Rate My Professor Simon Oliver

Professor Simon Oliver is the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity and Head of Department in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, a position he assumed in September 2015. Prior to this, he served as Head of Department at the University of Nottingham from 2013, having joined there in 2009, and as Senior Lecturer at the University of Wales, Lampeter from 2004. His earlier roles include Chaplain of Hertford College, Oxford from 2001 to 2004, where he also acted as honorary Chaplain to Helen House and Douglas House children's hospices, and Acting Dean of Jesus College, Cambridge and Director of Studies in Theology from 2000 to 2001. Oliver studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford before reading Theology at the University of Cambridge. He was ordained deacon in 1998 and priest in 1999. In addition to his academic duties, he holds the position of Residentiary Canon at Durham Cathedral, linking university theology with church life, a tradition stemming from the university's foundation in 1832. He served on the Anglican Communion's Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order from 2009 to 2020 and currently sits on the Academic Board of the Lambeth Research Degrees in Theology and the Research Degrees Panel of the Church of England's Ministry Division.

Oliver's research specializations encompass Christian theology and metaphysics, with particular emphasis on the doctrine of creation, teleology and final causation in nature, the historical interplay between theology, philosophy, and science, and thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. He incorporates theological anthropology and the theology of disability into his undergraduate teaching. Key publications include the authored books Philosophy, God and Motion (Routledge, 2005; reissued 2013) and Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2017). He has edited The Radical Orthodoxy Reader (Routledge, 2009, with John Milbank), Faithful Reading: New Essays in Honour of Fergus Kerr, O.P. (Bloomsbury, 2012, with K. Kilby and T. O’Loughlin), and The Oxford Handbook of Creation (Oxford University Press, 2024). Selected articles feature 'Theology, Science and an Alternative Modernity' (Modern Theology, 2024), 'Physics without Physis: On Form and Teleology in Modern Science' (Communio, 2019), 'Augustine on Creation, Providence and Motion' (International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2016), and 'Aquinas and Aristotle’s Teleology' (Nova et Vetera, 2013).