The 2020 Bible Faculty Summit will be held Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary in Ankeny, Iowa, from Tuesday, July 28 through Thursday, July 30.

The paper proposal period will officially open January 1, 2020, and end Thursday, April 30, 2020.

The Bible Faculty Summit Publishing Committee (Brian Collins, Paul Himes, Tim Miller, and Mark Ward) is working to help 2019 Summit papers get published. Paul Himes has written a few articles offering some wisdom on how and where to publish (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). We commend it to Summit participants.

Also, the committee would like to ask presenters to give us the bibliography information for BFS papers that have been successfully published, even in modified form and/or for a more popular audience. We are creating a Published Papers page on the website to celebrate (and promote) these successes. Here are just a small few:

BFS 2012

• Mark Ward, “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs: Stanley Fish, The Pragmatic Presuppositionalist,” Answers Research Journal 6 (2013):265–278.

BFS 2014

• Paul A. Himes, “Rethinking the Translation of Διδακτικός in 1 Timothy 3.2 and 2 Timothy 2.24,” The Bible Translator 68.2 (2017): 189-208.

BFS 2015

• Paul A. Himes, “First Peter’s Identity Theology and the Community of Faith: A Test-Case in How Social Scientific Criticism Can Assist with Theological Ethics via Biblical Theology,” Evangelical Quarterly 89.2 (2018): 115-32.
• Tim Miller, “Mere Christianity: An Examination of the Concept in Richard Baxter and C. S. Lewis” DBSJ 2015.

BFS 2017

• Tim Miller, “The Meaning of ‘Milk’ in 1 Peter 2:1–3” DBSJ 2018.

BFS 2018

• Paul A. Himes, “Israel and Her Vocation: The Fourth Stage of Romans 11,” BibSac 176 (Jan-March 2019): 35-50.
• Mark Ward, “Can We Trust the Biblical Manuscripts?,” Bible Study Magazine (Sep-Oct 2018).

Lastly, enjoy a little piece of wisdom from Alan Jacobs on the difference between a “critical posture” and the kind of scholarship that actually does something in the world—like serving the church.

The schedule for the 2019 Bible Faculty Summit is below. Please submit papers to info [at] biblefacultysummit [dot] org at your earliest opportunity. Word, PDF, OneDrive, and Google Docs are all acceptable formats. Papers will be posted on a password-protected page on the BFS website.

Remember: several participants have asked that we keep to a stricter schedule this year, in order to give everyone a chance to receive feedback on their papers. Most slots are 45 minutes, so the BFS committee suggests a paper length of approximately 3,600–4,300 words. That should leave 10–15 minutes for discussion after each paper. A timekeeper will hold up a card in the back of the room to indicate when a presenter has five minutes remaining.

Tuesday, August 6

• 3–5 pm – Registration
• 5:00 pm – Dinner
• 6:00 pm – Greetings from Mark Ward and David Shumate
• 6:15 pm – Michael Riley
  Stroud’s Critique of the Van Tilian Apologetic
• 7:05 pm – Kevin Bauder
  The Shaking of San Francisco Baptist Seminary During the Early 1970s

Wednesday, August 7

• Breakfast – 7:45 am
• 8:15 am – Devotional planned by David Shumate
• 8:30 am – Christopher Cone
  Addressing LGBTQ: A Biblical Teleological Argument for Identity, Gender and Sexuality
• 9:15 am – Tim Miller
  To Preach or Not to Preach: Text-Criticism and the Pulpit.
• 10:00 am – Break
• 10:15 am – Jon Pratt
  The Free Grace Movement and Perseverance
• 11:00 am – Matthew Walker
  A New Way Forward in Spiritual Warfare: Replacing the Four Commonly Held Views with a New Paradigm
• 11:45 am – Group photo
• 12:00 pm – Lunch
• 1:00 pm – Paul Himes
  Did Jesus Quote the Apostolic Council? The Possible Intertextuality of Revelation 2:24 and Its Ramifications for Translation Style
• 2:00 pm – Break
• 2:15 pm – Cory Marsh
  The Rapture: Cosmic Segregation or Antidote for Oppression? A Critical Response to the ‘Racial Ideology of Rapture’ by Nathaniel P. Grimes
• 3:15 pm – Joseph Jo
  The Function and Limit of Extra-biblical Historical-Cultural Background Research in Biblical Interpretation: A Case Study on the New Perspective on Paul
• 4:15 pm – Break
• 4:45 pm – Dinner
• 6:15 pm – Matt Shrader
  New England Baptist Alvah Hovey (1820-1903): Another Chapter in Baptist Edwardsianism
• 7:00 pm – Brian Collins
  Genesis 1:26-28: Its Significance in Genesis and Biblical Theology

Thursday, August 8

• Breakfast – 7:45 am
• 8:15 am – Devotional and BFS Comments: Mark Ward
• 8:30 am – Tom Parr
  Puritan Exegesis for the Covenant of Redemption
• 9:15 am – Mark Ward
  “Kept Pure in All Ages”: A Counterargument to the Textual Critical Views of Confessional Bibliology
• 10:00 am — Break
• 10:15 am – Mark Bruffey
  Animal Sacrifices in the Millennium
• 11:00 am – Jeff Straub
  An Analysis of Current Controversies in the Southern Baptist Convention
• 11:45 am – Lunch

BFS 2019 is a month away, and our hosts at International Baptist College and Seminary need to make sure they have an accurate head count. So please do register below if you have not done so already.

(If you’re not certain if you’ve registered, please contact Mark Ward at [email protected]. Also, Becky Stertzbach of IBCS may contact you for additional details.)

Note: several participants have asked that we keep to a stricter schedule this year, in order to give everyone a chance to receive feedback on their papers. Most slots are 45 minutes, so the BFS committee suggests a paper length of approximately 3,600–4,300 words. That should leave 10–15 minutes for discussion after each paper.