Senior Professor Michael Welker gave the second of his six Gifford Lectures earlier this evening. The video of Welker’s lecture is embedded below (followed by a short summary) for those who were unable to attend in person, or for those who’d like to watch it again. An audio only version can be found at the end of this post. In order to further facilitate discussion Dr Clement Wen will offer his initial reflections on the lecture. Wen currently serves as Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at China Evangelical Seminary in Taiwan and holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from the University of Edinburgh. We’d like to reiterate that we warmly welcome anyone wishing to engage with Welker’s lectures to contribute their comments and questions below.
The topic of Welker’s second lecture was the human spirit and the divine Spirit. At the outset he outlined the path that this lecture would take. First, he stated that he would “unfold a natural theology of the divine Spirit by means of a contemporary example” before, second, moving on to discuss the human spirit and the divine Spirit as “multimodal powers.” Thirdly, he stated he would discuss “observations on early-childhood mental development” in order to demonstrate the complexity and richness of the human spirit. Fourthly and finally he mentioned that he would engage Hegel’s “natural theology of the human spirit and of the divine Spirit” since the early Hegel helpfully “developed a theological and moral concept of these spirits that ultimately focuses on freedom and justice” in a multimodal manner.
