WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Patrick Timmis: The Relaunch of 'Ad Fontes'

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Patrick Timmis, Assistant Professor of English at Hillsdale College and Editor-in-Chief of Ad Fontes, joins Siobhan Weed on WRFH to discuss the the relaunch of Ad Fontes: A Journal of Protestant Letters and the beginning of a new chapter under his leadership. Explore the Ad Fontes site or read the Spring issue for more.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Chavon Weed, and joining me is Dr. Patrick Timis, assistant professor of English here at Hillsdale College and newly the senior editor at Ad Fontes, a journal of Protestant letters. Thanks for being on today. Thanks for having me. So first, can you introduce the mission of Adfontez? Kind of just talk about what does Adfantz mean and why is that an appropriate name for the journal? And then what are you trying to accomplish through the work? Right. So Adfantes refers to you back to the sources. It was kind of a rallying cry of Renaissance and Reformation Humanism. And I think for us, it continues to have both of those elements, both of a kind of going back to theological sources, right, and

particularly resourcing great theological texts that have been forgotten, but still have wisdom for today. But also then, you know, very much with an eye towards classical sources. You know, you had mentioned taking a look at our most recent issue, which is on classical education in the Protestant tradition. And, of course, a major question that's being asked is, well, you know, how do we think about the Bible as an ancient text alongside other ancient texts? How do we think about St. Paul and Plato? You know, what's the relationship between the two of those? And this is a conversation that often in sort of stereotypical or stereotyped accounts of the development of Protestantism tends to see Protestants is not engaged in at all. You know, you'll often hear things like, oh, well, Protestants don't believe in the natural law or Protestants, you know, are opposed to philosophy, things like this.

And of course, there are those elements within the broad kind of Protestant spectrum that have gone there. But that tends to be a minority and certainly not those who were responsible for the Reformation and particularly the Magisterial Reformation. You think of people like the Lutherans in Germany, the Reformed on the continent, the Church of England, people like Richard Hooker, Thomas Cranes. These are people deeply engaged in both humanistic and classical learning, but also then turning that towards thinking through the scriptures. Incredible. Okay. And I was wondering what were kind of some of your motivations for joining it as senior editor? What has interested me is, in fact, this resourcement project. Now, this is, this resourcement project. Now, this is actually inspired by a major Roman Catholic movement. The resourishment.

Much of American, I'm an American, American Protestantism, while there's a desperate need for re-engagement in the tradition, and in fact the tradition that is provided for us by, the great theologians of the 16th, the 17th centuries, who very much considered themselves to be small C Catholics, very much considered themselves to be working in line, not just with the church fathers, but also with the great theologians of the Middle Ages.

John Calvin, for instance, loves Bernard of Clairbeau, cites him all over the institutes. and both the Eastern and Western traditions. So in the founding documents of the sort of Protestant Church of England, for instance, I will say in Augustine, not surprisingly, is number one for them, but John Chrysostom is number two. So there's a kind of deep engagement with that tradition. And then an engagement across the aisle, right, an engagement with Roman Catholic scholarship on scripture. You know, John Dunn, who's one of my favorite poets and was also a great preacher and theologian of the 17th century Church of England.

He basically, you know, in his sermons, he'll often say things like, well, you know, I'm going to cite this Jesuit here because they're very good biblical scholars, even though they're very bad people, right? So there's that, you know, and it's a little bit tongue in cheek, but there's that kind of engagement. And that's an engagement, I think, that we have here at Hillsdale, not so much they're very bad people. we were able to love one another in this. But that kind of old republic of letters. But, you know, another thing that attracted me into that, and this is just my context here teaching at Hillsdale, is there's just this really robust, wonderful intellectual life.

I think for especially Catholic students around the Grotto, around the Thomistic Institute, speaker series, right, people coming in, publications. And the kind of Protestant version of that is a lot more haphazard, right? Many different parishes, not necessarily a place where those kinds of conversations about the tradition are happening. And, you know, that's a conversation that I and a number of my colleagues here have been thinking through for several years. We had a couple of different conferences with scholars of the sort of reformations, both Catholic and Protestant, you know, to kind of model that students. And then continue when you think about, well, what are ways we can advance that kind of conversation?

So I think this is one of them. And then the other, just having a place for folks like me, right? who are traditionally minded, but also want to say something about culture today and want to do it in dialogue with other Christians can go and publish. You know, there's actually are not that many venues for that kind of thing. And most of the best ones tend to be, you know, have more of a platform for Catholic thinkers. You think, you know, I think a journal like First Things is a good example, right, which always, you know, has always been kind of by Catholics, if not necessarily for Catholics. I've been a long-time reader. So, you know, having something complementary to that kind of a project.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Chauvin Wade, and I'm talking with Dr. Patrick Timis, professor of English here at Hillsdale College, who's recently become the senior editor of the Protestant Academic Journal, Ad Fontes. Another question I had for you is for someone who hasn't ever picked a bad fontas. Yeah, yeah. Like what, well, kind of what is the audience that you're trying to reach and like what kind of publication is it? And like why was it important to kind of relaunch it in 2026? Yeah, no, this is a great question. So I think maybe I could even return to that in your description of it as a Protestant academic journal. You know, and I think when we hear academic journal, we think, oh, so with very little sort of

It has very little to say about day-to-day life that writing is probably only read by nerdy people. And to some extent, like I get that's always going to be the case. But part of our desire, it used to be a print subscription journal. And we wanted to relaunch it as an all-online open access journal. And that's because we felt like these were things that although by and large written by scholars did not need to necessarily be written only for school. that they could be written for anybody who is interested in thinking through the wisdom of the past for how we engage in daily life. I mean, we are all, you know, so we think about the first couple of issues that we've had. The one is on education. How do we educate ourselves? How do we educate our children? That's not a scholarly question. That's a human question.

right? How do we think about our lives as citizens both of a country and of heaven? That's not an academic question in the sort of pejorative sense of academic, right? That has very real implications. You know, we hope that the readership will not be purely academic. And so that that's kind of the the reason to have an e-journal of Protestant letters is, well, you hope just it can get into more people's hands. I think our target audience is, first and foremost, going to be people who are, you know, going to Presbyterian or Lutheran or Anglican or Baptist or Methodist reform churches and want to know. know more about what it means to live their lives in that context, are curious and eager to learn, but aren't necessarily experts in theology or in church history or, you know, political philosophy or anything like that. But then also, you know, folks who are maybe not themselves

in one of those magisterial Protestant traditions, but who are friendly towards them, you know, and are kind of, you know, in the same way that you see the reformers engaging, you know, across the aisle with the Jesuits, things like this. You know, interested in reading about those things from a Protestant perspective and just understanding that. You know, so many of the really nicest notes that I got after our first issue came out were from my Catholic and Eastern Orthodox colleagues.

Awesome. Yeah. And you mentioned before, so the journal's name means to the sources. Can you kind of articulate why it's so important to return to those sources as a Christian like today? Yeah, well, obviously for all of us, I mean, the, you know, first and foremost, the source. I mean, you know, the proverbs talk about. A source fundamentally the images that of a well, right, or of a stream of water. And we have to be planted by the streams of water in order to be wise. And you find that wisdom, of course, in the scriptures. And this is, you know, Erasmus, the great Catholic humanist, his Greek New Testament was kind of what, you know, that was the dawning of both the Renaissance and the reformations. So I think always going back to that, to that fundamental word to the world. But then also there is a, I think, and I know I'm not alone in this, for us in the 21st century, this paradox where in one way we're more, quote unquote, connected, especially in the sort of online sphere than ever.

and yet never have people felt more isolated, never have people felt more cut off from some kind of tradition or story in which they're living. And so giving that to people, giving that to people and saying, you know, you're not the first one to ask these questions. You're not alone in this. You're not even alone in this right now, you know, both across time, but also as we talk to, one another, you know, as we debate these things, that doesn't just have to be, you know, mean tweets that can be a place where we engage in long form, thoughtful, but, you know, and charitable, but when need be pointed debate. And this, you know, for instance, this is one of the reasons it was quite important for us to have Ed Fontes continue to be an ecumenical journal, right, not tied to one particular Protestant church.

But, you know, be a place where, you know, folks from the various traditions who often, you know, spend more time lobbing grenades than actually engaging in constructive debate could have this kind of. of sharing of gifts, you know, and likewise then, you know, be a space where those, you know, Roman Catholic or Orthodox or Pentecostal, theologians who were, you know, and just, and not necessarily theologians, you know, I've got a wonderful piece coming out from a woman who's, you know, a mother of small child and is just thinking through these things as she's educating, you know, could come in and have this conversation. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Chavonne Weed and I'm talking to Dr. Patrick Timis,

professor of English here at Hillsdale College, who's recently become the senior editor of the Protestant Journal Ad Fontes. Another question I had was, so obviously, like, so the latest issue was the classical education in the Protestant tradition. And, like, again, it's very relevant. Like, you guys, a lot of you who are writing it are, like, these professors. You're engaged in education.

But still, how did you decide on that as the topic within this Protestant tradition as the subject for the first edition of Adfonte's under your leadership? Yes, well, it's been, you know, and I think this goes back a little bit to thinking through the bigger question. You know, it is very much the case that in sort of the traditional Protestant churches, there's, an exodus of young people from the church. And, you know, many of us are raising children in the context of the church and, of course, asking ourselves, so how do we avoid that? Right. What kind of people are we trying to raise? What are the resources for that? And, you know, are our Are we able to be giving them those resources in the churches where we're raising our families? Right.

I mean, I think that fundamentally is a question. Obviously, you know, plenty of students who grew up in partisan churches get to Hillsdale and decide, well, no, not really. Right. And, you know, they, I think either, you know, St. Anthony's does or Holy Ascension can do that. But I don't think these partisan churches can do that. And obviously for a whole variety of reasons that I think must come down to theological commitments. We've said, well, we think this best represents what we would see as the truth and as a true way to live your life in light of God. But we need to not just take that for granted, but actually be very thoughtful about the way that we're educating our own children.

So that's one aspect of it, right? But then I think also all of those people who wrote pieces, some of them who work here at Hillsdale, some who work in other contexts. but are people who have really given their lives to thinking through what does it mean to educate people who are free the sort of you know um classical uh in this kinds of thing you know we talk about we talk about classical education or the liberal arts right training free people but also in the context of free people are people who are free from sin free in Christ right um how are we drawing those things

together and not simply going back and saying, well, this is what has been said in the past, right, and the challenges of the past, but then also having this element where we think quite practically about what does this mean applied to the present, right? Socrates didn't have to deal with GROC or chat GPT. That's kind of a new problem. Right? And it, you know, we're still figuring this out. But for a lot of us right now, it feels like potentially an existential problem, right?

A kind of existential threat to the kind of thing that we're trying to do here. And, you know, putting a Band-Aid on it probably isn't going to be enough, right? because you're always playing catch up. How do you create or form? You know, I want back way too far from create because there is this element in which, right, our kind of creation is ongoing. We're being created and recreated

as we're becoming more fully human. Yeah, how do we help form people who are whole and then of course ultimately we're going to see that through a relationship with God but then every aspect of a life lived in relationship with God which is of course what a the kind of education that we're after here is about right Athens in Jerusalem so

for I think the this part why this particular issue why now I think it's because, you know, everyone in the sphere of education, and especially those who feel that, you know, to educate is, in fact, a vocation given you by God. And, you know, the scripture warns us that teachers will be held to a high account, you know, to a high standard and a high account. And you're, you know, it's better to have a millstone hung around your neck than to cause a young one to stumble. frightening thing to think about

what we better be thinking about what it is that we're doing then and we better be looking both to the wisdom of the past but then wisdom says okay how do we apply that prudently today? Yeah for sure and I was wondering

kind of looking into the future what are some other topics within again that Protestant tradition that you want to kind of tackle together with this new team? Yeah and that's a great question. So our fall issue is going to be thinking about

reformation then but also reformation now. Okay. There's, it was a kind of mantra of the reformation that, you know, reformed and always reforming, right? We fundamentally were always deeply aware of the fact that the church is, as Augustine says, a mixed body. There's always sin.

There's always heresy. There's always the need to be rededicating yourself to Christ and to walking in the spirit. And, you know, I think today is no different. You look around. Every Protestant church is basically split between, has basically split into at least two wings, right? One that's progressive, one that is traditional. But then even within, say, the traditional side of things, which we all, who are involved with the journal inhabit, those same battles are playing out.

and the same, you know, it's always easier to, well, kind of seek oneself rather than God. And they're always always a need than to be thinking about rededicating yourself to the first things, to the highest things. So that'll be the topic of this upcoming fall issue, yeah, for October 31st, which is Reformation Day. There you go. Very apropel. Yeah, very apropel. Or at least, and now I've given you that date, so we'll actually have to hit it. We'll keep you accountable.

Yeah, we're still talking about what the winter issue is going to be. Well, thank you so much for your time and contribution. It was great to have you. Our guest has been Dr. Patrick Timis and I'm Chivonne Weed on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.