The Lyceum Christian Platonism series focuses on the nature and validity of Christian Platonism as a proper metaphysic for Christianity. It features six essays from various perspectives with the final essay featuring a summary and analysis of the symposium. Each essay features the unfiltered views of each author which may or may not represent the viewpoints of the London Lyceum.
Lyceum Disputation Symposiums are essays on various theological, historical, and philosophical topics intended to provide greater understanding in a spirit that reflects charity, curiosity, critical thinking, and cheerful confessionalism. To find our other symposiums click here.
Essays and Contributors
On Classical Christian Platonism: A Philosopher’s Reply to Carter, by Paul Gould
Paul M. Gould (PhD, Purdue University) is an associate professor of philosophy of religion and director of the M.A. Philosophy of Religion program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. He is the author or editor of ten scholarly and popular-level books including Cultural Apologetics, Philosophy: A Christian Introduction, and The Story of the Cosmos. He has been a visiting scholar at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School’s Henry Center, working on the intersection of science and faith, and is the founder and president of the Two Tasks Institute. He speaks regularly at universities, churches and ministries around the country, including Summit Ministries, the C.S. Lewis Institute, and the EPS's annual apologetics conference. He is married to Ethel and has four children.
Christian Platonism: Some Comments on Its Past and the Need for Its Future, by Willemien Otten
Willemien Otten (PhD, University of Amsterdam) is Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Theology and the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the President of the Society for Eriugenian Studies (SPES). She studies the history of Christianity and Christian thought with a focus on the medieval and the early Christian intellectual tradition, especially in the West, and an emphasis on the continuity of Platonic themes. Her 2020 Etienne Gilson-lecture “Creation and Gender in Eriugena, Hildegard, and Hadewijch,” postponed to 2022 due to Covid, is forthcoming from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Press. Her co-edited volume Religion and Memory addresses how best to conceive the pastness of religion. Her co-edited volume Eriugena and Creation, brings together selected papers on medieval nature. With Editor-in Chief Karla Pollmann, she edited the three-volume Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (430–2000) and with Susan Schreiner she co-edited Augustine Our Contemporary. Examining the Self in Past and Present. Reflecting her interest in natural theology beyond the medieval period, Otten’s latest study Thinking Nature and the Nature of Thinking: From Eriugena to Emerson approaches ideas of nature and human selfhood across a wide array of thinkers, from Augustine to William James and from Maximus the Confessor to Schleiermacher.
Craig Carter’s Christian Platonism, by R.T. Mullins
R.T. Mullins (PhD, University of St Andrews). He has published over 50 essays on various topics in philosophical theology related to models of God, philosophy of time, personal identity, the problem of evil, disability theology, the Trinity, and the incarnation. He has published two books, The End of the Timeless God (Oxford University Press, 2016) and God and Emotion (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Mullins has held research and teaching fellowships at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Cambridge, the University of St Andrews, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Helsinki. When not engaging in philosophical theology, he is often found at a metal show.
Is Arius a Christian Platonist?, by Grant Sutherland
Grant Sutherland is a Ph.D. candidate in historical theology at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University. He is currently researching divine authority in Late Antiquity and fourth-century trinitarian controversies. He has an MA in Religious Studies from McMaster University where he worked on the trinitarian theology of Gregory of Nazianzus. He and his wife Abi have three children and live in Melbourne, Australia, where they attend Christ Covenant Church.
Plato is not the Point: A Critical Defense of Craig Carter’s Proposal, by Hunter Hindsman
Hunter Hindsman is a pastor at MeadowBrook Church in Gadsden Alabama. He has received his Masters of Divinity from SWBTS and is a current Ph.D. candidate in the Historical and Theological Studies program at SBTS where he is focusing on early church history. He serves as the patristic theology editor for the London Lyceum. He’s married to his wife, Taylor, and is the father of Joanna, Mason, Jack, and Melanie.
Which Plato? Whose Platonism? Summarizing the Christian Platonism Symposium, by Jordan Steffaniak
Jordan L. Steffaniak (ThM, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is President of the London Lyceum and Publisher for Hanover Press. He is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, UK, and teaches at several institutions. He has a wonderful wife and three sons. He also works in the financial industry.