Crux Sola: Formed by Scripture to Live like Christ
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary and Docent of Ecumenics, Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki
Why do you love teaching and researching about Christian theology?
Christian (systematic) theology is far more than a discussion of doctrines, as important as that is. Theology is about a comprehensive, “world-embracing” vision of God and the world. If so, nothing is more exciting and exhilarating than helping students capture that life-affirming hopeful vision and begin to apply it to all aspects of their lives.
Teaching theology at the graduate school—and in my case, devoting a major part of the time to working with doctoral students—is particularly meaningful and rewarding. Graduate school students usually come to the study task with significant life-experience and oftentimes with another career and education under their belts. Hence, the students teach and inspire me as much as I may be able to teach them!
What is one “big idea” in your scholarship?
As far as Christian (systematic) theology aims at a comprehensive and world-embracing vision of God and the world, its domain is wide and multifaceted: alongside traditional topics such as revelation, God, Christ, salvation, and church, theology also engages topics such justice and equality, gender, environment, and, say, colonialism. On top of that, in my understanding systematic theology for the sake of the third millennium also has the mandate of carrying a careful conversation with sciences. The reason is obvious: sciences, both natural and behavioral, study the very same world that in Christian understanding is created, sustained, and consummated by God. Hence, as Aquinas put it: the “object” of theology is God and everything related to God–i.e., “everything”!
While that alone is a tall order, I also advocate strongly an even wider and more complex vision of theology. It has to do with engaging other faith traditions with their own visions of the world and truth. Hence, in my scholarship and teaching, I also conduct detailed comparative theological exercises with teachings and doctrines of other living faiths (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism) as an integral part of theological argumentation.
Who is one of your academic heroes and why do you admire them?
Alongside my late Doktorvater, Professor Tuomo Mannermaa, a leading Luther expert at the University of Helsinki and another late Lutheran systematician Wolfhart Pannenberg with his idea of theology as a “public theology,” I admire the Reformed Jurgen Moltmann. While I do not endorse all of his interpretations and opinions, I find his explorative, creative, and groundbreaking constructive theology highly useful and inspiring.
What books were formative for you when you were a student? Why were they so important and shaping?
Pannenberg’s three-volume systematic theology, alongside his many methodological works. Moltmann’s “Contributions” to various topics of theology. A big number of “contextual” and “global” theologies written by men and women from various contexts and agendas.
Read Kärkkäinen’s Work
The five-volume A CONSTRUCTIVE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY FOR THE PLURALISTIC WORLD (Eerdmans, 2013-17).
A textbook: CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN THE PLURALISTIC WORLD. A GLOBAL INTRODUCTION (Eerdmans, 2019).
If you ran into me at a conference and didn’t want to talk theology, what would you want to talk about?
Travelling!
What is a research/writing project you are working on right now that you are excited about?
I am putting finishing touches on The End of All Things is at Hand: A Christian Eschatology in Conversation with Islamic Vision of Afterlife (Lexham Press, 2021) and I am currently writing two popular books titled, I Believe—Help My Unbelief! Christian Beliefs for the Complex and Pluralistic World (Cascade Books, 2021) and We Believe—Muslims and Christians in Conversation about Faith (Cascade Books, 2022).
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In