Volume 22, Issue 3, October 2009

JOHN CALVIN: 1509-1564

IN JULY 2009 the Uniting Church of Australia Centre for Theology and Ministry, Parkville, Victoria, held a week-long Seminar in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. The distinguished Calvin scholar, Elsie McKee, Archibald Alexander Professor of Reformation Studies and the History of Worship at Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, delivered the Northey Lecture in the course of the seminar. Pacifica is delighted to publish Professor McKee’s lecture in this issue of the journal, along with articles derived from two other lectures given in the course of the conference, both dedicated, in a complementary way, to Calvin’s treatment of the Psalms: Dr Gregory Goswell explores Jewish influences behind the Reformer’s exegesis and Professor Howard Wallace indicates the light the Preface sheds upon the hermeneutic that is operative in Calvin’s commentary on Psalms. A review article of Professor McKee’s recent translation of the French version of Calvin’s Institutes (1541) by Emeritus Professor Ian Breward completes the contributions that render the major part of this issue a commemoration of the great Reformer. As an ecumenical journal within an ecumenical age, Pacifica is pleased in this way to honour the memory of so significant a figure within the wider Christian tradition.


Editorial

Centenary Celebrations

Brendan Byrne, pp.249-250

Articles

Calvin’s Sermons: Treasure and Surprise

Elsie McKee, pp.251-277

Calvin’s Commentary on the Psalter: Christian or Jewish?

Gregory Goswell, pp.278-300

Calvin on Psalms: Reading his Hermeneutic from the Preface to his Commentary

Howard Wallace, pp.301-307

Patristics and the Postmodern in the Theology of John Zizioulas

Duncan Reid, pp.308-316

Christian Discipleship and Interfaith Engagement

Douglas Pratt, pp.317-333

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition (translated and introduced by Elsie McKee)

Ian Breward, pp.334-339

Ted Kennedy: Priest of Redfern

John Honner, pp.340-347

Book Reviews

The New Testament with Imagination: A Fresh Approach to its Writing and Theme

William Loader
Rod Doyle pp.348-349

A Costly Freedom: A Theological Reading of Mark’s Gospel

Brendan Byrne
Mark Trainor pp.350-351

The Eyes of Faith: The Sense of the Faithful and the Church’s Reception of Revelation

Ormond Rush
Richard Lennan pp.352-353

Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire

Mark Brett
Anne Elvey pp.353-356

Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations

Anthony Ruff
Deirdre Browne pp.356-358

Free Will, Predestination and Determinism

John Cowburn
Andrew Murray pp.358-360

Symposia: Dialogues Concerning the History of Biblical Interpretation

Roland Boer
Mark O'Brien pp.360-362

Converging Ways? Conversion and Belonging in Buddhism and Christianity

John D'Arcy May
Pyong-Gwan Pak pp.362-364

The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: Trinity, Christology, and Liturgical Theology

Bryan D. Spinks (ed.)
Gerard Moore pp.364-365


Contributors

ELSIE A. MCKEE, an ordained Presbyterian elder, is the Archibald Alexander Professor of Reformation Studies and the History of Worship at Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ. She earned a PhD at Princeton and a Diploma in Theology from Cambridge University, UK. Her historical studies have specialised in the history of the Reformation at Geneva and Strasbourg, with a particular recent focus upon the sermons of John Calvin. She has also written a biography of the reformer Katharina Schütz Zell (Brill: 1999). Most recently she has edited and translated the 1541 French edition of Calvin’s Institutes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). In association with the 500th centenary of Calvin’s Birth, in August 2009 she was the J. B. Northey Lecturer at the Uniting Church Centre for Theology and Ministry, Parkville, Australia.

GREGORY GOSWELL (PhD Sydney, 2002) has been since 2001 Lecturer in Biblical Studies (Old Testament and Hebrew) at the Presbyterian Theological College, Box Hill North, Victoria, where he is currently Academic Dean. He is assistant editor of the Reformed Theological Review, and has contributed studies to a number of journals and collections on the Old Testament and its contemporary interpretation.

HOWARD WALLACE (PhD Harvard) has been Professor of Old Testament at the Uniting Church Theological College, within the United Faculty of Theology, Parkville, Australia, since 1994. Besides introductory courses he specialises in the teaching of Genesis, Psalms and the Prophetic Literature. Himself a calligrapher, he has a particular interest in Art and the Bible, especially the portrayal of the Old Testament in Australian art. His most recent publication is Psalms (Readings: A New Biblical Commentary; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009).

DUNCAN REID completed a doctorate at Tübingen, Germany, in 1992, with a thesis subsequently published as Energies of the Spirit: Trinitarian Models in Eastern Orthodox and Western Theology (Atlanta GA: Scholars Press, 1997). He was involved in theological education for 15 years, being Head of the School of Theology at Flinders University, Adelaide (1999-2001) and Dean of the United Faculty of Theology Melbourne (2002-2005). An Honorary Research Associate of the Melbourne College of Divinity and a member of the International Anglican-Orthodox Commission for Theological Dialogue, he is currently priest-in-charge at St George's Anglican Church, Flemington, Melbourne.

DOUGLAS PRATT (PhD, St Andrews; DTheol, MCD) is Associate Professor and Convenor of the Religious Studies programme at the University of Waikato, NZ. He is the New Zealand Associate of the Monash-based UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations – Asia Pacific and an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow of the School of Social and Political Inquiry at Monash University. His research interests include religious pluralism; fundamentalism and extremism; Islam and Christian-Muslim relations; interreligious dialogue and related issues. From January to May 2010 he will take up a Fulbright Visiting Scholarship in the Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University, Washington DC.