Dr Pui Him Ip

Biography

I am Director of Tutorial Programmes at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity, and Research Associate at St Edmund's College. For the 2022-23 academic year, I am a Visiting Lecturer in Patristics in the Department of Theology & Religious Studies, King's College London. Before taking up my current position in 2019, I was Departmental Lecturer in Patristics at the Faculty of Theology and Religion and Tutor in Theology at Christ Church, University of Oxford.

I received my PhD in Theology from the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Rowan Williams, with a dissertation tracing the development of the doctrine of divine simplicity in the ante-Nicene period up to Origen of Alexandria. Before that, I earned my MA (with distinction) in Philosophy and Christian Theology at Heythrop College, University of London, with a dissertation on Basil of Caesarea's Apophaticism supervised by Johannes Hoff. My initial academic formation was in the Natural Sciences as I read for a MSci in theoretical physics at Imperial College London.

I am originally from Hong Kong but I have lived in the United Kingdom since 2002.

Research Interests

• Patristic Philosophy and Theology
• Origen of Alexandria and the Origenian Tradition
• Scriptural Interpretation and Natural Philosophy in Late Antiquity 
• Ressourcement (Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox)
• Science and Religion

Current research projects:

(1) Metaphysics of Simplicity: God, Human Spirituality, Nature. In my first book, I traced the philosophical developments and theological debates around early Christian conceptions of divine simplicity. But one important and rather neglected question emerged from my study of divine simplicity: how is God's simplicity connected to other common notions of simplicity? Several particular notions of simplicity come to mind: (i) simplicity as an ethical and ascetical ideal, (ii) simplicity as a criterion for theory selection (e.g. Occam's Razor), and (iii) simplicity as a description of mathematical (e.g. a geometrical point or the number 1) and physical (e.g. indivisible fundamental unit in nature) entities? The culmination of this project is to propose a metaphysics of perfection that set a philosophical and theological foundation for clarifying the conceptual continuity between divine simplicity and other common notions of simplicity. 

Project outputs:

1. ‘Divine Simplicity: the Eastern View’ in Adam Johnson (ed.), Five Views on Divine Simplicity (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, forthcoming 2025). 

(2) Ecclesiastes as Natural Philosophy in Origen of Alexandria's Tripartite Solomonic Philosophy. I am researching for a monograph that excavates a forgotten tradition of early Christian natural philosophy which has its root in Origen's philosophical exegesis of the Book of Ecclesiastes. In the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Origen famously mapped a threefold division of philosophy (Ethics, Physics, Epoptics) onto the three Solomonic books in the Bible (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs). This Origenian philosophical hermeneutic endured in late antique and early medieval reception of Solomonic wisdom literature. How did Ecclesiastes emerge as a natural-philosophical text alongside Genesis in early Christianity? What can this body of exegetical literature tell us about the study of nature in early Christianity: its method, scope, content, and relation to other Late Antique natural-philosophical enterprises? Where is the place for the study of nature in early Christian paideia and its associated account of spiritual progress?

Project outputs:

1. 'Ecclesiastes as Solomonic Physics: Shadows of an Origenian theory in later Patristic Exegesis of Eccl 1,9-10' in Alfons Fürst (ed.), Origeniana Tertia Decima: Origen and Philosophy: A Complex Relation. Proceedings of the 13th International Origen Congress, Münster, 15-19 August, 2022, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming).
2. ‘Origen, Sophiology, and the three senses of archē in Book I of the Commentary on John’, invited presentation at the Colloquium on Early Christian Philosophy (26-28 May 2023), University of Notre Dame London Global Gateway
3. ‘Origen’s de Princ. II,1,1-3 and Ecclesiastes as Solomonic Physics’, conference presentation at The 4th International Patristic Conference: The Christians of the Patristic Period in Relation to Nature (18-20 Oct 2022), The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland

Research Supervision

| am open to supervising graduate research in early Christian philosophy and theology, especially in the follow areas: figures or themes connected to Origen of Alexandria, dialogue between early Christian thought and modern science, and natural philosophy in early Christianity.

Teaching 

Graduate teaching

For 2022-23, I taught part of the MPhil module 'Christians in Late Antique Alexandria' (part of MPhil in Religions of Late Antiquity)

For 2019-20, I taught the MPhil module 'Theology and the Natural Sciences' (part of MPhil in Christian Theology).

Publications

Monograph

Origen and the Emergence of Divine Simplicity before Nicaea (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022). Paperback forthcoming Aug 2024.

Reviews: Scottish Journal of Theology, Reviews in Theology and Religion, The Journal for Theological Studies, Modern Theology, Reading Religion, Church History, Themelios

Special Journal Issue

(Sole editor) ‘Re-thinking Origen’, Modern Theology 38:2 (April 2022), 189-482 (editor’s introductory essay: “Thinking with Origen Today: Hermeneutical Challenges and Future Directions”).

 (Co-edited with Darren Sarisky & Austin Stevenson) ‘Theological Genealogies of Modernity’, Modern Theology 39:4 (October 2023), 573-795. 

Peer-reviewed articles

1. ‘Origen’s Johannine Trinitarian Theology of Love’, Modern Theology 38:2 (April 2022): 260-81.
2. ‘“Arianism” Ante-Litteram in Origen’s Peri Archōn 4.4.1’, Journal of Theological Studies 72:1 (April 2021), 247-78.
3.  ‘Divine Simplicity in Athenagoras of Athens’ Legatio pro Christianis’, Studia Patristica 100 (Leuven: Peeters, 2020), 61-70.
4. ‘Reimagining Divine Simplicity in Trinitarian Theology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 18:3 (July 2016), 274-89. (Winner of the 2016 Colin Gunton Memorial Essay Prize)

Book chapters

1. ‘Physics as Spiritual Exercise’ in After Science and Religion, edited by Peter Harrison and John Milbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 282-98.
2. ‘Origen against Origen? Origen’s paradoxical Legacy in Athanasius’ exegesis of Prov. 8.22 in Contra Arianos 2’ in Perspectives on Origen in the History of his Reception, edited by Alfons Fürst (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2021), 117-32.
3. ‘On the Patristic faithfulness of Christos Yannaras’ Prosopo-centric Ontology: A Methodological Exploration’ in Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture, edited by Andreas Andreopoulos and Demetrios Harper (London: Routledge, 2019), 41-55.
4. ‘Identifying the Apophatic Impulse in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy: The Lecture on Ethics as an Interpretative Key’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein between Analytic Philosophy and Apophaticism, edited by Sotiris Mitralexis (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 81-106.

Book Reviews

1. The Oxford Handbook of Origen, Ronald E. Heine and Karen Jo Torjesen (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. In Journal of Theological Studies (forthcoming 2023).
2. Giovanni Hermanin de Reichenfeld, The Spirit, the World and the Trinity: Origen’s and Augustine’s Understanding of the Gospel of John.. Studia Traditionis Theologiae 40. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. In Theologische Revue 119 (Nov 2023). 
3. ‘Back to the Fathers: The Nature of Historical Understanding in 20^th Century Patristic Ressourcement’, Reviews in Religion and Theology 23:1 (January 2016), 4-13.  [Review Article of Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance. Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 and Jason Robert Radcliff, Thomas F. Torrance and the Church Fathers: A Reformed, Evangelical and Ecumenical Reconstruction of the Patristic Tradition. Cambridge: James Clark, 2015.]
4. Cappadocian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, Doru Costache and Philip Kariatlis (eds.). Sydney: St. Andrew's Orthodox Press, 2013. In Reviews in Religion and Theology 22.4 (Sep 2015), 322-25.

Encyclopaedia Entry

‘Natural Theology’ in The T&T Clark Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology, edited by Paul Allen (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2024)