Christian Ethicist and Theologian to Receive Annual Kuyper Prize at Princeton Seminary

Princeton, NJ, April 8, 2008–Dr. Oliver O’Donovan, professor of Christian ethics and practical theology at New College in Edinburgh, Scotland, is the recipient of Princeton Theological Seminary’s 2008 Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life. He will receive the award when he delivers the Seminary’s Kuyper Lecture on Thursday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. His lecture is titled “Some Reflections on Pluralism.”

Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) was probably the greatest and most controversial figure in the Calvinist renaissance that took place at the conclusion of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in The Netherlands. Trained as a theologian at the modernist University of Leiden, he converted to orthodox Calvinism during his first pastorate. In 1872 he founded a Christian newspaper, De Standard, and was elected a member of Parliament in 1874. He was instrumental in the organization of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, a Christian political party, and helped in 1880 to found the Vrije Universiteit (the Free University of Amsterdam), where he regularly served as a professor of theology. In 1901, Kuyper became minister-president of The Netherlands. His worldview, as presented in his hundreds of articles, pamphlets, and books, profoundly affected the development of Reformed theology in The Netherlands, the United States, Canada, South Africa, and Korea, among other countries.

O’Donovan, born in 1945 in London and an Anglican priest, was Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology and Canon of Christ Church at the University of Oxford from 1982 to 2006. Since 2006 he has been professor of Christian ethics and practical theology at the University of Edinburgh.

His writings include Resurrection and Moral Order (Apollos, 1986, 1992), The Desire of the Nations (Cambridge, 1996), The Just War Revisited (Cambridge, 2003), The Ways of Judgment (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), and From Irenaeus to Grotius (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), a sourcebook coedited with his wife, Joan Lockwood O’Donovan.

He is a past president of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics, and has been an active participant in Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue and other ecumenical work. Since 2000 he has been a Fellow of the British Academy. 

The Abraham Kuyper Prize is awarded each year through the generous gift of Dr. Rimmer and Mrs. Ruth de Vries to a scholar or community leader who has contributed to the further development of Reformed theology, particularly as it bears on matters of public life, historical or contemporary, in one or several of the spheres of society. The de Vries’ gift also established an endowed faculty chair and a grant fund for graduate students at Princeton Seminary.

The lecture will take place in Miller Chapel on the Seminary campus. A public reception will immediately follow the lecture in the Private Dining Room of the Mackay Campus Center. For more information regarding the Kuyper Prize and Lecture, contact the Communications/Publications Office at 609.497.7760, or visit www.ptsem.edu.

Princeton Theological Seminary was founded in 1812 as the first seminary established by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. It is the largest Presbyterian seminary in the country, with more than 700 students in seven graduate degree programs.