Professor William Wood

Biography

I currently serve as the Chair of the Theology and Religion Faculty Board. I am also Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology in the Faculty, and the Clifford Potter Fellow and Tutor in Theology in Oriel College. I have published two books with Oxford University Press: Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion (2021), and Blaise Pascal on Duplicity, Sin, and the Fall (2013). My broader research interests include questions about the place of theology in the modern research university, philosophical and theological accounts of sin and self-deception in the Augustinian tradition, and what it means to say that God is truth, especially with respect to medieval figures like Anselm and Aquinas. I am originally from the United States. Before coming to Oxford, I received a PhD in theology from the University of Chicago, and spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. 

Research Interests

Analytic theology; the relationship between philosophy, theology, and the study of religion; medieval theology, especially the thought of Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas; the doctrine of sin, especially the link between sin and self-deception; theological and philosophical implications of the claim that God is truth; the thought of Blaise Pascal.

Select Publications