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Presidential Perspective
WHY WERE WE CREATED? WHY DO WE EXIST?
In this issue of Aware, we look back at the academic year that was 2020-21. It was a year of great change, of unexpected challenges posed by a global pandemic, of reckoning with our national and institutional history on race, and of tremendous perseverance on the part of our students, faculty, and staff, as well as the institution itself. It’s safe to say that this past year was unlike any other, and yet because we have such a rich history of institutional perseverance, we are weathering the challenges of the present moment with characteristic aplomb. I hope that as you read this annual report, you will share my sensibility that in the face of multiple challenges, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary remains strong.
Planning responsibly for the future and rising to the challenges of the current moment often require that one understands the past well. This has been part of my own work as I’ve assumed leadership in this storied institution—to remain focused on the future, but to learn the origin stories and to understand and appreciate the many other stories that have made this seminary what it is today. Yet, understanding that past cannot simply be accomplished by reading historical descriptions of past events, for understanding history well requires analysis and evaluation, leaving room for nuance and for what is not explicitly said in written accounts. Oral histories, which abound at GarrettEvangelical, are as much a part of the story as what has been recorded for posterity.
Origin stories are always somewhat misleading because they claim something that is almost always not entirely true. Origin stories often claim to tell or recall the beginning of something, but in doing so, they must start from arbitrary places. Otherwise, all origin stories would have to start so far back in time as to make the telling of the story a near impossibility. Just think about the question a child might ask her parents, as mine asked me, “Papi, where did I come from?” To answer that question in an ageappropriate way is a bit of a dance, isn’t it? Parents always struggle with providing their kids either too much information or too little. To tell the story of where a child came from requires a parent to make certain assumptions: first, that the child’s question wasn’t biological in nature, and second, that they were not asking for a detailed accounting of the family tree. These are important parts of their own origin, and in due time, they should understand both well, but I doubt that their innocent, yet profound question is motivated by these factors.
In my experience, I chose to start the story my daughter wanted to hear in Puerto Rico, where I came from. But the truth is that I could have started the story in England, from where her mother descends. Yet, even starting there is arbitrary because those lineage stories could have started back just one or two generations, and they would have then been situated in completely different places, like Spain and Africa on my side or Germany and Wales on her mother’s.
In truth, I don’t think my daughter was asking for a geography saga, but the origin story I wove seemed to suffice. Upon reflection, I actually think my daughter was asking a deeper question she wasn’t yet able to put into words, even though her little frame and heart could already fully sense and feel it. She wanted to know why she was here, and I assume she also needed to know that love was at the center of the story.
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Think about the origin story of this seminary. Where do we start? Do we start with Eliza Garrett’s generosity and vision for an educated clergy, which led to the founding of Garrett Biblical Institute? In terms of strict chronology, there is a case to be made for that, but it’s still an arbitrary place to start. We know that our origin story has multiple origins. The full story must also entail the founding of Union Biblical Institute in Naperville, Illinois, which sought to serve recent immigrant communities and churches and eventually became Evangelical Theological Seminary, as well as Lucy Rider Meyer’s vision for the Chicago Training School, which was founded to train women to minister to the needs of the most vulnerable in late 19th century Chicago.
Yet, even these more expansive narratives are arbitrary places to begin because the story could go back even further, including the Native peoples who lived on these lands and what happened to them and their communities and cultures when our three institutions claimed or purchased their lands. Or we could go back even further to England and Germany, for example, and the beginnings of the Methodist and Evangelical movements in those countries. More importantly, these origin stories don’t readily address the more important questions: Why were we created? Why do we exist?
Take the biblical account as a case in point. “In the beginning …” These are perhaps the three most familiar words in all of scripture. Most hear those words and immediately know that what follows is the biblical account of the origin of all that is. But as I’ve already said, origin stories aren’t ever really origin stories, and this biblical account is no different.
The predominant interpretation of this so-called origin story of the Jewish and Christian traditions frames this as a story of a God who stands outside of and beyond anything and nothing and who then speaks something and everything into existence. We assume that this is, in part, a story about God’s great power (omnipotence is the theological word), to create ex nihilo—out of nothing. Out of nothing comes everything. That’s how powerful God is, we were told, and that’s the real meaning of our origin story. Yet, the Genesis story isn’t an “out of nothing” story; it is an “out of chaos” story and that is what makes it so interesting. In v. 2, the author describes an event so potent that it characterizes all that follows, even to our own day:
• “The earth … (notice that the earth existed) • … was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep … (notice darkness existed—it’s not just the absence of light) • … while a wind from God … (literally: ruach
Elohim—the Spirit of God, the breath of
God, the wind created by God’s movement, presence, and nearness) • … swept over the face of the waters (notice that the waters existed)
This is not an account of a distant God who stands in nothingness to create something; rather, this is the dynamic, emotive story of a God who is brooding, sweeping rather closely over what did exist, a primeval chaos that lacked something fundamental to God’s very character, something necessary to God’s needs or desires, something essential to what God longed for within God’s self. God, it seems, had reached a moment of personal distress (“… brooding over the waters …”) or personal longing to the point of needing something other than the chaos that currently existed. The Spirit of God broods over this chaos and emptiness and decides to act. No longer resigned to what had been, God instead allows something new, powerful, beautiful, and relational to surge forth out of the chaos.
Into that chaos, God’s breathed order, beauty, connection, love. In that emptiness, God willed a bountiful diversity and declares that it is very good. All that God needs for relationship, for overcoming the primeval emptiness and chaos that defined what had been, has now been newly infused by God’s Spirit (ruach Elohim) and transformed into something beautiful, alive, colorful, harmonious, and intimate. This is a story, above all else, about God’s intent and desire, a story about God moving powerfully into the present chaos, the deep void, the pervasive emptiness until another more powerful, compelling reality emerges, and the results are astounding.
Once we allow the divine drama to sink in, we’re logically led to consider or to ask the more profound question: Why? Why were we created? Why do we exist? How we answer those questions, both about our God and about our founding institutions, will have profound implications for our individual lives and for our future work as a seminary. When I think about the fact that our sacred text opens with a story about existence being mired in chaos and emptiness and that God powerfully sweeps into that reality and radically transforms it, I’m filled with a sense of hope and awe. I also wonder, however, why we so often forget this powerful truth that our ancient forebears so wisely and intentionally placed as the opening narrative of scripture. It functions more as a profound expression of faith and trust, a recognition of who God is from the beginning, rather than as an account of something that occurred long ago. To the contrary, it is something that is still happening today. Walt Whitman wrote:
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end;
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now …
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
If Whitman is right, then our present moment is a Creation moment. It is a moment infused with ruach Elohim (the Spirit of God) to transform what is into what God intends. I honestly believe that the same creating Spirit of God described in Genesis is brooding over us right now, brooding over the chaos of this world and of our lives, brooding over the emptiness of our souls, the voids that persist in our common existence. I believe that sacred wind is sweeping through Garrett-Evangelical anew with great power, great desire, and a great call for us to help transform the chaos, the emptiness, and the voids in the lives and communities of those we serve. Why were we created? Why do we exist? To be God’s creative partners in this world and to see the possibility, the promise, the hope that God intended “in the beginning.”
The stories that follow in these pages are expressions of this seminary’s attempt to be co-creators with God of a new future, to be partners with the Spirit of God in speaking peace and hope into our national and global chaos. In the research and teaching of our faculty and in the sending forth of our students to communities around the globe, we see ourselves as participating in the ongoing work of God’s never-ending creation. There is no doubt in my mind that the founders of the three institutions that today are GarrettEvangelical shared this creative hope and intention. While we may approach and embody their vision differently today, the work remains the same—Garrett-Evangelical exists to be the creative, transformative, powerful presence of God in the world that speaks and embodies peace, harmony, justice, and love to a world in chaos. What a privilege to be called to that work and to be able to share in that work together.
Rev. Dr. Javier A. Viera President
