Lectures
January 25 2024• Thinking in Centuries
How to Read a Book
November 30 2023 • Thinking in Centuries
How to Read a Book
October 16 2023 • Slater Maguire Lectures
Comedy, the Logos, and Resurrection
June 10 2023
Consider the Lilies Roundtable Discussion
June 9 2023
Norman Wirzba: God Loves the Lilies
December 8 2022
On Making Windows into Men's Souls: Lessons on Unity from the Elizabethan Church
Please see this link for a recording of Bonnie Dowling’s lecture.
June 6 2019
And God Prepared the Dry Land
January 21 2018
Slouching Toward Washington, Part 3
November 23 2017 • Thursday Night Lecture
Slouching Toward Washington, Part 2
October 26 2017 • Thursday Night Lecture
Slouching Toward Washington, Part 1
February 16 2017 • Thursday Night Lecture
The World Sufficeth Not
October 2016 • Slater Maguire Lectures
Attention as a Cultural Problem and the Possibility of Education
For more information about the Slater Maguire Lectures, please visit slatermaguirelectures.org.
October 13 2016
Christus Victor: The Meaning of the Cross for Contemporary Christians
Thursday Night Lectures
We Only Know Men: The Extraordinary Rescues of Jews through the Ordinary Means of Grace
Ecclesial University
From Alpha to Omega: Christian Universalism and the Politics of Empire
Ecclesial University
Burning Hearts and Open Eyes: A Seminar with the Stranger on the Emmaus Road
This lecture explores the implications of Christ’s words in Luke 24:44-45, ‘‘’These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” As Irenaeus wrote in the second century, “The Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the word of God and his Spirit.”
The early church’s main concerns were two: to demonstrate that when read aright the Hebrew Bible pointed to Christ; and to develop an hermeneutic that would allow the nature of God and the divine will to be discerned through the texts. The Patristic authors argued that both testaments spoke with one voice about one God and one Son, and that both were the work of one Spirit. The narrative of Christ’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection functioned as the hypothesis, or pattern of meaning, that ran throughout the whole of the Bible, giving it unity in all its literary variety. As Augustine explained in the City of God, “we track down the hidden meanings of inspired Scripture,” in the belief that the historical narratives are “always to be interpreted with reference to Christ and his church.”
Fall 2014 • Ecclesial University
Everyone Seasoned with Fire, Every Sacrifice with Salt
We often associate priesthood with the classical catholic account, which is hard to reconcile with more protestant leanings. On the other hand, our culture is unremittingly functional, and offers a job-description that sucks out all the mystery. Is there a third way to see priestly calling? And why should it matter to the rest of us? And what might it offer to the church in its contemporary challenges?
This public lecture was one of a series for the Ecclesial University Project, in association with Wycliffe College (Toronto), and St. John’s College (Winnipeg)