Dr. John Lennox Interview in September

July 28, 2022

We regret to announce that Dr. Lennox will no longer be joining us in person due to health concerns. This event has been updated to a pre-recorded interview that will stream live on September 8 at 7 p.m. EST. Visit asbury.edu/honors to view online, or join us in the Miller Screening Room to watch the livestream.

This fall, the Asbury University Honors Program (AUHP) welcomes three notable speakers in their Colloquium Speaker Series: Dr. John Lennox, Dr. Rebecca DeYoung, and Pierre Sauvage.

The Colloquium series kicks off at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 8 with a video discussion with Lennox for students, held in the Miller Screening Room. Dr. Paul Nesselroade, director of AUHP and chair of Asbury’s Psychology Department, will interview Lennox from Oxford.

Lennox is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College. He is an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy, and religion, well known for public debates with public intellectuals such as the late Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Singer. In addition to being co-author of two mathematical monographs for Oxford University Press and his mathematical research papers, he has written a series of books exploring the relationship between science, philosophy, and theology including Can Science Explain Everything? (2019); 2084 – Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (2020); and Cosmic Chemistry: Do God and Science Mix? (2021).

“Dr. Lennox is an academic of the highest caliber, and his work on the relationship between Christianity and science is exceptionally important,” Nesselroade said. “Dr. DeYoung’s writings on the classical Christian concepts of virtues and vices help to call us back to aspects of Christian faith that have often been left out of post-reformation formulations. Finally, Pierre Sauvage’s video storytelling of the work of villagers in the French city of Le Chambon to harbor and protect European Jews serves as both a shining example of Christian-inspired courage and moral clarity as well as a stinging indictment on so much of the rest of Christian Europe during the dark days of Nazi occupation.”

Dr. Rebecca DeYoung will continue the dialogue for Honors students at the Lewis House at the University of Kentucky on Tuesday, Sept. 13. DeYoung has taught at Calvin University for more than 20 years. She studies the seven deadly sins and virtue ethics. She recently published a new edition of Glittering Vices and won an essay prize from The Character Project for her analysis of the virtue of courage in “Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life.” She speaks widely, works in prison education, and is exploring philosophy for children.

Pierre Sauvage will finish the fall Colloquium Speaker Series in the Miller Screening Room on Thursday, Oct. 20. Sauvage is an Emmy-winning French/American documentary filmmaker. A child survivor of the Holocaust who only learned that he was Jewish at the age of 18, Sauvage is best known for his 1989 feature documentary Weapons of the Spirit, being reissued in 2022 in a newly remastered edition. That highly acclaimed documentary tells the story of the ‘conspiracy of goodness of a mountain community in France that defied the Nazis and took in and saved thousands of Jews, including Sauvage, who was born there. Described by Tablet Magazine as “a filmmaker of rare moral perception,” Sauvage, also a lecturer and a former film scholar, is the founder and president of the Chambon Foundation. Three other documentaries by Sauvage will be released or re-released in 2022: Not Idly By—Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust, Yiddish: the Mother Tongue, and We Were There: Christians and the Holocaust.

Nesselroade highlights the benefits of Asbury’s Honors Program for both current and future students.

“Being in the Honors Program helps students to see the richness of Christian thought to animate, justify, and clarify so many of the moral arguments of our time,” he said. “This adds a critical layer of relevancy to student experiences. Furthermore, because the Honors Program has students from across the disciplinary landscape, time spent in the program and in the core classes fosters the building of meaningful relationships and collaboration between students across majors.”

To learn more, visit asbury.edu/honors.