Faithful Servants: James Will

The Faithful Servants Series gives an in-depth look at the work of some of Garrett-Evangelical's beloved retired faculty and senior scholars, as well as their reflections on their time at Garrett-Evangelical. 

I have many grateful memories of opportunities provideded during the 39 years I was privileged to serve on the Garrett-Evangelical faculty, first for 14 years in Naperville at Evangelical Theological Seminary.  Evangelical Theological Seminary was one of the centers for the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) church. I assisted in facilitating its faculty's close relation to the church, e.g., as a theological advisor to the Bishops writing the EUB Confession of Faith, as a member of my conference's board of ordained ministry, and as a frequent preacher to congregations, youth assemblies, etc.

The latter 25 years at Garrett-Evangelical in Evanston provided richer opportunities for ecumenical and inter-faith relations, as in the National Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission and Joint Committee on International Affairs.  Especially satisfying to me was organizing United Methodist seminaries in the Consortium for Internationalizing Theological Education (CITE), serving as it's secretary and editing for some years its quarterly journal CITE.  I also especially enjoyed the relation to Northwestern University, which for all the years of my tenure offered with us a joint doctoral program.  Interaction with their faculty on dissertation committees and some co-teaching allowed a dialogical relation with culture that I thought and still think is essential to constructive theology.

Faculty deployment also allowed for active praxis of the ethic grounded in theology.  On the one hand, the publication of theology grounding peace and justice praxis, as in my A Christology of Peace and The Universal God: Love, Justice and Peace in the Global Village. On the other hand, especially the ten years I was appointed to direct the seminary's Peace and Justice Center, also provided many opportunities for active witness, as in the Chicago Area Faculty for a Freeze/CAFF ( on nuclear weapons), and Christians Associated for Relationships With Eastern Europe/CAREE.  Here also there was apportunity for relevant publication, as in my Must Walls Divide? and The Moral Rejection of Nuclear Deterrence.

I found joy at Garrett-Evangelical in teaching both the required courses in Systematic theology, especially during the years when it was co-taught with my colleagues, Rosemary Ruether and Henry Young; and also courses in philosophical theology.  The course in the Theology of Paul Tillich was a special favorite, both because of his profound mastery of the whole history of theology, which was a continual challenge both to me, from the time he was my teacher in Union Theological Seminary, and to the students who ventured with me to take so daunting a class, joined with his constructive relating theology to European culture--especially German culture during the terrible Nazi challenge. 

At the very end of his life and career, after his visit to Japan, Tillich even ventured to begin relating theology to Asian culture and especially Buddhism, which provides a continuing challenge to me in this inter-faith era in my older age to constructively relate our Christian faith, now seen as one of the Abrahamic faiths--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--to issues of culture, peace and justice. This is a constituent dimension of the manuscript I am writing (all too slowly) on an "Ecumenical Theology for Contemporary Peace Witness: Peace, Peace, when there is no Peace."