Rate My Professor Richard Barry

Richard J. Barry IV is an Associate Professor of Theology at Providence College, where he serves as Assistant Chair of the Theology Department and Associate Director of the Development of Western Civilization Program. He is also an Associate Professor of Theology and Humanities in the Humanities program at the college. Located in St. Catherine of Siena Hall 217, Barry can be contacted at (401) 865-1713. He earned his Ph.D. in systematic theology from Marquette University in 2017, with a dissertation entitled "The Two Goats: A Christian Yom Kippur Soteriology." Prior to that, he received his Master of Theological Studies (MTS) from the University of Notre Dame.

Barry's research interests include systematic theology, temple theology, nature and grace, the atonement, and theology of sacrifice. His scholarly contributions focus on the integration of Jewish temple theology, particularly the Yom Kippur ritual of the two goats from Leviticus 16, with Christian soteriology. In his monograph Jewish Temple Theology and the Mystery of the Cross: Atonement and the Two Goats of Yom Kippur (Catholic University of America Press, 2024), he demonstrates how Christ's single act on the cross fulfills both the role of the pure sacrificial goat entering the Holy of Holies and the sin-bearing goat dispatched to the wilderness, engaging biblical scholarship alongside theologians Hans Urs von Balthasar and David Bentley Hart. Other notable publications are "They Feasted Their Eyes: Nadab, Abihu, and the Original Sin" in Journal of Theological Interpretation (2023, 17[2]: 145-165); "Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar's Biblical Soteriology" in Nova et Vetera (2017, 15[1]: 13-35); "Symphonic Theology and the Cacophonous World: Barth and Solovyev on Political Theology," co-authored with D. Stephen Long, in Correlating Sobornost: Conversations between Karl Barth and the Russian Orthodox Tradition (Fortress Press, 2016, pp. 241-272); and "A Chaste Marriage: Matthias Scheeben's (Western) Doctrine of Deification" in A Man of the Church: Honoring the Theology, Life, and Witness of Ralph del Colle (Wipf & Stock, 2012, pp. 185-205). Barry has presented papers at conferences such as the Catholic Theological Society of America, including on Balthasar's retrieval of Jewish atonement theology.