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Earlier this year, Princeton Seminary announced the Daniel L. Migliore Distinguished Presidential Award for Faithful Leadership. The Seminary named this award after Professor Daniel L. Migliore to reflect its highest ideals. In turn, it honors excellence, pastoral humility, and faithful Christian living.
Before this honor reaches future recipients, Professor Migliore accepts it as the inaugural awardee. Furthermore, his contributions justify the choice. He is a beloved teacher, gifted theologian, and gracious colleague who has shaped generations of students. Moreover, he influences them through his scholarship, his witness, and his deep love for the church and the world.
To honor this moment, Professor Migliore shares a personal reflection. Additionally, he welcomes us into his life, vocation, and lasting bond with Princeton Seminary.
For fifty years, Princeton Theological Seminary was my home away from home, three of those years as a BD student. As I recall, my junior year began with an unsettling experience. Leaving my room early the first morning on campus, I made my way down the long hallway in Alexander dormitory to take a shower. The bathroom doorway, however, was suddenly filled—I mean totally filled—by a giant with a bath towel around his waist. Later, I learned that it was Donn Moomaw, the Hall of Fame linebacker of the UCLA Bruins football team. But at the moment of our first encounter, all I can remember thinking was, “Wow, Princeton Seminary students are really big.”
My favorite teacher during my student years at the Seminary was George S. Hendry, Professor of Systematic Theology, a quiet Scotsman with a razor-sharp mind, whose prayers at the start of class were as memorable as his sterling lectures. He also had a wonderful sense of humor. One warm spring afternoon, the huge windows in Stuart 1 were wide open. As Professor Hendry was lecturing, the mournful sounds of a bagpipe came from the quadrangle. Looking up from his lectern, Hendry exclaimed, “Do my ears deceive me?” He walked over to the window, listened for a while as if to verify what he was hearing, then returned to the lectern and said, “Actually, I traveled three thousand miles to get away from that sound.”
After completing my BD, I spent two years pursuing a PhD at Princeton University (in systematic theology, no less!). Unexpectedly, I was called to the Seminary to teach in the Bible Department, which had an opening at the time. When President James McCord asked me at the end of the three years whether I would like to continue in the New Testament area or return to my first love, Systematic theology, I chose the latter. But I have never regretted those three years of intensive New Testament study that provided me with a solid foundation for my subsequent constructive theological work. My early years of teaching at the Seminary were tumultuous. It was the time of heartbreaking assassinations, mounting civil rights movements, and anti-Vietnam War protests. Students at the Seminary and the University were holding sit-ins; some students were burning their draft cards.
On one occasion, seminarians chained shut the doors of the Board Room of the Library, demanding that the Trustees, who were holding their annual meeting there, issue a public declaration opposing the Vietnam War. The Trustees were able to get out of that room only by opening some windows and indecorously crawling outside. Now imagine the difficulty of trying to attend to your Greek or Hebrew assignments, or the required chapters of Calvin’s Institutes or Barth’s Church Dogmatics, in a situation that at times seemed on the verge of revolution. My heart was frankly always with the students, and sometimes my actions too. Professor Edward Dowey called me “The Junior Prophet.” I never knew whether he intended the tag as a compliment or not!
Not only did the Seminary weather the storms, it also continued to grow and flourish. “Voices long silent,” as the new Brief Statement of Faith of the Presbyterian Church would later put it, were increasingly among the student body and the faculty—women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, students from many countries around the globe. What an exhilarating and humbling experience it was for me to teach, and continuously learn from these super bright, curious, dedicated students that filled our classrooms. I taught the introductory course in theology every year, sometimes by myself, but oftenwith a colleague—eight different ones as I recall. The classes were often animated. A visiting professor from the university asked me after one class: “Are all classes here as lively as this one?”
I also taught courses with colleagues from other departments. An especially memorable one for me was with Professor Chris Beker on the importance of the New Testament apocalyptic. We agreed on many things, but also differed deeply on one thing. Chris argued that I tended to diminish the primacy in Christian life of the apocalyptic hope in God’s imminent, final victory over the forces of evil in the world. I countered that while we must hold on to that faith and hope, we are also called to continue working for a world of greater justice and peace as signs and intimations of God’s coming new world. I am sure the students sometimes thought the two of us were about to engage in a very undignified public wrestling match, but not so. We were and remained good friends.
In addition to my class responsibilities, I served at various times as Chair of the Theology Department (as easy as herding cats), Director of the PhD program, and Editor of The Princeton Seminary Bulletin. Looking back on my nearly half a century on the Seminary faculty, I can only hope I have remained faithful to the cardinal convictions of my life, my teaching, and my writing.
That God is the living triune God, creator, reconciler, and redeemer, who from all eternity exists in the dynamic of reciprocal self-giving love, and who graciously invites us and all creation to share in that communion; that love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable; that faith continuously seeks understanding; that good theology begins and ends in prayer; that the Bible is not to be read as an infallible dictionary but as containing the unique, overarching story of God’s steadfast love that culminates in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior of the world; and that Hispresence and work continues, often in surprising ways, in the life-renewing and community-creating activity of the Holy Spirit in us and in the world.
What I know for sure is that I have been blessed and am thankful from the bottom of my heart for the awesome privilege and honor I have had in being a part of the life and mission of Princeton Theological Seminary.
For its first hundred and ten years, Princeton Seminary was a fortress of old school Reformed theology. It had its flaws, but its academic reputation was unimpeachable and its service to the church and world outstanding. By the mid-1920s, however, it became clear that church and world were changing. It was time to face faithfully and boldly the new challenges, not in repudiation of the school’s honored past but in recognition that God is never stationary. Theliving God does new things and summons us to new forms of service. In 1936, John Mackay became President of the Seminary and inaugurated a new era of the school. The Seminary grew in size and in worldwide influence. Its hallmarks were, as from the beginning, intensive biblical study, learning from the rich Christian theological and ethical tradition, and the best possible preparation for various forms of Christian ministry.
Almost another century after the beginning of a new era of the school in the 1930s, Princeton Theological Seminary, and indeed all theological schools, face new, unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Questions of the whither of theological education—its scope, range of participants, and means of teaching and learning are being charted anew.
Under President Jonathan Lee Walton, a new vision of the mission of Princeton Seminary is aborning. And of one thing you can be sure, under his leadership, Princeton Seminary will play a leading role in envisioning new possibilities of theological education and new forms of preparation for Christian service. Happily, the recently launched series of The Princeton Seminary Bulletin will help keep alumni informed of the work of our new and brilliant young faculty, of important lectures and events on campus, of new degree programs, and of much more. Our common prayer is that God will guide and bless Princeton Theological Seminary in the years ahead.
– Daniel L. Migliore
