Jack Louis Pappas

A photo of Jack Louis Pappas, a doctoral graduate of the systematic theology track in the Theology Department at Fordham University

Jack Pappas graduated with a Ph.D. in Systematics from the Department of Theology at Fordham University in Spring 2024. He is a systematic theologian with primary research interests at the intersection of fundamental theology, continental philosophy of religion, and theological metaphysics. Jack's dissertation focused on the theological reception of Martin Heidegger in the thought of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar and its influence on recent French phenomenologists such as Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Falque. Jack is also interested in patristics, theological and philosophical hermeneutics and the influence of personalist philosophy on modern Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology. 

Dissertation

“Through Phenomenology to Theology: Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the French Theological Turn”

Specialty: Systematic Theology

Director: Aristotle Papanikolaou

  • B.A. Philosophy - College of the Holy Cross, 2013  

    M.A. Philosophy - Boston College, 2014

    M.T.S. Historical Theology - Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, 2017

    Ph.D. - Fordham University, 2024

  • “Traversals: Maurice Blondel & Erich Przywara at the Intersection of Phenomenology, Revelation and Theological Metaphysics,” Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift (Forthcoming)

    “Sergei Bulgakov’s Fragile Absolute: Kenosis, Difference, and Positive Disassociation,” Building the House of Wisdom: Sergei Bulgakov and Contemporary Theology, ed. Barbara Hallensleben, Regula M. Zwahlen, Aristotle Papanikolaou, and Pantelis Katalaitzidis (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2024), pp. 107-122.

    “Rahner’s Embodied Subject: Carnal Phenomenology and Rethinking Humanism ‘Otherwise,’” The Human in a Dehumanizing World: Reexamining Theological Anthropology and Its Implications, College Theology Society Annual Volume 67, ed. Jessica Coblentz and Daniel Horan OFM (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis), 60-71.

    “Between the Flesh and the Lived Body: Henry and Falque on the Phenomenology of Incarnation,” Journal for the Continental Philosophy of Religion (2020) vol. 2: 73-90.

  • Research Fellowship, Fordham Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2022-2023

    Senior Teaching Fellowship, Fordham Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2021-2022

    Member of Phi Kappa Phi, 2020-Present

    Summer Research Fellowship, Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University, 2018