Kyle R. Hughes

Hard to believe, but summer is nearly here. I’m excited to share that I will be at Reformed Episcopal Seminary near Philadelphia, PA this June 9-13, 2025. There will be two things going on in what will be a very busy but fun week!

First, I will be teaching the class “Teaching for Spiritual Formation” (adapted from my book of the same name) at RES on June 9, 10 , 12, and 13. This will be similar to the intensive class I taught at Trinity Anglican Seminary in January. I was very happy with how the class was received at Trinity and am excited to share this material with another group of students. Folks have the option of taking this class with me in-person or to Zoom in online. Either way, for more information, visit the RES website here; to register (for audit or for credit), email registrar at res dot edu.

Second, my book Scripting the Son will be the subject of a symposium at RES on June 11. Titled “Hearing the Voice of Christ in the Old Testament,” the symposium will explore the early Christian method of reading the Old Testament that identified certain dialogical passages as conversation among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Scholars and practitioners will consider the exegetical, theological, homiletical, and ascetical implications of identifying the vox Christi within the Old Testament, with special attention to the opportunities and resources provided by the Anglican tradition. Fellow presenters who will be in dialogue with my work include Kelly Anderson (Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary), Don Collett (Trinity Anglican Seminary), Justin Gohl (Reformed Episcopal Seminary), and David Ney (Trinity Anglican Seminary). The event is free (!), but registration is required, which you can do here.

I hope to see you in Philadelphia this June for one or both of these great events! -Kyle

I’m very pleased to share the final cover for Scripting the Son, which will go to print next week in time to be available at ETS/SBL/AAR later this month in San Diego. St. Irenaeus of Lyons is a major player in this and my other books, and so it seems fitting that he graces the cover of this book:

I have to say, Cascade’s art team nailed it again with this cover. I think the green and gold cover scheme really pops in an appealing way. I’m also excited to share the endorsements on the back cover; additional endorsements from David Wilhite and Stephen Presley will be printed inside the book itself:

I’m super grateful for the kind words of each of these scholars and friends. It’s a lot of work to read a manuscript and produce a pithy blurb on a tight deadline, so I’m deeply appreciative.

Stay posted for details on how to order a copy of Scripting the Son; it should be available for purchase from Wipf & Stock’s website as well as Amazon.com and other major retailers in the next two weeks or so. Tolle lege!

Counting down the months to the release of Scripting the Son, but in the meantime, I’m keeping busy with a few other projects. First, I’ve done a fairly thorough (4,000 word) review of Gerald McDermott’s Deep Anglicanism, 2nd edition, over at North American Anglican. It’s a great book, especially for the “Anglo-Curious.”

Coming up soon (Sept. 12-13) is the Formed Conference in Chattanooga, TN. The theme is “Technology and the Christian,” and I’ll be speaking on “Guarding the Gates: Thinking with Chrysostom about Screens and a Child’s Formation.” They’ve got a great line-up, so if you’re in the Southeast, check it out–there’s still time to register!

Finally, this fall I’ll be teaching a seminary course on Acts and Paul as part of my new gig as Lecturer in New Testament at Reformed Episcopal Seminary. It’s been a while since I’ve done a deep dive on the Pauline corpus, and so I’m excited to get back into this material.

Thank you for your interest in my work, and I look forward to sharing some additional exciting news here soon.

I have the privilege of being able to share about my work (in this case, all related to Teaching for Spiritual Formation) in several places this summer. All should be great events, so if you’re in the area of one of these events, I hope you’ll consider checking it out! (As always, my participation in a given event or conference does not mean that I agree with all other speakers or views put forward at an event; I am happy to share the good news of the church fathers on education in a wide variety of contexts.)

“Education for Virtue: The Classical Approach” Workshop, Malone University (Canton, OH), June 5, 2024

In this free workshop, I’ll be paired with the wonderful Dr. Nadya Williams to discuss the classical education movement. I’ll be presenting on “Education for Virtue: An Overview of Classical Education” and “Formative Practices for Classical Education.” Check it out and register here.

ACCS National Conference (Atlanta, GA), June 21, 2024

I’ll be leading a workshop titled “Teaching for Spiritual Formation: Liturgies of Time and Space.” Think of it as a mash-up of James K.A. Smith, Benedict of Nursia, and the Book of Common Prayer.

“Formed 2024: Technology and the Christian” Conference (Chattanooga, TN), September 12-13, 2024

This conference is pulling together experts in neuroscience, psychology, and Christian formation in the Anglican tradition to consider the impact that screens are having on all of us. I’ll be delivering a talk on “Guarding the Gates: Thinking with Chrysostom about Screens and a Child’s Formation.” Check it out and register here!

Come 2025, I have some exciting things lined up as well–but more on that later. Hope to connect with you this summer!

I am excited to introduce my next book, Scripting the Son, which will be published in the Studies in Early Christology series by Cascade later this year. My last 18 months have been devoted to the research, writing, and editing of this book, and I am happy to share that the manuscript is now complete. By way of introduction, the back-cover summary and table of contents follow below. I look forward to sharing more about this new book in the months to come!

Summary

In Scripting the Son, Kyle R. Hughes analyzes how dialogical texts in the Old Testament presented early Christian exegetes with riddles that were best solved through a person-centered reading strategy known as prosopological exegesis. From the method’s roots in the pages of the New Testament through its increasingly careful application in the hands of church fathers such as Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen, this book traces how prosopological exegesis contributed to the development of Christology in the pre-Nicene period. By examining the origins and evolution of this approach to biblical interpretation, Hughes demonstrates how the very words of Scripture exerted a pressure for a Trinitarian understanding of God that was rooted in the Old Testament and aligned with the emerging rule of faith, exemplifying the dynamic interplay between biblical interpretation and doctrinal formulation in the early centuries of Christianity.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Trinity and the Old Testament
2. The New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
3. Justin Martyr
4. Irenaeus of Lyons
5. Tertullian of Carthage
6. Later Developments in the West
7. Origen of Alexandria
8. Conclusion: Scripting the Son

Here’s to 2024! But before we ring in the new year, a quick update on the status of my work in 2023. My primary focus was drafting the bulk of my new academic book Scripting the Son: Scriptural Exegesis and the Making of Early Christology, forthcoming from Cascade in their Studies in Early Christology series. This project expands and deepens my treatment of the subject of prosopological exegesis in the pre-Nicene period from my doctoral research and subsequent monograph The Trinitarian Testimony of the Spirit: Prosopological Exegesis and the Development of Pre-Nicene Pneumatology (Brill, 2018). In that volume, I briefly explored how prosopological exegesis contributed to the fashioning of early Christology, but the overwhelming focus of that book was pneumatology. This time around, Christology is front and center.

The main challenge in preparing this volume (apart from finding adequate time to work on the project, unsurprisingly) has been the sheer amount of pre-Nicene material to meticulously comb through to make sure I’m not missing any significant examples, especially once I made the decision to fully engage the work of Origen on this subject. Still, I’m pleased to be about 90% finished with the draft (so currently sitting at 207 pages, 60,500 words), so the end is very much in sight. The plan is to deliver the manuscript for Scripting the Son to Cascade in Q1 2024, so I anticipate a publication date in Q4 2024.

Besides this book project, I had the opportunity to deliver a number of smaller pieces. On the subject of Anglican catechesis, I prepared a two-part practical essay “Anglican Confirmation for Suspicious Evangelicals” for The North American Anglican (part 1 and part 2). As part of my work of Christ the King, I taught and prepared a series on hermeneutics, focusing on the fourfold sense and lectio divina. You can check out the video series here.

Most of my other pieces, though, focused on Christian education, spinning off ideas from my book Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian Education in a Convulsed Age (Cascade, 2022) in various venues, such as the ACCS magazine Classis and in Modern Reformation (here). I was also recently interviewed by Ken Myers of the Mars Hill Audio Journal (here; it’s well worth the subscription!). Finally, I wrote two short pieces for Logos on the subjects of the Trinity in the Old Testament (here) and introductory pneumatology (here).

Thank you as always, readers, for your support of my work. May the Lord richly bless you in 2024!

I recently had the wonderful opportunity of conversing with the one-and-only Ken Myers for his Mars Hill Audio Journal about my recent book Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian Education in a Convulsed Age (Cascade, 2022) and issues related to Christian education more generally. It was a fun and wide-ranging interview and is part of an excellent lineup of interviews in the most recent issue (vol. 160) of the journal. Check it out!

If you’re not familiar with it, the mission of Mars Hill Audio is “to produce creative audio resources that encourage Christians to grow in obedient wisdom concerning the cultural consequences of our duty to love God and neighbor.” If you’re not already a subscriber and that sounds interesting to you, do consider signing up for 2024!

The North American Anglican has published my two-part article describing how, in the context of my work as Director of Catechesis at Christ the King Anglican Church in Marietta, GA, I have envisioned the Confirmation process being used to advance the efforts of traditional Anglicans in helping what I am calling “suspicious evangelicals” enter deeper into the Anglican Way. I hope other churches find it useful; even if others don’t make use of any of it, if it simply provokes thinking about the topic I will consider the piece successful. Check out part 1 and part 2.

Logos recently published a piece from me on “Navigating Pneumatology: How to Study the Holy Spirit” for their Word by Word blog as part of their recent series on pneumatology. In this piece, I introduce some lexical issues related to the study of the Holy Spirit and then identify three sources of pneumatological reflection in the early church: the Bible, the liturgy of the church, and personal or corporate experience. As I conclude:

Our gospel, ultimately, must be Trinitarian in shape: the Father sends the Son, our saving King, who in turn sends the Holy Spirit to indwell and empower his people. We cannot understand Good Friday or Easter apart from the Ascension or Pentecost. Our increased appreciation for the Holy Spirit’s role in our salvation allows us to catch still further glimpses of the wonders of God’s amazing grace. Rightly understood, the study of pneumatology should lead us to worship.

The full piece can be found here. Check it out!