Pax et bonum!

PEACE AND GOOD!

The Victorine-Franciscan theological tradition, in particular and powerful ways, immerses one in a trinitarian approach to everything which is Christocentric through and through. It admits at once both beautifully cosmic and existentially personal inflections. This tradition offering abundant resources for spiritual life, theological insight, and rigorous thought in the present is yet lamentably understudied and underappreciated. But it is what I study, and here I both share the wisdom of this stream of theological perspectives and share the fruit of my own scholarly work.

The Victorine + Franciscan Theologians page is an ongoing effort to make available in one place videos & scholarship about and English translations of key Victorine & Franciscan figures and texts. The goal is to make the Victorine-Franciscan theological tradition, with its abundant intellectual & spiritual riches and its fearless & brilliant theologians, available and accessible.

A bit about me:

I serve as Director of Formation at Austin Center for Faith and Work.

Ph.D., Theology, Boston College (2018); M.Div., Duke Divinity School (2007); B.A., English, UT Austin (2002).

The best place to follow my writing in real time is my newsletter, Franciscan Options. See also My Works and/or my Academia page.

Received into the Catholic Church in April 2026, I previously worked in a variety of pastoral roles from Youth Minister to Senior Pastor at Methodist churches in Texas and North Carolina. I have taught theology courses at St. Mary's University (San Antonio, TX) and St. Edward's University (Austin, TX).

In my scholarship to date I’ve engaged figures like Bonaventure (in Pro Ecclesia), Jean-Louis Chrétien (in Modern Theology), and Augustine (also Pro Ecclesia). Dissertation is on Hugh of St. Victor and the centrality of the transformational and integrative work of Christ in his theology. Defend Herbert McCabe on God’s existence in Eclectic Orthodoxy. Popular articles in Christianity Today and Firebrand, and very many older ones for ministrymatters.com.

Some of my favorite topics:

  • The Franciscan Option as a wise and vital path for Christians in the present

  • Theology of work

  • Victorine theology as a resource for spiritual formation in the present

  • Trinity: the meaningfulness, reasonableness, history, and total spiritual relevance of the Christian doctrine of God. The Trinity has been well described by my teacher Khaled Anatolios as “meta-doctrine”: the widest, and actually unbounded, field of Christian study. My writing, teaching, and preaching are animated, however imperfectly, by love for the God named by this doctrine: the God of total goodness communicated in the person of Jesus Christ.

  • St. Bonaventure’s trinitarian theology and metaphysics

  • Hugh of St. Victor’s theology, and Hugh’s exploration in De Tribus Diebus of the form of human and cosmic transformation in Jesus Christ’s dying, burial, and rising

  • The Early Franciscan theological summa, the Summa Halensis (or Summa fratris Alexandri)

  • St. Augustine’s trinitarian spirituality, theology, & apologetics

  • Does God Exist? Human reasoning, experience and the reality of God. Natural theology for the win!

  • Victorine-Franciscan theological tradition: 12th-13th century Victorine and 13th & 14th century Franciscan theology

  • Franciscan Scotistic thought on the predestination of Christ & Mary

  • St. Anselm

  • Mystics and Metaphysicians: knowing God by faith & reason

  • Christian contemplative practice, and the Rosary

  • Jean-Louis Chrétien’s “Franciscan” phenomenology of Christ, beauty, & praise

  • Christ and “ecological conversion” in Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si'

  • the Latin Dionysian mystical tradition

  • Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda’s Mística Ciudad de Dios

  • Dorothy Day & Peter Maurin

  • things related to Jesus & the Bible :-)

Contact me about speaking, interviews, writing/editing projects, teaching or relevant theological questions via this form: