Faculty Profiles


Photo of Mark Talbot for faculty web page

Mark Talbot, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Philosophy Emeritus

On Faculty since 1992, Emeritus status in 2023
630.752.5892


mark.talbot@wheaton.edu

My areas of academic expertise include philosophical theology, philosophical psychology, the epistemologies of the early modern philosophers, and the works of David Hume, St. Augustine, and Jonathan Edwards. I am especially interested in how Christian philosophers should think about the intersection between philosophy and theology, with particular emphasis on exploring the similarities and contrasts that are found in the thinking of the medieval Christian philosophical theologians and the (still little-known) Protestant scholastics about that intersection. My current research includes investigating the nature of persons, integrating the latest findings in developmental psychology into epistemology, articulating the interrelations between Christian grace and human freedom, and drawing out and defending some of the philosophical implications of Reformation and post-Reformation Reformed theology, such as the doctrine of everlasting punishment.

University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D., 1993

Saint Louis University
Graduate study in philosophy

Seattle Pacific College
B.A., English Literature, 1972

  • Epistemology
  • Early Modern Philosophy
  • Ethics
  • Philosophical Psychology
  • Medieval Philosophy
  • Philosophical Theology
  • Society of Christian Philosophers
  • Evangelical Philosophical Society
  • Issues and World Views in Philosophy
  • Suffering
  • Nature of Persons
  • Historical Seminar: Augustine’s Earlier Writings
  • Augustine’s Confessions
  • Historical Seminar: Jonathan Edwards’s Religious Affections
  • Historical Seminar: Augustine’s Later Writings
  • Historical Seminar: Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment

As a Christian Scholars’ Fund Scholar, I am currently writing a four-volume series on Suffering and the Christian Life. The first volume, entitled, When the Stars Disappear: Help and Hope from Stories of Suffering in Scripture is available now. The second volume, Give Me Understanding that I May Live: Situating Our Suffering within God’s Redemptive Plan will be published near the end of 2021, with the last two volumes to follow. You may go to the CSF website to order the first volume as well as to view some video and read some of my other publications.

When the Stars Disappear: Help and Hope from Stories of Suffering in Scripture
Mark Talbot, 2020

Why Personhood Runs Deeper than Neurology, Didaktikos
Mark Talbot, 2020

Good Reading, Didakitkos
Mark Talbot, 2019

Broken Wholeness, in When Suffering is Redemptive: Stories of How Anguish and Pain Accomplish God's Mission
Mark Talbot, 2016

When All Hope Has Died: Meditations on Profound Christian Suffering, in For the Fame of God's Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper
Mark Talbot, 2010

All the Good that is Ours in Christ': Seeing God's Gracious Hand in the Hurts that Others Do to Us, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God
Mark Talbot, 2006

Learning from the Ruined Image: Moral Anthropology after the Fall, Personal Identity in Theological Perspective
Mark Talbot, 2006

The Indispensability of the Trinity, Modern Reformation
Mark R. Talbot and R. Scott Clark, 2003

Growing in the Grace and Knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, For all the saints: Christian spirituality and evangelical theology
Mark Talbot, 2003

True Freedom: The Liberty that Scripture Portrays as Worth Having, Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity
Mark Talbot, 2003