Thinking After

Author: rjdean76

  • Athanasius Addresses the Contemporary Church

    Thomas G. Weinandy concludes his book Athanasius: A Theological Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 207) with a set of brief, but penetrating reflections upon lessons that the contemporary North American church and academy would do well to learn from the 4th century Church Father.  Here are a few of the incisive paragraphs on what Athanasius has to teach us about reading Scripture: (more…)

  • The 2019 Providence Public Lecture Series

    The Providence Public Lecture Series kicks off tonight at the McNally Robinson bookstore in Winnipeg.  Over the next seven weeks faculty from Providence University College and Theological Seminary will be delivering lectures that aspire to make their scholarly work accessible to a broader audience.  Each presenter will deliver their lecture on a Friday night in Winnipeg and then on the following Tuesday evening in Steinbach at the Cultural Arts Centre. (more…)

  • American Protestant Gnosticism

    I’ve been revisiting Philip J. Lee’s incisive study Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) in anticipation of lecturing on the life and work of the second century Church Father Irenaeus.  Lee’s diagnosis of Protestant Gnosticism seems just as apt in 2019 as when he first published the book some thirty years ago.  Here’s a few quotes from a chapter entitled, “Results of a Gnosticized Protestantism” that caught my attention. (more…)

  • Minding the Web on Kindle

    Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections by Stanley Hauerwas with Robert J. Dean is now available for Kindle on Amazon.

  • America’s and Niverville’s Best Theologians

    I was caught by surprise this morning when upon opening the town newspaper, the Niverville Citizen, I was confronted by my own face and that of Stanley Hauerwas staring back up at me.  The article fittingly appears directly above a piece on the “Bear-y Holiday Musical” staged by the local elementary school, in which my kids participated.  You can read the full article here. (more…)

  • Restoring Catholicity (One Course at a Time)

    With a new year comes a new semester and I am particularly looking forward to this coming semester at Providence Theological Seminary.  In addition to the introductory “Theological Foundations” course, I am also going to be teaching an intensive course on the Holy Spirit and Eschatology in March and, beginning next week, a semester-length course entitled “Reading with the Fathers.”  A keen and bright group of students have registered for the course and I am excited about what we will discover as we dig into the writings of Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzus, and Augustine. (more…)

  • The Word Became Flesh

    One of the most interesting books I read this past year was Peter Leithart’s Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016).  Leithart skillfully integrates insights from a variety of disciplines to present a compelling, and profoundly biblical, vision of Christian reality.

    Here’s a key quote from the book that powerfully spells out the profound theological reality that the church celebrates at Christmas.  (more…)

  • The Church Lives in Advent

    “The church lives in Advent. That is to say, the church lives between two advents, Jesus Christ has come; Jesus Christ will come. We do not know the day or the hour. If you find this tension almost unbearable at times, then you understand the Christian life. We live at what the New Testament depicts as the turning of the ages.  In Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God is in head-on collision with the powers of darkness. The point of impact is the place where Christians take their stand. (more…)

  • A Poor Church-Growth Strategy? (Series on “Minding the Web”)

    “That we are taught to confess our sin, particularly during Lent, is not something to which we look forward. We are not at all sure an emphasis on sin is a good idea. We are in a time of a dramatic loss in membership in mainline Protestantism. We need to attract new people. Telling people they are possessed by sin does not sound like a good church-growth strategy. (more…)

  • A Lifetime Project (Series on “Minding the Web”)

    “One of the great advantages of being a Christian is that we are in a lifetime project to discover how to confess our sins. To be able to confess our sins is a theological achievement that our baptisms have made pos­sible. For sin, as Karl Barth maintained, is only known in the light of Christ. Thus from Barth’s perspective, our fundamental sin consists in the presumption that we can know our sin without having become a dis­ciple of Christ. In short, to be a Christian means we must be trained to be a sinner. (more…)