Tag Archives: cambridge

April 27, 2024

Christmas in Europe: Ridley Hall and Tyndale House in Cambridge

By Clarke Morledge

Another travelog installment!! … One of the highlights of visiting Cambridge, England around Christmas this past year was the opportunity to visit places that I could really geek out about.  Readers of the Veracity blog will know that my two favorite topics to think about are church history and Christian apologetics. You have both topics in abundance to visit and consider in Cambridge, England.

Venturing across “the Backs” behind Queens College in Cambridge to find a few places in particular was an adventure. The rains had swollen the Cam River, but I was able to get a nice view of the “Mathematical Bridge” behind Queens College. It was a popular fable that Sir Isaac Newton had built this bridge, but actually it was a William Etheridge and a James Essex who originally built this unique structure, with lots of mathematical engineering involved, in 1749.

The Mathematical Bridge crossing the Cam River, behind Queens College in Cambridge, England. It was a dreary day in Cambridge when I took this photo, though the sun poked out a couple of times.

 

So, what is the church history connection with Queens College in Cambridge? Well, it was where Desiderius Erasmus lectured at Cambridge between 1511 and 1515.  While Erasmus was at Queens College, he was working on preparing his authoritative Greek edition of the New Testament, which Martin Luther read soon after it was published in 1516. It was Erasmus’ Greek edition of New Testament which convinced Luther that the Latin Vulgate had erred in certain places of Bible translation, thus sparking the Reformation in 1517.

The can of worms that Eramus opened while lecturing somewhere near this Mathematical Bridge in Cambridge some 500+ years ago is something that continues to impact how Christians read their Bibles today…. and most Christians know very little of the back story.

I had limited time during my excursion across Cambridge, with drips of cold rain fogging up my glasses. So I made my way to Ridley Hall, another Cambridge institution. Ridley Hall is a theological college associated with the Church of England, training persons for Christian ministry in the Anglican communion. Among Anglican schools, Ridley Hall is more on the conservative evangelical side of the church.

Ridley Hall, a theological college at Cambridge, England, hosts a number of well-known evangelical scholars.

More than a few Anglican/evangelical scholars have ties to Ridley Hall, but perhaps one my favorite scholars, currently lecturing there, is Richard Bauckham. Dr. Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is on my “to-be-read” list, a favorite book of one of my former pastors, Doug Bunn (who now lives in Tennessee). Bauckham’s book is pretty “hot” in the scholarly world, as a number of skeptical scholars argue that none of our four Gospels contain eye-witness material, either by the author (as in the case of Matthew and John), or from those interviewed by the author (as in the case of Mark and Luke).

For fans of “The Chosen” film series, which features a nerdy former tax-collector, Matthew, constantly taking notes of what is happening, such critical scholars would argue that the film’s depiction of Matthew keeping an extensive diary is nothing but a fanciful idea that someone made up years after Jesus’ death. As an answer to those critical claims, Richard Bauckham is one of the few world class scholars who seeks to knock this scholarly skepticism down a few notches.

But there was still more to visit in Cambridge…. and since the Scott Polar Research Institute (the Polar Museum), where all sorts of artifacts related to North and South Pole exploration are kept, was closed that day (BUMMER!), I had to keep on going….

My final destination beyond Ridley Hall was to see where the Tyndale House was located.  The Tyndale House is kind of like an evangelical “think-tank” outfit, where scholars come to visit, do research, and write books that serve the church globally.  As the Tyndale House website states, it is “an international centre for research that specialises in the languages, history and cultural context of the Bible.”

The Tyndale House, in Cambridge, England.

 

It is a bit “Bible geeky,” to be sure, but Tyndale House publishes. a wonderful “Tyndale House Ink Magazine,” which dives into thoughtful articles about the language, history, and cultural context of the Bible, written from an historically orthodox, evangelical Christian perspective….. Stay tuned for more observations and notes from a “Christmas in Europe” in a few weeks.

The Tyndale House, in Cambridge, England.  Someone noted that I show up in a lot of my photos from our trip to Europe. I just wanted to prove to others (and myself) that I actually went to some of these places…. places that have fascinated me for years.  I had to pinch myself a few times to remind myself that I was actually walking the streets where Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell were pondering the mysteries of the universe, and discovering truths which impact millions and millions of people on a daily basis.

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February 9, 2024

Christmas in Europe: A Tour of Cambridge, England

By Clarke Morledge

My wife and I were able to tack on a few extra days, after our Christmas stay in Belgium, to go and visit friends staying in Cambridge, England.

Jon Thompson, the director of the Cambridge House at the College of William and Mary, had taken his family back to Cambridge, where he had previously studied philosophy, before eventually coming to Williamsburg, Virginia. A wide-ranging group of believers in Williamsburg had prayed for several years for the founding of a Christian Study Center at William and Mary, so it has been wonderful to see how God brought Jon Thompson and his family to Williamsburg less than two years ago, to oversee the work at the Cambridge House.

Our Christmas in Europe made it possible to meet up with Jon and his family in his old “stomping grounds” in Cambridge, England. Sickness made traveling quite difficult for us, but Jon was able to take me on a tour of the university town of Cambridge one afternoon.

Jon Thompson, director of the Cambridge House, at the College of William and Mary, took me on tour of the namesake for the Cambridge House, the university town of Cambridge, England, in January, 2024. We are standing in front of the residence the Thompsons’ had while in Cambridge for a few weeks.

 

Part of Jon’s interest in coming to Williamsburg to serve as the director of the Cambridge House at the College of William and Mary stems from his experience as an intern at the Round Church, a medieval church building in the very center of Cambridge, which now serves as a Christian Study Center for the academic community of Cambridge. This was also where we began our tour of the town of Cambridge, England.

William and Mary Cambridge House director, Jon Thompson, in front of the Round Church, now a Christian Study Center, in Cambridge, England.

 

Cambridge, England is an interesting college town, as it is actually a network of loosely affiliated colleges, all part of the Cambridge academic community. The famous Christian apologist and Oxford scholar, C.S. Lewis, spent the last nine years of his life as the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English for Magdalene College, one of the many colleges that are part of Cambridge. Our official tour guide for a “Christian Heritage” tour of Cambridge, was a wonderful young lady who told us about Lewis’ teaching career at Magdalene, as we gazed across the river Cam, looking at the Bridge that crosses the river, hence the name of the city: “Cam-Bridge.”

 

Visitors to Cambridge often will go “punting” along the River Cam to view colleges that dot its shoreline. However, the river was running quite high while we were in Cambridge, and the cold weather discouraged us from any “punting” experience.

 

The neat thing about this “Christian Heritage” tour is that we got the opportunity to visit inside some of the various colleges, where several of the colleges typically charge separate fees to visit. Some of greatest names in church history are tied to the Cambridge community, not just C.S. Lewis. For example, William Wilberforce, the 19th century evangelical Christian leader and outspoken advocate for getting rid of the British slave trade, attended St. John’s College. We were able to walk the grounds of St. John’s College and even take a few minutes to visit inside of the beautiful Chapel at St. John’s:

The courtyard of St. John’s College in Cambridge, England. Several Christian leaders in the early 19th century attended college at St. John’s, including William Wilberforce.

 

St. John’s Chapel at St. John’s College, in Cambridge, England.

 

We even had the opportunity poke our heads in and glance at the Cavendish Laboratory, led in its early years by James Clerk Maxwell, a leading Scottish scientist of the late 19th century and devout evangelical Christian, whose meditation on the doctrine of the Trinity helped to inspired him to develop his field theory of electricity and magnetism.  His work on “Maxwell’s equations” directly influenced Albert Einstein to develop his theories of relativity. Einstein described Maxwell’s work as the “most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.” It was at Cavendish Laboratory that the existence of the electron was first discovered:

Entrance to the Cavendish Laboratory, historically one of premier physics labs in the world.

 

What a treat it was walk along the same streets that some of the greatest names in intellectual history have walked: from Isaac Newton to William Wilberforce to James Clerk Maxwell to Clives Staples Lewis.

I will have more photos from our Christmas in Europe trip in future Veracity blog posts.

Emmanuel College, in Cambridge, England. The school was founded by Puritans, with one of its pupils being Thomas Harvard, who would later travel to New England and establish the first English-speaking college in the Americas, which still bears his name.

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