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Honoring Professor David Franklin White, The C. Ellis and Nancy Gribble Nelson Professor of Christian Education 2005-2023
It is only befitting that a volume of Insights dedicated to David C. White, the C. Ellis and Nancy Gribble Nelson Professor Emeritus of Christian Education at Austin Seminary, assembles reflections about the “Spirit.” This interest is not only a prolongation of David’s research on theological aesthetics, a Spirit-led transformation of quotidian experience into a subtle, yet revealing, expression of divine beauty, but a recognition of a spiritual source which deliberately informs his teaching, preaching, and overall approach to ministerial practices. Because of that recognition, David’s classroom turns into sacred space where learners are invited “to take off their shoes” as they wait to be encountered by unprecedented moments of wisdom and wonder. This is attested by former students contributing to this issue, who jointly argue how they have gained deeper spiritual insight when immersed in David’s pedagogy of enchantment.
I met David several years ago when I served as the president of the Religious Education Association at one of the annual conferences of the guild. David’s presence was noticeable for uncharacteristic reasons. Against the loquacious and selfindulgent atmosphere that characterizes many scholarly gatherings, David will drive attention by being the person sitting in the corner, observing the participants’ exchanges, listening quietly to the flow of ideas, waiting for the moment to be approached. Little did I know at that time he was silently attending to that space of human interaction looking for that epiphanic instant when spiritual awareness could fight itself out of a sea of theoretical and philosophical disquisitions. Perhaps because David is convinced—like Amos Wilder in his Theopoetics—that religious teaching must overcome its addiction to the discursive and prosaic and prioritize imaginative encounters with divine disclosure.
Throughout his career as both a minister and as a teaching scholar, David has encouraged the faithful, especially the young, to form ever-deepening relationships with God and with the whole of creation. As a youth minister at heart, David retains his love for music, outdoor activities, creative play, and storytelling. It makes sense, for it is in the vitality of the young who are awakening to a self that is not yet determined or rigidly structured, where the Spirit resists excarnation. As Brian Mahan reminds us in his article using a quote by Saint Augustine, “God is younger than all else,” infusing new life through a Holy Spirit that Aquinas identifies with the “youthfulness of the saints.”
For centuries, writings on theological pneumatology have elucidated how pliable the description of the third person of the Trinity can be. Whether the Spirit is a strong liberating force as D. T. Banda argues in his analysis of African pneumatology, or a gentle caring upholder of diasporic Filipino healthcare workers as suggested by Van Cliburn Tibus, its reality is experienced as a gift that invigorates our lives and preserves our hopes. David White describes it better reminding us that “it is the fire that burns at the center of our worlds.” For that important reminder we will be forever grateful.
