Seumas Macdonald

Seumas Macdonald

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Why aren’t there more Evangelicals in Patristics (4): The mainstream of Evangelical scholarship thinks patristics is marginal, and correspondingly marginalises patristic researchers

In many ways, this reason is related to reasons three and four, and so I have correspondingly less to say about it. Evangelicals involved in academic pursuits, theology in particular, tend to clump their interests around biblical studies, systemics, and practical areas of ministry training. And the first two among

By Seumas Macdonald

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Why aren’t there more Evangelicals in Patristics (3): Evangelical seminary curricula usually have one Early Church History course, and it's intro level, so they overwhelmingly get a non-specialist to teach it.

(Parts 1, 2) Patristics is, I confess, a research-oriented field for most of us. It’s not the most directly relevant to all aspects of training future ministers and missionaries, so it’s not a surprise that in Evangelical seminaries, focused for the main part on training people for

By Seumas Macdonald

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Why aren’t there more Evangelicals in Patristics (2): Evangelicals have a deeply problematic tendency to read early church history through a reformation lens.

(See first post in this series here) Evangelicals, like all Protestants, tend to define themselves in terms of Reformation distinctives, which has its pros and cons. I think the Reformation (re)discovered important theological and biblical truths and rightly called for a reform of the Catholic Church as it then

By Seumas Macdonald

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Why aren’t there more Evangelicals in Patristics (2): Evangelicals have a deeply problematic tendency to read early church history through a reformation lens

Evangelicals, like all Protestants, tend to define themselves in terms of Reformation distinctives, which has its pros and cons. I think the Reformation (re)discovered important theological and biblical truths and rightly called for a reform of the Catholic Church as it then stood in Western Europe. However, it also

By Seumas Macdonald