plenary Speaker

J. Richard Middleton, is Professor of biblical worldview and exegesis at Northeastern Seminary and Roberts Wesleyan University. A native of Jamaica, he immigrated to Canada, where he did his graduate studies, while working as a campus minister; he then immigrated to the USA for a faculty position. Originally trained in philosophy, he later specialized in biblical studies, with a focus in the Old Testament.

Dr. Middleton is widely published in religious periodicals and journals and is the author of five books addressing different aspects of a biblical worldview. The first two books were coauthored with Brian Walsh: The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (InterVarsity,1984) and Truth Is Stranger than It Used to Be: Christian Faith in a Postmodern Age (InterVarsity, 1995). Then came three books on creation, eschatology, and suffering: The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Brazos, 2005); A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Baker Academic, 2014); and Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God (Baker Academic, 2021).

Dr. Middleton has been president of the Canadian-American Theological Association (2011–2014) and president of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (2019–2021). He also has served as an adjunct professor of Old Testament at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology in Kingston, Jamaica.

Plenerary Speech:

The Imago Dei in the Biblical Story: A Vision for Christians in Higher Education

How does the Bible help us understand the meaning of our Christian life—including our work in higher education—as service to God and neighbor? Richard Middleton’s two talks will delve into the biblical worldview that should ground our scholarship and teaching.

Keynote Speech 1:

The Vocation of the Christian Scholar: Called to Image God

To be a Christian is to be renewed in the image of God (imago Dei). What are some of the implications of this high calling for the identity of Christian scholars and professors?

Keynote Speech 2:

Teaching towards a Vision: A New Heaven and a New Earth

Although we are called to image God in our lives, we have all failed in this calling. Yet God is at work, setting the world right through Jesus, the Messiah. How might the shape of the biblical story, which centers in Jesus and culminates in the new heaven and new earth, empower us in our vocation in Christian higher education?