In a conversation with some students recently I made reference to Wycliffe College’s Six Principles, and was met with blank stares. I do not fault the students. The fact is that we don’t talk about the Principles nearly as much as we did when I began teaching here in the late 1990s.

In late October I attended a conference at Yale commemorating the centenary of Hans Frei (1922-1988), one of the leading historical theologians of our age, and the most important figure in the so-called “Yale School” of theology and scriptural interpretation.

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.

I recently had the opportunity of spending two weeks in Rome as part of a course on Anglican Ecclesiology and Ecumenism. The course, ably taught by Prof. Matthew Olver of Nashotah House seminary and Dr.

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

It never really occurred to me to not be vaccinated.

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?”

The word lenten, the Oxford English Dictionary tells me, is older than the word Lent.

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.

One of the sure signs of “Covid-tide” in Anglican churches is the absence of the common cup at Holy Communion. The priest partakes of both the bread and wine, while the congregation receives the bread only.

Dr. Joseph Mangina wrote the following piece for his parish, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and agreed to share it here.

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

This blog post is adapted and abbreviated from an article by Prof. Mangina that appeared in The Living Church, Jan. 1, 2012

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.

In a recent post on this blog (September 17), my colleague Peter Robinson set forth a basic explanation of the theological interpretation of Scripture, often referred to as TIS. In that article, he made some crucial points.

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. 

I enjoy visiting old graveyards. I like to wander around, reading the tombstones, taking note of the dates and places of birth, the biblical verses and sentimental poetry.

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?