George Pattison

George Linsley Pattison (born 1950) is a retired English theologian and Anglican priest. His last post prior to retirement was as Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. He was previously Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. From 2017 to 2019 he was a Senior Co-Fund Fellow at the Max Weber Center at the University of Erfurt. He has also been an Affiliate Professor in Systematic Theology at the University of Copenhagen (2011–) and an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Theology at the University of St Andrews (2021–).

Early life and education He holds Bachelor of Divinity and MA degrees from the University of Edinburgh. He completed his PhD degree at the University of Durham.

Academic career Pattison was Dean of the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge (1991–2001), and then an associate professor at the University of Århus (2002–03).

In 2004, Pattison succeeded John Webster as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. He was also a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford from 2004 to 2013.

Pattison became 1640 Chair of Divinity at the University of Glasgow in 2013, succeeding Werner Jeanrond who then became Master of St Benet's Hall at the University of Oxford in 2012. In 2017, Pattison gave the Bampton Lectures at the University of Oxford; the series was titled "A Phenomenology of the Devout Life". These have now been published as first of a three part "Philosophy of Christian Life" under the same title. Parts 2 and 3 are entitled "A Rhetorics of the Word" and "A Metaphysics of Love".

Pattison's works range from historical, theological and philosophical engagement with the critical reception of German Idealism in such figures as Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to theological studies of the aesthetics of film and the visual arts. His latest work has used existential phenomenology to explore themes of ontology, language, love and the meaning of God.

Selected works

Art, Modernity and Faith (1991) Kierkegaard: the Aesthetic and the Religious (Palgrave Macmillan, 1992) Agnosis: Theology in the Void (Palgrave Macmillan, 1996) Kierkegaard and the Crisis of Faith (1997) The End of Theology and the Task of Thinking about God (SCM Press, 1998) Anxious Angels: A Retrospective View of Religious Existentialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) The Later Heidegger (2000) A Short Course in the Philosophy of Religion (2001) A Metaphysics of Love (OUP, 2021) Conversations with Dostoevsky on God, Russia, Literature, and Life (OUP, 2024) Heidegger and Kierkegaard - Elements in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (CUP, 2025)