Welcome to Wycliffe College

Growing Up Christian: Why Young People Stay in Church, Leave Church, and (Sometimes) Come Back to Church
John Bowen, Wycliffe College
Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2010

What happens to Christian teenagers when they grow up? Parents, grandparents, pastors, and youth workers want to know. How many retain their Christian faith and church involvement as they grow? How many drop out of church or out of faith, and how many of them eventually make their way back? The answers are surprising, but not unattainable for any church willing to change.
John Bowen worked with teenagers in a Christian leadership program for almost twenty years. Some years later, he did some research to find out where they were at in terms of faith. His new book tells the stories—always eye-opening, often poignant, and sometime hilarious—of over 300 of them.

Some of the respondents are still involved in faith and church. Others have given up on both. A good number still consider themselves Christian but have dropped out of church life. A surprising number have had time away from church and have now returned. And many have changed denominations.

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Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision points and divergent interpretations
Terence L. Donaldson, Wycliffe College
Baylor University Press, 2010

Is the New Testament anti-Semitic? It is a troublesome question for many. Terence L. Donaldson considers the decision points and divergent interpretations in this area in this ‘engrossing, persuasive and highly readable’ guide. Donaldson has an international reputation for his work on the relationships between Jews and Gentiles within early Christianity and the wider Roman world. In this important new treatment of “anti-Judaism in the New Testament” he considers a variety of interpretations of the key texts. Anyone looking for a sensible, balanced approach to this thorny matter or who wants to be aware of the risks of anti-Semitism when talking about and teaching the Bible.

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Revelation: Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible
Joseph L. Mangina, Wycliffe College
Brazos Press, 2010

This commentary, like each in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, is designed to serve the church--providing a rich resource for preachers, teachers, students, and study groups--and demonstrate the continuing intellectual and practical viability of theological interpretation of Scripture. In this addition to the series, Joseph Mangina offers a constructive ecclesiology for the role and mission of the church in the twenty-first century formed by a close examination of Revelation. This commentary approaches Revelation neither as a timetable for the end times, nor even as consolation literature for a persecuted church, but as a witness to Christ and the Trinity.

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 The World in the Shadow of God: An Introduction to Christian Natural Theology
Ephraim Radner, Wycliffe College
Cascade Books, 2010

In The World in the Shadow of God, Ephraim Radner argues for a vigorous Christian natural theology and insists that such a theology must, of necessity, be performed poetically. The peculiar character of such a theology is found in its disclosing of the natural limits that indicate indirectly the impinging and more fundamental reality of the divine life. Natural theology represents the encounter between created reality and the "shadow" of God's creative and revelatory grace. However, the encounter is a morally demanding task for the Christian church if it is to be held accountable to the truth on which its life is based. The first portion of the book offers an extended critical essay on the nature of this sort of natural theology, while the second provides a developed set of examples through poems that display the natural world in light of the truths articulated in the Apostles' Creed. Those interested in the intersection of theology, literature, history, and the natural world will be challenged by this attempt to renew a basic element of Christian knowledge and culture.

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  Breaking Boundaries Female Biblical Interpreters Who Challenged the Status Quo
Heather Weir (co-editor, instructor), Wycliffe College
Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 2010

While people often believe that the feminist movements in Britain and North America began in the late twentieth century, this is certainly not the case.  Women throughout the centuries have sought to break out of the constraints that their societies deemed appropriate for them.  For interpreters in the Christian tradition, this often meant examining biblical texts that had been understood in ways that demeaned women and using their interpretations to encourage women to break out of their culturally proscribed spheres.  The essays in this volume are drawn from the Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible Consultation at the SBL Annual Meeting and from sessions on female interpreters of Scripture at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies.  The essays address female interpreters of the Bible such as Eudocia and Anna Jameson whose publications have been largely ignored in the fields of the history of biblical interpretation and reception history. Through their publications these women used their interpretive and theological skills to break the boundaries that previous interpretations of the Bible and their societies imposed upon them.

Contributions by Wycliffe faculty include Glen Taylor (“Miss Greswell Honed Our Hebrew at Oxford”: Reflections on Joana J. Greswell and Her Book Grammatical Analysis of the Hebrew Psalter (1873)), and graduates included are Heather E. Weir (Reading Nature Before Reading the Bible: Sarah Trimmer’s Natural Theology),  Bernon Lee (Eliza Smith’s The Battles of the Bible: Biblical Interpretation in Service of a Christian Social Agenda in Nineteenth-Century Urban Scotland), and Rebecca G. S. Idestrom  (Elizabeth Mary MacDonald:  An Early Canadian Contribution to the Study of Women in the Ancient Near East). 

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