Calvin Congress 2027

Abstract
In church history, the allegation persists that Calvin had little or no missionary interest. Although many studies — particularly in recent years — have refuted this claim, they have largely focused on historiographical approaches. At the same time, numerous studies have been published examining Calvin’s pastoral approach, treating it with varying degrees of thoroughness.

This paper adopts a different angle. By examining primary sources, it will analyse the theological lines in Calvin’s thought, asking to what extent his understanding of the office of pastor and his pastoral motivations influenced his missiological thinking. Furthermore, the implications of this analysis will be applied to contemporary contexts and circumstances.

Bio
Victor Edouard d’Assonville studied classical languages, philosophy and theology in Potchefstroom, South Africa. During that time, he also taught Latin at the university on a part-time basis. After completing his studies in Potchefstroom, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Theology in Germany in 2000, with a dissertation on Calvin. For this dissertation, he received the Caspar Olevianus Prize of the Olevian Society in Germany in 2001.

He has a strong research background and has served as a member of the board of the International Congress on Calvin Research for twenty years. Over the years he has published some theological books and numerous peer-reviewed academic articles, as well as contributions to scholarly volumes, in Afrikaans, German, English and Dutch. In addition, he has served as editor or co-editor of various academic publications and is currently the editor of the scientific theological journal, Reformatorisch-Theologische Zeitschrift, while also serving on the international board of Koers – Bulletin for Christian Scholarship.

Furthermore, Victor has extensive experience as a lecturer, teaching regularly at some universities and seminaries in Africa and Europe. In addition, he has presented papers at academic conferences on several continents — Africa, Europe, North America and Asia. He is also affiliated with the Faculty of Theology at the University of the Free State (UFS), South Africa, as a Research Associate and is currently the dean of the RTS – Reformatorisch-Theologisches Seminar Heidelberg.

Victor has more than 30 years’ experience in missionary work in Africa (among the SeSotho- and Griqua-speaking communities) as well as in Europe (including serving as the founding minister of the Reformed Church of Hanover, Germany). He has been an ordained pastor since 2001.

Victor is married to Daleen Malan. The couple are blessed with four children and one grandchild.

Abstract
The church of Calvin’s time was a basic structure of European society. Even one of the most irreligious figures, Machiavelli, counseled that one must rule with religion, though not religiously. That factor has made studying ecclesiology both worthwhile and difficult for scholars of the present day: worthwhile because we see through a window into a very different mindset, and difficult because our own minds have been formed by liberalism – and its sense that people must be free to worship in the way they see fit, including not to worship or believe at all.

Calvin’s model of ecclesiology was of a church as a body informed by the reading and application of scripture. Calvin accepted the Pauline model of the church as the body of Christ, and the members individually all members of that body. Calvin’s reading of I Corinthians 12 led him to seeing that body, one that had to be led by its head, Christ. But the body only knows Christ, and Christ’s commands, through scripture. Thus, Calvin created a kind of textual community in Geneva, that sought to inculcate the teachings of scripture, not only intellectually, but through practices and disciplines of piety.

In the modern age, Calvin’s teachings frequently are either ignored, or turned to purposes counter to Christian intentions. My address will argue that a sound recovery of Calvin’s ecclesiology provides tools for many of the problems of our age, both issues of individualism, and of the manner that Christian community may exist in liberal states.

Bio:
R. Ward Holder is professor of theology and politics at Saint Anselm College, and Director of its Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life. He is the author or editor of twelve books, and numerous articles. His essays have appeared in Christian Century, Church History, Sixteenth Century Journal, Calvin Theological Journal, Politics and Religion, and Society. His most recent works are Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and Democracy in America in the Twenty-First Century, 2019 and John Calvin and the Christian Tradition: Scripture, Memory, and the Western Mind, 2022.

Abstract: This paper argues that John Calvin’s interpretation of Christ’s descent into hell (descensus ad inferos) offers a crucial hermeneutical key for a theology that seeks to be relevant to society and edifying for the church. Calvin interprets the as the depth of Christ’s solidarity with human abandonment, judgment, and suffering. By reading the descent not as a spatial event but as an existential and soteriological reality, Calvin resists both mythological literalism and theological trivialization. The paper explores how this interpretation challenges contemporary tendencies to evacuate hell from theology, and connects theology to cultural phenomena in which hell resurfaces.

Bio: Arnold Huijgen (1978) is Professor of Dogmatics at the Protestant Theological University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. He serves as the secretary of the Presidium of the Calvin Congress. He currently works on a theology of hell. Earlier, he published Divine Accommodation in John Calvin’s Theology (Göttingen, 2011).

Abstract: This talk seeks to explain how religious reformers supported medical practice and how physicians contributed to religious reform. The biblical narratives of Jesus healing the sick meant that healing would be a central concern in the history of Christianity. In the late medieval Catholic tradition, saintly intercessors were meant to empathize with human struggle, give spiritual meaning to a believer’s suffering, exercise the power of prayer, and provide a possible channel of healing through contemplation. Yet building on some of Erasmus’ critique, Protestants articulated a theological shift that limited or ultimately rejected saintly intercession. Rather than saints as supportive intercessors, the reformers promoted direct prayers to God and Christ as well as the natural medical remedies of the divinely created world. Whether acting supernaturally through divine intervention or naturally through created order, God remained sovereign. This dual emphasis on divine sovereignty and human dependence allowed for personal prayer directly to God, as well as for practical medicinal approaches. Pastors and physicians emphasized that medicine demonstrated God’s providence through the natural world and its medical remedies.

Bio: Esther Chung-Kim is Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, CA. She has served as President of the American Society of Church History, Editor of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, and Associate Director of the Gould Center for Humanities. Her research focuses on the history of biblical interpretation, religious conflict, poverty, and medicine in the early modern era.

Abstract:
John Calvin’s theology of the twofold knowledge of the Triune God can be used to enrich our understanding of the Eucharist, by which the Creator’s common blessings are consecrated by the Spirit to become redemptive blessings in the incarnate Christ. Furthermore, the identification of the Church as the body of Christ, due to her union with Christ, should soften the divisions between different wings of the Reformation regarding Eucharistic understanding. In Totus Christus, where Christ and the Church are one—and that one can never be without the other—the image of the Triune God in His unity, diversity, and equality becomes a clearer expression of who the true God is. In this role, Totus Christus becomes a transforming paradigm for all aspects of human society, including the nation-building project.

When multi-ethnic groups gathered to proclaim their unity in 1928, this historical fact in the pre-birth of Indonesia as a nation aligns well with the Church’s characteristic as a covenant-making community led by the true one Spirit. Which would better reflect the Triune God: Indonesia which acknowledges the grace of the omnipotent God in the preamble of its constitution, seeks to maintain its historical unity enshrined with the third principle of Pancasila along with the national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in diversity); Or the confessed one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church whose division by numerous denominations strives to fulfill the prayer of her Lord ‘Ut omnes unum sint’? Neither is easy. Yet Christians who bear responsibility regarding their dual citizenship can and should rediscover the reconciliatory aspect of the Eucharist in order to stand as a good witness.

Bio:
Audy Santoso, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the International Reformed Evangelical Seminary, Jakarta. Holding an M.Th. from International Reformed Evangelical Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Theologische Universiteit Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, he currently serves as the Academic Dean of the seminary, and as the Secretary of Indonesian Calvin Society since co-founding it in 2023. He is the author of Union with God: An Assessment of Deification (Theosis) in the Theologies of Robert Jenson and John Calvin (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021).

Abstract:
This paper aims to demonstrate the intricate interconnected factors involved in the growth of Calvinism, about a century after the Dutch East India Company (or the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC for short) was established. At its center, this paper studies how Calvinism reached the global world together with the VOC’s expansion and how Calvinism impacted the religious landscape of Asia from the seventeenth century onward. Started in 1602, the VOC rose as the largest trading company in the world that brought the Dutch into the monopoly of spice trading. As the VOC planted its power and authority in the East Indies, it also brought Calvinism and transplanted it among the indigenous people of the archipelago. For the Company, a successful growth of Calvinism in South-east Asia also meant its success over against its European rivals. The growth of Calvinism in that foreign land required a long and complicated process of transplantation. This process not only required its ministers and teachers to guard its orthodox beliefs, but also involved creative utilizations of linguistic circumstances and the careful navigations of the VOC’s policies that put forward profit over against any other purposes. To teach the indigenous people well, the Dutch Calvinist ministers had to weave together Arabic, Malay, Portuguese, and Dutch to advance the presence of Calvinism among the multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural people. At the same time, they also had to balance interpersonal rivalries, complicated VOC policies, and the standards of Reformed orthodoxy. By utilizing unpublished manuscripts of catechetical material and parts of Bible translations into Malay by some of the Dutch ministers in the East Indies at the end of the seventeenth century, this paper will ultimately argue that Calvinism’s presence in the East Indies was a part of the VOC’s strategic way to secure its grip on the people and the wealth of the land.