10/22/2026
What If It Were True? Faith, Belief, and Friendship
It’s not uncommon in the academic world to wrestle with competing claims about truth and fundamentally different ways of understanding the world. We debate the best political systems for human flourishing, examine the original intentions of historical documents, and grapple with vastly differing philosophical worldviews. But what about the claims of Christianity? Do we view these claims as just another subject for academic study, or as claims about ultimate reality that, if true, must dramatically alter the way we live and what we believe?
Kavin Rowe, Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, challenges us to reckon with the New Testament as more than a historical document to be analyzed. Instead, he invites us to confront two much bigger questions and consider our own answers: What if this is actually true? If this is actually true, what does that mean about how I live?
But if we take the New Testament's claims about truth seriously, what happens when we encounter people whose convictions are fundamentally different from our own? For example, Rowe argues that Christianity and ancient Stoicism hold such different views of God and humanity that there isn’t a shared, neutral standard by which to evaluate their competing claims. If this is true, can any meaningful dialogue take place? Rowe suggests that even if we can never agree with or fully understand those who hold a competing worldview, we can still cultivate friendships with them. And, in fact, genuine friendship is a great good in and of itself.
Join us for this meeting of Theological Society as we explore what it means to take the New Testament’s truth claims seriously, how those claims transform our study of Scripture and our lives, and how we can cultivate friendships with those who hold very different understandings of ultimate truth.
