I (Matt Boulter) am a former Presbyterian minister in Austin (having recently demitted my orders in the South Texas Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America), the husband of a beautiful woman Bouquet (who has the sensibilities of a medieval troubador, with a smattering of hobbit-like qualities, combined with an embodied concern for the poor and oppressed) and the father of Isabella Ruth (age four) and Eleanor Bay (age five months).

We live in urban Austin, and I have just ended a wonderful three year pastoral season with Christ the King Presbyterian Church (some of my sermons can be listened to by going here) in Southwest Austin in order to seek Anglican orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. To that end I am taking about a year’s worth of classes at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest dealing with Anglican worship and history.

I love to run, to read, to drink (scotch, bourbon, dark beers and hoppy bears), and sometimes to smoke. We love to work in our garden, and long for more time to do so.

I am currently working 20 hours per week at Starbucks, and this is proving to be a stimulating experience indeed.

My most influential Christian thinkers are: C.S. Lewis, GK Chesterton, Peter Leithart, Rowan Williams, Tim Keller, Walker Percy, N.T. Wright, and Eugene Peterson. (Honorable mention: John Milbank, Wendell Berry, Flannery O’Connor, Alexander Schmemann, William Cavanaugh, James Jordan.)

I studied philosophy (and finance) at the University of Texas, and theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

A current interest of mine is tracing the ways in which Augustine’s doctrine of God (especially divine simplicity and God’s ousia) differs from that of the East (with its emphasis on the energies of God and also their distinctive understanding of hypostasis), and how these divergent understandings led to subsequent developments in the East and in the West. (The claim of many Eastern Orthodox writers is that much of the philosopohical — and cultural and spiritual — impoverishment in the West is traceable to very early emphases in how God is defined, articulated and understood in Latin theology.)

I am also convinced of the centrality of liturgical worship and the sacraments in the Christian life, as well as in the church’s witness to a watching world.

This blog is dedicated primarily to a discussion of (things related to) political theology, particularly with respect to Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed tradition.