Читать книгу The Prisoner’s Cross - Peter B. Unger - Страница 7

A‍s Don drove his Pontiac Catalina through main street of the university town, he was amazed at how manicured the town appeared. As he passed the main gate of the campus on his left the lush green lawns of the campus in front of the administration buildings came into view. He saw students sitting on blankets studying. He noticed a couple on a blanket. The young man was sitting with the arms of a sweater tied around his neck, the sweater behind his back. The young woman with him was laying on her back next to him with a book resting on her stomach. The architecture of the buildings appeared colonial and they were built largely of stone. Don had also noticed that most of the cars lining the street were expensive models. There were BMWs, Mercedes, even Porches in the mix. Don suddenly felt self-conscious driving his beat-up old beast of a car through town. Almost on cue it belched smoke out the tailpipe just as he passed the main gate to the campus. Main Street was lined on both sides by upscale stores. It was the epitome of a quaint college town.

The graduate schools, including the seminary, were on the north end of town, the direction Don was headed. Don had received his room assignment with the acceptance letter. Once he had arrived at the seminary, he grabbed his suitcase and duffel bag, and made his way to Whitney Hall, the dorm he would be staying in. Don soon found his room and with the door unlocked he opened it and walked in. Two neatly made up beds lined the walls on either side of the room with desks at the head end of the beds, facing the back wall. A large window, in between the two desks, divided the room and let sunlight flood the room in the morning.

On the left side of the room his roommate sat in a recliner he had positioned at the foot end of the bed next to a bookcase. Don tried to smile congenially as he put his things down beside his bed, but he sensed intuitively that David and he could not have been more different. As Don turned back toward David, and smiled once again, he saw that David did not smile back, but simply puffed on the pipe that he held up to his mouth with one hand. Don extended his hand and introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Don Campbell.” David, without taking the pipe out of his mouth, extended the hand that had been holding it and in a formal tone said, “Good to meet you, I’m David Martin Edwards the Third.” Don suppressed a spontaneous urge to smirk. Who tacks a number onto the end of their name? He knew that in some high-society circles this might be the norm, but otherwise thought this a custom of an elite minority in a former era. Don also thought he had detected a slight English accent when David introduced himself. Don broke the awkward silence, “I’m from Kentucky, where are you from, David?” David spoke slowly and deliberately in what sounded faintly like an upper-class English accent. “I am originally from Houston, Texas, but more recently I lived in England and studied at Oxford University. As he spoke, Don had noticed that he seemed to be wearing a slight sneer of a smile on his horn-rimmed bespectacled face. Don initially thought that David had spent some years studying in England. He was later to find out that David had spent nine months studying at Oxford after college, in some special overseas study program. This of course begged the question as to how the English accent had developed in such a short period of a time, and even more mystifying was what had happened to David’s Southern drawl. Don was also to find out that David was indeed from a very wealthy Texas family, and the nephew of a US senator. At the time, though, Don’s follow-up impressions confirmed his intuitive hunch that David could not have been more different from him. As Don busied himself putting his things away, out of the corner of his eye he saw David sit back in his chair. Don turned his head sideways, smiled at David and looked again at the chair David was sitting in. It was a leather recliner that he had obviously brought into the room. Don also noticed that David’s side of the room was immaculate, with all his books neatly lining the shelves of the bookcase at the foot of his bed.

As David went back to reading the book that lay across his lap, he continued to puff on the pipe he once again held to his mouth. A Harris Tweed jacket with elbow patches that David was wearing completed the ensemble. Don didn’t want to be judgmental, but there was something about David’s whole manner and persona that seemed fake and pretentious. David seemed to be playing a role. His academic elitist demeanor was so over the top it almost came off as satire. Still Don was determined at this stage to make the best of the situation. Don finished putting away his things and then sat down on his bed. “So David, have you bought your books yet?” he asked. “Yes, I have already purchased all my books, I like to get a head start on the readings for my courses.” Don had found the slightly patronizing tone with which David had answered him annoying, and whatever further conversations he would have to have with his roommate, for now, he just wanted to make a hasty exit. “Well I think I’ll head over to the bookstore and see what books I will need.” Don had applied and been approved for a student loan in the months following his acceptance letter, that covered his room and board, as well as an additional allotment for books. Don paused and looked over at David waiting for a response. When he did not respond and kept on reading his book, Don got up and left.

The bookstore was in the basement of a large building that housed classrooms and sat diagonally across the quadrangle from his dorm, and next to the seminary chapel. As he passed the growing numbers of students walking across the campus, Don found that he had a hard time making eye contact with most of them to say hi. Many seemed to be walking and talking in small groups and he was unsure of how they had struck up their relationships so quickly. He also began to realize that his baseball cap, worn backwards, along with the hooded jacket and jeans he was wearing, set him apart from how most everyone else was dressed. Most of the men were wearing khakis or dress slacks and shirts, and most of the women were dressed in a more formal way than the female students at the community college back home. As Don descended the stairs that led down to the bookstore in the building’s basement, he was now feeling more and more like he didn’t fit in here. Walking into the bookstore bustling with students, he steeled himself. He was here, and no matter what, he would give it the best shot he could. He knew from orientation materials sent him soon after his acceptance letter that he would be taking intro classes in Old Testament, New Testament, theology, and church history. Don began looking at the piles of books on tables throughout the center of the store. Amid the book-filled bookshelves that lined the walls were labels that designated the different classes. He also found them taped to the edge of the tables right below the different piles of books for each course. Don quickly picked up the required texts for three of his four courses but was having trouble finding the books for his last course on theology. He finally found the course label on one end of a table toward the front of the bookstore. He then began to check the piles for the required books for the course. He soon found the first one and as he picked up the textbook off the top of the pile, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a pretty brunette across the table from him. She was already holding several books in one hand, and appeared to be looking for another book among the piles. Don had looked at her a second too long and felt his face redden as she looked back at him. “Which textbook are you looking for?” Don asked, hoping to move past the awkwardness of the moment. “Oh,” she replied, “I still have to buy one text book for the intro class to theology, and I just can’t find It.” Don had put all the books he had bought into a basket he had picked up at the door. “That’s the only course I need to buy books for as well,” Don said, seeing an opening to further the conversation. She smiled back at Don and then lowered her head to continue her search for the book. Don walked over to her side of the table, extended his hand and introduced himself. The young woman looked up at him, smiled, and said, “I am Wendy Bowman, it’s good to meet you.” As they exchanged introductions Don noticed just how cute Wendy was. With dark brown eyes, dark shoulder-length hair, bangs, a petite build, and fine features, Don found her exceedingly attractive. As they continued looking through the piles of books together, Don looked sideways at her. “So where are you from, Wendy?” Don asked. “I grew up in Texas, but my family moved to the Midwest when I was in high school,” she answered. This explained, Don thought, the slight Southern accent he had detected. “How about you?” Wendy asked. “I am from Kentucky, I’ve lived there my whole life. I mean up until now.” Don replied, realizing that what he had just said sounded like a bad joke. This made him feel momentarily awkward and inarticulate. “Well Don, I think I have all the books I need, so I am going to head back to my room.” As Wendy headed toward the cashier, Don grabbed the two remaining books he needed for the theology course and went to pay for them. Wendy and Don traded glances and smiles as Don stood behind her in the cashier line. When it came Don’s turn to pay he noticed Wendy talking to another female student in the hallway just outside the door to the bookstore. Finishing his purchase, Don walked out the door just as Wendy was climbing the stairs ahead of him. Catching up with her he asked her what she thought of the seminary so far. “It’s pretty much what I expected. I had an uncle who went here about twenty years ago. He helped prepare me and told me what to expect.”

As they walked outside and down the steps of the building together, Don suddenly felt confused. He was strongly attracted to Wendy, and perhaps, if the attraction proved mutual, it was time for him to risk opening himself up to a relationship. Still, while she had been one of the first people on campus that had seemed open, and friendly, she also seemed to be out of his league. She appeared to be from the same middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds as many of the other students. Don didn’t want to appear pushy, so at the bottom of the stairs he turned to her and said, “Well it was good to meet you, Wendy, I hope we run into each other again.” “It was good to meet you too, Don Campbell. I am sure we’ll see each other around, as well as in class.” Her tone had a slightly teasing quality to it. She also seemed to have a mix of both down-to-earth and formal ways about her.

As Don headed back to his room, he was uncertain of whether she would become a friend, much less be someone he could ask out on a date. At least he had broken the ice with her. For now, though, he too would head back to his room and skim through the books he had just bought. He would soon be receiving the syllabi in the classes, with the reading schedules, but he could at least familiarize himself with the different course textbooks. Don would have his first class, Intro to the New Testament, the following morning, and these were the textbooks he would skim through first. He only wished his roommate was someone he felt more relaxed around.

Don’s first week of classes went by uneventfully. Each professor seemed to have their own unique lecture style. His church history professor was a tall, thin, grey-haired man named Canfield, whose monotone lecturing style had many students bringing the largest cups of coffee they could to class. The subject matter had been somewhat disappointing as it was more of a history of Christian thought and theology than a course on the history of the church. A better title for the course, Don thought, might have been “Intro to a History of Long-Dead Theologians.” His Old Testament professor was a short, stocky man in his fifties, who wore wire-rimmed glasses, and always had on a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” type hat. Overall, though, he seemed to Don to be more scholarly than adventuresome. His theology professor, a middle-aged man named Wallace, was of medium height and build. At first glance, Wallace, who wore glasses and, as most of Don’s professors did, a suit and tie, also appeared scholarly and aloof. Don would soon learn that this was a misleading first impression, as Wallace often flashed a warm, welcoming smile that made him more approachable than his other professors.

Wallace was the only one of his instructors who had been a pastor for over a decade before earning a doctorate and beginning his seminary teaching career. His pastoral experience was evident in the many illustrations he brought into the lectures from his ministry days. One illustration in particular had caught Don’s attention and had resonated with him. The lecture topic dealt with the theme of suffering in theology, one which Don was specifically interested in. As a young pastor in his first church, Wallace had learned that a couple had just lost their only child, a teenage girl, in a car accident. Wallace immediately headed over to the parent’s house. The wife greeted him at the door, her face distorted by grief. “Helen, I just heard the news, I am so sorry,” Wallace said, knowing how insufficient words were at a time like this. “I am really worried about my husband, I have never seen him so angry. He is in the back, chopping wood, I don’t know if he will even talk to you,” she had replied. Wallace nodded his head trying to convey a look of understanding. In reality, given his inexperience, he had no idea what he could possibly say that would be meaningful given the depth of this man’s grief. Wallace made his way around the side of the house, and came into the backyard just in time to see the father violently swing an axe down on a piece of wood sitting on a tree stump. As Wallace approached, he knew the husband had to know he was there but he kept splitting wood, ignoring the young pastor even when he came to stand on the other side of the stump. An awkward silence followed. Without looking up, the father, in an angry, defiant voice, said, “Pastor, if you have just come to offer a bunch of religious platitudes you can turn around and go back the way you came.” Wallace prayed silently for guidance from the Holy Spirit, and then started speaking, only intuiting what he shouldn’t say. The words that came out were, “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling. All I know is that whatever it is, it is completely understandable.” Wallace continued to stand there for another few minutes, as the father continued to split wood, and then before turning around to leave, bowed his head and said a prayer, lifting up the father’s grief and anger to God for validation, and help. As Wallace turned around to leave and began walking away, he suddenly heard the words, “Thank you, Pastor.” When Wallace turned back to respond he noticed that the man had said these words while continuing to split wood and without looking up. Wallace stayed in touch with the parents, but was sure it was by not trying to fix anything, but merely affirming the nightmare they were experiencing as well as God’s presence, that he was able to minister to them. Wallace did not explain the story except to use it as an illustration for a theological understanding of the ministry of Christian presence. It would be one of many critical insights Don would gain over his first year at the seminary.

Other than Wallace, though, Don’s other instructors approached their subject as an academic discipline with little or none of the ministry references that he assumed would be an integral part of a seminary education. By the end of his second New Testament class Don’s professor seemed to take this teaching style to an extreme. His primary focus in the class, other than lecturing on the different types of writings in the New Testament, was to teach about a set of methods he called the “biblical criticisms.” The students were to use these in their exegetical assignments or papers where they interpreted designated New Testament texts. At the time Don understood these to be broken down into two categories: criticisms which concentrated on the composition and history of Scripture, and textual criticisms which focused on interpreting the meaning of Scripture. To Don, Wilson seemed to enjoy analyzing texts that had to do with the mission and deeds of Jesus in ways that questioned any possible supernatural interpretation. This also had the effect of reducing Jesus to a teacher of religious ethics who was merely human. As a matter of course, Jesus’ divine mission and incarnation were also brought into question. In lectures Wilson utilized the criticisms the way a pathologist dissects a cadaver. By the time Wilson was done analyzing a text in a lecture he had systematically undermined any traditional faith basis for it. He had peeled away the layers of the text like an onion until there was nothing left for those who clung to the essential truths of the faith.

Wilson had often referenced Rudolf Bultmann, a theologian and New Testament professor from the earlier half of the twentieth century, who heavily influenced the development of form criticism. Don came to understand form criticism as a literary or textual analysis of Scripture, used to discern its original and most essential meanings. Wilson, referencing Bultmann, had instructed that since we can’t know anything for sure about the historical Christ, all we can do is extrapolate the most essential meanings of texts, regarding his life and mission, for our current existence and lives. Don did not understand Bultmann in any depth, but the high regard with which Wilson seemed to hold him was at odds with his enthusiasm for biblical historical criticism. Although Bultmann’s biblical theology and Wilson’s overzealous scholarly use of the historical criticisms had served common cause by undermining any historical basis for supernatural occurrences in the Gospels, including Jesus’ miracles and the resurrection. They also both claimed that little of Jesus mission and ministry could claim historical validity.

The fact that Matthew, Mark, and John had based their writings or dictations on memories of, and as witnesses to, Jesus’ mission and ministry seemed to hold little weight with either camp. And while Paul had not known Jesus he was continually in direct contact with those that had. Wilson had also lectured that the diverse agendas of the New Testament writers, evident in both the Gospels and Paul’s epistles, had cast doubt on their historical validity. As for NT author agendas, Don questioned, why could each writer not have been divinely inspired to relate historical facts through a variety of lenses so as to bring the fullest understanding of Christ’s mission to the world.

Don not only found himself repulsed by Wilson’s use of biblical criticisms as the only way to study Scripture, and by implication to prepare for a sermon, he also felt an anger slowly rising within him. Don had decided to go to seminary partly to gain theological and biblical insights on which he could rebuild his faith. Instead this professor seemed intent on undermining what little faith he had left.

By his third class, in the second week of the semester, as Don listened to Wilson employ these criticisms on a variety of Gospel texts, Don began to feel an edgy restlessness. He knew it was a warning sign when he felt this way. Don knew, his anger could more easily rise to the surface, and that he was more apt to lash out impulsively. It had happened enough times before with fellow high school students, coworkers, and the occasional stranger who all had picked the wrong day and time to be critical, abrupt, or rude to him. Still Don knew he had to go to class and wanted to get off to a good start academically. To calm down he tried telling himself that he would avoid taking another class with Wilson in the future. After all, Don reasoned, there were other New Testament professors at the seminary who most likely did not hold Wilson’s narrow liberal views. He had just had the bad luck of the draw this time around. Still these self-reassurances did little to ease Don’s growing frustration with Wilson given his emotional state at the time.

By the third week of the NT class Wilson turned his scalpel to the resurrection narratives. The overall thrust of the lecture was already predictable. “There is much evidence to suggest that these narratives are a creation of the early church and so we should be careful not to regard them as historical fact,” Wilson had stated at one point. He then went on to reference a group of scholars called the “Jesus Seminar” to back his assertion.

The Jesus Seminar was composed of a group of liberal scholars and lay persons who used their own biblical critical methods, and other anthropological and historical tools, to examine the historicity of the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ. Using colored scriptural highlights, after discussion and then a vote, they determined, from the most likely to the least likely, which texts depicted Jesus’ teaching and ministry with historical authenticity. The votes were cast using beads of four colors, red, pink, grey, and black, the same colors later used to highlight Bibles utilizing their rankings. The color red was used to indicate which texts could most authentically be traced back to Jesus. Texts involving supernatural occurrences, including the resurrection, were assigned to the least likely category, the black color code. The seminar had been greatly influenced by the quest for the historical Jesus, initiated by Albert Schweitzer, who wrote a book of the same name, and was largely a product of the emerging scientific worldview. A teaching document of the early church, which is not extant, called “Q,” from the German word Quelle, for “source,” was relied on heavily by the seminar members in making their determinations. As was the “Gospel of Thomas,” an early Gnostic gospel, which contains the purported sayings of Jesus and which some scholars believe was written in a similar form, a collection of Jesus’ sayings, as that of “Q.” The disproportionate reliance by seminar members on these two resources has been hotly debated in the broader scholarly arena. Their authorship, date of origin, and agenda cannot be accurately verified—seminar members assume an earlier date for both Q and the Gospel of Thomas than that of Mark, the earliest Gospel—despite seminar assumptions.

The end result of the seminar’s determinations was that the figure of Jesus had been reduced to a one-dimensional figure that was totally a product of Jewish-Hellenistic culture and the early church. One who was seen as incapable of original thought if he had just been a product of his provincial, Galilean, Jewish culture. Don, partly in reaction to Wilson’s assertions, had read articles that reflected the growing critical reaction against the conclusions of the seminar in the greater scholarly community and included well-respected biblical scholars such as the Anglican N. T. Wright and New Testament professor Luke Timothy Johnson. Questions had been raised about the self-fulfilling selection criteria of the seminar members, and that a significant number of seminar members were scientists, and laypersons, and not Christian scholars. Don worried that a pseudoscientific mindset could be creeping into some of the more liberal seminaries, and that the generation of pastors they produced might be susceptible to unbalanced biblical perspectives. This influence, Don thought, contained a bias which assumes a foundational premise that rules out the possibility of any supernatural explanation. Don also wondered how much their biblical perspectives might in turn undermine the faith of parishioners of the church traditions they served.

While the accident had shaken Don’s faith down to its foundation, he had still clung to his belief in the resurrection. Don felt the anger within him growing, and knew it could overflow any minute. He had applied to a more liberal seminary hoping they would be more open-minded, and help him to arrive at deeper insights about suffering and injustice. He had never thought that liberal, in a seminary context, meant questioning everything about the faith, including its most essential truths like the resurrection. Hadn’t Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth said that without the resurrection the whole faith would fall apart? Part of Don knew he was projecting his anger at Wilson onto the seminary, and other theologically liberal seminaries, and that this was unfair. Given his limited classroom experiences in biblical studies Don had seen little evidence, as yet, of the broader biblical and theological perspectives that he knew must be represented in such seminaries.

It was with his anger primed that Wilson decided, as he occasionally did, break up the lectures by asking if “anyone had any questions.” Don’s hand shot up quickly, he felt his face redden and tighten into a rigid grimace that registered the mounting anger he felt inside. “Yes,” Wilson said, nodding his head in Don’s direction. “With all due respect, Dr. Wilson, if you question the resurrection won’t the whole faith begin to fall apart?” Don asserted in a defiant tone. Wilson was startled by Don’s challenging tone and caught off guard by the impertinence of the question. Looking down from the lecture platform, and over his reading glasses, he fixed his gaze firmly on Don. After a few seconds of awkward silence Wilson responded, “I am only calling its historicity into question, not the meaning of the resurrection for our lives as inspired by the Holy Spirit.” Wilson then turned his head and was about to ask if there were any more questions when Don, without raising his hand, spoke out again. “But if Christ didn’t really die on the cross and pay the price for our sins and salvation isn’t that meaning just an illusion?” Wilson re-fixed his gaze on Don with a disapproving scowl. “Your name please?” Wilson demanded. “My name is Don Campbell, Dr. Wilson.” “Well Don,” Wilson said in a patronizing tone, “is it not enough that the early church believed so fully in the transformative meaning of the resurrection for their lives that this faith phenomenon, imparted through the Holy Spirit, has been at work ever since through the body of Christ, we call the church.” Don, with a tone of defiance and disdain, then blurted out, “how can there be such a Spirit if Christ was just a dead man, wouldn’t all his claims then just be that of a crazy man.” Wilson tried to regain control of what had become a growing argumentative exchange between Don and him. “I would be glad to discuss this further with you, Don, after class, but we need to move on now.” No sooner had Wilson finished the sentence than Don, whose anger was overwhelming his ability to reason, blurted out accusingly, “Excuse me, Dr. Wilson, how is what you’re teaching us in any way preparing us to be pastors? I have only been a student here for a few weeks, but I already feel like the rug is being pulled out from beneath my faith.” “Don, I do not permit such outbursts in my class,” Wilson responded in an irate tone. Resting his forearms on the lectern Wilson leaned forward and fixing a stern gaze on Don that clearly indicated he had enough “You do not have to remain in this class if you don’t want to, but I will determine the material covered in class, and while you may not agree with it, you cannot impose your view on the class or me.” By this time, one could hear a pin drop in the classroom, and the rest of the students were now staring at Don. Knowing that his anger had once again escaped his control, and that this time it was in a setting where it had left him, in a way Don had not experienced before, vulnerable and exposed, Don felt he had only one out. He slowly picked up his books and walked down the aisle between the seats toward the door. Then motivated only by raw emotion and impulse, he turned and before exiting shouted at Wilson, “I am not sure how you can call my belief in the reality of the resurrection a view and still call yourself a Christian.” With Wilson’s disparaging gaze again fixed on him, the whole class turning around to stare at him, and feeling like he had nothing to lose, Don then got personal. “I think you are more into being a scholar than a Christian, Dr. Wilson, and would rather give a lecture on the resurrection than actually believe in it.” Don did not wait for a response from Wilson but wheeled around and walked out the door. The sudden release of his anger had felt cathartic, but now that it was spent, Don began to feel the shame and embarrassment his behavior now aroused within him. He also began to fear the consequences that were sure to result.

As Don left, walked down from the second floor where the classroom was, and out the door, it dawned on him fully how foolish his public display of anger had been. He was sure to be reprimanded by the administration. Even worse he had now established, for himself, a bad reputation among his classmates, one that was sure to spread across the campus where he already felt like an outsider. On his walk across the quadrangle back to his dorm room Don felt like a doomed man. He was relieved not to find his roommate there when he entered the room. Flopping face down onto his bed he managed after awhile to fall into a fitful sleep. When he awoke, he checked his wristwatch for the time, and realized he had slept through dinner. Trudging off to the library he resolved to salvage what little he could of the day; besides, he thought to himself maybe nothing too terrible will come of his classroom outburst. Arriving at his room later that night, David greeted him in his usual stiff, overly formal, and impersonal way. It was hard to tell if he had heard anything about the incident.

To relax before going to bed Don picked up a sports magazine laying on the floor next to his bed, and laying down on his side began to leaf through it. He soon felt sleepy and called it a night. When Don awoke in the morning he scrambled to get to the cafeteria for breakfast. Swinging by the in-house student mailboxes near the dorm’s front doors, he grabbed a couple flyers and one letter from his mailbox. As he read the words across the front of the letter, Don suddenly felt a cold clammy feeling come over him. In neat handwriting were the words “Dean’s Office.”