On December 14, 2020, Northern Seminary announced two new faculty appointments. One of them is Dr. Beth Felker Jones. We are delighted to have her leadership, thoughtful pedagogy, and academic expertise in theology. Get to know her better below.

     Beth Felker Jones, Professor of Theology, Wheaton College (soon to be Professor of Theology, Northern Seminary)

Why do you love teaching and researching about Christian theology?

            Some people worry that studying theology will lead them away from vibrant and personal faith, but my own experience has always been the opposite. The privilege of studying the things of God continues to lead me closer to God and to help me better know and love God. My passion for teaching theology is to share this with students. I believe that we’re all hungering for good theology, but we’re often given watered down stuff instead, because our teachers or churches falsely believe we can’t handle the good stuff. But there’s nothing more exciting than helping fellow believers to think about the mystery of God’s three and oneness and how that teaches us about what love is, or helping others to sort through the biblical logic which shows us how Jesus is both divine and human. That logic, too, unfolds the love of God for us.

What is one “big idea” in your scholarship? 

A lot of my work has centered around understanding the body in Christian theology. I wrote my first book on the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and how that matters for us as people God created as embodied creatures. As I’ve taught over the years, I’ve found that many students share my experience of not learning basic Christian things about embodiment, things like: the doctrine of creation means our bodies are good and that God has good purposes for our bodies which will finally be seen in the resurrection. My scholarship tries to connect doctrine and the everyday, embodied facts of our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Who is one of your academic heroes and why do you admire them? 

Ooh, this is hard, because I have a lot of them, but I’m going to name the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich. Julian was probably the first woman to write a book of theology in the English language, and she did extraordinary work connecting the very best, most thoughtful Christian doctrine with the most ordinary, everyday experiences of pain, suffering, relationship, and love. Her testimony to God’s love is beautiful.

What books were formative for you when you were a student? Why were they so important and shaping?

Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love

Augustine’s Confessions

Augustine gets a bad reputation these days, but I can talk for hours about why he’s such a good and influential interpreter of scripture and why he continues to shape me. His Confessions is his account of his own life lived with God, of God transforming him.

Read Jones’s Work

Practicing Christian Doctrine: An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically

Faithful: A Theology of Sex

Follow Jones Online

Facebook

@bethfelkerjones on twitter and IG

If you ran into me at a conference and didn’t want to talk theology, what would you want to talk about? 

I’m a voracious fiction reader. I also have four kids and, like most parents, I can talk about them forever.

What is a research/writing project you are working on right now that you are excited about? 

I’m writing two books right now I’m excited about. One is a theology of conversion, which is a topic that a lot of people have written about in anthropological or sociological perspective but about which there’s not much that is written about doctrine. The other book is called Why I am a Protestant.