Tag: Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams on the touch of God

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Rowan Williams on the riskiness of revelation The touch of God is dangerous, in that it can be a light too sharp to be borne without hurt or breakage; and when the perception is skewed and redirected, it may run close to the destructive and the hellish. Jonathan Smith, the great anthropologist of religion at Chicago, remarked about […]

Rowan Williams on Solitude

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Rowan Williams on “the loneliness of each one of us” The following is the opening of a characteristically excellent sermon from Rowan Williams. I wish I could post the sermon in full, but I’m sure the publisher would frown on that. It’d be worth seeking the text out to see how Rowan concludes the reflections he starts […]

Pictures of Doctrine

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Pictures of Doctrine A picture held us captive. (Wittgenstein, PI §115) Doctrines as Propositions A. Unrestricted. Thesis: Doctrines explain reality. Doctrinal supply should meet explanatory demand. Advocate: Alister McGrath Within the context of a scientific theology, the Christian network of doctrines is conceived as a response to revelation, in the belief that such doctrines will possess explanatory potential. [136] The […]

Rowan Williams 2013 Gifford Lectures

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I know I’m late to give notice to these, but I still think they’re worth sharing. Rowan Williams delivered the 2013 Gifford Lectures, a prestigious annual Scottish lectureship chartered to consider natural theology. The University of Edinburgh had the honor of hosting this installment. The series was entitled Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language.

Its six lectures ran as follows:

  1. Representing Reality
  2. Can We Say What We Like? Language, Freedom and Determinism
  3. No Last Words: Language as Unfinished Business
  4. Material Words: Language as Materiality
  5. Extreme Language: Discovery Under Pressure
  6. Can Truth Be Spoken?

The first in the series can be viewed below:

The rest of the lectures are available for viewing HERE. 

Or if you’d prefer to read these lectures, they’re also available in an expanded form in Williams’ most recently released book:

The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language, (Bloomsbury, 2014).