Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life.
He studied at the Royal School Armagh, Northern Ireland and was Exhibitioner and Senior Scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University from which he took his MA, MMath and PhD. He worked for many years in the Mathematics Institute at the University of Wales in Cardiff which awarded him a DSc for his research. He also holds an MA and DPhil from Oxford University (by incorporation) and an MA in Bioethics from the University of Surrey. He was a Senior Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow at the Universities of Würzburg and Freiburg in Germany. In addition to over seventy published mathematical papers, he is the co–author of two research-level texts in algebra in the Oxford Mathematical Monographs series.
We have three children scattered around the UK and ten grandchildren. Sally and I grew up in Christian homes and put our faith in Christ for salvation at an early age and he has been the key to our personal, married and family life. In my teenage years I came to a strong conviction that the Christian message was true and I felt increasingly called to be an ambassador for it. I saw two related ways to do this. The first was to get to know Scripture and learn how to explain it, so that people could grasp its relevance to their lives. The second was first to learn myself and then teach others how to defend the Gospel both privately and publicly in a world that misunderstood, misrepresented and sometimes downright persecuted it.
The most important event in history is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ – “the Word became flesh” and the most important message for the world is that: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
I have been immensely privileged for most of my life to have been able to be an ambassador for this message in an academic context taking it to many countries in the world, often engaging in public discussion with atheists and agnostics in the hope of showing people that Christianity is intellectually and morally credible and is the only world view that makes sense of reality as we experience it. I have constantly stressed that it is important to listen to what Christianity has to say before turning away from it. That often happens because people are told that science has left no room for God. As a scientist I completely disagree, as science properly understood strongly supports the existence of God and have written a number of books showing why.
I have also written a number of books on the biblical text itself because I see a great need for a much deeper understanding of God’s word on the part of those who are going to stand strong as witnesses in increasingly hostile cultures around the world today – both relativistic and totalitarian.
Advanced AI technology is facing us more and more with the question: what does it mean to be human? I have written a book, 2084 – AI and the Future of Humanity to help people of any worldview to navigate their way through these issues.
It is an honour for me to act as President of OCCA The Oxford Centre of Christian Apologetics and to work with team of young, bright, enthusiastic and deeply committed Christian apologists. It is also an honour to be a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Lanier Theological Library at Yarnton Manor, Oxford and to be able to interact with the scholars there.
Four-word Bio - John Lennox
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