Obituary: a determined voice for peace

Otago Daily Times

18-05-2025

PETER MATHESON
The Reverend Professor Emeritus, Dr Peter Clarkson Matheson, lived a rich and talented life.
Peter was born in Scotland in 1938 to James and Janet (nee Clarkson) Matheson. They were both children of the manse, with strong ecclesiastical pedigrees.
James was ordained as a minister in the conservative Free Church of Scotland, later becoming a minister of the more liberal Church of Scotland.
The Matheson family came to Dunedin in 1951 when James became minister at Knox Church.
He made a powerful impact with his internationalist outlook and concerns about political and social issues.
As a pupil at Otago Boys' High School in the 1950s, Peter felt alienated from its rugby, cadet, caning culture, somewhat isolated by his Scottish accent and critical of the low standards of much of the teaching.
In contrast, he enjoyed the liberation which came as a student at the University of Otago.
He delighted in discovering the world of thought through English and German literature, engaging in political debate, haunting the library and buying daring books.
He reflected on his honours year in history, how lively companions stretched each other. In the Hocken Library, housed then in Tuhura Otago Museum, Peter discovered the richness of archival research which stimulated his work throughout his life.
Peter received a first class honours in history.
Initially, Peter wanted to work in the Department of External Affairs. He identified as an existentialist and was arrogantly contemptuous of his father's congregation's beliefs and their worship.
But while working as a student during a summer vacation in a Roxburgh orchard, he had a mystical experience that led to him applying to train for the ministry and switching to theology.
He became an active leader in the Knox Church youth group, which studied political issues, and helped organise Dunedin's first peace march against nuclear weapons. His father gave the march's opening speech.
Peter had one year in the Presbyterian Theological Hall, where on daily walks to Knox College, he rubbed shoulders with three other students whose conversations and liberal views reinforced his own.
He loved the lectures on Church History by Helmut Rex, a German refugee, who had been a student of the great German historian, Hanz Leitzmann.
But Peter's activist character came to the fore as he edited Critic , the student newspaper, ran the university's political club and the Knox Youth Group.
The Matheson family, including Peter, returned to Edinburgh in 1961. On board the ship, he developed a friendship with Ian Breward, another Knox student, who was about to undertake postgraduate study in Manchester under the Reformation scholar, Prof Gordon Rupp.
At first, Peter struggled at New College with its formal, stuffy, traditional atmosphere, but he made good friends and found his study of ecclesiastical history refreshing. The liberal approach of Alex Cheyne, professor of church history, captured his imagination and encouraged him to begin doctoral studies.
His practical experience with Duncan Forrester, later a noted public theologian, working in the slums of St James Mission exposed him to distressing poverty.
A summer on Iona and engagement with worship and the Iona community, together with the charismatic leadership of George MacLeod, reinforced Peter's commitments to pacifism, socialism and activism.
Peter spent two years at the University of Tubingen studying Cardinal Contarini and his unsuccessful attempts to forge dialogue and reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants, bitterly divided by the Reformation.
Peter was stirred by the radical biblical scholarship of Ernst Kasemann, enriched by student friendships and exposed to the challenges of Germany's post-war recovery and division.
His student friend, Hartmut Sommer, introduced Peter to his sister, Heinke. Peter and Heinke married in 1965.
Peter was appointed to a new lectureship at New College in 1965, covering the Renaissance/Reformation period. It was an intense time, finishing his doctorate and facing new family demands, with the birth of Catriona, the grief of the premature birth and death of Gesine and the joy of Donald's birth.
Together with close colleagues Andrew Ross, David Wright and Alec Cheyne, Peter developed innovative approaches to church history, challenging Eurocentrism and introducing themal and team-teaching. In the university's history school, his course on the German churches and national socialism was very popular, leading to his publication, The Third Reich and the Christian Churches (1981).
Peter's discomfort with the Church of Scotland was expressed in the "Dissembly" he organised as a satirical counterpart to its General Assembly. When challenged by the New College principal, John McIntyre, "what is it you want to change?", Peter replied "everything".
For some, his actions were an affront, but for Peter, the Dissembly's purpose was "to question, to protest, to act as a catalyst" for change. His anger and frustration at institutional inertia was eased by his unique reverse humour, where his negative joking needed to be appreciated as positive.
The threat of nuclear war and The Troubles in Northern Ireland saw Peter and Heinke becoming members of Parents for Survival and supporting protests against nuclear weapons. Peter travelled to Belfast frequently and behind the Iron Curtain, visiting peace groups and encouraging reconciliation.
His extensive work with the Fellowship of Reconciliation led the publication of Profile of Love: Towards a theology of the just peace (1979).
In 1979-80, Peter and Ian Breward, then professor of church history in Dunedin, exchanged teaching positions.
One year later, Breward moved to Melbourne and Peter was appointed in his place.
Peter was ordained and began to preach and lead worship. His great rhetorical skills and passion, already seen in his social and political concerns, now found expression from the pulpit.
Peter's innovative themal teaching developed further, role plays and re-enactments encouraging students to experience the past.
He took seriously the New Zealand-Pacific context, writing a chapter on "The Settler Church" in the Presbyterian sesquicentennial history (1990), recognising both the Scottish legacy and the adaptations brought by colonial pluralism, voluntarism and pragmatism.
Peter identified with Clive Pearson on how the study of New Zealand religious thought was largely overlooked and began some exploratory teaching and publications.
The ecumenical partnership with the Catholic seminary, Holy Cross, and its staff in the faculty of theology enriched Peter's life.
Community, relationships and friendship were important. He encouraged the community life at the Theological Hall with a special concern to incorporate Māori, Pacific Islanders and international students.
Peter and Heinke's home became a place of hospitality. The St Martin's Island Community, in which Peter provided significant leadership, brought together for him an activist community, concerned about peace and the environment, as well as an inclusive spirituality, expressed in his poem, Aramoana Christ.
The 1990s were troubling for Peter. Tensions between colleagues and a church commission left the Theological Hall divided and weak, while the national church was almost consumed with its debates over homosexuality.
A university review led to the faculty of theology's replacement with a university-based theology department.
Peter lost his position, despite his distinguished academic scholarship.
The new Presbyterian School of Ministry, with its emphasis on ministry training, did not give Peter a rich academic environment in which to flourish.
Peter had already made his mark as a Reformation scholar. His lively pioneering English translation of the radical reformer, Thomas Muntzer's collected works, introductions and notes (1992) enhanced his reputation. Peter's discovery and translation of the writings of Argula von Grumbach (1995), the first published Protestant woman reformer, was ground-breaking.
He opened up new vistas of the Reformation in subsequent books, examining The Rhetoric of the Reformation (1998) and what he described in his Edinburgh Gunning Lectures as The Imaginative World of the Reformation (2001).
Drawing on sermons, pamphlets, letters and woodcuts, Peter grounded the popular radical appeal of the Reformation among ordinary people. The esteem in which he was held is evident in him being asked to write the volume Reformation Christianity , in the Fortress Press series, A People's History of Christianity (2006).
The bleak period in Peter's life was relieved by this "efflorescence of writing" and his guest professorship at Edinburgh, 1997-98.
His appointment as principal of the Uniting Church Theological Hall at Ormond College Melbourne in 1998 was "liberating".
Encouraging collegial relations and a culture for research and writing, supporting and stimulating students, working with parishes and presbyteries, building community and honing his preaching skills and poetic gifts was enriching and positive. While administration was not Peter's forte, his other gifts were greatly valued. It was for Peter a wonderful six years.
Peter retired to Waitati, where he and Heinke spent many happy years enjoying the rural environment, closeness to the sea and proximity to Te Whare Runanga Marae.
After health issues became pressing, they moved to Dunedin.
They jointly authored a remarkable publication, Love and Terror in the Third Reich (2019) from the letters between Heinke's parents when her father was serving with the German army at the Russian front.
In retirement, Peter continued to be active in research and writing. He became an honorary fellow of the Otago University theology programme, contributing to First Church and then Knox Church, and continued his links with the St Martin Island's Community.
His contributions to the Otago Daily Times and Tui Motu were often incisive commentaries on local and international issues.
His uncomfortable prophetic witness to peace and justice and to a renewed environment reflected his "belief in the power of words — to reimagine, to create new possibilities", and, as he expressed it in his Easter 2024 ODT editorial, to make "a defiant response to radical evil".
Peter Matheson died on April 14, aged 86. — Allan Davidson