We're delighted to be hosting a special summer term of Keene Lectures at the Cathedral this year with an exciting line-up of guest speakers.
This year we have a series of five lectures in the summer term, where we have asked theologians and university lecturers to talk about a subject of their choice, something that they feel passionate about.
From his prison cell in 1944, shortly before his execution, Dietrich Bonhoeffer penned the famous words to his friend Eberhard Bethge that ‘only a suffering God can help’. How are we to make sense of this? And how can a suffering God help? Suffering is often seen as the ‘stumbling block’ for the belief in the existence of God, let alone a good God. This talk attempts to address some of these pastoral questions and will argue, following Bonhoeffer, that only the suffering God can provide answers and assurance.
Revd Dr Matthias Grebe is Centre Lead for St Mellitus College, Chelmsford and Lecturer and Tutor at St Mellitus College, London. Prior to this, Matthias held a senior research fellowship at the University of Bonn, Germany, where he worked on a project on theodicy and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Matthias undertook doctoral work on Karl Barth under the supervision of Prof. David Ford at the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge. His revised PhD thesis is published under Election, Atonement, and the Holy Spirit (2014).