Second Lieutenant Arthur van Grondelle recently qualified for the Parachute Regiment in the British Army by passing through 'P Company,' a gruelling training programme. Out of 80 men, only 15 made it in the end. Mr. van Grondelle will speak about what it was like to be a part of 'P Company' and to be a platoon commander in his early twenties. He will speak about the role that his Christian faith played in sustaining him through his training.

He will speak alongside Revd Dr. Mark Bezerra Speeks who has served as an Army Chaplain since 2010 and previously served…

‘It is no exaggeration to say that all across the theological spectrum the great reversal had taken place; interpretation was a matter of fitting the biblical story into another world with another story rather than incorporating that world into the biblical story.’ These words of Hans Frei, from his masterly The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, summarise the profound changes that occurred in the way that Christians have read the Bible since early modernity. Where once Scripture had been read both literally and figuratively according to the ‘world’ depicted by its ‘history-like’ narrative, in the wake of ‘the great reversal’ it…

A Study Day led by Russell Jefford, providing an introduction to the life and work of St Athanasius (c. 295 - 373 AD). For Athanasius the Trinity was not an abstract concept but rather a (theo)logical necessity based on his understanding of salvation as physically rooted in the Incarnation (the achievements of which are ‘more than the waves of the sea’). No knowledge of Church history or theology is assumed. To register your interest and/or for further information visit OrdinaryTheology.com or contact Russell Jefford at info@ordinarytheology.com.

St Augustine famously saw in the creation week of Genesis 1 a framework by which world history could be organised and the progress of humanity’s salvation described. He developed the scheme over the rest of his life as he worked with various parts of Scripture. This lecture will highlight an example of some of the afterlife of Augustine’s approach in an obscure exegetical tradition of the early middle ages that read the eight parables Jesus tells in Matthew 13 as providing alternative descriptions for each of Augustine’s ‘ages’ (aetates) of human history. Developed through numerological connection with the Beatitudes and…