Biography

Reinhard Huetter is a native of Lichtenfels, Germany. He studied theology, philosophy, and German literature and philology at the University of Erlangen, the University of Bonn, and Duke University. He received his MDiv equiv. (best of the class) from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria in 1986, his Dr. theol. (summa cum laude) in 1990, and his Habilitation in 1995, both from the University of Erlangen. He taught for nine years theological ethics and systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and for seventeen years systematic theology at Duke University Divinity School. In 2004, he and his wife entered into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

Huetter was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Religion of the University of Chicago, a visiting fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, and a visiting professor at the University of Jena, Germany. He held the the Robert J. Randall Distinguished Chair in Christian Culture at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Chester and Margaret Paluch Chair of Theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary. He is a member of the American Theological Society, was a founding member and served as president of the Academy of Catholic Theology, is an ordinary academician of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and is a faculty fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology of The Catholic University of America. He is a member of the International Theological Commission, 2021–2026.

His teaching and research focuses on fundamental theological questions of the relationship between faith and reason, nature and grace, revelation and faith, theology and philosophy, dogma and history, on questions of theological anthropology (grace and freedom), and the theology and epistemology of faith. He has an abiding interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and has, in more recent years, developed also an intense interest in the thought of John Henry Newman.

Huetter is the author of numerous books, most recently Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (2012), Bound for Beatitude: A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and Ethics (2019), Aquinas on Transubstantiation: The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (2019), and Newman and Us: A Guide for Our Times (2020). He has contributed numerous chapters to handbooks and edited collections, and has published many scholarly articles in theological journals in the United States, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, and Chile. He has served as editor of Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology and as co-editor of Nova et Vetera: The English Edition of the International Theological Journal. He is presently working on a book on the development of doctrine and on a theological treatise on the theology of faith.

He is married to Nancy Heitzenrater Huetter; they have four children and six grandchildren.

Latest Publications

Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (2012)

Bound for Beatitude: A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and Ethics (2019)

Aquinas on Transubstantiation: The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (2019)

Newman and Us: A Guide for Our Times (2020)