Wycliffe College is a historic, evangelical seminary and a founding member of the Toronto School of Theology (TST). It is situated on the downtown campus of the University of Toronto (UofT), in the heart of one of the world’s most multicultural cities.
For over 140 years, the College has equipped people called by God to live out Jesus-centred lives in the Church, the Academy, and on mission, here in Canada and around the world.
We would like to invite the Wycliffe community to join us in prayer as we search for a new Principal:
Sovereign and gracious God,
At times past and in every place, you have raised up men and women to lead, protect, and reform your church, and we give thanks for those who have shepherded Wycliffe College over many years with foresight, courage, wisdom and zeal.
This Holy Week, Professor of Proclamation, Worship and Ministry, Peter Robinson, explores Sir Walter Scot's epic poem and how it collates to the Passion of Christ, and the sobering portrayals of how easily self-justification leads all too quickly to a complex web of deceit.
Transitional Director of Institution of Evangelism, Jeremy McClung, explores the importance of gratitude in a Christian life, and how a hardwired reaction to freely given gifts has become skewed with society's need for self-importance. However, there is hope if we return to who we were created to be, and reconcile to whom we owe the most gratitude.
Professor of Old Testament, Lissa Wray Beal, analyses how vocation, beauty and trust can fuel the vigour for our Christian journey, and how turning to the examples of leaders in the faith, we can find role models to help lead the way.
In a world where contentment is often unattainable, Director of Development, Shelley McLagan, delves into the idea of choosing joy—not because Christians are exempt from struggles but because we have a God who is always with us when we go through them.
Now that the pandemic is behind us, I’m now something of an exception – that is, I am someone who still spends more days away from Wycliffe than in college.
Let me begin with the story of two Rhodes Scholars. One is named William Jefferson Clinton. He went to Georgetown University on scholarship, Oxford on the Rhodes Scholarship, and Yale Law School. He served as the 40th and 42nd Governor of Arkansas and before that was Arkansas’ Attorney General.
Let me begin with the story of two Rhodes Scholars. One is named William Jefferson Clinton. He went to Georgetown University on scholarship, Oxford on the Rhodes Scholarship, and Yale Law School. He served as the 40th and 42nd Governor of Arkansas and before that was Arkansas’ Attorney General.
One of the most treasured items that gets hauled out of storage in our household each Christmas season is the crêche, or Nativity scene. Ours is a simple affair. It is composed of wooden folk-art figures made, as I recall, in Costa Rica.
On the second Sunday of Advent we anticipate and celebrate the promise that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, has come to bring peace into the world. In the face of so much hubris, greed, polarization, division, and war around the globe, the promise of peace might seem a distant and elusive dream.
It is often emphasized how radical the apostle Paul was in proclaiming that, through faith in Christ, Gentiles can enter into the people of God without first becoming Jewish and taking on obedience to the Mosaic Law: “those who believe are the children of Abraham” (Gal 3:7).
Seventeen years ago, I embarked on a life-altering journey. I departed from my homeland, leaving behind my family and friends in South Korea, where I was born, raised, and spent the most significant portion of my life.
We surveyed the faculty members at Wycliffe College for recommendations of books and resources that new theological students (or those considering further theological study) ought to read, and here is a list of them by category!
My name is Grace, and I am in my third year of the MDiv program. During my undergraduate years, I was involved in campus ministry and that was when I became interested in theological studies and enrolled at Wycliffe College.
I just returned from a trip to England visiting towns northeast of London – where my mother’s relatives lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – searching for churches where they had worshiped before their immigration to the New World.
I recall as an undergraduate being asked to read H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (1951).Niebuhr had set out five options of how one should understand this relationship, with “Christ versus culture” and “Christ in culture” as the two opposite extremes, the former representing a cr
Twenty-five-year-old noblewoman Anne Askew (1521–1546) was accused of heresy, arrested, interrogated at least twice, tortured on the rack, and burned alive at the stake.
As we prepare to receive 50 new students at the College this semester, I am once again reminded that many, if not most of our students have been drawn to Wycliffe because of our evangelical commitments and the quality of our teaching, and not because of any denominational allegiance.
“Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.” So begins William Williams’ hymn in which Christian life is a pilgrimage along which the believer’s weakness is exposed, and God’s provision abounds. Pilgrimage is a deeply embedded description of the Christian life.
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 Churchland there is a natural tendency to look to churches that appear successful, hoping to learn from or emulate what they are doing in our own communities.
Some time ago I visited a church in which the sermon, delivered by a guest preacher, concluded with the sentence “If you do this you’ll be happy, and your neighbour will be happy.”
Like many of you, I spend the first week of the New Year going through my diary, trying to anticipate some of the challenges and opportunities the next twelve months will bring.
In my first year of graduate studies at Yale University, I was asked to be a teaching assistant in a course that allowed for “the yeah, yeah experience” to arise.
“My soul longs, indeed, it faints for the courts of the Lord”
Psalm 84 is a psalm of longing or lament, and it is also a psalm of pilgrimage. Three times a year the people were commanded to make a pilgrimage to the temple to appear before the Lord (Exodus 23:14–17).
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 don’t often think about Kyrie – and, in fact, when I saw the name, just like that, “Kyrie,” in my newsfeed last week I thought I was seeing the Greek word kyrie, meaning “Lord,” as in kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy.” That was an exciting moment: New Testament Greek breaking
I joined the faculty at Wycliffe in 2019 only a few months before the start of the pandemic. I was in Toronto first, and visited a number of churches in-person, but by the time my wife joined me the city was in lockdown.
Ours is not a time of rest. I need not enumerate the many troubles that we face today, but it should be uncontroversial to point out that we live in a world ever more enveloped by fear. And who can blame us twenty-first century folk for suspecting that danger lurks in the shadows of every path?
On October 31, Wycliffe College officially launches its Reformed House of Studies (RHS)—a theological and ministerial training initiative, housed within the College, which draws on the riches of the Reformed tradition to prepare students and maturing leaders for Christian ministry.
Over the past few weeks I have had several long conversations with pastors who seem dangerously close to burn-out. They’re worried because some 25 to 30 percent of their congregations haven’t returned to church following the easing of pandemic restrictions.
As someone who has spent several decades in Church-land, I've heard literally thousands of sermons, homilies, and meditations. Too often, I hear preachers representing Jesus as someone who was uncomfortable with Judaism.
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.
A month ago Frederick Buechner died at age ninety-six. During that windfall of years, in which he served as a high-school chaplain, was ordained a Presbyterian minister, raised a family, and worked his unusually enchanted way with words, Buechner wrote a book that I read again each year.
Many positive things can be said about the benefits of online education. While in-person classes were largely suspended over the last two years because of the pandemic, students did not have to suspend their lives or learning. Wycliffe students were still able to proceed in their programs.
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.
Over the past few months, I’ve had the absolute privilege of completing my Summer Parish Internship in İzmir, Türkiye (the new official name for Turkey).
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.
Wycliffe PhD candidate Jeremy McClung’s presentation “Ridding the World of Angelas" was recently declared the winner of the Toronto School of Theology’s inaugural Three Minute Thesis competition. 3MT® is an internationally recognized research communication competition that started in 2008 a
At the beginning of March, the Angus Reid Institute ran a poll surveying those who were anticipating a return to work. The poll revealed that after two years of working at home many employees aren’t sure that they want to return to the office.
I can recall as a pre-school infant asking my parents about the likelihood of nuclear war, which seemed an ever-present danger in the UK of the early 1970s.
Do you, like me, have a complicated relationship with the news? I find it almost magnetic—I want to know “what is going on,” to think myself part of current social dramas. I also find the news disorienting and discomfiting—it depicts a world out of control.
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.
Occasionally, when I’m out in the wild, someone might see my ID and notice that little “Dr.” in front of my name. The next comment often goes something like: “Oh, you’re a doctor!
The most common challenge to Christian faith is the presence of pain, evil, and suffering in the world. We ask, if there is a God, why are these things allowed? Some suffering is the result of our own folly but there is also the suffering that seems to be woven into the fabric of life in ways we
In my graduate studies, my professors had me read great books written by great men who had made a difference in the church and academy. They never talked about the great books that women had written and the great things that women had done. Women’s voices had long been silenced.