2014 Articles

Faith for Faithful Disbelievers: Christopher Morse as Systematic Theologian

Seiple, D.

Christopher Morse has set out to salvage "dogmatics" as a theological discipline, but a first-year seminarian might naturally wonder if her teacher isn’t dodging the big issue. The most natural question for dogmatics would seem to be: What should any individual Christian, personally, believe? Yet even the faith statements Morse eventually offers are usually stated in terms of doctrine as in "the Christian Faith" or "the church’s faith in God the Creator," and a reader is bound to wonder if these locutions aren’t more sociological than personal, presented in terms of "the deposit of faith"—the "traditioned" symbolic representations of the "social facts" associated with worship. Now it’s true that when it comes to what should not be included among those doctrines, Morse’s recommendations seem to take on a more personal aspect.