Lumen Christi Institute

Willemien Otten is Professor of Theology and the History of Christianity; also in the College; Associate Faculty in the Department of History, Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. She holds an M.A. and PhD from the University of Amsterdam. Otten studies the history of Christianity and Christian thought with a focus on the Western medieval and the early Christian intellectual tradition, including the continuity of Platonic themes. She is coeditor of Eriugena and Creation (2014), On Religion and Memory (2013), and the Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (430–2000) (2013). Her most recent book is Thinking Nature and the Nature of Thinking: From Eriugena to Emerson (2020).

Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School and the Committees on Medieval Studies and on General Studies at the University of Chicago. He has written extensively about the history of apocalyptic thought, spirituality, and mysticism. McGinn's many books include Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil, The Presence of God, a multivolume history of Western Christian mysticism, and most recently Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae: A Biography.

Aaron Canty is Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Xavier University. His current research focuses on the development of medieval Christology, eschatology, and scriptural exegesis. He is author of Light and Glory: The Transfiguration of Christ in Early Franciscan and Dominican Theology (Catholic University of America Press, 2011), A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, eds. Franklin T. Harkins and Aaron Canty (Leiden: Brill, 2017), and an edition of excerpts from John of La Rochelle’s commentaries on the Synoptic Gospels (in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum).

Robert Porwoll has taught courses for the University of Chicago Graham School and History Department, and he is currently a visiting professor at Gustavus Adolphus College. His research includes the Christian liberal arts tradition in education, with a specialized focus on the liberal arts in Christian education at schools and at early medieval universities. He studied Historical Theology at Saint Louis University (MA) and the History of Christianity at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago (PhD). His scholarship includes the relationship of faith and reason, religious environmental ethics, Neoplatonic and scholastic thought, and the medieval School of Saint Victor Abbey (Paris). 

Peter J. Casarella is Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School. He received his PhD in Religious Studies at Yale University. Casarella previously served as professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Notre Dame and as director of the Latin American North American Church Concerns (LANACC) project in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Casarella has served as president of The American Cusanus Society, The Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the U.S. (ACHTUS), and the Academy of Catholic Theologians (ACT). He is currently serving a second five-year term on the International Roman Catholic-Baptist World Alliance Ecumenical Dialogue and served also on the Roman Catholic-World Communion of Reformed Churches Dialogue. He has authored or edited several books, including: Cuerpo de Cristo: The Hispanic Presence in the U.S. Catholic Church (1998), A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theory and Trinitarian Theology (2011), and most recently, Word as Bread: Language and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa (2017)

Paul Mankowski, SJ, is the Scholar-in-Residence at the Lumen Christi Institute. A native of South Bend, Indiana, and a member of the Society of Jesus, he has an A.B. from the University of Chicago, an M.A. from Oxford, and a PhD in Semitic Philology from Harvard University. He taught for many years at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and has published in the areas of language, theology, and the biblical text.

Perry Hamalis holds the Cecelia Schneller Mueller Professor of Religion endowed chair at North Central College. He holds a B.A. from Boston College, a master of divinity degree from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, and a PhD from the University of Chicago. Hamalis teaches and pursues scholarship in the field of Religious Ethics, with special interest in the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, virtue ethics, and the intersection of religion and political philosophy. His works have been published in Studies in Christian Ethics, the Journal of Religion, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, the Greek Orthodox Theological Review, and in numerous encyclopedias; and he has contributed essays to edited volumes including The Orthodox Christian World, Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration, and Thinking Through Faith. His forthcoming monograph, Formed by Death: Insights for Ethics from Eastern Orthodox Christianity, will be published by University of Notre Dame Press.