News & Blog

The present issue is a themed issue about the study of revivalist Protestantism. Some of its articles are based on papers read at the conference of the European Academy of Religion on Religion from the inside in 2023. The opening editorial by...

I was born in 1967 in the small Palatinate town of Kusel in Germany. The first years of my life were characterised by constant moves – from Düsseldorf to the greater Frankfurt area and a stay near London until in 1972 our family left for Sumatra...

After John has introduced his letter to the seven churches in Revelation 1:1-8, you expect some action. But before that happens, John first tells us about his call. This calling gives him legitimacy as a prophet and therefore he can present his...

Press release - EVANGELICAL IDENTITY IN EUROPE TODAY: UNITY IN DIVERSITY

Photos taken by Gert F. Hain

In Acts 1:8, Jesus tells his followers that, empowered by the Holy Spirit, they will be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. Acts shows this being fulfilled, although the task remains incomplete even today.

I was recently in Albania – not a...

In 2 Kings 18 we read about Sennacherib’s military campaign to Judah in 701 B.C. Having conquered the fortified city of Lachish, a siege that was depicted in reliefs discovered at Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh and now displayed at the British...

My wife Hetty is preparing a paper for the FEET conference on Evangelical Identity in Prague this August. One of the sources she is consulting is the new book by professor Hans Burger, Jesus Christ, Hermeneutics, and Scripture. Hetty received her...

‘Unity in diversity’ is the subtitle that follows the main description of the theme of our upcoming FEET conference, which will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, on 23-27 August 2024. The conference has been prepared in close cooperation with...

This issue of the European Journal of Theology opens with a contribution by Wolfgang Köhler, who shows how the theme of hardening the people’s hearts is important in the various parts of the Book of Isaiah. Tracing how the theme develops, Kohler...

Jacob Thiessen, born in 1964, has been rector and lecturer at the University School of Theology STH Basel since January 2004 and professor of New Testament since 2007. He is also a leading elder of the Basel-Holee Mennonite congregation.

Thiessen...

Opening a book by the Parisian theologian Henri Blocher is like being invited to a wedding banquet. It is a theologically and culturally rich, tasty and challenging experience. The publication of his latest book,La doctrine de l’Église et des...

See the attached PDF information about the forthcoming 2024 conference (Prague).

Read the Autumn 2023 Newsletter with more information about FEET activities, people, and forthcoming theological conferences!

I was born in 1961, in the harbour city of Constanța, Romania, in a Baptist family. Living in a Communist country, I knew from youth what it meant to be followed by the secret police, to be denied social and professional promotion, and yet to...

This issue of the European Journal of Theology contains two papers read at FEET’s online conference on Karl Barth. Romanian Octavian Baban offers a detailed and critical aassessment of Barth’s exegesis in the Römerbrief after 100 years. Baban...

See attached PDF file.

During the Covid pandemic, our daughter lost her unborn son six months into her pregnancy. It was our first grandchild. Added to the pandemic, this trauma led me to a deep burnout from which it has been difficult to recover.

Recently I had the...

To register visit: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeymXG-sR5VBJEzZjM_I6B2_mMCYF6pit-hDCWWyd12XIcVKQ/viewform

The wretched conditions of Jerusalem evoked in Jeremiah 33 are similar to what is going on in Europe nowadays in several respects. When reading the description of the downfall of the city in verses 4 and 5, the ruins of Bakhmut in Ukraine...

Yannick Imbert is professor of apologetics at Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence, France. He earned his doctorate at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (USA) studying J.R.R. Tolkien’s theory of imagination. Dr Imbert has published...

This issue of the European Journal of Theology contains two of the papers from the 2022 conference of the Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians in Prague: Christian Stettler investigates biblical texts that speak of the resurrection of...

Landmark One-Volume Bible Commentary from Central and Eastern Europe Launched

3rd March 2023, Prague, Czech Republic.

Readers of the Bible and followers of Christ can now gain new insights as they study Scripture thanks to a recently launched...

In Mark 15:40-41 we read how several women from Galilee stood at the foot of the cross of Jesus. A number of these women were also present at Jesus’ funeral (15:47). That was on Friday. Not long after, on the early Sunday morning, these women...

Over thirty years ago my wife Anne and I attended a Christian meeting where the theme was reconciliation and forgiveness. We were invited to reflect upon whether we should seek forgiveness from anyone present. Sitting in the row in front of us...

Dear colleagues and friends,

As you know, our third International ISFORB Conference will take place 4-5 May 2023 at ETF Leuven and focus on the theme “Secular States Struggling with Religious Freedom”.

As of now, we have received eighteen paper...

In 2023 we will commemorate that 125 years have passed since C.S. Lewis was born, and 60 years since he died.

I am an admirer of Lewis’ writings and have read him extensively. In the final book in his Narnia series, The Last Battle, there is a...

Let me introduce myself as a recent member of the Executive Committee of FEET. I have been teaching missiology in the French-speaking world for over ten years. I love traveling to various countries in French Africa, Madagascar, French Europe and...

Most evangelical theologians I know are diligent workers. They sense every day that the words of Jesus Christ in Luke 10:2 still hold true: ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few.’ And since they are responsible and conscientious...

The recent article ‘The Invisible Women. Female Participation in Church Leadership in the Dutch Evangelical Movement’ by Laura Dijkhuizen is now available for free on the website of the Journal’s publisher:

...

This issue of the European Journal of Theology opens with a substantial and important editorial by Christoph Stenschke. This is followed by a narrative exegesis of the story of Jacob in Genesis by Barbara Dörpinghaus, who focuses on two key...

Laura Dijkhuizen is the Academic Dean of the School of Theology within the Foundation Academy of Amsterdam, an institution focusing on people with a migration background. She is also the vice-president of the Jethro Foundation and teaches basic...

The name ‘Christian’ is characterised by the insistence on the personal need for salvation and the personal responsibility to respond to God’s grace in repentance and faith. The gospel is both an announcement of God’s intervention to save and a...

Press release from the Evangelical Theological Conference in Prague, August 26-30, 2022

As a part of the FEET Conference in Prague there will be various papers presented and discussed in theological discipline groups.:

Dr Derek Bass: “Is Moses a Murderer Deserving Judgment or a Just Redeemer Foreshadowing YHWH and Jesus?: A...

Dr. Robert Lilleaasen, head of research and associate professor in Practical Theology at Fjellhaug International University College in Oslo, Norway, introduces himself.

In the current issue of EJT I have written an article on religious freedom in...

In this issue of the European Journal of Theology you will find an article on a current issue in Norway by a Norwegian and an article on an Italian from the past by an Italian. Robert Lilleaasen provides background to the recent Norwegian law on...

On Holy Tuesday, the church commemorates Christ’s confrontation with the Pharisees, temple elders, and Herodians, who tried to insidiously accuse Christ of teaching against the Law of Moses. Christ rejected all reproaches. He exposed the...

Sent from our Ukrainian Theological Seminary Colleagues:

Voices from the Ruins: Appeal of the Representatives of Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Educational Institutions Regarding the War of the Russian Federation against Ukraine

“If one member...

A while ago I was made aware that #exvangelical is trending in social media. On TikTok, there are more than 730 million views of videos with that hashtag. One of the most profiled among those posting with that hashtag is Abraham Piper, son of the...

The Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians (FEET) wishes to express its utter abhorrence at the unprovoked war that the Russian Federation has instigated against its peaceful neighbour, the independent sovereign state of Ukraine.

We stand...

Almost every day, the media publish new facts relating to abuse and other acts of violence. The torrent of revelations about sexual misconduct in the Roman-Catholic Church but also in evangelical communities keeps flowing. The same is true for...

You are invited to register at:

https://feetprague.b2bonline.estec.cz

The fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15, 2019, is a symbol of the church that burns in secularised Europe and, more generally, in the globalised world. Andrea Riccardi’s book, La Chiesa brucia: Crisi e futuro del cristianesimo (The...

Read the Autumn 2021 Newsletter with more information about FEET activities, people, and forthcoming theological conference!

In his recently published book Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, The Universe and Us, the renowned astrophysicist and radio astronomer professor Heino Falcke writes on science and the Christian faith. He does not understand the two as...

Featured author: Professor Geert Lorein An interview

Why did you study theology?

Well, I started with Classics at the Katholieke Universiteit (Catholic University) Leuven, because being a teacher of Greek and Latin seemed to me an interesting and...

European Journal of Theology Issue 30.2 (October 2021)

This issue of the European Journal of Theology has the smell of the Low Countries. It so happens that most articles are somehow connected to The Netherlands and Belgium, and two even interact...

We have come to the season when intellectual influencers, among them theologians, reveal their summer reading lists. It is tempting to join their ranks; my reading lists tend to be rather long. And be sure, I plan to read books this summer. I...

A few years ago, I enjoyed one of the most wonderful experiences in my ministry as a teacher of theology. It happened in a not very wealthy Islamic country. While I was taking a nap, my students studied the advantages and disadvantages of living...

Video recordings of the online meeting.

Uniquely, this issue of the European Journal of Theology contains not one but two editorials. The first is a response to the pandemic which is holding Europe in its grip: what does this mean for the church?, asks Johannes Reimer. Our second...

Dr Meiken Buchholz is assistant professor of Missiology at the Freie Theologische Hochschule Giessen, Germany, and at Fjellhaug International University College, Oslo, Norway. She regularly visits the China Lutheran Seminary, Taiwan, as guest...

It has been rightly called the ‘political manifesto’ of Pope Francis’ pontificate. The new encyclical ‘All Brothers’ wants to plead the cause of universal fraternity and social friendship. This is a theme that Pope Francis has disseminated in...

On 18 February, after 203 days of flight, the US robot ‘Perseverance’ touched down on Mars. The goal of its mission is to explore the surface of the planet for the next two years. The rover’s name ‘Perseverance’ is very appropriate for its...

Monday 19 April 2021

Video conference organised by the Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians (FEET) at 2.00–5.00pm (Continental Time; 3.00–6.00pm Eastern European Time, 1.00–4.00pm GMT)

Programme:

Welcome by the Chairman of FEET,...

Football fans all over the world mourned when the Argentine footballer Diego Maradona passed away on November 25th. In response a commentator at my age wrote something that stuck with me: ‘You don’t mourn Maradona; you mourn your childhood.’ His...

Perhaps the most famous of the United Kingdom’s patriotic songs is ‘Rule Britannia’. Affirming that ‘Britons never will be slaves’, it declares that while other ‘tyrants’ will rise and fall, blessed by God the United Kingdom will continue to...

The first issue of the European Journal of Theology has been published in new layout under the Amsterdam University Press. Vol. 29.2, 2020.

Faith and works

Among the Protestant Churches, heirs of the Reformation, good deeds have no place in the process of redemption. Indeed, salvation is a free gift of God to all those who realise that they are orphans, in other words separated from...

This is the first issue of the European Journal of Theology which has been produced by the new publisher, Amsterdam University Press (AUP). The journal looks very different indeed, both inside and outside, yet the editorial board, aims and...

Conference topic: “Discerning the Work of the Holy Spirit in and Through the Church”

Friday, Aug 28, 2020

15:00 – 17:00

Introduction and address by the chairman of FEET, Prof. Pierre Berthoud (Aix-en-Provence, France) Prayer and Bible Reading:...

An electronic FEET membership form has been installed on this website. You will find more details on About page.

If you are considering joining FEET, feel free to use it.

Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005), from better known as Pope John Paul II, was one of the most influential men of the twentieth century. The centenary of his birth is a useful opportunity to reflect on his legacy. His life was at the centre of the major...

The coronavirus pandemic is currently affecting most countries of the world in a crisis that was hardly known until now. According to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, there are more than 6 million confirmed cases worldwide. More than...

Read the Spring 2020 Newsletter with more information about FEET video conference!

I am very sorry to announce now that the FEET conference cannot take place as a present or physical conference in Prague this August due to the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

This is a very recent decision. After intensive...

The World Evangelical Alliance’s Evangelical Review of Theology is becoming a free online journal, starting with its August 2020 issue. WEA leaders and other prominent Christians will address issues of contemporary concern to the global body of...

Issue 29.1 of the European Journal of Theology contains six major articles and the usual book reviews. Svetlana Khobnya offers a missionary reading of 1 Peter, arguing that even the instructions to slaves, husbands and wives (the household codes)...

The new issue contains no fewer than eight articles, written by authors from many different European countries. The Editorial is by the Dane Jeppe Bach Nikolajsen, a member of the editorial board. The issue then opens with two articles on Paul:...

Dr Klaus Vibe is assistant professor in New Testament at Fjellhaug International University College, Aarhus, Denmark. His article on Paul and Greek paideia is published in the October 2019 issue of the European Journal of Theology.

I was born in...

Rev. Pavel Černý, ThD is a Pastor, seminary tutor, missiologist and ecumenical worker. He teaches at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Prague, Czech Republic and lectures at the various missiological and ecumenical conferences. His article...

Dr. Svetlana Khobnya is Lecturer in Biblical Studies, with specialisms in New Testament, Biblical Languages and Theological German, at the Nazarene Theological College, Manchester. She is a member of the Tyndale Fellowship, the British New...

Ad de Bruijne is professor of Ethics and Spirituality at the Reformed Theological University Kampen (The Netherlands). This institute is one of the birth places of Dutch Neocalvinism (Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, Klaas Schilder, Jochem Douma)....

Dr Walter Hilbrands was born in the area of East Frisia, Germany, in 1965. He grew up in a reformed church and studied theology in Krelingen (Germany), at the Freie Theologische Hochschule Giessen and at the Protestant Theological University...

Dr. Helge Stadelmann is professor of Practical Theology at the Freie Theologische Hochschule Giessen / Germany and at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit Leuven / Belgium. He was born in Nürnberg, Germany, in 1952 and studied Theology and...

Professor Dr Ján Liguš is chairperson of the Department of Practical Theology, Ecumenism and Communication at the Hussite Theological Faculty, Charles University, Prague. His article “Master Jan Hus – Obedience or Resistance” appears in the April...

Bård Eirik Hallesby Norheim (* 1973) is associate professor of practical theology and Head of Department for Theology, Religion and Philosophy at NLA University College in Bergen, Norway. He serves as the President of the IASYM (International...

Featured Author - Professor Dr Christoph Stenschke Since 2001, I have been living and teal’ching at a seminary in Germany, some 50 km east of Cologne, called the Biblisch-Theologische Akademie Wiedenest (see ...

Dr Bernhard J.G. Reitsma is professor by special appointment at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and professor at the Christian University of Applied Science in Ede, the Netherlands. He is guest lecturer at the ETF in Leuven, Belgium, and at...

See attached PDF file for detailed agenda, etc.

Please note, that the conference has been changed into a video online meeting. The agenda has been shortened, so this brochure is informative only.

Dr. Markus Zehnder is professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California, visiting professor at the Evangelical Theological Faculty in Leuven, Belgium, and professor II at Ansgar University...

Free article

A couple of weeks ago, I was conducting a worship service with students and colleagues. When collecting topics for the intercessory prayer, I invited them to pray for the political leaders of the world: not only the head of the state of the...

Present-day Evangelicalism has a strange relationship with history. On the one extreme there are those who endorse a ‘gap theory’, whereby their experience of the Christian life has little if anything to do with a sense of historical continuity....

Jesus gave his disciples the order to proclaim the kingdom of God: ‘As you go, proclaim this message: “The kingdom of Heaven has come near.”’ (Matthew 10:7)

Just as he did and as John the Baptist did, so they too were to proclaim emphatically the...

Several years ago, when I was a young pastor serving a church in the western part of the Netherlands, a lady in the congregation asked me to preach about the wedding garment. It took me some time before I understood what she meant. Most probably,...

The Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians (FEET) aims to advance the Christian Religion in Europe through the study of Evangelical Theology in a spirit of loyalty to the Bible. Our next conference is being planned for 28-31 August 2020...

Proselytism has become a bad word. Like fundamentalism or exclusivism, in today’s religious language, only the negative overtones of the term are retained and are used to convey a derogatory understanding of its meaning. In the original Greek,...

One of the pleasures of travel is that, one hopes, it broadens the mind; we begin to see a world through a different lens as we encounter cultures and situations very different from those we call ‘normal’. The same is, of course, true when we...

In Psalm 146, in between calls to “Praise the LORD”, the God who thrones on the Zion, we are given the following advice:

Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth;...

As the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost is likely to revive the old discussion between cessationism and continuationism. In sermons and meditations, many ministers of the gospel will have commented on the continued...

Central to the Christian faith is the conviction that the Bible has primacy in all matters of faith and conduct. Scripture is the written, divinely inspired Good News of Jesus Christ and therefore it is the highest authoritative rule for the...

I have been reflecting recently on a paradox. The two nations that we tend to identify as ‘super powers’ (the USA and Russia) both have avowedly Christian leaders and their power is supported, to a significant degree, by those who claim,...

Peaceful coexistence of world religions is very important in these days and inter-religious dialogue is deeply rooted in the ground of the theology of mission. Nevertheless, it is important to discern what exactly we expect from this dialogue. It...

A fundamental question Paul Gauguin has painted a famous painting entitled, “What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?” The artist’s question relates to the origin as well as to the finality of human destiny and existence. The...

Two weeks ago, I listened to 77 psalms in one day. I had this wonderful experience in Utrecht, the Netherlands, where these psalms were performed as part of the annual Festival of Early Music. The remaining 73 psalms had already been sung the day...

Seventy years ago, in April 1947 the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth, gave an Easter sermon in which he expressed his shame about the fact that even we as theologians have great difficulties to grasp the message of Easter, to grasp its...

Wandering the streets of Lutherstadt Wittenberg at the FEET Conference last year, I was struck by the many plaques that celebrated famous Protestants who had, at some time or another, lived in the city. I remember the memorial to Paul Gerhardt...

The missiologist and theologian Jonathan J. Bonk wrote, ‘Theology can be liberated from cultural bounds only through mission.’ This understanding is hardly new. We can verify its validity on the pages of Scripture itself, depicted in the...

The Western world has moved from, or is currently in transition from, an era of Christendom to an era of post-Christendom. Many theologians have presented substantial theological considerations for how we are to evaluate the historical and...

The electoral victory of Donald Trump, which many experts had not foreseen, testifies to a crisis in the democratic system of western countries. Trump won, although the leaders of the Republican Party did not want him as their candidate. Hillary...

Introduction I recently heard a sermon that helped me understand why some of the so-called historical Protestant Churches are caught up in doctrinal and ethical relativism and confusion. The pastor had chosen the story of Nicodemus who came to...

The year 2017 will mark the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. In some ecumenical circles the chosen word is not ‘celebration’ but ‘commemoration’. Official Roman Catholicism, for example, even the post-Vatican II...

By the time this blog is read the United Kingdom will have decided whether it remains within the European Union, the blood-letting within the British Conservative Party will have commenced and both the British Parliament and the European Union...

The Czech Fellowship of Evangelical Theologians has continued the direction laid forth in the FEET 2014 Conference in Paris. Dr. Chris Wright and his explanation of Ethics, Mission and Evangelism in the Cape Town Commitment (CTC) greatly inspired...

n my experience, churches are often closed communities which do not easily reach outsiders with the good message about Jesus. Some recent examples: 1) After much discussion a church opened its doors to visitors. A big step to take! Yet on the day...

I have for years had the privilege of serving in Africa. Reading the Scriptures in other languages always brings out something new and exciting. Recently some of us studied Romans 12, and let me share with you what we saw.

12:1 ‘Offer your body...

According to the World-watch-list published by Open Doors, oppression of Christians increased in many countries in 2015. This is true especially for Muslim countries, due to the activities of organisations such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and ISIS...

‘We live in a post-Christian age.’ This is the refrain that is often heard when discussing the present-day conditions of the Christian Church in the West. Post-Christian culture, post-Christian society, post-Christian ethics, post-Christian...

For years it has been a privilege for me to be a member of FEET, the Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians, and it still is. Although not a theologian, I have always felt welcome in this fellowship of Christians whose aim is to promote a...

In May 2015 the first edition of Martin Luther’s treatise “De libertate christiana” from November 1520, with original handwritten notes by the Reformer himself, was discovered in a library in Selestat in Alsace. This almost 500-year old document...

I recently had the opportunity to attend a reunion of some of my former students from the period of ten to fifteen years ago. This gathering was also accompanied by a plethora of news from those who were unable to come. Generally speaking, all...

July 2015 has brought the 600th anniversary of Jan Hus`s martyrdom at the Church Council in Konstanz (1415). His cruel death at the stake was the beginning of prolonged wars between the Roman Catholic papacy and the emperor on one side and the...

At a FEET conference, more than 20 years ago, I was struck by a paper to which I still refer from time to time. Professor Oskar Skarsaune from Oslo showed us convincingly how the first Christians lived in a multi-religious, pluralistic society...

This author is presently based in Norway, but has served for many years in East Africa since late 1970’s. Just before Easter I returned home from Kenya after teaching and guiding a group of college students taking a course in World Religions and...

In his discussion with Nicodemus, Jesus says that he himself must be lifted up, just as Moses lifted up the snake. Obviously, Jesus refers to his future crucifixion, as part of his returning to his heavenly father (cf. John 12:32-33). Just as the...

Dr. Jeppe Bach Nikolajsen is assistant professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Aarhus, Denmark, adjunct professor at MF Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo, Norway, and chief editor of Danish Journal of Theological Studies. His article “...

Dr Roland Deines is Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Nottingham. His articles, Did Matthew Know He was Writing Scripture? Part 1, and Part 2, were published in the October 2013 and April 2014 issues of European Journal of...