Reclaiming Desire: Gregory Seach Presents Barry Marshall Lecture

Commemorating a former Chaplain of Trinity College, the lecture provides an opportunity for an important guest speaker to give a public presentation on a theological, spiritual or ecclesiological topic.  

This year's speaker was the Revd Dr Gregory Seach, Warden of Wollaston Theological College, Perth, whose lecture was entitled "My Song is Love Unknown: Reimagining Christian Desire".

Dr Seach spoke to us about Christian desire, noting the general muddle we are in on issues of sexuality, and the need to reclaim the notion of desire as something creative and powerful. Sexual desire is good in itself and opens us to intimacy with the 'other' but, a deeper level, it conveys also a sense of the deep yearning for God that lies within every human heart. We are called to put ourselves utterly in God's hands and find our true identity there and our deepest desire satisfied.

Gregory was a student in the Theological School from 1998 to 2001. He was ordained in Melbourne, and ministered at St John's Camberwell before proceeding to Cambridge, gaining his doctorate in systematic theology and literature. While in Cambridge, he was Dean and Fellow of Clare College. In 2015 was appointed Warden of Wollaston, the theological college for the Anglican Diocese of Perth.

The Revd Dr Barry Marshall, OGS, died suddenly at Oxford in 1970, shortly before becoming Principal of Pusey House, a centre for theological scholarship and research in Oxford. Barry entered Trinity College in 1946, completing his BA in 1948. He then studied theology at St John’s College, Morpeth. As ‘Brother Timothy’ he ministered in outback New South Wales, and after gaining a DPhil from Oxford, was appointed Chaplain of Trinity College in 1961, where he remained for ten years. Warm, vital, spontaneous, with a rich sense of fun, he was a man of remarkable influence, deeply involved with persons and causes, and much loved. Trinity's annual lecture honours his memory and his great skills as a teacher.