2018 Markus Barth Symposium

Name: 2018 Markus Barth Symposium
Start: 2018-09-27
End: 2018-09-27

Markus Barth (1915–1994) is the former professor of New Testament at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, the University of Chicago, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and the University of Basel. He made signal and lasting contributions to Pauline scholarship and New Testament theology more generally, and is well known for his particular interest in the questions surrounding justification, baptism and eucharist, and Christian—Jewish relations. He was also, as Dikran Hadidian once put it, a man who chose ‘through his life and scholarship, spoken and written, to break down walls and barriers of race, religion, and color’, in witness to Christ’s own saving demolition of walls of enmity (Eph. 2:14).

Through his vision and initiative, Markus Barth was instrumental in the creation of the Karl Barth Society of North America. His father, Karl Barth, acknowledged the profound personal influence of Markus’ work when he wrote in the introduction to Church Dogmatics IV/4, that ‘without following him closely, without cashing in to a large extent on his work, I could hardly have made the reorientation in my own doctrine of baptism’.

The Center for Barth Studies—which is honored to curate Markus Barth’s literary estate within the archives and special collections of the Princeton Seminary Library—is now delighted to be marking the recent centenary of his birth. It has invited a select group of former students, fellow New Testament scholars, and theologians to contribute to a research symposium with a view to illuminating and celebrating the enduring legacy of his life and work on September 27-29. This three day symposium will explore the following themes in relation to Markus Barth’s legacy: Markus’ contributions to NT studies, the Christian rites of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the doctrine of reconciliation (living the “one-ness” of the People of God in Judaism and Christianity).

Registration

The cost of registration for the event is $80.

This fee includes breakfast and lunch on all three days of the event along with refreshments.

Princeton Seminary faculty and students do not have to pay a fee.

REGISTER HERE.

Speakers

Steve Crocco

Steve is the Library Director at Yale Divinity School. His involvement with the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Seminary predates its founding. Active in the Karl Barth Society of North America (Midwest Chapter) while teaching Christian Ethics at Elmhurst College, Steve learned of plans by Markus Barth and others to form a Karl Barth research center in North America. He used his position as Library Director at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary to visit other research centers and develop the requirements for a center for Barth studies. In 1996, Steve was appointed to the Executive Committee of the KBSNA to identify a suitable home. In 1997, Princeton Seminary’s proposal to host the Barth center was affirmed by the KBSNA Executive Committee and Steve became the James Lenox Librarian at Princeton, a position he held until 2012. Steve hired the Center’s first Director, George Hunsinger, and was actively involved in building bridges between Princeton and the Barth Archive in Basel and Barth’s family, fund raising, and giving shape to the institutional requirements of the Center. Steve’s scholarly interest in Karl Barth lies in the area of Barth’s influence on North American theologians such as Joseph Haroutunian and H. Richard Niebuhr.

Mark Lindsay

A priest of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, Mark Lindsay is the Joan F.W. Munro Professor of Historical Theology, and (Interim) Dean of the Trinity College Theological School. He has taught at universities in Melbourne, Perth and Cambridge, and worked for seven years as the University of Divinity’s Director of Research. Mark is the author of three books on Karl Barth [Covenanted Solidarity: The Theological Basis of Karl Barth’s Opposition to Nazi Antisemitism and the Holocaust, (Peter Lang, 2001); Barth, Israel and Jesus, (Ashgate, 2007); and Reading Auschwitz with Barth: The Holocaust as Problem and Promise for Barthian Theology, (Wipf & Stock, 2014)], and is currently writing a book on the doctrine of election, which will be published by IVP Academic. In the winter of 2016-17, he was a visiting scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he conducted research on the topic ‘Judaism and Israel in the Theology of Markus Barth’.

Full-time Professor for New Testament Studies and Early Christian History at AST since July 1983 with specialties in the Revelation to John, Paul, Early Church History; interests in Biblical Theology and Jewish-Christian dialogue. David was the Academic Dean at AST from 1998 to 2011. As a doctoral student under and research assistant to Dr. Markus Barth (1915-1994) at the University of Basel he assisted Dr. Barth with the preparation of his volumes on Ephesians and Colossians in the Anchor Bible commentary series as well as the volume on Philemon in the Critical Eerdmans Commentary series. He is a member of the Canadian Society for Biblical Studies and has written several shorter book reviews in Studies in Religion. He wrote articles for the student handbook, Dictionary of the Bible and Western Culture from Sheffield Phoenix Press. With a deep interest in the use of the Bible in the church David was a member of the United Church of Canada General Council Committee for Theology and Faith and chaired the Committee from 1988 to 1992. He participated in the development and writing of the 1992 UCC General Council report, The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture. He also sat on the committee that prepared the Canadian resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2014 materials. David is presently working on a collection of essays on the Revelation to John and a special study on the theology of Israel in the Revelation. He is also translating Markus Barth’s book Die Taufe: ein Sakrament? into English.

Paul T. Nimmo

Paul Nimmo holds the King’s (1620) Chair of Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen, having previously held positions at the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh. His studies were undertaken at the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. His first monograph, Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth’s Ethical Vision, was awarded a John Templeton Award for Theological Promise in 2009, and he has since published Barth: A Guide for the Perplexed, co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology, and edited the church resource Learn: Understanding Our Faith. He served as Managing Editor and then Editor of the International Journal of Systematic Theology for a decade, before becoming its Senior Editor in 2016; he also serves as the current co-Chair of the AAR Reformed Theology and History Group Steering Committee, having been a Member of the same since 2012, and as a member of the AAR Friedrich Schleiermacher Group. He served on the Steering Committee of the Society for the Study of Theology between 2008 and 2011, and as the Society’s Treasurer from 2013 to 2016. He is an ordained elder in the Church of Scotland, and participates in diverse ways in the life of the church, at both local and national levels.

Randi Rashkover

Dr. Randi Rashkover is associate professor of Religious Studies and director of the Judaic Studies Program at George Mason University. She is the author of Revelation and Theopolitics: Barth, Rosenzweig and the Politics of Praise (T&T Clark, 2005) and Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics (Fordham University Press, 2011). She is editor of many volumes including, (with C.C. Pecknold) Liturgy Time and the Politics of Redemption (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 2006) and (with Martin Kavka) Tradition in the Public Square: A Novak Reader (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007) and (with Martin Kavka) Judaism, Liberalism and Political Theology (Indiana University Press, 2014). Her current monograph project, Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity and the Theologico-Political Problem concerns the impact of the fact-value divide on modern and contemporary Jewish and Christian thought. Dr. Rashkover is a Senior Editor (along with Stanley Hauerwas, Peter Ochs and Maria Dakake) of the Encountering Traditions book series at Stanford University Press.

Joseph Small

Joseph D. Small served as director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Theology and Worship from 1989-2011. He is now adjunct faculty at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, and church relations consultant to the Presbyterian Foundation. He serves on the boards of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, the Institute for Church Renewal, and Innovative Space for Asian American Christianity. He served as co-chair of the second and third rounds of the international Reformed-Pentecostal Dialogue, and has participated regularly in international ecumenical consultations sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, and the Centre International Reformé in Geneva. Dr. Small holds degrees from Brown University, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Louisville Theological Seminary. He has served on the staff of Pittsburgh Seminary, and as pastor of churches in Towson Maryland, Westerville Ohio, and Rochester New York. Dr. Small is the author of Flawed Church, Faithful God (2018), To Be Reformed: Living the Tradition (2010), Let Us Reason Together: Christians and Jews in Conversation (2010), Proclaiming the Great Ends of the Church (2010), Conversations with the Confessions (2005), Preservation of the Truth (2005), Fire and Wind: The Holy Spirit in the Church Today (2002), Committed Conversation (2000), and God and Ourselves: A Brief Exercise in Reformed Theology (1997). He has also written numerous monographs, book chapters, journal articles, study series, and theological papers.

J. Ross Wagner

J. Ross Wagner is Associate Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School. Specializing in Paul’s letters and in Septuagint studies, he seeks to contribute to the recovery of theological exegesis through careful investigation of the waysnscriptural interpretation shaped early Jewish and Christian communities. His publications include Heralds of the Good News: Paul and Isaiah in Concert in the Letter to the Romans (2002), Between Gospel and Election: Explorations in the Interpretation of Romans 9–11 (coedited with Florian Wilk, 2010), and Reading the Sealed Book: Old Greek Isaiah and the Problem of Septuagint Hermeneutics (2013). A member of the editorial boards of Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, Themes in Biblical Narrative, The Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies, and The Journal of Theological Interpretation, Ross also served for many years on the steering committee for the Pauline Soteriology Group of the Society of Biblical Literature. He was a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Göttingen in 2006–2007, 2010, and 2015, and he spent 2009–2010 as a member in residence at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey. Before moving to Duke in 2013, he served for fifteen years as a member of the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary. Ross serves as an ordained minister in the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Philip Ziegler

Philip Ziegler is Professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Aberdeen. Educated at the Royal Military College of Canada, the University of Toronto, the University of St Michael’s College, Regis College, and Emmanuel College of Victoria University, his studies is systematic and historical theology, ecumenics, and the philosophy of religion culminated in a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion. After teaching for several year at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Canada, he joined the faculty of the University of Aberdeen in Divinity & Religious Studies in 2006. He is the author of Doing Theology When God is Forgotten: The Theological Achievement of Wolf Krötke (2007) and Militant Grace: The Apocalyptic Turn and the Future of Christian Theology (2018). He has edited and co-edited a number of works in including The Providence of God, Explorations in Christian Theology and Ethics: Essays in Conversation with Paul L. Lehmann, Christ, Church and World: New Studies in Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics, and Eternal God, Eternal Life: Theological Investigations into the Concept of Immortality. Phil is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Reformed Theology and also serves, together with Ian MacFarland and Ivor Davidson, as series editor of T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology. Phil is a General Secretary of the Karl Barth Society of North America, and serves on the executive committee of the English language section of the International Bonhoeffer Society and the steering group of the ‘Bonhoeffer and Social Analysis’ section of the AAR. An ordained minister of the United Church of Canada, Phil is formally associated with the Kirk Session of the Cathedral Church of St. Machar in Aberdeen.

Date

Time

2018 Markus Barth Symposium

Registration