Southwestern Journal of Theology
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 62, No. 1 – Fall 2019
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
As a doctoral student I was afforded the opportunity to work as the Editorial Assistant for the Southwestern Journal of Theology under the then editorship of Dr. Malcolm Yarnell. This work taught me the nature of academic work, writing, editing, and publishing. I had interactions with authors and readers as well as with printers and publishers. Most academic journals are limited to a set field of inquiry. This is especially true in the broader field of theology which has journals focusing on both the Old and New Testaments, Philosophy of Religion, Church History, Systematic Theology, and more.
The aim of the Southwestern Journal of Theology has always been broader than only these fields. At its beginning, the Journal began publishing articles in the variety of topics that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary was teaching. Though it ceased to publish as an academic journal a few years later in 1948 it was revived and since then has addressed a variety of fields and topics that broadly relate to the purposes and goals of the Seminary. In the years I have been working on the Journal I have attempted to encourage that broad appeal to the subjects in which Southwestern is devoted. This multiplicity of topics often leaves volumes only partially read by many, but nevertheless allows non-specialists the opportunity to engage in a secondary or peripheral field of study.
This issue of the Journal offer that variety of scholarship as well as provides an engagement with topics that are more commonly know and less engaged today. The first article in this issue is an examination of the theology of Elizabeth I. In it Malcolm Yarnell challenges the historiography on the relationship between politics and religion in the thought of Elizabeth. Next, Ched Spellman engages a growing set of literature that engages theology and gaming. Spellman looks at the “themes of death, memory, and grief ” in relation to recent “cultural texts.” This engagement not only highlights the usage of video games as cultural texts but specifically focuses on the concept of lament in a few of these games. Following this article Michael Wilkinson engages the question of Calvin’s doctrine of adoption and asks if it is a basis for redemption or a benefit of union. Finally, James Wicker presents an article that investigates the translation of numismatic terms in the New Testament.
