J. Wentzel van Huyssteen emigrated from South Africa to the United States on 1 January 1992 to become Princeton Theological Seminary’s first James I. McCord Professor of Theology and Science. He has research degrees in philosophy (MA, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) and philosophical theology (PhD, Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and has specialized in philosophy of science and religious epistemology.
Dr. van Huyssteen was head of the Department of Religion at the University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, from 1972 through 1991. During this time he published numerous articles and several books. One of these Theology and the Justification of Faith: Constructing Theories in Systematic Theology (1989) was awarded the Andrew Murray Prize and the Venter Prize for Academic Excellence.
Since moving to Princeton in 1992 J. Wentzel van Huyssteen has won three Templeton Awards: for his Inaugural Address “Theology and Science: The Quest for a New Apologetics” and for two new courses he initiated at Princeton Theological Seminary: Theology and the New Physics and Theology and the Challenge of Darwinism. At Princeton Theological Seminary, van Huyssteen lectures in philosophical theology (and specifically on theology and science issues) on a full-time basis.
In January 1999 the Dutch Royal Academy for Arts and Sciences invited Wentzel van Huyssteen to become the chair of the International Committee for the Assessment of Theological Research in The Netherlands. In September 2000, Professor van Huyssteen was appointed to the worldwide board of advisors of the John Templeton Foundation.
Dr. van Huyssteen is a member of several national and international academic societies, including the Steering Committee of the Religion and Science Section of the American Academy of Religion; the American Theological Society; a life member of Clare Hall University of Cambridge England; a life member of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton; a founding member of the International Society of Science and Religion. He also serves on the board of directors of the Metanexus Institute of Science and Religion. In addition to serving on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, the Nederduits Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif and the Journal of Theology and Science, he edited the Encyclopedia for Religion and Science (MacMillan), published in 2003. He has authored numerous books, including The Shaping of Rationality: Toward Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science, which was chosen in 2004 for the John Templeton Foundation’s new Books of Distinction Program. In April of 2004 Dr. van Huyssteen delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, which were published in 2004 as Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology (Eerdmans). He is the first recipient of the Andrew Murray/Desmond Tutu Prize for Theology (April 2007).
J. Douglas Mastin
University of Edinburgh
Edited by Timothy Austen
