Cody Strecker

Hillsdale has always been committed to the study of the human being and the world, but also to their transcendent cause—in other words, to an understanding of liberal education as literary, scientific, and theological. For the tradition of theology that arises out of ancient Israel, to speak of the source of all things is to discern a face. God is a person, and personal, and has freely initiated a relationship with the world for the sake of the world. Theology is the study of that divine person. Its mode is to attend to the features of that relationship across time and throughout the world.

My theological interest is in focusing on the ways that the God of Israel calls for creative responses to the divine Word’s self-revelation. In images, stories, poetry, and music, in ethics, in worship, in little moments day to day, the shape of these responses can serve as witnesses to the God who has drawn near. In both teaching and research, I seek increased attunement to moments in the Christian tradition that have often been overlooked and, in the tradition of theological retrieval, to ask what possibilities of faithfulness they offer to us here and now. At present this means finding connections among contemporary reflections on the significance of lyric poetry, theologies of divine providence, and 1500-year-old texts in the Semitic language of Syriac.

After receiving Hillsdale’s liberal education as an undergraduate and before returning to teach at the College, I studied early Christian theology and modern theology and ethics at Duke Divinity School and Baylor University. I also spent a year studying at the University of Tübingen and the Reutlingen School of Theology in southwestern Germany. While there, I renewed my love of distance running and came to cherish daily life lived on foot with my wife, Mary, and our sons. Here in Hillsdale, our family delights in Saturday mornings at the farmers’ market, pretzel burgers at the local bowling alley, and backyard fires with friends.