Atonement Understood: PSTC 2026

Coming up in April 10-11 2026, the second biennial Pacific Systematic Theology Colloquium will be meeting at Gateway Seminary of the West. Check out the event page here, and get tickets at Eventbrite here. (If you’ve clicked through before, click again: the ticket price are considerably lower than before! Yes you read that right.)

The topic is atonement, under the title “Atonement Understood.” That title isn’t a boast of having exhaustively comprehended the divine work of reconciliation, but a recognition that the work of theology includes taking up the task of explaining this doctrine. For most of the twentieth century it was popular to talk about various “atonement theories.” Although that “theories” framework was distracting and has undergone devastating critique, every theological account of the doctrine includes a claim to have grasped its truth and its position within the Christian doctrinal system.

Our plenary speakers this year are both Los Angeles based, and both authors of multiple books on atonement: Adam Johnson (Torrey Honors College at Biola University) and Jeremy Treat (RealityLA). Johnson’s talk will be “The Theology of Fittingness in the Doctrine of the Atonement: A Constructive Retrieval,” and Treat’s will be “In Our Place: The Pervasive Nature of Substitution.” Both of these talks are serious and even programmatic statements of how to think accurately and expansively about this doctrine.

Join us! Tickets are available now at Eventbrite, and our audience for PSTC has included professors, independent scholars, pastors, students (seminary to high school in fact), and all sorts of interested laypeople. Both of our plenaries are clear communicators, and we’ll have a dozen breakout papers from a wide variety of scholars.

Here are the breakout papers:

• David Buchanan, ‘Iolani School: “’Remember the Righteous Martyrs of Judah:’ The Use of Second Temple Jewish Martyrological Traditions in Dogmatic Atonement Theology”
• Micah E. Chung, PhD, English pastor of First Chinese Baptist Church of Atlanta and adjunct instructor for New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary: “Bonded by Broken Bread: How Food Informs Christ’s Atonement”
• Jacob Chengwei Feng, Affiliate Assistant Professor of Theology and Leadership, Fuller Theological Seminary: “Metaphors in Watchman Nee and Witness Lee’s Doctrine of Atonement with Deification as Telos: Towards a Constructive Chinese Theology of Reconciliation for the Third Millennium”
• Ross Hastings, Sangwoo Youtong Chee Chair of Theology, Regent College. Ascension as Atonement: Considerations For and Against
• Colton Jones, PhD student, Apeldoorn: “One Mediator Between God and Man: The Unity of Christ’s Priestly Work in His Obedience, Atonement, and Intercession in the Theology of John Owen”
• David Lytle. Ph.D. student, Gateway Seminary: “Recapitulation and Infant Salvation in the Theology of Thomas Grantham (1634-1692)”
• Carl Mosser, Independent Scholar; Hannah Avvah, Local Artist: “Depicting the Confessional Doctrine of Atonement: Goltzius’ Satisfactio Christi”
• Derek Rishmawy, Independent Scholar: “With Us and For Us: Why Christ’s Penal Death in Solidarity With Us Must Also be a Substitutionary Death For Us”
• Robb Torseth, Public Service Librarian & Adjunct Professor at Gateway Seminary: “Christ For Us and Christ In Us: Gisle Johnson’s Personalist and Organicist View of the Atonement in Two Acts”
• Matthew Visk: “(Mis)Understanding Calvin on Atonement”
• David M. Westfall, Associate Professor of Theology at Dordt University: “’He Suffered—But Did He Offer?’ Christ’s Obedient Agency and the Eclipse of Satisfaction in Recent Evangelical Accounts of Penal Substitution”
• Christopher Woznicki, Affiliate Assistant Professor of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Research Fellow, Jonathan Edwards Center at Gateway Seminary: “Revisiting the Objective-Subjective Distinction in Atonement Theology: The Revelation Model as a Test Case”

The pstcolloquium@gmail.com email account is monitored during this season by the institutional host, Gateway Seminary, and by me for editorial questions. Feel free to reach out. And do help spread the word if you know theologians who ought to come to this event.

PSTC is a biennial gathering designed to foster theological discussion and collaboration on the west coast. It’s organized by Fred Sanders (Torrey Honors College) and Uche Anizor (Talbot School of Theology) of Biola University, and David Rathel, and Paul Jo of Gateway Seminary of the West. This team of Los Angeles-area theologians are committed to keeping theological dialogue going strong in the western region of the United States. Anyone is welcome, but the PSTC exists to meet the needs of theologians working in the western third of the U.S. Our region has various established larger conferences (the now-biennial Los Angeles Theology Conference), institutional conferences, church and apologetics events, denominational meetings, and regional chapters of national societies (AAR, SBL, ETS). But PSTC meets a regional need for an independent, academic theology event that spans confessions, traditions, and institutions for meaningful work on Christian doctrines.

Back in 2024, our inaugural meeting focused on Christology, and featured plenary talks by Dan Treier and Steve Duby. It was great! The Call for Papers drew a large number of excellent applications, of which twelve were presented in breakout sessions. There was a spirit of shared inquiry, lively interaction among all the guests, and collegiality spanning from senior scholars to grad students and ministry workers. (Check out the event page from 2024 to see the full slate of papers we had.) With the 2026 conference, we take up the doctrine of atonement and seek to understand it in broad, systematic perspective.