Matthew Puffer

Matthew Puffer received a BS in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University, an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Theology, Ethics, and Culture) from the University of Virginia. Prior to joining the Christ College faculty he was a Catherine of Siena Fellow in the Ethics Program at Villanova University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

His research and teaching explore competing normative visions of the human person, especially rival versions of the imago dei and human dignity and their implications for issues in biomedical, economic, environmental, and war and peace ethics. He is currently working on two book projects: Ethics in Crisis, Ethics in Hope: Bonhoeffer’s Unfinished Theological Ethics and the Future of Human Dignity and Augustine on the Image of God: Scriptural Imagination, Moral Formation, and the Development of Doctrine.

Puffer co-edited Comparative Religious Ethics: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies and has published in Modern Theology, the International Journal of Systematic Theology, the Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, the Harvard Theological Review, and in edited volumes.

Prof. Puffer was coordinator of the First-Year Program in 2020-22 and teaches a variety of interdisciplinary seminars, including: “The Christian Tradition,” “Interpretation: Self, Culture, and Society,” “Science, Technology, and Society,” “Christian Theology and the Moral Life: Augustine of Hippo,” “Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics,” “Imprisoned Minds” (Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program), and “Science and Religion in Cambridge” (Study Abroad).