Upcoming Public Lecture

My colleague Joshua Coutts will be sharing some of his recent work in the upcoming Fall Seminary Symposium at Providence. The title of his presentation is “The Absence of Jesus: John’s Gospel for a Secular Age.” The lecture is open to the public and includes a free lunch for those who attend in person. The event will also be live-streamed. You can register to attend in person or remotely here.

The Crucifixion of Ideology

I recently contributed an essay to a new online community, Living in Truth, aimed at supporting, encouraging, and cultivating a distinctly orthodox Reformed voice within Canadian Christianity. The essay, entitled, “The Crucifixion of Ideology,” emerged from a sermon I preached during Black History Month a year and a half ago. The assigned Gospel reading for the day, John 3, proved to be the stimulus for some important theological reflection on some of the cultural struggles facing Western cultures today. You can read the essay here.

The Devil, the Spirit, and the In-Between

I came across a fascinating quote from Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI in an essay entitled, “Farewell to the Devil?” It also reminded me that I had intended to draw attention to Phil Ziegler’s recent Warfield Lectures at Princeton, entitled, “God’s Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil.” The whole series of lectures can be viewed here:
2024 Warfield Lectures: Satan—A Motivational Talk (youtube.com) I share a longstanding interest in apocalyptic eschatology with Dr. Ziegler and I was fortunate to have him as a member of my dissertation examination committee back when I was a doctoral student.

Continue reading The Devil, the Spirit, and the In-Between

New Issue of Didaskalia!

I am pleased to announce the publication of Volume 31 of Didaskalia on the theme “Engaging Scripture.” The issue features an impressive collection of peer-reviewed essays, intriguing reflections from the front lines of ministry, edifying sermons, and reviews of some of the lastest books of note. You can view the full table of contents here. As part of our continuing commitment to providing accessible theological scholarship in service of the church, we are continuing with the special promotional offer of making the issue available for the cost of postage. You can subscribe for the latest issue here. In the video below, my colleague Joshua Coutts talks about his essay from the volume, “Formed by the Word in an Age of Information.”

Continue reading New Issue of Didaskalia!

Scripture and the Metaphysics of Modernity: A Jensonian Polemic

“We must summon the audacity to say that modernity’s scientific/metaphysical metanarrative―at the moment told by astrophysicists and neo-Darwinians―is not the encompassing story within which all other accounts of reality must establish their places, or be discredited for failing to find one.  It is instead a rather brutal abstraction from reality.  The abstraction has proved to be magnificent in its intellectual power and practical benefits.  Nevertheless, by these disciplines’ methodological eschewal of teleology, they prevent themselves from describing what actually is.  As pop scientists urge over and over, the tale told by Scripture and the creed finds no comfortable place within modernity’s metanarrative.  It is time for the church simply to reply: this is certainly the case, and the reason it is the case is that the tale told by Scripture is too comprehensive to find place within so drastically curtailed a version of the facts.  Indeed, the gospel story cannot fit within any other would-be metanarrative because it is itself the only true metanarrative―or it is altogether false.”

  • Robert Jenson, Canon and Creed (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 120.

Resources for wayfarers and wanderers