Inaugural Address, P. C. Rossin Chair of Church History; 10 November 1992
Introduction
Response to Keith:
It is an honor to be introduced by Keith Nickle who was a seminary student when I first met him and whose illustrious career I have followed with great admiration for more than 30 years.
Presbyterians have long been more famous for their careful expressions of order rather than their wild displays of ardor. Nevertheless, in the old days, a minister’s passion and compassion for the salvation of souls was often tested during the trial before Presbytery by the question, “Would you be willing to be eternally damned in hell for the salvation of one single sinner?”
The legendary Keith Nickle answered that question by saying, “For the sake of one miserable sinner, I would be delighted for this entire Presbytery to be damned!”
We knew then that someday Keith would be a Dean.
First Inaugural:
For the sake of the historical record, I think I should point out that this is my second inaugural address. As a new faculty member in 1978, I was expected to deliver a public lecture soon after I arrived. My subject was the theological contribution of Guillaume Farel, a sixteenth century reformer and John Calvin’s best and most loyal friend. I knew this topic was appropriate because I had been invited to the international Farel conference in Switzerland which was attended by everyone in the whole world who was interested in Farel. Our conference was held by beautiful Lake Neuchâtel in a very comfortable telephone booth. I was really enthusiastic about this Farel lecture because I thought it struck just the right academic note. That is to say, it was obscure as a topic, original in research, and the audience found it stupendously dull. So mighty was the impact of my first inaugural lecture that the practice of asking new faculty members to present an inaugural lecture was immediately discontinued and has never been revived. Shortly thereafter, both the president and dean resigned, but I don’t think those events had any direct historical connection with my lecture. Nevertheless, if I were you I would not lend either of them money until we know for sure.
Surprise to me:
By whatever concatenation of events, you explain your presence in this room tonight, I must admit that I am surprised to be here. As a young man, sharp of eye and swift of foot, I expected to devote my life to athletics. However, it became evident to me that if my family intended to eat on a fairly regular basis, I should go on to Seminary before — rather than after — being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. After graduation and while waiting for an overseas missionary appointment, Margaret and I decided to spend a few years in an American pastorate. This pastorate led to some graduate courses and then to a college position knowing only enough to teach a little bit of everything in philosophy, Bible, religion, history, and literature, including a glorious four-hour credit course on The Theology of Sherlock Holmes. All of that is to say, as a child of both the Presbyterian and Methodist theological traditions, I understand my presence here tonight to be the purist accident of God’s absolute predestination.
Since I am still a wayfarer on the road rather than an ambassador who has arrived, you should relax because I have no important dispatches to deliver. However, since we are already gathered, I would like to offer a few thoughts to occupy our time until the refreshments are ready. These remarks are designed as finger food for the mind. They are not supposed to be indigestible, or even hard to chew, but to slide smoothly down your brain like swallowing boiled okra.
Prologue:
As a prologue I would like first to say a small word about history in the theological curriculum. It seems to me that Pittsburgh Theological Seminary may be compared to a wagon train on its way to the promised land. The Biblical scholars guide us from the lead wagon. The practical theologians make sure that the necessary equipment is carried and we know how to use it. I think of the systematic theologians as scouts who are out front trying to blaze the trail. Most of the time they are wandering around completely lost, but once in a while they come back to tell us about the strange things they have seen or thought they saw. Church historians bring up the rear so that whenever something is thrown out, we can stop our wagon, jump off, and pick through the garbage to determine if any of it should be packed along. The history wagon is filled with a lot of stuff nobody else wants, but we think each item is valuable or might be valuable some day. Needless to say, on every wagon train you must watch your step or you will find yourself ankle-deep in an odoriferous substance. At this time, I will not identify the people at Pittsburgh Seminary who remind me of that part of the horse’s anatomy which is seen from my angle of vision.
Secondly, since I never expected to be here, I think I can say without being hostile or defensive but only descriptive, that history is nearly always considered the least glamorous of the theological disciplines. I grant that Pittsburgh Seminary is justifiably proud that not one of its graduates has ever failed the Presbyteries Cooperative examination in church history. A good deal of the credit goes to my esteemed colleague, John Wilson, but perhaps even more credit should be assigned to the fact that there is no Presbyteries Cooperative examination in church history.
If then, the enlightened Presbyterians do not examine their theological leadership in history, it is not surprising that in the popular mind “history” is scornfully regarded as “bunk” (Henry Ford) and has recently taken a decidedly negative, and even contemptuous turn. For example, a Sports Illustrated magazine which profiled Andy Van Slyke of our Pittsburgh Pirates contained an article about University of Arkansas football which as a chicken-eating Arkansawyer I felt obligated to read. Having lost 15 of 24 games, the Razorbacks’ coach was fired two weeks into the season. The result was this offensive line (if you will pardon the expression in a football context) which read, “Coach Crowe was history.”
This newly common usage of the term “history” seems to mean a number of things including: without effect, of no consequence, irrevocably past, completely irrelevant, deeply buried. Thus, to say of a person or event, he, it, she is history, looks like a kind of secular consignment to hell for a culture which is not sure whether it believes in either God or hell.
It seems to me a surpassing arrogance to declare that anyone or anything belongs so completely in and to the past that she or he or it has no possibility of influence in the present or future. At the same time, we need to be reminded that we are on a journey which never allows us to rest on our laurels or bask in our fame or wealth. Reporting on the fabulous Ramses II, an antique traveler reported:
“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert….
And on the pedestal these words appear;
‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
(Shelley, Ozymandias)
In any event, let us declare an end to the beginning.
A lecture celebrating the inauguration of a chair in church history is probably not expected to explain the difference between a normal chair and an academic chair. However, I thought I ought to address some things historical and since I did not want to start off with an egregious mistake, I went to the library to look for help.
You can imagine my delight to discover that my long-time friend, the incredibly learned and wise Philip Schaff, as recently as 1846, wrote a little book entitled What is Church History? I always learn interesting things from Professor Schaf whose son David, as you know, taught church history at Pittsburgh Seminary from 1903 to 1926.
Unfortunately, I am convinced that on two of his most pivotal points we cannot now follow Schaff as I had hoped. First, according to Schaff, the truth is objectively present in Christ Our Lord and in the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament. (p. 81). Thus Schaff exempts, or at least restricts, these two subjects, Christ and Scripture, from rigorous historical investigation. To the contrary, I submit that as late twentieth century Christians we have no choice but to ask full, tough, and specifically historical questions about Jesus and the New Testament. In other words, today we have more confidence in the range and application of history, than did the great Philip Schaff a mere 146 years ago. Whether we like the results or not, everything, including Christ and Scripture, has a history that must be investigated.
In the second place, when Schaff asserts the truth is subjectively present in the church, he means that the church and its history, in some contrast to Christ and Scripture, is appropriately to be studied within the categories of process and development. We can certainly agree with this. However, at the end Schaff thinks that the historical process is accurately defined this way: “[We] conceive of historical movement as an ever-increasing stream, whose course has been already prescribed in the plan of everlasting wisdom before the formation of the world, and that now rolls itself forward according to divine laws, to empty itself finally into the ocean of eternity” (p. 82).
I am not clear about Schaff’s use of the terms “objective” and “subjective” as they may or may not apply to this statement. However, since he does not immediately appeal to the profound mystery of history nor to the shaping power of the passionate faith of the Christian community and its historians, I conclude that Schaff means for this definition to stand as objective truth. In that case, I submit we have today considerably less confidence in asserting as objective truth the view that history is rolling forward prescribed by divine laws. As Christians we believe that history is the story of God’s providence in relation to human freedom, but to be painfully honest both believers and non-believers are often uneasy, fearful, and confused about the direction of our history and of all history.
Let us hie off in another direction. Since my late teens I have been fascinated by summaries of what I ought to know and by those who thought they knew enough to tell me. For that reason, as a college freshman, I decided to read the then-recent 54 volumes purporting to comprise the Great Books of the Western World. Sad to say, it begins to appear that I will not complete the works on ancient science, but I take some consolation in the fact that no one has ever wanted to discuss ancient science with me, and I have considerable difficulty bringing Apollonius of Perga into ordinary conversations.
More pertinent is it that the same compilation selects the 102 greatest ideas of the western world –among them God, theology, nature, angel, animal, life, love, beauty, being, reality, soul, sin, and so on. You will be relieved to hear that I do not propose to address all 102 great ideas here today. Moreover, while answers and conclusions are doubtless proper in a valedictory address, an inaugural seems to be an appropriate occasion to spend a little time with enigma variations.
I would therefore like to direct your attention to three related, central, and delightful great ideas of the western world: time, history, and memory. They are mysteries because human beings have not yet, and I submit never will, understand any one of them to our satisfaction. Moreover, while each is supposed to be a separate or separable reality, we cannot discuss one without involving the others. Further, while my illustrious colleagues might argue that their favorite great idea is greater than these three–or at least more worthy of interest, I suggest that for each and all of us time, history, and memory are completely unavoidable, mysterious realities and therefore not inferior as subjects of human reflection.
TIME
Let me begin these brief remarks on the mystery of time by acknowledging the life-shattering theme of “Devouring Time.” Our greatest poet writes:
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
So do our minutes hasten to their end….
That time will come and take my love away….
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose….
…of comfort [let] no man speak.
Let’s talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs….
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills
….nothing can we call our own but death
And that small mold of barren earth
Which serves as paste and covers our bones….
(Shakespeare, Sonnets).
The grave’s a fine and private place
But none, I think, do there embrace.
(Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”)
I will be delighted to deal further with this depressing theme, if by popular demand, this lecture has a sequel.
As a pocket-watchman who is always right on time, I thought at this place it would be a good idea to make an observation so obvious that it would create among us a genuine sense of fellowship. And I thought the observation that history is a subcategory of time would serve such a purpose. Most of us, I think, assume time is properly divided into past, present, and future, and that history is the study of past time. The problem for me begins beyond this point where the mystery of time becomes truly opaque.
Are we to think with the classical Greeks that time is eternal and circular without beginning or end? Or perhaps, with the classical Hebrews that, time — while everlasting is linear — having both a beginning and an end? Or perhaps Immanuel Kant has cleared up the mystery with his conviction the time is a transcendental a priori form of perception which must be experienced as irreversibly sequential since causality is the form in which any sensible manifold must appear to the human mind.
Translated into English that means:
“One thing at least is certain — This life flies.
One thing is certain and the rest is lies.”
(Rubaiyat)
If time really flies, is the present logically only an abstract interval between the past and future? The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, impressed by the constant fact of change and under the conviction that everything was in ceaseless motion, except the reality of change itself, declared that you cannot step into the same river twice. I have always wanted to ask Heraclitus how you can step into the same river even once. That is, how does the modifier “same” apply to an ever-changing entity?
Such considerations lead us to sympathize with Augustine’s assertion that he knows very well what time is – until he is asked to define it.
Logically I think he must be right that the world and time were created together. Subsequently when asked what God was doing before the world was created, Augustine replied that God was making hell to put people in who asked that question. This remark is clever and amusing but does not resolve the mystery of time which Christians and their historians share with all human beings. Therefore in place of an impossible conclusion let me offer a simple observation about time which is special to Christians.
All claims, including religious claims, have a time frame and may be studied and therefore taught as history. On most intellectual matters, good teaching does not require a personal commitment. For example, universities neither expect nor require professors of classics to accept the ontological deity of Hera of the white arms or of orange Zeus. At the purely academic level, church historians teach about the church like Greek historians teach about Greece, and African historians teach about Africa. However, I believe that teaching church history not only permits but presupposes a more than academic commitment to the subject. Of each of their pastoral leaders, Christian people rightly want to know how much you care before they care how much you know.
I suggest it would be foolish for a Greek historian living in the twentieth century to believe that Cronos was really the father of Zeus. I suggest it would be dishonest for a church historian living in the twentieth century to believe or teach anything less than “When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption[.]” (Gal. 4: 4-5)
HISTORY
Let’s move from the mystery of time to the mystery of history. The term comes from the Greek word, Ίστορια, which means learning or knowing established by inquiry or research. This definition assumes there is a recognizable difference between fact and fiction, reality and make-believe, truth and falsity. Historical literature, then, deals with what really happened and imaginative literature deals with what might have happened. The purpose of history is to put everything in true perspective.
Generally this distinction works well enough but gets puzzling if pushed. For example, every reported fact is selected, validated, interpreted, and narrated by some one or some group of persons. Heisenberg has reminded us that the interests of the observer are never absent from the observation. Thus, when we look down the well of history, among other things we always see our own faces. In addition, over time we find our memories modified by our needs. Further, if we tell a story a certain way often enough, we come to believe it happened that way. Can we always separate fact and factual interpretation from fact and imaginative interpretation?
If I give you a fair, impartial, and totally unbiased presentation of my point of view I would have to say that real history ends with the death of John Calvin. Everything since 1564 is not history but current events. This modern world is separated from the rest of our history by two great intellectual revolutions. The first is the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries led by Copernicus and Galileo, and Newton who turned the Western mind from final causes, which we can only deduce and admire, to efficient causes which we can modify and therefore utilize. This concentration on natural, rather than supernatural, science led to the industrial revolution and the great industrial cities devoted to it — including this one.
The second revolution is not so well known because it does not involve things but the way we look at things. Our culture has been taught by the historical revolution of the 19th century to see everywhere the process of change and development, including within theology and Bible. One hundred forty six years ago Philip Schaf could still define history as the study of God’s providence in relation to human freedom. Today, even among many Christians the conviction of absolute truth has been abandoned often reluctantly in favor of, and focus on, the relativities of history.
The line running from Rousseau to Lessing to Kant to Troeltsch sees history as the ugly, broad ditch (der garstige breite Graben) and replaces the divinely revealed historical faith with a religion whose value and truth is defended by its usefulness to human needs as they emerge. This view of history comes to full articulation in Ernst Troeltsch. The once-for-all special divine revelation is now evaluated in terms of general human history according to the principle that all historical judgments are only relative and probable and can never be made absolute or certain. On this view, Our Lord’s resurrection, since it is completely unrepeatable, cannot be affirmed as even probable by scientific historical investigation.
We have no choice but to continue to work at these extremely complicated issues. Therefore, rather than attempting a conclusion about the mystery of history, let me offer a remark: In the Scripture set before us earlier in the hour, Cornelius said to Peter, “What is the word from God? We are assembled in the sight of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.” And did you notice that in response Peter gives the assembly — of all things –a history lesson! Saying: God sent the word to Israel preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ beginning from Galilee: God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power; and Jesus went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and made him manifest. Jesus commanded us to preach that he is the one ordained by God to judge the living and the dead and that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sin (Act 10:33b-43). And while this particular history lesson was being recited, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. However we may understand them, we claim those events uniquely as our history.
As you know, I almost never quote A. N. Whitehead with either accuracy or approval, but I think he is correct that the victorious religion will be the one that gives ordinary people a clear confidence in the meaningfulness of history and their history.
Let’s leave history for the mystery of memory.
MEMORY
Following shortly upon the infancy of our western intellectual tradition the prodigious intellects of Greece grew up. According to one student, the Greeks were a highly sculptured people who invented history. They also invented a child’s modeling clay called Plato. The Greeks had a lot of myths. A myth is a female moth.
There may be some truth in the remark that a myth is a dead religion while a religion is a living myth. At least there is often a profound truth in the ancient stories. For example, the ancients attributed the miracle of human creativity to the nine muses. Taking my own ignorance as a standard, I would be surprised if anyone in the room could name all nine of the muses. Someone might remember that Paradise Lost appeals not to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry but to Urania, the muse of astronomy. Many know that Clio is the muse of history. A few might know that the father of the muses was Zeus, the God of thunder and lightning, who spent his time, in several senses, flashing around earth and sky. But — and this is the point I am working toward — the mother and nurturer of the muses, and therefore of human creativity, was Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, who spends her time remembering things, storing them in her heart, and passing them on to us.
Contemporary scientists define learning as the process by which we acquire new knowledge and memory as the process by which we retain that knowledge over time. There is an interesting article on memory in a recent edition of the journal Science in which Eric Kandel has taught the simple-minded sea slug, whose proper name is Aplysia, to retain a learned behavior, in short to remember. Listen to this lyrical description: “Long-term sensitization training in Aplysia causes a transcription-dependent down-regulation of NCAM-related cell adhesion molecules on the surface of sensory neurons.”
This is really hot stuff! However with your permission I propose that for now we leave these fascinating investigations of memory to the neurobiologists and cognitive psychologists. For us memory is experienced as a great and mysterious gift essential to the historical task. If you cannot remember where you have been, you cannot figure out where you want to go. It is a poor sort of memory that works only backward;. aA good memory works forward.
To lose your memory is not merely to lose creativity for the future; it is to lose present identity. Those of us who have watched helplessly as someone we love falls victim to Alzheimer’s know very well how precious the memory is. According to one pessimist “When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion’s sea.” And then disappear into the dark forever. In large measure our memories define who we are — especially those memories we choose for purposes of self-identity.
As Christians we choose to remember Abraham and Sarah, Rachel and Jacob and Leah, Deborah, Samson, Ehud and Eglon, Peter, Paul and Mary. Beyond them Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher are among the gallant dead who yet speak to the courageous living. Traditionalism is the dead religion of living people; while tradition is the living faith of dead people.
I have been trying to understand the Reformed tradition since my pastor gave me his copy of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion during my sophomore year in high school. At the same time I was strongly urged to get lost which I promptly did. I found Calvin to be a serious theologian with no discernible sense of humor. Over the years, I have discovered that Calvin actually wrote two humorous lines, but both have a biting edge. I think Calvin could never lighten up because of his perfectly wretched health.
Still, if you read carefully, a real human being is visible at the inauguration of the Reformed theological tradition. John Calvin is seldom charged with excessive optimism concerning the human condition. He knew a good deal about misery and yet in the middle of an exposition of our sinfulness Calvin wrote what I think was his most touching, winsome, and poignant sentence. “Take courage, my friends. Even if we are nothing in our own hearts, perchance something of us is safely hidden in the heart of God” (III.2.25).
I believe Calvin is here reflecting Colossians 3:3 which affirms that “Our life is hid with Christ in God.” Karl Barth, the great twentieth century Reformed theologian, claims this verse as the center of the gospel. I think our union with Christ is Calvin’s central dogma, but in any event, to be entirely forgotten by God would be to enter cold oblivion.
Instead of a conclusion on the theme of memory, may I suggest that the most astonishing confession of saving faith ever made was by a man whose name we do not even know. We call him the penitent thief. Reflect–Those who believed in Christ before his coming had understood the law and the prophets; those who believed in Our Lord Christ during his life on earth had heard his word; and after his death they experienced the resurrection. Those who believe in Christ today have the witness of the church. Without law or prophet or word or resurrection or church, this malefactor came to the heart of the gospel in his dying moments and cried out in agony, “Jesus, when you come in your kingly power, remember me (Luke 23:32).
CENTRAL PROBLEM:
What I have been trying to do with the great intellectual concepts of time, history, and memory is to play a little with the general, human mysteries within which our special, Christian mysteries are affirmed. Such reflections are good for us in that they give our minds some vigorous exercise, but a true mystery can only be contemplated and never solved. In spite of the fact that laughter is the purest expression of a community’s faith in God’s providence, the situation of the church today is too serious for us to spend all our time playing brain games. We have problems which, unlike mysteries, have possible solutions toward which we can and must bend our efforts.
In my lifetime I will never again have so distinguished a captive audience as I do at this moment. At least until CH01 meets on Thursday morning. Therefore, in place of a final conclusion, I would like to list very quickly for your later reflection what I think are the four central problems which the Christian church faces today and which we must all work together at solving.
While every doctrine is important, I suggest that two of the most important have become especially problematic in our time. I refer firstly to the Christological and secondly to the Scriptural debates. Each has a long history and disagreements have been fundamental and fierce. Nevertheless, today our views are so sharply different that we have difficulty recognizing each other as members of the same believing family. If we cannot come to a common agreement on these issues then we surely and desperately need a common task so great that it will unite us and enable us to move forward together.
Thirdly, Daley Thompson of England, gold medalist in the 1980 and 1984 decathlon, once said, “If to win a gold medal in the 1980 Olympic games, I had to die in 1981, I’d do it.” When I read that statement, I was astonished and absolutely appalled — because I understood exactly what he was talking about. For many there is no discipline too severe, no sacrifice too great if the reward is Olympic gold. Do not we Christians need to remind ourselves that the glory toward which we strive is more than Olympian and that greater discipline and sacrifice is expected of us by commitment to Christ to whom belongs the victory?
Fourthly, I believe the supreme need for us today is to recover the sense of fellowship (koinonia) which involves a history together of time spent, problems solved, and memories shared. The Christian church was a fellowship before it became an institution. A bunch of sheep huddled around the Shepherd before the hirelings took over the pasture. Like the Pentecost converts our task is to devote ourselves to the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship (Acts 2:42). In fact, eternal life was made manifest so that we might have fellowship (I John 1:3).
And so to the Epilogue:
The one complaint I have never heard applied to Presbyterians is the charge that they do not take education seriously. Put positively, the Reformed tradition has always insisted on both a pious and learned ministry–continuing Calvin’s conviction that no one can be a good minister of God’s word without being a first-rate scholar. For those of us with faith in the God to whose service theological education is dedicated, the establishment of a seminary chair is an occasion of genuine rejoicing. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Charles Partee
P.C. Rossin Professor of Church History
charlesbpartee 