Samuel Kaldas

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, LECTURER IN Philosophy & Theology

EDUCATION:

BA (Honours) in Philosophy USyd
Grad Cert. in Orthodox Theology, SAGOTC
PhD in Early Modern Philosophy of Religion at USyd
Coptic Fellow of Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham

Dr. Samuel Kaldas is Director of Research & Community Engagement at St Cyril’s. He studied philosophy, ancient history, and Orthodox theology before completing a PhD on the early modern philosophers of religion known as the “Cambridge Platonists”. In 2022, he was a Distinguished Research Fellow of Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center, writing on the development of Coptic eucharistic theology in the 19th and 20th centuries.

RESEARCH & SUPERVISION INTERESTS

Philosophy of Religion; Patristics; Desert Fathers; Religious Epistemology; Coptic Orthodox Theology; Science and Religion.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy: Inventing the Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge Studies in Religion and Philosophy, vol. 2. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2023.

(Co-authored with Stephen Meawad). “Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Church and State.” Palgrave-Macmillan Handbook of Religion and State. Forthcoming, 2023.

“From Garments of Flesh to Garments of Light: Hardness, Subtleness and the Soul-Body Relation in Macarius-Symeon.” In The Unity of Body and Soul in Patristic and Byzantine Thought, edited by Anna Usacheva, S. Bhayro and J. Ulrich. Contexts of Ancients and Medieval Anthropology, vol. 1. Leipzig: Brill, 2020.

“‘Draughts of Love and Divine Revelations’: Experiential Theology in Matta Al-Miskīn and Fayek M. Ishak.” In Copts in Modernity, edited by Nelly van Doorn-Harder, Lisa Agaiby and Mark Swanson. Leiden: Brill 2020.

“A ‘Strange New Philosophy’ of Forgiveness: Insights from St John Chrysostom on Forgiving the Unrepentant.” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 3 (2019): 261–271.