Thinking with and beyond Alexander Schmemann, this essay constructs a theological anthropology that conceives of humans as standing as priests at the centre of the cosmos. Within the exitus et reditus framework of neoplatonic thinking, the cosmos proceeds from and returns to the one God. Recent biblical theology has interpreted the imago Dei in a royal-functional sense. However, this essay argues for a priestly-functional interpretation of the imago Dei that comports better with the conceptual schema of Genesis 1–2 when read through an exitus et reditus lens. Ramifications for worship and work follow the constructive portion of the essay.

This essay argues that Barth's christological ecclesiology is worthy of consideration as a resource to fund a more robust and distinctly theological evangelical free church ecclesiology. Specifically, Barth's articulation of the church as witness, combined with his emphases on the gathering, upbuilding and sending of the church, all resonate with a distinctly free church vantage point. Additionally, I argue that Barth's theological interpretation of Matthew 18:20 (a verse of great significance for the free church tradition) further reveals his compatibility with free church ecclesiology. I conclude that while the traditional problems associated with evangelical reception of Barth need to be addressed and his doctrine of the church as grounded in Christ (and thus election) critically assessed, Barth does end up offering a resource that can inform the development of a theologically robust evangelical free church ecclesiology.

This paper considers two twentieth-century heresiological critiques of G. W. F. Hegel. That Henri de Lubac and Sergius Bulgakov should both worry at Hegel's ‘heresy’ is hardly surprising. More surprising, however, is how and that each charges Hegel with a different heresy. Though de Lubac's heresiological critique has proven more influential, I commend Bulgakov's. The paper concludes by querying the very strategy of assaying philosophers like Hegel heresiologically.

Within the recently published volumes, Knowing Creation and Christ and the Created Order, several authors argue that the theological category of creation can help contemporary society overcome the modern, and ecologically harmful, bifurcation between nature and culture. This paper supplements this important argument by showing how theological panpsychism, an ontology inspired by current debates within analytic philosophy of mind, can help theologians articulate a metaphysically robust and trinitarian doctrine of creation.

Despite the theological controversy surrounding ‘Russian sophiology' amongst Orthodox theologians, John Milbank has claimed that it has proven to be one of the most daring theological breakthroughs within twentieth-century theology. He further considers it to be a fecund avenue of theological and philosophical reflection that has the potential to effectively communicate his central theological arguments in a new idiom. However, many of the positions which Milbank adopts within his sophiology prove to be controversial. This article offers a critical appraisal of Milbank's sophiology, drawing particular attention to several theological aporias it appears to generate and leave unresolved.