"SURPRISED BY JOY": JOY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND IN CHRISTIAN SCHOLARSHIP

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 2004 by Howard, David M Jr

Fellow members of the ETS and friends: I stand before you tonight for the first time unfettered by the constraints of speaking officially, whether as a study-group chair, the Society's program chair, as moderator of a business meeting, or as a spokesman for the Executive Committee. I stand before you tonight to speak on my own behalf and, I hope, also on the Lord's behalf.

I think back to my first ETS meeting in 1981 in Toronto. I attended this same banquet, and I watched and listened with awe to the presidential address by Kenneth Barker that year, on "False Dichotomies Between the Testaments."1 I had absolutely no thought that I would ever be standing before the Society in the same capacity. It is a high honor that you have bestowed on me, and I am humbled and grateful.

Despite the high honor, however, when I have thought about this night over the past year, usually it has been with a sense of great dread. This is because of the membership challenge concerning open theism and inerrancy that lay before us, which we finally brought to a conclusion last night.2 I did not know how that evening would turn out, but God did. My sense is that, for most of us, a certain justice was achieved, and the Society has come through this challenge the better for it.

So, by his grace, I stand before you this night, not with the dread of this past year, but with great joy. I rejoice in the opportunity we enjoy tonight: to fellowship together and to be reminded of the need for joy in our lives. I rejoice in the 55-year history of the ETS and the 26 years I have been a member. I rejoice in the growth of the Society, especially in recent years.3 I rejoice in the spirit in which most things have taken place over the years, including the difficult events of this past year.

I want to speak to you tonight about the joy that is incumbent upon all of us as Christians and as scholars. But, beyond the speaking, I want us to participate in a sensory experience. I mean that we should use every sense and every faculty possible as we consider joy. I want us to "taste and see that the LORD is good" (Ps 34:8).4 Our scholarship is not done-at least it should not be done-in a vacuum, in a musty study with no connection to the world around us. Ultimately, our scholarship should be done in a doxological context: it needs to be done to the praise and glory of God.

So tonight we will do something that we have never done before at an ETS banquet, namely, we will sing together. It is my deep conviction that theology is ultimately doxological. So, in addition to working with and on a text, we also must let the text speak to us, inform us, transform us, wash over us, renew us. One way to express this is through song, and so, at two points in my address, I will ask you to join me in singing reverent and joyful praises to God.

Before I begin, I want to thank and acknowledge several people. First and foremost is my wife Jan, who is here tonight. She has been a supportive observer of my participation in the ETS since 1981, and she is delighted finally to be able to come and see first hand what we do here. My father, David Howard, Sr., is also here. he was a student of two of our illustrious predecessors, Merrill C. Tenney and Kenneth S. Kantzer, and has spent a lifetime of service in missions work. Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank my provost at Bethel Seminary, Leland Eliason. Leland has been very encouraging and affirming to me this year in a variety of ways. he also has performed a great service to the Society in releasing me from some course duties, which has allowed me to give the time needed to the recent membership challenge.

Finally, today is November 20, 2003, which would have been my mother's 77th birthday. She was eagerly looking forward to being here tonight, but she passed away two months ago. And so this address is dedicated to the memory of Phyllis Howard and to the faithful service that she rendered on behalf of the cause of Christ. It was at her knee and by her side that I first learned about him whom we all serve.5

I. C. S. LEWIS AND SURPRISED BY JOY

In his book Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life,6 C. S. Lewis tells the story of his conversion to faith in Jesus Christ. It is a very moving book, in which we see the constant interplay between Lewis's intuition and experience, on the one hand, and his reason and intellect, on the other. While there are many components in this work that I have found myself marking, underlining, and coming back to again and again-countless nuggets of wisdom, in and of themselves-my interest in the book here lies in its central narrative describing Lewis's experience of-and, at the same time, his constant search for-what he calls "Joy" (the word is capitalized in his usage). And, the book has a surprise ending, where Lewis discovers that what he was searching for was not "Joy" at all.

For Lewis, the essential component of "Joy" is a deep-seated longing for something that is supremely desirable. As a child, he had early glimpses of this in fleeting experiences that overwhelmed him in a rush, then just as quickly vanished.9 His mind and eyes were opened, by different stimuli, to things in another dimension, beyond this world. But, just as quickly, he was brought back to the mundane "realities" around him. he defines "Joy," then, as "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."10 he sharply distinguishes "Joy" from happiness or pleasure, which are much more oriented to the immediate, to gratifications of various types, most of them instant, ephemeral, and, in the end, not satisfying over a long term. "Joy" only shares with them the fact that it is something intensely to be desired. he states that "I doubt whether anyone who has ever tasted [Joy] would ever, if both were within his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world."11 Further, "Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing."12