2025 Veritas Conference
2025 Providence College Veritas Conference
Great Things Beyond Searching Out
Transcendence in the Modern World
Spring Conference | April 26, 2025 | Providence College
The Providence College Humanities Program invites you to its fourth annual Veritas Conference. Keynote speakers include James K.A. Smith (Calvin College), Gregory Pine, OP (Thomistic Institute), Jessica Hooten Wilson (Pepperdine University), and Michael Hanby (John Paul II Institute).
About the Conference
It has been argued that we are characteristically “modern” – or characteristically “secular” – in that we are able to imagine significance for our lives (individually and collectively) in a constructed social space that frames our lives entirely within a natural (rather than supernatural) order. This is to say, the modern social “imaginary” precludes transcendence. In the fourth annual Veritas Conference, we propose to examine the concept of “transcendence.”
What do we mean by the term: is it simply belief in the existence of gods, spirits, or a “higher power” – or what? Why is the preclusion of transcendence an intellectually plausible stance for many? Has transcendence actually disappeared from our lives – or is its supposed demise just a useful conceit? (And if the latter, then for whom is it useful – who benefits from a world bereft of transcendence?) Does modern scientific method itself or the specific results of scientific research necessitate the loss of a sense of transcendence? Where might a sense of transcendence still impinge on our modern lives – e.g., via art, or nature, or interpersonal love? May (must?) politics be open to some transcendence in order to be fully human? What resources does the Christian tradition – especially, the Catholic and Dominican tradition – have for recovering and articulating a renewed sense of “transcendence” in modernity? These and similar questions are the proposed topic for the Humanities Program’s fourth Annual Veritas Conference (2025),
For questions or inquiries about the conference, email veritas.conference@providence.edu.
Our Keynote Speakers
James K.A. Smith – “Epiphanies: Transcendence, Contemplation, and Contemporary Art”
Dr. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University where he holds the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair. He is the award-winning author of a number of influential books including Desiring the Kingdom (2009), How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (2014), You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (2016), On the Road with Saint Augustine (2019), The Nicene Option: An Incarnational Phenomenology (2021) and, most recently, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now (2022). He is currently at work on a book about mysticism and contemporary art.
Fr. Gregory Pine – “Agency Beyond Optimization: Transcendence in Human Freedom”
Fr. Pine teaches Dogmatic and Moral Theology at the Dominican House of Studies and works as an Assistant Director of the Thomistic Institute. He was ordained a priest in 2016 and holds a doctorate from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He is the author of several books and articles including Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly. He is a regular contributor to the podcasts Pints with Aquinas, Catholic Classics, and Godsplaining.
Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson – “Wonder, Witness & Wanting”
Dr. Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University. The author and editor of several books, including The Scandal of Holiness, Dr. Wilson has received a handful of awards including book of the year in culture and the arts from Christianity Today, the Hiett Prize in Humanities and Culture, and the Emerging Public Intellectual Award from CCCU and other partners. She is a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum.
Dr. Michael Hanby – “Everyone is a Platonist”
Dr. Hanby is an Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy of Science at the John Paul II Institute at the Catholic University of America where he has taught since 2007. Writing at the intersection of metaphysics, theology, politics, technology, and science, he is the author two books, Augustine and Modernity (2003) and No God, No Science? Theology, Cosmology, Biology (2013). He is currently working on a book provisionally titled On Being…Human, Catholic, American.
Conference Overview
Plenary and Breakout Sessions will be held in the Ruane Center for the Humanities (Providence College Campus Map)
Saturday, April 26
- 8:00 a.m.
Mass at St. Pius V Church (240 Eaton St., Providence, RI – across the street from PC campus) - 8:15 – 9:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast in the Fiondella Great Room - 9:00 – 10:00 a.m.
Welcome and First Plenary Address: Michael Hanby
“Everyone is a Platonist” - 10:15 – 11:15 p.m.
Breakout Session: Transcendence in Art and Education- Sr. Thomas More Stepnowski, OP, “Seeing” the Invisible: The Challenges of Contemporary Catholic Education”
- Mary Duffy, “‘You Must Change Your Life’: Art, the Artist, and Receptivity to Reality”
- 11:30 – 12:30
Second Plenary Address: Gregory Pine, OP
“Agency Beyond Optimization: Transcendence in Human Freedom” - 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Lunch in Raymond Dining Hall - 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Concurrent Breakout Sessions (see schedule below) - 3:45 – 4:45 p.m.
John F. Fay ’68 Plenary Address: Jessica Hooten Wilson
“Wonder, Witness, and Wanting” - 5:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Concluding Plenary Address: James K.A. Smith
“Epiphanies: Transcendence, Contemplation, and Contemporary Art” - 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Dinner in the Fiondella Great Room
Concurrent Breakout Session Options (Saturday, April 26, 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.)
Concurrent Session 1 (Ruane LL05)
- Dylan Belton, “Transcendence and the Human Niche: An Engagement with Contemporary Evolutionary Anthropology”
- Lauren Revay, “The Recovery of the Poetic in the Modern World”
- Andrew Geist, “Better than Jewels: The Market, Transcendence, and Biblical Wisdom”
Concurrent Session 2 (Ruane 206)
- Rob Duffy Title, “Love, Obedience, and Authority in Plato’s Apology”
- Andrew Horne, “Humanities, Cicero-Style”
- Robert Barry, “Thomas on Magnanimity as the Natural Virtue of Hope”
Concurrent Session 3 (Ruane 205)
- Robert Elliot, “Ascending and Transcending Animal Consciousness”
- John Allard, O.P., “Exploring Transcendence and Consciousness: Louis Roy, O.P., and his Contribution to Contemporary Understandings of Religious Experience”
- Michael Politz, “Lonergan’s Unconscious as an Impetus for Transcendence”
Concurrent Session 4 (Ruane 105)
- Gabriel Torretta, O.P., “Beyond What is and What is Not: Transcendent Reading Practices in John Scottus Eriugena and Italo Calvino”
- Leta Sundet, “‘The Prophet Isaiah is crafty’: Scripture at Play in Isak Dinesen’s The Immortal Story”
- Justin Noia, “Divine Silence and the Loss of Faith”
For free registration, please click the link below:
Full schedule and additional information coming soon. Please send any questions to veritas.conference@providence.edu.
For information on our previous conferences, click on the links below.
