Dr. D. Stephen Long, professor of Systematic Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, will present “Why Jesus is Not Ethical” for the Thirty-first Annual C.S. Lewis Lecture on Thursday, April 11, 7:30 p.m. in the UTC University Center Auditorium.
This event is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, UTC, and Covenant College.
Long majored in chemistry at Taylor University where he considered medical school. “His transition as a student from the hard sciences to theology…emerged from detours in his life that took him to Haiti and Honduras, both of which raised questions for him that continue to haunt and shape his work.”
He is an ordained United Methodist and served churches in Honduras and North Carolina.
Long says he “was baptized by the Anabaptists, educated by the evangelicals, ordained and pastorally formed by the Methodists and given his first position as professor of theology by the Jesuits, which makes him either ecumenically inclined or theologically confused.”
He has published 11 books, Living the Discipline: United Methodist Theological Reflections on War, Civilization, and Holiness (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmanns, 1992); Tragedy, Tradition, Transformism: The Ethics of Paul Ramsey (Boulder, Oxford: Westview Press, 1993); Divine Economy: Theology and the Market (London and New York, Routledge, 2000); The Goodness of God: Theology, Church and Social Order (Brazos Press, 2001); John Wesley’s Moral Theology: The Quest for God and Goodness (Kingswood, 2005); Calculated Futures (Baylor, 2007), Theology and Culture (Cascade, 2007); Keeping Faith: An Ecumenical Commentary on the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith in the Wesleyan Traditions (Cascade, 2012); Hebrews: Belief, A Theological Commentary on the Bible (WJKP, 2011); Christian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2010); and Speaking of God: Theology, Language and Truth (Eerdmans, 2009).
The C. S. Lewis Lectureship was established in Chattanooga in 1983 by Charles Hummel of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to perpetuate the Christian and literary legacy of Clive Staples Lewis.
An Oxford intellectual who as an adult professed faith in Jesus Christ, Lewis had a superb gift for communicating Christianity to the modern world. His writings range from literary criticism and theology to science fiction, poetry, and children’s literature.
