"John Calvin and Roman Catholicism"
Calvin Studies Society Colloquium
University of Notre Dame
April 12-14, 2007
We would like to invite you to attend the upcoming Calvin Studies Colloquium, to be held at the University of Notre Dame.
The theme of “John Calvin and Roman Catholicism” was chosen for several reasons.First of all, it is an acknowledgement that Calvin did not envision himself as the founder of a new tradition called “Calvinism,” but rather as one who soughtto restore the Catholic Church to what he called its “purer form” under the <>apostles and early Church writers. Calvin thought of himself as belonging tothe “orthodox and evangelical” tradition, which associated him not only with Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, and Heinrich Bullinger, but also with Cyprian, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Augustine. One of the concerns of the colloquium will therefore be to assess the degree to which Calvin might be seen as a Catholic theologian, as surprising as such a claim might appear to be on its face. Secondly, as a consequence of his desire to restore the Catholic Church of his day, Calvin’s engagement with his contemporary Roman Catholics was not tangential to his concerns, but was directly related to the task he was called to carry out. By placing Calvin and his followers within the context of their wider interactions with Roman Catholics in Geneva and its environs, and in places like Holland, we can get a better idea of what the real issues were that both united and divided them, and will be able to see more clearly how members of the Old Church regarded the work of Calvin and his colleagues. Thirdly, the theme of the conference highlights the remarkable fact that a good deal of the best scholarship on Calvin has been done by Roman Catholics such as Alexandre Ganoczy, George Tavard, Lucien Richard, Carlos Eire, and Dennis Tamburello. By holding the conference at Notre Dame, Calvin scholars would not only be acknowledging the major contributions made to their field by their Roman Catholic colleagues, but would also be recognizing the irreducible importance of listening to what our Roman Catholic colleagues see in the thought of Calvin and the movement he so deeply influenced. Finally, Notre Dame seems to be the ideal place for such a discussion to occur because of its long involvement in and commitment to the ecumenical outreach to other Christian traditions initiated in earnest at Vatican II, which has made Notre Dame such a welcome home for those in Calvin’s tradition such as Alvin Plantinga, George Marsden, and Nathan Hatch. It is our hope that this colloquium could give further impetus to these efforts at ecumenical understanding, which help us to overcome unfortunate stereotypes and to come to a richer understanding of the Christian tradition we all share.
Full details, including program, are available from Randall Zachmann at the University of Notre Dame.
