I’ll be retiring next summer.  People ask me “why now?”.  Lots of reasons, probably: let someone younger have a place at the faculty table; family responsibilities; health; fatigue; out of synch with the culture; “work is done,” “new things to do,” generational stage of life; and so on.

On August 1, 2022, Lissa Wray Beal joined the faculty of Wycliffe College as Professor of Old Testament. In the early days after her move to Toronto, she took time to participate in a conversation with Communications Director Patricia Paddey. An edited version follows.

Gwen Allison has finished her first year in the MDiv program at Wycliffe College. She is a candidate for ordination with the Anglican Church of Canada in the Diocese of Rupert’s Land.

The following comments were transcribed from opening remarks by Professor Ephraim Radner delivered at Morning Prayer in the Wycliffe College Founder’s Chapel, on Thursday, Dece

I believe our alphabet reflects one of the most significant inventions of all time. Without it, it would take years for me to learn the hundreds of pictographic signs that would be necessary to write this blog and for you to be able to read it. 

This blog post is the first in a series, in which Wycliffe theology professors consider the COVID vaccination debate. In the following, Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology asks, “How did the issue of vaccination so divide the church?”

My wife Annette and I own several charcoal and wash drawings by a wonderful artist, Churchill Davenport. We acquired them when we were married in the late 1980’s.

The ventilator may well come to be one of the sorrowful symbols of the time of the Virus. We will associate it, as even now we do, with intense suffering, loss, and even death.

As a scholar of ancient Hebrew, I have spent decades puzzling about how best to translate the first two verses of the Bible into English. Finally, I have settled on the following:

Who should you listen to?  Who do you trust to learn something from?  These are important questions for students, obviously.

"What is the best Bible translation?"

As a biblical scholar, I am asked this question more than any other.

"What is the best Bible translation?"

As a biblical scholar, I am asked this question more than any other.

The process of developing a sermon by drawing meaning out of a biblical text (also known as exegesis) does not have to be complicated.

I often tell my doctoral students that if they have an outside job of more than 10 to 15 hours per week, the chances are that their dissertation will be the worse for it, or that it might not get done at all. Experience seems to confirm this advice. But not always.

Life is hard for most people. Not just for a moment, or in moments—an illness, a lost job, a death of someone we love. Rather, life is hard in a continuous way, as a kind of passage over time. To get from birth to death is difficult. 

My family and I live in a Victorian house in downtown Toronto. One of the things that drew us to buy this old home was the entrance, which consists of two nicely sculpted wooden doors with stained glass panels that make up the upper half of each door.

Christians familiar with liturgical traditions will know that we are in the season of Epiphany, a period that focuses on Bible passages that disclose the fact that Jesus was divine.

I once heard a priest address a congregation with a question: “What is the complaint I hear most from parents?” Then he answered it by saying: “they lament the fact that their grown children have stopped going to church.”  The priest went on: “Do you know what I tell them?

During recent months we have been busy discerning how best to spread Messy Church across Canada, making it accessible to all for all. We are pleased to announce ‘The Messy Church Course’, an online course that we are planning to launch through Wycliffe College in September 2019.