2014 Articles

The Coming Cloud

Kay, James F.

As the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor in Theology and Ethics, Christopher Morse became known and beloved as one of the great teachers at Union Theological Seminary. With humor, humility, and humanity, he conveyed to his students that systematic theology is both an utterly human enterprise and an indispensable academic discipline. Despite its putative pretensions, and sometimes its pretentious practitioners, systematic theology can serve the church and the world by enabling Christians to give an account of the hope that is in them, usually with reference to prevailing "plausibility structures," while also prompting them to engage the received Christian message with both respectful reflection and critical testing. Thus, the point is not to pass along intact an unchanging "deposit of faith." Rather, by critically learning and engaging the traditions of faith, the followers of Jesus Christ become better equipped to be "on hand" for the God who is ever "at hand" in all the events of life and death.