Monthly Archives: May 2017

Biblical Faith and Evolution at Cambridge

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This is the seventh installment about my speaking tour in the UK.

In between my two visits to Oxford I spent the day in Cambridge.

I gave a lunchtime lecture at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge University (housed in St. Edmund’s College), as part of their bi-weekly series of Research Seminars on various topics relating to science and Christian faith.

Most of my other lectures in the UK were presented to divinity students and faculty at various universities and in a few cases to wider audiences that included non-academics.

Those lectures were all related to my teaching and research on the Bible, deriving either from my published writings (A New Heaven and a New Earth) or from material I am currently working on for publication (the lament psalms, Genesis 22, and Job).

My lecture at the Faraday Institute was a bit different; my assigned topic of how the early chapters of Genesis might relate to an evolutionary account of human origins (“Human Distinctiveness and the Origin of Evil in Biblical and Evolutionary Perspective”) was quite new to me; I’ve only begun thinking about this issue in the last few years.

The audience for the lecture was also different, being composed of scientists, theologians, and students, including people of different religious faiths, and even some skeptics.

This was the largest group I spoke to on my entire UK trip. Whereas some of the academic audiences I addressed were as small as 15 or 20, the Faraday organizers told me they counted 99 people in the audience, the largest turnout they had in recent memory for one of their seminars.

You can read a brief summary of part 1 of the talk (on human distinctiveness in the Bible) or listen to (and watch) the full talk (on human distinctiveness and the origin of evil) on Faraday’s Science and Belief website.

In the Faraday lecture I was representing BioLogos, an organization in the US that tries to help Christians see the harmony between science and faith, especially focusing on how we might understand evolution as the way that God has worked in the created order.

I became a BioLogos theology fellow in 2016, tasked with writing a number of blog posts on issues relating to biblical interpretation and evolution. I was also asked to become a member of BioLogos Voices, which is their Speaker’s Bureau (I am one of the speakers listed under Bible and Theology).

My approach in the Faraday lecture (which has also been my approach in my BioLogos blogs) was to use my expertise as an Old Testament scholar to help the audience notice what the relevant Scriptures were saying about the topic at hand, and then speculate (tentatively) on how this might connect with what we know about human evolution.

I had very diverse questions from people of different faith stances; I can only hope that my exposition of Scripture helped those in the audience (Christian or otherwise) realize the rich resources of the Bible, when it is taken seriously and read carefully.

Some Interesting People That I Met

Keith Fox is Associate Director of The Faraday Institute and Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Southampton. He was my initial contact with Faraday and the person who decided on the topic of my lecture (from the options that I suggested).

Jennifer Wiseman works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope (having previously headed the Goddard’s Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics); I had previously met her at a BioLogos conference in the US. She was at the University of Cambridge to work on a short-term research project in astrophysics and was the next speaker for the Faraday Research Seminars, two weeks after my lecture.

Hilary Marlow, Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity at University of Cambridge, is an Old Testament scholar well-known for her work on ecology in the prophetic literature. She is one of the editors of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Bible and Ecology, for which I wrote an essay on “The Image of God in Ecological Perspective.” I met Hilary last November when she gave the keynote address on ecology and justice at the 2016 meeting of the Ecological Ethics and Biblical Studies research group of the Institute for Biblical Research (I will be giving the keynote address on ecology and hope at the 2017 meeting).

Fox, Middleton, Weisman, and Marlow

Ruth Bancewicz, a biologist, is a Senior Research Associate at The Faraday Institute, who also writes for BioLogos. After my lecture Ruth interviewed me for the Science and Belief blog, which she is in charge of. The interview (both print and audio) can be accessed on the Science and Belief website. Ruth told me that the interview had been requested by the editor of The War Cry, a Christian newspaper in the UK published by the Salvation Army (since 1879). Unlike many Christian organizations in North America, it looks like the Salvation Army in the UK isn’t afraid of evolution!

Daniel Weiss is Polonsky-Coexist Lecturer in Jewish Studies, in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. After my Faraday lecture, Daniel took me aside and chatted enthusiastically about his work on biblical interpretation and the Jewish intellectual tradition. I was pleasantly surprised when he affirmed that my analysis of humanity as the image of God (in The Liberating Image) was helpful for his own work.

The Work of Michael Faraday

And now a word about Michael Faraday, the nineteenth-century English Christian (1791-1867) for whom The Faraday Institute is named. Although he had almost no formal schooling, Michael Faraday became fascinated with science in his teenage years and became an important experimental scientist as a young man. He was the first to demonstrate the relationship of electricity to magnetism, and he developed the first electric motor. Later on he demonstrated the connection of electromagnetism to light. In 1825 Faraday instituted a series of Christmas lectures on science for the public that continue to this day.

In the plane on the way home, I happened to watch a special episode of Cosmos (the science TV series) on Michael Faraday; it was quite inspiring.

After my time in Cambridge and Oxford I traveled to Cheltenham to speak at the University of Glouchestershire, which is the topic of my next post.

There and Back Again—My Visit to “Oxbridge”

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This is the sixth installment about my speaking in the UK.

After spending the weekend in Leeds, giving talks on eschatology and lament for the Thinking Faith Network, we headed for “Oxbridge,” where I would speak three times on the topic of biblical eschatology (“A New Heaven and a New Earth”).  For those who don’t know the term, “Oxbridge” refers the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the two oldest universities in England.

Although bound together by prestige and history, the two universities are in different cities; and they not connected by any clear, straightforward route—either by road or by rail (as I found out, when I traveled between them, twice).

Oxford

My first stop was Oxford, to speak at the Monday evening meeting of the Graduate Christian Forum, held upstairs in The Mitre pub. A small but collegial group of Oxford students, professors, and friends gathered for the lecture; and we had continued conversation for about an hour afterwards, interspersed with drinks and snacks.

I don’t know if C. S. Lewis and the Inklings ever met in The Mitre (I know they met in a variety of Oxford pubs), but I did see their most famous meeting place, the Eagle and Child (fondly known as the Bird and Baby).

So I’ve mentioned C. S. Lewis, and the title of this post alludes to J. R. R. Tolkein (the subtitle of The Hobbit), but it was Francis Schaeffer’s presence that I felt at The Mitre.

This was because I met Joe Martin, a retired American engineer, who had spent time as a young man with Schaeffer at Swiss L’Abri, the Christian study center that Francis and Edith Schaeffer founded in 1955.

Francis Schaeffer’s writings greatly impacted me as a young theology student, as I noted in the introduction to my book A New Heaven and a New Earth:

I was therefore delighted to meet Joe Martin, who functions as a pastor to Oxford students, nurturing their consciousness of a biblical worldview and its impact on all of life.

Joe gave me a theme issue of an Oxbridge journal that was devoted to the topic of Jerusalem in history and theology. His article on the “New Jerusalem” made many of the same points that I addressed in my eschatology lecture (in his case, I was clearly preaching to the choir).

Cambridge

The next morning we headed for Cambridge, where I would speak twice—first at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion (which I’ll report on in my next post), and then at the Jubilee Centre (on eschatology).

The Jubilee Centre is a sort of Christian think tank and outreach ministry that (according to their web site) “offers a biblical perspective on contemporary issues and underlying trends in society, of relevance to the general public.”

Among their forms of outreach, they publish a series of papers that bring incisive Christian analysis to a range of topics of concern to a wide audience in the UK and Europe.

My lecture at the Jubilee Centre was co-sponsored by the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics (KLICE), which exists under the umbrella of Tyndale House at the University of Cambridge.

My initial connection with the Jubilee Centre came through Jonathan Chaplin (about to retire from being the director of KLICE), who was a fellow graduate student with me at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, before he returned to his native England to do PhD work.

It was great reconnecting with Jonathan Chaplin and meeting the staff at the Jubilee Centre, including Jonathan Tame, director of the Centre, who introduced my talk (above).

Oxford

The next morning we headed back to Oxford, so I could speak at Wycliffe Hall, an evangelical school of theology in the University of Oxford. Although this stop was added only at the last minute (in fact, I only found out about it when I was about to leave my home in Rochester for the airport), it was a worthwhile addition to the speaking tour.

I gave my eschatology talk to a group of faculty and students and after a brief Q&A, I gathered with a smaller group for more in-depth discussion of issues raised in the lecture.

I was glad to reconnect with Ben Johnson, tutor in Biblical Interpretation at Wycliffe Hall, who I had previously met at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in 2016 (we both gave papers in the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures section). Ben is a friend of my colleague Josef Sykora, both having studied Old Testament with Walter Moberly at Durham University. Ben recently moved back to the US to take up a position at LeTourneau University.

Ben Johnson is co-editor, along with my long-time friend Keith Bodner, of two volumes of essays on characters and characterization in the books of Samuel and Kings; I contributed an essay on the prophet Samuel to the volume entitled Characters and Characterization in the Book of Samuel. I have blogged about these two volumes here.

In my next post I’ll talk about my time at the Faraday Institute in Cambridge.

Speaking on a Biblical Worldview at Leeds—Again after Twenty Years

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This is the fifth installment about my journey through the UK.

From the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, I returned to nearby Leeds for a few more days, both to visit with David and Ruth Hanson and to give two talks (Friday evening and Saturday morning). I had a very relaxed time with the Hansons, involving lots of conversations and good food, plus a tour of downtown Leeds with David.

It was David Hanson who originally invited me to come to the UK to speak for he Thinking Faith Network, a Leeds organization that he and Ruth helped found some years back. The organization (I guess I should say organisation) exists to educate Christians in the UK about a holistic vision of life lived in God’s kingdom.

David initiated my visit because he wanted me to speak on the topic of my eschatology book, A New Heaven and a New Earth.

This was the second time I had come to the UK to speak in Leeds. The last time was twenty years ago (1997). Back then the Thinking Faith Network was called the West Yorkshire School of Christian Studies (WYSOCS). When my wife Marcia and I came to the UK in 1997, we first visited relatives in London, then we spent time with the Hansons in Leeds.

I remember giving two talks for WYSOCS, on the image of God/cultural mandate and on the problem of suffering. Although my talks this time around were new, the topics were similar (I guess my interests have been consistent over the years).

My talks for the Thinking Faith Network on this visit were on eschatology (tracing the motif of the image of God from creation to consummation), and the lament psalms (as a resource for addressing suffering).

A UK Speaking Tour

However, David Hanson suggested that if I was coming all the way across the Atlantic, I should do some more speaking in the UK. This resulted in a series of fourteen talks that I gave at eleven institutions in nine cities in Scotland and England. Although the talks I did at Leeds were the two talks I gave most often on the trip, I spoke on five different topics (some specially requested by the institution).

I’m very grateful to Richard Gunton, a volunteer with the Thinking Faith Network, who did the organising and liaised with the various groups I was speaking for. Richard made sure I had the requisite train or bus tickets for each leg of the journey (and that there was someone waiting for me when I got there) and also that I had accommodations in each city.

I was particularly blessed that Richard and his wife Diana accompanied me for two and a half of the most intensive days near the end of my trip—from Leeds to Oxford, then to Cambridge, and back to Oxford (then Richard put me on the bus to Cheltenham).

Richard and Diana made sure that I got where I needed to be on time (without them I’m not sure how I’d have managed the trip from Oxford to Cambridge and then back again, since it required two train trips with the London underground in-between).

It was also a genuine delight getting to know them both.

Humour and the Gospel

It was also great to reconnect with Mark and Anne Roques, who I first met in Canada, through the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) in Toronto. Mark had been a student there in the eighties and Anne had organized various conferences for the ICS, including one at which Brian Walsh and I spoke, back when we were writing our book The Transforming Vision.

Mark is an astute philosopher, who has developed an effective approach for reaching out to high school students and young adults in the UK. He has a particularly quirky sense of humour (it has to be spelled this way, since it is a distinctively British sense of humour), which can be seen in his penchant for telling weird and wonderful stories (combined with incisive worldview analysis), in which he takes his cue from Jesus’s parables.

Mark’s new book, entitled The Spy, the Rat, and the Bed of Nails, is a brilliant introduction to the rationale and art of storytelling in a postmodern world as an entrée to communicating the gospel; plus the book ends with a collection of stories (which he calls spiels) that he has used (some true, all wacky).

Mark has written a brilliant short introduction to Christian philosophy, called “Crocodiles and Philosophy.” If you can read this piece without bursting your sides laughing out loud, you have better control than I do.

You can read an interview with Mark Roques here (on his ministry, sense of humour, and the book).

My next post will tell the story of what happened after Leeds.