John R. Wood
John was born in Japan, grew up on a clear-cut in western Washington and completed his BA in Biology at North Park University on the banks of the Chicago River. He has a life-long interest in theology and nature. His PhD is from the University of California, Berkeley, in Stream Ecology and Insect Behavior. His current research is on urban wildlife (White-tailed Jackrabbits), human-nature interactions, and campus sustainability. Dr. Wood is Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at The King's University College and Academic Dean for the Au Sable Institute. Some of his most recent publications include A Primer on Climate Change, in Faith Today, pages 18-22, January/February 2008, and the following research articles:
Mendez, P.K., J.R. Wood, and V.H. Resh. 2007. Emergence, fluctuating sex ratios, and protandry in Neophylax rickeri (Trichoptera: Uenoidae). Pages 197-202 in Bueno-Soria, J., R. Barbra-Álverez, and B. Armitage (Editors). Proceedings of the XIIth International Symposium on Trichoptera (2006). The Caddis Press. Columbus, Ohio. U.S.A. viii + 372 p.
Looy, H. and J.R. Wood. 2006. Attitudes Toward Invertebrates: Are Educational "Bug Banquets" Effective? Journal of Environmental Education 37 (2) (Winter): 37 - 48.
Wood, J.R. and K. Tomiyama. 2006. Horsehills Creek: An Urban Stream at the Rural-Urban Fringe. Pages 187 - 198, in: R. Wein (ed) Coyotes Still Sing in My Valley: Conserving Biodiversity in a Northern City. Spotted Cow Press, Edmonton.
Lecture Summaries
Biophilia and the Gospel
I once asked a group of Christian High School teachers "What creature do you love?" Almost instantly a hand shot up at the back of the room and someone replied, "That sounds like a New Age idea to me." How is it that we have come to a place today where loving God's creation is taken as a sign of infidelity to Christ? Like so many questions around our relationship to nature this response was closing off, rather than opening up the discussion. I began wondering, how do we understand ourselves as created beings - who are embedded in the context of communities, ecosystems and the biosphere?
The dialogue among life scientists and "the rest of us" needs to be enriched and expanded. It can be if we carefully attend to the challenging frameworks provided by contemporary theology and the natural sciences. The recovery of a Trinitarian discourse of relationship fits well within the theoretical and empirical insights of ecology today. In this talk I will explore some aspects of this emerging interdisciplinary discourse on loving life.
Shalom and a Sense of Place
Think with me for a moment and ask, "Where are you from? Is it here or is it elsewhere?" We often hear it said that "the world is shrinking, getting smaller and smaller every day." Symbolically and metaphorically the world does seem to be shrinking. Yet our personal worlds are actually rapidly expanding, or "flattening," to use Thomas Friedman's sweeping metaphor.
Up until a few hundred years ago virtually everyone came from their own and very personal "here". They were born, educated, worked and died right where their personal "here" was found. They fell in love, "here"; were married, had children, raised a family and buried their parents and friends "here"; and in turn they were buried here all only a few tens or few hundreds of miles of what they knew as home.
The scriptural picture of our place and of the good life is described by the ancient word Shalom. It is not a common word today. But the rediscovery and explication of this biblical concept can give us serviceable insights into new avenues for scholarship and the practice of sustained living. Shalom means much more than our trivial concept of "peace" as in the venerable sixties slogan "Hey, peace man!" It is about fullness and the flourishing of all of God's creatures - us and all else living together. "It is now clear," Walter Brueggemann has said that, "...a sense of place is a human hunger that the urban promise has not met." And he claims that "a sense of place is a primary category of faith." Together we will explore some avenues of this growing interdisciplinary dialogue on shalom and place.
Urban Wildlife and Land Conservation in a Northern City
Today nearly two-thirds of the world's population lives in urban spaces. Yet until very recently ecologists have almost universally ignored the City as habitat. Nature was something "out-there". As as undergraduate I encountered urban nature along the North Branch of the Chicago River some forty years ago. Since then my field research has circled in and out of four major urban arenas and several rural ones too. For the past 15 years I and my undergraduate students have been attending to the nightly peregrinations of White-tailed Jackrabbits. The Hare of the Prairie, as Lewis and Clerk called it in 1804, is a relatively new comer to our northern cities. From hares it was but a short hop to thinking about urban land use issues and the urgent need for conservation of natural areas. In this talk we will discuss how scholarship is applied to urban centers and campus sustainability.
My Climate. Your Climate. Our Watery Change
The liveability of earth is so common-place that we easily take for granted this blessing. But ecologists, earth scientists, and astronauts know better. From space our watery blue planet - our home - hangs like a jewel. And although earth is unlikely to crumble and fall apart we do recognize today that something fundamental is changing on the planet. Humans now have the power, leveraged through our remarkable machines, to significantly alter entire earth systems.
Water is both a unique molecule and a central salvation symbol. The Biblical narrative is a richly woven tapestry showing many faces of this unique molecule. From rivers to marsh needs or rain clouds to leviathans the the aquatic creatures singularly bless their Creator. And in our watery world today the challenges of climate change are increasingly clear. Rivers, streams, lakes and springs are all telling us a cautionary tale of change. Nowhere is this story clearer than in the Alberta oil sands - a new industrial development upon which North American transportation in increasingly relying for fuel. I have waded in streams both urban and wild from Alaska to the Yucatan and Hawaii to Cape Breton. In this talk we will look at climate change reflected in streams as well as the glacier strewn mountains that feed them.
ARIHE Lectureship on the Occasion of the 500th Anniversary of the Birth of John Calvin
James R. Payron, Jr.
Jim has been intrigued all his life by the intersection of history and Christian doctrine. He holds the following degrees: B.A., M.A. (Bob Jones University: 1969, 1971), M.Div., Th.M. (Westminster Theological Seminary: 1975, 1975), and Ph.D. (in the Intellectual History of Early Modern Europe, from the University of Waterloo: 1982). Drawn to the Reformed faith early during his graduate studies, Him avidly read Calvin's Institutes, treatises, and biblical commentaries while becoming thoroughly conversant in the history and teaching of the Reformed tradition.
Jim is especially interested in how faith in influenced by and itself shapes cultures. He teaches courses in Church history, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the history of Eastern Europe. He has traveled to and been involved with the region: after serving eight years as executive secretary, he is now president of CAREE (Christians Associated for Relationships with Easter Europe), a UN-endorsed NGO which has worked for peace, justice, and reconciliation in the region for more than fifty years. Over the past seven years, he has participated in Muslim-Christian dialogue in Macedonia. He also now serves a Christian co-chair of the National Muslim-Christian Liaison Committee in Canada, set up by the Canadian Council of Churches and various Muslim organizations.
Jim is a Professor of History at Redeemer University College. He has also taught courses at McMaster Divinity College (Hamilton, Ontario), Evangelical Theological Seminary (Asijek, Croatia), and Matthias Flacius Illyricus Faculty of Theology (Zagreb, Ontario). In 1999 he gave the annual Lectures in Christian Thought at the University of Calgary. He has lectured at the Crimean Medical University (Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine), the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), St. Clement of Ohrid Orthodox Theological Seminary (Skopje, Macedonia), the School of Islamic Sciences (Skopje, Macedonia), and McMaster University.
Jim has contributed articles to The Encyclopedia of Monasticism, to The Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Studies and to The NewWestminster Dictionary of Church History. He has published several studies on Calvin and other reformers, on the role of religion and culture in various Easter European nations, and on the influence on the Reformation in Easter Europe. Among these are the following:
- "History as Rhetorical Weapon: Christian Humanism in Calvin's Reply to Sadoleto, 1539," in E.J. Furcha, ed., In Honour of John Calvin, 1509-1564 (Montreal, 1987), pp. 96-132.
-"Calvin and the Legitimation of Icons: His Treatment of the Seventh Ecumenical Council," Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 84 (1993): 222-241.
-"Calvin and the Libri Carolini," The Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997): 467-480.
-"The Influence of the Reformation on the History of Ukraine," Journal of Ukrainian Studies 28 (2003): 105-117.
-"Ottoman Millet, Religious Nationalism, and Civil Society: Focus on Kosovo," Religion in Eastern Europe 26, No. 1 (2006): 11-23.
-"Religion, Nationalism, and National Identities," in Ines Murzaku, ed., Quo Vadis Eastern Europe? Religion, State and Society after Communism (Bologna: University of Bologna Press, 2008).
Jim's book, Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition (IVP Academic, 2007), has won two awards in Canada. He is under contract with IVP Academic to write another volume, Getting the Reformation Wrong (to be published in 2010).
Jim lives in Mount Hope, Ontario, with his wife Sharon and three cats (two of them Bengals). Their four children and six grandchildren live nearby.
Lecture Summaries
Calvin: Champion of Piety
This presentation points out the futility of trying to identify a core doctrine around which Calvin supposedly structured his thought - a preoccupation in past studies on Calvin. That will lead to challenging the notion many people have that Calvin was fixated on predestination, by showing that theologians had been dealing with that question extensively since the thirteenth century, and by identifying Calvin's stance on the issue as a moderate one in the sixteenth.
With the ground thus cleared, the presentation will point out and reflect on the fact that Calvin devotes more attention in his Institutes to prayer than predestination. This will lead us to focus on Calvin's overriding concern, to enable his hearers and readers to draw near to God. We will consider various facets of this emphasis in Calvin, including his understanding of the sacraments as given for believers' assurance, as well as his "earthy" spirituality.
Calvin the Humanist (or, less provocatively, Calvin at the Intersection of Renaissance and Reformation)
This presentation will challenge the widely held but historically erroneous contrast between a supposedly man-centered Renaissance and a God-centered Reformation, a view resoundingly rejected by early modern scholarship of the past three generations. It will then set forth the scholarly consensus on what the Renaissance was about and how it shaped the reformers themselves (focusing especially on Calvin, while touching on other reformers as well). We will see that those reformers never repudiated their Renaissance heritage and how the Renaissance contributed to the development of the Reformation. The presentation concludes with special consideration of how Renaissance emphases shaped Calvin's labors and enabled him to pursue reformation in Geneva and elsewhere.
Calvin and the Calvinists
This presentation will consider three developments in theology which have arisen since his time, evaluating them as to their faithfulness in reflecting Calvin's approach, emphases, and teaching. The three developments are: Protestant Scholasticism, Neo-Calvinism, and the Patristic Revival of the last decade.
Calvin and Eastern Europe: What Happened?
This presentation moves beyond the Western European stage we usually focus on in our considerations of Calvin to consider the impact of his teaching in Easter Europe. The presentation points out when Calvin's teaching began to be disseminated in the region and why it caught on so quickly and widely. Then we will consider why the Reformed faith lost so much ground and what contributed to those losses. The presentation ends with a consideration of the current status of the Reformed faith in several Eastern European countries.
