My beloved prof's website

Well, I'm going to take a risk and tell you who that beloved prof is who was so ambivalent about Bonhoeffer. I do this because I still appreciate his work for the Kingdom of God. Dale Brueggeman served as theology professor at Central Bible College where I attended. He began work for the Division of Foreign Missions for the Assemblies of God in 1994 and is now involved in Eurasia Education Services. Maybe he will have forgotten all of the aforementioned conversations and me in particular. Nevertheless his mission work goes on and I'm grateful for it. I also recall in that same semester that I took Philosophy, Theology 1 and 2 at the same time. So as one prof discussed whether God existed another took it on faith. As Dale assured us of God's judgment, my soteriology prof leaned on God's desire that all be saved. Talk about a ride! I remember hearing from Dale one morning that hell was God's intention and from Vernon later the same day that it was not God's desire. When I interjected in Vernon's class a point from Dale's, Vernon grabbed my desk spun me in front of the class and began erratically pointing a finger in my face to make his point. There were wounds licked and tears shed in my dark corner of the library that evening. But I got better. Vernon apologized later. Lesson from all this: don't play a Westminster doctorate and a Fuller doctorate off each other on the judgment of God. At least not in the middle of the lesson in front of the class.

Tags: Pentecostalism, Dale Brueggeman, theology, missions, Eurasia Education Services

Bonhoeffer Ethics website

There is so much new attention to Dietrich Bonhoeffer these days that I almost fear a Bonhoeffer fatigue will result with this new generation of scholarship. When I began reading him in the late eighties and early nineties I didn't know anyone with much interest. I remember a conversation with my theology professor over lunch. I asked "What do you think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book on the Psalms?" His reply was "Dietrich Bonhoeffer? I guess the best thing I've got to say about him is that his approach to the Bible offered him comfort in prison." While I valued this professor's thoughts very much at the time, I got the feeling Bonhoeffer was too liberal for his Westminster training. They measured everything by a reformed epistemology canon. Only years later did I learn the full extent of how strict that canon was. This same professor made the comment that "if your theology is wrong you will burn in hell!" Well, that's a tangent.

Richard Gillingham of Sub Ratione Dei has a Dietrich Bonhoeffer Resource site with up-to-date links that give some great background on Bonhoeffer. This site is not yet high on Google's list for the search term "Dietrich Bonhoeffer" but it should be.

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, professors