Dane Ortlund, Ph.D. 2010

Recipient of the Kenneth Kantzer Fellowship

Executive Vice President of Bible Publishing and Bible Publisher 
Crossway Books

My dissertation is entitled “Zeal without Knowledge: An Inquiry into Paul’s Use of Zeal-Language in Romans 10, Galatians 1, and Philippians 3” (Bloomsbury), The project was supervised by Dr. Douglas Moo. I argued that Paul speaks of “zeal” in a way that primarily denotes zeal for God (vertically) and holistic obedience to the law, and secondarily refers to zeal for the Jewish nation (horizontally) vis-a-vis Gentiles. This conclusion results in the strange situation that evidently Paul viewed not two possible moral scenarios among his contemporaries (zeal or no zeal) but three: 1) neither zeal nor knowledge; 2) knowledge-informed zeal; and 3) zeal, but no knowledge. The key ingredient, then, is not zeal, but knowledge—to which, intriguingly, Paul refers in each of these three zeal texts.

It has been a great mercy of God to study at Wheaton. I am very grateful to have worked under Doug Moo, who helped me in all sorts of important ways in my scholarly development. The integrative blend of Bible and theology was rich and fruitful. Learning intercanonically-sensitive exegesis from Greg Beale was a crucial source of learning and growth. The program is generous financially, which takes an otherwise heavy burden off us students and frees us to focus on our studies. I bless God for his kindness to me in giving me a season of full-time study here.