Email: [email protected]
First Year at Gordon-Conwell: 2010
Expertise: Patristics, Historical Theology, Eastern Orthodoxy
Biography:
Dr. Fairbairn is the Robert E. Cooley Distinguished Professor of Early Christianity. His research interests focus on the relation between the ways the early church understood the Trinity, Christ, salvation and Christian life, especially in the 4th through 6th centuries.
After graduating from seminary in 1989, Dr. Fairbairn ministered in Tbilisi, Soviet Georgia, for a year and then taught theology, New Testament and apologetics at Donetsk Christian University in Eastern Ukraine from 1992-96. After finishing his PhD in 1999, he taught church history and historical theology at Erskine Theological Seminary in Due West, SC, before coming to Gordon-Conwell in 2010.
Dr. Fairbairn has taught and lectured throughout Europe and North America, as well as in Africa and Asia on a more limited basis. He seeks to write for scholarly, academic, student-level, and popular audiences, and he is the author of more than a dozen books, with existing or in-process translations of his books into more than twenty languages.
He and his wife Jennifer have two adult children, Trey and Ella, and a daughter-in-law, Trey’s wife Abigail. His hobbies include golf, gardening, and playing with his dogs.
Degrees
- AB (Princeton University)
- MDiv (Denver Seminary)
- PhD (University of Cambridge)
Featured Publications
Select List of Publications
- Christology and the Logic of Grace in Fifth-Century Gaul. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025.
- The Trinity. Bridgend: Union Publishing, 2024.
- The Global Church—The First Eight Centuries: From Pentecost through the Rise of Islam. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2021.
- The Story of Creeds and Confessions: Tracing the Development of the Christian Faith (co-authored with Ryan M. Reeves). Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019.
- “Fides Quae Creditur? The Nicene Background to the Reformation.” In Reformation Celebration: The Significance of Scripture, Grace, Faith, and Christ. Edited by Gordon Isaac and Eckhard J. Schnabel. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2018.
- Understanding Language: A Guide for Beginning Students of Greek & Latin. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011.
- Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009.
- “The One Person Who Is Jesus Christ: The Patristic Perspective.” Pages 80-113 in Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology. Edited by Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2007.
- Eastern Orthodoxy through Western Eyes. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002.