2022 Karl Barth Conference:
Karl Barth and Reformed Theology: Tradition, Dialogue, and Construction
June 19—22, 2022
About
The 2022 Annual Karl Barth Conference will be hosted by the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary from June 19–22, 2022. The Conference takes as its theme on this occasion “Karl Barth and Reformed Theology: Tradition, Dialogue, and Construction”. The primary aim of the Conference is to explore some of the ways in which Karl Barth as a Reformed theologian interacted with the Reformed and other traditions, along paths both expository and critical, and to reflect upon the possibility that his creative engagement might encourage and resource generative work in theology in the contemporary era. A wide range of speakers of diverse perspectives has been assembled for the event, all of whom share an interest in the work of Karl Barth and a commitment to constructive theological dialogue around substantive issues affecting church and world. The Conference will also serve as an appropriate occasion to mark the retirement of Professor Bruce L. McCormack from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2022.
Virtual/Hybrid Conference
The 2022 Annual Karl Barth Conference will be hosted as a hybrid event for the first time this year on the platform Airmeet. This will allow us to expand the reach of our conference to many who have not been able to attend before, whether due to distance, finances, disabilities, or other reasons. Airmeet has a number of built-in tools to allow online conference attendees to interact with speakers at the conference as well as other online participants. We hope this model will provide an interactive experience for those who can not join us in-person.
Virtual Attendee: $100
Virtual Student Attendee: $50
PTS Community (Students/Faculty/Staff): Free
Registration
In-Person Attendee: $275
In-Person Student (Non-PTS): $100
PTS Community (Students/Faculty/Staff): Free
Please note: the in-person conference registration fee includes two lunches, two evening receptions, and five refreshment breaks.
Registration Ends: June 13, 2022
Plenary Speakers
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Matthew Aragon Bruce
Rev. Dr. Matthew James Aragon Bruce holds a PhD (in the History of Christian Doctrine) and a MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a MTh (in Theology in History) from the University of Edinburgh. His academic work focuses on the history of Christian thought with special attention to Reformed and ecumenical theology. He has previously taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton University, Lindenwood University, and Wheaton College (Illinois). Presently he works for the PC(USA), serving as the Grant Director for Synod of the Covenant’s Cultivating the Gift of Preaching Initiative, a lay preacher training program funded through the Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative. He is also the Theologian-in-Residence at First Presbyterian Church in Grand Haven, Michigan. He frequently serves as an adjunct professor for Western Seminary, Calvin University’s Prison Initiative, and the Hope Western Prison Education program, teaching classes in Historical and Systematic Theology, Theological Ethics, Church History, and New Testament exegesis.
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Brandon Gallaher
Brandon Gallaher
Brandon Gallaher is Senior Lecturer of Systematic and Comparative Theology at the University of Exeter (Devon, UK). His publications include Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), co-editor (with Paul Ladouceur) of The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky: Essential Theological Writings (London: T & T Clark-Bloomsbury, 2019) and co-editor (with John Chryssavgis) of The Living Christ: The Theological Legacy of Georges Florovsky (London-Bloomsbury: T & T Clark, 2021). His recent research focuses on ecclesiology, comparative theology, Sergii Bulgakov and Eastern Orthodoxy and modernity.
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Beverly Gaventa
Beverly Gaventa
Beverly Roberts Gaventa is Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis Emerita at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her publications include Our Mother Saint Paul (Westminster John Knox, 2007), The Acts of the Apostles (Abingdon, 2003), I and II Thessalonians (Westminster John Knox, 1998), Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus (University of South Carolina, 1995; Fortress, 1999), and From Darkness to Light: Aspects of Conversion in the New Testament (Fortress, 1986), and When in Romans: An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel according to Paul (Baker Press, 2016). In 2020, Gaventa received the Burkitt Medal by the British Society for Arts and Humanities, an annual award in biblical studies rarely bestowed on an American scholar. In 2016 she was president of the Society of Biblical Literature, the largest professional organization of biblical scholars in the world. She has lectured widely in the U.S. as well as in Canada, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. Dr. Gaventa is a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and a member of the University Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas.
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Kevin Hector
Kevin Hector
Kevin Hector is Professor of Theology and of the Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 2007. He is the author of two books, Theology without Metaphysics (2011) and The Theological Project of Modernism (2015), and has another one due out soon: Christianity as a Way of Life: A Systematic Theology. His next major project analyzes the relationship between memory, identity, and religious practices of self-narration.
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Keith Johnson
Keith Johnson
Keith L. Johnson is Professor of Theology at Wheaton College, where he also serves as the Director of Theological Integration at the Center for Faith and Innovation. He has authored and edited several volumes related to Barth, including The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth, co-edited with George Hunsinger (Blackwell, 2020), The Essential Karl Barth: A Reader and Commentary (Baker Academic, 2019), and Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis (2010). He currently is president of the Karl Barth Society of North America.
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Cambria Kaltwasser
Cambria Kaltwasser
Cambria Kaltwasser is assistant professor of theology at Northwestern College, Iowa, where she teaches courses in historical and systematic theology. Cambria also serves as the Project Editor for the Translators Project, and her research examines the relationship between Barth’s covenantal theology and his account of human agency as responsibility before God. Her wider interests include theological anthropology and Christian hope. Kaltwasser is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
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Adam Neder
Adam Neder
Adam Neder is the Bruner-Welch Professor of Theology at Whitworth University. He is the author of Theology As a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith and Participation in Christ: An Entry Into Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. He teaches a wide range of popular courses and has been voted Most Influential Professor by a number of Whitworth senior classes.
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Paul Nimmo
Paul 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. Paul serves as the English-language Editor for the Translators Seminar, and his own studies were undertaken in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Princeton, and Tübingen. His first monograph, Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth’s Ethical Vision, was awarded a John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, and he has since published Barth: A Guide for the Perplexed, and co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology and the Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth. He is the Senior Editor of International Journal of Systematic Theology, and a Translation Fellow at the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Seminary. He is also a former co-Chair of the AAR Reformed Theology and History Group Steering Committee, and has served as the Treasurer of the Society for the Study of Theology. An ordained elder in the Church of Scotland, he participates actively in the life of the church at local and national levels, and is currently a member of the CPCE delegation for ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.
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Alexandra Pârvan
Alexandra Pârvan
Dr. Alexandra Pârvan is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pitești, Romania. She has degrees in Psychology (BSc) and Philosophy (MA, PhD) from the University of Bucharest and the Romanian Academy. Following her PhD dissertation (Problema răului în filosofia lui Augustin – The Problem of Evil in Augustine, 2008), she published on Augustine’s theory of evil, theory of knowledge, and biblical exegesis, and is a multiple entry contributor to the two major current tools of Augustine scholarship (Augustinus Lexikon, 1986- , and The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, 2013). In addition, her singular, systematic attempt to show the usefulness of Augustine’s ideas in clinical contexts led her to introduce a new field of investigation, called “metaphysical care”, through award-winning research (Prize for Excellence, European Society for Person Centered Healthcare, London, 2018). Her publications cover expertise in fields such as: patristics, early medieval studies, philosophical theology, philosophy of culture, art theory, philosophy of medicine, philosophy and psychotherapy, arts and humanities in medicine. She published the monograph Dublul și diferența (The Double and the Difference, 2004) and two poetry books (2001, 2013). She is a multi-award and prize-winning poet.
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Michelle Sanchez
Michelle Sanchez
Michelle C. Sanchez is associate professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School where she teaches courses on the Protestant Reformations, Protestant theologies, critical theories of modernity, and theories and methods on the study of religion. Her first book, Calvin and the Resignification of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2019) performs a close reading of Calvin’s 1559 Institutio in conversation with theories of embodiment, practice, political theology, and secularization. She is drafting her second book, tentatively titled “Thinking God’s Thoughts”: Power, Imagination, and the Invention of Worldview Christianity, which will examine the theological adaptation of “worldview” by late nineteenth-century Neo-Calvinists, with an eye to its anthropological, cultural, and political impact.
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Katherine Sonderegger
Katherine Sonderegger
Katherine Sonderegger holds the William Meade Chair in Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary where she has taught since 2002. Prior to her service at Virginia, she taught for 15 years at Middlebury College in Vermont. Kate is a priest of the Episcopal Church, resident in the diocese of Virginia. She is also at work on a Systematic Theology, two volumes of which have appeared (Fortress Press 2015, 2020) and a third on the Missions of the Divine Persons is underway. Karl Barth has been a guiding influence on her theology since divinity school days.
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Thomas Joseph White, OP
Thomas Joseph White, OP
Fr. Thomas Joseph White is the Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum) in Rome. He is the author of various books and articles including Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Sapientia Press, 2011), The Incarnate Lord, A Thomistic Study in Christology (The Catholic University of America Press, 2015) Exodus (Brazos Press, 2016),The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (Catholic University Press, 2017), and The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (Catholic University Press, 2022). He is co-editor of the journal Nova et Vetera, a Distinguished Scholar of the McDonald Agape Foundation, and a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Conference Schedule
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Sunday, June 19, 2022
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6:00 – 7:30 PM
Registration
Outside Stuart Hall 6
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7:30 – 9:00 PM
Lecture 1
Stuart Hall 6
Katherine Sonderegger: Karl Barth and the Reformed Tradition
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Monday, June 20, 2022
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9:00- 10:00AM
Lecture 2
Stuart Hall 6
Paul Nimmo: Karl Barth and Huldrych Zwingli
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10:15 AM – 10:45 AM
Break with coffee and refreshments
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10:45 – 11:45 AM
Lecture 3
Stuart Hall 6
Michelle Sanchez: Revisiting Calvin and Barth on Natural Theology, Soteriology, and Political Theology
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12:00- 1:00PM
Lunch Break
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1:15 – 1:45 PM
Chapel
Preacher: Adam Neder
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2:00 – 3:00 PM
Lecture 4
Stuart Hall 6
Kevin Hector: Karl Barth and Friedrich Schleiermacher
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3:00 – 3.30 PM
Break with coffee and refreshments
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3:30 – 4:30 PM
Lecture 5
Stuart Hall 6
Thomas Joseph White: “Karl Barth and Roman Catholicism: Sacra Doctrina and the Analogy of Being”
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4:30 – 7:15 PM
Break
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7:30 – 9:00 PM
Event on the Göttingen Dogmatics
Stuart Hall 6
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Tuesday, June 21, 2022
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9:00 – 10:00 AM
Lecture 6
Stuart Hall 6
Brandon Gallaher: ”His claim upon our whole life’: The legacy of the Barmen Declaration’s revelational-exegetical politics as seen in Eastern Orthodoxy and Chinese Evangelical Christianity.”
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10:00 – 10:45 AM
Break with coffee and refreshments
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10:45 – 11:45 AM
Lecture 7
Stuart Hall 6
Keith Johnson: “Karl Barth’s ‘Farewell’ and the Challenge of Christian Nationalism in America.”
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12:00 – 1:00 PM
Lunch Break
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1:15 – 1:45 PM
Chapel
Preacher: Cambria Kaltwasser
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2:00 – 3:00 PM
Lecture 8
Stuart Hall 6
Beverly Roberts Gaventa: “Karl Barth’s Scripture Principle: A Reflection on the Göttingen Dogmatics.”
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3:00 – 3:30 PM
Break with coffee and refreshments
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3:30 – 4:30 PM
Lecture 9
Stuart Hall 6
Matthew Aragon Bruce: “Divine Agency in Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Election: A Conversation with Scholasticism”
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4:30 – 7:15 PM
Break
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7:30 – 9:00 PM
Reception on the Retiral of Bruce McCormack
Wright Library Atrium
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Wednesday, June 22, 2022
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9:00- 10:00AM
Lecture 10
Stuart Hall 6
Rinse Reeling Brouwer: Reformed Kenoticism in Historical Perspective
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10:00 – 11:30 AM
Break with coffee and refreshments – Check out from the Erdman Center by 11 AM
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11:30 – 12:30 PM
Lecture 11
Stuart Hall 6
Alexandra Pârvan: “Reformed and Romantic Kenoticism: The Old, the New, and the Novel, or ‘How to Paint the Bird in Flight’”
Lodging
Lodging is available on-campus at the Erdman Center. To reserve lodging, please contact the Erdman Center at 609-497-7990 or email them at hospitalityandevents@ptsem.edu. Rooms are $70-120 per night.
A hotel block has also been reserved nearby:
Hilton Garden Inn
1300 Lenox Drive
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
You must make your reservation through the hotel block by May 19, 2022.
Maps & Directions
By Air
From Newark Liberty International Airport
The Olympic Airporter shuttle service takes you to the Nassau Inn in Princeton; call for schedule and reservations: 800.822.9797 (within the United States) or 732.938.6666 (outside the United States), or visit www.olympicairporter.com
The AirTrain takes you from all airport terminals to the Newark Liberty International Airport Train Station. Take New Jersey Transit southbound (Northeast Corridor Line) trains to Princeton Junction. From Princeton Junction take the train to Princeton Station.
From Philadelphia International Airport
Take the R1 High Speed Rail Line (entrance on pedestrian bridges and commercial roadway), limousine service (The Olympic Airporter; call for reservations: 800.822.9797 within the United States or 732.938.6666 outside the United States, or visit www.olympicairporter.com), or local taxi service to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, where you can purchase a SEPTA/New Jersey Transit ticket to take a SEPTA train to Trenton and a New Jersey Transit train to Princeton Junction. From Princeton Junction take the train to Princeton Station.
By Bus
From Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City (41st Street and 8th Avenue)
Purchase a Suburban Transit bus ticket to Princeton at windows 16 through 19 on the first floor. Board the bus on the third floor (fourth level) at gates 420 through 422. The bus leaves every half hour between 6:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. on weekdays and between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. on weekends, and every half hour on the hour until 1:00 a.m. The trip is one and one-half hours. Ask the driver to let you off at the end of Nassau Street where it meets Mercer Street and Route 206 in Princeton, and walk to the Seminary.
By Train
From New York City (and north) and Philadelphia (and south)
New Jersey Transit services Princeton from the north (New York City, Newark), with connecting service from the south (Trenton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC). Amtrak trains stop in Trenton, and some at Princeton Junction.
By Car
From the North/New York City
Take the New Jersey Turnpike South to Exit 9 (New Brunswick). After the tollbooths, bear right onto the ramp for Route 18 North. Shortly after getting onto Route 18 North the road will fork; stay to the left of the fork, in the right lane. Bear right onto this exit for Route 1 South/Trenton. Follow Route 1 South to Alexander Road (Princeton). Turn right onto Alexander Road and continue to the entrance of Princeton Seminary, which is the first left turn after College Road (Alexander Road will be Alexander Street at this point).
From the West
Take I-78 East into New Jersey. Exit onto I-287 South toward Somerville. Follow signs for Routes 202/206 South. Travel south on 202 for a short distance and then follow signs for Route 206 South. You will go around a traffic circle. Continue south on Route 206 for about eighteen miles to Nassau Street (Route 27) in the center of Princeton. Turn left onto Nassau Street and the first right onto Mercer Street and continue to the main entrance of Princeton Seminary, which will be on your left.
From the South
From southern New Jersey take I-295 North (becomes I-95 South) to the “Princeton Pike North” exit and continue on Princeton Pike for approximately five miles. Immediately after passing Library Place (on the left), the main entrance to the campus will be on your right.
From the East
Take I-95 West toward Trenton to the exit for I-295 North (becomes I-95 South) to the “Princeton Pike North” exit and continue on Princeton Pike for approximately five miles. Immediately after passing Library Place (on the left), the main entrance to the campus will be on your right.
From Philadelphia
Take I-95 North into New Jersey and exit at “Princeton Pike North” and continue on Princeton Pike for approximately five miles. Immediately after passing Library Place (on the left), the main entrance to the campus will be on your right.
Contact
If you have any questions or concerns, email us at barth.center@ptsem.edu or call us at 609-524-1981.
Please allow at least three business days for an email response.