Nicholas Langrishe Alleyne Lash
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Nicholas Lash (1934 - ) is an English Roman Catholic theologian. Born to Joan Mary Moore, an Irish Catholic, and Brigadier Henry Lash, a Protestant British colonial officer, 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.
One of the most brilliant and imaginative minds of his generation, Nicholas Lash is the author of numerous books on a diverse range of theological topics, and he has been a regular contributor to the English Roman Catholic magazine The Tablet. A loyal and obedient Roman Catholic, Nicholas 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 reported to be 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 Nicholas Lash's strongest intellectual influences seems to have been the recovery of Aquinas' theology using forms of philosophical argument influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, which became influential in the 1970s and are 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 one of the most illuminating yet simply written discussions of the doctrine of the Trinity in recent years.
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.
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)
- 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)
