Professor Nigel Biggar

Qualifications

BA (Oxford); Master of Christian Studies (Regent College, Vancouver); MA, PhD
(University of Chicago)

Role or Position

Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology

Email address

nigel.biggar@chch.ox.ac.uk

Academic Background

After reading Modern History at Worcester College, Oxford, Nigel Biggar proceeded to study religion, theology, and ethics in Canada and the USA. On his return to Oxford in 1985 he became Librarian and Research Fellow at Latimer House, and then for most of the 1990s he was Chaplain and Fellow of Oriel College. In 1999 he took the Chair of Theology at the University of Leeds; and in 2004 he moved to the Chair of Theology and Ethics at Trinity College Dublin. He arrived in Christ Church in the autumn of 2007.

Undergraduate Teaching

The Architecture of a Christian Ethic; Topics in Medical, Sexual, and Political Ethics

Research Interests

The formative bearing of religious concepts on moral life; the contribution of religion to the health of liberal societies; the development of a concept of 'public reason' that permits the engagement of metaphysically contradictory positions; theories of natural law; the theology and ethics of national identity and loyalty, of forgiveness, of killing (especially in relation to suicide, euthanasia, and war), of military intervention, and of burying the past after civil conflict; the vocation of universities.

Publications include

“Melting the Icepacks of Enmity: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland”, Studies in Christian Ethics, 24/2 (May 2011)
“A Debate on the Iraq War and Reflections on Libya” (with David Fisher), International Affairs, 87/3 (May 2011)
Behaving in Public: How to do Christian Ethics (Eerdmans, 2011)
“What are Universities for?”, Standpoint, 24 (July/August 2010)
Religious Voices in Public Places (Oxford, 2009) (co-ed.)
Aiming to Kill: the Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia (DLT, 2004)
Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict (Georgetown UP, 2001, 2003) (co-ed.)
The Revival of Natural Law: Philosophical, Theological,and Ethical Responses to the Finnis-Grisez School (Ashgate, 2000) (co-ed.)
The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth's Ethics (OUP, 1993, 1995)
Cities of Gods: Faith, Politics and Pluralism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Greenwood, 1986) (co-ed.)

Hobbies

Reading history, playing cards, making pilgrimage to military cemeteries

Links

http://www.mcdonaldcentre.org.uk