Michael J. Leyden

Earlier this week I was at Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for a meeting of young priest-theologians . I was very excited to be invited along - not least because I'm not yet ordained to the Priesthood and I haven't finished my PhD so calling myself a priest-theologian seems premature. Nonetheless, it was a good day for me. I have long struggled to hold together the two the aspects of my sense of vocation: that of a parish priest, and that of an academic theologian. So, to be invited along to a meeting addressing exactly that issue, and finding like-minded people with a similar vocation, was a real treat. Several times during my training, and even a little since moving into full-time ordained ministry, I have come across a negative attitude towards academia from other ordained colleagues. Many pose the question of the practicality of systematic theology or biblical studies for example, or the "relevance" of this for a congregation. I ha...

I recently came across information about the Reformierte Sommer-Universitat project in Germany. It seems to be a series of seminars on Reformed Theology hosted by the Protestant theology faculty at the University of Muenster in conjunction with the Dutch Theological University at Apeldoorn. This year the theme of one of the seminars has been "An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth" and features Michael Beintker (Muenster), along with Gerard den Hertog (Apeldoorn), and Konrad Hammann (Muenster). For the benefit of those who speak German, you can view Michael Beintker's lecture, "dialectical beginnings: the development of the theology of the Word of God", here . You can also download the video too, for a more leisurely listen. Michael Beintker is a world class Barth scholar, and well worth listening to. Hopefully other lectures will come online soon.

Once again it's been a while since I blogged anything, but I thought I would flag-up this clip from the increasingly successful Modern Theology  Timeline created by Tim Hull at St John's College Nottingham, UK. This is a recent interview Tim did with the Edinburgh based scholar Paul Nimmo on Friedrich Schleiermacher. It is a really good interview, and will go a long way to rehabilitating FDES for those who mis-read Barth and reject him outright. Happy watching!