Three professors in the BJU Seminary worked together to create the blog “Theology in 3D” in September 2017 as a means of equipping its readers with the truth of God from New Testament, Old Testament and theological perspectives.
While some of the articles are written strictly from one of the three perspectives, many articles combine two and sometimes all three of these perspectives.
Dr. Ken Casillas, one of the three writers, teaches in the BJU Seminary and writes for the blog from an Old Testament perspective.
Casillas said the blog is aimed at students preparing for ministry, people already serving in the ministry and those from the public who are interested in gaining biblical insight and knowledge from educated Bible scholars.
“The [BJU] administration has encouraged everybody on faculty to be more engaged online,” Casillas said.
“Theology in 3D” was these three professors’ way of making that happen. “We want to be more involved externally in thought leadership, and this [blog] was one way that we could do it without giving ourselves another job,” Casillas said.
Casillas said many of seminaries have been blogging for some time now, and “Theology in 3D” was a way for the BJU Seminary to put themselves out in the marketplace of ideas.
In one of his first posts on the website, Casillas wrote about knowing God’s will.
He walked through Proverbs 3:5-6 step by step and ended with this question: “Why should we expect that the Lord will show us his will about matters the Bible doesn’t address when we aren’t consistently following what his Word does say?”
Dr. Layton Talbert, another writer on the blog, is a professor of Theology in the BJU Seminary.
He specializes in writing articles from a theological perspective for the website. “We try to write on a slightly more academic but still practical level,” Talbert said.
Talbert said he gets most of his inspiration from what he is teaching in his classes. “I get a lot of my ideas from student emails that raise questions about things,” Talbert said.
He will then write a blog post in response to the question and share it on the blog for more people to see.
Dr. Greg Stiekes, the third writer for the blog, also teaches in the BJU Seminary and writes most articles for the website from a New Testament perspective.
He said the posts that seem to get the most attention are ones that bring the Bible to bear on cultural “hot button” topics.
Stiekes said the blog gives them the opportunity to articulate their thoughts in writing after putting careful thought into every aspect of a theological idea. “We’re getting sharpened by [writing], and then hopefully we’re a blessing to the church,” Stiekes said.
Talbert said he learns more by writing and that he can order his thoughts better than when he is talking.
“Fundamentalists have been writing really good stuff for a long time, but nobody outside of our circle reads it,” Talbert said. “[The blog] is a way of trying to establish a little bit more of a public presence and a public influence.”
Casillas, Talbert and Stiekes are the primary contributors to the site, with an occasional guest writer. Each writer further interacts with readers and each other in a comments section and in follow-up blog posts.
Casillas said this interaction allows for expression of different perspectives by authors and readers alike.
A newly designed BJU seminary website at seminary.bju.edu/ has absorbed the content of Theology in 3D, but the original blog site can still be accessed at its original web address, theologyin3d.com/.
