Dear Friends and Family, Today I want to tell you a bit about my other supervisor, Dr Mary Cunningham. Mary is a lecturer in Church History here at the University of Nottingham, teaching classes on general church history, asceticism, Mary the Mother of God, and more. Her primary foci are Byzantine History (she is a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church) and Mary the Mother of God. (It should also be noted that Mary is not related to one of... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, I’ve been at the University of Nottingham for nearly two years now and have gotten to know many members of our faculty fairly well. That being the case, I thought I would take some time to do posts on some of our faculty. These first posts I intend to do will be on faculty I think to be stellar, but relatively unknown (or at least not widely known). The first member of our faculty I wish... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, Today, for Western Christians, is Trinity Sunday. Today we set aside some time to contemplate a God that is both 1 and 3. This is terribly difficult understand. Since God is completely other than us, we can never come to full knowledge of him in his essence. Nevertheless, God has revealed himself to us and he has done so in three persons who are one. There are many heresies surrounding the notion of the Trinity. There... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, Ordinary Time is now upon us. It is time to remember that God is not only present in the feasts and solemnities, but in the everyday as well. I may try and do a post later this week on the importance of Ordinary Time, and I’ll definitely do a post for Trinity Sunday. Today, however, I simply wanted to post something fun. Over the Easter Holiday, the Theology Department here at the University of Nottingham held... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, Today we celebrate Pentecost. It is the fiftieth day since our Lord was resurrected and the tenth since he ascended to the right hand of the Father. May we be filled with the Spirit, our Sanctifier and Deifier, so that we can speak the truth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Saviour and Deifier of the World, and come to greater knowledge of our Father. Tomorrow begins Ordinary Time. Tomorrow we must go out into... Read more
Dear Friends and Family When I first came here to Nottingham I had never heard of Radical Orthodoxy. John Milbank and Simon Oliver were names I only knew through Bibledex and if you had said the name Catherine Pickstock to me I’d have said, ‘To be honest, I don’t know who that is.’ Then I started meeting people, talking to my colleagues and the floodgates of Radical Orthodoxy were opened. I inundated myself, trying to learn as much as I... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, If you were to go back through my old posts, starting with the oldest and working your way up (not that I’d recommend it), you would first find this post. In it I talk about what was at the time my fifth thesis topic. Then, if you kept reading, you’d end up here, where I describe not only my fifth thesis topic shift, but the fact that I’d switched supervisors as well. In the interest of... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, One thing that I constantly hear from well-meaning Christians is how the Chronicles of Narnia, especially The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, are allegorical. I can’t even begin to tell you how much this would anger Lewis were he still alive today (and how much it did when he was alive). The Chronicles of Narnia are not allegorical, this becomes increasing clear with each book. Nevertheless, I understand why The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe keeps... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, As you’ve either seen from my wife’s blog or my reposting here and here, Lauren and I were on vacation last week. This was a kind of early anniversary gift to ourselves. We haven’t been on a vacation since we moved here in 2011, so we decided to go the Lake District. I have to be honest, Lauren planned the whole thing and did an amazing job. I didn’t want to leave. I could have stared into... Read more
Check out the second installment of my wife’s posts about our vacation (and more pretty pictures of me). Read more
Letters from the Edge of Elfland
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