NCL-30th-Anniversary-History-Book-WEB

2002-2016 | PROF TREVOR CAIRNEY
by the Hon. Kevin Rudd, Deputy Leader of
the Opposition at the time, with his talk ‘A
consideration of the relationship between
Church and State’. This was followed by
Dr Cameron’s second talk, ‘Making it work:
Proposals for future engagement between
Church and State’.
The Lectures were attended by almost 700
people over two nights and were recorded and
sold as a DVD. John Anderson’s lecture was also
published in a themed edition of Case Quarterly,
‘The Christian and Politics’, in 2007.
2006
The lecturer in 2006 was Prof Kim Oates AM,
MD DSc FRAC. Prof Oates is a paediatrician
with particular interests in child development
and child protection. He is Emeritus Professor
of Paediatrics and Child Health at the
University of Sydney, and had also been Chief
Executive Officer of the Children’s Hospital
Westmead from 1997 to 2006. The aim of the
three talks was to offer a new perspective
on family and its significant impact on
community.
The Lectures were titled ‘The amazing early
years of life!’, ‘When parenting goes wrong:
Hints for effective parenting’, and, ‘Sexual
abuse and children as reliable and truthful
informants?’ They later stimulated an edition
of Case Quarterly titled ‘Family Foundations’.
2007
The 2007 lectures were very significant. At the
time, Professor O’Donovan was seen as one of
the world’s great Christian scholars. His book
Resurrection and Moral Order was set reading
for all Moore College students, and had been
for some time. His work has always traversed
intellectual places and arguments that few
theologians were addressing in sound biblical
ways. He was accompanied by his wife, Dr Joan
Lockwood, who, a scholar in her own right, also
presented some talks.
The title for the lecture series was Morally
Awake? Admiration and resolution in the light
of Christian faith. The first lecture was held
in the Great Hall of Scientia and attended by
more than 600 guests. This first talk, ‘Waking,’
was framed around wakefulness – the mind
alert to shape decisions and actions – using
the metaphor of a journey. Prof O’Donovan
suggested that moral reasoning requires us
to think more seriously about the need for
frequent journeys from what is the case, to
what is not yet the case.
On night two he explored how ‘admiration’
is not mere effort or action, rather, it is ‘rest’ in
the biblical sense of the word. The third night’s
lecture, ‘Resolving’, concluded the journey,
discussing how we make the transition of reason
from what is the case to what we are to do.
These lectures created a real ‘buzz’ across
the Sydney and wider Australian church
with many people travelling from interstate
to attend. The Lectures eventually found
their way into a book that Oliver O’Donovan
published in 2013 – Self, World, and Time: Ethics
as Theology. In the book’s foreword O’Donovan
spoke of:
‘the generous hospitality of New College
and the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship
& Education (CASE) … which gave me
the first opportunity to explore some of
the terrain in September 2007, and an
occasional reminiscence of that pleasant
Australian visit still flavours the text.’
12 NEW COLLEGE LECTURES 30TH ANNIVERSARY