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Jon Coutts, PhD

Body
Associate Professor, Christian Theology
Cross Appointment, Humanities
Phone number
(403) 407-9478
Email Address

Biography

Before becoming a theology professor, Jon was baptized, brought up, and ordained in the Christian & Missionary Alliance, and then served as the preaching pastor in a few wonderfully small churches. Before Ambrose Jon taught ethics for future ministers at Trinity college in Bristol, England, which is where he and his wife nurtured their four sons.

As a result of spending life with one foot in the systematic-political and another in the pastoral-practical, Jon’s teaching tends toward the intersections. In his current research Jon is looking into Bonhoeffer’s theology of “mandates”, Jesus’ teaching on interpersonal forgiveness, and the films of the Coen brothers (and others). Jon welcomes invitations to write or speak on forgiveness and reconciliation; on church and vocation; on issues of gender, sexuality, disability, or race; on film and fiction; or on the works of Barth, Bonhoeffer, or Chesterton.

Education

PhD (University of Aberdeen)
MA (Briercrest Seminary)
BTh (Canadian Bible College)

Signature Courses

Issues in Systematic Theology
The Christian Confession
The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Theologies from the Margins
Political Theology

Select Publications

"Jesus as Teacher of Forgiveness," in Jesus as Teacher in the Gospel of Matthew, ed. by Charles Quarles and Nathan Ridlehoover, Bloomsbury, 2023.
"Arrival and Annihilation: Cinematic Reimaginings of the Resurrection of the Body," The Other Journal, June 10, 2021.
“Hail, Caesar! A Jesus Film in Search of a Christ Figure," Journal of Religion and Film 24.1 (2020)
“The Prince of Peace Smokes a Peace Pipe: A Church Response to the Challenge of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Theology and the Political (Brill, 2020)
Church Leadership: SCM Studyguide (SCM, 2019)
The Marks of a Church: Shaped by the Main Things (Grove booklet, 2018)
A Shared Mercy: Karl Barth on Forgiveness and the Church (IVP Academic, 2016)
“No Country for Old Man: Barth calls the Coen Brothers,” Karl Barth in Conversation, (Pickwick, 2014)
“Relative Grit: Masculinity in Flux on Film,” Cultural Encounters 9.1 (June 2013)
Looking Back, Leaning Forward: Wrestling with a Church's Story, edited with Heather Morgan, New Leaf Press, January 2024.