"Real Baptists Pursue Church Unity"

The new issue of Baptist World, the magazine of the Baptist World Alliance, includes my article "Real Baptists Pursue Church Unity" (vol. 63, no. 4, October-December 2016, pp. 9-10). The article is part of a feature section of articles on Baptists and unity, with other contributions by John Briggs, Elizabeth Newman, Ross Clifford, and Frank Rees and several news articles reporting on various regional and national expressions of Baptist involvement in the pursuit of Christian unity. The issue is available online; an excerpt from the beginning of the article follows:

The experiences of many Baptists and the impressions of many of their external observers run counter to the assertion made by this article’s title. Baptists have their origins in ecclesial division, and their subsequent history is marked by ever-increasing intra-Baptist divisions. Division is certainly a DNA sequence in the genetic code of “real Baptists.” Yet intertwined with it are genetic markers of an impulse toward ecclesial unity, and Baptists are being “real Baptists” when they allow that impulse to move them toward the full participation in the life of the Triune God and in the life of the body of Christ that Jesus prayed would mark his followers: “that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:22 NRSV)....(read the full article and other articles in this issue here)

Divine Immanence in Christian Philosophical Theology seminar

This weekend I'm headed to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where on March 1 I'm presenting guest lectures for an Analytic Theology Cluster Group seminar on "Divine Immanence in Christian Philosophical Theology." The cluster group involves students and faculty from the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond and Regent University, led by Elizabeth Newman, the Eula Mae and John Baugh Professor of Ethics at BTSR, and T. Ryan Byerly, Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies and Christian Ministry in the area of Philosophy at Regent. My lectures are titled "Natures and Narratives: Patristic Accounts of Divine Immanence in the Incarnation" and "Natures vs. Narratives: Suffering as a Test Case for Accounts of Divine Immanence in the Incarnation." My lectures will focus on the incarnation of God in Christ as an instance of special/local divine immanence; they will be paired with lectures by Alexander R. Pruss, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, who will give attention to the Eucharist as an instance of special/local divine immanence. (The cluster group seminar will also meet on April 5 in Richmond, with guest lectures by David Schindler, the Edouard Cardinal Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family of The Catholic University of America, and Katherin Rogers, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delaware.)

This cluster group seminar is funded by a grant from the Analytic Theology Project of the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. The Analytic Theology Project is in turn funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.