This Week’s Patheos Column: The Faithful Scholar

In this week’s Patheos column, I pay tribute to one of my teachers, Dr. John D. Woodbridge.  Here is a taste:

I arrived in Deerfield, Illinois in January 1989 to start a Masters of Divinity degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. When I left the Chicago area five years later I was on my way toward becoming an American historian. Very few professional historians find their calling in an evangelical divinity school. I did. God leads people to all kinds of vocations, and he certainly led me to an academic life. But he also uses people. In my case, he used a Trinity church history professor named John D. Woodbridge.

I am writing my column this week from Deerfield. I am back in my old stomping grounds for a special symposium honoring my beloved mentor. For the last several years I worked closely with two other Trinity graduates—Jay Green and Eric Miller—to produce an edited volume of essays that examines the unique calling of the historian and how that calling intersects with Christian faith. The book was published last November with the title Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation. We dedicated the book to John Woodbridge.

Read the rest here.

RECOMMENDED READING

Trinity College in Deerfield, IL ends residential, in-person undergraduate education. Randall Balmer on the closing of his alma mater What is going on at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School? Is Ketanji Brown Jackson an evangelical Christian?