Faculty members

Professor Sarah Coakley

Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, and Fellow of Murray Edwards College (formerly New Hall)

Courses taught this academic year

• Metaphysics (C11)
• Special lectures on ‘the very idea of philosophical theology’
• MPhil and doctoral supervision

Current research interests

• Philosophical theology and its place in university discourse; 'rationality', the passions, and religious truth claims; the 'spiritual senses' tradition in Christian theories of cognition; Platonic influences on Christian epistemology and spirituality (especially in the patristic period); the relation of apophatic and cataphatic claims in arguments about God's exisitence and nature
• The role of philosophy in 'systematic theology'; re-thinking 'systematic theology' in a post-modern era; the future of 'natural theology'; evolutionary theory, game theory, and Christian theology
• Gender theory and 'systematic theology'; feminist philosophy and religious epistemology

Recent and future projects

Professor Coakley co-directed with Martin A. Nowak a three-year research project at Harvard (2005-8), funded by the John Templeton Foundation, on 'Evolution and the Theology of Cooperation'.

At Harvard she also co-directed an earlier interdisciplinary project, with Arthur Kleinman, funded by the Harvard 'Mind, Brain, Behavior' initiative, on 'Pain and Its Transformations'.

She gave her inaugural lecture as Norris-Hulse Professor on October 13, 2009, entitled, 'Sacrifice Regained: Reconsidering the Rationality of Christian Belief'.

She chaired an international symposium, 'Faith, Rationality and the Passions', at Cambridge on the 11-13 January 2010, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The papers will appear next year in special issues of Faith and Philosophy and Modern Theology.

She is currently at work on a four-volume systematic theology, the first volume of which will appear as God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay 'On the Trinity' (Cambridge, CUP).

She has been appointed to give the 2011-12 Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen.

Education and previous posts

M.A., Ph.D (Cantab); Th.M (Harvard); Dr. Theol. (honoris causa, Lund); DD (honoris causa, The General Theological Seminary, NY)

• 1976-1991, University of Lancaster (Lecturer and Senior Lecturer)
• 1991-3, Oriel College, Oxford (Tutorial Fellow and University Lecturer)
• 1993-2007, Harvard Divinity School (1993 - Professor of Christian Theology; 1995- 2007, Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity)
• 2003-4, Eli Lilly Visiting Professor of Religion, Princeton University

Sarah Coakley is glad to receive enquiries about graduate work in philosophical theology.

Publications

Professor Coakley's publications are available in a separate document.

Contact details

Faculty of Divinity
West Road
Cambridge CB3 9BS

Tel.: (+44) 01223 763002
Fax: (+44) 01223 763003
Email: norris-hulse@divinity.cam.ac.uk