"Oikonomia: On Mission in North America"

Dr. Tiffany Butler

This paper explores the Greek term oikonomia in the context of pastoral discernment and the stewardship of God’s household. The paper examines how church leaders balance strict adherence to canon law (akribeia) with pastoral discretion, especially in today’s diverse and mobile North American context. Using historical examples of episcopal authority and overlapping canonical jurisdictions, the study shows how applying discretionary oikonomia can both respect church law and serve the well-being of the wider community, ensuring the church remains faithful, adaptable, and life-giving. 

Tiffany Butler Webinar.mp4

"Retrieving Ancient Exegesis: Beyond an Academic Fad"

Rev. Dr. Michael Niebauer

It has been fifty years since Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative helped to launch a robust critique of the historical-critical method and a rediscovery of pre-modern approaches to Biblical interpretation. There is now a legion of scholarly works that provide a robust description of the types of ancient exegetical practices that were lost in the transition to modernity. However, a living retrieval of these practices, where clergy and laity, the educated and uneducated, actively read scripture together in the local church along the exegetical contours of the ancient Christians, remains elusive. This lack of a living retrieval has prompted Ephraim Radner to wonder if the rising interest in early Christian exegesis will remain a fad of the academy. 

How can those able to glean the spiritual and figural dimensions of scripture translate their knowledge into exegetical artifacts that are intelligible to those who have never heard of the terms “exegesis” and “hermeneutics?” How can they teach their parishioners to go and do likewise? This presentation will explore the challenges to recovering ancient exegetical practices and highlight a few attempts to instantiate a living retrieval, attempts that have led to the subsequent publication of Four Mountains: Encountering God in the Bible from Eden to Zion (Lexham Press, 2005) and From Word to Worship: How the Lectionary Welcomes You into Sacred Time Through Story, Symbol, and Sacrament (Baker, forthcoming).

Michael Niebauer Webinar.mp4

“Participating in the Life of God in the Eucharist: Soteriology and Sacramental Theology in Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes”

Rev. Dr. Mary Baker

16th century Anglican theologians Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes both wrote that partaking of the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist leads the believer into participation in the Divine Love of God. Their framework for understanding Eucharistic participation is derived from their understanding that God’s act of justification is not limited to the extrinsic imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the repentant in justification. Rather, in the act of justification God also incorporates his adopted children into the life of the Trinity through our union with Christ, the state that Hooker describes as “mystical conjunction.” This presentation will explore the connection between each theologian’s soteriology and sacramental theology and the unique ways they approached these subjects. The concluding section of the paper will probe the significance of Hooker and Andrewes's teaching for understanding and communicating to our students and parishes the Eucharist’s significant role in spiritual formation.

Mary Baker is a vocational deacon serving at All Souls' Anglican Church in Wheaton, IL. She holds a Ph.D. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where she wrote on eucharistic participation in Christ in the theology of John Calvin. Mary has taught courses in Christian theology and spirituality at North Park University and Wheaton College, and presently for Trinity Anglican Seminary.

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Title: Participatory Metaphysics and Creation Out of God

Abstract:
In Aristotle’s view, nothing comes from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit). Both he and Plotinus thought, therefore, of the substratum (ὑποκείμενον) of matter as being eternal. Christian theology has consistently rejected this understanding of material causality through its teaching of creation out of nothing (ex nihilo). Theologians have parted ways, however, on how to understand the creator-creature relationship once eternal matter is rejected. The Augustinian-Thomist approach has rejected creation from God (de deo). This paper draws attention to an alternative tradition, that of Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor, which thinks of creation as both out of nothing (ἐκ τοῦ μή) and out of God (ἐκ θεοῦ). This paper argues that a genuinely participatory metaphysic requires the combination of creation ex nihilo and ex deo.

Speaker Bio:
Fr. Hans Boersma holds the St. Benedict Servants of Christ Chair in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin. He is the author of numerous books on retrieving the sacramental ontology of the Great Tradition, including Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Lexham, 2023); Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew (IVP Academic, 2021); Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Eerdmans, 2018); Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church (Baker Academic, 2017); and Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Eerdmans, 2011). Fr. Boersma is an ordained priest within the Anglican Church in North America.

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Why Does the Pilgrim Sometimes Not Progress?: 
A Historical Perspective on the Problem of Christian Immaturity
Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh, Regent College

Why is it that believers in our churches sometimes fail to mature? Can we diagnose the problem of “failure to launch”? In this presentation, Bruce Hindmarsh draws widely on case studies from the history of the church—from John Cassian to John of the Cross to John Wesley—to try to answer this question in ways that are of more than historical interest. In our discussion, we will probe these issues further and explore the implications for the church today for spiritual formation in an Anglican context.

Bruce Hindmarsh is the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology and Professor of the History of Christianity at Regent College in Vancouver, BC. He has published and spoken widely on the history of British evangelicalism, and is the author of three major books: John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1996), The Evangelical Conversion Narrative (Oxford University Press, 2005), and The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2018). 

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