Hans Boersma Homepage
Home - Hans Boersma (PhD, University of Utrecht), a theologian and experienced preacher, is J. I. Packer Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.
SCHOLARLY ARTICLES
Relying on Saint Maximus the Confessor, I argue that the Incarnation tells us how God typically manifests himself in created form. God's paradigmatic way of acting is visible, therefore, in the Incarnation. The Incarnation—God’s original and full manifestation in the flesh—is figuratively present throughout creation. Creation, therefore, is a theophany or embodiment of God.
“Dionysian Power: A Positively Medieval Hierarchy.” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 36/2 (March/April 2023): 24–30.
In Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s Ad Limina Apostolorum. Ed. Matthew Levering, Bruce L. McCormack, and Thomas Joseph White, 245–67. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020.
In this chapter I probe some of the difficulties surrounding the desire to meet “on equal footing.” I press the question of what unity means according to the Decree on Ecumenism.
Review essay. Pro Ecclesia 29 (2020): 275–84.
A review essay of Seitz’s The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity. It is only through the acknowledgement of the ontological priority of the Christ event that the Spirit enables us to recognize the hidden, deeper meanings of the text.
International Journal of Systematic Theology 22 (2020): 169–90.
Justification typically serves for Irenaeus within a broader, participatory framework of salvation. When we take these aspects into account, unexpected ecumenical possibilities open up between Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants.
TALKS
What is God’s most appropriate name, and why should this question matter? In this lecture, Rev. Dr. Boersma navigates the Neoplatonic tradition and saints Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius, and Maximus to make the claim that God’s most appropriate name is Love, and he unpacks the implications of this claim for our understanding of nature and the supernatural.
This lecture traces the separation of nature and the supernatural beyond the late Middle Ages to the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In short, the secularism of modernity requires that we read creation not primarily as substance but as relationship: the harmonious chant of the love that is God.
This lecture explains how Saint Maximus regards the church building as a key instance of the sacramental unity of heavenly and earthly realities.
Dr Boersma joins Will on the discuss two main topics: what is a sacramental tapestry and how do we encounter evil through a theological lens. Dr Boersma empathizes with the amount of evil this profession deals with each day. I hope you enjoy this episode!
Dr. Boersma joins Gospel Simplicity to talk about Pierced by Love.
Dr. Boersma joins Remnant Radio to talk about Pierced by Love.
Blogs and popular essays
Where does one turn when the devil’s mouth gapes open, and evil is ready to claim us for its own?
Remember Jesus’s suffering for us, for it is when we remember God, that God remembers us.
The fasting of Lent reminds us to focus on Jesus who will feed his people if they are willing.
Jesus who has come to restore all things will give sabbath restoration to our withered lives.
December 18, 2023, will go down in history as the date on which the die was cast: the date on which the church renounced the gospel’s right to call us to repentance; the date that, more than any other, signals the church’s implosion in the West.
In this interview, Credo’s Executive Editor Timothy Gatewood discusses Lectio Divina with Hans Boersma.
The darkness of our lives awakens deep within us the longing for God’s coming in the flesh.
Pantheizing God is no less troubling than anthropomorphizing or mythologizing him. And yet. Christianity is not Gnostic. Christians believe in the body as created by God, assumed by God, and raised up by God. And if human bodies matter from exitus to reditus, from beginning to end, then perhaps we ought to think again about whether God, too, might be embodied.
Jesus’s burden is different in kind from those of the scribes and Pharisees. With Jesus, the one giving us the yoke is himself the yoke.
Pure hospitality applied to the Eucharist implies a universalism of the worst sort: It is the radical insistence that the church is without any positive identity whatever.
We applaud our Anglican bishops’ willingness to reject neocolonial demands to accept the hegemony of the sexual revolution. But we are concerned that in an admirable attempt to resist the liberal project, they unwittingly have themselves opened the door to the use of Scripture for liberal ends.
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About Me
Hans Boersma (PhD, University of Utrecht), an Anglican priest, theologian, and experienced preacher, is the Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Chair in Ascetical Theology at Nasthotah House in Wisconsin—a community of formation marked by the fullness of Anglican faith and practice, Benedictine spirituality, and classical Christian thought and teaching. Before coming to Nashotah House in 2019, he was the J. I. Packer Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He previously taught for six years at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC (1999–2005). He has also served as a pastor for several years (1994–1998). In 2015, he was appointed as a member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Among Hans's main theological interests are Catholic thought, the church fathers, and patristic exegesis. Hans and his wife Linda live in Langley, BC. From 2015–2016, he held the Danforth Visiting Chair at St. Louis University.