Nicholas Lash
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Nicholas Langrishe Alleyne Lash (born 1934) is an English Roman Catholic theologian. Having served in the British Army, and having been briefly ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood, he held for twenty years the post of Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge from 1978 to 1999, succeeding Donald MacKinnon, and being succeeded by Denys Turner.
[edit] Theologian
Nicholas Lash is the author of numerous theological books, and a regular contributor to The Tablet. A loyal and obedient Roman Catholic, Lash has voiced strong but measured criticism of authoritarian practices among leading figures in his tradition, arguing for open debate on a variety of topics, including the ordination of women.
He is reportedly one of the few Roman Catholic theologians who have read, slowly, the whole of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics and the whole of Karl Rahner's Theological Investigations. One of Lash's strongest intellectual influences seems to have been the recovery of Aquinas's theology, using forms of philosophical argument influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, which became influential in the 1970s, associated with Cornelius Ernst and Fergus Kerr. Arguably his most significant piece of writing is also one of his shortest, his reflections on the Apostles' Creed, which includes discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity.
[edit] Family
He was born to Joan Mary Moore, an Irish Catholic, and Brigadier Henry Lash, a Protestant British colonial officer.
Nicholas Lash is married to Janet Lash, by whom he has a son Dominic Lash. He is the brother of the late novelist Jennifer Lash and thus uncle to the film and stage actors Ralph Fiennes and Joseph Fiennes and the film maker Sophie Fiennes.
[edit] Works
His books include
- His presence in the world : a study in eucharistic worship and theology (1968)
- Change in focus; a study of doctrinal change and continuity (1973)
- Newman on development : the search for an explanation in history (1975)
- Voices of authority (1976)
- Theology on Dover beach (1979)
- A Matter of hope : a theologian's reflections on the thought of Karl Marx (1981)
- Theology on the Way to Emmaus (1986)
- Easter in ordinary : reflections on human experience and the knowledge of God (1988)
- Believing three ways in one God : a reading of the Apostles' Creed (1992)
- The Beginning and the end of 'religion' (1996)
- Holiness, speech and silence : reflections on the question of God (2004)
