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Rev Professor W Gordon Campbell

I began working life as a modern languages teacher, before studying theology and training for ministry at Union, and serving as an assistant minister in Belfast. Sixteen years in France followed, in parish ministry in Cognac and Segonzac and later Marseilles South–East and Aubagne, as a minister in the Reformed Church of France (now the United Protestant Church of France). I then taught New Testament at John Calvin Seminary, in Aix–en–Provence, where I was Vice Principal and then Principal for a time and where I still help deliver the New Testament curriculum on an annual basis.

I became Professor of New Testament Studies at Union in 2007. In my teaching I aim to help students become confident, creative and thoughtful interpreters of New Testament texts, equipped to explore their complex and diverse impacts on faith, culture and life in society. I approach Scripture with respect for the integrity and coherence of texts and for responsibilities incumbent on readers who engage with them. Further priorities include each New Testament text’s particular contribution to the biblical Canon, use of Scripture by communities of faith and the Bible’s impacts on culture or society.

My teaching draws on my research and publications. My primary focus and main area of expertise is the Book of Revelation. My PhD dissertation in French, on Parody in the Apocalypse (2002), was reworked and published as a unique thematic study of Revelation (2007). It appeared in English as Reading Revelation: A Thematic Approach (Cambridge, James Clarke, 2012) and was republished in 2022 in the Foundations of New Testament Criticism series, with a new postscript responding to scholars’ reception of my research. I have also recently investigated the unusually crucial role played by the Book of Revelation in Martin Luther’s Bible or in the Geneva Bible in English.

I am an elder in a Belfast church where my wife, Sandra, is involved in children’s ministry. We live in Bangor and are parents to Aimée, Myriam, Stuart and Marc – none of whom now lives in N. Ireland – and grandparents to Anna and Caleb. We like meeting new people, exploring new places and catching up with family.

Research & Supervision

I conduct my research in the service of the Church and in dialogue with the Academy. For me, principled interpretation of each New Testament text involves careful methodological triangulation of three entities: author (with their context and intentions), text (with its value and inviolability) and reader (with their responsiveness and responsibility). I also approach the New Testament witness as a canonical whole and I value the demanding biblical-theological task of demonstrating both its diversity and unity. I am therefore equally comfortable with exegetical-theological research projects that zoom in on one passage or those that zoom out for a larger theological theme.

Whilst I am prepared to consider supervising research topics across all of New Testament literature, I offer the following by way of orientation:

The Book of Revelation. Revelation is my chief area of research output and expertise and I am fundamentally committed to reading the book as a multi-faceted organic whole. I particularly invite research projects that aim to explore motifs, topics or grand themes which contribute towards Revelation’s complex internal cohesion. I am also open to proposals that seek to investigate Revelation’s many and varied ecclesial, cultural and social impacts.

The Gospels and Acts. I read the New Testament’s other narrative texts, too, as coherent compositions. I welcome research proposals which focus either on commonalities that may be discernible across Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts and John, or on one or more distinctives that may characterise each Evangelist’s particular portrayal of Jesus and (in Acts) of the movement born out of his ministry.

The NT Epistles. Diversity of context, content and thrust characterises both Paul’s individual Letters and the General Epistles and my own forays into these components of New Testament literature are something of a miscellany! I especially welcome research projects with potential to enhance our appreciation of each text’s distinctive voice or of its particular contribution to the polyphony of apostolic teaching.