"Salvation as Adoption: An Antidote to Today's Distant yet Convenient Deity"

Dr. J. Todd Billings is associate professor of Reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary. In his lecture, he will give a biblical and theological account of how the Reformed tradition's notion of salvation as adoption and the double grace of justification and sanctification is deeply subversive to the views of many American Christians that God gives us space for our own autonomy while still being the convenient source of "eternal life insurance." Billings emphasizes that we are adopted by a triune God who is at once too close for sentimental comfort, too holy to shrug off our sin, and too free to be managed by our attempts at control.

Billings' first book, Calvin, Participation and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union With Christ (Oxford, 2007) won a 2009 Templeton Award for Theological Promise, awarded internationally for the best first books of scholars in theology and religious studies.