The Rev. Dr. Edwin Chr. Van Driel was installed as the Directors’ Bicentennial Associate Professor of Theology May 12, 2014. Check out pictures from the event.
"At the center of the Seminary’s identity is a desire to produce people who can engage in theologically reflective ministry,” said van Driel.” We hope to send people into the church who not only can read high level scholarship and engage in the nuts and bolts of church work, but who can imagine one in the light of the other; who can re-think theologically what it means to be church in a post-Christendom world. And that's exactly what I try to do as well. My work is always focused on helping the church to reflect more deeply theologically on what it is and called to be."
Van Driel joined the faculty at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 2009. Previously, he taught for two years at Fordham University. A native of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, he holds master’s degrees in theology and philosophy from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in religious studies (theology) from Yale University.
After the publication of his Incarnation Anyway (OUP, 2008), van Driel has been engaged in two research projects. One project teases out the implications for Protestant theology of contemporary Pauline exegesis; the other focuses on the doctrine of the church. Deeply concerned with the recurring conflicts and schisms in the mainline churches, van Driel proposes an ecclesiology that radically departs from our deeply engrained voluntarism and re-thinks the church as constituted by divine covenant. He is ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and served on the church’s committee that produced the denomination’s new hymnal, Glory to God. Van Driel was the primary writer of the committee’s “Theological Vision Statement” and “A Statement on Language.”