Here are some of the questions that motivate my work:

• Evil: What is the metaphysical status of evil (both natural and moral)? If it is something real, what sort of reality does it have? If it is not something real, then how does it appear to hold so much power in human life and society? What is the meaning of human sin? What exactly constitutes a turn away from God—is it an overreach (e.g. pride), a coming up short, a direct act of resistance and rebellion, or a missing of the mark while seeking a good aim? In what way does such a move deform humans as moral agents? What are the effects of such wrongdoing? What is the relationship between suffering and evil?

• Freedom and agency: what is the nature and significance of human freedom, understood both in a very basic sense of personal autonomy and in a more robust sense of self-possession and responsible self-governance? What basis for self-determinative freedom is there in the Christian doctrine of the image of God? Is freedom something inherent in human beings or belonging to higher stage of spiritual and moral maturity? How does human freedom cohere with the ideal of submission to God?

• Divine mediation: What is the manner in which finite and circumscribed creatures come into communion with the infinite and ultimately unknowable God? How does Christ’s life and death set a paradigm for and bring into effect this communion? What is the nature of God’s saving action in Christ and how do humans participate in it?

• Women: How have women been understood as distinct from and related to the more general understanding of a human being? How have they been thought to relate to and embody the image of God? What are the philosophical and theological foundations of their historical subordination to men both in family and society as well as within the Church?

• Christian discipleship: What kinds of attitudes and actions are called for in following Christ? What are the steps in spiritual maturity in the Christian faith? Does the “way of the cross” conflict with human flourishing? How have women and historically subordinated people been negatively affected by Christian understandings of Christ-like humility and self-surrender? What does authentic self-surrender in imitation of Christ look like?

• Human language and God: How does our human language relate to God? In what ways do our words accurately describe God and in what ways do they fall short of grasping who or what God is? How have these capacities and limitations of human language and thought been articulated (as metaphorical, analogical, apophatic, etc.)?