Notes on Contributors
Jonathan Bieler
received his doctoral degree in theology at the University of Zürich (2017), with a dissertation in Patristics on the coherence of Maximus the Confessor’s thought, published 2019 at Brill. He taught at the theological faculty at the University of Zürich. His research and teaching are focused on Patristics in general, Maximus the Confessor, Origen and Bonaventure in particular, as well as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Ferdinand Ulrich. Since 2019, he is Assistant Professor of Patrology and Systematic Theology at the John Paul II Institute at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
Brendan Case
Th.D., is Associate Director for Research of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. He is the author of The Accountable Animal: Justice, Justification, and Judgment (T&T Clark, 2021), and co-author of Least of the Apostles: Paul and His Legacies in Earliest Christianity (Wipf & Stock, 2022).
Thomas Cattoi
Ph.D., holds the William and Barbara Moran chair in early Christian theology and interreligious relations at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). He recently authored Seeking Wisdom, Embracing Compassion: A Philokalic Commentary to Tsong Kha Pa’s ‘Great Treatise’ (Brill, forthcoming) and co-edited Eastern Orthodoxy and World Religions (Brill, 2024). He also co-edits the journal Buddhist-Christian Studies and (with Paul Blowers) is working on a Subsidia Maximiana volume on Maximos’ Mystagogy.
Kevin M. Clarke
Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Dean of the Institute of Lay Ministry at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, in Detroit, Michigan. He is the translator of Maximus the Confessor’s Opuscula and Dispute with Pyrrhus in the Fathers of the Church Series (CUA Press, 2026). He co-edited Patristic Spirituality: Classical Perspectives on Ascent in the Journey to God (Brill, 2022). He edited and introduced Seven Deadly Sins examining the Church Fathers’ sayings on the capital vices and healing virtues (CUA Press, 2018). He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and popular items. He is the Associate Editor of Patristic Theology and the USA National Correspondent for the AIEP-IAPS.
Vladimir Cvetković
is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade, Serbia. He obtained his MA by thesis in theology from Durham University (2002) and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Belgrade (2007). He has worked as a research and teaching fellow at universities of Aarhus (Denmark), St Andrews (Scotland, UK), Oslo (Norway) and Niš (Serbia). His research interests include Patristics, Ancient and Byzantine Philosophy, and Orthodox Theology. Among his most recent publications are the monograph Justin Popović: A Synthesis of Tradition and Innovation (2021, in Serbian) and two edited collective volumes: Studies in Maximus the Confessor’s Opuscula theologica et polemica (co-edited with Alex Leonas, Brepols 2023) and Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović: Old Controversies in Historical and Theological Context (co-edited with Dragan Bakić, Sebastian Press 2022).
John Gavin, SJ
is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. His most recent book is Mysteries of the Lord’s Prayer: Wisdom from the Early Church (CUA Press, 2021).
Benjamin E. Heidgerken
teaches undergraduate students at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, and also teaches at the graduate level at the St. Paul Seminary. His book Salvation through Temptation offers an analysis of Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas’s contrasting approaches to Jesus’ temptation. He is a founder of Many Parts, a non-profit that encourages challenging conversations about Christian racial diversity and history. He, his wife Christine, and their four children like to garden when the Minnesota weather cooperates. He plays euphonium in the Minnesota Symphonic Winds.
Bogna Kosmulska
Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Member of the Commission Speculum Byzantinum of Faculty of Artes Liberales, both at the University of Warsaw. Author of the monograph Historyczne i doktrynalne uwarunkowania rozwoju myśli Maksyma Wyznawcy (Historical and Doctrinal Context of the Development of Maximus the Confessor’s Thought), Campidoglio 2014 [in Polish]. The main fields of her interest are, apart from the patristic thought (of Augustine, Origen, Maximus), the history of relations between Greek East and Latin West and the cultural background of philosophical and theological ideas.
Jane Sloan Peters
is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York. Her research focuses on Thomas Aquinas’s biblical interpretation in its historical context. She received her Ph.D. from Marquette University under the direction of Dr. Marcus Plested, writing on Aquinas’s reception of Greek patristic and Byzantine sources for the Catena aurea.
Marcus Plested
D.Phil., University of Oxford, 1999, is Professor of Greek Patristic and Byzantine Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He has previously served as Principal of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge Theological Federation) and taught for many years at the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cambridge. He has been a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. His books include: The Macarian Legacy: The Place of Macarius-Symeon in the Eastern Christian Tradition (Oxford: OUP 2004); Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford: OUP 2012); and Wisdom in Christian Tradition: The Patristic Roots of Modern Russian Sophiology (Oxford: OUP 2022).
Corey Stephan
serves as Assistant Professor of Theology and Fellow of the Core at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. Stephan holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the Department of Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studies the Latin Scholastic reception of the late Greek Fathers of the Church, especially Sts. Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus. His professional website is coreystephan.com.
Luke Togni
has focused his work on the intersection of Pseudo-Dionysius and Francis of Assisi in Bonaventure’s writings. At the time of writing, Luke is a Research Fellow for the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University. He has also been examining Bonaventure’s reliance on Albert the Great to better understand the mendicant communities at the University of Paris. He is currently preparing Crossing the Center, a monograph on how the symbolic framing of Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior sheds light on his later Trinitarian theology. Luke lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada where he teaches at St. Mary’s University and Dalhousie University.
Peter Totleben, OP
is a Dominican friar of the Province of St. Joseph in the eastern United States. Currently he is a doctoral student in systematic theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, Italy.
T. Adam Van Wart
Ph.D., Southern Methodist University, is an Associate Professor of Theology and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Ave Maria University. He is the author of Neither Nature nor Grace: Aquinas, Barth, & Garrigou-Lagrange on the Epistemic Use of God’s Effects. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020) and was the inaugural recipient of the Fr. Joseph Koterski, S.J. Research Fellowship for Philosophy in Theology by the Academy of Catholic Theology in 2022.
Jordan Daniel Wood
is Assistant Professor of Theology at Belmont University and author of The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor (UND Press, 2022).
Antoni Źrebiec
is a Ph.D. student at the University of Warsaw. His research interests are the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition in the Latin West and Cluniac monasticism. He is working on a comparative study of the understanding of symbolic theology in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century commentaries on the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy.