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The Alexandrian Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of Gregory Parker, Jr. to the role of Associate Dean and Assistant Director of Postgraduate Research. Greg joins the team as we launch the PhD Program partnership with Union Theological College, and he will give direction to the research community alongside the newly appointed Director of Postgraduate Research Kevin Vanhoozer.
Greg earned his PhD in Systematic Theology at the University of Edinburgh (New College), and is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (ThM, MDiv), and Cairn University (BA). Greg brings expertise in theological education, having taught at Cairn University and Faith Mission Bible College. He serves as a member of the Bavinck Society and the Advisory Board of the Scottish Council of Human Bioethics.
Greg is actively involved in the translation of important works in the Dutch Neo-Calvinist tradition. He is the translator and editor of several of Herman Bavinck’s works, including Guidebook for the Instruction in Christian Religion(Hendrickson Academic, 2022), What is Christianity? (Hendrickson Academic, 2022), and Biblical and Religious Psychology(Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2024). Additionally, he is working on a new translation of Herman Bavinck’s Magnalia Dei (Henrickson Academic, forthcoming 2026), a biography of Jan Bavinck, and a project for students and pastors on the Heidelberg Catechism.
The Alexandrian Institute is committed to forming students in Christ’s Word for True Wisdom. Accordingly, we’re honored to highlight some of Greg’s vision for the way his role helps support this mission.
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Vision for Formation in Theological Education
In the 11th century, Anselm laid down a paradigm for theological inquiry that remains persuasive today: faith seeking understanding. This was an adaptation of the earlier statement by Augustine, I believe, so that I may understand. This paradigm presses us in the direction of envisioning the task of theology as one unashamedly born out of faith.
Accordingly, true theological education invites students into patterns of life shaped by Scripture, attentive to the Great Tradition, and sustained through prayer, humility, and the fellowship of the church. My vision is that doctoral study does not become a retreat into isolation (which is far too common in academic study!) but a deeper entry, and in many ways an ascent, into the communion of saints, where research is undertaken and guided by the conviction that knowledge of God is inseparable from conformity to Christ and His body.
My hope for the program is that this doctoral formation will entail developing the intellectual virtues necessary for sustained theological inquiry: teachability, courage, gratitude, and a readiness to be shaped by Scripture.
We want our students to become scholars whose work serves the church. Every student who passes through this program ideally is shaped not only by academic integrity and excellence but by a renewed sense of wonder at the God who is speaking, redeeming, and empowering his people into the service of his kingdom in the world.
Why the Alexandrian Institute?
The Alexandrian Institute represents a rare and necessary model in contemporary theological education. It brings together academic rigor, ecclesial rootedness, and global accessibility in a way that honors both the intellectual heritage of the church and the realities of modernity.
David Fergusson’s essay, “The Place of Christian Theology in the University” lingers in the back of my mind. Particularly, his question: “Might an apprentice model of ministry work better in which candidates are rooted in parishes, working alongside other ministers, and gaining their theological education through day release or distance-learning modes?”1 It is this possibility that TAI affords future ordinands, ministry leaders, and scholars.
At TAI, theology is placed into dialogue with two overlapping communities: (1) the university, and the academic inquiry that is appropriate to that community, and (2) the organic community of faith, whose beginning and end, is beholden to our confession of Christ. TAI's clear commitment to forming Christians who do theology with the Church rather than apart from it, and who engage Scripture and tradition with humility attracts me.
I also admire TAI’s partnership with Union Theological College. It reflects a desire to wed intellectual and spiritual depth with excellence. Naturally, through UTC students have access to a global community of scholars.
In a time when many academic institutions are distancing themselves from the church’s life and confession, TAI seeks the opposite path: to restore the connection between scholarship and sanctification, research and godliness, intellectual labor and spiritual formation.
How Does the Academy Serve the Church?
The academy serves the Church when theology follows, guides, and accompanies its proclamation of Christ. These words of Bavinck ring true for me:
“The individual believer who puts his mind to the pursuit of dogmatic studies will only produce lasting benefit from his labors if he does not isolate himself, either in the past or from his surroundings, but instead takes his place both historically and contemporarily in the full communion of the saints. It is part of his calling of the ἐκκλησία to learn to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge and also to make known within the world of science ‘the manifold wisdom of God’ in order that the final end of theology, as of all things, may be that the name of the Lord is glorified.”2
The academy serves the Church when theology takes its place within the full communion of the saints and labors for the Church’s faithful confession of Christ.
Greg lives with his wife in Georgia. Outside of researching and teaching, he enjoys rucking, Philadelphia sports, supporting the life of their local church, and stanning Tame Impala.
1 David Fergusson, “The Place of Christian Theology in the University,” in Reformed Humanism: Essays on Christian Doctrine (London: T&T Clark, 2024), 241-251, 250. Similarly, on 241:
“Whilst Christian theology has often been pursued in the universities of Europe, this has never been its only setting. Seminaries, monasteries, religious houses, vicarages, and manses have all been the locus for important contributions to the discipline. We should guard against the assumption that theology cannot flourish without a university home.”
2 See Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 46.
In this series of posts, I aim to provide a primer on the types of things we must pay close attention to in order to engage with culture in ways that are deeply rooted in Christian Scripture and carefully applied to our particular contexts. In short, I aim to describe what culture is, how it fits in the story God is telling through history, and what that means for us.
Central to this vision, in this series I seek to introduce a neglected category to conversations on how Christians should engage culture. It is not enough to see that culture is a God-given gift we are called to create, form, and even redeem. We need to pay attention to the particulars of the biblical story, especially regarding in what age of history we are living, in order to see how best to create and inhabit culture. Understanding how to live culturally in time and place requires paying attention to God’s clues to this time and this place in the story of history he is telling.
Christianity and Culture
Perhaps no book in the last century has had such an influence on how English-speaking Christians think about cultural engagement than H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. In his book, Niebuhr lays out a typology of five different ways Christians have thought about their cultural callings and attitudes, and in doing so he has helped set the terms of the discussion on culture through today. For many Christians, culture is something “out there” in the world, and we should imitate Christ as we “enter into” culture. It represents the trends and tastes of society at large, and depending on how you interpret Jesus’ words and actions, he models different ways for us to relate to that world.
Niebuhr’s typology is helpful to the degree that he rightly stresses that Christians from different traditions and times have thought about what the Bible has to say regarding inhabiting society and relating to the world outside the church in different ways. Each of these represent a different form of cultural engagement, and Christians have been engaging culture in complex ways since the apostolic era. But where Niebuhr’s method falls short is that paying attention to how people aspire to mimic Jesus in various ways does not give a full enough understanding of what culture is and how it fits into God’s purposes for his creation.
Press Release
Introducing Gregory Parker, Jr.
7 min read
Greg earned his PhD in Systematic Theology at the University of Edinburgh (New College), and is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (ThM, MDiv), and Cairn University (BA). Greg brings expertise in theological education, having taught at Cairn University and Faith Mission Bible College. He serves as a member of the Bavinck Society and the Advisory Board of the Scottish Council of Human Bioethics.
Greg is actively involved in the translation of important works in the Dutch Neo-Calvinist tradition. He is the translator and editor of several of Herman Bavinck’s works, including Guidebook for the Instruction in Christian Religion(Hendrickson Academic, 2022), What is Christianity? (Hendrickson Academic, 2022), and Biblical and Religious Psychology(Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2024). Additionally, he is working on a new translation of Herman Bavinck’s Magnalia Dei (Henrickson Academic, forthcoming 2026), a biography of Jan Bavinck, and a project for students and pastors on the Heidelberg Catechism.
The Alexandrian Institute is committed to forming students in Christ’s Word for True Wisdom. Accordingly, we’re honored to highlight some of Greg’s vision for the way his role helps support this mission.
Press Release
Announcing Kevin Vanhoozer
7 min read
About Kevin Vanhoozer
Kevin Vanhoozer (PhD, Cambridge University) is Director of Postgraduate Research, leading the Alexandrian Institute PhD Program and its collection of doctoral supervisors in the Research Fellowship. Vanhoozer is a leading voice in the theological interpretation of Scripture, having authored scholarly and popular-level works in hermeneutics, theological method, and the movement from Scripture to theology.
He has taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, the University of Edinburgh, and most recently has been appointed Blanchard Professor of Theology at Wheaton College's Litfin Divinity School. His books include Is There a Meaning in this Text? (Zondervan, 1998), The Drama of Doctrine (Westminster John Knox, 2005), Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Mere Christian Hermeneutics (Zondervan Academic, 2024). He is presently working on a four-volume systematic theology, forthcoming with Baker Academic.
Vanhoozer serves on the board of Westmont College, as a senior fellow for the Center for Pastor Theologians, and as a member of the Lausanne Theology Working Group.
The Alexandrian Institute Research Fellowship brings together a community of scholars and doctoral students committed to serving both the academy and the church through fostering rigorous and formative scholarship on the integration of Scripture and Theology, in conversation with the Great Tradition.
Kevin Vanhoozer (PhD, Cambridge University) is Director of Postgraduate Research, leading the Alexandrian Institute PhD Program and its collection of doctoral supervisors in the Research Fellowship. Vanhoozer is a leading voice in the theological interpretation of Scripture, having authored scholarly and popular-level works in hermeneutics, theological method, and the movement from Scripture to theology.
He has taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, the University of Edinburgh, and most recently has been appointed Blanchard Professor of Theology at Wheaton College's Litfin Divinity School. His books include Is There a Meaning in this Text? (Zondervan, 1998), The Drama of Doctrine (Westminster John Knox, 2005), Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Mere Christian Hermeneutics (Zondervan Academic, 2024). He is presently working on a four-volume systematic theology, forthcoming with Baker Academic.
Vanhoozer serves on the board of Westmont College, as a senior fellow for the Center for Pastor Theologians, and as a member of the Lausanne Theology Working Group.
The Alexandrian Institute Research Fellowship brings together a community of scholars and doctoral students committed to serving both the academy and the church through fostering rigorous and formative scholarship on the integration of Scripture and Theology, in conversation with the Great Tradition.
