David Bradshaw, Ph.D
575 Scarsdale Road,10707,Yonkers,NY,US

The trustees, faculty, and students of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary welcome the public to the Commencement of the Class of 2018, Saturday, May 19. Ceremonies will begin at 2:00 p.m., with a “Prayer of Thanksgiving” in Three Hierarchs Chapel, followed at 2:30 p.m. by Commencement Exercises in the Metropolitan Philip Auditorium of the John G. Rangos Family Building.

Our commencement speaker this year is David Bradshaw, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, and a member of St. Athanasius Orthodox Church in Nicholasville, KY. Professor Bradshaw earned his doctorate at the University of Texas, Austin, and he currently specializes in ancient and medieval philosophy, philosophy of religion, and the interactions of theology and philosophy.

Professor Bradshaw is a contributor to Turning East: Contemporary Philosophers and the Ancient Christian Faith (ed. Rico Vitz; SVS Press, 2012). He is also the author of Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom,which focuses on a comparative history of philosophical thought in the two halves of Christendom, East and West, and which won the Morris D. Forkosch prize, sponsored by the Journal of the History of Ideas. Additionally, he is the editor of Philosophical Theology and the Christian Tradition: Russian and Western Perspectives and Ethics and the Challenge of Secularism: Russian and Western Perspectives.

His current research focuses on the ways that ancient Greek philosophy shaped medieval philosophy and religious thought, and how these, in turn, contributed to the formation of modernity. Most of his work to date has been on the philosophical roots of the division between the Greek-speaking (eastern) and Latin-speaking (western) branches of Christianity. 

Over the next few years his hope is to explore more fully the implications of Eastern Christian thought for contemporary philosophy of religion, and ultimately to use this work (both historical and contemporary) as a basis for a new analysis of precisely why modern philosophy rejected traditional religious belief, including in what respects that development was and was not justified.

View an absorbing interview of Dr. Bradshaw, about the connection between philosophy and theology, conducted in Moscow and published on the website, “Philosopher’s Corner” in March 2015