Tag Archives: theology

My Signature Course on “Biblical Worldview: Scripture, Theology, Ethics”

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This Fall (beginning August 26, 2025), I will be teaching my signature course on the Biblical Worldview as a radical, liberating vision for the church and the world. The course has had a number of different names over the years, including “Exploring the Christian Worldview” (the undergraduate version at Roberts Wesleyan University) and “Biblical Worldview: Scripture, Theology, Ethics” (the graduate version at Northeastern Seminary).

I’ve taught non-credit versions of this course since I was a campus minister in Canada (at the University of Toronto, McMaster University, the University of Guelph, and Brock University) and in the US (at the University of Rochester, Cornell University, and Syracuse University).

My first book, The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (IVP, 1984), which I co-authored with Brian Walsh, was based on this course.

When I began to teach the course for graduate and undergraduate credit at the Institute for Christian Studies, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Roberts Wesleyan University, and Northeastern Seminary, I was able to develop the content further with a deeper dive into Scripture and further analysis of our changing cultural contexts.

This Fall the course will be offered as a dual modality course, which means that it may be accessed in person (in the classroom) or remotely (by Zoom link). It may also be taken for undergraduate or graduate credit.

Although the term “biblical worldview” has been used and abused by Christians with a rigid, absolutist stance, I want to reclaim the term for the Bible’s liberating vision of shalom and flourishing. That’s the orientation of this course. 

I am planning a complete rewrite of my earlier book The Transforming Vision along these lines. It is tentatively entitled Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws: The Bible’s Liberating Worldview (to be published by Baker Academic).

I have been authorized by Northeastern Seminary to invite anyone interested to register for the course (in either modality—in person or online) for credit or for audit.

Auditors receive all the same resources as those taking the course for credit, without submitting any assignments. These resources include links to the professor’s weekly video lectures, along with links to PDFs of readings and handouts.

The course will meet for fourteen weeks on Tuesdays at 7:00–8:30 pm Eastern. The format will be a flipped classroom. Participants view the video lectures and do the readings in advance (auditors are encouraged to do as much or as little of the reading as they desire).

This weekly preparation gives participants a chance to formulate thoughtful questions that arise from the lectures and readings, which they are invited to bring to our hour-and-a-half synchronous meeting each week. These weekly meetings are a rich time of discussion and sharing, as we explore matters of biblical interpretation, worldview, theology, culture, and ethics, and their bearing on our lives.

“Biblical Worldview: Scripture, Theology, Ethics” (GBHT 5210) is a 3-credit course. The tuition is normally $575 per credit hour (thus $1,725 for the course). The fee for auditing is only $199.

If you are interested in taking the course (for audit or credit), you may use the NES Fast Application link (Fast App for short) to submit some preliminary information about yourself. Auditing students (and those desiring credit, yet not registering for a degree program) should select “Non-Degree Seeking” on the drop-down menu under “Application Type.” You don’t need to fill in all the information boxes in the app, just those with an asterisk.

When you have filled out the required information, you should email Jess Newcomb (Asst. Director of Recruiting and Admissions for Graduate, Professional Studies, & Seminary) at admissions@nes.edu to let her know you have completed the Fast App and that you want to audit the Biblical Worldview course; she will take you through the next steps for registering as an auditor. You can also call or text her at 585.565.6533.

You can read a full course description here.

You can see the course outline and topics covered here.

Here are the course objectives.

This is the list of core readings.

After Tom Wright—Speaking on the Lament Psalms in Aberdeen

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This is a continuation blog post about my speaking tour in the UK.

After a great time with Tom and Maggie Wright, I left St. Andrews, heading north for Aberdeen, before I would need to head south from Scotland to England.

I arrived in Aberdeen at the start of the weekend and had some time to poke about the city and work on polishing some of the talks I would be giving over the next couple of weeks.

The Lament Psalms in Aberdeen

On Monday morning I was picked up by Grant Macaskill, the Kirby Laing Chair of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen. We drove to “Old Aberdeen,” where part of the university campus was located. There I spoke on the lament psalms (“Voices from the Ragged Edge: The Gritty Spirituality of the Psalms for a Broken World”) in the School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy.

Lament was was one of the topics I had addressed in St. Andrews and it was the topic Grant specifically requested for my Aberdeen visit. Not only did this topic relate to the interests of many graduate students, but the lecture was attended by Brian Brock, Lecturer in Moral and Practical Theology, who has co-edited an important volume of essays called Evoking Lament: A Theological Discussion (T & T Clark International, 2009), in which he has a chapter on Augustine and lament.

I had a great discussion with students in a variety of fields, including biblical studies, systematic theology, and practical theology on the value of the lament psalms for the church’s processing of pain and suffering, in prayer to God.

Meeting Grant Macaskill in the Islands Group at SBL

I had originally met my host Grant Macaskill (who is an excellent New Testament scholar and ethicist) at the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) meetings a few years ago, in a session on Islands, Islanders, and the Bible. Although most of the presenters in these sessions were from either the Caribbean (like myself) or the Pacific islands, Grant did a beautiful paper called “Gaelic Psalmody and a Theology of Place in the Western Isles of Scotland.”

His paper and mine (which was called “Islands in the Sun: Overtures to a Caribbean Creation Theology”) were both published in Islands, Islanders, and the Bible: Ruminations (Semeia Studies 77; Society of Biblical Literature, 2015).

The Jamaica-Scotland Connection—Past and Future

Grant and I managed to carve out time for some preliminary talks about a possible doctoral program in theology that Aberdeen might co-sponsor with the Jamaica Theological Seminary and the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology.

Having been made aware of the possibility of a joint PhD with Aberdeen by my colleague Easu McCaulley, I had been deputized by these two schools to begin the conversation; Grant and I discussed some intriguing possibilities about how we might go about developing a workable doctoral program in theology between Jamaica and Scotland.

It is not well known, but Jamaica and Scotland have numerous historical ties, including our flags. It turns out that the Jamaican flag was modeled on the Scottish flag, due to the advice of Rev William McGhie, a Church of Scotland minister who was living in Jamaica at the time of independence. This has led to an organization called Flag Up Scotland Jamaica, that is dedicated to developing ties between the two countries.

When my lecture was over, Grant put me on the train to Durham, which was the start of a long, but leisurely trip, from Aberdeen through Edinburgh, then on into England.

What happened in Durham is the subject of my next post.

A Speaking Tour in the United Kingdom

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I am getting ready to head to the UK to give a series of lectures, mostly on eschatology (but with a few other topics included as well). The first stop is in Scotland, with most of my time spent moving southward through England.

I was initially invited by folks who run the Thinking Faith Network (in Leeds) to speak on the topic of my eschatology book, A New Heaven and a New Earth. Given that I would be coming all the way across the Atlantic, they worked out a series of other speaking events for me in the UK.

It is a bit of a grueling schedule, so I would appreciate prayers from anyone who feels so led, both for my sustained energy and that my talks would be helpful to those in attendance.

 

If you are going to be in the areas where I’m speaking, you are invited to attend any of the public lectures.

So far the following locations and events have been confirmed.

St. Andrews

Two public lectures sponsored by the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology and the School of Divinity (St. Mary’s College), at the University of St. Andrews.

  • April 20 – “A New Heaven and a New Earth: For God So Loved the World.” Thursday afternoon lecture (4:00 pm), Lecture Room 1, St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews.
  • April 21 – “Voices from the Ragged Edge: The Gritty Spirituality of the Psalms for a Broken World.” Friday afternoon lecture (4:00 pm), Lecture Room 1, St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews.

Aberdeen

Durham

  • April 25 – “Unbinding the Aqedah from the Straightjacket of Tradition: An Inner-Biblical Interpretation of Abraham’s Test in Genesis 22.” Old Testament research seminar for postgraduate students in the Department of Theology and Religion, Tuesday afternoon (4:00-5:30 pm), Seminar Room C, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham University.

Mirfield

Leeds

Two public lectures in the Life Matters series, Thinking Faith Network, Leeds. Click here for a flier about both talks.

  • April 28 – “Why Are We Here? Our Sacred Calling in God’s World.” Friday evening lecture (7:30-9:00 pm),  Quaker Meeting House, 188 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds.
  • April 29 – “Voices from the Ragged Edge: The Gritty Spirituality of the Psalms for a Broken World.” Saturday morning lecture (10:00 am-12:00 noon), Quaker Meeting House, 188 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds.

Oxford

Cambridge

Oxford

Cheltenham

  • May 3 – “A New Heaven and a New Earth: For God So Loved the World.” Wednesday evening public lecture (6:00-7:30 pm), University of Gloucestershire, Room TC001, Francis Close Hall Campus, Swindon Rd., Cheltenham. You can download a flier here.

Bristol