— Erasmus of Rotterdam, De ratione studiiPrincipio duplex omnino videtur cognitio, rerum ac verborum. Verborum prior, rerum potior. ... Primum igitur locum Grammatica sibi vindicat, eaque protinus duplex tradenda pueris, Graeca videlicet ac Latina. Non modo quod his duabus linguis omnia ferme sunt prodita, quae digna cognitu videantur, verum etiam quod utraque alteri sic affinis est, ut ambae citius percipi queant coniunctam, quam altera sine altera.
Faculty Information
Additional Faculty Information for Joshua Benjamins
Education
B.A. in Latin and History, Hillsdale College, 2015
M.A. in Early Christian Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2017
Ph.D. in Classics, University of California, Berkeley, 2022
Research Interests
Stoicism and early Christianity; Augustine; emotions in antiquity; patristic reception in the Reformation; Peter Martyr Vermigli
Books
Reformation and Tradition: Collected Essays Exploring the Legacy of Nicene Theology, co-edited with Nathan Nocchi (Westminster Seminary Press, 2026)
Peter Martyr Vermigli, Common Places: On Providence and the Cause of Sin, translation with introduction and notes (Davenant Press, 2024)
Journal Articles
“Slavery, Redemption, and Manumission as Structural Metaphors in Augustine’s Theology.” Classical Antiquity 40.2 (2021): 195-220.
“‘The Sparks That Kindled the Fire in Me:’ Reading, Love, and Conversion in Augustine’s Confessions and Dante’s Commedia.” Arts of Liberty Journal 2.1 (2014): 87-112.
Book Chapters
“Chalcedonian Christology, Eucharistic Presence, and the Session of Christ in Lutheran-Reformed Polemic: Peter Martyr Vermigli and Johannes Brenz.” In Reformation and Tradition: Collected Essays Exploring the Legacy of Nicene Theology, ed. Joshua Benjamins and Nathan Nocchi (Westminster Seminary Press, 2026).
“Praeclara pulchritudo virtutis: Suffering, Endurance, and the Aesthetics of Manliness in De urbis excidio.” In Vox praedicatoris: Latin Patristic Sermons, Their Transmission, and Their Reception (4th-15th Centuries), ed. Nicolas De Maeyer, Gert Patroens, Shari Boodts, and Anthony Dupont (Brepols, 2025), 619-640.
“Clemency and Correction: Peter Martyr Vermigli on the Punitive Duty of the Civil Magistrate.” In Reformation and Society: Collected Essays Examining Sources, Nations, and Legacies of Reformation, ed. Nathan Nocchi and Patrick Timmis (Westminster Seminary Press, 2025), 115-133.
Biography
I am a classicist and ancient historian by training. My research and scholarship focus primarily on the interaction of Greco-Roman literature and Christianity in the later Roman empire, particularly in the writings of Augustine. I have also published a good deal on sixteenth-century Reformation theology and patristic reception, with a focus on the Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli.
I have been teaching at Hillsdale since 2022. Myself a grateful beneficiary of the College’s liberal arts curriculum, I take great delight in helping to promote, through the rigorously chastened modes of attention and analysis that classics inculcates, that “habit of mind”—well described by John Henry Newman—“which lasts through life, of which the attributes are freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; or…a philosophic habit.”