Steven Anthony “Tony” Edwards, a 36-year Department of Religious Studies professor known for his rigor of thought — and his ability to train his students to share that trait — died May 5, 2024.
A memorial service will be held on June 16 at the First Hungarian Reformed Church, 416 E. 10th Ave., Munhall. Worship is at 10 a.m., and the memorial service begins at 11 a.m.
“Precision in thought was key to him,” recalled current department chair Adam Shear in a memorial sent to colleagues in the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences. Edwards, who joined the department in 1980 and retired in 2016, focused his early research on Thomas Aquinas and medieval religious philosophy, then moved to Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosophy of language and an analytic philosophy of religion.
“He was always interesting to talk to and supportive — in his own way — of his colleagues,” Shear said. “He relished his role as house philosopher in a department full of historians and social scientists. I remember him gently reprimanding the rest of us for ‘bracketing the truth question’” — not addressing whether claims made by religious believers were true or not. “He also made sure that we did not conflate methods and theories …”
Another departmental emeritus faculty member, Rebecca Denova, first had Edwards as a member of her Ph.D. dissertation committee and then as a colleague for 25 years, after he urged the dean to recruit her, she said. “He always challenged us to go above and beyond, which was excellent training,” she added. “Always incredibly supportive.”
She remembered sitting for her oral exam when defending her dissertation, and hearing Edwards quiz her on the opening of the Gospel of John — which is full of metaphors, she noted. “Analyze every metaphor in the preface and how John applies it to the gospel,” Edwards asked her then. “Why did you do that to me?” she asked him afterward. “Oh, I thought it would be great fun to see how you would handle it,” he simply replied.
Teaching her own courses years later, she said. “I could always tell students who had Tony’s courses (first), they were always better prepared.”
Another emeritus faculty colleague, Alex Orbach, told the University Times in a written remembrance, which noted that Edwards had joined the Department of Religious Studies to fill a new position in the philosophy of religion: “Tony’s scholarship focused on the work of Thomas Aquinas and the nature and general character of religious argumentation as it emerged in the writings of major Christian and even Jewish writers (notably, Maimonides) in the pre-Enlightenment era. While religious studies was his home department, Tony was able to reach out and interact creatively with colleagues in other arts and sciences departments, including Richard Gale and David Gauthier in the Department of Philosophy.”
At the time of Edwards’ appointment, the department had a Ph.D. program in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. “Tony’s contribution to that program was significant,” Orbach noted. “He brought a critical and sophisticated methodological approach to the explication of texts and the ideas that generated those presentations. He guided his MA and Ph.D. students to frame and execute research projects into successful dissertation manuscripts that not only produced noteworthy contributions to the field, but also made them credible and viable applicants for positions at major colleges and universities in North America.
“Tony’s commitment to clarity in thought and writing was initially frustrating to his students,” he added. “However, all agreed that it made them sharper thinkers and communicators.” His survey courses on Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Rationality, Ethics and Wisdom attracted many students from across disciplines, “drawn to his philosophically grounded presentations on good and evil, the existence or non-existence of divinity for human behavior, and comparative ethical perspectives as articulated in western and eastern thought.”
Concluded Orbach: “Tony Edwards’ contribution to the pedagogical mission of the Department of Religious Studies helped shape not only the department but those many students who enrolled in its offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
George Yancy, an undergraduate student of Edwards in the 1980s and now faculty member at Emory University, wrote to the UTimes that Edwards “encouraged close exegetical readings of the assigned texts that we read. This was complemented by his encouragement of conceptually robust discussions of the material and exchanges between students. In short, Dr. Edwards was a stellar teacher and a phenomenal scholar.
“What I found especially unique and laudable about Dr. Edwards,” Yancy said, “was the fact that he was open to discussions that didn’t fall within the predominant analytic style of doing philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. In other words, he was open to religious forms of discourse that were epistemically meaningful within their contexts or forms of life.
“He helped me to understand the importance of how religious ways of seeing the world, thinking about the world, needn’t import Western philosophical ‘authority’ to legitimate them. Asian philosophical and religious thought had its own integrity.
“Dr. Edwards was also trained in the discourse of analytic philosophy … Dr. Edwards invited me and other students in the course to attend a lecture that he was giving on some aspect, the specificity of which I can’t recall, of Aquinas’s work. But what I do recall is a moment during the Q&A when a famous analytic philosopher of religion posed a question to Dr. Edwards. The question wasn’t designed to confuse, but asked for clarification. Given Dr. Edwards’ training within the analytic tradition, along with a hefty dose of logic, his articulated response demonstrated deep acumen. The look on the philosopher’s face communicated that Dr. Edwards was not only philosophically up to the task, but that he was familiar with the direction of the question and had preciously given it serious thought. Along with other students who attended the lecture, I felt honored to be in the presence of a scholar of Dr. Edward’s brilliance.”
Born on July 11, 1948, in Torrance, Calif., Edwards earned his BA from Stanford University and his graduate degrees from University of California–Santa Barbara (MA) and Stanford (Ph.D.).
He is survived by his wife, Lisa M. Kerestesi; son Miles Travis Edwards; stepson Alec M. Kerestesi; sister Hilary; brothers Phillip and Andrew; and many nieces and nephews.
Memorial gifts are suggested to Doctors without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières) or the donor’s favored charity.
— Marty Levine