Black & White
My years of doctoral study were spent among the seminaries and divinity schools of Chicago’s Hyde Park, in a consortium of academies that gave the student access to what was perhaps the world’s best-known collocation of theology faculties and teachers. Each of these schools encouraged its students to take advantage of the extraordinary depth and range of acclaimed expertise available at this notable encampment of demons, devoted to the torment of Christ and the confusion of his Church.
The professor under whom I was studying at the time of this story was an expert on one of the most important liberal Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, and was in fact one of this theologian’s last doctoral students. He was an excellent pedagogue, some of whose teaching methods I purposed to imitate once I stood behind the lectern myself (which I never did) and needed ways to render the very difficult accessible to a theologically exposed but unsophisticated audience. The professor was also haughty and unpleasant, a player of favorites, and especially attentive to pretty female students—defects remarked upon but unpenalized in the upper regions of the Ivory Tower, at least in those days.
A Restive Young Man
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Education from the online archives
27.2—March/April 2014
Higher Education Should Advance the Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God by Anthony Esolen
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
on Wondering or Wandering Through College Education by Anthony Esolen
more from the online archives
33.2—March/April 2020
Encounters with Faith & Forgiveness in Communities of Faith by Nicole M. King
15.6—July/August 2002
Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World
The Shape of Divine Providence & Human History by James Hitchcock
32.3—May/June 2019
on the Implications of Changing the Pater Noster by John M. McCarthy
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
