Dr Silvianne Aspray

Honorary Research Fellow, Notre Dame Centre for the History of Philosophy
BTh, MTh, PhD

Email: silvianne.aspray-burki@nd.edu.au

• Biography

  Silvianne Aspray is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Notre Dame Centre for the History of Philosophy and School of Philosophy and Theology, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, and her MTh and BTh from the University of Bern (Switzerland). She is a Swiss-British dual citizen and currently lives on the east coast of America.

  Her research is in philosophical and systematic theology, as well as in philosophy of religion. She is interested in Christian metaphysics, anthropology and the role theology played in the genesis of modernity. Her book Metaphysics in the Reformation was published by Oxford University Press in 2021.

• Research Expertise and Supervision

  • Philosophy of religion
  • Philosophical theology
  • Theological metaphysics
  • Theological anthropology
  • Genealogies of modernity

• Books

  • Metaphysics in the Reformation: The Case of Peter Martyr Vermigli, British Academy Monograph Series, Oxford University Press, 2021

• Book chapters

  • “Gottes radikale Gabe und die menschliche Individualität: Zur Gott-Welt-Beziehung im Licht von Jakobus 1,17–18“, in Wachet und Betet: Mystik, Spiritualität und Gebet in Zeiten politischer und gesellschaftlicher Unruhe, Oliver Dürr et al. (eds.), Münster: Aschendorff Verlag 2021, 45–54
  • With Peter Opitz, “Der Heidelberger Katechismus im Kontext zeitgenössischer reformierter Katechismen”, in Handbuch Heidelberger Katechismus, Arnold Huijgen et al. (eds.), Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2014, 184–192

  Book reviews

  • Review: Christian Ströbele, Performanz und Diskurs bei Cusanus, Reviews in Religion and Theology 25.3 2018, 570–572
  • Review: Johannes Hoff, The Analogical Turn, 2013, Reviews in Religion and Theology 23.1 2016, 52–55
  • Review: Christopher Baker et al, A Philosophy of Christian Materialism, 2015, Theology 119.3 2016, 222–223
  • “The (Missing) Praxis of Radical Hermeneutics”, Review: Thomas Pfau, Minding the Modern, Syndicate: A New Forum for Theology 2 2015, 89–94
  • Review: Amy Nelson Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy, Zwingliana 39 2012, 157–161

• Journal articles and proceedings

  • “Was das Verstehen übersteigt: Zu einer Analogie zwischen Gotteserkenntnis und Geschichtsdeutung”, Hermeneutische Blätter 29 2023, 35–47
  • “Employing Genealogies Responsibly in Theology: A Proposal”, Modern Theology 39/4 2023, 627–638
  • “Performative Finitude: Theological Language and the God-World-Relationship in Nicholas of Cusa’s De Non Aliud”, International Journal of Systematic Theology 24/2 2022, 173–190
  • “An Augustinian Response to Jean-Louis Chrétien’s Phenomenology of Prayer”, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 79/3 2018, 311–322
  • “A Complex Legacy: Louis Bouyer and the Metaphysics of the Reformation”, Modern Theology 34/1 2018, 3–22
  • “Peter Martyr Vermigli's Preces Sacrae (1564) and the Problem of Prayers as Historical Sources”, Reformation and Renaissance Review 19/2 2017, 87–103
  • “Innere und äussere Angelegenheiten im Berner Staatskirchenrecht in historisch-theologischer Sicht”, Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Kirchenrecht 19 2014, 81–103 (as Silvianne Bürki)

• In the media

  • Video introduction to Nicholas of Cusa
  • Video presentation: How then should we write genealogies?
  • Seen and Unseen magazine column