Also inside, Robby Dixon ’13 looks at the role the internet plays in the pursuit of knowledge, Zach Rohrbach ’12 discusses the art of persuasion, Andrew Domini ’12 explores Crawfordsville, Adam Current ’11 defends Glenn Beck, and Dr. Webb solves all of Wabash’s problems.

Related posts:

1. Reflecting on Natural Law – Last Phoenix of the Fall Semester
2. New Phoenix: The Future of Wabash?
3. New Phoenix: Budget Cuts and Email Wars!

It has been nearly two years since Dr. Placher passed away while taking a sabbatical in the woods of central Minnesota. Since then, two classes of Wabash men have graduated, and a third, the last to experience him as a teacher, will soon be leaving the College for pursuits elsewhere. The Class of 2011—my class—was the last to have personally experienced him. While to the classes who have followed us, Dr. Placher is a name mentioned in reminiscences, in tones of respect, and in the syllabus of the new Enduring Questions course for freshmen, to us he is a concrete memory. Many of the members of my class remember him sitting in his Center Hall office, preaching at Wednesday chapel services in Tuttle Chapel, or giving a chapel talk on the 175th anniversary of the founding of the College. Dr. Placher was an active and visible member of the Wabash community, and perhaps the fact that his funeral service was conducted in the Pioneer Chapel speaks to the level of that involvement in and dedication to our community.

While we students might not have realized it at the time, Dr. Placher was one of the most influential Presbyterian theologians of his time. An alumnus of Wabash College, he received his doctorate from Yale University, studying under many theological luminaries of the late 20th century, including Hans W. Frei, an Anglican scholar who was one of the primary authors of what became known as “postliberal theology.” Postliberalism (or narrative theology) placed primary emphasis on both narrative and community in interpreting scripture and theology, particularly in relation to how a community defines doctrine. Therefore, postliberals pay most attention to the narrative being communicated by the texts as opposed to a simple grammatical or historical reading of scripture. This approach was illustrated in many of Dr. Placher’s books. In Jesus the Savior, Dr. Placher used the narrative of Jesus in the gospels to present a Jesus that “can capture your heart and not let go.” In one of his more academic tomes, Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture, he again utilizes the gospel narratives, this time arguing that the suffering of God in the person of Jesus Christ—God’s vulnerability—means that God can sympathize with and understand all those who suffer. Dr. Placher’s works are all postliberal at heart, and as such their focus is centered on the scriptures.

This emphasis naturally continues in his commentary on the gospel of Mark, entitled Mark, which was published this past August by Westminster John Knox Press. His commentary is the first volume in a multi-volume commentary on the Bible entitled Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. The volumes that will be published in this series are different than many of the commentaries that you will find in our library, and most likely quite different than ones that you might use for academic papers for Wabash religion courses. Most modern commentaries are primarily historical in nature. They emphasize the time, context, and culture of the biblical texts. The commentaries treat the scriptures as historical documents and literature, and, insofar as they are honest in doing so, they serve a noble and useful purpose. However, such commentaries do not provide the pastor, theologian, or devout layman with many tools that can be applied to Christianity.

Dr. Placher and his co-editor of the series, Dr. Amy Plantinga Pauw of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, recognize this in their Series Introduction, writing: “The writers of this series share Karl Barth’s concern that, insofar as their usefulness to pastors goes, most modern commentaries are ‘no commentary at all, but merely the first step toward a commentary.’ Historical-critical approaches to Scripture rule out some readings and commend others, but such methods only begin to help theological reflection and the preaching of the Word. By themselves, they do not convey the powerful sense of God’s merciful presence that calls Christians to repentance and praise; they do not bring the church fully forward in the life of discipleship. It is to such tasks that theologians are called.”

Dr. Placher is not interested in history for history’s sake, and this is demonstrated in his commentary. His use of the history and context in the scriptures ultimately serves as a tool to explore the gospel.

One of the central themes in this commentary is the notion that Jesus Christ should make us uncomfortable. On its face, this might seem strange. The Church teaches us that Jesus Christ is our savior, redeemer, and love incarnate. He is the Prince of Peace, Lamb of God, and the Wonderful Counselor. He is all indeed all these things—and he is God. Placher’s commentary nicely revives a traditional attitude towards God that has found itself decreasing in popularity in recent years: Christ is my loving savior, but he is also my judge. His teachings convict sin, in which we as human beings inevitably live. While many of us might hear sin being denounced from the pulpit, we often shake it off as something that pertains to that person in the other pew, but think, surely the pastor is not addressing my sin. Christ is on my side, of course, and all of my priorities are in line with his own.

However, Jesus is not our pastor, who ultimately can do little more than reprove us for our errors. Jesus is God incarnate. He carries more power than your neighborhood moralist. Dr. Placher demonstrates this in his interpretation of the story of the Gerasene demoniac, found in Mark 5:1-20. Deep in Gentile territory, Jesus commands demons (who identify themselves as “Legion”) to depart from a demon-possessed individual into a herd of pigs, who careen off a cliff to their deaths. Dr. Placher connects the story to a Roman military campaign that occurred in the region around the time when the Gospel of Mark was written. Therefore, Jews would be ecstatic for the unclean Roman “legion” to be driven from their lands—especially to their collective demise. However, there is still the character of the outsider whom the community keeps on the outskirts of the town, living in a cemetery. Dr. Placher claims that “readers who recognized themselves as oppressed victims of the Romans would also have had to come to terms with the way they isolated the outsiders of their own society.” Therefore, the story of the Gerasene demoniac should inspire one to consider one’s treatment of “undesirables” or outcasts.

However, while reading this story through a social lens, Dr. Placher does not remove the traditional emphasis on the extraordinary power of Christ demonstrated here. As Christ sends the pig herd off a cliff, he inevitably harms the local economy through his power. While we might sympathize with the farmers, especially with the current economic situation, Christ does not seem troubled by this. Christ’s priorities are, many times, different than our own, Dr. Placher argues. Therefore, “we modern readers are fooling ourselves if we think that we, by contrast, would have liked having Jesus around. We do not understand Mark’s picture of him unless we recognize that he is terrifying.” Perhaps the gospel—and Christ—are much more radical than we might assume.

An important part of any commentary on scripture is its analysis of the text itself, particularly in its original language. Dr. Placher approaches the Greek in an incredibly reader-friendly manner, and he shows its beauty and power. He does not use the Greek text for pure historical reasons or to brandish his academic credentials, but instead utilizes it to reveal the kernel of the gospel that is present there. Perhaps the most illustrative example is found in the very first verse of the gospel. In the Greek text, the word used for “gospel” is euangelion, which translates literally into “good message” or “good news.” Ever since the days of the early Church, the word “gospel” has been often used by theologians, preachers, and laity to describe the Christian message.

Inevitably, since the word is part of our common parlance, it has lost much of its inherent power as a word, being something of a cliché within the Church and the culture at large. However, Dr. Placher argues, this was not the case when the first generation of Christians was hearing the words of Mark. “We take the term for granted and lose the surprise and puzzle it might have occasioned among Mark’s first listeners/readers at the beginning of a book. ‘Gospel’ was one of Mark’s favorite words . . . and for him captured what he wanted to say—he had wonderful news to tell, news of a kind, he was signaling his readers, that no previous form of writing could appropriately convey.” As powerful and good as Christians might find the message of the gospel today, there was another level of joy in the world prior to Christian hegemony in the cultural West. The gospel in the first century was truly a blissful and surprising message. Perhaps we should try to remember that and reclaim that power.

You are the intended audience of this book, which serves as Dr. Placher’s last testimony of Jesus Christ. Christianity is a faith that is built upon the foundation of our forefathers. No matter what tradition we claim as our own, our faith experiences are directly related to those of past generations. The Church is a communion of saints past and present, as Paul teaches us, and theology is a dinner-table conversation with our brothers and sisters in Christ about the gospel. Karl Barth once wrote that “there is no past in the Church . . . ‘In him they all live.’” Remember that when you pick up Mark. There is a conversation to be had. You’re invited.

Related posts:

1. Man’s Chief End: A Reflection on Dr. William C. Placher ’70
2. Thoughts for Bill Placher
3. New Phoenix: Dr. Placher’s Mark

Editor’s Note: With all of the talk about changing traditions during this year’s homecoming, I felt it would be fitting to publish this, one of my favorite Chapel Talks on the subject. Dr. Blix graciously agreed, and the following are excerpts of his talk, delivered originally on September 13, 2007.

I would like to talk to you this morning about what it was like to be a student at Wabash in the late 1960s. More precisely, I would like to talk to you what it was like to be a student from 1966, when I entered Wabash as a freshman, and 1970, when I was graduated…I’d like to do this in two parts. First, I’d like to talk about some experiences that I shared in common with other students. Second, I’d like to talk some experiences that happened to be specifically my own, at least as far as I know. I tell these stories in the spirit of fellow who was a student at the College in my day, who used to live in Martindale, on the 4th floor. He was a religion major, if I remember correctly, and a very funny fellow. In the spring, it was his custom to fill his waste basket with water. He’d then station himself by his window, and wait for some unsuspecting wretch to pass under it. From four stories up, he’d stick the waste basket out the window, pour the water on the student below, whilst crying out at the top of his lungs, “Repent, and be baptized!” He’s now a Presbyterian minister. So here’s a deluge of stories to baptize you with.

First, then, what was it like to be a student in general in the late 1960s? Let me begin with my freshman year. In particular, let me begin with that aspect of the freshman year which had very little to do with academics and the classroom, and a lot to do with what was then called “Freshman Indoctrination.” As some of you may know, back in the late 1960s, the College had in place a program called Freshman Orientation or Freshman Indoctrination. This program applied to all freshmen—independents as well as to students in fraternities.

What did this mean in practice? Well, a whole bunch of things. Let me just go down the list, in no particular order. All freshmen wore hats called “pots.” These were green beanies with red brims and red buttons on the top, much like what the Phi Delts wear now. All freshmen were supposed to tip their pots to four groups of people: all faculty members, all members of the Senior Council, all women, and all visitors on campus. (Of course, when you came out of class, and had to cross campus, you had no idea of who was who, so you had troops of freshmen wigging their pots up and down, from one end of the Mall to the other, like caps flipping off beer bottles.) While freshmen were wearing their pots, upperclassmen played a version of “capture the flag.” Upperclassmen were at liberty to chase you, tackle you, seize your pot, and rip it up and hand it back to you. Freshmen were not allowed to sit at the round tables in the Scarlet Inn, lest they pollute the College seal which, in those days, was embossed on the backs of the chairs. Freshmen were not allowed to walk on the College seal, which was laid in linoleum the floor of the front entrance of Lilly library. Actually, nobody was supposed to walk on it, not just freshmen. (There’s carpet there now, a little past where the security gates now are. I wonder if the seal is still there.) Freshmen could enter or leave the Chapel only by the side doors—there used to be a door into the Chapel on the east side too. This was important because, in those days, we had required Chapel twice a week—once on Monday, and once on Thursday. You had an assigned seat. All freshmen sat up in the balcony, just as all sophomores sat at the back of the main floor, all juniors sat in the middle, and all seniors sat up front. All faculty sat in the part of the balcony that’s above the Chapel entrance. Attendance was required, and attendance was taken. You were allowed 10 cuts. If you missed more than 10, you were expelled from the College, no questions asked.

It goes without saying, of course, that all freshmen had to learn “Old Wabash” and the “Alma Mater.” There were two Chapel Sings, as we termed them then. They were much like what we have now, except that the Alma Mater sing took place outside, not inside. And, of course, as I suppose everybody knows, if you messed up in the end, you received, not a red “W” on a T-shirt, but a W-haircut on your head. As for other infractions—if (for instance) you accidentally walked on the College seal, or failed to tip your pot—you were summoned before the Senior Council. For the first offense, if I remember correctly, you were given a warning. For the second, you had to wear green long johns over your clothes for about a week. And for a third infraction, you also received the W-haircut.

Finally, I ought to mention the legendary event known as the pole fight. This took place just before Thanksgiving. There was a tall pole that used to stand just west of the plant, near the east end of the football field. In this event, a pot was placed on top of the pole, and the pole was slathered with grease. The sophomores gathered around the foot of the pole to defend it. The freshmen gathered some distance away in an attempt to conquer it. They were allowed three charges. That is, they could charge three times, attempt to clamber over the writhing mass of sophomores (whose arms reached up, Scylla-like, to drag you down into the well-churned mud), climb up the pole, and seize the pot. If they did—and if certain other conditions were met—the entire freshman indoctrination program ended, then and there. If the freshmen failed—which was usually the case—the program remained in effect until the end of the semester.

Such, then, were some of the common experiences that all students at Wabash underwent in the late 1960s. But what personal experiences, specific to this or that individual student? Well, there’s really only one person whose personal experiences I know about, and that’s me. So, if you will kindly indulge me, I’d like to say something about how I personally experienced Wabash in the late 1960s. By this I mean two things, sort of mixed together—my personal experience of the common experiences I just described, and then personal experiences which, as far as I know, were, well, specifically Blixonian.

But first a word of caution. Obviously, all this was a good many years ago now. And if I were to compose this talk in a month’s time, I might well remember other things. These are the things I remember this week. I also think it’s important to resist two extremes in recalling experiences like these. One extreme is to romanticize these experiences—to recall them through scarlet-colored glasses, to say how great they were, and to sigh nostalgically at the very telling of them over many a mug of beer. The other extreme is to intellectualize these experiences—to analyze them intellectually, to explain them through some theory or another (you can possibly conceive of a Freudian, psychoanalytic theory of the pole fight), and thus to distance yourself from the experiences themselves. I wish to do neither. I don’t find either of these extremes very helpful. The romanticizing extreme is uncritical. If you go that route, you run the risk of being self-indulgent. And the intellectual extreme is superficial. If you go that route, you run the risk of stifling the power of your imagination. Better, I think, simply to recall these experiences as best one can, and try to say, more or less, what they were like.

To begin with freshman indoctrination, I actually found it to be kind of fun. It was like a great game. True, I was never actually chased and tackled to the ground for my pot. But I do remember walking once past what is now the Dean’s house on Wabash Avenue, or at least somewhere near it. At least I remember that there was an iron-wrought fence. On the one side was a group of upperclassmen playing a vigorous game of touch football. On the other side was me, wearing my pot and walking humbly on the sidewalk, hoping not to be seen. As I walked past, an upperclassman suddenly reached over the fence seized my pot. Instinctively, and without thinking about it, I reached back across the fence, and seized the pot out of his hand, and slapped it back on my head and kept walking. I then glanced back, thinking he might be chasing me. But he wasn’t. He looked stunned and then broke into a smile. “Hot damn,” I thought. Well, not really, since at the time I didn’t use words like “damn.” But that was the feeling.

What about the pole fight? You will remember that I said I was a nerd. This meant, among other things, that I was very skinny, and had no athletic ability whatsoever. The good thing about being a nerd is that you learn to make your nerdiness work for you. Not only could I not imagine taking part in it, I couldn’t even imagine what good I could do. So during the pole fight, I stood up on the railroad tracks, safely out of harm’s way, and watched it from a safe distance.

And what about Chapel Sing? Not a problem. I learned the songs cold. I still remember where I stood in front of the Chapel, both times, staring at the top of the flagpole. Some upperclassmen did haze me, shouting and yelling. But I was unshakable. No W-haircut for me. But I should add—as an antidote to romanticizing—that there were a couple of fellows in our year who did get the W-haircut. They found the experience to be humiliating, and they subsequently left the College. Not good.

Let me finish with one last story. This too is about my freshman year. In the late 1960s, the College had instituted a new honors course called “Freshman Humanities.” In retrospect, it turned out to be a precursor to what later became freshman tutorials. Anyway, we were assigned a book to read before we came to the first class. If I remember correctly, it was a book by the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, called Existentialism and Human Emotions. From my vantage point now, I probably would not recommend it as a first book for a College freshman to read. Anyway, I recall sitting in the Lilly library reading it, just before classes started. I was struggling with it. I glanced up, and there, across the way, sitting in another chair, was another student reading the same book. “Aha!” I thought, “a fellow sufferer.” At about the same moment, he saw me. He got up out of his chair and came over. He smiled and said, “Isn’t this the dumbest thing you’ve ever read in your life?!” I laughed and nodded. Then he stuck out his hand and introduced himself. “Hi,” he said, “my name is Bill Placher.” From that day forward, we became friends. And that friendship has lasted for—oh my goodness—for 40 years. For that, too, I am grateful.

So there’s the deluge of stories. I might tell others on some other occasion. But let me now stop. That was then. That was life, for me and my classmates. But this—this is now. This is your time. Please feel free to learn from the past. Feel free. Please be free, and feel it. You have the freedom to have your own experiences, in your own way, in this great, good place which we call Wabash College.

Related posts:

1. The Dreaded “W”: A Story of Tradition and Lost Trust
2. My Favorite Chapel Talks
3. Tradition Freely Chosen: Independents in Chapel Sing

I remember six points that were part of our routine. First, one of us—often it would be Raymond Williams, if memory serves me—would talk about how refreshing it is that the faculty at Wabash are not cynical about their students. At the time I did not fully understand why this was such an important point, but now I have a better grasp of why Raymond put this point front and center. Many faculty at many colleges are in the habit of sneering at their students and complaining about their ignorance, their prejudices, and their laziness. Wabash faculty really do, or perhaps did, stand out for being refreshingly upbeat about their students. Raymond often made the point that it is easy for professors to begin doubting their students, and that the trust and respect between faculty and students at Wabash is a precarious and precious relationship that must be actively nourished and sustained. Once a faculty allows itself to become suspicious and condescending toward its students, it is almost impossible to rebuild that mutual trust and respect.

Second, one of us, maybe it was David Greene or Hall Peebles, would suggest that one of the reasons Wabash has avoided so many of the ideological disputes that plague so many colleges and universities is that the faculty keep the focus on teaching. The faculty share a love of teaching and honor good teaching and talk about teaching. That is what sets us apart from so many of our peer institutions, and that is what provides our sense of unity and community. At this point in the conversation I would often throw in the comment that we do not have mountains, beaches, big city shopping, or even girls, so the only thing we can really offer our students is our total dedication inside and outside the classroom. Several of us would then point out how much we cherish the tradition of fraternity faculty dinners.

Third, one of us—often it was Bill Placher, I think—would talk about how you can’t stereotype Wabash students. One of the advantages of being an all-male college, we would tell the job candidate, is that our students are very egalitarian and unpredictable. You don’t know which students are from wealthy families and which from poor ones, and the fraternities compete against each other for good grades rather than good looking girls. The best athletes are often the best writers, the guys who look like they would never read poetry are English majors, guys who never acted in a play in high school become theater majors, and pre-meds are known to minor or even major in religion.

Fourth, one of us, perhaps Cheryl or Glen, would point out that our students are often first generation college students, frequently from small towns, and frequently on generous tuition aid. They are thus not your typical private liberal arts college students. They are not the sons of the urban cultural elite. Nevertheless, we would all chime in, we like it that way! The measure of a great college is how far you take students, not how sophisticated they are when they get here. And, we would add, we like the values they bring with them to the College—their work ethic, their competitive spirit, and their eagerness to learn.

Fifth, one of us, I think it was often me, would talk about how important it is that students take ownership over the college. Being all-male makes us unique, and the traditions and rituals that come along with that create a tremendous bond among the students that becomes even stronger for many of our alumni. The students are forced by their friends to defend their decision to come here, and thus they have to think long and hard about what Wabash is and whether Wabash is worth it. Most of them end up being very proud of Wabash. They claim this college as their own, which makes them more engaged with their education and their environment.

Sixth, and finally, one of us inevitably would bring up the Gentleman’s Rule as the capstone to all that had already been said. A college that treats young men as men, with minimal regulations, is a remarkable phenomenon in an age of college administrations run amok. Colleges that have huge handbooks of student rules and complex systems of enforcing those rules simply don’t trust their students. We trust our students, we would say, which is why we have only one basic rule. We believe that virtue is best taught when students are given the freedom to determine for themselves what kind of lives they want to lead. As an all-male institution, the college has a competitive atmosphere, with students working hard, playing hard, and even, in many cases, drinking hard, but we don’t tell students what to do outside the classroom just as we don’t tell them what to think inside the classroom.

Such were our conversations with job candidates, and in light recent trends and events at Wabash, they seem pretty innocent and quaint. I don’t know what kinds of conversations departments have with job candidates nowadays, but the Faculty Quality of Life survey suggests that there is little agreement about the character of this college and even less enthusiasm for its unique mission. My sense is that a genial cynicism has settled over faculty discussions of students like a thick fog that clouds our memory of what used to be. I would like to focus six areas of particular concern.

First, student freedom. We live in an era of big government, invasive technology, excessive litigation, and political correctness. Most universities these days have Byzantine rules and procedures for the governance of student conduct. Many universities have speech codes that determine what you can and cannot say about sensitive issues. Wabash is different, but it can sustain that difference only if the administration and the faculty trust the students. As every parent knows, it’s not easy to trust young people these days. Parents who do not want their children to make mistakes often end up being overly protective, but being overly protective only encourages children to be passive and irresponsible. What this means for Wabash is that the College cannot teach students to be responsible by taking away opportunities for them to act responsibly.

Second, the all-male mission. This is utterly essential, in my mind, to the character and success of what we do, but what do we do with faculty who reject this mission? Of course, those who are already on the faculty and reject this aspect of our mission are more than welcome to their opinions and criticisms, but it is time, I think, to be more open and up front about our all-male mission to new hires. We need to ask them to think carefully about what it means to teach at an all male college, and we need to make sure they realize that this is a settled issue. It can be and should be debated, but it will not change. If a potential faculty member, for example, thinks that an all-male college is equivalent to an all-white racist college, then that job candidate should be excluded from employment consideration. How could someone give their best to an institution that they think is morally evil? Every institution has a tipping point, which is the point when criticisms lead to chaos. Every institution needs order. If too many people opt out of an institution’s ideals, then those ideals will fall apart. Is that what the faculty wants?

Third, women faculty. We need to affirm the women who teach at Wabash, and to do that, we need to think very carefully about faculty claims that an all male environment inevitably leads to a hostile environment for women faculty and staff. The only way to investigate this claim is for female faculty and staff to be given an opportunity to document their many charges of sexual harassment in an absolutely private and confidential form. I think that there is not a single faculty member who would not be appalled by any kind of sexual harassment at Wabash, but how can we know the level of the kind of problem we have if we do not know what women faculty mean by sexual harassment?

Fourth, the role of religion. We simply have to talk about the role of religion at Wabash. It is obvious that many faculty are uncomfortable with having so many religious students at Wabash, and some faculty have made it clear in the Quality of Life Survey that they are indignant that there are a couple of outspoken people of faith on the faculty. In my experience, Wabash is one of the most secular institutions that I know. Many of our peer institutions have administrative positions or chaplaincies to meet the religious needs of their students. Religion is all the rage in many academic disciplines, although it is treated as irrelevant in many Wabash classrooms. Survey after survey shows that college-bound students are increasingly conservative and religious, and that a significant number of them want to learn more about religion in whatever field they end up studying. What are we going to do about that? Our religious students are woefully neglected and underserved, especially given the many new programs, offices, buildings, and initiatives the College has undertaken in recent years.

Fifth, the problem of politicization. There is obviously a lot of conflict between the many faculty who self-identify as liberals or leftists and the small handful who self-identify as conservative, libertarian, or even moderate. The College would benefit from examining this conflict honestly and directly. The College should be committed to a diversity of ideas and to a free market for political perspectives. A survey of just how many faculty are registered Republicans would be an interesting place to start. We need data. When faculty complain about conservatives, how many are they talking about? Just how liberal is our faculty? Why are conservative views so threatening?

Sixth, student recruitment. We need to think about what makes our student body work, and we need to be very careful about trying to become a more “national” institution or even a more “diverse” college. We are and always will be a small all-male college in a small town in Indiana. What kinds of students will find this experience invigorating? What kinds of students do we serve best? We need to stop asking what kinds of students we would like to teach and instead ask what kinds of students would get the most out of studying here.

Perhaps if we have these conversations with each other, we can end up having good conversations with job candidates. Nonetheless, I admit that I can’t think of any better job candidate conversation than the ones we used to have in the religion and philosophy department. I just wish one could still hear these things being said by faculty today.

Related posts:

1. How Many Women Should Teach at Wabash?
2. Educators or Policy Creators?
3. Anticipating the Christian Studies Center: Students React to Webb Proposal

Dr. Placher was a son of the Illinois prairies, born in Peoria, Illinois. He was raised Christian, growing up in the Presbyterian Church – a connection he maintained throughout his life. He decided to attend Wabash College, where he immersed himself in theology and philosophy and quickly gained recognition by faculty and students for his brilliance. He proceeded to attended Yale Divinity School, where he came under the influence of the Hans Frei and the theological school of postliberalism, which deemphasized the spiritual authority of the individual and placed a greater emphasis on tradition and the authority of the community. Postliberalism greatly impacted how Dr. Placher formulated and articulated his theology.

Some theologians are distinctively liberal or conservative. Dr. Placher was neither. He rejected the liberal predilection of rejecting traditional doctrines and theologies. Instead, according to Dr. David Blix, “He rejoiced in traditional, orthodox Christianity.” His approach to theology was “Let’s not chuck it, let’s meditate on it.” A prime example of this were his thoughts on predestination. Though many Calvinists try to modify one of their signature doctrines to be more easily consumable, Dr. Placher held a fairly conservative view of the doctrine, believing that “our destinies are utterly in the hands of God.” Oftentimes, Drs. Placher and Blix would get into theological conversations about this issue, and Dr. Placher would say: “If you really take the idea of God seriously, that’s where you end up.” However, he was not afraid of criticizing his tradition’s Calvinist roots, when he found it necessary. Several years ago, Dr. Placher purchased a newly published set of Calvin’s works. He worked his way through them and, according to Dr. Blix, was not unwilling to criticize the Reformer. Indeed, in his 2001 book Jesus the Savior: The Meaning of Jesus Christ for the Christian Faith, he took a direct shot at Calvin. Regarding Calvin’s statement that “nothing relevant to salvation” occurred between Christ’s birth and His death, Dr. Placher retorted: “It’s one of the stupidest things Calvin ever said.” Though certainly a man of his tradition, he was willing to criticize it when necessary.

Dr. Placher desired very much to make theology understandable to the laity of the Church. According to Dr. Blix, he was “always looking for the best way to express faith.” In the preface to Jesus the Savior, Dr. Placher wrote: “‘Theology’ is a word that scares off many people, but ‘theology’ really just means reflecting on faith, and I’m convinced many people want to do that…It’s customary to distinguish among books written for laypeople, for pastors, for college students, or for seminarians. As a layperson myself, I’m skeptical of the distinctions. If the issues and the technical terms get explained along the way, any intelligent person can follow even complicated arguments, and I’m not persuaded that clergy or academic institutions have cornered the market on intelligence. Theology that engages laypeople may well be the right theology for a seminary classroom.” When God revealed Himself, He did not simply reveal himself to the academics or the clergy. Indeed, He revealed Himself to the lowly. Therefore, there is no reason why modern theology should be sequestered within the ivory tower, starving the laity of intellectual and spiritual nutrition. Dr. Placher wrote his books with the express purpose of feeding the sheep of God and aiding them in their spiritual journeys.

While all Wabash men and many in the Crawfordsville community knew that Dr. Placher was a prominent theologian, they probably did not realize how important a theologian he truly was – particularly within the Presbyterian Church (USA). After the merger of the two mainline Presbyterian churches in 1983, it was decided that a new confession of faith would be needed to articulate the Reformed faith in the 20th century. This came to fruition in the Brief Statement of 1993. Dr. Placher was one of those on the committee and was quite influential in crafting one of the phrases, particularly the one that states: “In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit, we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks and to live holy and joyful lives, even as we watch for God’s new heaven and new earth, praying, Come, Lord Jesus! With believers in every time and place, we rejoice that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Though life on earth may seem dismal and depressing, all the saints of God’s Church must realize that nothing can separate one from God’s eternal, abiding love.

The idea of God’s love was one of the hallmarks of Dr. Placher’s faith and theology. Indeed, Jesus the Savior and The Triune God (2007) were strong testimonies of God’s devotion to His people. Though we are weak and fallen, God is strong. He wrote in Jesus the Savior: “God is, oddly, most powerful in stooping to our weakness.” God’s love is perhaps best expressed through the actions of His disciples. A regular attendant at Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church, Dr. Placher gave of himself greatly to his church. According to his pastor, the Rev. John Van Nuys ’83, worship was an incredibly important aspect of the Christian life for him. One of the Rev. Van Nuys’ most enduring memories of Dr. Placher is how he reacted to the readings of Scripture during the service. The professor would close his eyes, attempting to absorb as much out of the readings as feasibly possible. He served as an elder at Wabash Avenue, participating in the church governance. Even in death Dr. Placher continues to serve the Church, donating his extensive theological library to a seminary in the Third World. “For him,” according to the Rev. Van Nuys, “faith wasn’t a laundry list, but a way of taking belief into one’s core and living it out.”

In the best sense of the word, Dr. Placher was truly a “catholic” theologian. In the words of the Rev. Van Nuys, “He knew the full breadth of the theology of the Church,” and “he could make them [the theologians] converse with each other.” Naturally, being a Presbyterian, Dr. Placher had a firm grasp of the theology of John Calvin. However, he did not restrict his mind and interests strictly to the Reformed tradition. Indeed, among his favorite theologians were Augustine, Hans Urs Van Balthasar (a Catholic), Hans Wilhelm Frei (a Baptist), and Wolfhart Pannenberg (a Lutheran). In his writings, he brought all views to bear. While he certainly disagreed with some of the theologians that he referenced, he always treated them respectfully and then proceeded to demonstrate where he disagreed with their points.

As important as tradition was, Scripture was central in the formation of Dr. Placher’s theology. Indeed, he was using his sabbatical at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, to write a commentary on the Gospel of Mark and was also an editorial consultant to the Theological Commentary on the Bible, a multivolume Biblical commentary to be published by Westminster John Knox Press, the publishing arm of the Presbyterian Church (USA). In a speech that was later published in Struggling with Scripture, Dr. Placher discussed his views on Scripture: “We insist, indeed, that in believing what the Bible means and teaches, rather than in misunderstandings of it, we are most faithful to it. We vow to manifest ourselves as the people who take the Bible most seriously, who struggle hardest to be faithful to it, recognizing that faithfulness always does involve struggle and the recognition of complexity, even as we find this book shaping our lives and our faith and guiding us to the knowledge and love of God.” Dr. Placher utilized the historical-critical method of Bible study. However, he did not allow this method to rip the divine from the sacred text. Instead, he used it to probe further into Scripture and attempt to further decipher the meaning and implications of its words.

Dr. Placher certainly lived a life that strived “to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” He fell in love with Christ and never let hardship or circumstances separate him from his God. As Dr. Placher wrote in Jesus the Savior: “This Jesus can capture your heart and not let go, and he calls us to a dangerous discipleship. Yet our hearts are restless till they find their rest in God; we seek to make sense of a world that doesn’t seem to make sense on its own; we want a way of living that does not keep turning ourselves in on ourselves. When we truly encounter Jesus – incarnate and ministering among us, crucified and resurrected – our fireproof hearts catch fire, and in following him we come to that obedience to God which is perfect freedom, and we begin to find our way home.” Dr. Placher’s heart surely did catch fire with that love, and so he has found his way home.

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3. Thoughts for Bill Placher

I found it a great irony last semester that while the campus was meditating seriously on the dangers of drinking, every other happy memory of my late and much-lamented colleague Professor Placher seemed to involve a bottle of Scotch. But the irony is inherent in the nature of Dionysus himself. The Greeks understood that the god gives men joy and good will and relaxation from cares, but that his presence could also be darker: he is as well the god who brings violent madness, as Pentheus discovered too late. For a long time we have enjoyed the beneficent side of Dionysus at Wabash without too much thought; the terrible face of the god was revealed last Fall, and we are with good reason confused.

One of the most obvious changes in society – and in particular academic society – during the course of my life has been its increasingly negative attitude towards drinking. From the time I was about seventeen I was served wine without question when eating in restaurants with my parents. It never occurred to them that this introduction would do more than it in fact did, which was to turn French wine into a serious hobby. I am unclear when the drinking age was sensibly lowered to eighteen. Then it was Vietnam, today Iraq and Afghanistan that make it an absurdity for a young man to risk his life every day in battle and be unable legally to buy himself a beer at home. (The legal drinking age in France and Germany is sixteen.) As did most of my friends, I learned by experience the truth of what St. Thomas teaches about alcohol and morality, viz., that one may drink usque ad hilaritatem, “to the point of high spirits” without sin, but that after that point one’s behavior becomes potentially problematic. Binge drinking I don’t recall ever being an issue.

My time both in college and graduate school confirmed the fact that social drinking has been a highly visible aspect of academic life in the European tradition. And an old one. Those who have read Plato’s Symposium will know that the philosopher chose to make his most important statements about the nature of love at a drinking party. Even serious Cicero, arguably the most central figure in Western humanism, experienced a sense of mental exhilaration in bibulous conversation with a friend. He writes to the distinguished jurist C. Trebatius Testa: “You made fun of me yesterday when we were drinking because I had said that it was a point of controversy whether an heir can go to court over a theft on the basis of a theft previously committed. And so although I returned home late and quite tipsy, I nonetheless noted the section where this point is treated and sent you a copy” (Ad fam. 7.22). Dropping of pretense (in vino veritas), sharpening of verbal combativeness, confirmation of friendship shared – wine in an academic setting has always been associated with these good things.

I have had in my years at Wabash many experiences that correspond to the ancient symposium. The first was at a Faculty Delt dinner in 1979, and I continue to have only pleasant memories of that evening and those that followed. I had thought I was coming to a small college with distinctly rural ways, and was amazed when at dinner bowls of shrimp, plates of filet mignon, and bottles of classed Bordeaux appeared, thanks to the generosity of an alumnus of the house who owned a grocery business in northern Indiana. These evenings tended to be prolonged, and during them you could find students playing poker with their revered Dean Norman Moore. He might then invite the younger faculty back to his house for a nightcap. Some of the best and most enduring friendships I have enjoyed with students were solidified at occasions like this, and the contact affected positively the way I taught and the way the student learned. There is no more damning judgment one man can make about another than to consider him a prig, and once that suspicion, so easy for a student to entertain about a professor, has been dispelled, then comfortably interesting things can begin to happen in the classroom. There are certainly other ways to achieve this understanding than through sharing a glass of wine, but I would argue that it is one way, and a way sanctioned by a long and honorable tradition.

But it is equally a fact that no college can afford to maintain the unreflective ease of those earlier, and as it seems now, less complicated days. Two cultural reasons are uppermost: first, more students are coming to us who have already developed pathological drinking habits in high school, and second, many more students arrive who are being treated with psychotropic drugs that when mixed with alcohol produce unpredictable results. Drinking on campus must be monitored – as it always has been through the Gentleman’s Rule — although I am not personally taken with the suggestion that faculty assume the role of delator if they happen to see a sophomore with a beer in his hand. I hope, however, that we do not put too much faith in phobic organizations that specialize in alcohol education. There are certain physiological facts that all students need to know for their own safety, but anything that approaches the alcohol equivalent of Reefer Madness is bound to produce a reaction. Morality purely rooted in the secular is to me no morality at all, but simply fastidiousness masquerading as virtue. Different traditions put it in different terms, but to use Christian language, unless people respect their bodies as temples of the Holy Ghost, and realize that gross drunkenness is a sin against the Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue, changes in behavior will be forced and cosmetic. Students do not need another Just Say No program; they need a proper theology of the body.

Conversations about these matters will no doubt continue to go on in the future; opinions will differ. Let me end here by returning to those Delt dinners where mirthful Dionysus once presided, evenings that helped define early on for me the uniqueness of this place. I make no judgment on actions taken by the College last semester. Whether what was done was fair or not, necessary or alarmist, the fact is that the Delta Tau Delta fraternity is gone, and with it the spirit of those many faculty and student gatherings that remain so vivid in my memory; gone too is the generous volunteer work the fraternity consistently did for our community over the years. Without Delts on campus, both students and alumni, Wabash will never be quite the same college I knew. Shakespeare’s Marc Antony famously said “The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred in their bones.” It should not be so for the Delts. Someone should regret our losing them. They and all of us have learned a hard fact, one starkly set out by the German scholar Walter Otto in his book Dionysus:

Thus, of all that earth produces, the vine best mirrors the god’s two faces and reveals most clearly his miraculous nature –- both his endearing and his terrible wildness…the Greek of antiquity was caught up by the total seriousness of the truth that here pleasure and pain, enlightenment and destruction, the lovable and the horrible lived in close intimacy. It is this unity of the paradoxical which appeared in Dionysiac ecstasy with staggering force.

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I think I can acknowledge Bill’s life and work without envy or adulation, but I do not know about regret. Like a lot of academic relationships, Bill and I had found ourselves on opposite sides of an escalating wall of differences that finally led to a definitive parting of ways. We did what we thought we had to do, which amounted to protecting each other’s space from any hint of our own presence. So it is hard to pay homage to someone when you were barely at the point, when they died, of working up to saying hello in the hallway. What can I say that will not be overshadowed by the ruin our friendship had become? How can I think clearly when everything I think is colored by sadness—and other motives I can hardly admit? If even I do not trust these words, why should anyone else?

Nonetheless, Bill gave me so much that it would be churlish to turn down an invitation to write a tribute to him. He would not want my praise, but we held back so much from each other that at this point that is the least I can give him. Every conversation about the dead is at least a little bit indiscrete. To be silent about the dead is to do them an injustice, but to talk about them in any tone other than gratitude and respect risks silencing them, since it denies them the last word.

One thing Bill taught me is that God’s judgment of us will coincide, in the final judgment, with God’s forgiveness. In this, as in so many things, God is utterly unlike us. When we forgive each other, we suspend judgment, and when we judge each other, we decline to forgive. What we give always has strings attached, and we forgive only as a roundabout way of giving something to ourselves. Still, it would have been nice had Bill lived long enough for us to forgive each other.

Among the Greeks and Romans, the man of prestige and power could be forgiving because, if he were truly a man, nothing could possibly hurt him. Forgiveness was just an expression of power held back in reserve. Bill and I held back from each other as a first step, I thought at the time, on the way toward forgiveness, but now I see that we held back out of weakness rather than strength. We did not know how to get started talking again about theology without talking about everything else.

I actually dealt with the dilemma of returning a gift to Bill in a very concrete way. Before we had our troubles, Bill gave me a package containing instructions for his funeral and a request that I preach a traditional, Christ-centered Gospel sermon instead of the usual panegyrical oration. I gave it back to him soon after we stopped talking to each other. I’d like to think that I did what he would have wanted had he been able to express himself in this awkward situation. After all, why would he have wanted me to speak at his funeral, after what we had been through? Yet how could he ask me to step aside? It would have been rude for him to ask for his gift back, and besides, we weren’t talking to each other! What he couldn’t ask for, though, I could give unbidden, or so I thought.

When Bill came to the Wabash Religion Department to teach, he had graduated from Wabash only a few years earlier. He was the newcomer in a department already quite established, and when he died he was the department’s senior member, having left his stamp on its subsequent transformations. When I had him in class, he was really not much older than me, although even back then he seemed like he had lived with the great minds for so long that he was becoming one of them. All of his students, it seems, have a story about Bill involving chalk and an encounter with the chalk board.

When I was a senior in college, he was just finishing his first book, and he invited me to read it in draft form. In my innocence, I expected to read something as hard as Heidegger. I was thus amazed that what I read was instead so accessible and inviting that I decided I could write theology too. I had no idea at the time of how hard such effortlessness is. I think it is interesting to note that as easy as he made writing look, writing did not come naturally to Bill. He worked extremely hard to make hard ideas look simple. The only time I ever saw him express the least bit of resentment was when he thought others did not appreciate how much work that took.

Bill said to me more than once that there must be something wrong with people like us who write so much. Writers are creatures of their reading habits, and Bill was an avid reader of detective fiction, a genre which shaped his theology. He had a very systematic approach to writing and a near-compulsion for clarity. One of the problems with trying to give back to Bill is that he worked his prose to the point of elegant perfection, so that when he asked me to read something before publication (which was rare), there was ridiculously little I could contribute.

He was an impeccable theological stylist, but he was an even greater preacher, in fact, one of the best preachers I have ever heard. Many times, listening to him deliver a homily to a handful of students and colleagues during Wednesday morning Chapel at Wabash, I marveled at my good fortune and found it hard to believe that these sermons were heard by so few. When I would grumble about the lack of a local audience for such priceless treasures, he would pass on to me the wisdom Eric Dean, his mentor, passed on to him: you preach the same, whether it is to two people or two hundred.

As much as our differences widened over the years, we also agreed on some fundamentals. We both had a fairly low view of the state of contemporary theology, and yet we knew nothing better to do with our lives. (Mercifully, Bill died with his boots on, doing what he loved best—he was on sabbatical, writing a book on the Gospel of Mark.) We both believed in substitutionary atonement, which put us at odds with most of our contemporaries. We also believed in a pretty high doctrine of providence, which helped us to not worry too much about our careers. We both also believed firmly in the incomparable nobility of small schools over research universities. We both loved teaching Wabash students, although in completely different ways. He once told me that when he went from being the older brother to his students to being their father-figure that his teaching was harder to pull off. I think he ended up being a kind of wise and gracious uncle, the family relative you always wished you could have gotten to know better and spent more time with.

Before we had our final break, Bill said that we should both try to find jobs elsewhere, on the assumption that perhaps one of us would be successful. Before that, he had talked about not wanting to retire in Crawfordsville. Wabash is such a student-oriented school, and Crawfordsville is such a small town, that retired faculty can find it hard to live here without being a part of the relationships that build on the daily labor of the classroom. I don’t know what Bill would have done had he been faced with the choice of retiring here or moving somewhere else. I don’t think he would have been happy either way. He was spared that choice. One might think that his death would make it easier for me to stay at Wabash, but I am finding the opposite to be the case.

Bill thought about death a lot, as did I, and we shared those thoughts with each other, as much as one can share something that is so hard to think about. Bill wrestled hard with the Christian hope in the afterlife, and for a long time he was a skeptic about the continuation of individual identity in heaven. That might be the only theological topic I was able to move him on, because I believe he gradually came to affirm the traditional teaching of the Church on the resurrection. In terms of this earthly life, though, I am not sure that he wanted any more life than what he already had. There is no such thing as an abbreviated life, he would say. The only time we know is the time God allots us, just as God’s time is the life of Jesus Christ. All of his theology, I think now, was commentary on that sentiment. Perhaps it is true that asking God for more life would be a bit ungrateful, but God can give back to us what we do not know how to give to him. I am confident that God will give Bill what he was sometimes afraid of desiring. Even now, I trust, Bill is enjoying the conversations of the saints, and some day we will rejoin where we should have left off.

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