Skip NavigationWheaton College Home
 
  

 

Overview

Faculty

Majors

Courses

Conferences

Activities &
Opportunities

Competency and
Comprehensive Exams

 

    

George Kalantzis
Associate Professor of Theology
On faculty since 2007

Office: BGC 226
Phone: (630) 752-5819

George.Kalantzis@wheaton.edu


Education

Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1997
M.T.S., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, 1994
M.A.B.S., Moody Graduate School, 1993
M.S., Northeastern Illinois University, 1993
B.S., University of Illinois - Chicago, 1990
 
Professional and Personal Interests
On a leisurely walk by the river Ilisus, just outside the walls of the ancient city, Socrates responds to his persistent interlocutor, "You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they were alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words" (Phaedrus 275d).

I was born and raised by the shadow of the Acropolis, a stone's throw away from the bank of the Ilisus river where Socrates took the young Phaedrus for that famous walk; and though the sounds and smells of the megalopolis have for generations replaced the bucolic descriptions of Plato, the ancient sentiments remain the same: writing and, even more, reading, is a tricky business! Especially as one engages sacred Scripture and the history and theology of the Church.  This, most rewarding of endeavors, demands attention, perseverance, and a curious and open mind, to really engage the multifaceted vision of the Painter, the author of the beauty that confronts us.

My research and writing interests focus on this dynamic relationship between the written documents and their interpretation in early Christianity. I pay particular attention to the development of Christological and Trinitarian thought, as well as the interplay of classical Greco-Roman and early Christian philosophical understandings of anthropology and biblical hermeneutics. Whether I study history or theology, first I seek to study the subject within its own historical, theological, and socio-political context so that I may understand it on its own terms; only then do I attempt to interpret it diachronically and explore its impact on theology and the church today.

For the past ten years I have had the opportunity to teach seminary and doctoral students as they were preparing to engage the world and the Church. Together we were challenged to allow ourselves to become agents of change in a world in desperate need of God; to learn how to be, in Stanley Hauerwas' words, "a community of character." My wife, Irene, and I share this goal and vision with our local congregation where we serve in missions, the worship arts programs, and in adult and children’s education.


Courses Taught

  • Historical Theology: The Ancient & Medieval Church
  • Christology and Trinity in the Early Church
  • Christian Thought
  • Theological Politics
  • Gospel, Church, and Culture
  • Topics Courses:
    • Color & Gender in the Early Church
    • Christianity and Culture in the Early Church (C.E. 100-565)
    • Reading through the Fathers (De Genesis)
    • Origen's De Principiis
    • Origen: Theology & Exegesis
    • Augustine
    • Augustine: City of God
    • The First Christian Histories: Eusebius to Theodoret
    • Anthropology & Hermeneutics in the Early Church

Membership in Professional Societies

North American Patristics Society (NAPS)
Association Internationale des Études Patristiques (AIEP) (voted into membership February 2002)
American Society of Church History (ASCH)
Evangelical Theological Society (ETS)
Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians (FEET)
American Philological Association (APA)
Society of Biblical Research (SBL)

Research

• The development of early Christian (patristic) theology, especially the doctrines of the Trinity and Christology
• Alexandrian Theology and Hermeneutics (esp. Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria)
• Antiochene Theology and Hermeneutics (esp. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius, Theodoret of Cyrus)
• The Cappadocian Fathers
• Augustinian theology
• Patristic exegesis and historiography
• The relationship between Christianity and classical culture and the emergence of Christendom

Publications and Presentations


Books

Kalantzis, George and Thomas F. Martin (†), eds. Studies on Patristic Texts and Archaeology: If These Stones Could Speak...Essays in Honor of Dennis Edward Groh. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.

Kalantzis, George and D. Stephen Long, eds., The Sovereignty of God Debate. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2008.

Kalantzis, G. Theodore of Mopsuestia: Commentary on the Gospel of John. Early Christian Studies 7. Strathfield: St. Paul’s Publications, 2004 (Robert C. Hill, volume editor).

Essays & Articles

“Scripture: The Orthodox View,” in Michael. F. Bird and Michael Pahl, The Sacred Text: Artefact, Interpretation, and Doctrinal Formulation. (forthcoming, Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2010).

“Spirituality and the Mimetic Impulse: Porch, Desert, and Other Unlikely Destinations in the Late Antique Search for the Spirit,” in George Kalantzis and Jeffrey P. Greenman, eds.  Life in the Spirit: Spiritual Formation in Theological Perspective. (forthcoming, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010).

"'The Voice So Dear To Me': The Epistle to the Romans in the Antiochene Tradition," in Kathy Ehrensperger and R. Ward Holder, eds. Reading Romans with the Greek Fathers, vol. 8 of the Romans Through History and Cultures Series (forthcoming, New York and London: T&T Clark International, 2009).

"Single Subjectivity and the Prosopic Union in Cyril of Alexandria and Theodore of Mopsuestia” (forthcoming in Studia Patristica 15, 2009). 

"Introduction," in George Kalantzis and Thomas F. Martin, eds. Studies on Patristic Texts and Archaeology: If These Stones Could Speak...Essays in Honor of Dennis Edward Groh. (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009) 1-5.

“Crumbs From the Table: Lazarus, the Eucharist, and the Banquet of the Poor in the Homilies of St. John Chrysostom,” in Mark Husbands and Greenman, Jeffrey P., eds. Ancient Faith for the Church’s Future (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008) 156-168.

“The Sovereignty of God and Divine Transcendence: Two Views from the Early Church,” in Kalantzis, G., and D. Stephen Long, The Sovereignty of God Debate . (Eugene:Cascade Books, 2008) 27-41.

“George Kalantzis’s Response” to Process and Open Theology, in Kalantzis, G., and D. Stephen Long, The Sovereignty of God Debate. (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2008) 190-193.

“Is There Room for Two? Cyril’s Single Subjectivity and the Prosopic Union.” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2008) 95-110.

“Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Commentarius in Evangelium Iohannis Apostoli: Text and Transmission.” Augustinianum 43, no. 2 (2003) 473 - 493.

“Duo filii and the homo assumptus in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia: The Greek fragments of the Commentary on John.” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 78 (2002) 57-78. 

“Ephesus: A Roman, Jewish, and Christian Metropolis in the First and Second Centuries C.E.”  Jian Dao: A Journal of Bible & Theology 7 (1997): 103-119.

Additional Publications