There was a buzz when I started to study for my degree in Birmingham University’s Theology department, writes Gavin D’Costa. The notorious The Myth of God Incarnate had been published in 1977, and my Christian Union friends called its editor, Professor John Hick, the “arch heretic”.

They suggested we employ Ulysses’ trick: wax in the ears during lectures. John, who had begun as an evangelical, was developing a call to abandon Christian parochialism to positively embrace the truth of the best of the world religions.
I was rather tense in my first lecture. Should I drink holy water to protect myself? I was also excited. I’d never met a heretic.