Dr Matthew Kirkpatrick

Dr Matthew Kirkpatrick is Tutor in Ethics and Doctrine, Tutor for Graduates, and Tutor for Visiting Students at Wycliffe Hall, and SCIO Director of Studies in Theology and Philosophy.

Before joining Wycliffe Hall, Matthew studied theology and then ethics at the University of Oxford, before completing a D.Phil. analysing the thought of Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He teaches a wide range of subjects across ethics, Christian doctrine, and philosophy, and teaches at graduate level for the University in both ethics and doctrine. Amongst his wide interests includes particular attention to the interplay of existentialism and Christianity, sexual ethics in relation to the identity of children, and the wider thought of Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer.

Select Publications

Forthcoming. ‘Kierkegaard on the Church.’ In The T&T Clark Companion to the Theology of Kierkegaard. Edited by David Gouwens and Aaron Edwards. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

Forthcoming. ‘Sources and Texts.’ In The Oxford Handbook to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Edited by Michael Mawson and Philip Ziegler. Oxford: OUP.

Forthcoming. ‘Sociological Categories and the Journey to Selfhood: From the Crowd to Community.’ In Kierkegaard and Political Thought. Edited by Roberto Sirvent and Silas Morgan. Eugene, OR: Pickwick.

Forthcoming. ‘Bonhoeffer’s Failures: The Transformation of Power and Success through the Failure of Christ on the Cross.’ In Theologies of Failure. Edited by Roberto Sirvent and Duncan Reyburn. Macmillan Palgrave.

2016. How to Live a Good Death. Cambridge: Grove Books.

2016. Engaging Bonhoeffer: The Impact and Influence of Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

2013. Søren Kierkegaard. Cambridge: Grove Books.

2016. ‘Situations, Context, and Responsibility: Bonhoeffer’s Ethics in the Thought of Joseph Fletcher, Paul Lehamnm, and H. Richard Niebuhr,’ in Engaging Bonhoeffer: The Impact and Influence of Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought. Edited by Matthew D. Kirkpatrick. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

2016. ‘Bonhoeffer and Liberation Theology,’ with Geffrey B. Kelly, in Engaging Bonhoeffer: The Impact and Influence of Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought. Edited by Matthew D. Kirkpatrick. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

2013. ‘Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, and the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical: The Beginning or End of Ethics?’ in Ontology and Ethics: Bonhoeffer and Contemporary Scholarship. Edited by Adam Clark and Michael Mawson. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications.

2011. Attacks on Christendom in a World Come of Age: Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, and the question of “Religionless Christianity”. Princeton Theological Monographs. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications.

2011. Bonhoeffer’s Ethics: Between Pacifism and Assassination. Cambridge: Grove Books.