Date
November 19 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EST
Location
Guest Scholar:
A Conversation with Ryan O’Dowd
Ryan O’Dowd, Pastor of Christ Church of Atlanta and Senior Academic Advisor at Chesterton House
Ryan O’Dowd is the Pastor of Christ Church of Atlanta and Senior Academic Advisor at Chesterton House. Ryan started volunteering with Chesterton House in 2010 while serving on Air Force active duty at Cornell ROTC. He briefly served on the governing board before joining the staff in 2013. His academic research focuses on biblical wisdom and law and their intersection with Christian ethics. He has written several essays and book chapters as well as five books on topics related to biblical law and wisdom literature including “The Preacher’s Hebrew Commentary on Deuteronomy” (Hendrickson, 2024) and “Proverbs” (Zondervan, 2017). Ryan is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy (1994), Reformed Theological Seminary, and the University of Liverpool (PhD). He and his wife, Amy, have three grown children and recently moved to Atlanta with their youngest daughter.
THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
This society seeks to gather Cornell faculty and graduate students to discuss major themes in biblical and theological studies. Discussion aims to satisfy what Simone Weil once described as the basic need of the soul to consider “every sort of opinion, without the least restriction or reserve.” To this end, we invite dialogue that explores and even challenges historic orthodox beliefs as well as those ideas that reign in the contemporary church, academy, and culture.
Our dialogue is collegial and cordial without shying away from the hard questions scholars face in their life and work. Members of the group seek to nurture discussion by listening attentively to one another, guarding the length of our responses, and avoiding diversions to pet issues unrelated to the subject at hand. In short, we seek to embody a uniquely Christian form of intellectual hospitality that we can pass on to future generations.
