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2009 Bitar Lecture Speaker

Dr. James K.A. Smith

R.J. Snell

Dr. James K.A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he teaches philosophy of social science, philosophical theology and hermeneutics. Smith is the author of The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (InterVarsity Press, 2000), Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation (Routledge, 2002), Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Baker Academic/Paternoster, 2004), Jacques Derrida: Live Theory (Continuum, 2005), and Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Baker Academic, 2006). His new book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, will appear in summer 2009. He has contributed to Christianity Today, First Things, Books & Culture, and the Christian Century, as well as appearing on the NPR program, Speaking of Faith. He and his wife, Deanna, have four children and are committed inner-city dwellers concerned with urban renewal.

In addition to Smith as Bitar Lecturer, we welcome philosopher R. J. Snell (Eastern University) as Smith’s respondent. Snell is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Eastern University in Philadelphia, as of this year. From 2003 to 2008, he served on the philosophy faculty at North Park University in Chicago, as well as directing their Honors program. He holds a Ph.D. from Marquette University, M.A. from Boston College, and an undergraduate degree from Liberty University. Snell is author of Through a Glass Darkly: Bernard Lonergan and Richard Rorty on Knowing without a God's-Eye View (Marquette UP, 2006), and has presented numerous papers at conferences such as those of the Evangelical Theological Society. Current writing projects include intersections in the thought of Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor, and an Augustinian-Thomistic account of an epistemology and agency of love. Snell, like Smith, hails from Canada. He is married to Amy, and the two have three young children.