| LEAVE A MESSAGE READ MESSAGES ED'S LIFE ED'S WORK MORE TO COME HOME |
MESSAGES, TRIBUTES AND COMMENTS
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| Graham Weeks, London, England |
The abiding memory in our congregation will be his sermons, especially, David's Mighty Men (Water from the well) and Salvation is of the Lord, the whole of salvation history in that one verse in Jonah.
We rejoice that his ministry will continue through his printed work.
| Evy Viss Smith, Franklin, TN |
To our kids: You need to know about this man!
This is Paul Clowney's Dad - what a blessing it was for Dad to be able to have his new Christian life nurtured by being part of the Clowney household via their son Paul, who's witnessing to Dad on the train to Phila College of Art and taking Dad to coffeehouses where Christian writers like Steve Hutson played, and hanging around Dr.Clowney...all were used to bring Dad to the Lord. Those were the good ol' days when Paul and Dad used to hike the Appalachian Trail and play endless ping-pong in the Clowney's basement (with Paul enlightening Dad that when he cursed at missed points, he invariably would lose the next 3 points!) Paul was so creative and fun and Dad always wanted a friend to replace him (after he moved to London) in his brilliance and wacky creativity and solid commitment to the Lord - it seems our son J.D. has been alot like that to Dad.
Anne Clowney (his daughter) and I were good friends and school mates at Philmont - we lived around the corner for a time and loved to have sleep overs and go bird-watching, do art projects. Always there was a creative, joyful and brilliant mindedness in the Clowney home. Mrs Clowney taught me sewing and was our choir director - music and the arts were big in the Clowney family and they were always up to something creative and humorous. Dr. Clowney painted the mural of the ocean waves as the backdrop at the Boardwalk Chapel in Wildwood which was quite a nice work of art, and which you kids must remember from the years that we would spend a week there doing the "special music". He also had other paintings up around their house that he did.
Basically Dr. Clowney and his family were part of both Dad & my everyday lives through the open door of their home on 520 Grant Ave. in Willow Grove, Pa, through their children and Dr. and Mrs. Clowney's teaching as they talked in their home to us in the most everyday ways, after school...etc. Christ lived in their home in a delightfully easy way.
In all our moving around, and going to churches inside and outside the OPC, we have never come across a "preacher-person" with such a POSITIVE impact of God's goodness by exposing the brilliant light glittering off of the deep doctrines of God's word - an impact which could only come from a man who loved it and didn't get in the way of it.
Thank you to the Clowney family for your open hearts and home in welcoming my husband into the Kingdom back in the 70's. Love you all, and of course we have you in our prayers!
Evy Viss Smith
| Bob Smith, 1144 Culpepper Circle, Franklin, TN 37064 |
My heart and my tears and my prayers are with you, and I rejoice as well that as my wife said, "Ed Clowney is in heaven". It is incredible to think of what he must know now! I owe deep gratitude to Dr. Clowney and the legacy he faithfully passed on, to Mrs. Clowney, her children, and especially to their son Paul, through whom I came to know our sweet Savior. Praise our God and Redeemer Jesus Christ! If there is one verse that sums up my experience with Dr. Clowney it is Psalm 119:18 "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law". I remember having countless discussions with him as a new Christian with loads of questions. Dr. Clowney's answers always amazed me, and drew me into the depth, the beauty, and the comprehensive wonder of the word of God. His passion and enthusiasm for the knowledge of God always lit a big fire in my heart. Thanks to him my mom is now reading The New Reformation Bible, where he was a contributing editor. In Christ, I love you! Bob Smith
| Daryl Daniels, Wisconsin |
| Shirl Schiffman, Columbia International University |
Of course, my dear friend has now had the joy of literally seeing Jesus! I rejoice for him even as I pray for comfort for his dear wife. But I know Miss Jean: she will keep pressing on in the service of the King! My prayers are with you, Jean! I'm glad you are back in Charlottesville and surrounded by so many people who love you!!
With love, in Jesus,
Shirl Schiffman
| David and Pamela Hitt, Lake Oswego, Oregon |
Soon after we heard of Ed's homegoing to the Christ in whom his whole heart, soul, mind and strength, indeed, every sinew of his being were focused and invested, we both sorrowed at the loss of so many of us, yet rejoiced in his great gain...being face to face with his ascended Savior and Lord! Then, we felt for you and all your precious loved ones. We entrust you all now to God's gracious care and strength. A whole flood of varied memories of Westminster 1963-1966 and Phil-Mont Christian Academy ensued: Ed's tender care of his mother; then, the lilts in his voice, the sprints in his feet, the laughter in his spirit...his absolute joyful doxologic mode in preaching. Then, we remember how Ed and my father Russell Hitt became closer, and friends Bud and Martha Ayers had Ed in their home for teaching a class on the Philadelphia Main Line. (He was so diversified and always ready to serve somewhere else.) But most of all, Pamela remembers his chapel talk at Phil-Mont on Revelation 2:17: "I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it." We all knew him with the name Ed Clowney, but we are awed to know about that new name God has given him on that white stone...what a very special name now! With our love and deep gratitude for Ed Clowney.
| William Edgar, Westminster Theological Seminary |
A Remembrance
The year was 1965, in Cambridge, Mass. Several of us were meeting in a quiet, mahogany studded room in Leveret House, one of Harvard’s nine residences. Our host was Jim Hurley, whose brother, Morris, was a student at Westminster Seminary. Holding forth was a brilliant young professor whose years of education had not quite erased an unusual South Philadelphia drawl. I came in a bit late, and Ed was discussing the nature of the church. Someone had apparently asked him about denominations. Much of this was new to me, and I did not understand it altogether. But he was arguing that despite the tragic divisions within Christendom, a deeper unity existed in Christ through his Spirit. We had an already-not-yet organic fellowship with every true believer, past and present.
I had not heard anything quite like it. Christ was not only the forensic representative, but the vital head of the church in these last days. We were end-times Christians, already worshiping in the heavenly Mount Zion. Later that week end, Ed spoke at Park Street’s Collegiate Club about guidance. His title was, “What’s in a Name?” and he walked us through the entire Old Testament, showing us that we could know God’s will, not through special telegrams from heaven, but from our identity in Christ, and the new name that he gave us as redeemed people. Ed’s teaching was mind-boggling. No one had ever explained so many issues using what I now know to be biblical theology, the progressive unfolding of redemptive history, culminating is Jesus Christ, the “yea and amen of the promises of God.”
Many of us had applications out to various graduate schools of theology. I had more or less made up my mind to attend Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. That week end it became clear to us that we needed to be where this man taught. What I would later recognize as a recruiting visit I experienced as God’s prophet come to tell us how to read the Bible.
A whole group of us from Harvard did come to Westminster, and we never regretted it for a minute. There we discovered that exegesis was controlled by biblical theology, which in turn yielded the good fruits of systematics. We sat under the likes of Paul Woolley, John Murray, E. J. Young. But Edmund Clowney remained a central inspiration. It was he, more than any of the others, who opened the Bible to us. Ironically, in those days, many of the courses on the Pentateuch or the Psalms or Galatians were little more than painstaking refutations of the German critics. We were no doubt still in the era of Westminster’s origins in controversy, called to “demolish strongholds.” But many of us came from outside the Christian faith and did not worry particularly about these guys with funny names like Gunkel or Mowinckle. We needed basic Bible knowledge, and we got it from Ed Clowney’s courses in, of all things, Practical Theology. Whether homiletics, worship, missions, or the church, his sermon-like lectures took us through one era after another, climaxing in Jesus Christ.
As he got more and more excited about the structure of revelation, Ed spoke contagiously about the impossibility of God’s extravagant promises. How would he do it? What about Abraham rising up in the morning to sacrifice the only son of the pledge? For a people in exile, how will the very bells on the horses have the Lord’s name inscribed on them, and the cooking pots in the Lord’s house be like the sacred bowls before the altar, Ed would ask, with characteristic delight? The answer: “remnant and renewal,” “remnant and renewal,” he would repeat over and over, breaking into laughter. Jesus was the true Israel. Christ was the beaten rock of Exodus 17. He was the true elder brother who would leave the Father’s bosom to go find his prodigal brother. He was the wisdom of Solomon, the craftsman of Proverbs 8, justified by her children.
Ed’s understanding of the Bible was like Monet’s garden in Giverny. Everything was connected like a grove full of trees and flowers in bloom. As we all know, Ed could draw and paint beautifully. But his favorite artwork was verbal. He wrote his own poetry. He loved images and analogies, because they reflected the nature of reality. In a VBS one summer I used a panel board Ed had created to teach kids about the Gospel of John. Each chapter had a theme, such as, light of the world, door of the sheep, and so forth. When the child inserted the right plug into the right hole a light would turn on. His special fondness was Scriptural metaphors for the church. Using insights from C. S. Lewis and Paul Ricour, he showed how God has given us far more than just images or pictures of the church. “We have metaphorical affirmations,” he wrote, “in which the daily realities of life in the created world are brought into a tensive but fruitful relation to the realities of God’s revelation of his name and his works.” One year when he was in Aix-en-Provence, ostensibly visiting his daughter and son-in-law, writing a booklet on meditation, he fell in love with poets like Gerhard Tersteegen, whose hymns compare the love of Christ for us with our love for him: “He and I, in that bright glory, One deep love shall share, Mine to be forever with Him; His, that I am there.”
The Bible for Ed was more than a vast puzzle to be pieced together. It was a living, powerful word that could transform lives. Nothing excited him more than to see souls turn from darkness to light because of the gospel. He once preached a series of messages in Schloss Mittersil. One afternoon a revival broke out. Ed didn’t quite know what to do with this, so he went down to supper while the students remained for hours singing and crying in their conference room. Ed was always astonished that the Lord could use his words to effect change. Strangely, considering his brilliance, he felt deeply inadequate. Indeed, away from the pulpit, he could be shy, almost retiring. Yet when he believed in something, whether a theological principle or a practical policy, he was like a dog after a bone.
I never quite understood it, but he seemed to believe in me. I know I am not alone in this. But he and Jean became mentors to me, from the early days right until the end. I made no significant decision about my life’s direction without their prompting. While a student at Westminster, I cannot count the number of Sunday meals we had over at 520 Grant Avenue. I usually ended up in the kitchen discussing music with Jean. She is so down-to-earth, where Ed was such a visionary. I want to pause here to pay tribute to Jean. Her sober judgments were the perfect complement to Ed’s dreams. Life was not easy for her at Westminster, especially when Ed came under fire from people who did not work half as hard as he did. But she stood by him and together they led a generation of students into ministry. And Ed loved her so much, through good times and bad.
As all of us well know, Ed had a special fascination for the church. What was behind that? Certainly, not nearly enough had been said by Protestants about the theology of the church. His many wonderful writings filled the breach. But beyond that, I believe Ed was concerned that the great poetry of God’s love had not sufficiently been felt in the fabric of church life. He wanted us to know that in worship angels were present. In the church’s outreach there is a joyful gathering up, a theophanic parade to Zion. And there is singing. He was quite funny about how no one ever asked him to sing a solo. But he believed Christ to be the great choir master, directing even the most tone-deaf in a heavenly chorus of praise and adoration. Ed deeply believed in the communion of the saints. He was fascinated by the ecumenical movement, even though committed to biblical separation. He spoke at Urbana which earned him the criticism of fraternizing with Evangelicals, apparently something you don’t do. He loved going to Berlin and Lausanne and working with John Stott’s London Center. He longed to see the OPC and the RPES (then the PCA) join forces.
How can I sum up a life that so deeply affected me over 40 years? Of course, it is quite impossible. In closing, then, let me allude only to a few of his many gifts, many of them already mentioned. These are the ones that most made their mark on me, his spiritual son.
Ed was funny. He loved to make puns, to tell jokes, and just to laugh. After leaving Westminster, he liked to say, retire early, and often. In Homiletics class, he challenged us to find a passage in the Bible that did not speak of Jesus Christ. He said, try me, as he made gestures like a prestidigitator, saying check my sleeves. Laughter was not for him a nervous way of taking the edge off of hardship. It was connected to the joy of God.
Ed was brutally honest. I once gave him a manuscript to look over. It had been sharply criticized by my editor, and I was hoping he could suggest a new one. He gave it back to me and said, “Bill, you don’t need a new editor, but a new manuscript.” In homiletics class here, I will never forget preaching my heart out in the dull setting of a WTS classroom. True to form, Ed began with items of praise. He went on and on about how good it was, well structured, passionately delivered, good illustrations... I was getting more and more worried about what was coming next, and sure enough, he ended by telling me in front of everyone, “I suppose if I had one negative, it would be this: the sermon had no relation to your biblical text.”
To complete the picture, it should be said he was most sharply critical of himself. About an issue that had come up here at WTS, one which no one could have controlled, he once told me his entire administration should be judged a failure. He worried about his children, his grand children and his friends, accusing himself of not being sufficiently there for them. How curious, considering that’s the one place he always was.
Ed was wise. At every crossroad in my life, he was there, to help me get to the next stage. He was the theologian in residence for churches and for individuals.
Ed had a fascination with various individuals. Often they were pioneers. Maybe he lived a little of his love of Christian adventure through them. One of his favorites was Eugene Boyer. What Ed will tell you is that Gene was the greatest street preacher he had ever known. He would take his trumpet and play it in the dingy sections of Marseille, draw a crowd, and preach the gospel in street-French. He was one of the founders of the new Seminary in Aix-en-Provence. What he wouldn’t tell you is that he, Ed, led him into the Reformed faith, and helped him and the other French leaders make that seminary a reality! The flip side of the coin of this fascination with heroes was Ed’s almost absurd modesty.
Ed was tender. He and my wife Barbara were close friends. At one point Ed somehow decided that they shared the same heart condition, something called mitral valve prolapse. He found her a doctor for this, in Virginia, and whenever they got together they discussed who else was allowed into this exclusive club.
Ed was possibly the greatest preacher of his generation. In his sermons, as in his life, he taught us at all costs to avoid moralism. “Dare to be a Daniel,” was not biblical. David’s defeat of Goliath was not so much an example of courage, as a prefiguring of Christ, humble, yet slaying the giant of sin. The temptations of Our Lord in the wilderness were not about how to resist, but were about the triumph of the Messiah over the devil’s compelling propositions of short cuts. It was always about Jesus. This Christ-centered preaching may have been his greatest legacy.
Finally, Ed was a man of prayer. He once asked how our children were doing, in a way one could only ask if deeply concerned, and well-informed about them. We told him the latest news, and he thanked us, remarking, almost as an aside, “You know, I pray for them and for you every day.” Not too long ago, we sat next to him at Christ the King Church in Houston, where Loe Schuster is the pastor. He happen to drop his Bible, so I leaned over to pick it up, and out popped a picture of our grandchildren! If you ever prayed with Ed, you will remember that he spoke to the Lord as his creator, his redeemer and his friend.
Well, now Ed is in heaven. Surely he is laughing with the Lord. His honesty is being matched with God’s grace. His wisdom is being renewed every day by the Spirit himself. He is meeting all those fascinating people, who are telling him what he meant in their lives. His tenderness is being way surpassed by Jesus’ tender care. But he is not praying! Doesn’t have to. He can talk directly to his Lord and Savior. And even sing solos for him.
William Edgar
| Dante Mably, Burbank, CA |
I did not know him personally but I did hear him preach a couple of times and have read some of his books. I saw him in the library during his last visit to Westminster California where he was kind enough to smile and say ‘hello’ to me when he didn’t have to. I remember R.C. Sproul coming up to the podium when Dr. Clowney finished preaching and saying, “I could listen to preaching like that all day long. Wouldn’t it be great to hear that kind of preaching every Sunday?” He meant it and he was right. Dr. Clowney’s sincere faith and love for Christ produced a theological profundity that routinely caught me off guard. His insights were so simple yet weighty: “Jesus Christ is the reason for the Bible” he wrote.
In addition to his example of a humble and gracious spirit that reflected his Savior and led him into non-Reformed settings, I thank God for using him to teach us how to interpret Scripture. Having spent years hearing expository sermons that forget the ‘big picture’ and see the gospel as being for unbelievers, where the Bible is often treated as ‘exegetical data’ and the preacher sometimes seems like he has mastered ‘the text’ so that the wonder and fear of God is dissolved, it was Dr. Clowney’s chapter in "The Preacher and Preaching" that first showed me what it was that I was longing for. This was a turning point in my walk with God and the beginning of my adventure into redemptive-historical preaching.
Dr. Clowney is one of those saints whom I can look at and think of how grateful I would be if I bore even a tenth of the fruit he bore to the glory of God. He finished the course and his faith has now become sight. Because he knew and enjoyed God as a father in the faith (1 Jn. 2:13), he was an example to me and like many other noble men of God, he will bear fruit even after his ministry has been fulfilled.
| John Corcoran, United Kingdom |
Ed would say to us "Christ has led me and let him lead you; for he only has good for us." A not-great human is a person who has studied and thinks that they know everything by the time of their youth. But Ed was not of this mould. He let Christ show him new vistas throughout his long life. So, even in old age he was open to receiving new insights and inspirations as to the myriad diversities and splendours that God has bequeathed us by grace.
| Philip Duce, IVP, Leicester, England |
On behalf of all at Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England.