Bio
My teaching and research interests have been primarily in the areas of Christian theology and World Religions, with emphasis on Protestantism, Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, 19th century Liberal Theology, and comparative religious worldviews. For the last 20 years I have been an affiliated faculty, first of the Middle East Studies Program, and now of the Mohsin & Fauzia Jaffer Center for Muslim World Studies.
Since 2010 I have been engaged in study of the major thinkers in the Continental tradition in Philosophy from Kant to Heidegger, both for their intrinsic philosophical import and for the implications of their thinking for the study of religion. Outside of Christianity, Buddhism and Islam are the religions with which I am best acquainted and those that have challenged me the most. Among the important influences on my thinking and development, I must include Jonathan Edwards, Schleiermacher, Ernst Troeltsch, Paul Tillich, and Gordon D. Kaufman. My more purely philosophical influences include W. V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, and Nelson Goodman.
My first publication, "On the Possibility of an Evangelical Theology," can be found in Theology Today, Volume 55, July 1998. In 2005 “Rupp in Perspective: An Examination of Two Topics in Beyond Existentialism & Zen,” was published in the April Volume 55, No. 2, of Philosophy East and West. In 2013 “A Critique of Pannenberg’s Scientific Theology” appeared in Theology and Science (Volume 11, Issue 3), followed in 2014 with “A Brief History of Western Rationality,” published as chapter 2 (Section I) of the book co-edited by my colleague Whitney Bauman, Science and Religion, One Planet Many Possibilities (Routledge).