Professor Olli-Pekka Vainio

Olli-Pekka Vainio, Th.D. is Professor of Systematic Theology in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki and a Docent in Ecumenical Theology. His research is focused on Contemporary Systematic and Analytic Theology, Theological Epistemology, Theology of the Reformation, and Political Theology.

His current research project focuses on ideological and religious extremism and worldview/belief formation in contemporary society.

Olli-Pekka is a Member of the Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton, where he was a resident scholar in 2008 and 2016–2017. In the research project on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology, he was involved in an astrobiology research project funded by the US space agency NASA which enabled the latter visit. Read NASA needs this theologian and Cosmology in Theological Perspective Understanding Our Place in the Universe.

He was a visiting faculty member at the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford 2011–2012 and a member of the Philosophical Psychology, Morality, and Politics Unit 2008–2013, which was one of the National Centres of Excellence in Research funded by the Academy of Finland. He is a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Olli-Pekka is the author of multiple books, including Beyond Fideism: Negotiable Religious Identities (2010), Cosmology in Theological Perspective: Understanding Our Place in the Universe (2018), Theological Perspectives on Free Will: Compatibility, Christology, and Community (2023), and Faith in Certain Terms (2023).

Olli-Pekka earned his Th.D. in Theology from the University of Helsinki in 2004 with his dissertation Justification and Participation in Christ: The Development of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification from Luther to the Formula of Concord (1580). Read Justification and Participation in Christ: The Development of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification from Luther to the Formula of Concord (1580).

He has published a large number of monographs and articles in the fields of dogmatics and philosophy of religion in Finnish and English. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Systematic Theology, Kerygma und Dogma, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, and the Journal of Analytic Theology.

Watch Olli- Pekka Vainio – Is Virtuous Disagreement Possible? Read We are part of a cosmological machine that is not interested in humans” — Theologian Olli-Pekka Vainio ponders where life can flourish and what will follow from that.

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