Oliver Davies, the professor of Christian doctrine at King's College, London, is a theologian whose research and writing has focused on the language of Christian texts and on the classical problems of metaphysical theology. His work has ranged from studies of medieval mysticism inspired by phenomenology to more systematic theology influenced by contemporary thinking in rabbinics and hermeneutics. Educated at Merton College, Oxford University, where he read German and Russian as an undergraduate, he went on to Wolfson College, where he specialized in contemporary German religious literature, taking his D.Phil. in theology at Oxford in 1986. He spent two years teaching at the University of Cologne before returning to his native Wales to teach, first, at the University of Wales at Bangor, and, then, at Lampeter, where he was appointed a lecturer in theology and religious studies in 1993. Named a senior lecturer two years later, he became a reader in 1997, a post he held until accepting his present professorship at London University in 2004. Dr. Davies has held visiting fellowships at Regent's Park College, Oxford, Clare Hall, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia. He is a fellow of the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture at Regent's Park and a life member of both Wolfson College and Clare Hall, as well as a trustee of the Spalding Trust. He has lectured widely throughout Britain and the United States, as well as in Russia, Germany, and Romania, and will deliver the 2007 Scottish Journal of Theology Lectures in Aberdeen on scriptural hermeneutics. Current projects include a workshop entitled "Athens to Jerusalem: Modes of Inquiry in Christianity and Judaism," which he is co-directing with C. T. Mathewes, with the support of the British Academy, and "Religion as Reading," a workshop being planned with Gavin Flood. Formerly co-editor of Logos: the Welsh Theological Review, Dr. Davies has contributed numerous articles to academic journals and essays to volumes of collected works. He has translated ten classic works in spirituality from Celtic languages or German into English, including Celtic Spirituality (2000), for which he received an award from the Catholic Press Association of North America, and served as general editor of two book series, The Spirituality of the Fathers (New City, 1991-1994) and Religion, Culture and Society (University of Wales Press, 1994-2000). Most recent of the eight volumes he has edited or co-edited is (with Denys Turner) Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation (2002), a study of the history of apophasis that examines its relationship with contemporary secular philosophy. Dr. Davies also is the author of five books, including God Within: The Mystical Tradition of Northern Europe (1988), which has been translated into Dutch and Italian, Meister Eckhart: Mystical Theologian (1991), Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales: The Origins of the Welsh Spiritual Tradition, a study supported by a Welsh Arts Council Literary Award, A Theology of Compassion: Metaphysics of Difference and the Renewal of Tradition (2003), and, most recently, The Creativity of God: World, Eucharist, Reason, a volume published by Cambridge University Press in 2004 in which the author argues for a contemporary scriptural cosmology.