Denys Turner

Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology

Denys Turner, A.B. and M.A. at University College, Dublin, Ph.D. at Oxford University, faculty member at Yale since 2005: you are a historical theologian of unparalleled depth, range, and clarity whose early work explored the links between Christianity and political and social theory. You soon turned from the social and political to the mystical where you found rich fodder for your fascination with the complex relationship between theological “knowing” and theological “unknowing”, between the religious rhetoric that overflows in, for example, the erotic discourse of medieval monastic commentaries on the Song of Songs, and the limits of language in the apophatic tradition which makes no affirmative statements about the divine and says only what it is not. Yet you insist on the distinction between this “negative theology” and the denial of God that is central to atheism, a subject that has also brought you into serious conversation with Marx, Nietzsche and Derrida. In other work, you argue that the mystical and rational understandings of God are not inconsistent, particularly in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, the subject of your most recent, widely-lauded book. Your fresh and provocative portrait of Thomas, designed to get at the heart of the character and personality of a man who left few traces of himself behind, is crafted with humor and energy and has been called “the most delightful work of theology one can imagine.” More recently you have turned your supple and penetrating mind to the theological significance of music and poetry, taking an interest in Dante, the Metaphysical poets and Hopkins. 

Your students stand in awe of the sweep of your intellectual labors and must surely apply to you your own warning of the danger involved in trying to get a mind on the scale of Thomas’s into one’s head. This, you said, would be “a task of compression that will be achieved only at your head’s peril. The only safe thing to do is to find a way of getting your mind into his, wherein yours has room to expand and grow, and explore the worlds his contains.” 

Nearly three score doctoral students and many scores of other students have had the pleasure of exploring the worlds your mind contains—whether in your Divinity School course on medieval theology or your interdisciplinary seminars that attract graduate student medievalists from Italian, German, French, English, History, Art History and Religious Studies. Students describe you as an extraordinarily dedicated and supportive teacher and an exemplar of your own reminder that texts “need work and they need a lot of introduction and context setting…they don’t work like magic. You’ve got to teach…” 

With all of your erudition, Denys Turner, you are still a lot of fun. A dear and kind man, who is also very clubbable, you take pleasure in good cookery, good wine, good conversation and the delights of the common room—in this case, JE’s in particular. In the classroom and in your writings, you have taught the great works of western scholasticism and mysticism and we are all the better and the wiser for it. As you retire, we salute you and thank you for nearly a decade of generously sharing with the Yale community the rich worlds your mind contains—and hope to see you often this side of the pond!