A New Republic Article on the Controversy at Valparaiso University

David Masciotra, a Valpo alumnus who writes for The New Republic, has published an article in the current issue of that national magazine: "A Georgia O’Keeffe Painting and the Battle for the Soul of a Liberal Arts College."  

The article is given prominence at the top left corner of the homepage of the online version of the magazine: https://newrepublic.com/

In my judgment, Mr. Masciotra frames the issues in precisely the right way. 

"What is the purpose of studying at a university beyond job training? How can schools like Valparaiso, which emphasize learning outside of vocational courses, survive when a corporate-consumer model has overtaken higher education and exerted a powerful influence on administrators and students alike?"

Masciotra writes: "Valparaiso University’s student body is shrinking and its dormitories are aging. But is selling the campus museum’s most famous artwork the right solution to the problem?"

As you can tell from the quotations by yours truly that he included in his article, I think Valpo can take a different, better path here. 

(The university recently constructed a huge, expensive residence hall, Beacon Hall, which is only partially full--and partially paid for. Valpo has also recently built a couple of rows of sorority houses down the hill from our athletics building, and Valpo has recently made renovations to at least one of its freshmen dormitories. These expensive on-campus housing projects have largely gone unmentioned in the reporting. Valpo has been making capital improvements to its campus housing in recent years.)

A larger issue, at least in my view, is the expensive and oversized role that athletics plays on our campus.  We are moving toward becoming an athletics institution that offers some college-level classes on the side. Toward that end, the university's administration wants to build a huge, new, very expensive athletics complex. In my judgment, that will be a mistake. We will be digging ourselves into an even deeper hole of debt--and then forced to make even more cuts to our academic programs (further weakening the liberal arts).

Meanwhile, in light of the reporting by Mr. Masciotra, one wonders, "From where will the funding come?" Part of the administration's answer to that question, at least so far, has been: "We'll sell off what we consider to be our non-essential assets to raise the money."

And that is how a church-related academic institution eventually loses its soul.

To read the entire article, go here.

P.S. I also encourage you to read another piece on the Valpo situation that came out today. John Fea is a former Lilly Fellow at the university. To read his article, "What Is Going on at Valparaiso University?," go here.

P.P.S. Inside Higher Education also ran a piece today on the Valpo matter. To read it, go here.

A New York Times Article on the Valpo Controversy

The New York Times published an article today on the decision of Valparaiso University's board of directors to deaccession three paintings from the university's Brauer Museum. The article contains a link to the letter I wrote, opposing this decision. This letter was signed by more than 90 current and former Valparaiso University faculty members (75 current ones; 17 former ones; and two staff members who work at the Brauer).

I'm grateful for the service and leadership of John Ruff and Dick Brauer, who are dear friends and valued colleagues! Stop the sale!

To read the NYT article, go here.

Stop the Sale!

On February 8, 2023, in a campus-wide email, Valparaiso University’s president, Jose Padilla, announced that he and Valpo’s board of directors would be selling three masterpieces of art from the university’s Brauer Museum to provide funding for the renovation of two on-campus residential buildings. Here is a link to his statement.

In a subsequent statement, President Padilla said, “Our actions will be based on the best interests of our students, mission, and entire campus. Not just one small piece of it, especially when that piece is not part of our strategic plan and our core mission of educating students and giving them the best campus residential experience.” 

Both the decision and the justification for it deeply disturb me. As someone who regularly takes students to the Brauer Museum as a part of my teaching, and who frequently visits the Brauer for my own edification and enlightenment, and who works closely with people who support the mission of the Brauer, I consider that museum to be near the core of Valpo’s mission and a key feature of its unique identity. The artwork there relates directly to my vocation as a university professor of theology and the humanities. I have a particular interest in Christian theological interpretations of art, about which I have written in my book on fundamental theology. I am especially pleased that we have three central works  that demonstrate excellence in the visual arts, precisely the three pieces that the university board wants to sell. These three pieces comprise the anchor for the whole collection.

I should add that I had met privately with President Padilla in his office exactly one week before he made his announcement. It was my first face-to-face meeting with him. I presented him with my recently published edition of Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics, I explained a little about it and my scholarly work in ecumenical theology, and I discussed matters of shared interest (e.g., politics). We had a very pleasant meeting. I wanted him to know that he could count on me to help him as a resource, especially with respect to Lutheran theology and the American church scene. 

My meeting and conversation with him that day would have been very different had I known about this  secret board decision. 

So on February 9, I began to write a letter to our faculty senate, to criticize this presidential/board decision. That letter, whose rough edges were polished with the help of a few others, was sent to the faculty. After only two days, 75 current faculty had signed it, as had 17 emeriti or retired faculty. To read the letter, go here. (At last week’s faculty senate meeting, President Padilla referred to the letter as “the Matthew Becker letter,” but it is not my letter. I may have written the first four drafts, but it was ultimately submitted as a letter from the faculty who signed it.)

For more details on this controversy, go here. 

The New York Times has assigned a reporter to the story. I learned today that her article will be coming out perhaps already next week.

Yesterday, at a special meeting of Valpo’s faculty senate, a few of us presented a memo, which we hope will become the basis for a senate resolution that would call upon the president and board to rescind their decision. Here is the content of that memo: 

1. The sale constitutes a gross violation of professional museum ethics. VU will be censured by professional organizations, lose credibility with those associations, and the museum will be unable to lend, borrow, or collaborate with other museums in the world. The president claims he has his own “ethic” to uphold—a confusion of ethics and expediency? Will that “ethic” trump ethical standards across all disciplines, professional schools, and university organizations? 

2. The sale violates the trust of artists, the public, donors, and faculty. The Brauer Museum is at the core of Valpo’s liberal arts identity. The three masterpieces anchor the collection and its international reputation. Artists want their work to be displayed in notable public collections. Donors expect their gifts to contribute to the strength of the museum in perpetuity. Faculty count on these works as crucial pedagogical resources. This action tramples on the generosity and trust of current and past donors. It conflicts with the strong support for the arts and humanities in the Lutheran intellectual tradition. What is the presidential and board rationale for breaking these basic and long-term trusts for the sake of short-term, perishable goods? 

3. The sale may be illegal. The sale clearly violates the terms of the trust agreement signed by the VU board president when the core collection was acquired in 1953. The Church painting was part of that gift; the other two paintings in question were purchased with funds from the restricted Sloan endowment fund. The president claims that will not be a legal problem. That remains to be seen. And, does it not matter that violating the trust is clearly unethical? 

4. This sale is a poor management of assets. To sell an asset of appreciating value and use it to buy something of depreciating value (dorms) is problematic. Furthermore, by selling these pieces through a private auction, Sotheby’s will be entitled to at least a 25% commission. Add in PR and legal fees, and that is a very poor return on the value of these assets. Selling university assets in a reckless and/or unethical manner has already resulted in the loss of major donors and negative press. More will come. This could also have a negative effect on our bond rating. Is this short-term sale really worth the net outcome, especially in view of Valpo’s long-term future? 

5. This sale seems very rushed. Do we understand why a dorm renovation suddenly rose to the top of the university’s priority list? What is the urgent necessity for this project? The administration could provide no concrete evidence. 

6. The process of making the decision to sell these masterpieces lacked transparency. The plan to select and sell the works has been conducted with deliberate secrecy. The paintings were selected purely for cash value, without any investigation into or concern for their importance to the museum and the community it serves. No one with any knowledge of the collection was consulted, as if the details of the works themselves were irrelevant to the process. This is a shocking way to approach the sale of university assets, and not a path to a sustainable future. 

7. The administration’s withholding of knowledge of the impending sale resulted in an unethical hiring process. Last summer, while in the process of finding and hiring Jonathan Canning, representatives of Christie’s Auction house were on campus. This information was withheld from the search committee, and more importantly from Canning when he accepted the job. Any association with this sale will be devastating to his career. The university asked Canning to participate in a sale that would violate his professional ethics. 

8. This impending sale represents a further attack on the arts and humanities at VU. Student response has been spontaneous, strong, and often emotional. They immediately connected this action to the administration’s ongoing dismantling of the arts on campus. Notably, among the nearly 400 signatories on the student petition, approximately half are STEM majors. The board/presidential decision is contrary to Valpo’s stated mission. 

I don’t know what will happen here. We want to stop the sale of the paintings.  Thankfully, for now at least, the masterpieces remain on the walls of the Brauer. But as I indicated at yesterday's senate meeting, my confidence about the leadership of the president and the board has been deeply shaken by the decision and by subsequent presidential behavior that I will not write about here. Indeed, I wasn’t able to control my emotions very well yesterday as I tried to thank the students who publicly spoke so eloquently, passionately, and persuasively about their reasons for opposing this decision. Those students give me hope. My heart is not the only one around this place that is broken right now.

If you want to sign a petition to stop this sale, please go here.

Rev. Dr. John Scheck+

On Sunday night I learned that Dr. John Scheck died on Christmas Eve. Some of us had him as our beloved professor at Concordia University, Portland, Ore. He was my academic adviser, and I think I took every course he offered during those four undergraduate years (1980-1984), e.g., freshman humanities, several courses in American history, one on American thought and culture, and his introduction to philosophy. In addition to being a great teacher, he was an excellent preacher and musician. He wrote the lyrics for the school song. (A few decades later, he also composed a hymn for my son's baptism.)

John was among the shining stars that Dr. Thomas Coates, president of Concordia, Portland, brought to the school during his tenure (1946-1957). People called those faculty members "Tommy's boys." In addition to John, that illustrious group included Art Wahlers ("Mr. Concordia"), Don Lorenz, Dick Reinisch, Karl Keller, George Weller, Al Roth, and Hans Spalteholz.

When I started teaching at my alma mater, John helped to mentor me. (It took me a while to become comfortable using the first names of people who had been my esteemed professors just a few years earlier. They kept insisting that I was now their colleague, not merely their former student, and that I should thus call them by their Christian names, but every now and then I still referred to them as "Dr." or "Prof.") John graciously gave me many of his course notes and teaching aids, and he kindly took time to offer advice on how to deal with various higher-ed situations. 

(When Martin Marty received an honorary degree from Concordia, John served as the M.C. at one of the accompanying events--Marty had been John's resident assistant [is the right term "dorm buck"?] at Concordia College, Milwaukee, Wis. Needless to say, that evening we learned some new things about Marty and about John that we hadn't known before. Indeed, I need to underscore that John is the one who introduced me to Marty's writings when I was an undergraduate. In one of John's classes, we used a Marty book on American religions as one of our texts. I don't think I would have gone to the U. of Chicago had it not been for that introduction to Marty and for the encouragement that John Scheck and Hans Spalteholz gave me to go to there.)

I got to know John's first wife because she was a librarian at Concordia. I have known John's second wife, Nan, my whole life. She, her first husband, and their family spent a lot of time with our family when I was growing up in Salem, Ore. (Nan, whose father was Rev. Amos Schmidt [who served at St. Michael's, Portland, and was at one time the LCMS' campus pastor at U.C.L.A., and who was also a close friend of my grandfather Emil], is the baptismal sponsor for my sister.) Nan and John were joyfully married for more than thirty years.

In so many ways, John represented the best that the Missouri Synod produced among its clergy in the twentieth century. Today, more than one of my former classmates has commented that Dr. Scheck helped them to know what the gospel is and how to preach it effectively. Many of us are remembering sermons he preached in Concordia's Chapel of the Upper Room and at St. Michael's. His wry humor always helped to bring a little spice to the message he shared.

John was a gentleman and a scholar. He was a kind man--and a forgiving grader of freshmen term papers (!). Always prepared to offer a quick and witty reply to an offhand comment by one of his conversation partners, John modeled the kind of Christian humanism he hoped his students would embrace, one that would resist the inroads of Protestant fundamentalism in the church body that he served, but also one that would maintain the essential, mandatory content of the classic Christian faith. Needless to say, his relationship to the Missouri Synod was always tenuous, especially after 1969, and he wasn't too surprised when some of his former students were eventually pushed out of the LCMS. (His funeral will be taking place at the main ELCA church in Salem.)

I will always be grateful for all that Dr. Scheck taught me, and for how he did that teaching and preaching. I am so grateful for the mentoring he later provided. I wouldn't be where I am today were it not for him and his example.

Here is a link to his obituary:

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/salem-or/john-scheck-11078414

Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints. May John rest in the peace of the Lord, and may the Lord's light shine perpetually upon him.

Edmund Schlink's Ecumenical Dogmatics

I’m pleased to announce that Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics will be published in early December, just in time for Christmas. It is coming out in hardcover in two half volumes (1277 pages total). The work is really the equivalent of four 320-page volumes of church doctrine. It is the culmination of Schlink’s many decades of ecumenical work and teaching (principally at Heidelberg University, where he established an ecumenical center after WWII). The work reflects his deep understanding of both Western and Eastern traditions of Christian doctrine and practice. (Schlink has influenced many American Lutheran theologians, including esp. Walt Bouman, Won Yong Ji, Robert Jenson, Carl Braaten, Eugene Skibbe, and others.) He was the principal Lutheran participant in the WCC in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s, and he served as the official observer from the German Protestant Church at Vatican II, where he became a leading spokesperson for the non-Roman observers. 

    His dogmatics is the most significant summary of Christian doctrine written between Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics and Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology. Indeed, his work contains material that is found in no other dogmatics text with which I am familiar. While Schlink is most known among Americans for his Theology of the Lutheran Confessions and his little book on baptism, his Ecumenical Dogmatics was his opus magnum. It has never been translated into another language until now. In its German form, it has continued to be an important resource for university theology students who are preparing for their exams in Christian doctrine. I’m hoping that the book will be read by American pastors, seminarians, and graduate students, but given the editorial notes that are unique to the American Edition, I think even lay people will find its content accessible and edifying.

Pannenberg (who was Schlink’s assistant for many years), wrote the preface. One of the two forewords was written by Schlink’s long-time friend, the Roman Catholic theologian Heinrich Fries. The other foreword was written by another of Schlink’s friends and WCC associates, the Greek Orthodox theologian Nikos Nissiotis. The afterword is by one of Schlink’s last assistants, Michael Plathow. In addition to serving as the principal translator (assisted by Hans Spalteholz, Robin Lutjohann, Mark Seifrid, Ellie Wegener, and Ken Jones), I wrote the 25-page introduction and all of the editorial notes (more than 500 of them). 

The abiding strength of the work is the way in which Schlink brings theological insights from all of the principal church fathers and subsequent key theologians (both Eastern and Western) into conversation with one another, identifying points of convergence and areas of ongoing disagreement (and suggesting ways forward for overcoming the differences/historic conflicts). While Luther is clearly Schlink’s most important non-biblical influence, other thinkers who receive significant attention include Irenaeus, Augustine, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Jerusalem, John of Damascus, Gregory of Palamas, Anselm, Aquinas, Calvin, but also Schlink’s most important contemporaries (e.g., Barth, Bultmann, Rahner [who was also a friend, as were Ratzinger and Kueng, who also make appearances in the book], Fries, and the principal Orthodox participants in the WCC). So the book is not only a contemporary summary of the Christian faith but also an excellent resource for gaining a deeper understanding of the history of Christian doctrine. There are more than 2000 Scripture references, but Schlink also draws heavily upon the Lutheran confessional writings and other historic confessions in the history of the churches. 

I’m hoping that the book might be used in ecumenical study groups or as a text that invites theological dialogue among pastors and other church leaders. It could serve as a discussion starter for a set of pastoral circuit meetings. I’m hoping that at least a few professors of systematic theology will use the book in their teaching, and perhaps will even assign it as a text for their seminarians or graduate students. And I do think that the work could serve as a kind of “refresher course” in Christian doctrine for pastors and other church leaders.

The book is now available to be pre-ordered: 

https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/detail/index/sArticle/57719

Also on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ecumenical-Confessional-Writings-Dogmatics/dp/3525560753/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ZJH7VMB0D6S5&keywords=schlink+ecumenical+dogmatics&qid=1665606738&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjAzIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=%2Caps%2C316&sr=8-1

If someone wants to order a review copy, it will be available through V&R’s American distributor in Bristol: tel. 860-584-6546

Even if you don’t want to add this important resource to your personal theological library, may I encourage you at least to encourage your regional church-related college or seminary library to add the book to its holdings? Or perhaps to your congregation's library? 

May I also encourage you to share the above links and phone number with professors and pastors whom you know who might want to purchase the book or review it for a journal?

Given the book’s size and quality, it is reasonably priced. (Comparable volumes by Barth and Pannenberg are more expensive, at least according to what I saw this morning on Amazon.) Whatever proceeds I receive from the sale of the book will be given to charities, e.g., Bright Stars of Bethlehem, the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, as well as local Lutheran congregations.

Here is a sampling from the table of contents:

Chapter I: The Knowledge of God
1. Beginning with the Gospel of Jesus Christ
2. The Hiddenness of God in the Gospel
3. The Revelation of the Divine Mystery
4. The Knowledge of God by Faith
5. The Knowledge of God as Being Known by the Triune God
Chapter II: The Knowledge of the World
1. The Self-Knowledge of the Human Being
2. The Knowledge of Other Human Beings
3. The Knowledge of the History of Humanity
4. The Knowledge of the Universe
5. Believing and Knowing
Chapter III: The Knowledge of God and the Doctrine of God
1. The Basic Forms of the Theological Statement
2. Structural Issues Regarding the Dogmatic Statement
Excursus: The Relationship between the Theological and Philosophical Analysis of Language
3. The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics
4. The Doctrine of the Acts of God
5. Theology as Doxology
6. Anthropology as Repentance
7. The Organization of Dogmatics

FIRST PART
The Doctrine of Creation
Chapter IV: The Creation of the World
Introduction: The Starting Point for the Doctrine of Creation
1. The Freedom of God the Creator
2. The Act of Creation in the Beginning
3. The Universe
4. The Purpose of Creation
5. The Originally Good Creation
6. The Order of Creation
7. God’s Continuous Creative Action
Chapter V: The Purpose of the Human Being
Introduction to Chapters V-VII: The Starting Point for the Doctrine about Human Beings
1. The Response That Is the Image of God
2. The Community That Is the Image of God
3. The Dominion That Is the Image of God
4. The Life That Is the Image of God
5. Origin and Purpose
Chapter VI: The Failure of the Human Being
1. Turning Away from God
2. Imprisonment in Guilt
3. The Urge to Sin
4. The Dominion of Sin
5. The Judgment into which Human Beings Have Fallen: Death
6. Origin and Failure
Chapter VII: The Preservation of the Human Being
1. The Preservation of the Sinner in the Midst of Having Fallen into Judgment
2. The Witness of God through the Works of Creation
3. The Commandment of the Preserver
4. The Establishing of Just Authority
5. The Conservation of the Distorted Image of God
Chapter VIII: The Preservation of the World
1. The Corruption within the Creation
2. The Service of the Angels
3. The Dominion of the Powers of Corruption
4. The Judgment into which the World Has Fallen: The End
5. The Time of Divine Patience
Chapter IX: The Governance of the World
1. God’s Dominion over World History
2. The Hiddenness of God in World History
3. The Mystery of World History: Jesus Christ and the New Creation
4. The Revealed Action of God through the Gospel
5. The Humiliation of God in His Governance of the World
6. Theodicy
7. Providence
Chapter X: The Confession of God the Creator
1. God the Father, the Creator
2. God the Eternal Father

SECOND PART
The Doctrine of Redemption
Chapter XI: The Old Testament Law
Introduction to Chapters XII and XIII: The Exaltation of Jesus as the Presupposition for the Doctrine of the Humiliation of the Son of God
1. The Honorific Titles of Jesus
2. The History of Jesus as the Basis for His Honorific Titles
3. The Reversed Sequence of the History and the Recognition of Jesus Christ
4. Historical Investigation into the Earthly Jesus
5. The Apostolic Message as the Basis of Faith
6. The History of Jesus and Christological Dogma
7. The Organization of Christology
Chapter XII: The Humiliation of the Son of God
Chapter XIII: The Exaltation of Jesus
Summary of Chapters XII and XIII: The Doctrine of the Threefold Office of Jesus Christ
Chapter XIV: The New Testament Gospel
Summary of Parts A and B: God’s Action of Grace and Human Action
Chapter XV: Baptism
Chapter XVI: The Lord’s Supper
The Conclusion to Chapters XIV-XVI: The Richness of God’s Action of Grace and the Number of Sacraments
Summary of Chapters XI-XVI: The Distinction between Law and Gospel
Chapter XVII: The Confession of God the Redeemer
1. Jesus the Redeemer
2. The Eternal Son
3. “Truly God and Truly a Human Being”

THIRD PART
The Doctrine of the New Creation
Chapter XVIII: The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit
Chapter XIX: The Church
Chapter XX: Spiritual Gift and Ministerial Office
Chapter XXI: The Preservation of the Church
Introduction: The Indestructibility of the Church
A. Holy Scripture
B. Confession
C. Church Order
Chapter XXII: The Unity of the Church and the Disunity of Christendom
1. The Dangers of Ecclesial Self-Preservation
2. The Scandal of a Disunited Christendom
3. The Question Concerning the One Church in a Disunited Christendom
4. Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Traditions of Christendom
5. Apostolic Tradition and the Traditions of Christendom
6. Recognizing the One Church in a Disunited Christendom
7. Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches
Chapter XXIII: The Consummation of the New Creation
Chapter XXIV: The Confession of God the New Creator
1. The Holy Spirit, the New Creator
2. The Eternal Spirit of God

FOURTH PART
The Doctrine of God
Chapter XXV: The Adoration of God
Chapter XXVI: The Triune God
Introduction to Chapters XXVII-XXIX: The Holy God and the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes
Chapter XXVII: The Lord
Chapter XXVIII: The All-Consuming God
Chapter XXIX: The Self-Giving God

CONCLUDING PART
Chapter XXX: God’s Decree of Love
1. Solely by Grace
2. The Eternal Decree of the Triune God
3. The Issue of Double Predestination
4. Election
5. Rejection
6. The Incommensurability between God’s Electing and Rejecting
Excursus: On the Issue of the Theological Syllogism
7. The Warning to the Church and the Invitation to the World