I recently stumbled upon a great site that I think will help many of you who want to improve your theological writing ability. Westminster Seminary offers a great resource on their website that helps people hone their writing skills. The “Center for Theological Writing” is a fairly comprehensive resource that helps to “equip[...] students of theology with the tools to write clearly, correctly, cogently, and profoundly (John Frame,The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God).”
I’ve found as I’ve gone through this website that some of the suggestions are short and don’t give a whole lot of information, but others are very comprehensive in explaining how to write. In seminary, there are various types of courses and most of them require a specific style of writing. Personally, I’m better at writing devotional and argumentative type papers, but other classes require just research. I have found that I didn’t know where to begin in some cases. The site has been a starting point to help me know in what direction to go when writing a certain type of paper and what its boundaries are.
Some of the areas that you might benefit from are:
- Writing for Apologetic Papers
- Writing for Systematic Papers
- Writing for Biblical Studies
- Writing for Church History
- Writing for Practical Theology
Writing is not my best skill, but little by little it is possible to improve in this area. Is it too late to teach an old dog new tricks? As I’ve heard it said, “It’s not too late, because we are not dogs.” I want to encourage you to take a look through the website and utilize the resources it offers. Also, take a look at the other resources that WTS offers in this section of their site.
“the church and the world need those who can articulate the gospel faithfully, bringing it to bear upon the issues of life with insight, clarity, and truthfulness (cf. Rom 10:14).”