Our GFCF Speaker Series for the 2025-26 Academic Year: The purpose of GFCF (aka The Forum) is dialogue across disciplines, ideologies, and  philosophical persuasions, engaging key issues in scholarship and society from an orthodox Christian faith. We continue to explore new ideas, offer fresh, well-researched perspectives on current issues. Our target audience for this pertinent dialogue includes the senior members of the UBC teaching and research community: faculty, postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows. We welcome alumni to participate as well. Our January speaker, Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer, will deliver a newly-minted paper. The venue is on Zoom, and the recordings will be posted on YouTube to allow a broader, international audience to participate. A few of our previous speakers have drawn over one thousand views in this way. Participants for this year are teaching in Israel, South Africa, Chicago, and Virginia. They bring a global perspective to their critical insights. It is our privilege to engage with these accomplished scholars. GFCF welcomes your questions and insights.

Kevin Vanhoozer

Three Documents of the University: Reading Nature, Culture, and Scripture Theologically.

Tuesday, January 27, 2026 @ 12:00 PM

Abstract

Universities arguably exist to make the universe legible (readable) and intelligible (understandable). In Christian tradition, what the Second Helvetic Confession calls the “Book” of nature is as readable as the book of Scripture, for both ultimately precede through the Logos in whom all things hang together. The “book” of culture, human history, is similarly legible, because it is written by those created in the image of the Logos. Modern secular universities, however, struggle to make sense of these three documents. What Hans Frei termed the “eclipse” of biblical narrative led to a “great reversal” in hermeneutics in which the biblical narrative gave way to other frames of reference. This presentation argues that the prevailing metaphysical frames of reference used today in the natural and human sciences, as well as in biblical studies, are ultimately unable to read rightly their respective texts. Brief examples from each of the three books – the laws of nature; human dignity; the historical Jesus – illustrate both the problem and also the way forward.  This involves a retrieval of a theological frame of reference that privileges biblical narrative and enables faith-fueled scholarship to gain a deeper understanding of reality.

Biography 

Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Ph.D., Cambridge University on Paul Ricoeur) is Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Previously, he served as Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (1990-98) and as Blanchard Professor of Theology at the Wheaton College Graduate School in Chicago (2009-2012). He is the very articulate author of twelve books, including The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology; plus Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine, and his impressive 2024 volume Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What it Means to Read the Bible Theologically. He is presently at work on a three-volume systematic theology. In 2017, he chaired the steering committee and drafted A Reforming Catholic Confession to mark the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation. He is currently Senior Fellow of the C. S. Lewis Institute. He is an amateur classical pianist, and finds that music and literature help him integrate academic theology, imagination, and spiritual formation.