Cyril O'Regan

Who is Cyril O'Regan?

Cyril J. O'Regan, an Irish-born Roman Catholic intellectual, is the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is best known for his multi-volume gnosticism series, including Gnostic Return in Modernity and Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme's Haunted Narrative. Rehabilitating a project attempted in the nineteenth century by a leader of the Tübingen school of theology, Ferdinand Christian Baur, O'Regan attempts to identify a gnostic structure or "grammar" that can be traced through sources and authors as diverse as Valentinianism and William Blake. By identifying this grammar, he hoped to find a way to distinguish works of gnosticism from other types with superficial resemblances, such as writings in Neoplatonism. As a Christian theologian, he also hopes to equip theologians to avoid gnosticism, which he sees as an alternative contrary to genuine Christian faith yet, by its nature, one that is present in every era. This project is in some ways similar to that of Eric Voegelin, who in his Science, Politics and Gnosticism attempted to identify some core features of gnosticism that he viewed as dangerous, though the two thinkers disagree about how to define gnosticism and why it should be rejected.