[November 1998 journal entry]
[November 2008 NOTE: A mutual acquaintance introduced me to a Hebrew and Jewish Wisdom Literature professor – Bob -- shortly after we had completed our move in November 1998 to Williamsburg, KY, where I began work with a nearby community health center. Bob and his family attended First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, a congregation with a sizable contingent sympathetic toward the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship opposition to the fundamentalist remaking of the Southern Baptist denomination engineered in the late1970s by Adrian Rodgers et al. Bob is a couple of years older than I. He was raised in Virginia and North Carolina. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1971 with a major in mathematics and worked for a few years as a computer programmer and systems analyst before entering Midwestern Baptist Seminary (1997 MDiv). Before beginning doctoral studies at Southern Seminary, he completed the ThM program at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. His principal professors at Southern were Drs. Owens, Tate, and Polhill. He completed his dissertation – The Dark Side of God: The Antagonistic God in the Mosaic Traditions -- in 1983 under Dr. Tate’s supervision. James Crenshaw was his external reader. That year he joined Cumberland College’s Religion and Philosophy Department (which he has chaired since 1990). At my suggestion, Bob and I began in November 1998 meeting twice most months for lunch discussions. I submitted a set of ideas in tutorial fashion, seeking Bob’s response as a specialist in Hebrew and in Jewish Wisdom Literature. Most of our discussions were textual, topical, and word studies rooted in the story/play Job and in Ecclesiastes. I made sure the question – “And shall we continue these discussions?” – remained open for Bob as we looked evermore deeply into my ‘non-religious’ journey. I did not want him to feel cornered/trapped. When I left the community health center ten years later to fill my present position with Barnes-Jewish Hospital, he had continued to answer “Yes” with an enthusiasm that matched mine.]
Bob gave me today his translation and related word study of Job 42:7. This material from Bob confirmed and deepened my intent to ‘do theology’ founded on and anchored by the 42:7 affirmation of Job’s ‘scrap heap’ thought/views. Doing so requires radical rethinking of every facet of ethics, and spirituality. This is what I have been attempting for at least the past twenty years. Note that Job – from the ‘scrap heap’ – is outside his ‘religious’ sphere, challenges his longstanding assumptions, refuses to conform to or endorse the ‘religious’ paradigm of his three close friends in order to retain or regain their support. The implications are profound for (1) how to pray, (2) what texts to treat as canonical, (3) hermeneutics, (4) understanding the thought of ‘Jesus’, (5) how to conceive of ‘God’, (6) the basis for ‘ethics’, (7) how to respond to human suffering, (8) liturgy, (9) . . . . I asked Bob if he wants to look down this path on which I have been walking for so many years. He said yes. I hope he continues. In order to stay on this path, it is necessary to be free – in thought, in covenants, in vocation – from ‘organized religion’. I think Bonhoeffer had reached the threshold of this freedom during his prison correspondence. Would he have crossed the threshold and not turned back?
[November 2008 NOTE: A mutual acquaintance introduced me to a Hebrew and Jewish Wisdom Literature professor – Bob -- shortly after we had completed our move in November 1998 to Williamsburg, KY, where I began work with a nearby community health center. Bob and his family attended First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, a congregation with a sizable contingent sympathetic toward the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship opposition to the fundamentalist remaking of the Southern Baptist denomination engineered in the late1970s by Adrian Rodgers et al. Bob is a couple of years older than I. He was raised in Virginia and North Carolina. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1971 with a major in mathematics and worked for a few years as a computer programmer and systems analyst before entering Midwestern Baptist Seminary (1997 MDiv). Before beginning doctoral studies at Southern Seminary, he completed the ThM program at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. His principal professors at Southern were Drs. Owens, Tate, and Polhill. He completed his dissertation – The Dark Side of God: The Antagonistic God in the Mosaic Traditions -- in 1983 under Dr. Tate’s supervision. James Crenshaw was his external reader. That year he joined Cumberland College’s Religion and Philosophy Department (which he has chaired since 1990). At my suggestion, Bob and I began in November 1998 meeting twice most months for lunch discussions. I submitted a set of ideas in tutorial fashion, seeking Bob’s response as a specialist in Hebrew and in Jewish Wisdom Literature. Most of our discussions were textual, topical, and word studies rooted in the story/play Job and in Ecclesiastes. I made sure the question – “And shall we continue these discussions?” – remained open for Bob as we looked evermore deeply into my ‘non-religious’ journey. I did not want him to feel cornered/trapped. When I left the community health center ten years later to fill my present position with Barnes-Jewish Hospital, he had continued to answer “Yes” with an enthusiasm that matched mine.]
Bob gave me today his translation and related word study of Job 42:7. This material from Bob confirmed and deepened my intent to ‘do theology’ founded on and anchored by the 42:7 affirmation of Job’s ‘scrap heap’ thought/views. Doing so requires radical rethinking of every facet of ethics, and spirituality. This is what I have been attempting for at least the past twenty years. Note that Job – from the ‘scrap heap’ – is outside his ‘religious’ sphere, challenges his longstanding assumptions, refuses to conform to or endorse the ‘religious’ paradigm of his three close friends in order to retain or regain their support. The implications are profound for (1) how to pray, (2) what texts to treat as canonical, (3) hermeneutics, (4) understanding the thought of ‘Jesus’, (5) how to conceive of ‘God’, (6) the basis for ‘ethics’, (7) how to respond to human suffering, (8) liturgy, (9) . . . . I asked Bob if he wants to look down this path on which I have been walking for so many years. He said yes. I hope he continues. In order to stay on this path, it is necessary to be free – in thought, in covenants, in vocation – from ‘organized religion’. I think Bonhoeffer had reached the threshold of this freedom during his prison correspondence. Would he have crossed the threshold and not turned back?
