hugo Grotius revives two ancient questions: ‘What is war? What is law?’
The Dutch theologian-jurist thereby commences modern European discussions about just war and just peace, both of which were now meant to be conducted according to ‘law’.
Four hundred years later, war is still with us and peace seems just as difficult to make as it ever was. Law remains a contested domain, especially between jurisdictions and nations. It is unclear whether war is being waged or peace is being made according to any law. The questions are still with us. But we also enjoy the benefit of a welldeveloped tradition of natural law.
What can doctrines of natural law tell us about waging war and about peace-making? Are ancient sources that may have been unknown to Grotius’s age helpful in answering the questions? Do the ‘laws of nature’ that science has since uncovered help us? Can the theology, which undergirded both Grotius’s writings and the modern natural rights and human rights doctrines, help in answering these questions?
Join the Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture in Oxford for a two-day international conference, held in partnership with the Chase Center at Ohio State University, the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Canterbury Institute, Oxford.
More details available on the conference page.
Past events
Why Middle-Sized Matters to Science, Theology and Metaphysics
1 May 2024
In conjunction with the Civitas Institute, UT-Austin
Held at All Souls' College, University of Oxford
A colloquium on the significance of 'middle sized' entities in the sciences, metaphysics, and theology. Participants should be familiar with physics and metaphysics.
Speakers included: George Ellis (Cape Town), Robert Koons (UT Austin), Timothy O'Connor (Indiana), Javier Sánchez Cañizares (Navarra), Vera Hoffmann-Kolss (Bern), Alyssa Ney (UC Davis), Mark Harris (Harris Manchester), Daniel De Haan (Blackfriars & Campion Hall), William Simpson (Pusey House & UT Austin), John Pemberton (Durham & LSE), Philip Goff (Durham), Aaron Cotnoir (St Andrews), Christopher Oldfield (Cambridge), Robert Verrill (Blackfriars Cambridge), Jonathan Price (Pusey House & St Cross), and Emily Quershi-Hurst (Pembroke).
More details about the colloquium can be found here.
Political Theology, Sovereignty, and the Reform of Human Rights Law.
29 February 2024
with St John's College.
This colloquium brought together a small group of academics, lawyers and persons from the political world (a) working on possible reforms to domestic human rights law in the context of current political crises, and (b) those working on the constitutional and jurisprudential underpinnings of human rights law in the British context.Our colloquium brought these topics into a critical conversation with the Christian foundations of human rights doctrines, theologies of human dignity, and the theological groundings of state sovereignty and legislative authority.
Intelligences: the Making and Unmaking of Humans.
8 February 2024
at Exeter College.
A day-long colloquium on God, anthropology, and the revolutionary development of artificial intelligences. It considered the implications of rapidly developing artificial intelligence on philosophies of human personhood, the Christian doctrine of man’s creation in God’s own image, national and international human rights régimes, and the world of the arts.Speakers included Professor Charles Foster (author of the New York Times bestseller Being a Beast), Iain McGilchrist (author of The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things), theologians and philosophers of personhood, and an AI bot which will respond to the colloquium’s questions.
Lectures
The Centre works with the Principal and Chapter to co-ordinate the House's flagship the Recollection Lecture series: recalling the major themes and thinkers of Christian history.
Recollection lectures take place in the Ursell Room at Pusey House at 4pm generally (unless noted otherwise). Tea and coffee is served in the Hood Room between 3.15 and 3.45pm.
You can see our lectures, given by scholars including John Finnis and Wim Decock, on our YouTube channel. Follow us to see upcoming series on early modern theology and law, the soul, and moral and political theology, as well as the co-organised Theological Conference on the theme of the work of the Holy Spirit.
Support and Contact
Please consider sponsoring one of our scholars or an upcoming colloquium or lecture series or book discussion group. It is only through the generous support of donors like you that the next generation of Oxford students, as well as interested scholars and policy-makers, might receive ancient wisdom in a setting of Christian life and worship. Donations can be made here.
Alternatively, donations can made by bank transfer with the following details:
Pusey House Chapel
Barclays Bank
Sort code: 20-65-18
Account no.: 10748455
Reference: Pusey Centre
For enquiries about the Centre, please contact Dr Jonathan Price at: jonathan.price@stx.ox.ac.uk
Pusey House, St Giles', Oxford, OX1 3LZ
Who we are
The centre's current scholars.
Dr Jonathan Price
Research:
Theological origins of modernity; philosophical anthropology; virtue ethics; philosophy of Private Law.
Dr Ryan Blank
Research:
Modern British History, Ecclesiastical History, History of Intimacies, History of Masculinities.
Dr Clinton Collister
Research:
Theology and Literature; Moral Theology; Systematic Theology.
Miss Isabelle Heinemann
Research:
Intellectual History; the high middle ages; Dante Alighieri.
Mr Phillip Quinn
Research:
philosophical theology (especially in connection with moral theology); analytic theology; late antique philosophy and theology, patristic philosophy
Dr William Simpson
Research:
Philosophy of nature, metaphysics of physics, history and philosophy of science.
The Revd Professor Nigel Biggar CBE
Research:
Please follow this link to Prof Biggar's university profile.
Dr Mehmet Ciftci
Research:
Political theology; the intersection of liturgy and ethics; constitutionalism in the Commonwealth realms.
Dr Euan Grant
Research:
Contemporary interpretation of scholastic theology; the theology of human nature.
Prof Agnieszka Nogal
Research:
Human rights; natural rights; the organic metaphor of "political body"; biopolitics.
Dr John Ritzema
Research:
Visionary experience and cult in the Hebrew Bible; the Bible and Humanities; Christian theology and the British Constitution.
Miss Matti Veldhuis
Research:
Plato and the will, Platonic metaphysics, Persianate Neoplatonism.
