7 reasons to sign up to Calvin@500 today

Moore College is holding its very own School of Theology in honour of John Calvin's 500th birthday. Why should you fork out the funds and book out the time?

1. Oliver Crisp. Oliver is one of the most interesting and prolific of a younger breed of evangelical theologians currently working in the UK. He has published on Jonathan Edwards and other figures in the Calvinian tradition.

2. Paul Helm. Paul Helm is already the author of a very, very good book on Calvin: John Calvin's Ideas. His intellect is formidible - his mastery of concepts extraordinary. Worth the price of admission!

3. Ashley Null. Ashley's expertise is in Tudor Anglicanism, and especially in the thought of Thomas Cranmer. One of the most exciting features of the conference (for me anyhow!) will be tracing the influence (or not) of Calvin on the faith that became Anglicanism.

4. Assessing the New Calvinists. Time magazine called 'the New Calvinism' one of the top ten ideas changing the world right now. Have the New Calvinists - much beloved of a younger generation of Christians world-over - got their hero right?

5. Calvin in Australia. Two papers, by Peter Jensen and Colin Bale, will assess Calvin's often unconsidered place in Australian history generally and in Australian church history especially.

6. Calvin as a theologian of the Holy Spirit. David Hohne's paper promises to lift the lid on Calvin's pneumatology! Calvin the charismatic?

7. Purchase the book of the conference AT the conference. The papers will be available in a hot-off-the-press volume entitled 'Engaging Calvin' (pub. IVP) at the conference.

Jesus is the question to all our answers

Moore College students have been hard at it this week, coming out of their classrooms and into the community to talk to people about the Lord Jesus Christ.

You might have noticed the mission-related posts from the student bloggers on my blogroll...such as this one, this funny one, this one, this one (from the team I am with), and this one. Oh, and this one.

Actually it was at Dan's blog that I heard the story of the student who accidentally said to a classroom of teenagers 'Jesus the problem to all our solutions!'

The more I think about it, the more I think this is a piece of accidental genius. It is a far better and I reckon far more biblical way to preach the gospel I think! Jesus is the question to all our answers! What do you think?

Shapers of Contemporary Protestant Theology

Introducing - an important course offered to fourth year students at Moore College!

Shapers of Contemporary Protestant Theology is a reading and seminar style course which seeks to give the student an orientation to current themes and debates in theological thinking. This is in part at least to help the student conduct some self-analysis about their own theological thinking, its context and the influences on them. To do this, we will be narrating the story of Protestant theology in the last two centuries with special reference to four main thinkers: Schleiermacher, Newman, Warfield and Barth. Each of these thinkers is both an individual of immense and original influence on theological thinking, and also representative of (roughly speaking) 'schools' of theological thought within Protestantism. What is also of significance is that each of these thinkers is trying to do Christian theology in a faithful way in response to the modern world of the industrial revolution, the rise of the nation state, the Darwinian revolution in science, the politics of tolerance and charity and the inevitable progress of human culture.

Schleiermacher is of course the representative of the turn to 'feeling' and experience over and against the rationalism of Kant; Newman (who of course ended up as a Roman Catholic, but whose influence on Protestant/Anglican thinking is ongoing) turns to the church and tradition; Warfield is the orthodox Calvinist, and an American as well; and Barth represents the single most impressive attempt to reposition Protestant orthodoxy within modernity.

We see some themes beginning to emerge even from the planting of these four stakes in the ground. What is the place of academic theology vis a vis the church? What role can scripture plausibly have in modern theology after the fact of the rise of biblical criticism? What can theology say about politics in the modern world? What is the response of theology to the rise of science?

Here is the reading list:


Schleiermacher, F.
The Christian Faith. 1821. Repr. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999, 52–93; 11–19.

Newman, J.H.
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, 93-178

Warfield, B. B.
‘The Church Doctrine of Inspiration’. The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948. 105–165

Barth, K.
Church Dogmatics, I/1. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956, 125-186.

Church Dogmatics, II/2, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956,145–194.

Moltmann, J.

Theology of Hope. London: SCM, 1967, 15–36.

Pannenberg, W.
from Revelation as History. London: Sheed and Ward, 1969, 123–158.

Gunton, C.E.

Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, London: T&T Clark, 2003, 3-18


Torrance, T.F.
"Theological Realism." The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 169-96.

Wiles, M.
Working Papers in Doctrine, London:SCM, 1976, 1-17; 180-193

Packer, J.I.
“Hermeneutics and Biblical Authority,” Themelios 1.1 (Autumn 1975): 3-12.

Frei, H.
Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, Hunsinger & Placher eds., New York: OUP, 1993, 94-116.

Lindbeck, G.
The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Lousville: Westminster John Knox, 1984), 73–90

Williams, R.
‘On the Unity of Christian Truth’ in On Christian Doctrine, Oxford: Blackwells, 16-28

Milbank, J.
‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’, in G.Ward (ed), The Postmodern God, Oxford: Blackwells,1997, 265-78

Horton, M.
Covenant and Eschatology: Divine Drama, Louisville: John Knox, 2007, 1-19

Vanhoozer, K.J.
The Drama of Doctrine, 1-30

Knox, D.B.
Selected Works, Vol 1, Kingsford: Matthias Media, 37-50, 73-95


Robinson, D.W.B.
Selected Works:Vol 1, Camperdown: ACR, 230-53

(about 550 pages in total)

Everard Digges La Touche

My predecessor as a lecturer at Moore College, Everard Digges La Touche, Church of Ireland clergyman and author of a brilliant work of Christology, saw WWI as a holy war against German liberal Protestantism. He joined up to fight against it...

The report of his service is here. I quote an excerpt from it:

"At the outbreak of war in 1914, he tried first to join as a chaplain, then in the ranks of the 2nd. Battalion, Australian Inf. In November 1914, he was rejected because of his severe varicose veins, so he immediately went away and had an operation. This meant that he was too late to join the 2nd. Battalion, but as soon as he was well he joined the 13th and rose to Sergeant. You might wonder why this clergyman, who was not in A1 physical condition, and with the responsibility of his wife, Eve, and two young sons, was prepared to go off and fight, but one of his men summed him up, saying "he convinced us of the righteousness of our cause and likened this present struggle for liberty to a Holy Crusade, so when we finally sang "Onward Christian Soldiers", we meant it".

He was commissioned as a 2nd. Lt. in the 2nd. Battalion when an officer was needed to take reinforcements from Alexandria to Gallipoli, for the August attack. On the morning of the 6th, August 1915, he landed his men at Anzac Cove. As a Reinforcement Officer he could then have chosen to go back to Alexandria, but the official historian says that he begged leave to join the attack at Lone Pine. At 5.30, he went over the parapet with the first rush, only to fall, mortally wounded within a few seconds. He managed to roll down the slope of the spur and crawl back into the Australian lines, dying "among his own people" as Charles Bean the Australian war historian described it.”

They don't make 'em like they used to!