“While God acts eternally, we receive that act in time.” Bauerschmidt at LATC 2025

With the 2025 Los Angeles Theology Conference coming up in March, I’m posting mini-interviews with some of our speakers, asking them to share about what they’ll be presenting at the conference. We’re excited to have Frederick Bauerschmidt with us this year. Here’s what he’ll be speaking about:

Q: LATC 2025’s theme is Receiving Redemption, and it focuses on how salvation is received by human persons and communities. Why is this aspect of soteriology worth close theological attention?

A: Thomas Aquinas said that knowledge is received by a knower in a way that is suited to that knower, and I think the same is true of grace: grace is received by us in a way that is suited to the kind of beings that we are. To me this suggest that in thinking about salvation we need to think not just about how God gives it, but also about how we receive it.

Q: The title of your plenary address is “Gift and Growth in the Christian Life” How will you be approaching the conference theme?

A: At least one aspect of the kind of beings that we are is that we are beings with histories, who live our lives spread out in time. So while God acts eternally, we receive that act in time so that “being saved” is extended throughout our life stories. My paper will approach this phenomenon by looking at a controversy in Early Modern Catholic  theology over grace, the so-called Jansenist controversy, focusing particularly on the writings of Blaise Pascal and what he thinks about grace and how it is manifest in the conversion of hearts.

Q: Can you describe how this new talk fits in with your previous theological work?

A: I’ve done lots of work on Thomas Aquinas, who remains a key touchstone in Early Modern theological controversies, such that everyone one had to at least pretend that they agreed with him. So in a sense this talk will deal with the reception history of Thomas’s theology. But it also looks forward to emerging modernity, and in this way fits in with my current project, which is a book on Spinoza and Pascal as paradigmatic modern religious thinkers.

Q: What are you looking forward to at the conference? Are there any papers or issues that have especially caught your eye?

A: Among the plenary addresses, Kathryn Tanner’s seems to come closest to my talk in terms of topic, so I’ll be very interested to hear what she has to say, but I’m looking forward to all the papers.