Published by Matthew S. Beal
I am a Practical Theologian currently a doctoral candidate working toward a Ph.D. in that discipline at Boston University School of Theology. I am also a Licensed Professional Counselor and a pastoral psychotherapist. My academic passions focus on the intersection of psychology and theology in order to foster the church's task of spiritual formation. I am a pro-feminist scholar, particularly interested in gender studies, racial justice, privilege and oppression, social ethics, and liberative transformation in men's embodiment of masculinity. My work is rooted in social Trinitarian theology and aims to foster loving relationships at the personal, community, and societal levels (including the ecological). Such relationships as I envision them are characterized by Christ-like perichoresis and kenosis (I am likely to deal with those concepts often in my blogging and other writing, but briefly - perichoresis is the mutual indwelling love of Creator, Christ, and Spirit in the one Triune God; kenosis is the self-emptying love of Jesus manifest in the incarnation and crucifixion). My understanding of these ideas is formed by two rather distinctive but mutually enriching strains of thought. The first is the Christian tradition with its Scripture and practices; the second is poststructuralism.
More importantly, I am a husband to the most brilliant woman I know, father to two alarmingly cute children, and a lover of music, mountains, and wilderness.
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