Email: jacob.phillips@stmarys.ac.uk
Tel: 020 8240 2325
Research
Areas of research supervision
- Systematic/Dogmatic Theology
- 20th Century German Theology
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- Joseph Ratzinger
- John Henry Newman
- Theology and Culture
Research profile
Jacob works across a diverse range of sub-disciplinary areas, mostly within systematic and philosophical theology. He is particularly concerned with issues of human self-understanding, subjectivity, conscience and obedience, with particular reference to the work of Erich Pryzwara, Joseph Ratzinger, John Henry Newman, and others.
Selected Publications
Books
- John Henry Newman and the English Sensibility: Distant Scene, London: Bloomsbury, 2023.
- Obedience is Freedom, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022
- Simplicity and Wisdom: Human Subjectivity in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, London: T&T Clark Series in Systematic Theology, forthcoming 2019
- Mary, Star of Evangelization: Tilling the Soil and Sowing the Seed, Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2018
- Translation: Benedict XVI and Peter Seewald, Last Testament: In His Own Words, London; Bloomsbury, 2016
Articles and Chapters
- ‘Influences’ in The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Ratzinger, edited by Uwe Michael Lang and Daniel Cardó (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024).
- ‘Lumen Gentium: The Church as Mystical Body and Communion of the Faithful’, in Oxford Handbook to Joseph Ratzinger, edited by Francesca Aran Murphy and Tracey Rowland (Oxford: Oxford University Press forthcoming 2024).
- ‘The Human Person in Christian Theology: Revelation and Historicity’ in Human Dignity Across the Islamic and Christian Traditions, edited by Afifi al-Akiti and Maria Power, forthcoming.
- ‘Synodality and Incompleteness: Some Reflections on the Instrumentum Laboris for the Synod on Synodality’ in Synodality and the Recovery of Vatican II: A new way for Catholics, edited by Stephen McKinney, Beata Toth, and Thomas O'Loughlin (Dublin: Messenger Publications 2024).
- ‘Approaching Ratzinger’s Interculturality through Newman’s Power of Assimilation’, in John Henry Newman and Joseph Ratzinger, edited by Matthew Levering, Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming 2024.
- ‘Immanuel Kant; Distinguishing verum and ens’ in Joseph Ratzinger in Dialogue with Philosophical Traditions: From Plato to Vattimo, edited by Alejandro Sada, Rudy Albino de Assunção, & Tracey Rowland, London: T&T Clark, 2023.
- ‘Reflections on the Emerging Theology of Synodality’ in New Blackfriars, Early view available on https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12859.
- 'Bonhoeffer’s Understanding of Chalcedon in Dialogue with Contemporary Catholic Christology’ in Bonhoeffer and Christology: Revisiting Chalcedon, edited by Matthias Grebe, Nadine Hamilton, & Christian Schlenker, London: T&T Clark, 2023.
- ‘After Etsi Veluti si Deus Daretur: Joseph Ratzinger and Robert Cardinal Sarah’ in Joseph Ratzinger and the Future of African Theology, edited by Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai and Matthew Levering, Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2022.
- ‘Service in Perfect Freedom: The Precious Gift of the Caroline Divines’ in The Anglican Patrimony in Catholic Communion: The Gift of the Ordinariates, edited by Tracey Rowland, London: Bloomsbury, 2021.
- ‘John Henry Newman and the English Sensibility’ in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Volume 24, Issue 3, pp. 108-129.
- ‘Raymond Williams' Reading of Newman's The Idea of a University’, New Blackfriars 102: pp. 108-122, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12564.
- ‘Theology and Culture in Newman’s Defense of the Immaculate Conception: An Essay in Commemoration of the Canonization of Saint John Henry Newman’, Nova et Vetera Fall 2019 (Vol. 17, No. 4).
- ‘Heteronomy and Conscience in the Third Reich in Joseph Ratzinger and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’ in Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions, edited by Matthew Levering and Emery de Gaal, Steubenville:Emmaus Academic, forthcoming 2019.
- ‘Theological Dynamics for Understanding the Roman Catholic Episcopate in Britain’ in Episkope: the theory and practice of translocal leadership, edited by Roger Standing and Paul Goodliff, London: SCM Press, forthcoming 2020.
- ‘Confirmation in the Spirit by Con-formation to Mary: The Gifts of the Spirit in Marian Perspective’ in Marian Studies 2017 issue, forthcoming.
- ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer the Londoner: A Discussion of the London Period 1933-1935’, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Jahrbuch Volume 6, forthcoming 2019.
- ‘Having to be thus: On Bonhoeffer’s Reading of Goethe’s Iphegenia in Tauris, Oxford Journal of Literature and Theology, Volume 32, Issue 3, 1 September 2018, Pages 357–370.
- ‘My Enemy’s Enemy is my Friend: Martin Luther and Joseph Ratzinger on the Bi-Dimensionality of Conscience’, Heythrop Journal, 2017.
- ‘A Bride Bedecked with her Jewels: Inculturation and Popular Piety as a “locus theologicus” in Evangelii Gaudium’ in Pope Francis and the Renewal of the Church, edited by Alana Harris and Duncan Dormor, Mahwah:Paulist Press, 2017.
- ‘Interreligious Reading After Vatican II with John Henry Newman’s Two Habits of Mind’, Journal of Scriptural Reasoning: SR and Vatican II issue, November 2016.
- ‘The Cup of Suffering: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship and German Expressionism’ in Christianity, Modernism and Apocalypse, (Studies in Religion and the Arts Series), edited by: Erik Tonning, Brill Publications, 2014.
- ‘Pierced Side Hermeneutics: Reading the Scriptures in the Spirit of Luther' in The Bible: Culture, Community and Society, edited by: Angus Paddison and Neil Messer, T&T Clark, 2013.
- ‘Dispossessed Science, Dispossessed Self: Wilhelm Dilthey and Bonhoeffer’s Christology Lectures of 1933’ in Ontology and Ethics: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Contemporary Scholarship edited by: Mike Mawson and Adam Clark, Pickwick Publications, 2013.
- ‘Being Scorned by One’s Own is Perfect Joy: the Strange Case of Dorothy Day’, Journal of Religious History, Issue 37: 528–540, December 2013.