NCL-30th-Anniversary-History-Book-WEB

2002-2016 | PROF TREVOR CAIRNEY
science-religion relations in the present.
The first lecture, ‘Is Christianity a Religion?’
offered an account of the emergence of the
modern idea of religion, which in the 17th
century began to be understood less in terms
of a way of life, and more in terms of explicit
beliefs. The second lecture, ‘The Invention
of Modern Science,’ examined the history of
‘scientific’ endeavours, reminding us that
the study of nature, up until the nineteenth
century, was vitally concerned with moral and
religious questions. Finally, on night three,
Dr Harrison explored the ongoing legacy of
religion and science, suggesting that some
of the problematic aspects of their present
relationship arise out of the history of the ideas
themselves.
2015
Professor Trevor Hart returned to deliver the
2015 lectures. He began with the most basic
of Christian claims about the world; that is,
its Creator took on flesh and dwelt among
us. The Lectures sought to trace resonances
between this claim and the realities of our
shared human condition, especially as they are
manifested by participation in the arts.
The first lecture was titled ‘Clayey lodging:
on the predicament of being human and
why matter matters’. In it, he argued that the
sorts of meaning typically associated with
the arts furnish a healthier picture of human
knowing than ones that presuppose our
final disentanglement from the flesh and its
contingencies. In his second lecture – ‘Earthy
epiphanies: the incarnation of meaning and
the meaning of incarnation in the arts’ –
Professor Hart discussed the tendency in the
arts to grant the meanings and experiences
they generate an exalted status. In his final
lecture – ‘Heavenly bodies: why Wagner was
right about art and wrong about God, and
what the Church may yet have to learn from
him’ – Professor Hart suggested that Wagner’s
music had a radical vision for the arts that
was theologically informed and inspired. He
suggested that we need to recapture Wagner’s
intuition that the true ‘hallowing’ of things
by creatures like ourselves must necessarily
involve a multi-sensory and imaginative
‘total’ engagement whereby the whole self is
reordered and reoriented.
Professor Hart’s second lecture from
the series was published in issue 43 of Case
Quarterly.
2016
Some of the most widely published challenges
to the Christian faith today have come in the
publicity surrounding the “apocryphal” gospels
not included in the Christian Bible. The idea
that there is nothing particularly special about
the four New Testament Gospels has appeared
in both the popular media and in Biblical
scholarship, from references to the ‘Gospel of
Philip’ in the Da Vinci Code, to the publication
by the Harvard Theological Review of the socalled
“Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” fragment. The
2016 lectures considered the relevance of these
gospels, comparing them with Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John.
In the first talk, ‘What Ten Gospels Say
About Jesus’ Death and Resurrection’, Dr
Gathercole sought to debunk the notion that
there is nothing particularly special about the
four New Testament Gospels. In his second
talk, ‘What Ten Gospels Say About Jesus the
Jewish Messiah’, Dr Gathercole’s broad concern
was the extent to which Jesus was present
and whether this was internally consistent.
He also examined the extent to which this is
consistent with the Old Testament, as well as
Jewish literature and other historical evidence.
The major outcome from the series was the
publication of Issue 46 of Case Quarterly with
the theme ‘Which Gospel’. It featured an article
by Dr Gathercole titled ‘The Old Testament in
Ten Gospels’.
16 NEW COLLEGE LECTURES 30TH ANNIVERSARY