Manager: Professor Elie AYROULET
Disciplines involved: Exegesis (Old and New Testaments); Patrology; Patristics; Ancient and Medieval Philosophy; Biblical Theology; Medieval Theology; Ancient History; Judeo-Hellenistic Literature; Ancient and Medieval Literature
Number of teacher researchers: 10
Topic and goals:
The research group is powered by the diverse expertise of its members, covering the Bible, patristic theology, literature, philosophy, archaeology, languages and ancient cultures more generally. Its work is focused on the reception of the biblical text and the interactions between it and its cultural context.
The group makes use of its links with external researchers for its work, especially:
• The researchers of the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) ‘Sources Chrétiennes’ research
programme on ancient Christian texts (part of the HiSoMA unit, UMR 5189), in particular a project entitled ‘Irenaeus, the Bible and Gnosis’. This project covers three main goals: reproducing and facilitating the understanding of documentation around Irenaeus of Lyon; furthering work on the theology of Irenaeus and his place in the history of theology; detailing a hermeneutics for the relationship with deviance.
• Members of the CCEJ (Christian Centre for Judaism Studies) within the Theology Department. The group is supporting, for example, a project around the theme of: ‘Oath and vow: where divine word meets human word’ whose goal is to shine a light on the meaning of these two concepts in Judaism and to examine their reception in Christianity during its origins (Apostolic and Patristic periods).
• RRENAB (research network for narrative analysis of biblical texts)
Flagship project for 2025-2030: Salvation and collapse
The aim of the project is to explore the concepts of salvation and collapse through the biblical, patristic and philosophical literary traditions, in response to contemporary questions at the individual, communal and global levels. Experiences of collapse in antiquity have given rise to new interpretations. The challenge will be to draw from them elements of wisdom and hope for contemporary humanity, which is confronted with its anxieties. How do these reinterpretations invite us to rethink salvation? Does salvation come from elsewhere or from humanity itself? What is the relationship between the Fall and salvation? The aim will be to examine the apparent exclusivity of these two concepts. Could collapse contain an experience of salvation, and does every experience of salvation necessarily presuppose a prior collapse? The perception of collapse will also be examined: is it an inevitability, a curse, or rather a call to restore old values or to invent new paradigms? This analysis will lead us to reflect on human vulnerability, on the notion of sacrifice as the transformation of loss into a salvific event, and on providence, the Christian understanding of which will be clarified.
The objectives, whilst not exhaustive, will be to:
- To explore concepts that reflect contemporary issues;
- To seek one or more points of connection between the two concepts of salvation and collapse, which appear to be mutually exclusive;
- To examine how various experiences of collapse in antiquity have been interpreted;
- To shed light on the sense of collapse experienced by some people today (societal impact).
The methodology will be interdisciplinary and will be based on the study of biblical, philosophical, patristic and theological texts.
Scientific research at UCLy has become a priority which has led to the creation of this Research Center made up of eight research teams.
The Confluence Sciences and Humanities Research Center has made vulnerability a key focus of its explorations. A decision explained by the center’s Director, Valérie Aubourg.