Fresh Thinking Issue #13 by ctinquiry

Elise Edwards | Tom Greggs | Jürgen Moltmann Theological Journeys

DIRECTOR

William Storrar

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

Joshua Mauldin

CENTER MANAGER

Michelle Tan

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Kamal Ahmed

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS

Robert Jones

CONSULTANT ON DIGITAL RESEARCH

ACADEMIC ADVISORY PANEL

John Bowlin

Peter Casarella

Francis Clooney

David Fergusson

David Ford

Agustín Fuentes

Tammy Gaber

Eric Gregory

Michael Hecht

Jan-Olav Henriksen

Jennifer Herdt

Cathleen Kaveny

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Roy Lennox, Chair

Clifford Anderson

SOCIAL IMPACT FELLOW

John Walker

DESIGNER

Debra Trisler

CONTRIBUTORS

Elise Edwards

Tom Greggs

Douglas Meeks

Fred Simmons

William Storrar

Nico Koopman

Ian McFarland

Friederike Nüssel

Peter Ochs

Peter Paris

Esther Reed

Susan Schneider

Mona Siddiqui

Rothney Tshaka

Jeremy Waldron

Leslie Wingard

Gayle Robinson, Vice Chair

Jon Pott, Secretary

Robert Wedeking, Treasurer

Fred Anderson

Darrell Armstrong

Bette Jane (B.J.) Booth

Robert Gunn

Douglas Leonard

William Storrar

Charles Wall

EMERITUS/EMERITA TRUSTEES

Robert Hendrickson

Carter Karins

Jay Vawter

Judy Wornat

Ralph Wyman

John Walker

We convene leading thinkers in an interdisciplinary environment where theology makes an impact on global concerns, and we share our research to inform public thinking. OUR MISSION

OUR PROGRAM Thriving in Diverse Contexts

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FROM THE DIRECTOR —

A Transition Year at CTI

Succession planning is a key skill for every well-run institution. It has long been a core commitment of the Center’s Board of Trustees, thanks to the expertise and guidance in corporate governance of one of its senior members, Charles Wall. I learned an early lesson in the art of transition when a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh. I have been reminded of this formative experience in recent months as my distinguished successor Professor Tom Greggs and I work closely together with the CTI Trustees and staff colleagues to ensure a successful transition to his leadership of the Center in the summer of 2025.

A Collaborative Approach: The Rector’s Story

Like the other ancient Scottish universities, Edinburgh has a distinctive constitutional tradition where the student body elects the Rector, the titular Chair of the university’s governing body, the Court. Every three years there is a lively election campaign as students run their favored candidates for Rector. I ran a campaign in 1975 for a BBC journalist and broadcaster of Icelandic descent called Magnus Magnusson. Thanks to his public spirited appeal Magnusson won the election by a landslide. The first decision a new Rector must make is to appoint the Rector’s Assessor, a member of the University Court who represents the Rector in the university. Magnusson appointed me as his Assessor. That is why I found myself in my early twenties sitting on the governing body of a major international research university. It was a masterclass in corporate governance that stood me in good stead later in life as Director of CTI, working closely with our own outstanding nonprofit Board of Trustees.

But before I took up office as the Rector’s Assessor, Magnusson did something remarkable. He reached out to his defeated opponent who had served as Assessor to his predecessor as Rector, and invited this rival candidate to continue in office as his Assessor for a semester. The defeated candidate graciously accepted and so Magnusson was able to draw on this experienced Assessor’s wisdom in his first months as Rector. This magnanimous arrangement gave me time to learn my responsibilities as ‘Rector’s Assessor Designate’. What could have been a fraught and abrupt transition was turned into a collegial and collaborative process in the best interests of the University. I have never forgotten my mentor’s example of how to conduct a successful transition with grace and good will.

A Theological Journey: The Marischal Professor’s Story

I tell that Rector’s story here because it is also the story of CTI this year. Tom Greggs graciously accepted the Board’s invitation not only to become the next Director but also to serve in the honorary position of ‘Director Designate’ before he takes up his full-time appointment in July 2025. He is doing so to ensure the same collegial and collaborative transition at CTI that Magnus Magnusson secured for Edinburgh University. Our shared leadership roles in this transition year have enabled Tom and me to work strategically together to maintain the momentum in advancing CTI’s mission in the critical months following the opening of our new Center building. Plans for CTI’s future research and fundraising program are already well in hand, all thanks to Tom’s early and expert engagement with these transition challenges.

The wisdom and vision Tom Greggs is bringing to the future direction of the Center of Theological Inquiry draws on his stellar record as a student, teacher, research scholar, and university leader. It is therefore a pleasure to share with you in this Fall issue of Fresh Thinking my recent conversation with Tom on the theological journey that led him to accept the invitation to become our next Director. I should stress before you read the interview that while Professor Greggs holds the historic Marischal Chair in Divinity, established in 1616, at the ancient Scottish University of Aberdeen, founded in 1495, he is in fact from the city of Liverpool, a proud Liverpudlian and not about to be another Scot in Princeton!

A Wonderful Endeavor: The Beadle’s Story

Along with the remarkable story of our next Director’s theological journey to Princeton, there is one more tale I would like to tell about this transition year at CTI. At the opening of our new Center

building in June I had the privilege of reading an address written for CTI by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Marilynne Robinson on why theology matters in intellectual and public life. I want to close my Director’s column for this Fall issue with the words of a less well known but equally passionate advocate of theology. If the office of Rector in the ancient Scottish universities is a distinctive one, an even older Scottish office is that of the Beadle in our ancient parish churches. The Beadle is the Church Officer charged with looking after the practical needs of the officiating Minister in services of worship. In an earlier life in parish ministry I learned to revere and sometimes fear the Beadle, who could be an all too discerning judge of one’s sermons and shortcomings. Jack Thompson, a Beadle in an Edinburgh parish whom I remember for his gentle piety, once said to me when he heard I was taking up my first appointment as a university lecturer, “It must be wonderful to be a theologian.” It is indeed, because as both Marilynne and Jack knew, theology matters.

In leading CTI as a practical theologian, I have focused on what Paul Tillich saw as one of my discipline’s distinctive responsibilities, which is to think about the appropriate institutional settings for doing theology. In CTI’s case, we do theology in an interdisciplinary environment that is designed to be conducive to fresh thinking on the problems of religion and society. This is CTI’s enduring setting for doing theology, now in our light-filled building for virtual, resident, and public inquiry. The task ahead is to cultivate the theological renaissance that our founder James McCord saw as his Center’s enduring purpose. It is a joy for me that we have in Tom Greggs the perfect theologian to lead the Center in this wonderful endeavor.

Thank you for your continuing support in this transition year. —William Storrar

Meet the Next Director

An Interview with Tom Greggs

In this conversation between CTI’s Director, William Storrar, and his successor, they trace Professor Greggs’ journey from a childhood in Liverpool to a future in Princeton.

William Storrar: Tom, can you tell us about some of the early influences on your younger life that sowed the seeds of your later vocation as a theologian?

Tom Greggs: I grew up in Liverpool, a post-industrial town in the north of England in the 1980s, when there was a strategic governmental policy of disinvestment in the city. My parents were unemployed when I was born, though my father later worked in a marzipan factory and my mother as a clerk for a bus company. I realized education provided a possibility of changing my life; but more profoundly that the life of the mind was a place in which I could be free and in which my social class and background would not hold me back. I was a scholarship boy at a very traditional boys’ school, Liverpool Blue Coat, where I always wanted to prove I deserved to be despite my economic situation—never dropping a grade and going on to be Head Boy (the senior prefect—with all that you might imagine about that in an English schooling!).

More profoundly, however, it was faith which accompanied me from my earliest days. My parents came to faith when I was very young, and I was raised in an evangelical and Methodist context. I was fascinated by questions of belief, and my faith was the most important part of my life. I begin to preach at a young age, and had support from a wonderful group of friends—both people of faith and not.

Most people at school expected me to read law or English or politics and economics, and go on to be a politician; that was a possibility at one point. But because of my faith and a very strong sense of call to ministry I decided to study theology. I was never much interested in questions of how many angels could fit on a pinhead, but—given my own social and economic context—was interested in how faith, church and politics (in particular) intersected. I was already beginning to ask the question: what can and should we say as Christians in society?

WS: You studied theology as an undergraduate at Oxford University. What were the questions that most interested you on the threshold of your theological career?

TG: Believing I’d spend my life as a jobbing Methodist minister, I thought (quite rightly since I preach most weeks), I’d be spending my future reading commentaries and thinking about the Bible. As such, while I took my compulsory Bible courses, I focused a good deal more on the history of Christianity and Christian thought.

My interests were two sides of the same coin in Oxford, and I guess it has in different ways remained so since. On one side, I was interested in how Christianity came into being: how we moved from the Jesus movement to an institutionalized church to the religion of Christendom; and how we should respond to that reality. On the other, I was interested in articulations of theology following the collapse of Christendom and the rise of complexly secular and multi-religious societies. Already at school, I’d begun to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth; in fact, I mispronounced Barth’s name in my interview at Oxford! And I was captivated by their thought in general, but especially their critiques of religion. These interests were not, however, for their own sake but rather for the sake of trying to understand the contemporary context and how we might reflect on and speak about faith today. The late John Webster, who was later my colleague as a fellow professor at Aberdeen, was a huge influence on me where he was at that time Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. I used to walk to and from lectures with him, and his lectures on systematics captivated me. I began to realize that the way we think about God determines everything: how we think about society, science, politics, the church, pastoral issues, international relations, and so forth.

WS: Before your PhD and becoming a university lecturer, you taught in a high school. What drew you to teaching and what did you carry from that time in secondary education into your work at university, first at Chester and then at Aberdeen?

TG: I fully intended to candidate for full-time Methodist ministry after Oxford. But I did well at university, and graduated first in my year. People around me, both in the university and the church, asked me to consider my call a bit further: they said that I had a gift for theology and could potentially make a difference that way; that perhaps theology might be the particular expression of my calling. I thought that teaching in a high school would be helpful in giving me some time to reflect on that, and that I’d also learn some skills which might be useful in both the church and the academy. Furthermore, I knew how precarious it was getting funding for further study and getting a job. Teaching seemed a secure profession to fall back on.

I taught a lot of philosophy at the school I was at, and had to do a lot of self-education on that front as well as in learning more about world religions. I had learned a lot about the religions of the Ancient Near East, but nothing about Islam or Sikhism or any other living religion.

I think the experience of teaching in a very secular context and of increased exposure to secular philosophy and other religions really shaped concretely the kinds of concerns that I have about how to articulate faith in a complexly pluralist and secular world. This was the turn of the millennium; 9/11 was the new global reality in which we all lived. My interests in inter-religious engagement can be traced back to my time as a teacher; but so too can my concern that one can never separate inter-faith discussions from secular-religious ones if one is to live honestly in the world today.

WS: You did your doctoral studies at Cambridge University with the theologian David Ford. But you also met regularly with Daniel Hardy, the first Director of CTI. Tell us about their different influences on your theological formation.

TG: I had an extraordinary apprenticeship as a doctoral student, working in both patristics and systematics. More than anything, David Ford taught me how to be a theologian in and for the church and world. I was so grateful for the training I had

had in Oxford, and the patristics scholar, Mark Edwards FBA, has continued to shape my thinking about earliest Christianity. But in Cambridge, at least under David, it seemed ok to ask openly what this might all mean for the church and society today. And there were such possibilities of engaging with other subject areas and disciplines. The PhD seemed to be something which was taken in one’s stride: there were conferences to help organize; home seminars; reading groups; teaching to be done; inter-faith dialogues; and even government conferences to be involved with. It was a very exciting time. David’s focus on wisdom is entirely apposite for the way in which he operated in the university, church, and world as a theologian. I continue to be supported by him and to learn from him. He was the very best of what one could hope for in a Doktorvater.

Dan Hardy was the added bonus I had in being supervised by David. He looked after me when David was on research leave, but more importantly he met with me week after week, usually on a Friday afternoon, to talk about theology, church, and everything else under the sun—believing that none of these three arenas could ever be separated from one another. Dan was an extraordinary thinker—complex and difficult to understand. In fact, Dan’s favorite mantra always seemed to be: “It’s more complicated than that.” I continue to find his book God’s Ways with the World instructive and find new things in it each time I read it: to be honest, he is almost impenetrably dense on first read! Dan’s sense of the connection of theology with society and especially the church was very important to me. We disagreed a good deal about certain aspects of theology, but agreed fundamentally on the need for theology to relate to the church. “All that groundwork must be meaningful on the ground,” I remember Dan saying. It is because of Dan that I went on to work in a university. I still, during my PhD, felt that I should really be a jobbing Methodist minister and work fulltime for the church. “That’s precisely why you need to work in a university theology department,” Dan said. “You can make avenues into the church from the academy, but rarely from the church into the university.” Dan understood how key to the church and the academy it was that theology in the university flourished.

WS: You are currently embarked on writing a major three volume dogmatic ecclesiology. Why is this theme a focus of your work at this stage in your career and how does it relate to your earlier writings?

TG: I have always understood myself as a preacher and church person first and foremost. The question of the nature of the church has been something I’ve thought about since I was in my early teens. I thought it was time to focus a bit more on the topic formally. There is a new confidence in theology in this decade—certainly that wasn’t there when I was an undergraduate—and it is wonderful to be able to be part of that sense that theology has something significant to say. It seems so key to me that this new confidence should be focused on the life of the church where there is so often so little confidence at the moment. The decline in the mainline church has been extraordinary even in my lifetime. The responses to this situation have in general made things worse—acting as if the church were like any organization in the world. I wanted to say something a bit more about the nature of the church and its purposes within the ways of God with the world.

There is certainly a sense of continuity in the work from my earlier writings. My work has tended to focus on both what the conditions of writing theology outside of Christendom might mean and on that very context itself. Most theology has been written in the presumption of a homogenous society of Christians, and where there has been difference it has tended to be between Christian denominations. This changed context needs reflecting on, but—I’ve tried to argue elsewhere in my work—it might perhaps even mean we discover something truer in our theology that we missed in a supposed Christian society. Thinking about the church in the twenty-first century will inevitably be different to thinking about it even up to the middle of the last century; but maybe our new thinking might rediscover some earlier sources from the time before Constantine when the church lived without any presumption of power or Christian homogeneity?

WS: Tom, as Head of Divinity you took theology and religious studies at Aberdeen from being rated 13th to being ranked number 1 for research in the UK. Can

you reflect with us on your approach to institutional leadership that contributed to this remarkable success with your colleagues in Aberdeen?

TG: I really cannot claim the credit here: it was a team effort. If I did anything, it was that I tried to convene the right group of people who would be able to work together collaboratively and pursue a shared passion and vision for theology. My concern as Head of Divinity was to think about the whole community in Divinity, and try to find ways to let people flourish. Over time, I have become interested in how an account of the hierarchy of goods can help us flourish as a community. As Head of Divinity, what I hoped was that colleagues were able to focus on the ultimate goods of research and teaching; that meant trying to prevent other issues from interfering with the pursuit of the good and to create conditions where the good was the aim of all we did. Our vision as a department was to undertake classical and cutting-edge theology with impact in the world. We tried to work together, through shared seminars, discussing work in progress and finding ways our research could impact society more broadly. That “real life” context for theology was so key to our imaginations. Colleagues all found ways to relate their research to the world. This meant, as well, that they were able to discuss big questions in the belief that theology matters and makes a difference. That confidence is so important to doing work of significance.

Aberdeen is a genuinely collegial and friendly theology department. The context was absolutely key to the flourishing of Divinity. There was lots of inter-disciplinary engagement both within the many disciplines in a Divinity School and across other parts of the university.

WS: You will have opportunity to set out your vision for CTI when you take up office next July, but can you tell us something now of what drew you to accepting the Board of Trustees’ invitation to become the next Director?

TG: I can’t imagine a better job or role, or one I would rather have! I hope I am a theologian and person of faith down to the core of my being. CTI is the world’s

only institute of advanced study in theology, so where better could there be to be a theologian? But, from being Head Boy at School to Head of Divinity at Aberdeen, I’ve also always cared about institutions; and the role of director allows an opportunity to build upon the extraordinary legacy of your tenure in terms of the shape and running of the Center. There are few things more important at the moment than finding and supporting institutions in which theology can thrive. The idea of being able to serve its continued flourishing is something I could hardly resist.

You have done the most amazing job of securing the Center, Will, focusing it back on its foundational purposes, and transforming both the program and the new building into something fit not just for the present era but ready for the decades to come. I feel very blessed to be inheriting this legacy, and it is wonderful to enter a new role secure in the knowledge that so much has already been done.

As is the case at all points with all institutions, there are, of course, ongoing challenges. And they appeal to me as well. This new phase of the Center’s life and program is the perfect moment to deepen relationships with the other three centers of higher learning in Princeton (the university, the institute and the seminary) and seek further to build strategic alliances, raising CTI’s profile. My experience in the UK university setting and working in inter-disciplinary ways should help here. Finances are always a challenge, but one I relish. The new building comes at a cost, and the usual avenues of funding from alumni are hardly available to a research center. But I am confident that if we are to focus on Dr. James McCord’s founding vision of cultivating a theological renaissance, we can capture the imagination not just of donors but of intellectual culture at large. After all, if the hard sciences can secure billions of dollars of investment, shouldn’t seeking to glorify God with our minds be worth even more?

WS: Indeed, Tom. Thank you for sharing your theological journey from Liverpool to Princeton. I wish you every encouragement as you lead CTI into its greatest days ahead.

Journeying with Jürgen Moltmann

M. DOUGLAS MEEKS

Jürgen Moltmann (right) with his wife and fellow theologian Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel and Douglas Meeks

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF M. DOUGLAS MEEKS

Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024) held CTI in high regard for its work in theology and science. We are honored that CTI Member Douglas Meeks has written this essay for Fresh Thinking, remembering his friend.

Jürgen Moltmann was a homo viator. His mind and his person were constantly on the move. Together with countless companions, I journeyed with him but perhaps a bit closer to him than most. The journey was and is compelled by Jürgen’s passion for life, justice, reconciliation, and play.

I first met Jürgen in August 1967 as his assistant at Duke University Divinity School. My wife, Blair, and I had come to their house where he, Elisabeth, and their four daughters were making a new home. It was our first responsibility to help them get oriented to Southern reality. Durham, with its residues of slavery and the tobacco industry, was the beginning of his American journey, which he often compared to Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. On that first visit, Jürgen handed me a copy of Theology of Hope. I read it with astonishment, for it opened radically new theological possibilities to me. In college, amid a faith struggle, I had been helped by Tillich, especially his sermons. Then, I entered a Whitehead frenzy. Process theology was refreshing because of its deep criticism of facilely accepted Western metaphysical attributes of God. But now, reading this book, I joined the general excitement about Moltmann’s theology, for here was a new way of viewing God and the world. One could read the Bible without suppressing the experience of the world’s suffering.

Some of the excitement about the theology of hope was a mistaken misidentification with American optimism, groundless in its grasping for the

future. It should have been clear from the beginning, however, that from Moltmann’s perspective, Christian hope has a ground, a reason. The resurrection, God’s power of life against death, is the reason of hope and the center of Moltmann’s theology. Raised in a secular family, Jürgen’s journey in theology began when, in an anti-aircraft bunker, the young soldier lived through a bombing that killed everyone else in the bunker. The stench of death stayed with him the rest of his life as he wrestled with why he was left alive. This could have simply been survivor’s guilt. But in prisoner-of-war camps, Jürgen slowly gained a love of the life that God creates out of death.

Stationed in Durham that year, Jürgen’s travels all over America culminated in the watershed year of spring 1968, in which the power of death seemed to be in control. The ever more deadly and insane Vietnam War, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and later the Paris barricades, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the violence of the Democratic Convention, and the election of Nixon left many stunned.

In October 1968, Blair and I, stunned as we were, traveled to Tübingen, Germany, and lived two houses from the Moltmanns. Tübingen was a breath of fresh air. The young professor, still relatively new to the Tübingen faculty, stood with the students protesting for peace. New theological start-ups were appearing on all continents. Tübingen was a hothouse of fresh theology. Two primary movements in Moltmann’s theology were afoot.

The first was the light the resurrection shed on the cross of Jesus. The second was the development of a theology of play. The juxtaposition of the cross and play in the light of the resurrection became characteristic of how Moltmann dealt with every theological question. The juxtaposition was also apparent in Jürgen’s life, and I guess this was the secret of his inexhaustible energy.

An example from that time was a party the Moltmanns gave for his assistants and doctoral students. It was a fest amid the deadly conflicts of the world everywhere one could look. Everyone was to come in costume; Blair and I were Huck Finn and Becky. There was ping-pong in the garden and a contest to see who could recite by memory the longest passage from Faust. The evening ended with a line dancing and singing to a loud trumpet, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It could have been Louis Armstrong at the head of the line, but it was Jürgen Moltmann. The same song concluded Jürgen’s funeral. How can we do anything other than sing and dance if the resurrection is real? The freedom of play in the face of suffering became a hallmark of Moltmann’s theology.

As the decades moved on, Moltmann’s theology evolved. Theology is usually facilely managed until it has to deal with the church in the world. Having been a pastor himself, Moltmann’s eye was always on the life of the congregation. Pastors the world over responded with lively expectation to everything he wrote. But his eye was also on the world church. He became an ecumenical theologian par excellence, proposing new perspectives on the oikumene for two decades at the crucial gatherings of

the WCC and other ecumenical organizations. He understood the separation of the churches because of dogma, but he pleaded that theology must deal more crucially with the social, economic, and political differences that separated the churches and the nations.

Moltmann’s love of freedom became a characteristic of his theology as he joined liberation theologies and movements worldwide. Like Barth, he turned to the East and took pushback for that from theologians in the grip of Western ideologies. He journeyed not only to Eastern Europe; China, South Korea, Japan, and Oceania also became regular venues, presciently opening questions that are ever more pressing for the future of theology in an increasingly treacherous time. Moltmann was closely related to Black theology, especially in the person of James Cone. Together with Elisabeth, he entered a sustained journey with feminist theology and with movements for the rights of women. Latin America was the site of the most developed liberation theologies, and Moltmann had an extended and fruitful conversation with them. Several Latin American liberation theologians stepped back from Moltmann, but Gustavo Gutierrez and others remained close allies. Later, Gutierrez said that liberation theology might end, but God’s love of the poor never ends. The emphasis on poverty became essential to Moltmann’s theology. It is a focus I have taken up in my work.

The 1980s and 1990s brought a new sense of the ways human beings threaten the life of the world: the crushing of the life systems on which humans depend and the human capacity to destroy the earth with our weapons.

Moltmann was deeply involved in the protests against nuclear weapons. Moltmann’s eschatological theology is now more urgent than ever as the scourge of wars opens up again the threat of nuclear weapons and other armaments driven by AI. Moltmann’s theology of creation situated God’s creative power in nature and showed how the human subjugation of nature threatens the only home humans have. Theology cannot escape the raging of nations against each other and the threat of apocalypse. This is urgently true for theology in America as we slowly become aware of the implications of Hiroshima and Dresden as excuses for the bombing of Gaza. Moltmann has taught us that a theology that does not come to grips with nihilism is useless.

Early on, in those days in Durham, Jürgen told me that his theology was a theology of reconciliation. I wasn’t sure what that meant then. But now I see that his theology never strayed from a focus on reconciliation. It might be because the terrified soldier eventually knew there was no way beyond the deadly contest for superiority except through reconciliation. Barth’s theology glowed as a theology of reconciliation in the fourth volume of Church Dogmatics. The difference is that from beginning to end, Moltmann’s theology of resurrection could not be other than a theology of reconciliation.

I believe that Moltmann lived for reconciliation in thought and in person. According to Paul, we have been reconciled (plus quam perfectum) with God through Christ. But reconciliation with each other: Is that a joke? Is not violence necessary to conquer what’s necessary for life and end conflict? The societies and nations of the world are so alien-

ated economically and politically that some even welcome the four horsemen of the apocalypse. How do we live in the face of the apocalypse for the sake of God’s righteousness? Hope is a “feathery” thing. It is really not much unless it is created in us by the Triune God. It appears on the journey in a sudden assurance of God’s love. Jürgen Moltmann’s journey is not over. And he will remain a partner in our theological journey. As Jürgen wrote in his book The Living God:

We acknowledge the gracious hand of God from which the gifts and powers of God come, and we grasp this open hand. There we feel ourselves to be in safe-keeping even when we fall, when the gifts are absent and when our powers fail us. We are led from the open hand of God to the heart of God, where there is glowing love.

Left to right: Douglas and Blair Meeks with James Cone and Jürgen Moltmann

From the Societal Implications of Astrobiology to Philosophy, Theology, and Origins of Life Research

FRED SIMMONS

Ifirst heard of astrobiology on a Sunday morning in November 2014—at the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) breakfast reception held during the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings. Although astrobiology was by then a flourishing interdisciplinary field devoted to studying life in the universe, I was intrigued by CTI Director William Storrar’s announcement that NASA had invited CTI to launch an inquiry on its societal implications. Contemporary exchanges between natural scientists and theologians are typically initiated by theologians or religiously affiliated scientists, not national scientific agencies. Why would NASA ask theologians to explore the potential cultural significance of one of their chief research priorities?

At the time, prominent astrobiologists were publicly predicting that discovery of extraterrestrial life was imminent and that this discovery would rival the Copernican revolution in its societal implications. Since that revolution had profound and contentious religious and philosophical consequences, NASA leadership concluded that theological and philosophical reflection on the prospect of such discovery had become opportune, even prudent. While I was unsure how to assess the first part of this prediction, I was skeptical about the second. After all, although communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence would likely have portentous cultural import, detecting the extraterrestrial microbes that mainly animate astrobiologists seemed unlikely to have similar effects.

Yet even if encounter with extraterrestrial life is delayed or elusive and astrobiology is not societally revolutionary, astrobiology may still be theologically significant. Since all extant life on Earth shares a common ancestor, it constitutes a single—albeit staggeringly diverse—instance of life. Given the impossibility of identifying the essence of a kind from a single instance, finding another instance of life—even if only microbial—could importantly advance understandings of what life is. Such an advance would not only impact biology but could alter chemistry and physics as well. It could also materially influence Christian thought.

Even if encounter with extraterrestrial life is delayed or elusive and astrobiology is not societally revolutionary, astrobiology may still be theologically significant.

Accordingly, when CTI convened an initial cohort of scholars for its Societal Implications of Astrobiology inquiry, I was eager to participate. At first, I was attracted by the possibility of finding extraterrestrial microbes, however improbable that might be, for such life would seemingly be unaffected by human sin and if so would afford particular insight into the character of God’s creation. Moreover, such insight could be theologically consequential, for it could clarify the effects of sin, the substance of salvation, and the extent to which eschatological hopes involve a new creation.

The appeal of pursuing such possibilities is amplified by extraordinary developments in astrobiology itself. Over the last half century, technological innovations have enabled scientists to begin searching for life within our solar system with far greater sophistication, in part through the first interplanetary spacecraft. Interest in the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe has been further stimulated over the last three decades by discovery of life on Earth thriving in various settings previously thought uninhabitable,

a now disputed announcement of microfossils in a Martian meteorite from Antarctica, and detection of the first exoplanet—that is, a planet outside our solar system. Currently, telescopes are determining the chemical composition of exoplanetary atmospheres, probes are examining moons of Jupiter and Saturn that almost certainly have both organic compounds and liquid water, and NASA is preparing to send astronauts on bioprospecting missions to Mars.

Nevertheless, during the first year of our inquiry at CTI, it became evident that if astrobiology’s societal implications depend on discovering extraterrestrial life, interpretation of those implications in the meantime rests on hypotheticals rather than scientific developments. It also became apparent that this restriction would limit the promise of our inquiry unnecessarily. As the study of life in the universe, astrobiology is not reduced to search and speculation, for we know there is life on Earth. Furthermore, the search for life elsewhere in the universe and reflection on how we might detect it has already enriched understandings of life on this planet.

Perhaps most notoriously, when asked by NASA for advice about how to search for life on Mars, James Lovelock counseled that there was no need to visit the red planet since spectroscopic analysis from Earth showed the Martian atmosphere to be in chemical equilibrium. Lovelock conjectured that because life necessarily disturbs its environment, the lack of detectable disturbance in the Martian atmosphere indicated that Mars was lifeless. Yet absence of evidence is only evidence of absence if life’s disturbance of its environment on Mars would be detectable from Earth. Lovelock maintained that it would be detectable from such a distance because this disturbance is what would keep Mars inhabitable and hence it would be planetary in scale. To support this maverick conjecture, Lovelock noted that although Venus, Earth, and Mars all had liquid water on their surfaces billions of years ago, Venus and Mars lost theirs through drastic atmospheric changes. Lovelock also

noted that although Earth’s atmosphere too changed dramatically over these years, its changes correlated with changes in solar energy output and maintained a relatively stable planetary surface temperature. Since many of Earth’s atmospheric changes were biogenic, Lovelock concluded that the biosphere had changed the chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere to maintain planetary surface conditions favorable to itself. Lovelock called this idea the Gaia hypothesis, and its affirmation of teleology, description of Earth as a supra-organism, and implication that life must regulate a planet to persist at astronomical timescales are controversial. However, Lovelock’s basic insight that the only known instance of life in the universe has become a biosphere that profoundly shapes its planetary home is not. Indeed, that insight has transformed geology into Earth system science and fundamentally enhanced our understanding of life.

Given these realizations, subsequent years of CTI’s Societal Implications of Astrobiology inquiry explored the scientific, theological, and philosophical consequences of considering life on a planetary scale from the vantage of several religious traditions. Through extended collaboration with a NASA planetary scientist and a Princeton astrophysicist, I helped guide this exploration by proposing that the degree of astrobiology’s societal implications is directly related to the level of organization at which life is considered, such that higher levels of organization have correspondingly greater degrees of societal significance. Investigating this proposal has proven productive and CTI continues to do so. Still, because planetary scale is but the highest level of biological organization and Lovelock’s inference that extraterrestrial life will only be found alive if it has become a biosphere is but one astrobiological idea, I have joined CTI in reckoning with further facets of the field as well.

Among the most stimulating of these facets is origins of life research. Just as it is unclear whether life exists elsewhere in the universe, it is unclear how life arose on Earth. Identifying an independent origin of life elsewhere may thus provide crucial clues to its emergence here. Beyond this, because

As the study of life in the universe, astrobiology is not reduced to search and speculation, for we know there is life on Earth.

the gap in complexity between the most intricate organic chemistry and the simplest organism is so vast and the fraction of the possible chemical sequences that are potentially biological is so small, it is exceedingly improbable that life has arisen more than once in the universe unless the laws of nature are abiogenetically biased. Since scientists have yet to find compelling evidence of such bias after more than seventy years of searching, the study of life in the universe is also the study of the origin of life in this respect, too. Accordingly, CTI’s inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology has led it to become a founding partner of the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe (LCLU), an international consortium of research institutions led by the University of Cambridge investigating astrobiology and abiogenesis, or the presumed development of life from non-living matter.

Like CTI, I have followed my interest in astrobiology’s societal implications to the University of Cambridge and the LCLU, where I now explore how philosophical and theological concepts may contribute to natural scientific study of the origins of life. One of my projects in Cambridge contests a prominent philosophical argument that origins of life research is irrational because there is no scientifically relevant reason to doubt that life arose merely by chance. I contest this argument by showing that its categorical distinction between intentional and non-intentional bias neglects second order possibilities and I illustrate these possibilities by discussing the distinction between primary and secondary causality. On another project, I collaborate with a Cambridge experimental astrophysicist to examine whether the universe is not only fine-tuned for life at the cosmological and subatomic scales—as is broadly attested—but at the chemical scale too. We begin by identifying several instances of such potential chemical fine-tuning and elucidating

fine-tuning’s inherently evaluative character. Next, we contend that this evaluative character discloses a widely neglected dimension of origins of life research, namely that life may differ from non-living entities by having well-being. This possibility is scientifically significant, for it would allow scientists to attribute interests and teleology to life and hence afford a new way to distinguish life from its precursors. This possibility is also philosophically significant, for it would reveal another aspect of life’s value, contribute to determining what life is, and perhaps explain why life exists.

Just as philosophy and theology may contribute to astrobiology and origins of life research, then, these natural sciences may further these and other humanities disciplines, too. On a personal level, since life’s origins would seemingly be as unaffected by human sin as extraterrestrial microbes, I am interested in the insights that research concerning it may offer into the character of God’s creation for the reasons that attracted me to CTI’s initial astrobiology inquiry a decade ago. On an institutional level, since I will return to CTI as its Senior Research Officer in the fall of 2025, I am excited to be part of the team that will convene an annual LCLU symposium in Princeton on origins of life research for natural scientists, theologians, and philosophers over the decade to come. From its inception more than forty years ago, CTI has been at the forefront of exploring how interdisciplinary inquiry may stimulate fresh theological thinking. With its membership in the LCLU, CTI is poised to extend that pioneering legacy by engaging some of this century’s most ground-breaking natural sciences at unprecedented length and unparalleled depth.

Fred Simmons is a research associate in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University.

Theological Journeys Making Architectural Design More Just

IELISE EDWARDS

n my recently published book Architecture, Theology, and Ethics: Making Architectural Design

More Just (Lexington Books, 2024), I argue that architecture, design, and creativity are theological-ethical concerns that ought to be considered more deeply by Christians who are committed to social and environmental justice. This topic emerges from my professional career, which began in the field of architecture, but it also reflects the influence of key questions within Christian ethics and liberation theology. At the start of my career, I trained as an architect at Florida A&M University (FAMU), a historically Black university. My knowledge about architectural design, theory, structures, and materials and methods was shaped in a university context in which questions about social justice and racism were always present.

In my graduate work at FAMU, I first encountered the work of Karsten Harries who wrote The Ethical Function of Architecture, which convinced me about architecture’s responsibility to address the ethos of a community. I also began to identify myself as a black feminist in this world and learned more about feminism and womanism during my time in Tallahassee. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for the professors and administrators who supported me and challenged me to become a socially responsible design professional and an emerging critical thinker. At FAMU, I first found my voice as an academic writer and my love of ideas about the built environment. But it wasn’t until after college when I was working in an architecture firm that I began to think about the intersections of theology and architecture. I attended seminary part-time while working full time, prompted initially by a

desire to be a better teacher and leader in my local church. Yet, as I pursued a Master’s and then Ph.D. in theology, Christian theology and ethics became my method to explore questions about art, architecture, and creativity from a faith perspective with intellectual rigor.

Architectural design is commonly understood as a professional practice that people with an extensive education and expertise do, or an activity that institutions (like companies or universities) or wealthy clients do. These are accurate reflections of architecture as a field, but architectural design is more than that. An expansive understanding of architectural design allows us to see it as something much more familiar to our experience: decorating a bedroom as a teenager, thinking about the changes you’d do to your house after watching a show on HGTV, planting a garden, sharing your ideas for what’s needed in your church buildings or envisioning changes to your office space. Design is the process by which objects, buildings, and experiences are envisioned and then made real. When we consider what design means from a theological perspective, we have an opportunity to frame it in terms of the interrelation between God, human designers, and the world we occupy. This re-visioning or re-conceiving of design becomes the starting point for a design process that is just and inclusive.

I intentionally blur the lines between architectural design and design of the built environment because these are domains that have discrete forms of expertise. Architects have a different professional training from engineers, whose training differs from urban planners, who come into their field and its set of practices differently than visual artists do.

The expectations around who is expected and enabled to pursue these career paths and what gaining expertise in that area looks like diverge greatly, but their efforts converge in making the world we inhabit. Murals, large scale art installations, landscape designs, and community gardens are part of the built environment along with architecture. The term “built environment” may be unfamiliar, but in disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, sociology, and anthropology, “built environment” refers to humanly constructed or modified landscapes, structures, and infrastructure systems that provide people with living, working, and recreational spaces. The built environment includes all of the physical parts of where we live and work (e.g., homes, buildings, streets, open spaces, roads, and even utilities like the electrical grid.) These designed spaces provide the setting for human activity and were created to fulfill human desires and needs.

Architecture, Theology, and Ethics presents a new way of thinking about design informed by liberationist theological principles. If Christians think theologically about their agency in decisions about the built environment, they will discover that design becomes an opportunity to contribute to the flourishing of humanity and God’s creation. In a book titled The Vocation of the Artist, feminist cultural critic Deborah Haynes calls upon artists to practice visionary imagination. I strongly believe that Haynes’ appeal to artists extends to designers and anyone who has the power to shape our world, which is to use our work to “[call] for the reclamation of the sacred and future in a world that in many ways seems to be dying” (p. 51). Liberationist

When we consider what design means from a theological perspective, we have an opportunity to frame it in terms of the interrelation between God, human designers, and the world we occupy.

theological and ethical perspectives remind us that God is concerned with the conditions in which we live. In liberationist discourses such as Black theology, Latin American liberation theology, feminist theology, womanist ethics, and mujerista theology, transformation is a spiritual goal and practice, but it is not focused on an other-worldly realm; transformation addresses the realities of lived experience in the present world, where the equal humanity of all people is too often distorted or denied. Liberationist ethics calls for the transformation of any system of exclusion. Why not examine professional practices like architecture? Liberationist ethics is not simply about race, gender, or class as identity markers or about racism, sexism, and economic exploitation in its most obvious forms. Liberation is about acting upon a prophetic vision of human flourishing and well-being to address systematic ills (like racism, sexism, and economic exploitation) in social structures and institutions.

At the center of Christian belief and practice—especially its liberationist expressions—is a relational God who acts in history to provide wholeness and healing to humanity and everything else that has been created. And not only do we believe in the possibility of redemption for the created world, but we also believe that we can participate with God in the world’s transformation. In my book, I argue that our participation includes imagining and building our created world through architectural design. All architecture presents a particular person’s or community’s values through the design. As new buildings are created and older ones rede-

signed, ethicists, theologians, Christian leaders, and laity have the opportunity to question whether the building’s design conforms to our best values and ideals, like justice. Liberationist theologians help us understand what justice looks like, and womanist ethicists—Katie Cannon, in particular—helped me understand that the moral values that need to be lifted up for oppressed communities might need to diverge from more dominant norms.

Christian ethics became my intellectual home discipline because it is the area of religious study most directly concerned with questions about how Christians (and other people) ought to live. What are the implications of our most central theological teachings and claims? Christian ethicists insist that many of the topics of concern in Christian ethics are not “Christian” issues, but rather the issues that are central to human life across time and religious identity—family, sex, health, work, law, social structures, war, and money. Christian ethicists like me bring sources of knowledge from Christian wisdom (or what we might call Christian theology, scriptures, practice, and tradition) alongside other sources of wisdom and experience to bear on these topics. We seek to articulate in big and small ways what a good life looks like, how we should treat one another, and what kinds of social arrangements lead to human flourishing. Architecture is part of that project of human flourishing at the most basic level because it helps us live by giving us shelter, one of our basic human needs. And more than that, when our buildings promote ways of living that edify us rather than harm us and the rest of creation, architecture can be said to contribute to our world’s flourishing. Our responsibility as religious thinkers, leaders, and participants in communities is to consider the social and moral effects of architecture and to orient design to those concerns as well.

Elise Edwards is an assistant professor of religion at Baylor University. She was a member of CTI’s 2020-2021 Inquiry on Religion and the Built Environment.

“Theologians are in a difficult situation intellectually. To speak of God is to speak of the One who is the ground of all that is. Therefore, all that is must to some degree be relevant to the theological task. In principle, everything is grist to the theological mill.”

John Polkinghorne

REVIEW

THE BROKEN BODY

Israel, Christ and Fragmentation

REVIEW ESSAY BY JOHN WALKER

Princeton University Graduate Social Impact Fellow

The Broken Body: Israel, Christ and Fragmentation

by Sarah Coakley

(Wiley Blackwell, 2024, pp. 336)

“Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” This was the question Dietrich Bonhoeffer posed in the dark days of the Second World War. The collective self-reference, “for us,” and the immediate temporal horizon, “today,” expressed his conviction that the question of Christ’s identity is no speculative puzzle for the theoretically curious. It is a question of utmost existential and practical import, whose answer is given, not in a propositional belief or verbal declaration, but in a life led. The “christological question” presses for more than a statement about Christ, it calls for a personal answer to him—“Who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29)

Although in many respects a representative of a quite different tradition than Bonhoeffer’s high German Lutheranism, Sarah Coakley, Anglican priest and former Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, wishes to renew this basic christological approach. In The Broken Body: Israel, Christ and Fragmentation, a collection of working papers that accompany and anticipate her multi-volume project in systematic theology, she stresses the imminently self-involving character of any christological inquiry adequate to its subject-matter. In no way eschewing traditional metaphysical concerns about natures, person, and hypostatic union, she invites her readers to locate these technical considerations within a more fundamental spiritual encounter. As the title indicates, Coakley believes such an encounter is necessarily an ascetic one, simultaneously renunciative

and transformative, in which “initial human presumptions or attitudes have to be broken in order for any proper response to emerge to these core riddles of Christian faith in relating to Jesus Christ” (xv).

The book does not attempt a full-scale Christology. It is rather, she insists, a “prolegomena to any future Christology” (a playful though revealingly ambitious nod to Immanuel Kant’s philosophical project). The chapters conduct “preliminary explorations” meant to identify methodological and substantive desiderata for further theological reflection. For those who have read the first installment of her systematic theology, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity,’ the present volume provides an advance glimpse into the planned fourth and final volume on christology, which promises to be the “climax” of the work (xvi, n.1).

The Broken Body exhibits many of the traits we have come to associate with Coakley’s work and which are responsible for her reputation as one of the most exciting and distinctive voices in contemporary theology: attentive reading of the classical era of patristic theology, with a special focus on the Greek Fathers, an uncommon combination of analytic philosophical concerns with themes from various postmodern, feminist, and post-Freudian psycho-analytic approaches, a grounding in questions of spiritual practice and asceticism, especially prayer, a championing of the apophatic and mystical traditions of Christian thought, and a bracing readiness to face head on some of the thorniest issues in modern culture and intellectual life, espe-

cially gender and sexuality. What is new, however, in this volume is the serious and sustained engagement with the Jewish intellectual tradition. The second half of the twentieth century was marked by a deep dissatisfaction, often repulsion, by many Christian theologians and believers with traditional ways of conceiving Christianity’s relationship to Judaism. Though by no means unanimous, there was a widespread sense in the trans-Atlantic world that conventional supersessionist models of the church as the replacement of Israel were profoundly out of step with the New Testament and provenly disastrous in their ethical and political ramifications. Discontent, however, has been slow to generate resolution, and so the task of rethinking the relationship between Christianity and Judaism remains an outstanding one. Coakley situates her own efforts in relationship to a prior generation of post-liberal theologians who took up this question in earnest (Robert Jenson, Kendall Soulen, Peter Ochs—and we might add John H. Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas), though we can also see her as representative of a recent wave of contemporary theologians who, across ecclesial divisions, have centered the rethinking of Christian-Jewish relations (Ephraim Radner, Ellen Charry, Katherine Sonderegger, Matthew Levering, Paul Griffiths, and Karen Kilby, among others). What all these figures share is a conviction that the trinitarian and christological commitments

of credal orthodoxy are less an obstacle than a resource to the present task. Coakley’s distinctive contribution lies in her thought that a pneumatologically-driven, incorporative understanding of the trinity, in which the Spirit names “a reflexivity-in-God which precisely enables the ecstatic participation in God of the elect,” is the key to conceiving the relationship between Jewish and Christian traditions. The model of the trinity developed in God, Sexuality, and the Self, derived from Romans 8, is here applied to the subject of Romans 9-11, the eschatological future of the church and Israel. According to Coakley, “the Spirit is the wedge, the guarantor, of the ‘apophatic’ openness of the Christ event to a yet-unknown fulfilment” (p. 98). She argues that the notion of reflexivity internal to God’s life is not a Christian discovery, but something already contained in the Jewish tradition concerning temple worship, which suggests a possible convergence of traditions.

The Broken Body exhibits many of the traits we have come to associate with Sarah Coakley’s work and which are responsible for her reputation as one of the most exciting and distinctive voices in contemporary theology.

less insists that this process takes place through fleshly mediation and bodily practice. The necessary transformation is not merely epistemic but affective, purifying human desire, and so it works in the medium of bodies, especially, she says, following the Cappadocians, through embodied acts of mercy. Seeing Christ, knowing him in his divine-and-human identity, engages the whole person and, indeed, the whole of one’s life. It is not a settled cognitive state, reached once and for all in a moment of propositional assent, but an ongoing movement, a way that one traverses as the Spirit incorporates one’s life ever more fully into Christ’s body.

Whatever the merits of this particular proposal, it illustrates a defining feature of Coakley’s approach, showing the tight weave of apophaticism, Christology, and pneumatology. Genuine encounter with the risen Christ, she claims, requires “a breaking open of apophatic consciousness” (xxv). Divine revelation, the knowledge of Christ as God incarnate, entails a “paradoxical combination of revelatory brightness and enduring dark,” in which “these are not opposites, but inexorably twinned and entwined in Christ’s manifestation of his person” (xxxviii-xxxix). Apophatic consciousness, which is the necessary condition of authentic knowledge and response to Christ, is itself a work of the Holy Spirit. The human must undergo a “profound epistemic transformation,” an “interruptive, undoing of epistemic blockage,” that enables me to “truly ‘see’ ‘Jesus,’ and not merely my own face at the bottom of the well” (p. 17). Wrought by the Spirit, Coakley neverthe-

I have only offered a sample of the themes and discussions addressed in this very learned, wide-ranging, and impassioned book. There is an important, now classic essay on the nature of the Chalcedonian Definition, a section of searching chapters on sacrifice, gift, and the eucharist, and a powerful paper on the exclusively divine possibility of forgiveness. Throughout the work, Coakley’s reflections are consistently stimulating and yet, as she warns, often unsettling. Not merely because the topics addressed are controversial, but because of the sheer difficulty in grasping precisely what her proposals amount to. One finds her pointing in a certain direction, marshalling a host of important considerations and gesturing where we might go or look, but there is marked tendency to resist closure. That there is something unsatisfying in these essays is perhaps to be expected. It is, after all, a series of preliminary explorations, stages on the way to a future articulation. However, if Coakley is right, even her planned work of Christology will refuse us at least a certain satisfaction. The encounter with Christ is not a matter of tidying up one’s life, of clicking the box on one’s intellectual inquiries, but of being broken open before the dazzling darkness of the broken and raised body of God enfleshed.

MY THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY TO CTI

JOHN WALKER

The Center of Theological Inquiry has graciously provided me the opportunity to briefly introduce myself to the readers of Fresh Thinking magazine, to say something about the work that I will be doing in the coming year, and, taking up the theme of this issue, to reflect on my own theological journey.

I am currently a doctoral student at Princeton University in the Religion Department’s religion, ethics, and politics subfield. I came to CTI through a University-run initiative that pairs graduate students with a selection of host non-profit organizations. These “Social Impact Fellowships” afford students a chance to gain professional experience outside the university context, receive mentorship from qualified leaders, and discover ways that their scholarly skills and expertise might be of service to the broader public. As someone with scholarly aspirations and a vocational commitment to the work of theo-

logical education, CTI represents exactly the sort of institution to which I hope to contribute.

This year I will work alongside Associate Director Joshua Mauldin, who is serving as my primary host mentor, in a number of the Center’s initiatives. In addition to written and editorial contributions to this magazine, I will assist in the production of the Theology Matters podcast, provide research support for CTI programs, and participate more generally in the intellectual life of the CTI community.

I discovered the existence of CTI early in my theological studies. Only a year out of high school and in the suburbs of the Pacific Northwest, I knew next to nothing about the institutional landscape of contemporary academic theology. However, I did know where my favorite theologian was—I had seen it printed beside his name in essays and prefaces: “Robert W. Jenson, Center of Theological Inquiry.” I knew nothing else about it, only that Jenson was there. But that was enough to give it an aura of gravitas and excitement. I am sure it played some role in my later decision to study at Princeton Theological Seminary.

In hindsight, I see how fortuitous it was that I came to read Jenson when I did. His Systematic Theology was my first exposure to the work of systematic theology. It guaranteed that I would be uncomprehending when I later encountered complaints that it was a boring, unedifying, and idolatrous genre of theology, somehow alien to the joy and astonishment of faith’s native grasp of the gospel. Jenson showed me, on the contrary, that the intellectual demands of theology need not compete with the impassioned response of worship and proclamation. It was, he insisted, all of one piece in coming to terms with the God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Like many young Christians, my first serious intellectual engagement with Christianity came in the form, not of first-order theology, but of apologetic literature. During high school, I had been impressed by the historical arguments for Christ’s resurrection and my reading on the subject quickly expanded to-

ward more general discussions of the historical Jesus. By the time I was deciding on colleges, I had made up my mind to study the New Testament and early Christianity—that is, to do something like what N.T. Wright was doing. I accepted an offer from George Fox University, with the plan of learning from Paul Anderson, a noted historical Jesus scholar. By the time I arrived on campus, however, an important shift had already taken place in my thinking. The more I read historical Jesus scholarship, the more I came to see historiographical, hermeneutical, and methodological questions as decisive. My naively positivist conception of history had fallen away, and I became convinced that purely historical study was unable to achieve what I had hoped. One essay in particular sealed the deal. Scot McKnight, a reputable contributor himself to historical Jesus scholarship, published a paper, “Why the Authentic Jesus if of No Use for the Church.” The argument was simple but, for me, conclusive: Every historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus seeks to produce a fifth gospel, but the church only has four gospels.

Given that the entirety of my intellectual energy had been devoted to this project, I was somewhat devastated. I was forced to regroup. Again, McKnight had recommendations. He pointed to Stanley Hauerwas, whose critical reflections on modernity exposed the doubtful epistemological assumptions underlying my historical ambitions, and to Karl Barth, who represented a theological response to problems I had unknowingly bumped up against. I lucked out and found a set of the entire Church Dogmatics for $80. But my first encounter was uninspiring—what was Barth on about with theology as a “science”? So retreating from Barth, that’s how I ended up with Jenson. Over the following four years at George Fox, I devoted myself to an intensive program of reading theology. Eventually I found my way back into Barth, this time with much more appreciation and understanding. I also discovered Augustine through a beloved professor, Joseph Clair, who became my theological mentor. I took courses in philosophy, theology, and Bible, though the center of my education, and what I still consider its foundation, was the Honors Program’s great books curriculum. Here I

encountered the grand sweep of Western intellectual history, reading theology from the patristic, medieval, reformation, and modern periods.

The natural step after graduation was further study, and so I enrolled in the M.Div. program at Princeton Theological Seminary. There I focused on courses in systematic theology and ethics. Having encountered the work of Anglican theologian Oliver O’Donovan, I gravitated more and more toward ethical and political subjects. Professor John Bowlin modeled a way of doing theological ethics that was at once philosophically exacting, dogmatically substantive, and responsive to the needs of the church. At Princeton, my interest in Augustine continued and deepened, as did my concern with the nature and shape of Protestant theology. It was at George Fox, encountering the history of theology and modernity-criticism, that I confronted formidable challenges to my Protestant commitments. Nevertheless, I was convinced that a robust Protestant theology remained possible. Much of my graduate study since has consisted in trying to work this out, in sustained reference to Augustine, who remains for me a model of theological integrity and seriousness.

I enrolled in Princeton University’s PhD program with these two points of reference, Augustine and Protestant theology. Although my present doctoral work under Prof. Eric Gregory centers on Augustine’s ethics, focusing on his account of eudaimonism and the place of mercy in his social thought, the question of what a Protestant appropriation of his enduring insights might look like continues to animate my thinking. Augustine’s recognition of the restlessness of the human heart in its hunger for God and the Reformation emphasis on the utter gratuity of Christ’s justification of the ungodly stand as the two fixed poles of my thought. Whatever direction my future work might take, my hope is that it can serve as a credible invitation to others to the “happy science” of “thinking what to say to be saying the gospel.”

John Walker is a doctoral student in the Department of Religion at Princeton University and a Graduate Social Impact Fellow at CTI.

Honoring Our Donors & Benefactors 2022-2024

In thanking our donors who made gifts to last year’s Annual Fund Appeal, running from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, we are also honoring our benefactors who have given major gifts to the Center’s endowment since the start of the building renovation project in 2022.

Your gift to the Annual Fund supports our research program, powering our fresh thinking.

Your gift to the Endowment sustains our mission, casting light on global concerns.

We appreciate gifts in any amount from those giving $50 or more to join the Friends of CTI to our new generation of Founders giving $500,000 and above.

CTI is now welcoming naming gifts for the new Center building. If you are in a position to consider a six-figure gift to the Endowment, please contact me to meet with the Director.

We invite you to join one of our new Giving Circles by making your gift to this year’s Annual Fund Appeal, running from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025.

With our gratitude and good wishes,

Kamal Ahmed Executive Assistant for Advancement Office of the Director

Honoring Our Donors to the 2023-24 CTI Annual Fund

We thank the following donors and benefactors for their annual and endowment gifts.

Founders Circle

$500,000 and above

Charles and Nancy Wall

Naming the William F. Storrar Colloquy Room

Director’s Circle

$250,000 and above

Robert Hendrickson

Naming the Robert F. Hendrickson Library

Renaissance Circle

$100,000 and above

William and Joanna Storrar

Naming the Associate Director’s Office

In Memory of Fiona M. Joyce

Jay Vawter

Naming the Office of Director

In Honor of Harriet Vawter

Global Concerns Circle

$50,000 and above

Richard Lambert

Towards Naming a Research Floor Study

In Memory of Janis K. Cole

Roy Lennox

Including to the Endowment

Gayle Robinson

Including to the Endowment

In Memoriam,

Judith McCartin Scheide

A Dedicated Trustee and Generous Donor

Public Impact Circle

$25,000 and above

Fred Anderson

Including to the Endowment

Robert Gunn

Including to the Endowment

Robert Wedeking

Including a gift in his honor

Colloquy Room Circle

$10,000 and above

Anna-Maria & Stephen

Kellen Foundation

Garden Room Circle

$5,000 and above

B. J. Booth

Global Studio Circle

$2,500 and above

Jon Pott

Including to the Endowment

Library Circle

$1,000 and above

Anonymous

Brian Fix

Roland Frye

Brick Johnstone

Robert Jones

Douglas Leonard

Peter Paris

Hank & Jean-Marie Peterson

Esther Reed

Jay Vawter

Philip Webb

Alison Zimmerman

Zubatkin Owner Representation, LLC

Digital Suite Circle

$500 and above

Clifford Anderson

James Buckley

Eliot & Patti Daley

David Fergusson

Edmund Freeborn

Samuel Hamill

Carter ‘Bud’ Karins

S. T. Kimbrough

Carol Kuhlthau

Robert & Jane MacLennan

Joshua and Yan Mauldin

Eric Springsted

Atrium Circle

$250 and above

Stephen Fitzpatrick

Michael Hecht

George Hunsberger

Wesley Kort

Juliana McIntyre

Daniel Migliore

Mark Modak-Truran

William Myers

Peter Ochs

Dennis Olson

Mary Reath

Jayakiran Sebastian

Cloister Circle

$100 and above

Kamal Ahmed

Linda Arntzenius

Thomas Barrie

James Bratt

Peter Bowes

John Burgess

Gordon Burghardt

Mark Douglas

Willem Drees

Kyle Dugdale

Jane Egbert

Joan Fleming

Michael Gecan

Jennifer Holloway

Michael Lukens

John McCarthy

Gerald McKenny

Helen Parr

Elizabeth Parr-Johnston

Martin Radermacher

Calvin Ratcliff

Paul Rorem

Daniel Schipani

Susan Schneider

Louis Slee

Michelle Tan

Hans-Martien ten Napel

David Tombs

Roger Trigg

Debra Trisler

Robert Vichnevetsky

Charles Wood

Ralph Wyman

Friends Circle

$50 and above

Wayne & Jeannie Becker

Harry Boertzel

Mary Chapin

Stephen Hart

Robert Legnani

Barbara McClure

Wolfgang Palaver

Andreas Prindl

Megan Thomas

Sr. Tina Latina Circle

Honoring our Supporters

Peter Connors

Richard Crocker

John McNassar

John Shimchick

Angela Townsend

Corporate Sponsors

Bel Air Investment Advisors

McCord Fellow Giving Society

Named in honor of CTI’s founder James McCord, the Society recognizes the Members of our research community who support the Center with a gift to the Annual Fund.

Kamal Ahmed

Thomas Barrie

James Bratt

James Buckley

Gordon Burghardt

Mark Douglas

Willem Drees

Kyle Dugdale

David Fergusson

Stephen Hart

Michael Hecht

George Hunsberger

Brick Johnstone

S. T. Kimbrough

Wesley Kort

Michael Lukens

Joshua Mauldin

John McCarthy

Gerald McKenny

Daniel Migliore

Mark Modak-Truran

Peter Ochs

Dennis Olson

Wolfgang Palaver

Peter Paris

Martin Radermacher

Esther Reed

Paul Rorem

Daniel Schipani

Susan Schneider

Jayakiran Sebastian

Eric Springsted

William Storrar

Hans-Martien ten Napel

Roger Trigg

Charles Wood

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Mayor of Princeton Visits CTI’s New Building

CTI Director William Storrar was honored to welcome Mr. Mark Freda, Mayor of Princeton Municipality in July to tour CTI’s new building. Mayor Freda was joined on the tour by Mr. Robert Wedeking, Board Trustee and CTI Treasurer.

The Director shared with the Mayor CTI’s hope that the new building will raise the Center’s public profile as a Princeton nonprofit for research and dialogue on global concerns. They are seen here with a portrait of CTI’s Founder, Dr. James McCord.

CTI Welcomes Members for Inquiry on Thriving in Diverse Contexts

The fall cohort of members in CTI’s Inquiry on Thriving in Diverse Contexts is now in residence in our fully renovated facility. Having participated in remote modules of this study program on psychological science for theologians, members of this cohort have now begun the residential phase of the program, in which they are focused on theologies of thriving for diverse contexts. Arriving at CTI from such locations as South Africa, Norway, California, and Texas, and exploring this topic from a range of disciplinary perspectives, they are well situated to the work of this inquiry.