Date: December 17, 2025
For the next two months, the Dean’s Commentary will feature text by VTS & GTS faculty members writing about what they are currently teaching, reading, or writing about.
Perhaps I’m not the only one who picks up a new book and first peruses the acknowledgments. Most chapter ones begin with words well considered and polished, each sentence progressing a complicated and nuanced argument in a clear authorial voice. But the preceding acknowledgements remind us that the writing process was long and messy, that the self-confident voice emerged only after lengthy engagement with the literature and usually a few trial experiments in conference presentations or journal articles. By mentioning colleagues who read drafts and sharpened the argument, research assistants or editors who improved the text, librarians who tracked down vital sources, and friends and family members who supported the author along the way, the acknowledgments remind us that no one writes by themselves.
For the last four years it has become our custom to celebrate recent faculty books, and on December 10, the faculty and friends in the community gathered to celebrate the VTS books published in 2025 with the authors giving extemporaneous versions of these acknowledgements. Professor Altagracia Perez-Bullard reminded us that her recent book, Equipping the Saints for Service in the City, began long ago as her doctoral dissertation and was shaped by her professors and supported by family members. Professor Marty Wheeler Burnett spoke of her inspiration to begin Shapers of the Hymnal 1982 when she first arrived on campus in the fall of 2020. Hired to teach music during a global pandemic when choir singing was temporarily silenced, she took the opportunity to interview those who had assembled the 1982 Hymnal and include the relfections in a book. I spoke about co-hosting a conference held at VTS that produced God and Faith (edited by Ian Markham and J.D. Bauer), and reflected on the way that the text emerged out of a conference where scholars gathered to consider the work of Keith Ward, who responded to every essay in the volume.
As we gathered, we saw these new volumes set out on the big table in Scott Lounge alongside many faculty books published in earlier years. Joining together with faculty colleagues, students, librarians and other staff members, we celebrated the new publications and reminded ourselves that our work is done in community.
John Allan Knight, J.D., Ph.D.
Director of Faculty Research
Sprigg Visiting Professor of Philosophical Theology and Ethics
Virginia Theological Seminary