Malcolm Yarnell is an inspiring lecturer and scholarly writer. He has presented invited lecture series at schools around the world, including Oxford University, Aberdeen University, and each Southern Baptist seminary. Believing in the priority of the local church, he has long served in some pastoral capacity. Passionate for global theological education, he has also led many study and mission tours and has lectured on five continents.

Born in 1962 to a military family, Malcolm earned the Bachelor of Science in Finance, Summa Cum Laude, from Louisiana State University in 1986, the Master of Divinity with Biblical Languages from Southwestern Seminary in 1991, a Master of Theology in Historical Theology from Duke University in 1996, and the Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford in 2000. He began teaching at Southwestern in 2000 but soon left to help lead Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He returned to our Seminary in 2003 at the encouragement of John Newport, James Leo Garrett Jr., Kenneth Hemphill, Craig Blaising, and David Allen.

Yarnell has written ten books and over one hundred articles, making contributions to the doctrines of God the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, revelation, the church, and theological method, as well as in the areas of Reformation theology, Baptist theology, philosophical theology, and liberty of conscience. His most popular volumes include The Formation of Christian Doctrine (2006), God the Trinity: Biblical Portraits (2016), and Who is the Holy Spirit? (2019). He also published Royal Priesthood in the English Reformation (2013) with Oxford University Press and John Locke’s “Letters of Gold” (2017) with the Oxford Centre for Baptist History and Heritage.

He co-wrote Special Revelation and Scripture with President David S. Dockery in 2024 and has edited or co-edited numerous volumes. As the longest-serving editor of the Southwestern Journal of Theology, he continues publishing issues devoted to the Christian faith and its practice. He is currently writing a three-volume project, “Theology for Every Person.” The first volume, God, was published in 2024; the next two are Word and Spirit. He also served on the translation committees for the New American Standard Bible (2020) and the Amplified Bible (2015), publishing shorter commentaries on the biblical books of Jeremiah, 1 Corinthians, and Hebrews.

Malcolm finds special joy in graduate-level students, of whom he has mentored more than 60 from diverse national and denominational backgrounds. Many of his doctoral students now teach at or lead theological institutions around the world, including Brazil, Germany, India, Korea, and Ukraine, as well as several Southern Baptist seminaries. Yarnell has taken a primary role in promoting the adoption of the Nicene Creed and other classical creeds by evangelicals. He also serves on the boards of numerous research and publishing institutes.

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