Archived GFCF Lectures:

1991-2003 || 03-04 || 04-05 || 05-06 || 06-07 || 07-08 || 08-09 ||

09-10

Note: For some lectures, there is no audio-file available. We can provide the lecture on Audio-CD as well. Please contact Guillaume Badinier.
 
JEWEL SPEARS BROOKER
Professor of English
Eckhert College, St. Petersburg, Florida

"Murder and Misunderstanding in T. S. Eliot"
ABSTRACT:
From his first poems to his late plays, from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to The Cocktail Party, Eliot was fascinated with the intimate relation between murder and sacrifice. Murder is criminal and sacrifice is sacred, but both have violence at their core, and both are foundational in culture and religion. This lecture uses the theoretical work of Ren Girard in Violence and the Sacred and other books to explore the relation between murder and sacrifice in Eliot, especially in Murder in the Cathedral. Girard argues that culture is built on murder and on mconnaissance. Murder/sacrifice is foundational, in the literal sense. Mconnaissance is not simple misunderstanding, but an unconscious mis-knowing in which the true nature of what is happening is veiled from the participants. This presentation argues that the inextricable connection between violence and knowledge is a central motif and major structural principle in Eliot's work.
  
Sorry, but this lecture is not available in audio-format.
Website: Jewel Spears Brooker

IAIN PROVAN
Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies
Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia

"Worshipping God in Nietzsche's World?"
ABSTRACT:
Friedrich Nietzsche, was one of the great foreseers, and indeed one of the significant shaping influences of the contemporary Western world and culture. How is one to live and worship in the context of this Nietzschean ethos? The ethos entails a cultural outlook which has deconstructed the privileged position of soul over body, mind over senses, duty over desire, reality over appearance, and even the eternal over the temporal, transcendent over immanent. It appears to be a post-Christian, post-religious world which presses us to conform to its dictates. This lecture will examine two concerns. First, there is the desire to be clear about biblical claims of the difference between the transcendent personal God of the Hebrews and Christians, over against the competing idolatries (God-substitutes) of the ancient world. Secondly, there is the desire today to be intellectually alert and astute while reflecting on the modern world: to name its "idols" and to challenge the reverence for such, as one seeks to worship and to obey a living God. The challenges and tensions are real and palpable. Indeed, can we worship a loving, transcendent God in a Nietzschean world?
  
Website: Iain Provan
Sorry, but this lecture is not available in audio-format. It has been published in Ex Auditu though.

KURT SCHAEFER
Professor of Economics, The 2002-2003 Calvin Lecturer
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

 "Re-Engineering Poverty Policy in the United States"
ABSTRACT:
The 1990s saw fundamental changes in anti-poverty programs at all levels of government in the United States. Together these changes constitute a tremendous experiment in social policy. Several forces played a part, including disenchantment with the old system, political expediency, a healthy economy, and a reassertion of the importance of the non-governmental institutions of civil society. The civil-society concerns have frequently been founded upon religious principles, and are resulting in major changes in the provision of social services. In this lecture, the provisions of the old system, the political process that led to its demise, and the apparent effects of the last decade's changes will be reviewed and discussed.
  
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KATE WILLEMS
Ph.D. Candidate, English
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

"Godly, Learned Woman":
Reformation, Reading, and 16th Century Feminine Spirituality
ABSTRACT:
Religious books written for women, both before and after the Protestant Reformation, envision a certain type of female reader, with particular spiritual needs and methods of relating to the divine. This talk will begin with a brief outline of the shape of "feminine spirituality"- affective, sensory, image-centred - as it is presented in texts directed toward women (and lay) readers in late-medieval Catholic England. It is this type of devotional practice which was rejected by the Reformers, who replaced it with a new emphasis on the written Word - and the reading of it. However, the female reader of religious texts - pictured alternately as saintly and heretical - is a complicated and controversial figure in late-medieval England. With reference to the particular circumstances of the Reformation in England, the uneasy status of the English vernacular Bible, and the growth of literacy (facilitated by the printing press) during this period, I will trace the emergence of a new ideal of book-oriented female spirituality which emphasizes woman as reader. The idea of the "godly, learned woman" becomes a familiar one in Protestant writing, both as a reading audience for devotional books, and as an example of female spirituality. I will examine both the distinctions and the continuities between late-medieval and post-Reformation models of female spirituality, and perhaps consider some broader implications for the notion of 'feminine spirituality' more generally.
  
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GEORGE ELLIS
Professor of Applied Mathematics
University of Capetown, South Africa

"Modern Science, the Nature of Existence,
and the Grounds for Morality"
ABSTRACT:
Given the state and character of modern science, I propose that we look at scientific issues underlying the emergence of complexity and higher levels of order, and with this, the emergence of meaning. This analysis provides the basis for a perspective on the very nature of existence -- an extension of the brilliant proposals forwarded by Popper, Eccles and Penrose - in fact, one required to achieve a causally complete model of the universe. This proposal leads us to an important discussion of the nature of morality, and of grounds for the existence of a "deep morality"--a kenotic or self-sacrifical type. It will be suggested that this type of morality reveals one of a number of what we can all "intimations of transcendence"; it points provocatively to the existence of a transcendent world of meaning and values. This discussion of morality finds a logical connection with the nature of existence. I suggest that morality, and with it the dimension of transcendence, is necessarily required for a full causal explanation of events in the physical universe.
  
Website: George Ellis Sponsored by: CSCA
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MALCOLM JEEVES
Emeritus Professor of Psychology
University of St. Andrews, Scotland

"The Ongoing Dialogue between Faith and Psychology:
Conflict or Complementarity"

ABSTRACT:
A century ago psychology began to make serious claims to be a science. As different specializations emerged, such as psychoanalysis, behaviourism, physiological psychology, social psychology, neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology, psychology was portrayed, at different times, as undermining, supporting, or complementing some traditional religious beliefs. This lecture will briefly review the early years and then focus on some of the more recent challenges from neuropsychology and evolutionary psychology. He will argue that psychology can offer fresh insights into human nature, as well as challenging us to re-examine some traditional Christian beliefs.

BIO:
Malcolm Jeeves is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews, and was formerly President of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy of Science and Letters. He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992 for his services to science and to psychology in Britain. He established the Department of Psychology at St. Andrews University and his research interests center around cognitive psychology and neuropsychology.

  
Sponsored by: CSCA
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MIROSLAV VOLF
Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology
Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut

"Struggles in Religious Identity:
Is Christianity a Violent Religion?"

ABSTRACT:
Christianity, and religions in general, have often been accused of fostering violence, indeed of being violent by nature. Following the European Enlightenment, much effort has been expended to neutralize religion as a factor in public life. I will argue that, in regards to Christianity, the concern for religiously induced and legitimized violence is poorly understood. Over against a major intellectual current in the West, the cure for violence is not less religion, but, in a carefully qualified sense, more religion. This does not mean increased religious zeal, for blind religious zeal is at the heart of the problem of violence. Rather the solution lies in a more intelligent commitment to core faith, including its strong peace-making trajectory, and its respect for diversity. My thesis: The more we reduce Christian faith to vague religiosity, the more it will be vulnerable to exploitation by certain agendas such as national and economic interests. On the other hand, the more Christian faith matters to its adherents as faith, and the more they practice it as an ongoing tradition with strong ties to its origins and with clear cognitive and moral content, the better the situation for the human community. A 'thin' but zealous practice is more likely to foster violence; a 'thick' and committed practice will help generate and sustain a culture of peace.

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School. His is a distinguished theologian, originally from Croatia, who is concerned to develop theology which is relevant to current political, economic, and social issues, and thus is academically interested in the interface of theology and the social sciences.

  
Website: Miroslav Volf
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ROGER LUNDIN
Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English
Wheaton College, Illinois

"Nimble Believing: Modern Literature
and the Conflict of Interpretations"

ABSTRACT:
The title comes from a letter by Emily Dickinson. Her poetry is in large measure about belief--about the objects of belief and its comforts, as well as belief's great uncertainties and difficulties. With daring tenacity, she explored the full range of human experience in her reflections on God, the Bible, suffering, and immortality. She writes, "On subjects of which we know nothing, or should I say Beings, we both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an Hour, which keeps Believing nimble." To keep "Believing nimble" one needs skill, and in this sense, too, Dickinson realised that belief is an art that demands trial and practice. A product of the romantic age and a prophet of modernity, she comprehended more fully than most people in her day how much the human mind contributes to the process of belief. Much of the history of the modern world is the story of our increasing awareness of the extent to which we participate in the making of truth (or belief) as well as in the discovery of truth. Dickinson, as a seeker after religious knowledge, never became a church goer, but she never gave up on God, wrestling with profound issues of faith throughout her work and life. This paper will explore the relationship between belief and unbelief in the development of "the conflict of interpretations."

Roger Lundin is the Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois, and a literary study center leader at Notre Dame University. One of today's leading literary scholars and theorists, he is the author of 'The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World', 'Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief', and the editor of 'Disciplining Hermeneutics: Interpretation in Christian Perspective.'

  
Website: Roger Lundin
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Archive - Lectures 1991-2002
DAVID VAN BAAK
Professor of Physics, The 2001-2002 Calvin Lecturer
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

"Cosmology and the Role of Presuppositions in Science"
ABSTRACT:
Of all the fields of human knowledge, mathematics and the natural sciences are those that are most often assumed to be universal, value-free, obligatory, and independent of pre-suppositions and prejudices. In these fields, if any, one may hope that all scholars will necessarily be constrained by reason and evidence to reach a consistent set of conclusions. While vast amounts of the content of the sciences do indeed reveal this kind of convergence, there are interesting areas in which consensus is not achieved, and may never be achieved. In this lecture, I will explore those places in the natural sciences where essential disagreements persist, and illustrate in the field of cosmology the reasons for the disagreements. In particular, I will describe the role of presuppositions, and extra-scientific assumptions, in motivating theories about the character and origin of the universe. This talk is intended for a general audience of persons interested in science.
  
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Website: David van Baak

 
LAMIN SANNEH
D. Willis James Professor of Missions & World Christianity and Professor of History, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut

"Islam and the Western Encounter"
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Website: Lamin Sanneh
 
GLENN TINDER, Murrin Lecturer 1993
Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston

A:) "Personal Hope in an Age of Despondency"

B:) "Political Hope in an Age of Revolution"

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OWEN GINGERICH, Professor of Astronomy and History of Science, Harvard University, Massachusetts

"Reflections on Natural Theology:
Kepler's Anguish & Hawking's Query"

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Website: Owen Gingerich