Category: Conferences

St Paul’s Theological Centre Annual Lecture

Professor Jeremy Begbie The Emotional Power of Music in Worship: Have We Anything to Fear?

14th June 2007, 7.30pm at Holy Trinity Brompton, London

Jeremy Begbie is Honorary Professor of Theology at the University of St Andrews and Associate Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge. Jeremy is a professionally trained musician and one of his passions is the renewal of music in worship. He is the author of many books including ‘Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts’ (T & T Clark). The lecture will include a performance at the piano, recorded music and worship. Entry is free.

Communicating Bible to Babel
– Exploring and shaping the debate on Christian language and communication in the public square

Liverpool Hope University Friday 28 – Saturday 29 September 2007

For a long time religious discourse has had limited access and impact in politics. In the UK, it is generally acknowledged that Christian political discourse has not been effective in speaking truth with grace in our contemporary mediascape. However, given the growing number of challenges to secularism, it is clear that God is very much back on the political agenda. In this new context, it is important to explore the themes and issues that define language and communication of a Christian worldview in the public square.

Following Bible Society Discourse Process events at political party conferences and a Parliamentary symposium, the colloquium will provide for a more detailed theological and philosophical exploration. With an interdisciplinary approach, it will offer a forum to
facilitate discussion about the development of Christian political discourse.

Bishop of Liverpool, Rt Revd James Jones
Dr Jolyon Mitchell, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh
Nick Spencer, Theos – the public theology think tank
Professor John Sullivan, Centre for Christian Education

Building on themes and issues raised in the earlier events, the colloquium facilitates a more sophisticated theological and philosophical exploration of the language and communication of Christians in the public square. On the basis of what we understand and experience about the challenges and opportunities for ‘Doing God’ in contemporary political discourse, this event develops thinking about the necessary connections between worldview and discourse in public theology.

The Career and Prospects of Providence in Modern Theology

An international conference 7-9 January 2008 King’s College, University of Aberdeen

Sarah Coakley
David Bentley Hart
Nicholas J. Healey
Alister E. McGrath
Charles Mathewes
Francesca Murphy
Cyril O’Regan
Katherine Sonderegger
John Webster
Philip G. Ziegler
and others

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.

‘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’

‘Eschatologies migrate into secularized forms’? Now that is an interesting remark. I wonder who could say more on this subject?

– and thanks to Andy Goodliff, always first with the news

THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW AND THE ACADEMY

A conference sponsored by the Aquinas Institute, Athletes in Action, the Baptist Student Fellowship, Christian Leadership Ministries, Manna Christian Fellowship, Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, Princeton Faith and Action, and the Witherspoon Institute.
Princeton, New Jersey November 9-11, 2007

Contrary to the perception of certain intellectual circles, no oil-and-water dynamic need exist between academic excellence and Christian faith. History instructs us in this, as so much of the Western intellectual inheritance rests on the work of great Christian figures like Augustine, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Erasmus, John Calvin, and Jonathan Witherspoon. And yet, Christian students today are told via explicit arguments and subtle denigration that their positions on many issues lack rational foundations. Not only are Christian beliefs and practices under attack, but moral norms of sexual ethics and human dignity are increasingly challenged or even dismissed. The Christian Worldview conference will bring together thinkers from both inside and outside the academy to address several issues:

1. The nature of Christian truth and how we can know it.
1. Secularism and the Challenges of Faith
2. The Authenticity and Historicity of Scripture

2. The relationship between, and compatibility of, Christianity and science.
1. The rejection of scientific materialism as a philosophy
2. The nature of the universe as a designed system

3. The Christian and the Polis: where and how Christian and natural law principles influence public policy, with subsections on:
1. Bioethics
2. Sex and Marriage

The proposed topics of the Christian Worldview conference reflect the worries that students regularly confide to their priests and pastors, as these clergy have related to the Witherspoon Institute. Far from being a pep talk, however, the conference aims instead to explore how orthodox Christianity shapes one’s approach to scholarship and to engagement with the secular and academic worlds.

Amongst the stars are Robert P. George and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.

I know what the Witherspoon Institute is, and am impressed. I have even discovered The Institute on Religion and Democracy. Am I becoming a theocon? Stop me someone.

Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius

Fellowship Conference 2007: Scripture in the Church

13 – 17 August 2007 All Saints Pastoral Centre, London Colney (near St Albans), England

Benedict XVI and the Sacred Liturgy

The Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus, Ohio 20-23 September 2007

St Andrew’s Institute for Theology, Imagination & the Arts is holding a conference on

THE OFFENCE OF BEAUTY –
What can a theological perspective on beauty offer to the arts today?
3-5 September, 2007

Speakers include:

Bernard Beatty (Liverpool)
Professor Jeremy Begbie (St Andrews)
Dr Carol Harrison (Durham)
Professor Trevor Hart (St Andrews)
Professor Robert Jenson (Princeton)
Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale)

The colloquium takes place at a time of considerable and growing interest in the intersections of theology, beauty and the arts. Its particular concern is with the concept of beauty, and what a Christian theological perspective on beauty might have to offer to the arts today.

In recent decades, among those who practise, think and write about the arts, the notion of beauty has often come under deep suspicion. For many who have not dismissed it as irrelevant, it has even become a matter of offence.

For some, beauty is an offence against truth, a lie in the midst of a world that is so obviously not beautiful. The quest for beauty in the arts is the quest for an illusory consolation, signalling a primal human urge for order in a world we cannot bear to admit is destined for futility.

The pursuit of beauty has also been seen as an offence against goodness. In the hands of the comfortable and powerful, the love of beauty – in the arts as much as anywhere else – is a luxury that can easily muffle the howl of those who know little or no beauty, distracting us from our obligations to those in need. Or, from the other side, beauty dulls the oppressed to the injustice of their predicament.

Beauty is also distrusted insofar as it is assumed to ‘harmonise away’ the evilness of evil. In particular, there has been a distrust of theories of beauty in which the notions of balance, symmetry and equivalence predominate, where evil’s irrational, intrusive quality is suppressed, where it is subsumed into a harmonious metaphysics of necessity and seen as part of the necessary balance of things. Art, it is said, must never collude with such schemes.

Undoubtedly, the Church and Christian theologians have been as responsible as any others for generating and encouraging these suspicions. The question arises, however: can there be a theological perspective on beauty that takes these suspicions seriously, while at the same time refusing to set aside the notion of beauty altogether? More particularly: in what ways can attending to the triune God of Jesus Christ, and this God’s gracious, reconciling, self-revealing activity in and for the world, inform and transform our conceptions of beauty? In this light, are there ways in which it might be quite legitimate to speak of the ‘offence’ of beauty – especially in relation to the ‘scandal’ at the heart of the Christian faith, the vindication of the crucified Jesus? And – the focused concern of this colloquium – what might such theological construals of beauty imply about the way we practise, interpret and enjoy the arts in the twenty-first century?

The person of Christ

The Twelfth Edinburgh Conference in Christian Dogmatics

Monday 27th to Thursday 30 August 2007

Speakers include:

John Webster
Richard Bauckham
Henri Blocher
Bruce McCormack
Stephen Holmes

– all the greats

Rutherford House holds these conferences every other year. They are small, which means there is a good chance of some real discussion, and they are Scottish, which is nice.

But we need a nationwide forum for some real Christian dogmatics in the UK. So Rutherford House might think of widening participation and making this an annual conference. I wonder whether there should be a national organisation, perhaps with the words ‘evangelical’ and ‘theology’ in its title. On second thoughts, let’s stick with the word ‘Dogmatics’ – it is better than ‘evangelical’.

Professor Paul Bradshaw has very kindly offered to host a new series of three Deep Church ecclesiology seminars. These will continue to explore the resources of the whole Christian tradition for contemporary church worship and life

Friday 16 February, Friday 30 March, and Friday 11 May, 3-5pm
at Notre Dame’s London Centre

16 February Alan Brown – ‘Orthodox and Evangelical?’
Alan is on the management team of the Cambridge Orthodox Institute. He is author of ‘The Intellectual Debate between Pagans and Christians in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries’ (Cambridge Histories) and is presently writing on the relationship between Christian theology and Christian spirituality.

30 March Bernd Wannenwetsch – ‘Worship as public and political act’
Bernd is lecturer in Christian ethics at Harris Manchester College Oxford, and is author of ‘Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens’ and ‘Liturgy as Politics – Politics as Liturgy’.

11 May David Hilborn – ‘Why should evangelicals be Anglican?’
David is Director of Studies and acting Principal of the North Thames Ministerial Training Course. Previously he was the Evangelical Alliance’s Theologian, convenor of the Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals, and editor of ‘Evangelicalism and the Orthodox Church’.

These seminars are open to anyone in Christian ministry or theological study in London.
If you would like to come to any one of these please email using the address in ‘About Us’

The Book of the Series –
We hope to launch ‘Remembering our Future: Explorations in Deep Church’, edited by Luke Bretherton and Andrew Walker, the collected papers from the last Deep Church series, at one of these seminars.

Fulcrum Conference Islington London
Friday 27 April 2007, 2:00pm to 9:00pm

Being Disciples

Conference Speakers:

Dr Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury

Dr Elaine Storkey
Senior Research Fellow, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, Chair of Fulcrum and President of Tearfund

I wonder who gave them that title? Disciples and discipleship is just what is required when attempting a little Christian theology in London