Professor Mark McInroy
Biography:
Mark McInroy received his doctorate in systematic and historical theology from Harvard Divinity School, and after postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge he joined the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas, where he was Professor of Theology and Associate Chair. He is the author of Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour (Oxford, 2014), for which he received the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise.
In 2023 he founded and co-directed the Claritas Initiative on Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, an interdisciplinary project that examines the various ways in which aesthetic discernment (i.e., judgments concerning beauty) lead to the discovery of truth and the bolstering of goodness in fields as diverse as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, law, engineering, and medicine.
Research Interests:
McInroy is a systematic and historical theologian with interests in modern and contemporary Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox thought, especially the modern retrievals and reformulations of patristic, medieval, and Reformation theologies.
His research examines the Christian doctrine of deification across a wide range of contexts, including Anglican retrievals of the doctrine from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, Martin Luther’s use of the doctrine in his mature theology, nineteenth-century German Protestant examinations of deification, twentieth-century Orthodox models of theosis, and patristic versions of the doctrine in the Christian East and West.
A significant component of his constructive work focuses on theological aesthetics, particularly those of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Closely related to these efforts is his research on spiritual perception (sometimes called the doctrine of the spiritual senses). McInroy examines the spiritual senses in the early church, the medieval period, and early modernity, in addition to treating twentieth-century retrievals of the doctrine conducted by Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Augustin Poulain, and others.
Other areas of interest include theology and art, mystical theology, phenomenology, religious epistemology, and East-West relations in Christianity.
Research Centres & Projects:
Theology and the Visual Arts Network
Current Projects:
Current book projects include completion of a monograph on deification in nineteenth-century Germany that studies treatments of the doctrine in major figures of the period from Johann Gottlieb Fichte to Adolf Harnack. An additional project is co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Hans Urs von Balthasar with Anthony Sciglitano and Cyril O’Regan.
Forthcoming articles and book chapters examine a range of topics, including spiritual perception in phenomenological treatments of art, the reception of émigré Orthodox accounts of deification among figures associated with la nouvelle théologie, and the influence of John Henry Newman’s Grammar of Assent and Essay on Development on Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Karl Rahner.
Courses Taught:
The Figure of Jesus
Key Themes in Systematic Theology
MSt in Christian Doctrine
MPhil in Christian Doctrine
Educational Background:
Th.D., Harvard Divinity School (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany - Visiting Doctoral Candidate in Theology
M.Div., Harvard Divinity School (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
B.A., Southwestern University (Georgetown, Texas)
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany - Semester of Study through the Institute for the International Education of Students
Recent Publications:
“Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Anglicans,” in The Oxford Handbook of Deification, ed. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Matthew Levering, and Andrew Hofer, OP (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 350-70
“Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in Ford’s The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918, 4th edition, ed. Rachel Muers and Ashley Cocksworth, with David Ford, consulting editor (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2024), 162-174
“Bulgakov and Lot-Borodine as Shapers of Deification in the West,” in Building the House of Wisdom: Sergii Bulgakov and Contemporary Theology: New Approaches and Interpretations, ed. Barbara Hallensleben, Regula M. Zwahlen, Aristotle Papanikolaou & Pantelis Kalaitzidis (Münster: Aschendorff, 2024), 63-76
Image as Theology: The Power of Art in Shaping Christian Thought, Devotion, and Imagination, ed. C. A. Strine, Mark McInroy, and Alexis Torrance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)
“Beholding the Radiant Invisible: The Incarnate Image in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jean-Luc Marion,” in Image as Theology: The Power of Art in Shaping Christian Thought, Devotion, and Imagination, ed. C. A. Strine, Mark McInroy, and Alexis Torrance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 159-180
“Spiritual Perception and Beauty: On Looking and Letting Appear,” in Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a Constructive Account of Spiritual Perception, ed. Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 212-227
“How Deification Became Eastern: German Idealism, Liberal Protestantism, and the Modern Misconstruction of the Doctrine,” Modern Theology 37/4 (2021): 934-58
“Manifesting Being: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Interpretation of Bonaventure and the Transcendental Status of Beauty,” in Beauty and the Good: Past Interpretations and Their Contemporary Relevance, ed. Alice Ramos (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 269-287
The Christian Theological Tradition, 4th Edition, ed. Mark McInroy and Michael J. Hollerich (New York & London: Routledge, 2019)
“Introduction: Approaching the Christian Theological Tradition,” in The Christian Theological Tradition, ed. Mark McInroy and Michael J. Hollerich (New York: Routledge, 2019), 1-29
“The English Reformation,” in The Christian Theological Tradition, ed. Mark McInroy and Michael J. Hollerich (New York: Routledge, 2019), 385-393
“Christianity in the Modern Period,” in The Christian Theological Tradition, ed. Mark McInroy and Michael J. Hollerich (New York: Routledge, 2019), 437-465
“Christianity in the Contemporary Situation,” in The Christian Theological Tradition, ed. Mark McInroy and Michael J. Hollerich (New York: Routledge, 2019), 537-563
“Catholic Theological Receptions,” in The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman, ed. Frederick D. Aquino and Benjamin J. King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 495-516
“Before Deification Became Eastern: Newman’s Ecumenical Retrieval,” International Journal for Systematic Theology 20 (2018): 253-268
“Catholic Theological Receptions of the Grammar of Assent,” in Receptions of Newman, ed. Frederick D. Aquino and Benjamin J. King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 73-94
Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
“Rechtfertigung als Theosis: Zur neueren Diskussion über die Lutherdeutung der Finnischen Schule,” Catholica (Münster) 66 (2012): 1-18
“Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity, ed. Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 257-274
“Origen of Alexandria,” in The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity, ed. Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 20-35
“Karl Barth and Personalist Philosophy: A Critical Appropriation,” Scottish Journal of Theology 64 (2011): 45-63
