CHRISTOPHER DALE OWENS is a Catholic theology student, currently studying in Rome, Italy at the Pontificia Studiorum Universitas a Sancto Thoma Aquinate in Urbe (the “Angelicum”). A native son of the South, he grew up near Raleigh, North Carolina. Christopher is married with three children, and in his spare time enjoys cycling, photography, and home-brewing beer.

As an adult convert to the Catholic Faith, he owes much of his formation in a Catholic way of life to his time spent living overseas; first in the West Highlands of Scotland, where he lived for a year doing youth ministry and evangelization work; and then afterward in Birmingham, England, where he lived in a small community doing university chaplaincy work, while at the same time working at the nearby Maryvale Institute for Theology, Philosophy and Catechesis.

Christopher spent three years as a Director of Religious Education at a Catholic parish in Wyoming, and that has greatly influenced his perspective on theological study, and in particular the concept of a “lived theology”. His philosophy in theological study could be expressed as follows:

St. Anselm defines theology as faith seeking understanding. Any and all theology is therefore oriented toward the formal object of faith; namely, God, the first truth (ST II-II, 1.1). Further, as St. Thomas says, “understanding implies an intimate knowledge… (intus legere)” (ST II-II, 8.1). Theology, then, has for its object an intimate knowledge of God, the first truth.

With such intimacy as its object, theology is impelled to take on an incarnational form through the person of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, and in communion with his mystical body, the Church. Theological pursuit is then inseparable from the pursuit of personal holiness on the part of the theologian. In this light, speculative theology is not simply an abstract undertaking, but in fact becomes a most necessary and vital endeavor in the life of the Christian.