Jonathan Leonard Drury (born November 16, 1978) is an ordained minister in The Wesleyan Church of North America and an American theologian known for his contribution to Christology, Wesleyan Theology, Barthianism, Holiness Theology, and Protestant Theology. He is currently the Associate Professor of Theology and Christian Ministry at Wesley Seminary and the Discipleship Pastor at Indiana Wesleyan University's Office of Spiritual Formation (formerly the IWU Dean of the Chapel Office).
Biography
Early life
John was born to Keith Drury and Sharon Bailey Drury, both pastors in the Pilgrim Holiness Church and later the Wesleyan Church after its merger with The Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1968. John is the youngest of two sons.
Life and career
Drury earned his B.A. at Indiana Wesleyan University, majoring in Religion, Philosophy, and Biblical Literature, and graduated summa cum laude in 2001. While at Indiana Wesleyan, he met and later married Amanda Hontz of Holland, MI.
He went on to earn both his M.Div. in 2004 and his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ. He was awarded the A. A. Hodge Prize in Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and earned the rank of magna cum laude for his doctoral dissertation titled, "The Resurrected God: Karl Barth’s Trinitarian Theology of Easter." in 2011.
Drury went on to become the inaugural Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation at Wesley Seminary in Marion, IN where he served from 2010-2021. In 2021 he accepted the position of Spiritual Formation Coordinator in the chapel office at Indiana Wesleyan University.
Honors and awards
A. A. Hodge Prize in Systematic Theology
At the 57th Annual meeting of The Wesleyan Theological Society at Duke Divinity School in March of 2022, Drury was called "one of the two greatest young minds in the Wesleyan tradition" (along with Jason Vickers) by Dr. Cheryl Bridges Johns, during informal comments after her plenary address.
Dissertation
Drury's landmark work on the theme of Resurrection in Karl Barth's fourth volume of Church Dogmatics was among the most influential English-language Christian theological dissertations of that year and earned him the rank of magna cum laude from Princeton Theological Seminary. It has since become a central text in numerous published works including Mark Edwards "The Divine Moment," Nixon De Vera's "The Suffering of God in the Eternal Decree: A Critical Study of Karl Barth on Election," Adriani Milli Rodrigues' "Toward a Priestly Christology: A Hermeneutical Study of Christ's Priesthood," and JP Haley's book "The Humanity of Christ: The Significance of the Anhypostasis and Enhypostasis in Karl Barth's Christology."
Works
Books
The Resurrected God: Karl Barth's Trinitarian Theology of Easter. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014 Karl Barth and the Future of Evangelical Theology. Pickwick Publications. 2017 19th and 20th Centuries, in A Canon of Christian Theology: The Methodist Tradition. London T&T Clark Publishers, 2014. Judgment. Methodist Doctrine, Vol. 10. Atlanta Cascade, 2016.