Retired Director Interviews New Director
Meet CTI’s New Director
In this conversation between CTI’s former Director, William Storrar, and his successor, they trace Professor Tom 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 its 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 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 full-time 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 to 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: Can you talk about what drew you to accepting the Board of Trustees’ invitation to become Director of CTI?
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.