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Johm Owen Today Conference announes paper titles

There are several updates to the John Owen Today conference blog - main paper titles, short paper titles and conference promotions.

Sarum Lectures 2008: Rethinking Christianity

This year's speaker is Professor Keith Ward, formerly Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford.

Science and Christian Belief: Are modern science and Christianity in conflict?
Tuesday 6 May

Christianity among the Religions: Is Christianity the only true religion?
Thursday 8 May

Faith and Reason: Is Christianity rationally defensible?
Tuesday 13 May

Faith and Morals: Is Christianity immoral?
Thursday 15 May

For more see here.

Early this year, Keith Ward also gave the 2008 Hensley Henson Lectures, Oxford.

David Fergusson's Gifford Lectures

One of the great things there must be about studying theology in Scotland, is the opportunity to hear the Gifford Lectures. The Gifford Lectures are one of the most prestigious around the world. This year its the opportunity of David Fergusson at the university of Glasgow.

David Fergusson, Professor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, will present the Gifford Lecture Series 2008.

Founded in 1887 by the bequest of Lord Gifford, the annual Gifford Lecture Series was established to promote, advance and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of that term. The focus of this series will be 'Religion and its Critics.'

The appearance of a steady stream of recent writings critical of religion has been heralded as ‘the new atheism’. Its leading exponents include Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Michel Onfray, Anthony Grayling, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Unlike earlier forms of scepticism, religion is no longer regarded as a harmless and quaint life-style choice lacking in social significance. Instead, it is seen as unscientific, irrational, dangerous and requiring more robust public criticism. These lectures will attempt to set this new movement in context before offering some analysis of its standard claims and arguments. As an exercise in natural theology, the lectures will outline ways of variously conceding, accommodating and countering criticism.

Formerly a parish minister of the Church of Scotland, Professor Fergusson's research interests include issues in Christian doctrine, theological ethics and the history of Reformed theology, especially in its Scottish context. His publications include Scottish Philosophical Theology (2007), Church, State and Civil Society (2004) and John Macmurray: Critical Perspectives (2002)

The lecture topics will be as follows:

April 8th - The new atheism: historical roots and contemporary context.
April 10th - The implausibility of religious belief: claims and counter-claims.
April 15th - The genesis of religion: can Darwinism explain it away?
April 16th - Religion, morality and art: invention or discovery.
April 22nd - Is religion bad for our health? Saints, martyrs and terrorists.
April 24th - Sacred texts: how should we treat them?

More on Bible and Justice Conference

The 2008 Conference on the Bible and Justice, Sheffield, 29 May - 1 June, 2008

Keynote Speakers:

Stanley Hauerwas - Justice in the Hebrew Bible
Timothy Gorringe - Idolatry and Redemption: Biblical Perspectives on Economics (1 Kgs. 18-20, Lev. 25)
John Rogerson - The Hebrew Bible and the Environment

A Short Sample of Papers to Be Presented:

Paula Clifford - Fueling Our Carbon Habit: Climate Change and Justice For the Poor
James Crossley - Caesar’s Willing Theologians: "Just War" Theory and the Art of Justifying the Unjustifiable
Matthew Coomber – Globalization Then and Now: A Window Into the Prophetic Message
Philip Davies - Socrates at Sodom
David Horrell - Ecojustice in the Bible? Towards an Ecological Hermeneutic
Walter Houston - “Rule” in a Non-Violent World: Cosmic Utopia and Environmental Justice
Louise Lawrence - The Sound of Silence: Approaching a Deaf Hermeneutic
Mary Mills - The Other City in the Book of Jonah
Leo Perdue - Two Visions, Two Tomorrows, Two Worlds: Neocolonialism and the Fourth Paradigm
Hugh Pyper - Rough Justice: God in an Unjust World
Christopher Rowland - Blake and Justice
Yvonne Sherwood - On the Genesis of the Alliance Between the Bible and Rights
John Vincent - Urban Justice
Gerald West - From a Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) for the Economy to the
RDP of the Soul: Public Realm Biblical Appropriation in Postcolonial South Africa

John Owen Today conference

This coming August Alan Spence and Terry Wright are organising a conference on the theologian John Owen. For more information visit the blog here. Speakers include:

Stephen R Holmes

Michael S Horton

George Hunsinger

Alan Spence

Carl R Trueman

One-Day Conference on Eschatology

King's College London and Spring Harvest are hosting a one-day conference on eschatology. For more details see here.

Bruce McCormack to give the SJT Lectures

The Barthian theologian, Professor Bruce McCormack (Frederick and Margaret L. Weyerhaeusar Professor of Systematic Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary) is giving 4 Scottish Journal of Theology lectures next week at St. Andrews.

The Humility of the Eternal Son:  A Reformed Version of Kenotic Christology

Lecture 1: Immutable in Impassibility: The Role Played by Classical Theism in Creating the Unresolved Problems in Chalcedonian Orthodoxy (Tuesday 4 December)

Lecture 2: Passibility in Mutability: The Failure of the Older Kenoticism  (Wednesday 5 December)

Lecture 3: Immutable in Passibility: The Contribution of Karl Barth (Thursday 6 December)

Lecture 4: The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism, Trinity and Election (Friday 7 December)

The Bible and Justice conference

HT to Sean for the heads up about a conference hosted by the biblical studies department at Sheffield University. Information can be found here. Speakers include Stanley Hauerwas, Tim Gorringe and John Robertson. Topics include human rights, economic justice and environmental justice. What really attracts me, as well as the topic, is an opportunity to hear Stan Hauerwas in the flesh for the first time, a chance not be missed, so I'm going to see about attending.

Doctrine of Providence Theology Conference

‘Deus Habet Consilium’—

An International Conference on the Career and Prospects of Providence in Modern Theology
7-9 January 2008, King's College, University of Aberdeen

This conference aims to break fresh ground in the analysis of divine providence by exploring a range of current proposals concerning its form, significance and viability within contemporary thought.             

The character and interrelation of divine and human agency lies at the contested heart of modern theology. Since the Enlightenment, the classical doctrine of providence has been aggressively criticised within both theology and philosophy.  Following on the cross-fertilization of early-modern eschatologies and the doctrine of providence, the idea of providence did not so much go into decline as migrate into secularized forms.  In light of the divergence of such humanistic approaches from classical theological conceptions of providence, contemporary restatements of the idea require careful consideration: what exactly is to be recovered? A metaphysical account of the doctrine grounded in divine omnipotence? A thoroughly historicized notion of providence? Or, perhaps something altogether different? By inviting scholars to examine the development of the idea of providence within intellectual history, the axial role of providence in modern systematic theologies, and the reformulation of the classical idea of providence after Hegel, we hope to advance the frontiers of investigation of the doctrine of providence at the present juncture.

Sarah Coakley "Providence and the Evolutionary Phenomenon of Cooperation: A systematic proposal"

David Bentley Hart "Providence and Ontological Causality"

Nicholas Healy "Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?  Predestination and providence in Thomas Aquinas and Hans Urs von Balthasar"

Andrew McGowan "Providence and Common Grace: A Reformed perspective"

Alister McGrath "The secularization of providence: Theological reflections on the concept of 'natural selection' in recent atheist apologetics"

Charles Mathewes "Providence and Political Discernment"

Francesca Murphy "The Question of Providence in I Samuel"

Susan Neiman "Providence and the Problem of Evil from Nietzsche to Heidegger"

Cyril O'Regan "Hegelian Theodicy and the Invisibility of Waste"

Hans Reinders "Providence and Ethics"

Katherine Sonderegger "The Pattern of Divine Providence"

John Swinton "Patience and Providence: Living gently in the presence of evil"

Stephen Webb "Providence After Darwin: Historical reflections on evolution and natural evil"

John Webster "Upholding the Universe by his Word of Power: On the theology of providence"

Philip Ziegler "History without Apocalypse: The transformation of providence in pragmatic historicism"

The Triune God in the Theology of Colin E Gunton

Monday 10 September 2007
Spurgeon's College, London

PROGRAMME

Professor Robert W Jenson
Some Choices Made by Colin Gunton

Dr John E Colwell
Provisionality and Promise: Avoiding Ecclesiastical Nestorianism?

Dr Stephen R Holmes
What’s in a Name?  The Concept of ‘Person’ in Gunton, Zizioulas and the Cappadocians

Dr Douglas H Knight
Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Colin Gunton on the Doctrine of God