Are you burnt out on easy answers, searching for a wisdom that is both biblical and historically grounded? Do you wonder how to read God’s two books of His Word and world?

Join us this summer for one of our Protestant Wisdom Foundations courses at The Davenant House for a deep dive into how to be an intelligent, faithful, and historically-grounded Protestant in the twenty-first century . Students will spend twelve days in the beautiful and restful setting of our Davenant House retreat center in the Carolina Blue Ridge foothills: worshipping together, preparing meals together, reading together, debating together, and learning from our team of gifted teachers. Each day’s schedule will also have time for gardening, quiet reflection, or nature walks in the woods.

Protestant Wisdom Foundations I
Reading the Bible and the World

The Lord reveals his glory to us through what many of our fathers in the faith called his “two books”: Scripture and nature. Both lie open to us: the latter sufficient to render us without excuse, the former sufficient to make us wise unto salvation, and both together sufficient to guide our footsteps faithfully on the tortuous paths of discipleship that lie before us. However, we are fools if we imagine that the clarity of God’s communication to us excuses us from the duty of being good readers. The great calling of every Christian is to grow in our skills of learning to attentively, discerningly, humbly read and interpret God’s revelation in both Scripture and nature, standing on the shoulders and sitting at the feet of the church’s wisdom through the centuries.

This two-week residential course will introduce you to the patterns of God’s self-revelation in his world and his Word, to tools and strategies employed by the church historically and today for reading this revelation well, and to wisdom in applying this discernment of God’s will to your own life and calling.

 Featuring readings, lectures, and discussion seminars each day, it will provide an intense but rewarding time of intellectual stimulation, laying a foundation for faithful Christian discipleship in the modern world, rooted in the wisdom of the past. 

The cost for attending the program is just $1200, with some scholarship opportunities available. This includes all of your meals, room and board for the period of your stay. Although we encourage students to be residential for the full experience, a limited number of commuter students will be accepted. Some scholarships are available for students for whom the cost is prohibitive.

Instructors

Joseph Minich (Ph.D, The University of Texas at Dallas) is a Teaching Fellow with The Davenant Institute. The founding editor of Ad Fontes, he is also the author of Enduring Divine Absence, and is the editor of several volumes with The Davenant Press. Currently, he is c0-host of the Pilgrim Faith podcast, and a regular contributor for Modern Reformation. He lives in Garland, Texas, with his wife and four children.

Dr. Alastair Roberts is a Teaching Fellow of The Theopolis Institute and lecturer for Davenant Hall, a leading evangelical blogger and writer, and one of the hosts of the Mere Fidelity podcast. His personal podcast is Alastair’s Adversaria, where, alongside topical interviews, he currently produces daily reflections upon the whole Bible. He is the author of Echoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption Through Scripture (2018). He is married to Susannah, and they divide their time between the UK and the US.

The Davenant House Protestant Wisdom Summer Programs are designed to help train Christian undergraduates, grad students, and seminarians in Christian wisdom so that they can serve and lead the church and their local communities. Students come to live together, work together, eat, pray, and read together, and above all converse together. Each day consists of morning and evening prayer, time allocated for gardening, cooking, or manual labor on the property, communal meals, designated times for quiet reading and study, lectures, and seminars for Socratic discussion of key texts. The programs are held at Davenant House, a property located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in upstate South Carolina.