The Work That Endures

Dirk J. Smit

Dirk J. Smit holds an MA (philosophy, Stellenbosch), DTh (Stellenbosch), DPhil (h.c.) (Umeå, Sweden), and PhD (h.c.) (Protestant Theological University, Groningen). His appointments include honorary professor of the Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany), extraordinary professor of Stellenbosch University (South Africa), fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), and member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). Smit comes to Princeton Seminary from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, where he served as professor of systematic theology. Before his appointment to Stellenbosch, Smit served on the faculty at the University of the Western Cape. He has also served as a pastor.

Over the past three decades, Smit has emerged as one of South Africa’s most significant theologians. He has written extensively, in both English and Afrikaans, on the legacy of the Reformed tradition and its relevance to contemporary theological, social, and political questions. He has been a particularly prominent and influential voice in the church’s repudiation of apartheid. Smit was one of the primary authors of the Belhar Confession. Written in 1982 and adopted by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in 1986, the Belhar Confession boldly declared the sinfulness of apartheid and was a call for justice, reconciliation and unity among all people. It has recently been adopted as part of the PC (USA) Book of Confessions. His teaching, supervision, research and popular writing all draw on experience in ecumenical theology and the church’s public witness in South Africa.

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George Hunsinger

George Hunsinger is Princeton Theological Seminary’s Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology. He earned his B.D. from Harvard University Divinity School and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University. He served as director of the Seminary’s Center for Barth Studies from 1997 to 2001. He has broad interests in the history and theology of the Reformed tradition and in “generous orthodoxy” as a way beyond the modern liberal/conservative impasse in theology and church. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he was a major contributor to the new Presbyterian catechism. He teaches courses on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Reformed tradition, the theology of the Lord’s Supper, the theology of John Calvin, and classical and recent Reformed theology. He is the founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and a delegate to the official Reformed/Roman Catholic International Dialogue (2011-2017). His most recent scholarly contributions include The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge, 2008), Conversational Theology: Essays on Ecumenical, Postliberal, and Political Themes with Special Reference to Karl Barth (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), and Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal (Baker Academic, 2015).

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Mark Lewis Taylor

Mark Lewis Taylor is Princeton Seminary’s Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture. He earned his MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, and his PhD from the University of Chicago. A member of the Presbyterian Church, he frequently teaches and lectures in churches and supports church communities in their efforts to organize on justice and peace issues. Since 1987, he has studied regularly in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico, where he analyzes the cultural and political dynamics of the churches as they move closer to a contextualized Mayan theology that also facilitates resistance to military repression. He is coordinator for Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal. His regular teaching duties focus on the theologies of Paul Tillich and Gustavo Gutierrez, with full courses also on white racism as theological challenge, feminist and womanist theologies, empire and capital in theological perspective, and cultural-political hermeneutics.

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