WHAT IS THIS PLACE?
This site exists, in its present form, as the residue of a genuinely good idea that never quite learned how to stay alive. It began as a collaborative vision among classmates—ambitious, idealistic, and briefly energized—before quietly slipping into dormancy. The original architect ("first guy") built something beautiful and then disappeared. A second attempt flickered to life, fueled by passing enthusiasm and competing projects, only to fade just as quickly.
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What remains is not a polished platform, but a reclaimed space.
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Today, this site functions as the personal web space of its reluctant steward (the proverbial “second guy”) who has chosen to preserve it largely as it was first imagined. Not out of nostalgia, but out of patience. And perhaps a bit of stubborn hope.
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At its best, this place is meant to be a theological commons: a space where serious ideas can be explored without pretense; where scholarship and devotion are not treated as enemies; and where writing, teaching, and reflection are offered freely, without the performance metrics of social media or the financial and institutional barriers of academic publishing.
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Some posts here will be unapologetically academic. Others will be instructional, opinionated, experimental, or accessible by design. The intended audience ranges widely: fellow scholars, seminarians, catechists, students, and thoughtful readers who simply refuse shallow answers to deep questions. No single level is privileged. Fidelity to the subject matter is.
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If this site ever becomes something more than it is now, it will not be because it was optimized or branded, but because the ideas themselves demanded room to breathe. It will also be because others, who share its vision will get involved by contributing their own content. This site makes no promises. It offers no brand, platform, or audience ... only space. If that proves enough, then perhaps it will finally become what it was meant to be.
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Operating Assumption ... Or, Why "Fools not Rushing"?
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Theology is not a hobby, a weapon, or a marketing strategy. It is the disciplined pursuit of truth about God, undertaken in humility, tested in community, and accountable to history. While every believer reflects, however imperfectly, on what they believe about God, it does not carry that we're all theologians. Theology itself is not reducible to mere opinion, anyone's certainties, or even the deepest sincerity. It is a craft, formed through study, argument, prayer, and submission to the long memory of the Church.
In the face of the Object of theology's pursuit, we're all fools. Thus a theologian is one who admits they must carefully pilgrim onward accepting that intentional uncertainty must always be maintained as a healthy part of her/his conviction.
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When theology is severed from the Church, it becomes speculation—speculation we have seen splinter into thousands of disconnected circles. When it is severed from rigor, it becomes sentiment. This space exists in the conviction that the life of the mind and the life of faith belong together.
About the "Second Guy" - J. M. Zabick, ThD
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I am a native Michigander, married to my unmatchable wife, and father to our incredible son. Our household is completed (somewhat chaotically) by two large-ish and regrettably unruly dogs. I have never served in vocational ministry. Instead, I retired after a 29-year career in the public sector, making room at last for the work that has long occupied the margins of my life.
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Academically, I hold a Doctor of Theology (ThD) in Historical Theology / Church History from Evangelical Seminary (Myerstown, PA). My doctoral work, "Open Theism before the 'Open Theists,'" is a historiographical study of openness theologies in the centuries prior to the movement’s popular emergence in the late 1990s, especially among Methodists/Wesleyans. (View at ProQuest Dissertations and Theses)
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My theological interests center on theology proper in sustained conversation with the historical development of Western thought, especially in regard to the Doctrine of God and free will. Additional areas of academic focus include the history and theology that developed into Nicene orthodoxy, ecclesiology of the earliest Church, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, and most particularly the development of populist American evangelicalism from the Revolution to present day.
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Spiritually, my journey has been neither linear nor tidy. I was removed from Catholicism in my teens, following my parents’ "born again," experience and subsequently spent nearly four decades within a deeply formative Assemblies of God congregation. About fifteen years ago, serious engagement with Christian theology across the breadth of Christian history began to unravel my inherited evangelical framework. What followed were five to six years of sustained spiritual disorientation, deepened by the disheartening spectacle of American evangelicalism, writ large, giving itself over to politicization with troubling abandon. Out of that upheaval emerged a renewed encounter with the depth, coherence, and sacramental imagination of my Catholic heritage. I was received back into the Church and confirmed in 2022.
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I currently serve as an instructor of Theology and Church History at Detroit Catholic Central High School and as a catechist in the OCIA program at my local parish.
Academic Formation
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ThD (2025)—Historical Theology / Church History, Evangelical Seminary
Certificate (2025)—Catholic Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary
ThM (2019)—Theology, Liberty University
MRE (2017)—Master of Religious Education, Liberty University
MATS (2015)—Biblical Studies, Liberty University
BS (1993)— Criminal Justice, Wayne State University
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