James Kang Hoon Lee

Professor of the History of Early Christianity
Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor
Director, Graduate Program in Religious Studies

Email

jklee@smu.edu

Phone

214-768-1400

Education

Ph.D., University of Notre Dame; M.A., Catholic University of America; B.A., University of Notre Dame

Teaching Specialties

History of Christianity, early Christian spirituality and the Bible, the life and thought of Augustine, Christian mysticism, Eastern Christianity, ecclesiology, medieval theology & philosophy, Catholic literature & theology, monasticism, theological anthropology & soteriology

Research Interests

History of Christianity, Augustine, Origen, Latin and Greek patristics, ecclesiology, Biblical exegesis

Selected Publications

:: “Holiness and Early Latin Christianity.” In T&T Clark Companion to Holiness. Bloomsbury, (T&T Clark, forthcoming).

:: Praise Without Ceasing: The Spirituality of St. Augustine. Cascade Books, 2026.

:: "Augustine's Sermons on the Old Testament." In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's Sermons. Edited by Andrew Hofer, 81-97. Cambridge University Press, 2025.

:: "'One in the One Shepherd': St. Augustine and Pastoral Ministry." Heythrop Journal LXIII (2022): 232–244.

:: "Petrine Authority in the Ecclesiology of Leo the Great." Studia Patristica CXXX, no. 27 (2021): 69-78.

:: "Ecclesiology." In Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online, 2021.

:: "Patristic Ecclesiology in the Latin West." In T&T Clark Handbook of Ecclesiology. Edited by D. Stephen Long and Kimlyn J. Bender, 71-80. Bloomsbury, T&T Clark, 2020.

:: The Church in the Latin Fathers. Lanham: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019.

:: Augustine and the Mystery of the Church. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017.

:: "The Church and the Holy Spirit: Ecclesiology and Pneumatology in Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine," Studia Patristica XCI, no. 17 (2017): 189-206.

:: "Babylon Becomes Jerusalem: The Transformation of the Two Cities in Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos," Augustinian Studies 47: 2 (2016): 157-80.

:: The Family of God: Resurrection and Eternal Life in Korean Catholicism and the Western Tradition, in Embracing our Inheritance: Jubilee Reflections on Korean American Catholics (1966-2016), eds. Simon C. Kim and Francis Kim, Eugene, OR: Wipf Stock, 2016.

Professional Distinctions

Faculty Senate President, 2026-2027; Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Award, ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú; University Research Council Grant, ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú; Sam Taylor Fellowship, United Methodist Church General Board of Higher Education; Wabash Center for Teaching & Learning in Theology Summer Grant and Workshop Participant; Perkins Scholarly Outreach Award; President, Korean American Catholic Theological Society; Advisory Council Member, McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame; Kaneb Center Award for Excellence in Teaching, University of Notre Dame; Professional Development Grant, Graduate School, University of Notre Dame; Johanness Quasten Scholarship, Catholic University of America