John McDowell's Theology and Philosophy Page

My story begins 'A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...', well, Larne in Northern Ireland actually.  It's too long and boring to provide any details, so I'll not subject you to it!   Suffice to say that I'm an academic theologian and have had the privilege of learning from some fabulous teachers at the Universities of Aberdeen (1989-93, BD Hons) and Cambridge (1994-8, PhD).  From the buzz of Cambridge to the heady excitement of Scotland's capital city, I moved to Edinburgh to embark on a teaching career at the university there from 2000 until the end of 2008.  Working at New College in the University of Edinburgh was a real joy, and I had the provilege of learning from some very astute and helpful colleagues.  Yet the sunshine of Australia and the Morpeth Chair in Theology that came calling, and with the allure of somewhere new and quite different in ethos I jumped ship and landed on the tropical shores of Newcastle, NSW, where I have now begun to ply my theological trade.  It's been quite a move, but so far it's been an enjoyably challenging one.  Long may it continue! 

On a more personal level, I'll reveal only a couple of my highlights:  I married Sandra in 1993, and from 1998 on we began to have a family that now stretches extendable dining tables as far they will go.  Our 5 wonderfully boisterous children are:  Archie, Jonathan, Joseph, Meg and Robert.  

At present I don't have much spare time, but my main interests, apart from Theology and my family of course, are playing and watching football ('soccer' as the Aussies call it) - I'm a long-suffering Liverpool fan; anything to do with Star Wars; and watching movies (my wife calls what I do not 'watching' so much as 'over analysing'). 

What is it that we are doing when we hope?  How is our conception of self and world shaped within certain understandings of hope?  These two broad questions have lingered through my doctoral research and beyond, inspired as I have been by encountering the writings of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).  Exploring the complex theological dynamic of what it means to hope, and particularly what significance hoping has for human identity/agency, will be furthered, in one way or another, over the next few years through particular engagement with a host of diverse figures:  primarily, but not exclusively, Sophocles, Euripides, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, William Shakespeare, Immanuel Kant, G.W.H. Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Donald MacKinnon, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Frei, Alasdair MacIntyre, Paul Ricoeur, and Gustavo Gutierrez.  

              Currently I am working on several projects.  Most immediately, I am writing a paper for a conference on ‘Trinitarian Theology After Barth’, testing the theological assumptions of a particular account of petitionary prayer.  Following this will come, among other things, the editing of several of Donald MacKinnon’s published articles (Continuum/T&T Clark, 2010); a paper for a collection on theology and tragedy which will read Jesus’ trial by Pilate in the light of Barth’s ‘Judge Judged in Our Place’, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Kafka’s Trial; a study of important elements in Barth’s theology; and an introduction to the history of eschatological perspectives (Eerdmans, 2011). 

In the more distant future I intend to develop a conference paper that I delivered in 2001 [‘Midnight Feastings:  Hope and the Deglobalising of Theology’].  This seeks to reflect on the manner of Christian praxis specifically through reflecting on the styles of hoping available in societies undergoing ‘globalisation’. 

Following that, I hope to explore the accounts of evil and its relation to the cross in the writings of Karl Barth, Jürgen Moltmann and Donald MacKinnon.  The aim is to demonstrate that these thinkers who are critical of the ‘project theological of modernity’ require critical reconstructions to their approaches to the cross, but that despite their various tendencies they attempt to refigure the Christian as a hopeful subject resisting evil. 

My research plans flow from various concerns:  concerns to engage fruitfully with the theology of Karl Barth; to substantiate the feeling of the significance of the broadly iconoclastic philosophical and theological work of Donald MacKinnon; to develop ways of engaging literature (especially the genre of tragedy); to root theological education in the practice of engagement with non-academic environments; and to ask about the nature and manifestation of the inescapable interaction between church and ‘world’ (hence my book on Star Wars). 

Since I have very broad theological and theo-ethical interests I would welcome applications from anyone wishing to study systematic theology (dogmatics, religious philosophy, theological ethics), and/or theology’s engagement with disciplines such education studies, history, and literature.  I have supervised 15 doctoral students in my time at Edinburgh (all who were examined passed first time ‘without major corrections’ being required), covering various theological issues and theological figures.  Of course, I have particular, but certainly not exclusive, interest in supervising students who would like to work on the theology of Karl Barth and on issues in eschatology.