Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology

These lectures are named after former TEDS dean and theological visionary, Kenneth Kantzer. Previous years have covered a range of topics, such as divine presence, election, and liturgy.

    Purpose

    All too often, biblical and theological doctrines have been displaced, discarded, or forgotten in favor of therapeutic, relational, or managerial knowledge drawn less from the canonical Scriptures than from the canon of contemporary popular culture.…

    All too often, biblical and theological doctrines have been displaced, discarded, or forgotten in favor of therapeutic, relational, or managerial knowledge drawn less from the canonical Scriptures than from the canon of contemporary popular culture. The Kantzer Lectures address the crisis of theology in the church. In particular, they confront the powerful, and not entirely unwarranted, prejudice that theology is irrelevant and unrelated to real life. They do this by showing how the knowledge of God derived from revealed theology is indeed practical.

    The special focus of the Kantzer Lectures is on the development of doctrine from Scripture and on the ways in which doctrine gives rise to the lived knowledge of God. Given the increasingly complex world in which the church now lives, there is nothing more practical, yet elusive, than Christian wisdom. Hence the aim of the lectures is not to add to the church’s stock of information – who, what, where – but rather to the church’s wisdom and understanding, and hence to the church’s witness and well-being.

    Revealed theology deals not with arcane or obsolete knowledge. Theology is no trivial pursuit. On the contrary, as both Calvin and Kantzer insist, the knowledge of God is intrinsically linked with self-knowledge and with knowing how to live well to God’s glory.

    If evangelical theology has a constructive contribution to make to the contemporary church, it is its passion to root Christian thinking and living in the realities of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To focus on revealed theology is not to bury our heads in ancient Palestinian sand, however, but rather to approach our era’s most pressing challenges with the resources of Trinitarian faith. The Kantzer Lectures provide a platform for this kind of Christian thinking, featuring prominent theologians committed to the project of faith seeking understanding, and to making this understanding practical. Hence the remit of the Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology: get wisdom; get understanding; get the mind of Christ.

    Q&A room

    If evangelical theology has a constructive contribution to make to the contemporary church, it is its passion to root Christian thinking and living in the realities of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To focus on revealed theology is not to bury our heads in ancient Palestinian sand, however, but rather to approach our era’s most pressing challenges with the resources of Trinitarian faith. The Kantzer Lectures provide a platform for this kind of Christian thinking, featuring prominent theologians committed to the project of faith seeking understanding, and to making this understanding practical. Hence the remit of the Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology: get wisdom; get understanding; get the mind of Christ.

    The aim of the lectures is not to add to the church's stock of information—who, what, where—but rather to the church's wisdom and understanding, and hence to the church's witness and well-being.

    Thomas A. McCall

    History of the Kantzer Lectures

    The Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology are intended to be the evangelical equivalent of the celebrated Gifford Lectures in natural theology. The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 by a generous provision in Adam Lord…

    The Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology are intended to be the evangelical equivalent of the celebrated Gifford Lectures in natural theology.

    The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 by a generous provision in Adam Lord Gifford’s will in which he stipulated that the lectures be held alternately at each of the four universities of Scotland. Since their inception, the Gifford Lectures have provided a quasi-institutional, university-based framework for seeking knowledge of God on the basis of science, philosophy, and nature. Taken as a whole, the Gifford Lectures constitute a record of the most important intellectual trends of the twentieth century. However, though Lord Gifford expressed a desire that the lecturers be “sincere lovers of and earnest inquirers after truth,” he also stipulated that they treat their subject “as a strictly natural science … of infinite Being, without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation.”

    While agreeing with Lord Gifford’s premise that all people should benefit from the knowledge of God that “lies at the root of well-being,” the Kantzer Lectures begin where the Gifford Lectures leave off: with a sustained focus on the knowledge of God located in God’s Word, on the self-presentation of the triune God in the history of redemption, and on its scriptural attestation that culminates in the person and history of Jesus Christ.

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    While agreeing with Lord Gifford’s premise that all people should benefit from the knowledge of God that “lies at the root of well-being,” the Kantzer Lectures begin where the Gifford Lectures leave off: with a sustained focus on the knowledge of God located in God’s Word, on the self-presentation of the triune God in the history of redemption, and on its scriptural attestation that culminates in the person and history of Jesus Christ.

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    Moderator | Kevin Vanhoozer

    Kevin J. Vanhoozer (PhD Cambridge University) is Research Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), and Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine (Lexham Press, 2019).

    If evangelical theology has a constructive contribution to make to the contemporary church, it is its passion to root Christian thinking and living in the realities of the gospel of Jesus Christ.Douglas A. Sweeney

    Previous Lectures

    • 2007: John Webster

      University of Aberdeen
      Perfection and Presence: God With Us, According to the Christian Confession

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    • 2009: Stephen Williams

      Union Theological College
      The Election of Grace: A Riddle without Resolution?

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    • 2011: Bruce McCormack

      Princeton Theological Seminary
      The God Who Graciously Elects: Seven Lectures on the Doctrine of God

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    • 2013: Nicholas Wolterstorff

      Yale University
      The God We Worship: A Liturgical Theology

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    • 2015: Henri Blocher

      Faculte Libre De Theologie Evangelique
      God, Evil, and Possibility

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    Kenneth S. Kantzer

    Kenneth S. Kantzer’s (1917-2002) career spanned the course of the resurgence of North American evangelicalism and was one of the factors that spurred it on. Dr. Kantzer served as professor of biblical and systematic theology at Wheaton College for seventeen years, as Dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for fifteen more, as president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and as editor-in-chief of Christianity Today.

    In 1984 he returned to Trinity, where he eventually became the first Director of a PhD program in Theological Studies. In each of these roles, he was motivated by a heartfelt desire that theology be of service to the church:

    Scripture was given to the church, and theology is a necessary work of the church, by the church, in the church, and for the church.

    Dr. Kantzer’s most important legacy was not a monetary bequest but a divinity school: Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, which he helped grow from a small denominational seminary into a major evangelical Christian graduate school of national and international reputation. It was his vision to combine centrist evangelical theological convictions with a commitment to academic excellence. His concern was to help evangelicals major on the majors rather than the minors. In this sense, he was the epitome of the “catholic evangelical.” (“The role of church tradition,” he once wrote, “is like that of an elder brother in the faith.”) He was a model of graciousness who would criticize only after listening charitably. (“Differences are not necessarily contradictions.”) He was one of the first evangelicals, for example, to go to Basel and learn from Karl Barth. He completed his PhD at Harvard University where he wrote a dissertation focused on the knowledge of God in the theology of John Calvin. It is therefore fitting that the lectures that bear his name be located at the institution into which he poured not only the best years of his life, but also his passion, energy, and wisdom.