Over the past two months I have posted 64 disputations. They must seem to many to be difficult or just odd, for I use Latin titles and deal with some rather technical issues. What am I trying to accomplish by posting these in rapid fire order?
Actually, these disputationes were composed over the course of many years, often in the margins of administrative work, teaching, and the founding of an institution devoted to theological truth. They reflect not only the content of my research but the shape of my vocation. The scholastic form became for me not a historical curiosity but a discipline that ordered my own thinking when the theological landscape around me seemed increasingly fragmented.
I posted these dispuations in the spirit of theological transparency. While they are not yet in final form, they are ready to take off the desk and circulate to friends and colleagues. I do care about any responses anybody might have to these, and will likely modify the posts in response to feedback. My hope is to speak clearly, and sometimes this is a difficult task for the theologian. These revised disputations will ultimately constitute a new book, Disputationes Theologicae: Sixty-Four Exercises in Theological Reason, that I hope to bring out in 2026.
The questions addressed here emerged from two lifelong commitments: first, to the reality of God’s action in the world; and second, to the conviction that theology must speak truthfully about that action. Much of modern theology has relinquished metaphysics, often on the assumption that metaphysical claims are speculative or oppressive. But I found, in study and in prayer, that theology without metaphysics cannot speak coherently of divine presence, incarnation, sacrament, Spirit, or resurrection. These disputationes are therefore an attempt to recover, without nostalgia, the ontological depth that the Christian tradition presupposed.
They are also marked by the life of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, where theology is lived before it is written. The work of building an institution taught me that theology is not merely conceptual but performative—that truth animates communities as well as texts. Many of these disputationes were written in the quiet hours after long days of work, when the only thing that could be done was to write toward clarity.
I offer them to the reader with gratitude. If they serve to strengthen theological intelligence, deepen participation in Christ, or clarify the hope that sustains the Church, then their purpose will have been fulfilled.
D. B.
Advent II
Sioux Falls, SD
