John Louis Sullivan was born in Dubuque, Iowa, on September 15, 1922. He attended Sacred Heart. Holy Ghost. and St. Mary's parochial school in Dubuque and graduated from Loras Academy in 1939. His studies at Loras College were interrupted in January 1943 for service in the United States Marine Corps. After three year of military action in Iwo Jima Guam, and Japan. he left the service as a First Lieutenant and returned to Dubuque and a job with the John Deere Company. In 1950 he resumed his college studies at Loras as a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Dubuque. Friendship with Dominican preparatory students on the Loras campus stimulated his interest in the Dominican Order, and eventually he entered the novitiate at St. Peter Martyr Priory in Winona, Minnesota, soon after graduating from Loras magna cum laude with a bachelor' degree in philosophy. With Edward as his assigned religious name, first profession followed on August 31, 1953, and he continued with philosophical studies in River Forest and theological courses in Dubuque, where he was ordained to the priesthood on May 23, 1959.

Shortly after ordination, Father Sullivan was sent to Washington for graduate studies leading to a Doctorate in Theology. In 1961, he was assigned to St. Rose Priory in Dubuque to teach patrology and historical theology in the studium and at Mount St. Bernard Seminary. He also served the Dominican community in Dubuque as Subprior, Master of Cooperator Brothers, Assistant Dean of Studies, and as Secretary of Studies.

To pursue his interests in teaching, research, and writing in a more pastoral setting, Father Sullivan was assigned to St. Thomas More Newman Center in Tue on, Arizona. in 1968, as Co-Director of the Center and as a Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Arizona. Increasing cardiac problems interrupted his work at the Center and in April 1969 he underwent surgery for a coronary arterial bypass. Two years later, he was assigned to the Western Dominican Province and the theology faculty at St. Albert's College in Oakland, California, and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Close association with Mortimer Adler in the Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago led to the publications of his research on the nature of religion in the 1976 and 1977 issues of The Great Ideas Today.

To help his sister care for their aging parents, Father Sullivan moved to the faculty of St. John's College seminary for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in Camarillo, California, in August of 1975. There he was able to continue hi research on the philosophy of religion, and his book entitled Ideas on Religion: A Prolegomenon to the Philosophy of Religion was published in 1979. During a meeting on accreditation at the Seminary on March 26, 1981, Father Sullivan was stricken with a severe heart attack. Emergency efforts to, revive him were not successful, and he died the same day at Pleasant Valley Hospital in Amarillo. Following funeral services on March 30 at his family's parish church of St. Justin Martyr in Anaheim, California, and on March 31 at St. Albert's Priory in Oakland, his body was taken to Benicia, California, for burial in the Western Province's cemetery at St. Dominic's church.