MyHCHC
Creator of the Hellenic College Foundations Forward CORE
Director of the MTS Program
Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics
Timothy G. Patitsas has been the Assistant Professor of Ethics at Holy Cross since the Fall of 2005. He taught at the St. Nicholas Orthodox Seminary in Seoul, Korea, and at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, before joining the faculty.
From 2006 until 2021, he directed the St. Helen’s Pilgrimage, which is the annual study abroad program for MDiv seniors in Greece, Constantinople, Mount Athos, Israel, and Palestine. He was the Interim Dean of Hellenic College from January 2020 through June 2024.
In 2019 he published The Ethics of Beauty, an attempt to recover one of the most ancient emphases of Orthodox spirituality, which is the priority given to combating the sensual rather than the intellectual passions. The book shows how this emphasis translates into a consoling and liberating Beauty-first approach to Orthodox ethics and life. The work also presents ethical, theological, and scriptural definitions of traumatic experience with a view to aiding recovery, and has been incorporated into individualized treatment plans in Veterans Court.
He has published an article on patternlanguage.com, a website directed by the mystical architect Christopher Alexander. For the Spring 2007 edition of the St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly he wrote, “The Marriage of Priests: Towards an Orthodox Christian Theology of Gender,” which has been translated into both Modern Greek and Russian.
His Ph.D. dissertation, “The King Returns to His City: An Interpretation of the Great Week and Bright Week Cycle of the Orthodox Church”, combined interests in organic order, liturgy, and the economic and political writings of Jane Jacobs, whom Dr. Patitsas had the joy of knowing personally. His current research centers on themes including liturgy and its relationship to moral agency; synodality and rhetoric as “bloodwork”; and macroeconomic theory in the light of new definitions of economic development.
Prof. Patitsas serves on the boards of The Russian Orphan Opportunity Fund and The Road to Emmaus Foundation. He is also the co-founder of Beauty First Films and a contributing designer of its annual Liturgical Seasons Calendar. He was co-director and co-producer of the documentary short “Amphilochios: Saint of Patmos”, which was an official selection at seven film festivals.
Publications
Timothy Patitsas, The Ethics of Beauty (St. Nicholas Press, 2019)
