Oxford Pastorate

Bible Conference:

Reading the Bible with faithful integrity and intellectual honesty

On Saturday, 8th May 2010, the Oxford Pastorate organized a day conference at Ruskin College where more than 35 Christian postgraduate students reflected together on the questions relating to the Bible that our research had shown to be of greatest relevance to the Christian postgraduate community.

For example:
• Who decided which books made it into the Bible, and on what grounds?
• Do Christians need to affirm that God commanded genocide?
• Is the Bible irredeemably sexist?
• Are the gospels historically reliable?
• How should we chose what method of interpretation to apply to various texts?
• How can we best relate to the bible in our 21st century spirituality?

 

Short papers were presented by postgraduate students at Oxford who are Christians and whose research interests lie in these fields. Between them, they had experience teaching theology in a wide variety of contexts, e.g. Brazil, Croatia, Russia, Australia, the US and the UK.

 

 

 

The conference was diligently chaired by Rev Christian Hofreiter, Oxford Pastorate Associate Chaplain, so as to give ample time to honestly and openly discussing questions, and to evaluating together the strengths and weaknesses of various answers one might chose to give.