Robert A.J. Gagnon, a biblical scholar who became one of the most outspoken and polarizing opponents of same-sex practice in a generation of debates within his and other Protestant denominations, has resigned from the faculty of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

The seminary is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a denomination that debated sexuality for decades before deciding in 2011 to ordain non-celibate gays and lesbians and in 2015 to authorize same-sex marriages in its churches. Mr. Gagnon, an ordained elder in the denomination, spoke out often against such liberalizing trends.

The seminary and the professor “mutually agreed to end their relationship” effective this past Monday, the East Liberty school said. Mr. Gagnon, 59, was a tenured professor of New Testament and had been on the faculty for 23 years.

“We appreciate the contributions Professor Gagnon has made to our students and the community during his time here and we wish him the best in his future endeavors,” a seminary statement said.

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I have found that it is unproductive to force theological ideas—like Augustine’s understanding of evil, Dante’s depiction of the beatific vision or Flannery O’Connor’s morbid but hopeful anthropology—into the minds of students despite their disinterest.

Instead, I try to translate the import of these weighty concerns, claims and questions so students can feel what Augustine or Dante felt when facing these existential summits, or so they can entertain Plato’s suggestion that perception and reality are not necessarily what they seem.

Theology is impotent and irrelevant when simply presented as a set of ideas, doctrines or conclusions to be passively internalized. Instead, it is the kind of discipline that requires first making the questions that drive theological inquiry meaningful, long before answers can even be introduced.

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Trinity School for Ministry is pleased to announce the appointment of The Rev. Dr. Jack Gabig as the new Associate Professor of Practical Theology and Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program. Trinity’s Board of Trustees ratified the call to Dr. Gabig after a unanimous vote of the faculty in July.

“I am pleased to announce the appointment of The Rev. Dr. Jack Gabig as a full-time member of our residential faculty,” said The Very Rev. Dr. Henry L. Thompson III, Dean & President of Trinity. “He brings many years of pastoral wisdom, creative energy, innovative thinking, passion for academic rigor, and an abundance of love centered in the love of Jesus Christ.”

Dr. Gabig received his MDiv from Trinity School for Ministry and then served for eight years as Assistant Rector at the Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, PA. He then moved to England where he completed his Ph.D. at King’s College in London during which time he served as a Chaplain at New College, Oxford. Dr. Gabig, who currently serves as the Associate Professor of Practical Theology and the Director of Advanced Degree Programs at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Nashotah, WI, will join the Trinity Community on August 28, 2017

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The Board of Directors of Nashotah House announced on Monday that the Very Rev. Steven Peay, Dean and President, will step down from his leadership position on August 31, 2017. Dean Peay has been appointed Research Professor of Homiletics and will remain affiliated with the seminary upon the conclusion of his service as Dean and President. Dr. Garwood P. Anderson, Ph.D., Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament studies, will assume the position of Acting Dean, effective September 1. Dr. Anderson is well-known to the Nashotah House community due to his many years of dedicated service as a teacher, scholar, and previous academic dean.

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Consider these lessons from Eugene Peterson’s ordeal.

First, there is nowhere to hide. Every pastor, every Christian leader, every author — even every believer — will have to answer the question. The question cannot simply be about same-sex marriage. The question is about whether or not the believer is willing to declare and defend God’s revealed plan for human sexuality and gender as clearly revealed in the Bible.

Second, you had better have your answer ready. Evasive, wandering, and inconclusive answers will be seen for what they are. Those who have fled for security to the house of evasion must know that the structure has crumbled. It always does.

Third, if you will stand for the Bible’s clear teachings on sexuality and gender, you had better be ready to answer the same way over and over and over again. The question will come back again and again, in hopes that you have finally decided to “get on the right side of history.” Faithfulness requires consistency — that “long obedience in the same direction.”
That is what it means to be a disciple of Christ, as Eugene Peterson has now taught us. In more ways than one.

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A Wilkinson Theology of Soup from Regent College on Vimeo.

A 14% increase in numbers training for the priesthood has been welcomed by the Church of England. An anticipated total of 543 men and women will begin studies this Autumn at colleges across England.

Welcoming the increase the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson, said:

“I am delighted at both the number and the range of those whom God has been calling into ordained ministry over the course of the past year. Here are men and women who are choosing to put their faith on the line, so as to bring hope and spiritual nourishment to individuals and communities alike. In an increasingly uncertain world, nothing could be a greater privilege than walking alongside people in their joys and sorrows, from birth to grave.”

An increase of 17% in women coming forward for ordination was welcomed by Catherine Nancekievill, Head of Vocation for the Church of England….

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An immense servant of the Church. Scholar, pastor and spiritual guide to many. Bishop #GeoffreyRowell RIP pic.twitter.com/bzDo5VSgpN

— Chichester Diocese (@ChichesterDio) June 11, 2017

The Bishop of Chichester today (Trinity Sunday) asked parishes in his Diocese to remember the soul of Bishop Geoffrey, who died earlier today.

Bishop Geoffrey was an assistant bishop in the Diocese and Bishop Martin had been able to spend some time with him in recent days.

+Geoffrey was previously Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe in the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe from 2001.

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An influential Episcopal Church seminary that last year announced they were no longer granting degrees will become part of the New York-based Union Theological Seminary.
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/episcopal-seminary-stopped-giving-degrees-amid-7-9-million-asset-loss-join-union-theological-seminary-184732/#W77P7bRXwoTseXtX.99

Episcopal Divinity School of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a theologically liberal seminary founded in 1974, will move its personnel to Union’s campus.

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The email read like one that could easily be circulating at any American college in 2017: a professor at Duke Divinity School urged her colleagues to attend a two-day session on how to recognize and combat racism.

The diversity program “provides foundational training in understanding historical and institutional racism,” said the Feb. 6 email by Anathea Portier-Young, an associate professor of the Old Testament, who called it “transformative, powerful and life-changing.”

But to Paul Griffiths, a professor of Catholic theology, the March course was something else: akin to the retraining of intellectuals by “bureaucrats and apparatchiks” in totalitarian societies, he wrote in an email to his fellow professors that afternoon.

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The Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence, Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina, will deliver the Address at the 2017 Commencement ceremony of Cummins Theological Seminary in Summerville, SC. The Commencement will take place on Saturday, May 13, 3:00 p.m., in Bethel A.M.E. Church, 407 South Main Street, Summerville.

In September, 2016, Bishop Lawrence was elected to the Board of Trustees of the seminary by the Synod of the Reformed Episcopal Diocese of the Southeast. Also, during this academic year the seminary added three new members to the Faculty — The Rev. Dr. George Gatgounis, instructor in Biblical Hebrew; Fr. John Panagiotou, instructor in New Testament Greek, and the Rev. Dr. Charles Echols, adjunct professor of Old Testament.

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The controversy centers around Paul Griffiths who wrote in part as follow to his colleagues:

Subject: intellectual freedom & institutional discipline at Duke Divinity School

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

Intellectual freedom – freedom to speak and write without fear of discipline and punishment – is under pressure at Duke Divinity these days. My own case illustrates this. Over the past year or so I’ve spoken and written in various public forums here, with as much clarity and energy as I can muster, about matters relevant to our life together. The matters I’ve addressed include: the vocation and purpose of our school; the importance of the intellectual virtues to our common life; the place that seeking diversity among our faculty should have in that common life; the nature of racial, ethnic, and gender identities, and whether there’s speech about certain topics forbidden to some among those identities; and the nature and purpose of theological education. I’ve reviewed these contributions, to the extent that I can (some of them are available only in memory), and I’m happy with them and stand behind them. They’re substantive; they’re trenchant; and they address matters of importance for our common life. So it seems to me. What I’ve argued in these contributions may of course be wrong; that’s a feature of the human condition.

My speech and writing about these topics has now led to two distinct (but probably causally related) disciplinary procedures against me, one instigated by Elaine Heath, our Dean, and the other instigated by Thea Portier-Young, our colleague. I give at the end of this message a bare-bones factual account of these disciplinary proceedings to date.

These disciplinary proceedings are designed not to engage and rebut the views I hold and have expressed about the matters mentioned, but rather to discipline me for having expressed them.

You need to start here and then go there and then go here.

Seminary education is changing at a high velocity, and no one quite knows where it is headed. Almost everyone agrees that technology will be increasingly important, but no one knows precisely how. Almost everyone agrees that student indebtedness is at catastrophic levels, but no one knows how to wean schools off giving government-guaranteed loans that students will have to pay back after graduation. (The exceptions are the few schools that aim to build an endowment that covers tuition.) Almost everyone knows that most students are not likely to dive into a three-year residential experience far from home. Instead, students are seeking out a seminary education close to home; they tend to be older, with families, and with no intention of quitting their current job. Increasingly they are staying where they are and studying online.

Arguably, this approach is better for the church. Why should potential congregational leaders uproot their lives, borrow large sums of money, and rip up local connections when they can study online, try out what they learn about ministry in their own congregations, and grow in effectiveness and competence right where they are?

Schools linked to fast-growing megachurches are among those that are adapting more quickly to these new circumstances. Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Asbury Theological Seminary’s extension campus in Memphis, and the St. Mellitus College in London illustrate the trend. Their innovative programs arise from partnerships with large congregations that have a track record in evangelism, a pastoral staff adept at media and technology, and church campuses with lots of underutilized space.

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Today’s identity theology merely replaces northern European, male, cisgendered theology with another set of adjectives seeking to exercise power over others in the name of justice. But this is a false justice, because it lacks the divine righteousness that gives meaning to all lesser forms of justice. Call it retribution theology, a form of tribalism at its worst.

Christians need a theology that prophetically denounces sexism, homophobia and racism—in the past and in the present—without the divisiveness inherent to identity theology. This sort of inclusive theology is central to Mr. Keller’s preaching and ministry, which is done in one of the most diverse places in the world, New York City. Theologians like Mr. Keller focus on God, scripture, loving others, and missionary work. They’re not very concerned about their own navels.

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools,” Martin Luther King said in 1964. Is Mr. Keller not our brother? I am sad that my alma mater chose to undermine King’s vision and succumb to the demands of identity theology. When Mr. Keller stands before the seminary community next month, he will not deliver an acceptance lecture for the Kuyper Prize. Instead, he’ll demonstrate grace and magnanimity, for Mr. Keller’s unity with his detractors will truly be in Christ.

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Dear Members of the Seminary Community,

On March 10 I sent a letter to the seminary community addressing the emerging objections to the Kuyper Center’s invitation to the Reverend Timothy Keller to speak at their annual conference and receive the Kuyper Prize. Those who are concerned point to Reverend Keller’s leadership role in the Presbyterian Church in America, a denomination which prevents women and LGBTQ+ persons from full participation in the ordained Ministry of Word and Sacrament.

As I indicated in my previous letter, it is not my practice to censor the invitations to campus from any of our theological centers or student organizations. This commitment to academic freedom is vital to the critical inquiry and theological diversity of our community. In talking with those who are deeply concerned about Reverend Keller’s visit to campus, I find that most share this commitment to academic freedom. Yet many regard awarding the Kuyper Prize as an affirmation of Reverend Keller’s belief that women and LGBTQ+ persons should not be ordained. This conflicts with the stance of the Presbyterian Church (USA). And it is an important issue among the divided Reformed communions.

I have also had helpful conversations about this with the Chair of the Kuyper Committee, the Chair of the Board of Trustees, and Reverend Keller. In order to communicate that the invitation to speak at the upcoming conference does not imply an endorsement of the Presbyterian Church in America’s views about ordination, we have agreed not to award the Kuyper Prize this year.

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Princeton Seminary Rescinds its Award of Kuyper Prize to Tim Keller https://t.co/u1bqu5ErIN #religion #usa #theology #evangelicals #politics pic.twitter.com/V8L1YSaJjF

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) March 23, 2017

Unfailingly thoughtful and cerebral, frequently appearing in secular media as a religious and cultural commentator, Keller is one of the most influential pastors and Christian thinkers in America today. He is a guru of the rebirth of urban evangelical Protestant Christianity. His theology like his denomination’s is orthodox and Reformed. Keller typically avoids culture war issues and hot button debates. He affirms traditional Christian sexual ethics and marriage teaching but rarely speaks about it. His churches are full of New Yorkers who are socially liberal but drawn to his intellectually vibrant presentation of Christianity.

One Princeton graduate, a minister in the liberal Presbyterian Church (USA), has been quoted in The Christian Post denouncing Keller’s scheduled appearance at her alma mater in her blog, which declares:

…An institution designed to train men and women for ministry shouldn’t be awarding fancy prizes to someone who believes half the student body (or is it more than half?) has no business leading churches. It’s offensive and, as I have taught my four and five year olds to express, it hurts my feelings.

She also complains that “he (and the denomination he serves) is also very clear in its exclusion of LGBT people.”

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In a stated effort to train up Christian leaders in disciplines that will help them connect with a rapidly changing culture, Hope Bible College & Seminary announced Thursday its new course offerings in advanced meme-making.

“The first reformation was all about creeds, the second reformation was all about deeds—now we’re starting a new reformation that’s all about the dank memes,” college dean Chuck Lyle told reporters. “The best way to communicate truth to a postmodern world is by slapping a clever zinger on a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio or Robert Downey Jr., and we want to equip the next generation of Christians to engage culture with the dankest memes.”

Read it all from the Babylon Bee.

Theological schools debate how much field education is the right amount and how to integrate practical experience into ministerial training. But what if field education were inseparable from M.Div. courses? And what if seminarians’ primary classmates were the people in the congregations they serve during their three years of seminary?

Bexley Seabury Seminary, an Episco­pal school based in Chicago, has such a model in mind as it relaunches its M.Div. degree program. “At every step,” the school states, “students will be challenged to connect the content of their academic work with insights and reflections drawn from their internship experience.”

KyungJa Oh, director of field education and formation, sees the advantages of keeping students rooted in the context of ministry.

Read it all from the Christian Century.

The Third Anglican Leadership Institute is now history. As I write some are still in the air, and some have landed and rejoined their families.

And what a great group they were. They spanned the full Anglican spectrum:

– From the Rector of a posh downtown parish in a mid-sized Australian city to the General Secretary of the Anglican Church of Burundi;
– From a Rector in Brunei where Sharia Law prevents him from even having a Christmas tree outside the Church to a leader of young adults in a large Brazilian church who surfs in his spare time;
– From a bishop in northern Nigeria where unless a man “steals” another man’s wife his own wife might accuse him of “not really being a man” to the assistant Rector of a booming Northern Ireland church who finished off 6 books while he was with us;
– From a former “Lost Boy” of South Sudan who runs a diocese that cannot afford him any salary and whose family must live in exile to a Deacon who assists the former President of GAFCON…

And on it goes. 16 marvelous people — all Anglicans from 12 enormously different socio-economic situations living in cultures vastly different from each other. Yet all united in Jesus Christ and experiencing the joy of becoming a family. Our closing dinner was a time of deep prayer followed by hugs all around. Those Africans love to hug.

Read it all (Diocese of SC photo).

What had prompted [Henri] Nouwen to embrace a spirituality and a ministry model like this one? Born in the Netherlands in 1932, Nouwen had grown up a pious, conscientious””and ambitious””eldest child. By the time he was five years old, Nouwen had acquired specially made child-size priestly vestments so that he could say Mass at a play altar. “I did all the proper things,” he would later write, comparing himself to the elder brother in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, “mostly complying with the agendas set by the many parental figures in my life””teachers, spiritual directors, bishops, and popes.” Two decades later, having already graduated from two seminaries, Nouwen was ordained to the Catholic priesthood at Utrecht, ready to fulfill a calling””an inevitability, it seemed to those who knew him best””he’d sensed from boyhood. In short, a walking specimen of oozing spiritual wounds, Nouwen most certainly was not. Gregarious, theatrical, often childishly playful, his priestly work led him from strength to strength.

But Nouwen’s deepest self-identification was with the younger son in the parable, not in his outward behavioral choices but in what he described as an inner pain of lostness. This accounts, it would seem, for his constant talk of woundedness. His distance from God the Father’s heart, as he would put it in what is probably his second most-loved book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, had to do not with public rebellion but with an acute inner sensitivity and susceptibility to feelings of rejection. At one of his life’s crucial turning points, he recorded the following sentiment in his journal: “What I am craving is not so much recognition, praise, or admiration, as simple friendship. There may be some around me, but I cannot perceive or receive it.” This insensibility would dog him through his exit from the academy, through his twilight years spent as a carer in a home for disabled persons, through his quieter days of writing, until, en route to St. Petersburg for another viewing of Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son which had renewed his faith years earlier, he died.

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Students from multiple states and countries come here, attracted to a school that aims to be an “evangelical seminary in the Anglican tradition” ”” that is, blending the piety and urgent sense of mission that characterize evangelicals with the time-tested liturgy and sacramental tradition associated with Episcopal Church and its Anglican counterpart.

“This is really the place” for that blend, said Jim Hearn, a doctoral student from California, who joined an Anglican congregation through the influence of his wife and a trip to Israel.

Now Trinity is celebrating its 40th year, and while the mission remains the same, it’s being defined in new ways. The school says it has about 285 students, either full-time, part-time or on-line.

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If you haven’t grown up in the Anglican (or Episcopal) Church, you might think a “Canon” is just a fancy kind of camera. But to those familiar with Anglican tradition, a canon is much more. And now, Wycliffe College can boast of two new canons within its close knit family.

The positions were formally conferred on Annette Brownlee and Ephraim Radner, both professors at Wycliffe, during a late afternoon service of sung Scripture and prayer on Sunday, January 15, 2017, in Dallas, Texas. The Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, George Sumner, bestowed the honours.

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Cummins Theological Seminary in Summerville, [South Carolina,] is pleased to announce the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Charles L. Echols as a new Adjunct Professor of Old Testament. For this Spring Semester he will be teaching a course in the Major Prophets. In 2005, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Old Testament by the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, England. He also holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Trinity School for Ministry, Abridge, Pennsylvania.

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(Diocese of South Carolina)

(Oak Hill College)

To compel attention in his lectures, where he never got to the end of the notes, he used Sooty and Sweep puppets to illustrate the Trinity. But staff feared that the meat cleaver sitting on his study chair might make visiting DDOs nervous.

His love of PG Wodehouse found expression in exam questions in which a couple of pages of Woodhousian narrative were populated by various ecclesiastical figures espousing different theological nostrums to which the candidate was invited to respond.

The Rev Andrew Cornes from Crowborough, his training vicar, recalled him as a fierce fighter for justice. Dr Dan Strange, now acting principal, said: “He had so little ego and no interest in self-aggrandisement.” His local pastor, Jonathan Prime said he was the best of listeners.

Present were his wife of 29 years, Heather and their children, Charles, Harry and Ana. Before they were a ”˜couple’, they had led a Bible study group at St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, while Mike was a Parliamentary draftsman and living in Clapham. Heather told Mike he should devote his life to teaching the Bible.

Mike’s parents, John and Ruth and sisters Elizabeth and Margaret were present. Dr Mark Thompson, principal of Moore College, Sydney, where Mike had done post-graduate study and lectured, led prayers.

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From here:

An article in ‘The Sunday Times’ (22 January 2017) has been brought to our attention, which suggests that Wycliffe Hall’s “inclusive language policy” recommends that staff and students no longer refer to God as “He”, but as “the one who”. It does no such thing. Yes, inclusive language is encouraged at Wycliffe Hall in our preaching and our writing when describing people ”“ not ”˜man’, ”˜mankind’, ”˜every man’, but ”˜human’, ”˜humanity’, ”˜everyone’. Therefore careful thought is required when using older liturgy, hymnody, or Bible translations, in order to include the whole people of God. This is common sense and is common practice throughout the churches. But there is no suggestion that the traditional gender pronouns concerning God should be altered in any way. Indeed the Hall’s policy reaffirms that we should continue to speak of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as Christians have always done

.

He was ordained in 1991 and served for 4 years as curate of All Saints, Crowborough in Chichester diocese. He and Heather then left to move to Sydney Australia, as Mike took up a post as Junior Lecturer at Moore Theological College. While there he also did research for an MTh, with a dissertation on the concept of truth in John’s Gospel, and made many friends.

I first met Mike in 1998 when he returned to the UK to be a research fellow at Oak Hill Theological College in London. Some of his lectures were quite stretching (such as this one, and this one which he contributed to The Theologian journal), and I never understood his compulsive need to talk about Arsenal football club and include diagrams or witty quotes in all of his handouts! But he was a good friend and a mentor. We met up weekly to read the Bible and pray together during a year when I was doing MPhil research in the Old Testament, and we’d occasionally pore over the Septuagint or a Latin Church Father, or he’d advise me about college committees he had gotten me involved with. Always with at least one cup of coffee (and occasionally with a glass of something different).

Mike’s PhD from Kings College, London (completed in 2004) was on the eternal relation between God the Father and God the Son in selected patristic theologians and John’s Gospel, which highlights his interest in integrating systematic, historical, and biblical theology. Much of this work made it into his most recent publication Your Will Be Done: Exploring Eternal Subordination, Divine Monarchy and Divine Humility. He was keen to encourage Christians to engage more carefully in systematic theology, which he saw as something of a weakness in evangelical circles. In a helpful talk from 2006, for example, he examined the biblical foundations of systematics and outlined a biblical method of engaging in it, which many found persuasive.

Read it all (my emphasis).

(Oak Hill College)

It is with profound shock and sadness that we announce the sudden and unexpected death of our Principal, the Revd Dr Mike Ovey, at the age of 58.

As the Oak Hill community comes to terms with the loss of our dear brother and leader, we cling on to the promise that ”˜For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’. It reminds us that for Mike, death is not an end but a glorious beginning.

Read it all and you can read comments by Archbp Peter Jensen there.

[The] Rev Dr Plyming trained at Cranmer Hall, where he gained a first in theology, before undertaking a curacy at an ecumenical church in Basingstoke.

He went on to serve on the General Synod of the Church of England since 2009 and played a significant role in the church’s Renewal and Reform modernisation project, sitting on the Archbishop’s Simplification Task Group.

He is currently Vicar of Holy Trinity Claygate, a parish church in the Diocese of Guildford which has seen significant growth in recent years, and also Area Dean of Emly.

He is married to Annabelle, a hospice doctor, and they have two schoolage sons.

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In many ways, the class that met here Tuesday night could be in any university in the United States. There were desks arranged in a circle to facilitate discussion. There were student presentations based on dense readings. And there was the faint buzzing from the fluorescent lights overhead.

But in other important respects, the class was anything but typical. Coils of razor wire glinted under security lights outside the window, and more than half the students wore the drab green uniforms that mark them as inmates in New York’s only maximum-security prison for women.

This was Union Theological Seminary’s course on African religions in the Americas. Six seminary students boarded a van in Manhattan over 16 weeks this fall, commuting about 35 miles north to reach the secure walls of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Part of a nationwide trend in prison education programs, it was a process that proved as educational and powerful for the graduate students as for the 10 inmates.

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This [Will] Herberg challenge radically affected Oden’s work in the 1970s, as he evolved from backing an edgy liberalism to spreading an ecumenical approach to orthodoxy in shelves of books. Oden kept publishing into the final years of his life, until his Dec. 8 death at the age of 85. “Here was a guy who — until his mid-40s — had been a success on that career track in the contemporary academy,” said Seamands. Oden had a Yale University doctorate and thrived in an era “built on the idea that new is better and that you looked down on anything old. You were supposed to idealize whatever people called the latest thing. That’s how you got ahead.”

In the 1950s, Oden embraced Marxism, existentialism and the demythologization of Scripture. He was an early leader among Christians supporting abortion rights. In the 1960s he plunged into transactional analysis, Gestalt therapy, parapsychology and what, in one of my first encounters with him, he called “mild forms of the occult.”

As he dug into early church writings from the ancient East and West, Oden came to the conclusion that “I had been in love with heresy.” In a 2012 interview with Good News magazine, Oden explained: “My basic question early on in the 1970s was, is the Resurrection really just an idea or is it a fact of history? … Did this Jesus rise from the dead? Not symbolically, not just as a fragile memory of the earliest Christian rememberers, not just as an ever-questionable matter of fallible human remembering, but did Jesus actually rise from the dead. And finally, I did believe. And that changed my life.”

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