A fool for Christ, but no man's fool!

Remembrance of Dr. Stuart C. Hackett, beloved professor

My first brush with philosophical thought was reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, as well as other Russian novelists, while I was studying Russian Language and Literature at Penn State.  The Russians love the “eternal questions”.

In the summer before I graduated from Penn State, I read just about all of Francis Schaeffer’s books.  He was my first taste of Christian apologetics. 

But my first real taste of philosophical rigor was under the tutelage of Dr. Stuart C. Hackett at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.  I just saw that Apologetics was required for my Master of Divinity and signed up for his class, knowing nothing about him.

You only had to meet Stu once to either love him or be repelled.  He was at once a ridiculous (I say that kindly) and a magnificent character.  Stu loved to “mug up”.  He would open his brief case and extract with exaggerated care a bamboo back scratcher and luxuriously scratch his back and make a very loud sigh of contentment.  All the while his eyes sparkled beneath and above the Hackettian “rational haircut”: beard and hair all two inches long. He always had a joke or two to start.  Philosophy was too serious not to begin with nonsense.

This exchange below exemplifies Stu’s sense of humor:

During a discussion of Hegel, Küng, and the nature of God:

Dr. Hackett:"If I talk about it, it's because I think it's important, otherwise I wouldn't talk about it...that's except for the nonsense I give out from time to time. It's just an ineradicable aspect of my personhood, if I may put it that way. Well, you know, it's just that I thrive on nonsense."

Student:"But there is, of course, a metaphysical distinction between you and your nonsense."

Dr. Hackett:"Absolutely. It is an accidental quality. However, sometimes I fear it is also invading my essence." 

http://www.cheapersunglasses.com/docs/hackettquotes.html

Accessed October 30, 2012

I won’t go on quoting Stu’s silly quotes, but they always had a point.  I urge readers to go to the link above and enjoy!  That would be one of the greatest acts one could do to remember Stu.  Philosophical fun!

If Stu’s exterior was silly (he tended to dress in a rather unconventional way, e.g. orange trousers, a shirt with bell sleeves and a cravat with a gold ring or a bolo tie), he was nonetheless a formidable philosopher of the first rank.

Stu’s trilogy is still a magnificent achievement by any standard: The Resurrection of Theism (free here http://www.cheapersunglasses.com/docs/stuarthackett.html ), The Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim: A Philosophical and Critical Apologetic, and The Rediscovery of the Highest Good. A Philosophical and Critical Ethic.

Stu was a philosophical apologist.  He was interested in answering serious, academic philosophical challenges to Christian belief and specifically to theism.

Stu was not everyone’s cup of tea. He was definitely not a Calvinist.  When asked how many of the “Five Points” he held, Stu would say, “I’m a Whisky Calvinist. … I only hold a fifth.” (Perseverance of the Saints, if I recall rightly.)  While Stu was interested in philosophical rigor he was suspicious of answers that were too neat.

Stu’s philosophical rigor sometimes repelled students, who were not so interested in philosophy.  Thankfully for these students, Dr. Paul D. Feinberg, gave a more popularly aimed apologetics course.

For many, though, Stu was an example of evangelical scholarship and excellence in academics.  Stu inspired among others, Dr. William Lane Craig, a well known Christian philosopher and apologist.  Though I do not consider myself to be on the same plane as Bill Craig, I am glad to be able to trace the beginnings of my philosophical career to Stu’s encouragement and thought.

Stu’s original work had been on Mahayana Buddhism and his book Oriental Philosophy is still in print and widely used.  He is recognized for his academic excellence, even outside of evangelical circles.

Once a semester, Stu would invite his students round to his house for an evening of food and fun.  He would pull out his banjo and his guitar and sing both country songs (he loved Johnny Cash) and gospel hymns.  His dog would lie there at his master’s feet content.  Stu would tell his jokes and everyone would have a great time.

As a student in a seminary you sometimes think your professors are akin to the gods on Mt. Olympus. Stu wanted to make sure that we weren’t under any such delusions, but he was nonetheless our professor and a formidable one at that.

While Stu’s thought was anything but easy to understand, as a person he was approachable and warm.  He was a great teacher and mentor.

He asked me if I would stay around and do an MA at TEDS in 1984. I was headed to Communist Yugoslavia to learn Serbo-Croatian and teach at the Eastern European Bible Institute of Greater Europe Mission.  He didn’t object or try to change my mind.  He was a passionate supporter of world missions.

I’m thankful for Stu’s teaching and example.  I’m thankful to for the MA and PhD I got later in Leuven, but I sometimes wish I had stayed around to write an MA with him.  Maybe I could have learned a few new chords!

Below is Stu's Obituary

http://hultgrenfh.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=1742397&fh_id=10184 

honesty and humility – respect

One of my students suggested that I ought to write about the flip side of the blame shifting and pride.

To be fair most of my students show me respect.  Only one or two have ever really been disrespectful.

Most of my students are from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia.  They have a very highly developed sense of rank and order.  They usually address me as “Professor” or “Dr. Gottschalk”.  They may disagree with me, but they are almost always respectful.

Unfortunately, some students feel that they can humble me into agreeing to something, which is inappropriate, by using an exalted sense of respect.  Using exaggerated terma of respect is in fact showing disrespect.

I don’t mind if students are familiar with me.  Still, I prefer to be “Dr. Gottschalk” because I am Dr. Gottschalk.  I worked for many years to earn the right to be addressed as Dr. Gottschalk, and practically it is just good to keep some distance between myself and my students.  I love them, and I think they know it.  However, I do have to grade them, and there are always times when we disagree about something and there has to be order.

Some students misunderstand the nature of a graduate school and a church.  They think that because we are Christians and they live together in a dormitory, we are all equals.  That is not true.  Yes, we are all equal before Christ as regards salvation, but we are not all equals in the classroom.  Giving a poor grade to a student and criticizing a project or paper should never be a question of favoritism or dislike.  Students earn their grades by their performance.

Some students seem to think that since they have been pastors or church executives in their home countries they should be treated with special deference.  Basically the culture of Tyndale is the same as most evangelical American seminaries:  we are friendly and open, but we try to maintain order. 

I sat in classes at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with guys who were medical doctors and had PhDs in physics.  Intellectually they were every bit of a match for our professors, who were Cambridge and Harvard PhDs.  Yet, I don’t recall any of them being impolite or rude to a professor.  In fact just the opposite they were more deferential than others, since they knew what the professors had done to reach this position.

When a student is criticized his character shows immediately.  If he or she begins to become defensive or argue, it generally means he or she has a pride problem.

Some students have had very impressive ministries before coming to Tyndale and others have pretty impressive ministries while they are at Tyndale.  But whatever they did in terms of evangelism or church planting has no bearing on how they performed on a particular assignment. 

Sometimes a student who was a very well respected preacher is offended that their grammar, diction and writing are criticized.  “I speak well!  I have published books!” That may be true, but very likely, certainly your English (which is your second or third language) is not as good as your professor’s.  Humility is accepting criticism in the spirit in which it is given (i.e. with a good intention of improving your performance).

I am always amazed when a student opens up a bit and I see something I didn’t know.  I generally see applications for admission, since I am on the admissions committee.  Still there is much we do not know about one another.

One student was a model student his entire three years at Tyndale.  He was a married student, a pastor.  He got up at 0400 every day to deliver newspapers, so that he could send some money home to his wife.

He was from a village in Myanmar.  He was always respectful and soft spoken.  He always did all of his community duties (e.g. vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, cutting grass…) without complaint.  He never objected to a grade he was given.  He did very well, but not stellar.

Just before he graduated he told me a story…

“Professor”, he said, “we went to the next village to evangelize.  While we were evangelizing the police came.  They arrested us. They held us for ten days.  They made us build the pagoda (Buddhist temple) in that village.  Then they beat us and told us never to come back to that village to preach again… So, we went to the next village instead and started to evangelize.”

Little wonder he was such a godly man. It was a privilege to be his teacher.

Blame shifting and Pride...

Why is it when someone doesn't fulfill requirements they shift blame to the rule keeper. 

No one is prepared to say, "I failed. I am to blame."  The reason is pride.  No one wants to be wrong.  

No one wants to admit they shirked their duty or waited until the last minute and produced an inferior product.  The person who was helping them was at fault or the system is unfair. 

Some of us aren't cut out for certain jobs.  I am red green color blind.  It kept me out of the Navy; was that fair?   Fair or no; that was the way it was.  Was the Navy at fault?  No, I just didn't have the genes.

I am average at mathematics (69% SAT).  I wanted to be a theoretical physicist (Big Bang Theory sitcom type dude [hopefully without the neuroses]), but my mathematical aptitude was not good enough.  I got Cs in calculus.  Was it the professor's fault?  No. Was it the Teaching Assistant's fault?  No.  It was my fault. 

Sometimes we don't get what we want and we can't do what we want.  Wisdom is embracing what we can do well and doing it with all our might as unto the Lord. 

For me, that meant changing my college major to Russian language. (My verbal aptitude was 96% SAT)  I did well! Surprise, surprise! I went on to seminary and studied OT Hebrew and NT Greek.  I learned German and Serbian while connected to Yugoslavia.  I don't speak Dutch well, but I have learned a lot of Dutch in Belgium and Holland. 

I also moved my area of interest to philosophy and apologetics and have done very well, as they are language related fields. 

Some people are great church planters.  I am not.  Some people have gifts to allow them to be executives.  I do not. 

We must accept our limitations as God's direction in our lives and MOVE ON!  Blaming someone else is a cheap and lazy way to avoid one's own responsibility to use one's talents wisely.

38 East Orchard, Ross Township, Pennsylvania 15202

http://www.pittsburghmoves.com/property/details/189988/MLS-927262/38-E-Orchard-Avenue-Ross-Twp-PA-15202.aspx

This is the address I grew up at.  It is now for sale.  We had moved in 1965 from the North Side of the city of Pittsburgh proper to a finger of Ross Township that ran along the borders of the Bellevue and the city of Pittsburgh.

The location had one big advantage over other possible houses: it was in the North Hills School District.  My grandmother, Bertha Gottschalk, was a second grade teacher at Northway Elementary above Northway Mall on McKnight Road.  My grandmother was a teacher in the North Hills School District for 50 years.  She started teaching at 22 and taught until she was 75.  Also my father's older sister, Bernice Gottschalk (later Roehner) taught for a while in the North Hills School District.

For me or my sister or brother to attend school in the North Hills School District was to be known as Bertha's grandson or granddaughter or Bernice's nephew or niece.  They were sometimes big shoes to fill.  Aunt Bernice eventually completed her doctorate in Art Education at the University of Pittsburgh and worked for 20 years for the PA Dept. of Education making sure that school districts had adequate art curriculum.

The elementary school I attended was Quail Elementary.  My first grade teacher was Mrs. Pfeiffer.  She was my grandmother's contemporary and friend.  She was the sort who still read a Bible passage and said a prayer before class every morning.  The one Jehovah's Witness spent the few minutes in the hall.  Mrs. Peiffer was old school.  So was grandma.  Grandma didn't ken with the new reading system.  Phonics has served her well for over 40 years.

When I was in the fifth grade some executive in the school district decided that they needed to shift some of us to another school due to high student - teacher ratios.  We were the end of the Baby Boomers and numbers were high.

So we were bused to Seville Elementary, a new school which had just opened.  It meant we lost our friends.  Though we made new friends, it was tough to lose the old ones.  My fifth grade teacher was a friend of my Aunt Bernice's.  I'm sure she was extra kind to me as a result.

When it came time to go to Junior High School we were sent to West View Junior High School (now West View Elementary) and reunited with our Quail Elementary School friends, though we were separated from our Seville Elementary friends, who went to Ross Junior High School (now Ross Elementary).  My father and both of his sisters had attended what was then West View High School.  My most vivid memories of West View Junior High School were of playing baritone sax in the concert band.

When time for high school came we all "went up" to the new Intermediate School and the High School on the hill.  (Everything in Pittsburgh is on a hill; hence North Hills High School and North Hills School District.)  We attended ninth and tenth grades in the Intermediate School (now the High School).  My most vivid memory of that building actually came from twelfth grade when I ran the second fastest mile in the school history to that point while in gym class.

We attended eleventh and twelfth grade in the building of what is now the Junior High School.  My most vivid memories of the High School were playing tuba in the North Hills High School Symphony and Marching Bands.  While I had a brief career on the swim team, band was all consuming.  Mr. Warren Mercer, decorated several times with the American Band Master Award, produced top notch bands.  We spent many hours in the parking lot below the now Junior High School drilling formations.  My Aunt Marilyn, who had played clarinet in the West View High School Band, used to love to sit on my grandmother's porch on Norwich Avenue in West View and listen to us practice.

Being in Ross Township, but on the border of Bellevue meant that it was easier to be involved in local Scout troops, both Cub Scout and Boy Scout, in Bellevue.  I attended at first Cub Scout Pack 166 and then Boy Scout Pack 166 at the Bellevue UP Church on Lincoln Avenue.  When our Scout Master died suddenly I shifted to Pack 135, which met at Assumption RC Church.  Several of us were from Ross Township, but local packs were easier to attend.  We could walk there.

We also had the right to a Bellevue Pool Pass due to sale of the land from Ross Twp to Bellevue to build the pool.  I was on the Bellevue Pool Summer Swim Team for several seasons and it was a nice way to cool down on hot summers.

Lincoln Avenue in Bellevue was our "stomping ground".  When I was a kid there was an Isley's Sweet William restaurant and the ever popular Luigi's Pizzeria.  The old Bellevue movie theater was still there until I left for college in 1977.  The old theater, before it was "remodeled" to have two small viewing halls, was an amazing plush seat, dramatic turn of the century theater similar to the Warner Theater on Fifth Avenue downtown.  The high ceilings, beautiful curtains and gold painted balconies are long gone.  I bought a bicycle at Murphy's on lay away, which I paid for with money I earned delivering the North Hills News Record.

There are still many businesses on Lincoln Avenue: CVS Pharmacy, Luigi's Pizzeria, PNC Bank, Miller's Funeral Home, Bellevue Hardware, Hallmark Cards, Dietz Floral, Kuhn's Groceries... The YMCA is still on Lincoln Avenue.  I remember roller skating evenings and playing catcher in the Hot Stove Baseball League.

It was great to have the 16C bus (now 13) which went out to West View.  I could ride the bus from the top of our street at East Orchard and North Fremont (the stop is still there) to my grandmother's street, Norwich Avenue (where Schellhaus Funeral Home is) in West View.  I also used to ride the 16C to St. Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church, where we went to church and where I was catechized and confirmed, and met Linda Stuckrath, now my wife.  The 13 now stops at West Park Mall, which used to be West View Park. West View Park was an amusement park known for the Dips and Racing Whippet, rollercosters, and the Dance Land, my father had earlier frequented.

Bellevue also had several bus lines, which went into downtown Pittsburgh.  There are still three: 13, 16, 19.  We could go down to the Carnegie Library in the Allegheny Center Commons or visit stores and theaters downtown.  With a transfer we could go out to Oakland to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History or the Sarah Scaife Art Gallery.

All in all growing up in Ross Township on the border of Bellevue afforded us a top rate school district and the advantages of a main street nearby.  Last I checked North Hills School District rated 80th out of 498 school districts in Pennsylvania.  Northgate School District (which is the combined school districts of Bellevue and Avalon) is 267th out of 498.  While houses and the neighborhood may look similar the school district made a great difference.  It was a difference my grandmother was glad about!