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Willemien Otten

Willemien Otten is Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where she has taught since 2007 and served as the director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion between 2017 and 2023. From 2011 to 2022 Otten served as the international president of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies (SPES). Her most recent book is Thinking Nature and the Nature of Thinking: From Eriugena to Emerson (Stanford, 2020).

Essays

Christianity, History, Nature: Responsible Ways to Address Environmental Concerns

Both books evoke a sense of nature that likewise challenges and transcends conventional notions of creation as a passive, static object of divine activity. They do so by having nature engage with and even touching on the divine, or at least creating the conditions that allow such a touch to happen.