Edwin Chr. van Driel

The Rev. Dr. Edwin Chr. van Driel is the Directors’ Bicentennial Professor of Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He teaches mainly in Christology, ecclesiology, and the interaction between biblical studies and theology. Van Driel is deeply invested in helping the church think about its existence and calling as it moves into an increasingly post-Christian world.

Van Driel is the author of Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Rethinking Paul: Protestant Theology and Contemporary Exegesis (Cambridge University Press, 2021), which won the 2021 Senior Alberigo Award of the European Academy of Religion. His new book The Firstborn of All Creation: Explorations in Supralapsarian Christology collects his work in Christology from the last 10 years and is forthcoming from Baker Academics in 2025. He also edited What Is Jesus Doing? Divine Agency in the Life of the Church and the Work of the Pastor (IVP Academic, 2019) and the T&T Clark Handbook of Election (Continuum, 2023). His essays have been published in academic journals such as Modern Theology, The International Journal of Systematic Theology, The Heythrop Journal, Worship, and The Scottish Journal of Theology, but also in popular magazines such as Christian Century, Call to Worship, and The Presbyterian Outlook.

Van Driel’s first and third book deal with the divine motivation for the incarnation: is it contingent upon sin, or does God have deeper motives to become human? Van Driel suggests the latter, arguing that in friendship and love God wants to come as close to creation as God can—by coming among us as a human being. His second monograph offers a theological reading of contemporary Pauline exegesis and gleans what Protestant theologians can learn from the New Perspective on Paul and an apocalyptic reading of the apostle. He currently researches an ecclesiology for a post-Christian world.

Van Driel is an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and served on the church’s committee that produced the denomination’s new hymnal, Glory to God. He was the primary writer of the committee’s “Theological Vision Statement” and “A Statement on Language,” and also served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Book of Common Worship. Van Driel is currently part of the Steering Team for the seminary’s Lilly-funded Preaching for a Post-Christian Age program. He serves on the executive committee of the American Theological Society and is the chair of the International Consultation on Ecclesial Futures, an invited group of practitioners, church consultations, denominational leaders, and academics from four continents which gathers yearly to consult on the church’s contextual missional challenges.

BOOKS

The Firstborn of All Creation: Explorations in Supralapsarian Christology. Forthcoming: Baker Academics, 2025.

T&T Clark Handbook of Election. London: Continuum, 2023.

Rethinking Paul: Protestant Theology and Pauline Exegesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

What Is Jesus Doing? Divine Agency in the Life of the Church and the Ministry of the Pastor. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

RECENT ESSAYS

“All Things Summed Up Into Christ: On a particular Christological impetus of Lesslie Newbigin’s missional-ecumenical project.” Forthcoming in Ecclesiology.

“The Firstborn of Creation and Redemption: A response to Douglas F. Ottati’s A Theology for the Twenty-First Century.” Forthcoming in the Journal of Reformed Theology as part of a symposium on Ottati’s book.

“Incarnation and Israel: A Supralapsarian Account of Israel’s Chosenness.” Modern Theology 39 (2023) 3-18.

“God and God’s Beloved: A Constructive Re-Reading of Scotus’ Supralapsarian Christological Argument.” The Heythrop Journal 63 (2022) 995-1006. 

“Sharing in Nature or Encountering a Person: A Tale of Two Different Supralapsarian Strategies.” Scottish Journal of Theology 75.3 (2022) 193-206.

“‘His death manifested its power and efficacy in us’: The role of Christ’s resurrection in John Calvin’s theology.” Journal of Reformed Theology 12 (2018) 217-234.

“What Are We Doing When We Bless?” Call to Worship 52.2 (2018) 2-9.

“‘Ministering to the grandchildren of the lost son’: Being Church in a Post-Christian Society.” The Presbyterian Outlook 200.13 (September 13, 2018), 29-35.