We welcome Dr David Instone-Brewer who is Senior Research Fellow in Rabbinics and the New Testament at Tyndale House in Cambridge. His title is ‘Divorce and Remarriage in Bible times and today’. He will examine what the Bible says about divorce, as it would have been understood by the original readers of the New Testament.…
Dr Paula Gooder, Theologian in Residence for The Bible Society. The title of her lecture is “The Body beautiful? The Importance of the Body in Paul's Theology “ Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds has said that "Paula is one of the most lucid, engaging and stimulating teachers I have encountered. Her probing, encouraging style blends…
Revd Dr Derek Tidball, a former principal of London Bible College. The title of his lecture is ‘The Cross and The Crown’: the relationship between the kingdom of God and the cross of Christ. The major theme of Jesus' teaching and ministry in the synoptic gospels is the kingdom of God while in the New…
The Revd Dr Alan Garrow is Vicar of St Peter’s Harrogate and an Honorary Academic in the Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield. He will be speaking on Eating and evangelism in the very early Church. Why did people in the first century decide to follow Jesus? On the face of…
Venturesome love often begins with pondering 'Could I? Should I? Could We? Should We?' Such pondering and commitment is at the heart of discipleship. Venturesome Christians risk powerlessness and being overwhelmed – like Jesus, who also opted to be without power and faced up to being overwhelmed. What does venturesome discipleship look like? Where do…
Professor John Barclay Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham on Saturday 21st January. His title is Paul, grace and gift: does the best gift have no strings attached? Thinking with Paul about giving and receiving gifts. For a number of reasons (Western) Christians have become champions of the notion that the ‘pure’…
Julie Clague is Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at Glasgow University and an academic associate of the Institute of Health and Wellbeing. She carries out research in Catholic moral theology and ecclesiology, Catholic social thought, and Christian approaches to public issues. Julie’s lecture will explore the impact and significance of the Papacy of Francis…
Dr Strine will explore what both the Old Testament and New Testament say about migration, developing the insight that a massive number of biblical texts are written by migrants to other migrants about migration. By recognising this feature, analysing what these texts say about migration, and thinking carefully about how this compares to contemporary experiences,…
First of two in-depth sessions on the so-called wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) which lays foundations for much of Judeo-Christian reflection through the ages and is still influential today, although often unacknowledged by secular thinkers. This is an important part of the Bible Jesus and Paul used and without which we…
We are in unfamiliar country. A faith urgently needs to seek new ways of being present to a culture adrift from any spiritual roots and unable to recognise its loss. We will be exploring, experimenting and in conflict for the foreseeable future. ‘We do not see what we shall become’ (1 John 3.2). This is…