DEPARTMENT OF CHURCH HISTORY
Department Chair. Dr. Ron Smith, MATS, DBS, a missionary, pastor and writer, is our professor of Church History and a published author. Along the way between his first studies in theology, at the historic Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and then at ETS, God called Rev. Smith as a missionary to Mexico, where he established various mission outposts and a church, which still proclaims the Gospel to this day in Bustamante, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Currently he is the pastor of the vibrant Church of the King, in McAllen, TX. Having served as an assistant professor in 2007 and an associate professor in 2008, he was appointed full professor in Old Testament Studies in 2009, and to his present position in June of 2012.
Professor Smith’s writings include Apostolic Interpretation and about forty published articles and smaller works, such as his well-read “Religion In and Out” and “Common Defects of Preachers.” The thesis for his MATS degree was entitled, The Visions of Daniel Fulfilled, and he wrote his doctoral dissertation, The Eternal Covenant, on Old Testament themes—a life-time interest.
Early and Reformation Church History Coordinator. Dr. Darrel Hilbrands Vander Tuig’s La Ekklesia Institucional Temporal: una Perspectiva Histórica, opened new understandings of the history of the church, and has awakened many to the rewarding as well as challenging nature of Ante-Nicene through Reformation church history. For a fuller background to Professor Hilbrands, see “Academic Division / Office of the Dean,” also on this web-site.
Medieval Church History Coordinator. With a specialty in medieval and Islamic studies, Instructor Paul Roberts has undergraduate studies in Literature and graduate studies in History from the University of Texas-Edinburg, as well as graduate studies from Edinburg Theological Seminary, where he is currently in the APS program investigating and writing on The Genesis of the Crusades – History’s First World War.
An expert on the life and rise of Mohammed’s conquests against the backdrop of the Roman Empire, he has also studied and written on various political and military power-struggles in history, with a specialty in the Spanish Reconquista (see his How Marriage, Military Orders and the Church of Rome Enabled Christendom to Halt the Moslem Advance in Spain).
Modern and Latin American Church History Coordinator. Dr. Pedro Guzmán Reyna, B.D., M.A., S.T.D., is an outstanding author and teacher, known in Mexico and throughout Latin America for his many studies on theological and literary issues of the day, including works such as his “Siguiendo a una Estrella” (“Following a Star”), and “Campanas del Recuerdo” (“Bells of My Remembrance”), both of which were selected as prize-winning historical essays by the Literary and Historical Society of Tamaulipas. In theology he has published a study on Esther, and translated The Work of the Elder, by Dr. Lester De Koster (El Oficio del Anciano Gobernante), as well as A Christian Critique of Art and Literature, by Dr. Calvin Seerveld (Una Crítica Cristiana del Arte y la Literatura), and many other lesser works, articles and essays.
Chairman Guzmán Reyna was born in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, México, where he obtained his early schooling. His theological studies were begun at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Mexico City, after which he began a lengthy ministry as an itinerant evangelist and conference speaker which took him to most of the states and regions of Mexico, Central America, Europe and North America.
During this period, however, Professor Guzmán did not neglect his education, studying evangelism in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, missiology in Atlanta, GA, and theology in Houston, TX, publishing both his Bachelor of Divinity thesis, The Evangelical Church Four Centuries After the Protestant Reformation: Leaders, Works and Dilemmas (published in Spanish: La Iglesia Evangélica a Cuatro Siglos de la Reforma Protestante: Líderes, Obras y Dilemas), and his Master’s thesis, The Dignity of the Ministry of the Church Elder (in Spanish: La Dignidad de los Ancianos de Iglesia), completing his doctoral studies with an award-winning dissertation, Historical Traces of Protestantism in Mexico: From the Laws of Reform, 1857, to the Plan of Cincinnati, 1914, in a graduate consortium program of Edinburg Theological Seminary in Texas, which has now been published under the title Rasgos Históricos del Protestantismo en México. Order at el_faro@hotmail.com.
