Dr. Hinkson came to Liberty University in 1997. He grew up in Wichita, Kan. and attended Kansas State University, where he earned his BS in Electrical Engineering. In a highly consequential philosophy course taken while still an undergraduate, he became wholly absorbed with the thought of Søren Kierkegaard. This prompted a shift in vocational interest, and he proceeded to take theology degrees from Bethel Seminary and The University of Chicago Divinity School. He did his dissertation research on Kierkegaard at the University of Copenhagen under the auspices of the American Scandinavian Foundation. While there he met his wife, Ellen, who is Danish, and they had their only son, Cyrus, who now attends the University of Chicago as a pre-med major specializing in neuroscience.

Dr. Hinkson's principal research interests are søren Kierkegaard, Martin Luther, J. G. Hamann and German Romanticism and Idealism. They form the core of a larger interest in the history of ideas, both philosophical and theological. He has published essays on Kierkegaard's relation to Luther and the Lutheran tradition.