I serve as Assistant Professor of Theology and Fellow of the Core in the Division of Liberal Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.
I hold a Ph.D. in Religious Studies in the area of historical theology from the Theology Department at Marquette University (2022). I also hold a Master of Theological Studies from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry (2017) and a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude with majors in Theology and Classical Languages and a minor in Spanish from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota (2015), both of which I earned precisely with the goal of receiving a doctoral degree.
My broad fields of study are patristics and the theology of the Latin Middle Ages and Greek Byzantium. My research interests include the Christology of the latest Greek Fathers of the Church (especially St. Maximus the Confessor and St. John of Damascus) and its reception among the Latin High Scholastics. I am an active member of the North American Patristics Society (NAPS), the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), and the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH). Beyond my focus in historical theology and the history of Christianity, I engage the spectrum of the Catholic theological tradition from Biblical Studies to modern systematics.
The title of my defended dissertation is “Maximus the Confessor in Aquinas’s Christology.” First, I tell the story of how St. Maximus the Confessor’s thought made it to St. Thomas Aquinas, including several pieces of previously unnoticed manuscript evidence. This reception history constitutes a majority of the project. Next, I explain how Thomas restored Maximianism in the Latin West, following his turn toward the Greek East for theological inspiration by walking chronologically through his corpus. Finally, I explore the place of Thomas’s Maximianism in Catholic theology today, as well as the relationship between my work and the cause for Catholic and Orthodox re-communion.
What underlies all of my historical and theological research is the desire to make the richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition known to the next generation. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi is my perennial intellectual theme.
Also see my curriculum vitae, stand-alone publication record, and blog.
Updated on August 25, 2024.