SBTS trustees elect Haykin, respond to SBC referral

Southern Seminary trustees unanimously approved all recommendations in the board’s Oct. 10 meeting, including the election of esteemed church historian Michael A.G. Haykin to the faculty and a response to a referral from the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.

“The election of Michael Haykin brings to Southern Seminary’s permanent faculty a scholar of world renown and a Christian of such wonderful heart,” Mohler said. “He is not only a prolific author and scholar, he is also a man of deep conviction and a teacher who invests personally in his students.”

Haykin, professor of church history and biblical spirituality, has taught at Southern since 2008 and serves as the director of the seminary’s Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He has authored or contributed to dozens of books, including Rediscovering the Church Fathers and 8 Women of Faith.

Trustees unanimously approved a response to a referral from the 2016 SBC annual meeting in St. Louis requesting “all SBC entities to consider examining establishing a policy that trustee meetings, including committee meetings, be open to news media.” The recommendation clarified all plenary sessions are open to media and seminary leadership “will do everything within their means to assist members of the media as they endeavor to provide accurate, complete, and fair reporting.”

— S. Craig Sanders

Harvard graduate Tyler Flatt joins Boyce faculty

Harvard University Ph.D. graduate and classics scholar Tyler Flatt joined the Boyce College faculty in January as assistant professor of humanities.

“The more I learned about Southern and Boyce, the more I knew there is nowhere else in the world I would rather work,” said Flatt, who graduated from Harvard in March.

Born and raised in Canada, Flatt dedicated his early life to the study of Greek and Roman culture. He first interacted with Boyce College when the Worldview Certificate program toured Harvard under Flatt’s guidance. Specializing in the works of Plato, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, Flatt says he plans to provide students in his Great Books courses with ample evidence that God works through his creation.

— Zachary Ball

SBTS at ETS 2016

Southern Seminary led all participating institutions with more than 40 paper presentations from faculty and students at the 68th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Antonio, Nov. 15-17. Of those, 15 presentations dealt with topics related to the conference’s theme on the Trinity in the areas of systematic theology, biblical studies, church history, and practical theology.

Speaking to a room full of faculty, alumni, and students at Southern Seminary’s late night event Nov. 16, R. Albert Mohler Jr. said 25 years ago SBTS was a “small band” of scholars at ETS because the majority of the faculty did not consider themselves evangelicals. But Mohler expressed gratitude that several current faculty have served as past presidents of the society and the seminary continues to lead in faculty and student presentations.

— S. Craig Sanders

Schreiner co-chairs CSB revision

Southern Seminary professor Thomas R. Schreiner served as co-chair for the new Christian Standard Bible translation, released by LifeWay in March 2017. The CSB is a revision of the Holman Christian Standard Bible, which was published in 2004.

“The revision of the HCSB into what is now called the CSB makes a good translation even better,” said Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation. “It is an honor for me to serve on a translation team of men and women who truly love God’s Word. Our prayer is that the Lord will use this fresh translation for the spread of the gospel, for the edification of churches, and in times of private reading and prayer.”

Schreiner said the new revision retains the “optimal equivalence” of the HCSB, which is a translation philosophy in between formal (literal) and dynamic (readable), while improving both the faithfulness to original languages and its readability. More information on the translation is available online at csbible.com.

— SBTS Communications