CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE
The Christian Doctrine Study Group of Tyndale Fellowship exists to promote evangelical scholarship within the disciplines of Christian Doctrine and Historical Theology.
Chair
Tom Noble
Co-Chair
Jason Sexton
Tyndale Fellowship Study Groups Conference
Wednesday 3 - Friday 5 July 2024
HIGH LEIGH CONFERENCE CENTRE, UK
Christian Doctrine programme
The doctrine of creation
New explorations of a doctrine of creation have been forthcoming in recent years from scholars at the intersection of theology and modern science, from the history of the tradition, and from constructive approaches engaging matters of racial-capitalism and environmental justice. The Christian Doctrine study group will explore this subject in ten papers from a range of perspectives within the broad evangelical tradition, including systematic theological approaches, exegetical and historical bases, along with how a doctrine of creation relates to contemporary cultural issues.
Wednesday 3 July
16.00-16.45 Tom Dove, University of Aberdeen, 'Christ, the Spirit, and the creatureliness of the Christian: thinking through Karl Barth's theology of vocation and calling'
16.45-17.30 David Rollings, Shoreham-by-Sea Baptist Church, 'The Presence of the Transcendent God'
17.45-18.30 Jacob Lett, Nazarene Theological College, Manchester, 'An Evangelical Analogia Entis?'
Thursday 4 July
10.00-10.45 Mark S. Medley, Baptist Seminary of Kentucky, 'Praying with Animals, Plants, Soil, Land, and Water: The Liturgical-Political Theology of Creation of Cláudio Carvalhaes'
10.45-11.30 Andrew Sloane, Morling College, 'Troubled Gender between Creation and New Creation'
11.45-12.30 Wes Vander Lugt, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 'Creation Cares: A Creedal Theology of Entanglement and Co-Tending'
Tyndale Fellowship Lecture in Christian Doctrine
13.30-15.00 Alex Irving, St Mellitus College, 'Election, Grace and Nature'
Karl Barth’s treatment of the doctrine of election within the doctrine of God, if accepted, carries implications for the doctrine of creation. Both the being of God and the being of that which is created are determined for that which takes place in Jesus Christ. This must, in turn, carry implications for how the relationship of grace and nature is to be conceived. On the one hand, it identifies the person of Jesus Christ as the centre of creation in as much as he is that toward which it is determined. On the other hand, it suggests that the elevation of nature is not general but specific, with that specificity determined by the event of the history toward which God has determined himself and creation, namely the incarnate life, death and resurrection of the Son in the power of the Spirit. If the above is accepted, then the relation of grace and nature must not give way to either wholly intrinsic or extrinsic excesses. Grace remains a supernatural intervention upon the created order which would otherwise contain no capacity to be anything other than nature. Although, by merit of the divine decree, that action from beyond, belongs to nature by merit of its determination toward the history of Jesus Christ. Grace is wholly extrinsic to nature but nature is always orientated toward that intervention. By way of consequence, putative mechanisms for self-transcendence from within nature that are abstracted from the history of Jesus Christ are nothing other than nature doing what nature does and has no relation to grace as such.
17.00-18.00 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Fuller Theological Seminary, '’What’s the Time?’: Dogmatic Reflections on the Relationship between Time[-Space] and Eternity with regard to Eschatological Consummation'
18.00-18.30 Jason Sexton, UCLA, & Tom Noble, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Discussion for next year
Friday 5 July
10.00-10.45 Elizabeth Gatewood, University of Aberdeen, 'Limitations and promises of Barth’s doctrine of creation for a Protestant theology of household'
10.45-11.30 D. T. Everhart, London School of Theology, 'Belonging with Creation: What Relational Theology Can Learn from Māori Christology'
11.45-12.30 Laura Smit, Calvin University, 'Retrieving the Spiritual Dimension of the Creation'