Jesse Couenhoven

Jesse Couenhoven is a Professor of Theology at Villanova University. He earned his Bachelor’s in psychology at Oberlin College, a Master’s degree in historical theology from Yale Divinity School, and a PhD from Yale’s Religion Department.

Couenhoven has published articles on Barthian, Augustinian, and feminist theologies of sin and grace, freedom, natural law, virtue ethics, forgiveness, and retributive justice. He recently edited a focus issue on forgiveness for the Journal of Religious Ethics and published a book on responsibility and inherited sins, titled Stricken by Sin, Cured by Christ. He has another book entitled Predestination: A Guide for the Perplexed which focuses on how sharing authorial responsibility for crucial features of one's personal narratives is often a blessing, and undermines neither one's freedom nor one's praiseworthiness.

Couenhoven also spends a fair amount of time arguing about the implications of his work on "lack of control" for the concept of patient autonomy with members of the medical community.

Areas of Interest:

My main interests are in the areas traditionally known among theologians as soteriology, anthropology, and ethics. I publish on Augustine's thought, especially in his anti-Pelagian period, and on the thought of Karl Barth. The topics I write about include Free Will, Personal Responsibility, Theories of Punishment, Doctrines of Grace, Predestination, Forgiveness, and Ethical Theory (natural law, deontology, virtue ethics).

Education:

• Ph.D., Religious Ethics, Yale University
• M.A.R., Historical Theology, Yale Divinity School
• B.A., Psychology, Oberlin College

Selected Publications

• Predestination: A Guide for the Perplexed, T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2018. This book offers a historical overview and a constructive appropriation of predestination as a doctrine of hope. My central argument is that sharing authorial responsibility for features of our personal narratives can be a blessing that need not undermine our freedom or praiseworthiness. My work on this topic has been funded by a “Big Questions on Free Will” grant from Florida State University.
• Stricken by Sin, Cured by Christ: Agency, Necessity, and Culpability in Augustinian Theology, Oxford University Press, 2013. I offer a novel reading of Augustine’s conceptions of inherited evil and the bound will, then formulate non-volitionalist accounts of responsibility and freedom that make it possible to retrieve central aspects of Augustine’s views, and to recognize the humanity of his doctrine of original sin.
• “The Justice in Mercy,” Journal of Religious Ethics, focus issue on mercy, ed. Darlene Weaver. Forthcoming.
• “Responsibility,” The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics, ed. William Schweiker and Maria Antonaccio. Forthcoming.
• “Augustine’s Moral Psychology.” Augustinian Studies, 48:1-2, 2017, 23-44.
• “Augustine of Hippo.” in The Routledge Companion to Free Will, ed. Meghan Griffith, Neil Levy, and Kevin Timpe, NY: Routledge, 2016, 247-57.