Preface

Standing as it does at the heart of Canada’s largest public university, Knox College is a testament to both the historic role played by the Presbyterian Church in Canada in shaping our nation and the abiding importance of faith in the public square today. Since the construction of the current Knox building in 1915, the intellectual and spiritual development that has taken place here has helped prepare women and men for ministry in churches, hospitals, schools, prisons, and missionary contexts across Canada and around the world.

The articles in this volume represent the diversity of disciplines and approaches among the faculty of Knox College and are offered in celebration of the 170th anniversary of our founding and our 100th year on the campus of the University of Toronto. While the range of subjects has changed since the ribbon was first cut on the college’s gothic academic home a century ago, the commitment to the gospel and its importance for Canada and the world remains the same.

When surveyed about the character of their faith, more and more Canadians are responding with the statement that they are “spiritual, but not religious.” In other words, there is a sense among Canadians that there is something beyond oneself, but they choose to engage this something in isolation, rather than in a religious community. This recent trend falls within what former Knox professor and principal Walter W. Bryden would have described as the “domestication of divine transcendence.” In his appropriation of the teaching of John Calvin, Bryden argued that God speaks to us in a way that provokes an encounter with Christ, and that one way in which Christ is mediated is through the Church. In his chapter “Calvin and Canadian Protestantism: The Thought and Influence of W.W. Bryden,” Knox professor of historical theology John Vissers highlights Bryden’s understanding of Calvin’s thought and how he appropriated and applied it to the Canadian context.

On a Sunday morning, a volunteer pours boiling water into a pot and organically grown tea begins to steep. Elsewhere, a congregation celebrates as an array of rooftop solar panels begins to stream clean energy through their building and onto the grid. In ways small and large, in rural and urban churches across the country, individuals and congregations are claiming their identity as stewards of creation. In his essay, “Faith Matters: Towards a Public Missiology in the Midst of the Ecological Crisis,” professor of systematic theology Charles Fensham examines the ecological crisis facing our world and argues for a new approach that tackles the global, economic character of this crisis from the perspective of a renewed sense of mission. In this, Professor Fensham sees not just an ecological crisis, but a spiritual one that can be countered only by a church equipped with a missional response.

On a hot summer day in 1848, a group of Scottish settlers turned their faces upward as the final shakes were nailed into place atop a newly constructed wood-framed church. In subsequent years the congregation grew as the new railway line brought new settlers and prosperity to the region. Soon, a larger church of red brick would replace the original building. In the twentieth century, what had started as a hamlet became a suburb of the growing city of Toronto, and a new Christian education wing was built to accommodate the growth of the post-war years. In the 1970s, members of a now diverse congregation established a day-care centre and began to offer English classes to new residents who hailed from around the globe. Even as the face of Presbyterian congregations has changed over the years, so too has the study of church history itself. In “The Changed (and Changing) Face of Church History,” Knox professor of Church and society Stuart Macdonald traces how a church history that once focused on Western Europe has become a truly global history and notes how the new questions that have arisen hold the prospect of new insights for both historians and the Church.

On this floor alone are tens of thousands of books totalling millions of pages. He runs his finger along...