CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--
I’ve been going through old correspondence. I have a lot of letters from when people wrote long-hand and sent messages via the post office. It’s interesting to re-read them now, to see what our lives were like then.
One letter is from a theology professor. In it, he thanks me for being a friend to him when he taught a summer course, as a visiting professor, where I was a seminary student. When I received the letter, I probably thought that was nice, and then dumped it in the box with all the other letters I thought I should keep for some reason. Now I realize how lonely he must have been, to take the trouble to thank a mere student just for being nice to him that summer.
I think David felt inferior to other theology profs. He did not write books. He was not invited to give lectureships. He taught at a basic B.D. seminary rather than a PhD theological school. He was just training preachers instead of educating scholars.
B.D was the basic professional degree for ministers then. Three years of graduate work, after four of undergraduate, and we had earned another bachelor’s degree, Bachelor of Divinity. That started when other professional degrees were also bachelors. My college roommate, Tom Cone, had earned an LLB, Bachelor of Laws, in law school.
But by the time I was in seminary, every other professional—lawyer, doctor, veterinarian, dentist, janitor—received a doctorate for three years of graduate work. Tom’s diploma had even upgraded to JD, Juris Doctor. Not preachers. We are much too humble to be considered “doctors” just because we have as much education as the other professions. [1]
Many theological schools are part of a university. SMU, Duke, Boston, etc. They are PhD schools, teaching scholars for research and teaching. Those are the important seminaries, for they aren’t just training preachers to serve congregations. Their professors teach important stuff, like you how to parse the filioque controversy, not something easy, like how to comfort a grieving widow.
Other seminaries are free-standing, not part of a university. They are just training schools for preachers. The theology profs there might try to teach the students about Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard, epistemology and soteriology, but those students just want sermon illustrations.
David taught at that kind of preacher training school. Except for that one summer, when he taught a six-week course at Garrett, which served as the religion PhD faculty for Northwestern U. It was an advanced course. I liked it a lot. But mostly I liked having lunch with David. I always found him eating alone. He seemed glad to have my company. I was beginning to piece together my own narrative theology in those days, and he listened carefully as I made my fledgling attempts at it.
When he learned that I knew another theology prof from a different school, he said, “He and I were PhD students together at Yale. He was so smart, he never understood those of us who were average. Once we were studying together. He was reading St. Charles Borromeo, in Latin. He read a page, closed the book, and recited it word for word off the backs of his eyeballs.”
David had accomplished what he set out to do. He was a theology prof. But he knew he was just average. And he was lonely. As a lowly BD student, I looked up to him. I was flattered that he was willing to listen to my stories and share with me his own.
I have often offered to share a meal with someone who was eating alone. Sometimes that was a mistake. Most of the time, though, those were some of my best moments, and from them came some of my best friendships. I think that was part of what Jesus had in mind with what we call “communion.”
This is an add-on to the way I originally wrote this column, but I would be sadly remiss in a piece about community if I did not say something about the life of Dolly Parton. She was a gentle Christian, and in a world of cynicism and division and greed, she modeled and witnessed to hope and inclusion and generosity. Everything she did built community, because she found something in anyone and everyone, starting with herself, that was worthy of respect. That, too, is what Jesus had in mind with what we call “communion.”
John Robert McFarland
1] Some years after I
graduated with my humble B.D. my seminary told me that if I would give them
another $25, they’d send me a sticker to put on my diploma that said it was
really a Master’s instead of a bachelor’s degree. I declined.
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