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.

As Wycliffe College Chaplain, I spend a lot of time creating lists. I consider doing so a critical part of any pastoral practice.

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

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?”

On this day the Lord has acted. We will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24)

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.

I am in the middle of reading St. Benedict’s Rule with my 30 students in the first year MDiv course at Wycliffe called, “Life Together: Living the Christian Faith in Community.” We have come to the fun part of this portion of the class.

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.

On Friday, March 13, 2020—just before the University sent out its directive moving all classes online—several students said to me over the course of the day, “I’ve never been through something like this.” The current global pandemic is unprecedented in the experience of almost everyone living.

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

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.

I remember a Wycliffe student of several years ago who organized her life so she could be both a student and parent and spouse. She was the mother of two elementary school-aged boys.

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. 

Two years ago, my husband, Ephraim, and I were proud parents at our son’s graduation from university. The afternoon before the graduation ceremony there was a baccalaureate service in the chapel of his school. Seating was limited; each graduate could only invite a few people.

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?

A Houston residential neighbourhood is under water following days of heavy rains during Hurricane Harvey.

By Ephraim Radner