Oliver Crisp appointed professor of Analytic Theology

The School is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Oliver Crisp (Fuller Seminary) to the newly established chair in Analytic Theology. Professor Crisp will take up his appointment on 1 September 2019. He will be a key member of the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology, and also contribute to the School’s work in Systematic and Historical Theology and in Theology and the Arts.

Professor Crisp played a role in founding the growing movement called “Analytic Theology”, and is one of its leading figures. With Michael Rea (Notre Dame and St Andrews), he is a senior editor of the Journal of Analytic Theology, and a series editor for Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. He has written or edited 25 academic books, and is currently working towards publishing a systematic theology.

For the last eight years, Professor Crisp has been professor of systematic theology at Fuller Seminary. There, he co-founded the annual Los Angeles Theology Conference, which has generated a series of important volumes published by Zondervan Academic, and led a major project entitled ‘Prayer, Love, and Human Nature: Analytic Theology for Theological Formation’, funded by a $2 million grant by the John Templeton Foundation. Since 2016, he has been involved in the Logos Institute as a part-time professor. As a collaborator and consultant he, along with Professor Michael Rea, made a profound contribution to the conception and establishment of the Institute.

Before joining Fuller, Professor Crisp held a teaching fellowship at the University of St Andrews, followed by a lectureship and then a readership at the University of Bristol. He has also held the William H. Schiede Fellowship at the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton (2008-2009), and the Crosson Fellowship at the Center for Philosophy of Religion (2004-2005) at Notre Dame, where he is spending the current semester working on a book entitled Substitution and Atonement for Baker Academic.

Professor Crisp commented: ‘I am delighted to be a part of the thriving community of scholarship in the School of Divinity, where there is so much good work being done across the range of theological disciplines. The Logos Institute has already established itself as the place for cutting edge research on analytic and exegetical theology. I look forward to contributing to that, and to working together with such excellent friends and colleagues in St Mary’s.’

Professor Alan Torrance, who is chair of Systematic Theology and director of the Logos Institute, commented, ‘This is a massive coup for the Logos Institute and, indeed, for the University of St Andrews. Bringing Oliver to a full-time position in the Institute is the fulfilment of an ambition that dates from its conception. In the person of Professor Crisp not only do we have one of the world’s leading theologians, a renowned teacher and co-founder of “analytic theology,” we also have an intellectual whose numerous monographs, edited volumes and articles constitute a track-record of research that is all but unparalleled in the field. In addition to this, his extensive experience of UK universities, not least as Deputy Head of the School of Humanities in the University of Bristol, will prove invaluable and serve to secure the long term ambitions of the Institute. In short, the fact that he has finally been persuaded to accept the position here is spectacularly good news!’

Professor Crisp will be joined by his wife, the author Claire Crisp, and their family. We greatly look forward to welcoming them to the community in St Andrews.