Research interests
I have three main areas of research at the moment:
Apophaticism: I am interested in the view, under-represented in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, but with plenty of classical precedence, that there is an interesting sense in which we do not know what God is. My book Negative Theological and Philosophical Analysis : Only the Splendour of Light (Palgrave) explores this, and locates contemporary wariness about apophaticism in certain unexamined commitments in the philosophies of language and mind. With Fillipo Casati I am writing a book drawing parallels between responses to the so-called paradox of ineffability and to paradoxes of self-reference in logic and mathematics.
Christianity and Marxism: I'm interested in what these apparently opposed systems of thought and practice have in common and how they can inform each other. I'm also concerned to answer criticisms of Marxism made within the churches.
Divine Love: The question of how it is possible that a transcendent God could love God's creatures fascinates me. My work in this area applies both contemporary analytic thought about love and scholastic insights to the special case of God's love for creatures.
