Date: December 15, 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.
I am delighted to announce that VTS Press has recently published Experiments in Early Christian Theology, the 2022 Costan Lectures given by Kathryn Tanner, the Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School.
In this fascinating book Tanner explores the creative theological thinking of early church theologians such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. Although we read their works today as that part of the tradition known as the patristics, Tanner’s work reminds us that these scholars were “engaged in open exploration towards ends unknown, making their way with great daring into uncharted territory.” As she shares a re-reading of their works over three chapters, she also points to the ways in which the inventiveness they modeled centuries ago can inspire contemporary theology.
The Costan Lectures at Virginia Theological Seminary are an annual three-day series established in 2014 through the generosity of Jay and Margaret Costan. They provide world-renowned scholars an opportunity to connect the deep well of Christian tradition with contemporary issues in theology, ethics, and spirituality. Often turning to figures from the first millennium of Christianity, these lectures demonstrate the perennial relevance of the church’s earliest theologians, inspiring a new generation of thinkers, writers, and leaders to speak boldly into the contemporary moment.
The volume was edited by a recent VTS alum, Christopher Poore (now a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago), and Ed Watson from Yale’s Religious Studies Department provides a helpful introduction.
And, when planning your spring calendars, please plan on attending the next set of Costan lectures at VTS on March 16-18, when Margaret Mitchell, the Shailer Mathews Distinguished Service Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago, will present “The Theological Problem of Hunger, from Paul to Chrysostom to SNAP.”
John Allan Knight, J.D., Ph.D.
Director of Faculty Research
Sprigg Visiting Professor of Philosophical Theology and Ethics
Virginia Theological Seminary