ScottishJournalofTheology

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KovcsandBarth(eds),Calvinismonthe Peripheries:ReligionandCivilSocietyinEurope (Budapest:L'Harmattan,2009),pp.287.25.00.

LeeHinsonHasty
ScottishJournalofTheology/Volume66/Issue01/February2013,pp122123 DOI:10.1017/S0036930611000445,Publishedonline:15January2013

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scottish journal of theology

doi:10.1017/S0036930611000445 Abrah m Kov cs and B la Levente Bar th (eds), Calvinism on the Peripheries: Religion a a e a and Civil Society in Europe (Budapest: LHarmattan, 2009), pp. 287. 25.00. Reformed scholars representing a variety of disciplines (ethics, history, missiology, theology, cultural anthropology and literature) and from Europe and North America gathered in April 2008 for a conference at Debrecen Reformed Theological University in Hungary to commemorate the birth of John Calvin 500 years before. Calvinism on the Peripheries is the conference proceedings and includes nineteen essays, organised in six sections: (I) Calvinism and identity, (II) international Calvinism: relationship between Calvinist communities on the peripheries of Europe, (III) international Calvinism on the periphery of Latin Christendom, (IV) Calvinism, religious pluralism and social ethics, (V) the role of Calvinism in education and religious practice in Hungary and (VI) Calvinism, mission and minority. Essays address how Calvinists, living on the cultural and geographical peripheries, have interacted with civil society. While the terms periphery and centre are dened differently by the contributors, the overall message of the book is clear: Calvinist minorities in Eastern, Central and Western Europe have transformed culture, based on Reformed principles, for ve centuries. International relations were fostered by Calvinist churches and, in Hungary alone, the Reformed church created an extensive network of schools and colleges. Special attention is paid to the relationship between scholars from Scotland and Hungary, specically the Universities at Edinburgh and Debrecen. Debrecen is known as the Calvinist Rome and home of the host university which was founded in 1538, far from the centre of the magisterial Reformation. The pivotal role which the Reformed church has played in Central Europe is often neglected in the West, due in large measure to the complexity of the Hungarian and other Central European languages. Those wishing to explore European Reformed identities, shaped by Calvinism and expressed in social ethics, mission and piety, will glean a wealth of knowledge from the illuminating histories in these essays. This book makes the conference papers available in English, despite the obstacle of translating non-native English speakers, shifts the centre of the global conversation on Calvinism from the West to Central Europe, recasts the historical and theological conversation among Reformed scholars and serves as an invitation to unearth more ways Calvinists shape theological, educational and political conversations. What is learnt in this book and the scholarship which follows will inform contemporary questions, including European issues touched upon in the nal essay: membership in European Union and the marginalisation of ethnic minorities like the Roma people.
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Book reviews

Calvinism on the Peripheries will be of interest to religious leaders in the worldwide ecumenical movement, particularly the World Communion of Reformed Churches, scholars of Reformation history and Reformed theology as well as theological students and pastors. The reviewer, writing while on sabbatical in Debrecen, is left with the hope that out of the pain in the push to the peripheries that Calvinists have experienced, primarily from civic authorities, courageous church leaders will continue to emerge to transform the church and the world.
Lee Hinson-Hasty
Presbyterian Church (USA) Ofce of Theological Education, Louisville, KY, USA

Lee.Hinson-Hasty@pcusa.org

doi:10.1017/S0036930611000457 B. A. Gerrish, Thinking with the Church: Essays in Historical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 213. $25.00; 16.99. Much so-called postmodern theology whether it moves in a traditional or in an avant-garde direction assumes that we no longer need to attend to the shift in worldview brought about by the Enlightenment. But questions still remain, as evidenced in recent secular literature on God. Brian Gerrish seeks to address these questions from a Reformed understanding of the Christian faith. Following Ignatius Loyola, he argues for a historical theology dened as thinking with the church. But for Gerrish, thinking with the church does not entail going against our own best insights. Rather, it means taking responsibility for our own thinking, even as we draw from the wealth the Christian tradition offers. This book is a collection of essays, some new and others revised from earlier publications. Two essays address modern questions about traditional ideas of reason and revelation. One traces developments from the Deist controversy in England following critics like Baron dHolbach and David Hume, who thought that religion (both natural and supposedly revealed) had been superseded in human development to the owering of new ideas in Germany, starting with Immanuel Kant and culminating with Friedrich Schleiermachers depiction of Christian faith as a modication of the feeling or intuition common to every religion and human self-consciousness. The other essay follows Calvin in defending a special revelation beyond simply a general sense that God is our Maker which deals with our estrangement in sin and reconciliation through Christ, the Redeemer. The next three essays concentrate on shifts in our thinking about faith and morals (after Kant), tracing the shift (e.g. in Fichte and Herder) from a dualist to a monistic understanding of God and the world, and its implications for a changed
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