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The Wycliffe Blog - Vestigia Dei
Vestigia Dei – is a Latin term meaning “traces of God.” As a theological term it is associated with natural theology – that is, the view that there are vestiges of God within creation. We’ve chosen this term as the title of the Wycliffe College blog because our hope is that through these writings, readers might glimpse evidences for God as our writers interact with the wider world.
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On Being an ImmigrantBy Justin Stratis I am now beginning my fourteenth year as an immigrant. In 2008, my wife and I, along with our young son, moved from the USA to Scotland to pursue my PhD. In 2012, we moved from Scotland to the southwest of England so I could take up my first teaching post in a theological college (then with two more children in tow). And most recently, this past summer we moved... |
Fri, November 05, 2021 |
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How do you know when you’ve gone too far: Lessons from an American JezebelBy Marion Taylor Anne Hutchinson (ca. 1591-1643) was a courageous woman who fought for many of the freedoms we now take for granted. The published account of her trial for sedition and heresy—before the Massachusetts General Court when she was forty-six and pregnant with her sixteenth child—illustrates why she has been memorialized as “a martyr on behalf of lay [biblical] interpretation.”[1] It also explains why the Governor of... |
Thu, October 28, 2021 |
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Why I am not “a person of faith”By John Bowen I do not consider myself “a person of faith.” There, I said it. Are you shocked? Yes, I attend my parish church regularly. I say the creed without crossing my fingers. I renew my baptismal vows at least once a year. So what could it possibly mean to say I am not “a person of faith”? Well, consider the fact that these days we call people what they want to... |
Mon, October 25, 2021 |
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Body Politics: Christian Theological Reflections on VaccinationBy Joseph Mangina It never really occurred to me to not be vaccinated. On learning that effective vaccines against COVID-19 would soon be on the horizon, my initial reaction was: “Where can I sign up?” No doubt my eagerness can be explained in part by a sheer hunger for human connection, after months of lockdown existence. The lockdown had been taking its toll. I wanted to teach my students in person again, I... |
Tue, October 19, 2021 |
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The Difference between Truth and OpinionBy Stephen Chester
Sometimes incidents that are not very important in themselves can crystallize for us the importance of issues that are much more significant. That happened for me many years... |
Thu, October 14, 2021 |
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The vaccination question: a theologian reflects, part 1By Ephraim Radner 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?”
I am a conservative and traditionalist Christian. Yet during this Time of the Virus I seem to have ended up on opposite sides with many of those with whom I... |
Tue, October 05, 2021 |
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Subway Prayer (or How to Pray for Strangers)By Judy Paulsen Eight years ago, our family moved into the heart of Toronto. One of the surprises that came with this move was being freed from my car; something I was completely dependent on while pastoring in suburbia. Now I was taking public transit every day as I travelled into Wycliffe College. I knew my trip would entail a short walk on both ends of a subway ride. What I didn’t know... |
Fri, October 01, 2021 |
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God’s Call for your life?By Peter Robinson “What is God’s call for my life?” That is a question most Christians think about at one time or another and it is certainly one of the questions we have in the back of our minds when we come to a college or seminary like Wycliffe—regardless of whether we are looking towards possible ordination/paid ministry or envisioning some type of volunteer ministry or service. It is, potentially, a dangerous question... |
Mon, September 27, 2021 |
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Why Study Church History? Barking at False PastsBy Alan L. Hayes How can studying the past help us in our Christian formation? It can help us in several ways: it can confront us with the mysteries of God's providence, globalize our understanding of Christian life and faith, explain why our churches do things the way they do, justify the norms that the Church ought to honour, and challenge false or biased constructions of the past that distort our sense of the... |
Mon, September 20, 2021 |
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Meanings matter: clarifying “mission” and “gospel”By John Bowen I remember seminary students who were hoping to be ordained warning one another of the kind of questions they were likely to be asked in the selection process. “It used to be,” they said, “that you had to say something about the importance of the sacraments. But now,” they explained, “you’d better say something about the importance of mission, or you don’t have a chance.” “Mission” has become a very... |
Wed, September 15, 2021 |
