Religion and Public Life

C. S. Lewis is widely regarded as one of the most important and accessible Christian writers of recent year. In this lecture, Professor Alister McGrath of Oxford University will speak on how Lewis can help us consolidate and develop our personal faith and resource the preaching and outreach of churches. How can Lewis encourage us and help us to grow in our faith, or even explain our faith to friends and family? How can Lewis help preachers and apologists communicate and commend Christianity? There is growing interest in Lewis as a resource for personal faith development and church outreach. In this lecture, Professor McGrath will explain why and point to ways in which Lewis can enrich the life of faith.

American culture has shifted dramatically in the last decade toward stances which are openly hostile to the Christian faith. Views now aggressively promoted in popular and journalistic media, flourished decades earlier only in elite liberal arts faculties. We need an elite generation of Christian academics to feature in tomorrow’s universities, ensuring that a gospel-centered voice informs every conversation.

Emanuel Tov explains that the Qumran scrolls were produced by highly trained scribes who followed consistent practices in layout, spelling, and correction, revealing an organized scribal culture rather than random copying. These scribal habits help scholars understand how biblical and non-biblical texts were transmitted and preserved in the Second Temple period.

Emanuel Tov explains that the Qumran scrolls were produced by highly trained scribes who followed consistent practices in layout, spelling, and correction, revealing an organized scribal culture rather than random copying. These scribal habits help scholars understand how biblical and non-biblical texts were transmitted and preserved in the Second Temple period.

ohn frames his gospel with deliberate echoes of the creation story in Genesis, all the way from ‘in the beginning’ at the very start to the ‘new Eden’ themes in chapter 20. In chapter 1 the focus is on Jesus as the ‘Word made Flesh’, uniquely revealing the glory of God to the world, but in chapter 20 the focus is on the disciples, who are equipped with the Spirit to be, for the world, what Jesus was for Israel (‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’). Picking up from the earlier hints about the Spirit in chapters 7 and 14-16, we glimpse the task of the Church in terms of the rivers of living water (ch. 7) and the holding of the world to account (ch 16). John 20 thus shows how Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and the gift of his Spirit, launch God’s mission of new creation.