My Regional ETS Presentation: Reconciliation and the Lack Thereof
If you're in the Birmingham area from March 21-22, 2014, and you're interested in evangelical theology, please consider attending the Evangelical Theological Society's Southeastern Regional Meeting at Beeson Divinity School! This year's theme is "the theological interpretation of Scripture," and the plenary speaker is Wheaton's Daniel J. Treier (incidentally, Dr. Treier and I are both alumni of Cedarville...go figure).
Furthermore, if you're free from 5:00-5:30pm on Friday, March 21, consider swinging by room S009 to hear me present "Reconciliation and the Lack Thereof: Atonement, Ecclesiology, and the Unity of God." The atonement and the unity of the Church are topics that I'm passionate about, and I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to give my first ever conference paper. Here's the abstract:
This essay endeavors to demonstrate the theological and exegetical legitimacy of viewing the atonement as the act in which the one God fulfills his creative purposes by bringing his uniqueness and simplicity to bear on our sinful, divisive condition through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah in order to save a people to robust unity with himself, each other, and the entire creation. Given Adam Johnson’s thesis regarding God’s triune being-in-act, the fullness of the divine perfections, and the unity and diversity of Christ’s saving work, I draw upon the theology of Karl Barth and pertinent biblical data to frame a theory of the atonement based on the unity of God. Although the lack of ecclesiological unity is the impetus for my study, I choose primarily to emphasize the synthesis of God’s unity and the doctrine of reconciliation. That is, I focus on the theological explanations within the atonement of why the church is to be unified. However, after framing a unity-based theory of the atonement, I conclude this study by casting a vision for the ecclesiological implications of such a theory.
If you can't make it to my presentation, but you're interested in the topic, check out my previous series of posts and the undergraduate thesis paper from which this conference paper is drawn. Also, consider buying the new paperback edition of Adam J. Johnson's God's Being in Reconciliation: The Theological Basis of the Unity and Diversity of the Atonement in the Theology of Karl Barth (T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology). It's much cheaper than the previous hardcover edition, and without his fresh insights into the doctrine of the atonement and Barthian theology, my paper would not have been possible.
Finally, please attend the entire conference at Beeson if possible! Here's the full schedule.
Grace and Peace
~Josh