Yesterday I attended the Eastern Regional meeting of ETS with my sister, Rebekah Devine.

In past years, I have attended these meetings for the fellowship, for the book sales, and sometimes to present a paper–without much interest in the keynote speaker or the plenary topic. This year’s speaker and theme, however, were excellent. Peter Leithart spoke on his new book, Defending Constantine. I am not a Patristics scholar–nor am I the son of a Patristics scholar–but I found Leithart’s presentation compelling as history. As someone associated with the so-called “Federal Vision,” Leithart drew the FV-theonomist-Reformed crowd from PBU and elsewhere, so it was nice to connect with old friends.

Dr. Leithart was so gracious as to attend my presentation during the opening parallel session: “The Economic Failure of the Torah? Toward a Post-Industrial Reading of an Agrarian Text.” I was very pleased with the attendance and the feedback, including some comments from Dr. Leithart and Dr. Todd Mangum from Biblical Seminary. If you are interested in reading and/or hearing the presentation, the PDF and MP3 audio are posted on the Papers and Presentations page.

Rebekah received one of the prizes in the graduate student paper competition for her paper entitled, “No god Made With Hands: Pauline Idol Polemics.” Her paper will soon be posted online, along with the other winning submissions, on the ETS website.

What a fun day! Soli Deo Gloria.