June 4-7, 2013
Ambridge, Pennsylvania
In cooperation with The Robert E. Webber Center for an Ancient-Evangelical Future located on the campus of the Trinity School of Ministry.
The AFFN gathering will begin at 11 AM on Tuesday, June 4, and continue until the late afternoon. The schedule for the following day, Wednesday, will be (approximately) 9-5. The Webber Center events begin on Wednesday night, June 5, with a 7 PM, gathering. The fee for the AFFN portion of the gathering is $29. Plans for the AFFN portion of the week, including guest speakers and the full agenda, are still coming together, so stay tuned!
Meanwhile, here’s the very latest on the Webber Center portion of the week: The Word and the Creeds: Reading Scripture in the Light of the Church’s Ancient Faith. Keynote Speakers: Richard Hays, Christopher Hall, Peter Leithart, Kathryn Greene-McCreight, David Yeago, with special guest David Neff, Editorial Vice President of Christianity Today. The fee for the Webber Center portion of the gathering is $150 and includes some meals. Cilck here to learn more or to register.
Accommodation and registration info: Here are a couple of helpful tid-bits: Flights will be booked to the Pittsburgh airport. Network members have been encouraged to go ahead and register for the Webber Center conference and make reservations at one of four potential places for lodging near the airport and within minutes of Trinity: The Sheraton Pittsburgh Airport (formerly called The Crowne Plaza Hotel) (the main hotel Trinity where Trinity has reserved a block of rooms– use code TSM) ($99), The Hampton Inn (at Pittsburgh airport) ($139 conference rate), The DoubleTree ($119 conference rate), and the Gilmary Catholic Retreat Center, a local option that Trinity uses ($55). NOTE: Find more information about all of these accommodation options, including contact information, by clicking here.
Helpful Links:
Read about Joel Scandrett being named the director of the Webber Center.
Read an article about the Webber Center by Joel Scandrett.
A Wiki article about Ambridge.
Additional Webber Center Conference details:
The Word and the Creeds: Reading Scripture in the Light of the Church’s Ancient Faith
How do we read the Bible? How does the way we read the Bible inform our theology and ministry? Modern and postmodern methods of Biblical interpretation (hermeneutics) have tended to read the Bible as an isolated text with little unified meaning or coherence—but this has not always been the case. Throughout most of church history, Christians have read the Bible under the guidance of the Rule of Faith and the great Creeds of the Church. How does such a creedal hermeneutic square with contemporary Christian and secular approaches to the Bible, and what are the implications of this approach for Christian theology, spirituality, and mission?
These questions will be addressed in Trinity’s first Ancient Evangelical Future Conference, June 5-7, 2013, at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. Hosted by the newly established Robert E. Webber Center, this Conference will draw deeply from the well of the Great Tradition. Conference speakers from across a spectrum of theological traditions will join us to lead this important and timely conversation.
Robert Webber himself (left) described what he hoped would be the content and scope of this conference (as articulated in “The Call“):
“We call for the Church’s reflection to remain anchored in the Scriptures in continuity with the theological interpretation learned from the early Fathers. Thus, we call Evangelicals to turn away from methods that separate theological reflection from the common traditions of the Church. These modern methods compartmentalize God’s story by analyzing its separate parts, while ignoring God’s entire redemptive work as recapitulated in Christ. Anti-historical attitudes also disregard the common biblical and theological legacy of the ancient Church. Such disregard ignores the hermeneutical value of the Church’s ecumenical creeds. This reduces God’s story of the world to one of many competing theologies and impairs the unified witness of the Church to God’s plan for the history of the world. Therefore, we call Evangelicals to unity in ‘the tradition that has been believed everywhere, always and by all,’ as well as to humility and charity in their various Protestant traditions.”