In Defense of Tradition

Every now and then I run across something said so well that I wish I'd said it. This piece by Virginia Bennett in The Anglican Digest is one of those.

G. K. Chesterton once said that being a "traditionalist" means a determination not to automatically dismiss any man's opinion outright just because he happens to be your father.

The buzz these days in the church is whether you attend a church that has "traditional" or "contemporary" worship.

William Willimon, former chaplain at Duke University and newly elected Methodist Bishop of Alabama, (not known to be a curmudgeon) writes this: "I was recently at a church of my own denomination, and I came away frightened, thinking, have I seen the future of the church? The hymns (songs really), anthems, everything had jettisoned the tradition, our language, our metaphors, and our stuff in favor of something called contemporary Christian music. And in my humble opinion, what I heard that day, I just don't think will lift the luggage in the future. As people were singing, praising some vague thing called 'God' who, as far as I could tell, had never done anything in particular, as we were bouncing along praising, I wanted to say, 'you know there are people out there today who just found out that their cancer is not responding to treatment, or who found out their kids won't do right, that their marriage won't survive, or that they can’t keep their jobs, and here we are just bouncing along, grinning, praising God. We've got some good stuff for that kind of thing -- where is it?'"

Willimon speaks of running into a preacher who said his church had had contemporary worship for 12 years. "When does the contemporary stop being contemporary? When we go into our second decade of this stuff." The preacher said, "You mark my word, you've heard it here first; you're going to drive by some Baptist church in Atlanta, and they're going to have, out there on the lawn, an amplifier, a set of drums, and a guitar for sale. We will have moved on to some other infatuation."

Willimon reports that he heard an (ELCA) Lutheran pastor say recently, "We are starting to form new churches that have, as part of their mission, the aggressive, loving nurturance of traditional Christian worship."

The fact is, there is something to be said for using words that have been used in Christian worship for 2000 years, something to be said for using prayers that St. Augustine and St. Basil and countless others handed on to us like the precious gems they are. There are 2000 years of Christians who have pressed them to their hearts, stained them with their tears, and carried them to their deaths. The core of our Christian worship is filled with the life blood of Israel as well. The truth is, not many people realize how ancient are the prayers that we pray and the substance that fills them or how ancient is much of our music. This is not to negate that there is some bad theology in traditional hymns nor the need to bring a freshness to worship or a spontaneous voice to prayer.

It IS to say that what traditional worship gives us is something that is not only unique, but something holy, something that has bubbled up from thousands of years of Hebrew-Christian experience.

There are contemporary hymns I love, that bring me fresh insight into God and my relationship with God. But I will never stop breaking out in goose bumps when the choir sings an "Aye Verum Corpus" or a Gregorian chant that suddenly brings the world of my Christian ancestors so close I can almost reach out and touch them; those who felt that God was worthy of the deepest reverence they could offer.

A student asked Willimon, "How come we always sing these old hymns in Duke Chapel? I don't know any of these hymns." Willimon replied, in love, "Well you'll notice that you won't hear any of this kind of music on MTV. This is different kind of music. You had to get up, get dressed, and come down here at an inconvenient hour of the day to hear music like this. Check out the Ten Commandments. It says that thing about 'honor your father and your mother.' This is our attempt to do that in a small way. To be a Christian is to find yourself moving to a different rhythm, a different beat."

So yes, this year in our church you will hear the ancient words again and you will hear the ancient music again and the reason it will touch you is because it has woven its way into your soul as it did those before us. No doubt, there are things that are new, both tunes and words that will ultimately weave their way into our hearts and souls as well. In the meantime, perhaps the test of whether they stay or leave should be do they give you goose bumps! If not that, then at least it should be something that doesn't just make you feel good, but something that pulls back the veil between God, you, and the rest of the community, so that we are able to perceive just Who it is we come before and worship.

The Meanest Theology of All

The Sunday School Director at the church where I’m serving as intentional interim pastor asked me to teach a combined adult class on August 30th, and in a weak moment I agreed. So in preparation for teaching the class, I read the lesson in the Sunday School quarterly used by our adult classes, and, not surprisingly, found little help there.

The lesson was titled “God Calls for Decision” and was ostensibly based on Deuteronomy 30, presumably focusing on the challenge Moses gives the people in verse 19: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life….” What bothered me about the lesson was that nowhere was any background or context (historical, literary, or theological) offered the reader. Specifically, there was not a word in the lesson about “Deuteronomic theology.”

Since the days of Martin Noth (d. 1968) it has been widely recognized by biblical scholars that a single theological thread weaves together the biblical history that runs through the so-called Former Prophets – Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings (“former” because they come before the “real” prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Scroll of the Twelve). That theological thread is sometimes referred to as the “Deuteronomic theology” because it begins in the Book of Deuteronomy and extends right through the Former Prophets. It has affinities with the prophets, causing some scholars to suggest that it may have originated with them. It has been variously defined and described, but its chief characteristic is that it establishes a cause/effect relationship between behavior and blessing. I usually refer to it in shorthand as “Reward and Retribution;” that is, God blesses the good and punishes the wicked. To be sure, there are other values characteristic of this theology – concern for the marginalized, personal responsibility and accountability, obedience to the covenant, and the centrality of Jerusalem as the central place of worship – but the central theological premise is that good things happen to the good and bad things to the bad. As a result, Israel reads its history through the lens of “reward and retribution” understanding difficult days as the curse of God upon the people and their leaders for their wickedness, and good days as the blessings of God upon the people and their leaders for their covenant faithfulness.

And as far as that goes, that’s good enough. But it doesn’t go quite far enough. You don’t even have to go very far in the Bible (not to mention your life and mine) to realize that this theology can’t account for everything. The Book of Job rises from the canon to object that this two-dimensional theology is too simplistic to account for everything. What happens when the neat categories of the Deuteronomic theology get shuffled by life and circumstance? What happens when God and good don’t balance the scales of disobedient and bad on the other side? What do we do when the good suffer and the wicked prosper? As the late Paul Newman said in Absence of Malice, “Who do I see about that?”

Anyone who gives it even a moment’s thought or reflection knows that our circumstances are due not to one but two different factors: voluntary and involuntary. Some things happen to us because "we asked for it;" that is, they are the effect of some cause, the consequence of some action, the result of some decision. I spent more money than I made; I chose to lie rather than to tell the truth; I ate more than I needed; I refuse to exercise even though I know I should and that there are consequences of not doing so. Voluntary factors – I make choices; I receive the consequences of my choices – reward or retribution, good or bad, blessing or curse. But to live in this world also makes us subject to involuntary factors – things over which we have no control; decisions in which we have no say; consequences in which we did not participate in the actions. Sometimes bills come due we did not run up. Sometimes bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.

People of thought and faith have long recognized that there are two kinds of consequences – consequences that are the result of voluntary factors and consequences that are the result of involuntary factors. The Deuteronomic theology places responsibility and culpability on the former, but not the latter. To blame someone for consequences that are the result of involuntary factors is just plain mean.

But that hasn’t stopped some from doing it. In the Gospel of John, chapter 9, Jesus and his disciples pass a blind man begging outside the temple, and the disciples, assuming that all blessing and curse are the result of voluntary factors, look at the blind man and ask Jesus: “Who sinned that this man should be born blind, he or his parents?” Do you hear the theology? All curse is the consequence of voluntary factors and, as such, is the judgment of God. That’s the meanest theology I know. And Jesus rejected it. “Neither he nor his parents, but that the works of God might be manifest in him.”

Some of the finest people I’ve ever known – people of faith and piety, people of integrity and industry, people of value and virtue – have never known a day without pain. Nothing missing in their lives as far as anybody can tell, no consequence of conduct unbecoming as far as anybody knows, and yet they suffer every day of their lives. Sometimes the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer.

And yet, every week on television I hear it: “If you just had enough faith or prayer or devotion, all these problems would disappear." Call it “Prosperity Gospel;” call it “Health and Wealth Gospel;” call it “Name it, Claim it” theology; call it what you will, I call it the “meanest theology of all.”

Why do the righteous suffer? Why doesn’t the Deuteronomic theology always work, both with voluntary factors and involuntary factors? I don’t know, and I don’t know who knows. C. S. Lewis’ Problem of Pain is about the most compelling rational explanation I’ve ever heard, but reason doesn’t seem to help much when you’re going through it. Maybe Mother Teresa was closer to the truth when she was asked once what would be the first thing she would say to Jesus when she met him, and she answered: “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.” I guess when you live your entire adult life taking care of the sick and diseased and dying in the slums of Calcutta, you can say that.

In any case, that’s what I’m going to talk about with the adult Sunday School classes on Sunday, August 30th. I just wish the writer of the Sunday School lesson had.

The Annoyingly Artificial Application of Alliteration*

I heard a sermon the other day that moved me…to regurgitation, nearly. Ostensibly, the sermon was on the central text of the Gospel of Mark (central both strategically and theologically); namely, Mark 8:27-38. The preacher took as his theme “The Messiah's Mission.” That was okay in that that's a fair assessment of what this story in Mark is about. What bothered me about the sermon was where he went from there. Forcing his subject onto a procrustean bed of alliteration, he launched into a Scriptural scavenger hunt that led him to pillage all four Gospels meaning to mine them for the letter “M” - The Mission of the Messiah; The Method of the Messiah; The Mandate of the Messiah; The Murder of the Messiah; The Mastery of the Messiah. By the time he was through, I was mulling another “M” in my mind - the madness of the minister.

Those who defend this kind of slavish servitude to alliteration in preaching do so because, they insist, it helps the audience to remember what the preacher said. Yeah, right. You really want to ask your congregation what you said in your sermon on a Sunday? How about asking them the following Sunday? No? What about that same Sunday afternoon? No? Well then, what about on the way out the door following your sermon? I didn't think so.

Now to be sure the Scripture itself employs mnemonic devices on occasion. Of course, the Scripture was directed primarily to an oral culture where books were expensive and few could read. Hence, all sorts of “tricks” were used to help the audience (from the Latin meaning “those who hear”) make the intended connections. For example, there is a common literary device employed in the ancient world known as chiasmus (from the Greek letter “X,” pronounced “chi” with a long “i”). To facilitate memory and understanding, Greek authors would often arrange material (including collections of stories) in the form of an “X.” The Gospel of Mark contains an example. In Mark 2:1-3:6 there is a collection of five stories that, on the surface, appear to have little in common. They are, in order: (1) The Healing of a Paralytic (2) Eating with Sinners (3) Question about Fasting (4) Plucking Grain on the Sabbath (5) Healing a Man with a Withered Hand. But if you take the stories in the order in which they appear and arrange them chiastically, the pattern emerges: Healing, Eating, Fasting, Eating, Healing. Note: there are two healing stories (one first, one final); two eating stories (one second and one next to last); and in the middle one fasting story. The chiasmus is obvious. These five stories, which on the surface have nothing in common, are brought together as a single whole in a chiastic collection of stories around the theme of “conflict with Jesus." The chiasmus made the collection of controversy stories easier to remember in an oral culture and offered evidence that Jesus' ministry created conflict with the religious power structures of his day, and provided encouragement for later Christians whose commitments also brought them into conflict with the culture.

But notice: this pattern is indigenous to the text, not imposed on it. And therein lies my problem with the incessant use of alliteration in sermons. It misuses the Scripture at two points: (1) it imposes onto the Word of God the preacher's agenda rather than the biblical writer's agenda; (2) it reads the Bible horizontally rather than vertically.

I sometimes call this “horizontal” approach to interpreting the Bible the “playing card approach” to Scripture. It's as though every individual verse of the Bible can be written on a playing card producing, of course, a huge deck of Scriptural playing cards. Then, you shuffle the deck and deal them out however you see fit irrespective of the purpose and perspective of the particular biblical author.

There is a tendency on the part of both preachers and laypersons to read the Bible completely unaware that it is a collection of writings by multiple authors with different purposes and different perspectives. For example, John's pneumatology (understanding of the Holy Spirit) is quite different from Luke's. Whereas John emphasizes the presence of the Spirit in the life of the believer after the departure of Jesus, Luke emphasizes the power of the Spirit empowering the Church to fulfill its mission given it by the Risen Jesus immediately prior to his ascension. That's not to say that the two views are competitive, just different. However, to read the Bible horizontally, running from Luke to John to Matthew to Mark, with neither awareness of nor sensitivity to the individual writer's purpose, perspectives, and agendas, runs the risk of running roughshod over the biblical writer and misinterpreting and misusing the Word of God. It's far better (and more interesting!) to read the Bible vertically; that is, let John speak for John, Luke for Luke, Paul for Paul, etc. The Bible is a multi-voiced choir of inspired writings, each voice chosen by God for its contribution to the holy harmony. To reduce the choir to a solo is to deny inspiration in a functional, if not formal, way.

So spare us the alliteration when you preach. It's not that clever; it's not that interesting; and it's not that memorable.

*Yeah, Yeah, I know that this is assonance rather than alliteration, but you get the point.

Kingdom Theology

I wrote last week about George R. Beasley-Murray and his legacy on my life and my understanding of the New Testament. Anyone who knew George or has read anything he’s written knows at once that he believed eschatology (Greek for “last things” or more colloquially “the future”) to be the centre (George would have insisted on the British spelling!) of the proclamation of Jesus and the message of the New Testament. That theme runs right through virtually every book he wrote but is nowhere more evident than in his book The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus. In this, Beasley-Murray stands squarely within the mainstream of New Testament scholarship (see, for example, G.E. Ladd’s New Testament Theology; E. P. Sanders’ Jesus and Judaism; Geza Vermes’ Jesus the Jew; N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God, to name a few).

Now, to be sure, there are those who argue for a “non-eschatological Jesus,” that the emphasis on the future and the coming kingdom of God did not originate with Jesus but with his followers. On this view, Jesus was a sage, a teacher of wisdom and purveyor of practical advice, who had no aspirations about playing any kind of role in the ultimate denouement of history. It was rather a group of his followers who, after he was gone and was unable to defend himself, re-interpreted Jesus along the lines of an eschatological prophet of the End and in the process re-invented Jesus and created the Christianity we know today. The Gospels, they argue, contain more the perspectives of these “revisionists” than they do the authentic teachings of Jesus. In fact, one widely known and well-publicized group, the “Jesus Seminar,” claims that 82 percent of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels actually derive from the revisionists rather than Jesus. Of course, the way they arrive at this startling conclusion is by employing circular reasoning: they begin with the presupposition that Jesus was not an eschatological prophet and did not speak with eschatological language or imagery, and, therefore, that any reference to eschatology attributed to Jesus in the Gospels must be inauthentic. How convenient. Their “findings” are simply a restatement of their presuppositions.

But when we look at Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God itself, a fairly clear picture emerges. It can be characterized by four assertions:

• The kingdom of God was the centre of Jesus’ preaching, teaching, and action. From the parables to the Sermon on the Mount to the exorcisms, virtually everything Jesus said or did was meant either to elucidate or exemplify the coming kingdom of God.

• Jesus believed (and taught) that he himself had a central role to play in both the coming and consummation of the kingdom of God.

• The kingdom of God will be characterized by what has been called “The Great Reversal,” which is predicated on the assumption that this world’s vision and values are not only different from those of the kingdom but in conflict with them. That is to say, the kingdom of God is counter-cultural.

• There is a tension in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God that is both spatial (heaven/earth) and temporal (is/comes; already/not yet).

With this most New Testament scholars would be in general agreement. That’s why I continue to be surprised when I read things like this in a recent op-ed piece for a Baptist news agency: “For Jesus, the kingdom is the reclaiming of God’s world in its entirety. The kingdom happens when God’s will is done ‘on Earth as it is in heaven.’” Note the underlying assumption: There is no kingdom until we make it “happen” on earth. That kind of warmed-over social gospel rhetoric reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what the New Testament means by the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God in the New Testament is not some giant “reclamation project.” It’s more radical, more disruptive, more, well…eschatological than that. John, in the Apocalypse, catches a glimpse of the kingdom, fully and finally come, when he writes: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” Paul, in advising the Corinthians to remain in the social context in which they find themselves because, he writes, “…for the essence (Greek schema) of this world is passing away.” And C. S. Lewis, in discussing the radical nature of life in the kingdom of God, says, “If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.”

It is for that reason that in the New Testament the kingdom of God is a fundamentally “other worldly” reality that has “this worldly” implications. Jesus said it best himself when asked by Pilate whether or not he was a king: “My kingdom (Greek basileia) is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my supporters would fight that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36). The New Testament perspective is that the kingdom of God is “another world” (from the New Testament’s perspective, the real world!) that has broken in and broken through in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and some have caught sight of it, been captured by it, and live within it.

Perhaps an illustration from George Macdonald will help. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that the room in which you currently reside is the only room in the whole world, and the people with whom you occupy that room the only people in the world. There are no windows or doors in your room; hence, you have no concept of anything outside your little “world.” Indeed, the word “outside” doesn’t exist in your language. You would be forgiven, in such a situation, for believing that your room and the people with whom you occupy it were the entire universe. However, unbeknownst to you, there is another floor above your room where other people are living other lives and doing other things. You are not aware of them, because you’ve never been outside your own little “world,” but they’re there nonetheless. Suppose somehow a hole were torn in the ceiling of your “world,” the floor of the “world” above, so that for the first time you were to become aware of this “other world” just above you. And suppose some in your “world” began to call up to the people in the room above, interacting with them, learning about all sorts of strange and wondrous things, things utterly inconceivable in your “world.” Indeed, you discover, to your amazement, that the people in the room above live their lives according to entirely different “rules’ than those which govern life in your “world.” In the room above, the poor are not regarded as a drain on the system, but are precious and prized; the old and the sick are honored and valued rather than warehoused and discarded; in this “world,” if one makes a promise, one keeps it, even when inconvenient or difficult; and in this “world,” it’s okay to suffer for doing the right thing. Some in the “world” below find themselves strangely drawn toward this “world” above. Indeed, a few are so captured by this new “world” and its new way of living, that even though they still live in the “world” below, they start to think of themselves as really belonging to the “world” above. Though they are still in your “world,” they are no longer of your “world.” The knowledge of the room above, having broken through into their “world,” has changed them forever (cf. see my “Introduction to the Thessalonian Correspondences,” Review & Expositor Vol. 96, No. 2, 175-194). That’s what Jesus meant when he described the in-breaking of the kingdom of God in his life and ministry, creating a new community which he called the “church” (cf. Mark 1:15; Matt. 16:13ff.).

Moreover, there are implications for the church as well. The church is not a “social action committee” out to “fix” the world; it is a “kingdom community” out to announce the end (Greek, eschaton) of this world and the advent of a whole new world visible only through the eyes of faith. It is a “kingdom colony,” a counter-cultural community of people who have caught sight of that “other room” and having been captured by it can never again feel quite so at home in this world.

Now that doesn’t mean that Christians aren’t concerned with “this world,” or that Christians are exonerated from the obligation to work for justice (social, economic, racial, gender, or otherwise). It’s just that Christians don’t reduce the kingdom of God to justice in this world. Through the years, I’ve been a supporter of Habitat for Humanity. I believe in what Habitat stands for and does – giving the dignity that comes with home ownership to people who have not known it before; offering a “hand up” instead of a “hand out;” requiring people to be a part of their own solution by investing their own “sweat equity” in their home. But I don’t support Habitat because by doing so I believe that I can end substandard housing in my lifetime and, thereby, bring about the kingdom of God. Rather, I support Habitat because I’m a Christian and that’s the kind of things Christians do! Christians have caught sight of another world in which the kinds of marginalization so characteristic of this world no longer obtain, and because they believe themselves to belong more to “that world” than “this world,” they live in “this world” according to the vision and values of “that world.” It’s a matter of being more than doing.

Again, perhaps an illustration will help. You find a stray cat and bring him into your home. Bathe him, de-flea him, give him his shots, care for him, nurture him, and give him a name – call him Kevin. After a while, you’ll start to feel that Kevin is such a part of your life that you find yourself talking to him, believing that he understands you. He responds to you almost as though he were a person and not a cat. You believe that you can understand him when he meows, and that he understands you when you speak to him. After a while, you begin to think of Kevin as such a member of the family that he ceases for you to be a cat at all! But you bring a mouse into the house and put it in front of Kevin and you’ll find out what a cat is every time! In the same way, you put a hurting person in front of a Christian and you’ll find out what a Christian is…or isn’t…every time! It’s a matter of being more than doing.

As a citizen of the kingdom of God, the Christian is at once in this world but not of it. Will Willimon’s term for it is “resident aliens.” C. S. Lewis says that currently we are in “enemy-occupied territory.” When I was a boy, I used to sing in church, “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through.” Different formulations; same idea. We got it from Jesus.

And so, remove the essentially eschatological character from the proclamation of Jesus, and you can make Christianity pretty much anything you want. But if you’re going to talk about the Jesus of the New Testament (and not some “Jesus” you prefer to the Jesus of the New Testament), then let’s be fair to him. He is not the first century Eleanor Roosevelt some want to make him out to be. He’s the long-robed bearded guy standing outside the political convention holding up the sign that says, “The End is near. Get ready!”

By George

I’m teaching the Gospel of John at Liberty Theological Seminary this summer. It’s an advanced New Testament elective in the master’s program, so I’m reading and grading lots of research papers. And that’s made me think of George. Nearly every paper I read quotes him at length, and well they should! Not only is his commentary on the Gospel of John a fine piece of New Testament scholarship, but George was one of the seminal influences on my own life and career. I speak of George Raymond Beasley-Murray.

I still recall the day when I was talking with another George who was influential in my life – George Balentine – about where I should go to seminary. George was the dean at Palm Beach Atlantic University and my New Testament Greek professor, mentor, and friend. George said: “Well Wayne, if it were I, I’d go to Southern (he meant The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY).” Then, holding up a copy of Beasley-Murray’s Baptism in the New Testament, he said: “They just landed George R. Beasley-Murray on the faculty there, and that makes them the best!” I read Baptism and was convinced. It was the most carefully crafted, brilliantly written New Testament scholarship on baptism I had ever read. I had to study with George.

When I arrived at Southern, the first class I took was a New Testament Greek exegesis class with George. I was in awe of him – his brilliance, his capacity to read and remember everything he read, and above all, his wonderful British accent. Even though he lived in the US for a score of years, he never lost his marvelous accent. Indeed, it seemed to grow more “pronounced” with the years. He told me one time that he had preached at a rural church in western Kentucky, and when he finished, a woman came up to him and said: ‘Dr. Beasley-Murray, I didn’t understand a thing you said, but I just loved the way you said it!’” He was such a joy just to listen to that I even forgave him his horrid Greek pronunciation! He insisted on pronouncing parousia (Greek for “coming” as in the Second Coming of Christ), “par-OW-sia.”

Years later, when I had finished my PhD and was teaching on the faculty of Midwestern Seminary, I chaired a committee that planned and scheduled lectureships for the faculty and students. I scheduled George. He and Ruth flew to Kansas City where George delivered a series of lectures around his new book which I was using as the text for a course I was teaching, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus. Typically, he was stunning. Both faculty and students were enthralled. We took him to a rodeo while he was in Kansas City. He said he’d never been to a rodeo. After the rodeo, he said: “Everyone should go to a rodeo…once.” He was finishing work while he was with us on his new commentary on the Gospel of John for Word Publishing. He asked me read parts of the manuscript for him and give him my opinion. I said: “It’s typical Beasley-Murray – succinct yet thorough, honest yet gracious, rigorously academic yet unfailingly Christian.” He quipped: “Yes, yes, but will you buy it?”

Cheryl and I drove George and Ruth to the airport following his lectures. It was a difficult time at the seminary. Baptists were going through another of their patented and infamous “Baptist battles,” and the seminaries were in the thick of it. I was conflicted in that I was thoroughly committed to what I call “thoughtful belief.” That is, I was unapologetically committed to Christian orthodoxy, yet at the same time I was equally committed to the best, and most rigorous, scholarship at my disposal confident that Truth had nothing to fear from questions. Practically speaking, that meant that I was comfortable in neither of the two political “camps” vying for denominational control at the time (as I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t do “group think” no matter what group is doing the thinking). George and I talked about that a lot on the way to the airport. I knew he understood because the kind of scholarly commitments I was articulating described him as well. When we arrived at the airport, George looked at me and said something I’ve never forgotten. He said: “You know, Wayne, there’s all the difference in the world between believing that the Bible merely contains the Word of God and believing that the Bible is the Word of God.” Then he added, “If you believe that the Bible just contains the Word of God, then you’re free to pick and choose what parts of the Bible you wish to accept and follow as authoritative. But if you believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then I’m afraid it’s a whole different matter, isn’t it. Then you must accept the Bible both when you like what it says and when you don’t.” Then, poignantly, he added: “Of course, there’s a price to pay for either one you choose.”

I would pay that price some years later. I had gone to be pastor of the First Baptist Church of Raleigh. The church was clearly on one side of the Baptist battle. While there, I learned that George had come to Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest to teach as a Visiting Professor for his dear friend Louis Drummond who was president of the seminary at the time. However, because Drummond was regarded (fairly or unfairly) as a political pawn of one of the denominational factions, George’s presence on the campus was problematic to many in that he appeared to be lending support to one side of the battle over the other. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. George went there because Drummond was his friend and had invited him to teach. And, of course, anyone who knew George knew that he taught exactly the same things at Southeastern he had taught at Southern a decade before. I thought several times how wonderful it would be to invite George to preach or teach for me at First Baptist, but knowing where my church stood in the conflict, and not wishing to alienate anyone, I let it slide. I ran into George in Rex Hospital one day while I was there visiting someone in my church. George was there because he had slipped on an icy sidewalk and had broken his arm. We chatted for a while and then parted, awkwardly. Looking back on that now, I’m ashamed…and embarrassed…that I pandered to prejudice.

My last conversation with George took place some years later when I had gone to be dean of a Baptist divinity school. I was editing a theological journal on Paul’s Thessalonian Correspondences and I needed an article on Paul’s understanding of the parousia. Instantly, I thought of George, now retired and living in London. I called him, not knowing how sick he was; he didn’t say a word about his health. We chatted for a while, and he graciously declined my invitation. I said: “But George, you can write this article in your sleep!” He said: “Asleep or awake, Wayne, it must be written, mustn’t it.” A few months later, I learned that he had died.

The other day, a student of mine was working on the draft of her paper for my course, and researching resources, she had come across George’s Word Commentary on the Gospel of John. She asked: “Dr. Stacy, do you know the name George R. Beasley-Murray?”