Simon Oliver

Contact

• workRoom C27 Humanities Building
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work0115 951 5853
• fax0115 951 5887
• simon.oliver@nottingham.ac.uk

Expertise Summary

My academic and teaching interests focus on systematic theology (the study of the method, meaning and implications of the 'system' of Christian doctrine) and the relationship between theology and philosophy. My principal fields of expertise are the Christian doctrine of creation, Christian neoplatonism and the thought of the thirteenth century theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. I have interests in patristic theology, twentieth century Thomism, the school of la nouvelle théologie, the Reformed theologian Karl Barth and the Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. I am particularly interested in supervising graduate students in any of these areas.

Research Summary

My current central research project develops themes from my earlier work and maintains my interest in a critical theological engagement with philosophy and science. Provisionally entitled Creation's… read more

Recent Publications

• OLIVER, SIMON, 2010. Trinity, Motion and Creation Ex Nihilo. In: COGLIATI, C, SOSKICE, J and STOEGER, W., eds., Creation and the God of Abraham Cambridge University Press.
• OLIVER, SIMON and MILBANK, JOHN, eds., 2009. The Radical Orthodoxy Reader Routledge.
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2009. Wisdom in Theology and Philosophy. In: MCGEE, M. and CORNWELL, J., eds., Philosophers Amongst the Gods Continuum.
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2008. Love Makes the World Go 'Round: Motion and Trinity. In: SCHINDLER, D.L., ed., Love Alone in Credible: Hans Urs von Balthasar as Interpreter of the Catholic Tradition Eerdmans.

• View all publications

Current Research

My current central research project develops themes from my earlier work and maintains my interest in a critical theological engagement with philosophy and science. Provisionally entitled Creation's Ends: Teleology, Ethics and the Natural, this work will argue that the notion of teleology (the view that creation is orientated towards certain ends or goals) is crucial to a full understanding of the natural. Despite a forceful return in recent moral philosophy and theology, the teleological understanding of nature is frequently - but not universally - rejected by contemporary science. I will suggest that modern philosophy and science reject a particularly impoverished view of teleology, and that a revival of a more nuanced notion of final causation has significant implications for our understanding of creation and associated ethics.

In addition to this research project, I am currently writing an introduction to the highly influential theological sensibility known as Radical Orthodoxy to be published by Routledge. I have recently edited The Radical Orthodoxy Reader with John Milbank.

Past Research

In my first book, Philosophy, God and Motion, I examined the concept of motion, a category which, after Newton, is thought to be straightforward and confined to the realm of physics. Yet motion is understood more broadly in the pre-modern world: as well as movement in space, learning and growing, for example, are varieties of motion. If the universe is saturated in motion, how can it relate to God who, according to the orthodox Christian tradition, is beyond motion and change? With a properly historical perspective, it can be seen that categories which we commonly understand as lying exclusively within the realms of science - motion, space, light and time, for example - are also crucial to theology and philosophy. It is possible to examine the way in which discourses such as theology and the natural sciences share such categories but understand them in very different and potentially analogically related ways. My research therefore leads me to the history and philosophy of science as well as theology proper. This opens new and more nuanced opportunities for critical inter-disciplinary engagement.

• OLIVER, SIMON, 2010. Trinity, Motion and Creation Ex Nihilo. In: COGLIATI, C, SOSKICE, J and STOEGER, W., eds., Creation and the God of Abraham Cambridge University Press.
• OLIVER, SIMON and MILBANK, JOHN, eds., 2009. The Radical Orthodoxy Reader Routledge.
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2009. Wisdom in Theology and Philosophy. In: MCGEE, M. and CORNWELL, J., eds., Philosophers Amongst the Gods Continuum.
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2008. Love Makes the World Go 'Round: Motion and Trinity. In: SCHINDLER, D.L., ed., Love Alone in Credible: Hans Urs von Balthasar as Interpreter of the Catholic Tradition Eerdmans.
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2008. What can Theology offer Religious Studies?. In: OLIVER, S. and WARRIER, M., eds., Theology and Religious Studies: An Exploration of Disciplinary Boundaries T&T Clark.
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2008. The Holy Trinity and the Liturgical Subject. In: LEACHMAN, J., ed., The Liturgical Subject: Subject, Subjectivity, and the Human Person in Contemporary Liturgical Discussion and Critique SCM.
• OLIVER, SIMON and WARRIER, MAYA, eds., 2008. Theology and Religious Studies: An Exploration of Disciplinary Boundaries T&T Clark.
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2005. The Sweet Delight of Virtue and Grace in Aquinas's Ethics International Journal of Systematic Theology. 7(1), 52-71
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2005. Philosophy, God and Motion Routledge.
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2005. Robert Grosseteste on Light, Truth and Experimentum Vivarium. 43(1), 109-138
• OLIVER, SIMON, 2001. Motion according to Aquinas and Newton Modern Theology. 17(2), 163-199
• OLIVER, SIMON, 1999. The Eucharist before Nature and Culture Modern Theology. 15(3), 331-353