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Adult Learning Archive - Theology Today Past Events
Faith on Film Lenten Series (2005 - 2010)
What is the Church? (June 2006)
Blockbuster Jesus (September/October 2006)
Now and Not Yet - The Message and Meaning of Advent (November 2006)
Whatever Happened to Original Sin? (February 2007)
What's Faith Got to Do with It? (June 2007)
Revelation (November 2007)
Doing the Lambeth Walk: The Contest for the Soul of Anglicanism (September 2008)
Looking for Saints (November 2008)
Do you believe in miracles? (January/February 2009)
Dealing with Darwin (May/June 2010)
God's Word Written: The Bible and its Authority (Jan/Feb 2011)
Faith on Film 2011: A Special Tribute to Stephen Reynolds (Oct/Nov 2011)
Stephen Reynolds presented three images of the Church found in the New Testament:
| A Community Called Out of the World |
| A Royal Priesthood |
| The Body of Christ |
We explored what each image means in the New Testament - and how it helps us to live in (and with) the Church today.
The past decade has seen a number of bestsellers about Jesus, whose marketing has depended on their "controversial" quality - on the ways in which their authors are supposed to have challenged the Church's teaching about Jesus of Nazareth.
Stephen Reynolds took a look at John Dominic Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ - and asked, "How credible are these challenges?"
Now and Not Yet - The Meaning and Message of Advent
The season of Advent tends to get lost in the shuffle between Hallowe'en and Christmas. Stephen Reynolds explored the theology and spirituality of this "poor relation" of the Christian Year. How do we await and look forward to adventus - the coming, the approach - of Jesus, the Messiah once born of Mary and the risen Lord who shall come again?
Whatever Happened to Original Sin?
The Church has tended to make the doctrine of Original Sin a highlight of Lent. But what does this doctrine mean – and does it still “hold water” for Christians living in the Church? Stephen Reynolds, Senior Associate, explored these questions.
What's Faith Got to Do with It?
Christians talk a lot about faith. But what do we mean by it? Stephen Reynolds, Senior Associate Priest, offered a chance to explore some dimensions of faith in this three-session mini-series.
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11.1). Faith as a matter of trusting, faith as a matter of knowing.
“We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5.7). Faith bears witness to a dimension of reality which our physical senses cannot verify. Does that make faith “irrational”?
“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9.24.) Am I still faithful, even if “I have a little shadow” — a doubt about this, an uncertainty about that, a question or qualm about another point of the Church’s belief — “that goes in and out with me”?
Stephen Reynolds, Senior Associate, hosted a discussion of Christianity as a revealed religion.
Doing the Lambeth Walk: The Contest for the Soul of Anglicanism
Anglicans have nearly always contested with one another for the soul of Anglicanism. We have entered a new and exceptionally intense phase in this internal debate, as the controversy over blessing of same-sex marriages has acted Pandora-like and opened the box of other, even more fundamental issues for the Anglican Communion. At stake is Anglican identity: what is Anglicanism? how do we go about defining it – and who gets to do the defining?
Our Senior Associate, Stephen Reynolds, offered three sessions during which he explored the contest for the soul of Anglicanism in light of the Windsor Report and the proposed draft “Anglican Covenant”.
Stephen Reynolds, Senior Associate, spent fifteen years researching, writing, and compiling biographical notices, prayers, and readings for each and every saint’s day listed in The Book of Alternative Services. His work was published in 1995 as For All the Saints. After a decade-long hiatus, the Anglican Church of Canada has begun to add new saints to its calendar.
In this three-part course, Stephen spoke about his own experiences in the saints’ trade, how the Anglican approach to “canonising” saints differs from the Roman Catholic approach, and how we ourselves might go about discerning saints in our midst.
“Nobody who listens to a radio can believe in miracles.” So wrote Rudolf Bultmann, a very great New Testament scholar, in 1943. He meant that modern technology – the gadgets we all take for granted in our everyday lives, from indoor plumbing and flush-toilets to radio, television, and personal computers – has abolished the credibility of miracles. But a very recent poll of Americans found that something like 89% do believe in miracles. This suggests one of two things: either the vast majority of North Americans are not using radios, televisions, and personal computers – or that Bultmann was wrong.
Miracle-stories are like bread and butter in the Bible; they often serve as a turning-point in larger narratives, such as the stories of Moses, the prophets Elijah and Elisha, and Jesus. So how do we – Christians who are also citizens of the modern world – deal with miracles? Can we believe the Bible’s miracle stories? Can we believe that miracles are possible today?
Stephen Reynolds, Senior Associate, presented ‘Do You Believe in Miracles?’ on three Thursday evenings:
| Lord, I believe; help my unbelief |
| Outraging the Ordinary |
| The open-ended creation |
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was an English country gentleman devoted to his wife and children, to his privacy, and to painstaking investigations of local biology. In 1859 he published a book entitled, On the Origin of Species. In this work, Darwin proposed a theory of evolution through “random selection”. His theory became an axiom of European thought and life within a decade of its publication and made him not only a figure of staggering celebrity in his own day but also a name which has defined the conflict between Science and Faith ever since. 2009 saw the bicentenary of his birth and the sesquicentennial of his book’s publication; and the conflict roared back into public life with a plethora of polemics on both sides.
Stephen Reynolds, our Senior Associate Priest, offered a three-session series which took a look at Darwin’s theory, its contemporary advocates, alternative theories like “creation science” and “intelligent design,” and how people of faith might deal with the issues posed by the enduring debate.
Stephen Reynolds' remarks are available online: Session I, Session II and Session III.
God's Word Written: The Bible and its Authority
At every celebration of the Eucharist, we listen to readings from the Bible. Over the course of each year, we also provide opportunities, both one-off and ongoing, to study one or another book of the Bible in depth. Why? What makes the contents of the Bible so special? Our Senior Associate Stephen Reynolds explored this question and its implications in a three-part series:
How did we get the Bible? The formation of the biblical “canon” – the rule or list of writings that the Church has determined to be “God’s Word written”. |
Questioning the Canon A number of modern critics want the Church to open the canonical door to other ancient Christian writings, so as to include them in the Bible. What’s this about? |
The Rule of Faith What authority does the Bible have in governing Christian faith and life? And why? |