In the massive volume ‘The Modern Theologians – an introduction to Christian Theology since 1918’ (3rd ed. 2011), editor David Ford offers an Epilogue: Twelve Thesis for Christian Theology in the Twenty-first Century.
They are:
- God is the One who blesses and loves in wisdom.
- Theology is done for the sake of God and the Kingdom of God.
- The cry of prayer is the beginning, accompaniment, and end of theology: Come, Holy Spirit! Hallelujah! and Maranatha!
- Study of scripture is at the heart of theology.
- Describing reality in the light of God is a basic theological discipline.
- Theology hopes in and seeks God’s purposes while immersed in the contingencies, complexities and ambiguities of creation and history.
- Theological wisdom seeks to do justice to many contexts, levels, voices, moods, genres, systems, and responsibilities.
- Theology is practiced collegially, in conversation and, best of all, in friendship; and, through the communion of saints, it is simultaneously premodern, modern, and postmodern.
- Theology is a broker of the arts, humanities, sciences, and common sense for the sake of wisdom that affirms, critiques, and transforms each of them.
- Our religious and secular world needs theology with religious studies in its schools and universities.
- Conversation around scriptures is at the heart of interfaith relations.
- Theology is for all who desire to think about God and about reality in realtion to God.
