 he Center
of Theological Inquiry owes is existence to
three men who dared to dream dreams.James I. McCord, president
of Princeton Theological Seminary from 1960 to
1983, was the first to have a vision for a unique
community of theological reflection. At his
initial meeting with the Seminary’s Board of
Trustees, he spoke about American
Presbyterianism’s failure to perform her
theological task: giving intense theological
thought at the deepest level to the church’s
ministry. And he believed there was no better
place to begin this task than in Princeton.
Never one to spin
idle dreams, in 1962, McCord presented the
board’s Development Committee with a plan
for an advanced academy of theological studies,
much like the Institute for Advanced Study that
had already made its home in Princeton. The board
decided to go ahead. Over the next fifteen years,
McCord’s nascent idea was shaped into a
proposal for an ecumenical religious research
institute that would draw scholars from around
the world to Princeton’s libraries and
academic communities to pursue theological
inquiry.
Dr.
Wallace M. Alston Jr. is the director of CTI. -
Photo: Carolyn Herring
Finally, in 1978,
the board moved to establish the Center of
Theological Inquiry as “a separate
corporation, not under the control of any
denomination, nor of the Seminary itself.”
McCord retired as
Seminary president in 1981 to tend his dream full
time. As CTI’s founding director, he oversaw
the construction of the handsome Georgian red
brick building located next to Speer Library that
opened in 1984. Luce Hall is the Center’s
home and the focal point for its work.
There twelve
resident scholars (called members) who have been
chosen by a rigorous selection process come to
read, to think, to talk with each other, and to
write. Their research, although on topics
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as disparate as mission in
the pluralistic context of India (the project
undertaken this year by Athyal Jesudas Mathew)
and the role of Presbyterians in framing the U.
S. Constitution (the subject that fascinated
lawyer Marci Hamilton during her residence last
year), has the common goal of helping to address
an increasingly secular and technological world
with an intelligible Gospel. CTI members have come from
as far as Auckland, New Zealand, (Derek Tovey
from the College
of the Southern Cross just completed his
residency) and as close as just across Mercer
Street on the Princeton Seminary campus. This
year Patrick Miller and J. Wentzel van Huyssteen
from the Seminary faculty have been accepted at
CTI for their sabbaticals.
It is thanks to
the second man with a dream — Dr. Thomas W.
Gillespie — that the relationship between
the Center and the Seminary is a close and
flourishing one. As McCord’s successor to
the Seminary presidency, he saw the possibility
for mutual support and common concern between the
two institutions.
“The
biblical imperative for the church today,”
Gillespie believes, “is one of recovering
our roots and reclaiming our identity as a
theological community. Both the Center and the
Seminary address this task. The Center is a
resource both for the church and for those who
teach the future leaders of the church.”
As chair of the
Center’s Board of Trustees, Gillespie has
helped the sister institutions chart a careful
course between CTI’s isolation from and its
inappropriate control by the Seminary. Several
years ago, it appeared that the relationship
between the two boards had lapsed, or was at
least unclear to both sets of trustees. So, the
Center’s board inquired of the Seminary
whether the original relationship might be
renewed.
Under
Gillespie’s leadership, the PTS board said
yes, and a joint committee drew up terms of
agreement that stipulated that the Center’s
board would be made up of twenty-five members,
twelve selected from the Seminary’s board
and twelve at large. The Center’s director
serves as the twenty-fifth trustee.
The agreement preserves the Center’s
independence and also assures the Seminary’s
support. “We envisioned close, collegial
relations among our faculty and the Center’s
visiting
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