Amy J. Erickson is Lecturer in Theology at St Mark’s. She previously taught undergraduate students at Texas Lutheran University while serving as an online course facilitator for Fuller Theological Seminary. She is a graduate of the University of Aberdeen, where her PhD explored the ecclesiology and hermeneutics of the contemporary scholar Ephraim Radner through a theological reading of Hosea. Her research interests include figural reading, ecclesiology, church discipline, and the biblical understanding of wilderness as it relates to contemporary ethical concerns.
“I acknowledged Christ’s Lordship at a young age, but did not feel a dramatic sense of conversion that I had somehow come to expect. In fact, I “accepted Christ into my heart” on multiple occasions, since I wasn’t sure if it had “worked” the first time – or second, or seventh. I gradually realized, however, that I wasn’t always going to “feel” God’s presence and or my own faith in a dramatic or empirical sense, and that that was ok. As a consequence, I soon became drawn to the physical and even intellectual concreteness of the Bible: it was something I could hold in my hands, pour over, study, and research. That eagerness to understand the Bible launched me into biblical commentaries, biblical languages, and various theological writings…and away I went. My study of theology admittedly began to make up for a perceived deficit in my faith. (Perhaps there is some truth there still for all of us vocational theologians). But it has also developed into a way that I not only know God, but also love God — and embrace how the profound limits of my knowing meet the mysterious depths of his goodness, beauty, and grace.”