Christian Systematic Theology Unit
The Christian Systematic Theology Section invites proposals for individual papers or complete panels on diverse themes in the broader field of systematic theology. While we welcome proposals that ground arguments in pre-existing texts from various traditions and discussions, papers should be constructive rather than merely historical.
This year, we especially invite proposals related to the presidential topic of freedom, for example:
- Divine and human freedom
- Agency and personhood in human and nonhuman creatures
- Creaturely freedom under conditions of givenness, finitude, fallenness, and structural sin
- Bondage vs. freedom of the will historically and eschatologically
- The Holy Spirit - spirit of freedom?
- Different theological conceptions of "freedom for/to" (such as freedom to love) and "freedom from" (such as Augustine’s ultimate freedom not to sin)
- Authority and freedom in theological method, e.g. in relation to scripture, doctrine, and reason
- Divine and political sovereignty, theological accounts of democracy and political freedom, obedience, and rights to resistance
- Theological accounts of, engagements with, and critiques of "freedom's others": sin, bondage, enslavement, forced labor, forced migration, human trafficking, imprisonment, exclusion, and other forms of unfreedom
- Freedom engendered and limited by creeds and confessions, upon its 1700th anniversary especially considering the Nicene creed, its imperial context of origination, ecumenical reach, and ongoing significance
- Freedom and Liberation, especially in the theologies of Juergen Moltmann and Gustavo Gutierrez of blessed memory
- Freedom in the Christian life
- Theologies of worship and liturgy as laboratories of freedom
- Freedom in modern theology, especially in and around Friedrich Schleiermacher and 19th century Liberal Theology and its alternatives
This Unit promotes constructive work in Christian systematic theology that is in dialogue with the historical Christian theological traditions on the one hand and with all aspects of the contemporary context on the other — intellectual movements, methodologies, multiple theological and religious perspectives, and ethical/social/political contexts.