As of January 1, 2021 I will fulfill a life-long secret ambition by becoming a full-time writer! I have always wanted freedom from meetings, schedules, bosses and administration. I believe I have some things to say that can benefit the church and I know that the best way to think through issues is to write my way through them. So I have decided that I will be writing here on Substack in the future, in addition to writing books and teaching regularly in my local church.
As of December 31, 2020 I conclude my full-time teaching career at Tyndale University. I’m not sure I want to call it retirement, although that is sort of what it is. I think I have quite a few years of active service left and I want to make the most of them in serving Christ and his church.
I’ll continue to be involved at Westney Heights Baptist Church on a regular, part-time basis as Theologian in Residence. Having served on staff in this wonderful congregation since January 2008, I feel that I’m getting started. From time to time I’ll teach an occasional course at various seminaries. But at this point in my life I feel called to focus on several major writing projects that I have not had the time to do up to this point and they will take up the majority of my time and energy going forward.
After two years of college, I worked at a secular job in the family furniture business for two years to pay for college and get married. After a B.A. and an M.Div. I served as a pastor for seven years before doing doctoral studies in the early 1990’s under John Webster. I served two Christian universities for 26 years with 12 of those years in academic administration and 14 in teaching. So far I’ve published four books, the last two of which I’m proud of! I wrote the first two back when I didn’t really know what I was talking about. I explain my theological journey in the prologue of my next book, which is mentioned below.
The title of this newsletter (or blog or whatever it is) is the Great Tradition, which comes from a series of books I’m in the middle of publishing. In 2018 I published Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (Baker Academic, 2018). It has sold well and led to many rewarding conversations with readers, for which I am grateful. Many pastors said it helped them preach the Bible with more confidence and that is rewarding. The second book in the series, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism will be published in April, 2021, also with Baker Academic. I plan to complete the trilogy with a third volume on metaphysics in the Great Tradition very soon.
Why am I writing this series? I believe that fourth-century Nicene theology (out of which emerged the Nicene Creed) consisted of a three-legged stool made up of exegesis, doctrines arising from exegesis and metaphysical implications of doctrine that serve as the framework for renewed exegesis and deeper contemplation of the meaning of Scripture. The purpose of this series is to recover usable resources from the history of the church to enable us to meet the challenges presented by decadent, late-modern, Western culture. The twentieth century was not exactly a great century for systematic theology and we need new directions inspired by classical orthodoxy. Biblical studies is in crisis and the connection between Scripture, theology and preaching is very fragile. I hope this series will contribute to renewal in theology.
It also has a more personal purpose. I am under contract to write a multi-volume commentary on Isaiah in the International Theological Commentary series. The hardest part of doing so is figuring out what, exactly, a theological commentary even is. The Great Tradition series is helping me think through this basic question. I regard commentary on Scripture as the highest form of theology and I think that it is intricately bound up with dogmatics. Speaking of dogmatics, I’m also under contract to write an introduction to Christian theology but I’m in the middle of discussions right now about the shape, length and nature of that book. I’ll let you know more details in due course. But it will come after the Great Tradition series and before the Isaiah commentary. I expect these projects to keep me busy for the next five years at least.
One of the things I’d like to do here in this space is to write short pieces on what I’m thinking about and reading in the process of writing. I’d like to keep you informed about new discoveries I make and recommend resources I find helpful. I’ll also be doing a lot with YouTube videos, some of which will be connected to the writing projects. Others may focus on continuing education projects. One thing I think we need, for example, is a series of lectures on understanding philosophy for theology for those who are pastors or theology students and who want to improve their knowledge of philosophy.
I hope you will subscribe to this newsletter and let your friends know about it. At some point I will probably make the decision to add material that will be available to paying subscribers only. The reason for this is so that I can devote more time to certain projects and ramp up the quality and quantity of the content. I hope when that time comes you will be interested in supporting my work. In the meantime, don’t expect to see a lot of content here until January. But whatever I do will be advertised on Twitter.