princeton theological seminary

Save $50 on the Princeton Youth Ministry Forum

November 8, 2011 By Tony Jones Leave a Comment

The Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry is one of the premier gatherings in field. In 2012, the Forum is expanding beyond New Jersey to take place in California. Santa Barbara, to be exact. In January. Get the hint.

Great speakers this include some of the usual suspects (Kenda Dean, etc.) as well as some Californians (who I nominated to speak): Marianne Meye Thompson and Rebecca Ver Stratten-McFarren. The theme is “Create“:

As you take a deep look into your own soul and into the creative heart of the Gospel, help us ask insightful questions about the creative expressions of youth culture. Today, young people are awash in a sea of brands and pop-culture icons, but at the Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry we seek to immerse youth in the waters of their baptism – to unleash the creative power of the Holy Spirit who has called them by name and commissioned them to go “into all the world.”

And, if you register by the end of this month, you’ll save $50 on the registration fee.

What’s stopping you?

Are the Social Trinity and Panentheism Incommensurable?

May 10, 2011 By Tony Jones 12 Comments

Last week, I wrote about a question at my dissertation defense over which I stumbled. There was one other question that tripped me up.

Stacy Johnson is one of my favorite professors at Princeton, though I never took a class from him. (He is also the author of possibly the very best book on GLBT issues in the church, A Time to Embrace.) Stacy is not, however, a fan of Jurgen Moltmann, my theological muse. And at my defense, he asked me a question that he really has for Moltmann:

How can someone be committed to a social doctrine of the Trinity, in which the godhead is seen as an eternal, interpenetrating relationship of three divine persons, and also a panentheist, in which God is in all things and all things are in God?

It’s a good question, for it would seem that a commitment to the social Trinity requires an understanding of God as sovereign Other, whereas panentheism seems at odds with that commitment.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: dissertation, theology Tagged With: jurgen moltmann, princeton theological seminary, trinity 12 Comments

Where Is God Revealed?

May 4, 2011 By Tony Jones 25 Comments

Two questions during my dissertation defense last week I think I fumbled a bit. The first one was put to me by Kenda Dean who asked, in essence, “How is God revealed to human beings?”

She asked this because in my dissertation, I am critical of the way that “practices” have been emphasized in practical theology over the past couple decades. This is primarily, I think, because of the preeminence of Stanley Hauerwas as Theologian Of The Americas, and because of the direction that Craig Dykstra has taken the Lilly Endowment (and its tens of millions of dollars).

I don’t have anything against practices, per se, being core to our understanding of the church. I do, however, think that Dykstra, Hauerwas, Dorothy Bass and others have overdetermined the power of practices at telling us who we are and, more significantly, who God is. In fact, I don’t think that ecclesial practices tell us much, if anything, about God.

What practices do, I submit, is show us how human beings organize our experiences of what we understand as the divine. We pray, we sing, we take communion, we dance, we recite poetry, we listen to sermonators. These practices all tell us what we think about God. The whirling dervishes think something very different about the divine than do the frozen chosen.

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Filed Under: dissertation, theology Tagged With: princeton theological seminary 25 Comments

On Being a Doctor

April 26, 2011 By Tony Jones

So yesterday, in front of a gallery of a couple dozen friends, a committee of five professors from Princeton Theological Seminary questioned me about my dissertation for just over 90 minutes. Then they dismissed all of us from the room, voted, and awarded me with the degree, Doctor of Philosophy.

Dissertation Moment (by Courtney Perry)

[Read more...]

Filed Under: dissertation Tagged With: dissertation, princeton theological seminary

The Dissertation Is in the Mail!

April 7, 2011 By Tony Jones 7 Comments

And here’s what Wordle says it’s about:

Filed Under: dissertation Tagged With: princeton theological seminary 7 Comments

Housekeeping

March 14, 2011 By Tony Jones 9 Comments

Dear readers, thanks for your ongoing interest in my writing here on the blog. Today, a non-descript Monday in a liminal part of the year, seemed like a good time for me to do a little housekeeping here on the blog. Here are some notes and answers to a few questions that seem to linger out there among readers and commenters:

Dissertation: My committee has approved my dissertation for a public defense on April 25 at 4pm on the Princeton Theological Seminary campus. It’s open, so you’re all invited. That committee has also suggested many more revisions, which I’m now in the process of making. I need to have two hard copies of the revised dissertation to campus two weeks before the defense, so that it can be read by those attending my defense. At the defense, I’ll be encouraged to make more changes, and that version will be due at Princeton the first week of May. Then PTS will send it to a dissertation editor who will check all the formatting and tell me what changes to make. Then, sometime this summer, I’ll mail three copies of the final-final-final version — on linen paper no less — to Princeton for binding and placement in the library.

Rob Bell: My post on Monday, February 28 on the Rob Bell-John Piper tête à tête amoureux was the most-read post in the history of my blog. By a long shot. I attribute that to two things: 1) Sarah Bailey added a paragraph from my post to her much-read online article about the controversy; 2) lots of people were retweeting my post with comments like, “This is the best thing I’ve read on the #robbell controversy.”

Dissertation Acknowledgements

February 7, 2011 By Tony Jones 3 Comments

In the next couple days, I’m wrapping up Draft No. 3, the penultimate version of my dissertation. Kenda Dean, my advisor, will look it over, and early next week she’ll distribute it to the other three members of my dissertation committee. How this works is, Kenda tells them which page numbers of the dissertation will most interest them — usually, the sections where I deal directly with their work. While they, of course, can read the whole thing, professors’ schedules being what they are, they may not get to it.

Kenda will then funnel their observations back to me, later this month, and then I’ve got until March 15 to make those revisions, format the thing to very exacting specifications, and get it in hard copy to the PhD Studies Office at Princeton (Theological Seminary).

Among the finishing touches I’ve had to put on is the acknowledgements section. While I won’t disclose the entirety just yet, here’s what I wrote about Kenda, [Read more...]

Filed Under: dissertation Tagged With: kenda creasy dean, princeton theological seminary 3 Comments

Dissertation Update

January 29, 2011 By Tony Jones 5 Comments

After a few blessed weeks of not thinking about it, my dissertation arrived last week via overnight messenger from Kenda Dean, replete with comments on suggestions on nigh every page. I am now canceling appointments and putting off email responses until February 9, when the next (and penultimate) revisions are due back in Princeton.

Ass is in chair, head is down, and nose is to the grindstone.

Filed Under: dissertation Tagged With: princeton theological seminary 5 Comments

On Finishing a Dissertation

November 16, 2010 By Tony Jones 15 Comments

My sojourn to Philadelphia last week took me close enough to the gravitational center of my doctoral studies that could not help but be sucked into the tractor beam of Princeton Theological Seminary. While there, I had a wonderful lunch with my primary advisor, Kenda Dean, during which we mapped out a schedule by which I can complete my dissertation during this academic year.

What that means, in short, is that I have to revise my first four chapters and write the fifth and final chapter by the time that she boards a plane for South Africa on January 2, 2011. Thereby, she can read my tome on the flight (what better way to kill 20 hours?!?) and return it to me for more revisions upon her return. Thereafter, the dissertation will be distributed to the other three members of my dissertation committee, and I will subsequently make the changes that they suggest.

Then I will take on the tedious and arduous task of formatting the dissertation, about which Princeton will truck no deviance. To wit:

The main body is to be consecutive Arabic numbering from “1.” The page containing a chapter heading is to have the page number centered and greater than or equal to ¾in from bottom of page. The remaining pages in a chapter have the page number at the top right corner at least ½in from any edge.

On or before March 15, the dissertation must be printed and presented to the PhD Studies Office at Princeton, at which time an oral defense will be scheduled, to take place no later than the last day of April. After the oral defense takes place, two more copies of the dissertation, printed on “high-quality, non-erasable, acid-free paper” must be submitted to the PhD Studies Office, whereupon I will be awarded the degree of philosophiae doctoris.

I write all of this for the sole purpose of informing the readers of this blog that, holy shit, I have a lot of work to do by January 2!

Thanks for your ongoing support.

Filed Under: dissertation Tagged With: dissertation, kenda creasy dean, princeton theological seminary 15 Comments

Almost Christian: Make No Small Plans

September 9, 2010 By Tony Jones 3 Comments

I’m blogging through Kenda Creasy Dean’s new book, Almost Christian, a theological follow up to Christian Smith’s Soul Searching. I hope you’ll join me. Find all the posts here.

Kenda’s final chapter and conclusion is called, “Make No Small Plans: A Case for Hope,” and in it she attempts to find the good news in the otherwise rather dreary conclusions of the NSYR and the finding that most American teens practice a version of Christianity called, “Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism.”

She recounts the five years of reflecting on the findings as full of sleepless nights. And she told CNN that her time on the NSYR interview team was “one of the most depressing summers of her life.” Five years later, she has drawn two conclusions:

When it comes to vapid Christianity, teenagers are not the problem — the church is.
The church is also the solution.

Kenda is tough on the church in this chapter, and throughout the book, arguing that “the contemporary church has strayed, often badly, from the course set before us by the earliest followers of Jesus…” But, she hasn’t lost hope, and she round out the book with these five encouragements/challenges: