The Veritas Forum at Hope College
January 8-11, 2009
What is Veritas?
The Veritas Forum at Hope seeks to explore the possibility of truth, beauty and goodness in every aspect of our academic and personal lives. The forum is an opportunity for the entire university community to explore and discuss life's hardest questions together. By asking the pressing questions on campus and answering them with respected university voices, we hope to engage the entire university in fruitful discussion.
We, the planners of the forum, are inspired by the idea that Jesus Christ has something relevant to offer our modern university in its search for knowledge, truth and significance. We welcome and honor skeptics and their questions, and even bring some of our own. The Forum is not meant to be a typical academic exchange of abstract and unembodied ideas. Rather, it should come out of real community earnestly exploring questions of real importance.
We have invited presenters who have wrestled with our questions to challenge us, connect disconnected ideas, and put forth their answers and objections in light of our beliefs and doubts. We believe the events will draw participants into real conversations, questions, discussions, stories, and friendships.
The forum is sponsored by a collection of campus bodies and created by a group of students, professors, chaplains, local community members and alumni.
The 2009 Hope College Veritas Forum Mission Statement
The Body: Implications of the Incarnation
The human body is the site of controversy surrounding the moral and social issues of hunger, sexuality, art, torture, and human enhancement. Remarkably, among the decisive truths of the Christian faith, none is more provocative than that God became a human being without ceasing to be God. The Son of God took on human flesh, experiencing birth, hunger, joy, temptation, friendship, anger, pain, and even death. Yet, this pivotal event in history seldom strikes us with its full force. What does it mean that God became flesh and lived among us, and does this fact have anything to do with how we view our own bodies, the bodies of others, creation, culture, and a life of justice? Likewise, how does Jesus Christ's assumption of humanity affect our thinking about efforts to improve or modify the body by scientific means? What implications does God's own embodiment carry for artistic creation and perception? These and other crucial questions raised by Jesus' humanity will provide the themes of the 2009 Hope College Veritas Forum. We invite you to come and share with us as together we think deeply about the full implications of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.
