Helen Chen

Dr. Helen Chen received her PhD in Systematic Theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) in 2026. Dr. Chen was called from a professional career at IBM to vocational ministry 20 years ago. After more than a decade of pastoral and missional ministries, the calling for her was extended to theological research and teaching. Dr. Chen’s journey as a theologian started with a deep interest in the connections between Christian spirituality, theology and ministry, which eventually led to the theological vision and insight that emphasize intentional integration—between theology and spirituality, between conventional theological loci, and between biblical and theological studies for constructive theology.

Through the research done for doctoral dissertation, Dr. Chen has come to the realization of a much-underdeveloped Christian theological anthropology, which presents somewhat a “bottle neck” to the entire enterprise, especially for the further development of Evangelical theology. The overall value of theological anthropology as a potential “integrative element” for systematic theology is also much underestimated. For constructing an integrative theological anthropology, besides Scripture, Pannenberg’s unique Christologically-centered theological anthropology has become part of an important foundation, an extensive dialogue with modern philosophical anthropology and contemporary developmental psychology that offers much food for thought.

Building up the research done for the doctoral dissertation (“From Pannenberg’s Christological-turn to the Human spirit of Jesus: Constructing an Evangelical Theological Anthropology”), during the research fellowship time, Dr. Chen is working toward publishing a monograph revised from dissertation and further constructing a robust biblical-theological anthropology for the age of AI (dominated by an emerging, influential yet distorted “technological-anthropology”). Dr. Chen will continue to present the result of research at theological conferences (including ETS and the International Wolfhart Pannenberg Symposium) and through publication (in addition to adjunct seminary teaching).