www.thegospelcoalition.org
Daniel Treier (1972–2025): A Theological Life
My friend, colleague, and former student Daniel Treier finished his earthly race on December 22, 2025, and Christmas for me will never be the same. In the Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey comes to understand how much his life mattered by experiencing an imaginary world in which he never existed. I don’t need such a vision. I now have to face the real-life prospect of a strange new world that’s diminished because my friend is no longer in it.
Who was Dan, and what difference did his life make? He was a farm boy from Ohio who went to Cedarville University and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary before earning his PhD under my supervision at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He began teaching theology at Wheaton College in 2001, and in 2017 was appointed the Gunther H. Knoedler professor of theology. Along the way, he married a fellow Wheaton professor, Amy Black, and together they had a daughter, Anna. No doubt Dan would say it’s less a bio than a list of blessings from God.
Blessing is the operative term. Dan’s life was both blessed and a blessing—a gift of God—to me, his Wheaton colleagues, his students, his friends, his church, and the cause of evangelical theology. He blessed us all by living a consistently theological life. Let me count the ways.
Theological Interpretation
Dan was a leader in what has come to be known as the theological interpretation of Scripture (TIS) movement. I tapped him to be an associate editor for what we hoped would be a key reference work, Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Truth be told, Dan did the lion’s share of the editorial work. He also contributed more articles than anyone else (11), including a masterful treatment of what the entire dictionary was arguably about: “Theological Hermeneutics, Contemporary.”
The Dictionary won the 2006 biblical studies book of the year award from Christianity Today and was named the Christian book of the year by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. But Dan was only getting warmed up.
Dan’s life was both blessed and a blessing—a gift of God—to me, his Wheaton colleagues, his students, his friends, his church, and the cause of evangelical theology.
Dan’s next book, Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture, remains one of the best books for discovering what theological reading of the Bible is and why it matters to the church. At its heart is the question of the difference that Christian faith and theology make for reading the Bible as the church’s Scripture.
Dan was always concerned with and a champion of integrating systematic theology and biblical exegesis. His book reminds us that theological interpretation is an ancient practice, a contrast to the historical-critical exegetical complex typical of the modern academy. He also urges the Western church to pay attention to the way the Bible is being read in the Global South, a theme that regularly surfaces in his later work.
Dan also teaches us that “the formation of Christian virtue is a crucial aspect of interpretative practice” This is a topic that figures prominently in his dissertation, Virtue and the Voice of God, which was published the same year as the dictionary.
Did I mention Dan cared about exegesis? Often advocates of TIS are critiqued for neglecting exegesis, but Dan was both a theological interpreter and an exegete.
In 2011, he published a commentary, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series. The dedication and preface show that Dan wasn’t just a theological interpreter and an exegete. What Dan wrote here shows that his thinking about Scripture wasn’t merely intellectual. Dan’s theology affected his heart and family life.
Dan wisely dedicates the book (which treats Proverbs 31) to his wife Amy, and in the preface wryly quips (O Lord, you know how I’ll miss those quips!), “Thanks to the birth of [my daughter] Anna, I have encountered anew the human delights and limitations of which Proverbs and Ecclesiastes speak.” The wisdom theme recurs throughout the commentary, but I particularly like what he says at the end of the section on Proverbs: “What Proverbs ultimately teaches about parenting is the tremendous privilege involved in imitating God at a creaturely level. . . . There is nothing quite like parenting itself for learning the fear of the Lord.”
Theological Thinking
At the time of his death, Dan was the ranking theologian at Wheaton College and the director of its PhD program in biblical and theological studies. Over the years, he led integrative doctoral seminars that included professors and students in both biblical studies and systematic theology, training scores of students both to read the Bible well and think theologically.
Many of these students (Uche Anizor, Ty Kieser, Steve Pardue, and Hank Voss, to name a few) have gone on to publish their dissertations or serve as professors themselves. The program Dan led was small—only six students admitted per year—but its influence disproportionate.
Since his passing, I’ve talked with several of Dan’s past and present doctoral students. Together, they form a choir that uniformly sings his praises, agreeing that he consistently went far above and beyond the call of professorial duty. He held high academic standards (insisting students use their newly acquired German), gave honest feedback about term papers (and job prospects), and, above all, was concerned with his students’ intellectual and spiritual formation. He encouraged them to do theology in service to the church, to the glory of God. To adapt a line from Gilbert and Sullivan: He was the very model of a virtuous evangelical theologian.
Yet mentoring students wasn’t the only way Dan functioned as one of evangelical theology’s most significant thought leaders. Evangelicalism is what philosophers call an essentially contested concept, constantly eluding simple definitions. Dan was nevertheless able to comment on evangelical theology with Calvin’s characteristic lucidity and brevity.
He did more than that: Dan published three books on evangelical theology (either as author or editor). First, he coedited The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology with his Wheaton colleague Tim Larsen. He wrote the chapter “Scripture and Hermeneutics,” in which he describes evangelicals as “the true heirs of the Protestant Reformation.”
I must also note Dan’s six-year herculean labor of love to produce the third edition of the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (2017). Amazingly, he was able to reduce the volume’s size by almost a third while adding 150,000 words of new insight. He did so by focusing on theology, with the aim of representing “both the range of evangelical diversity accurately and the center of evangelical consensus winsomely.” The dictionary rebuts prejudices about evangelical anti-intellectualism and reflects evangelical Christianity’s global scope.
We best hear Dan’s own theological voice, however, in his Introducing Evangelical Theology (2019), a text he workshopped both with colleagues in the academy and with a Sunday-school class in his home church.
The care Dan habitually took to communicate clearly is on full display here. There’s a thesis for each of the book’s 15 chapters, and the Nicene Creed structures the whole. At Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, it’s the only book required for all three of our core MDiv theology courses. I can think of no higher commendation. It’s the most elegant example of evangelical theology—the disciplined pursuit of gospel truth and Christian wisdom—you’ll find, and it brilliantly displays Dan’s concern that doctrine matters for intellectual, moral, and spiritual formation alike.
Theological Flourishing
Dan did many other things as well. You can find tributes from students and colleagues aplenty online. He was a respected mentor, a trusted friend, a faithful husband, and a loving father.
It’s true that, in the end, he no longer enjoyed the health of the body. But that’s different from the health of the person, which includes mental, social, and spiritual well-being. Dan enjoyed healthy relationships that involved each of these aspects of his personhood.
Dan’s chief concern was his relationship with his Savior. An evangelical theologian to the core, he knew that the goal of life is communion with God. Dan enjoyed spiritual well-being, a healthy relationship—a friendship—with God.
This comes through in his last book, Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, there are the trademark Treier touches: a second, more detailed contents page; summary paragraphs for each chapter; extended theological interpretations of key Bible passages. There’s also evidence of a deep desire to know and commune with a person. Jesus Christ isn’t just Dan’s subject matter but his beloved Lord, and the only source of true wisdom.
Dan’s chief concern was his relationship with his Savior. An evangelical theologian to the core, he knew that the goal of life is communion with God.
In an email he sent me just after receiving his cancer diagnosis, Dan said he was praying “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” (see Phil. 3:10). Dan was always wise beyond his years; now he can plumb “the depth of the . . . wisdom and knowledge of God” to his heart’s content, for all eternity (Rom. 11:33).
So, even as his bodily health failed, Dan continued to flourish in fellowship with his family, his friends, and his God. He was, in short, one of the healthiest people I’ve ever known, even on the eve of his physical death. It is well with Dan’s soul. He is alive in Christ.
Dan was a gift and a blessing to so many of us, in so many ways. I thank God for his wonderful, exemplary, and altogether healthy theological life.
New Posts (Home)
ChatBox
Popular Posts 
Game Zone
Top PodCasts
