Aidan Nichols
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The Rev. John Christopher Aidan Nichols O.P. (born September 17, 1948) is an academic and Catholic priest, and currently serves as the first John Paul II Memorial Visiting Lecturer at Oxford University for 2006-8, the first lectureship of Catholic theology at that university since the Reformation. He is a member of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and was formerly the Prior of St. Michael and All Angels in Cambridge.
[edit] Priesthood
Aidan Nichols was born in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire on September 17, 1948. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford with a First in Modern History in 1970, and entered the Dominican order the same year. He spent the next seven years at Blackfriars, Oxford, being ordained to the priesthood in 1976. From 1977 to 1983 he was a Catholic Chaplain at Edinburgh University, and it was at Edinburgh in 1986 that he took his PhD. Between 1983 and 1991 he was Lecturer in Dogmatics and Ecumenics at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome. In 1990 he was awarded a Licentiate in Theology from the Angelicum. From Rome he moved back to England and to Cambridge, where he began as Assistant Catholic Chaplain, then as an Affiliated University Lecturer (1998-) and finally as Prior of St. Michael's (1998-2004). He still lives at the priory in Cambridge, though during academic terms he is based at Greyfriars, Oxford: which is, ironically, a Franciscan friary.
[edit] Academic Work
Fr. Nichols began his academic work in the Russian theological tradition and has written on Sergei Bulgakov. However he is best known for his work on Hans Urs von Balthasar, publishing three analytic volumes on Von Balthasar's famous 'trilogy': 'The Word Has Been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar's Aesthetics' (1998), 'No Bloodless Myth: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Dramatics' (2000) and 'Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic' (2001). Fr. Aidan was also one of the contributors to the recent 'Cambridge Companion to Von Balthasar' (2004), along with Fergus Kerr OP and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Elsewhere he has also written on 'The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger' (1988), the theological history of Anglicanism in 'The Panther and the Hind' (1993) and a more general work on religion in the modern world, 'Christendom Awake' (1993).
