In his Reminiscences of an Octogenarian (1997), Bruce M. Metzger of Princeton remarks that it has often been said, “The snare of autobiographers is that we see ourselves neither as others see us, nor as God sees us.” Dr. Metzger taught many of the New Testament scholars currently at work around the world. But he prepared many more of his students as pastors. I recall how some of us saw and benefited from his ministry in that role.
Long life and long service were part of Bruce Metzger’s legacy. When he died he had just marked his 93rd birthday. His parents lived to the age of 96. He taught at Princeton Seminary 46 years (1938-1984)–serving in an emeritus capacity there until his death, February 13, 2007. It is said that although Charles Hodge taught at Princeton longer (due to the lack of mandatory retirement), Dr. Metzger taught more students than any other Presbyterian seminary professor because of larger classes.
I was among the last graduate students to work under him. Like many another new student in the seminary, I came to the campus recently graduated from a small college, so that Princeton seemed a large and intimidating place. Happily, Dr. Metzger taught my first course, “The Person and Work of Christ.” That morning, as at the beginning of almost every subsequent semester, the large number enrolled required that his class move to the largest lecture room in the seminary’s massive three-story brownstone, Stuart Hall. I took many more courses on a wide variety of topics–all that he offered, I think, except Coptic language and literature!
Dr. Metzger would make a carefully-prepared presentation, allowing a ten-minute break mid-period, at which time he would invite us to come forward for discussion of questions raised by his lecture. He would sit in a shabby overstuffed chair that happened to be near the speaker’s platform, and once we asked if this were the “George L. Collord Chair of New Testament Language and Literature,” the endowed professorship he held from 1964 until his retirement.
In that course mentioned above, I was struck by the fact that, unlike other teachers, Dr. Metzger taught from a historical instead of a dogmatic viewpoint. Instead of starting with ancient arguments, he proceeded from discussion of current questions. Instead of overwhelming the class with voluminous amounts of ancillary reading, he gave us a short list, which he expected us to ponder with great care–with an eye to mastering the material. It was from such lists that I began long-term acquaintance with such scholars as Oscar Cullmann, Joachim Jeremias, and A. M. Hunter. I formed a lifelong resolve to choose reading carefully and to study with the aim of storing material in mind for frequent recall and use.
All of Dr. Metzger’s students remember his specially-made suits with extra pockets on the inside for tiny slips for bibliographic notes. He made a fetish for accuracy and precise reporting of research. Little sayings learned from others became his own (and ours), such as “never use two words when one will do.” He published an astonishing number of reviews, articles, and books, but the number of pages is brief for such a wide range of work.
In unimaginative hands, a study of the textual criticism of ancient manuscripts would have been boring to an extreme, but our professor could make us laugh aloud with wonderful tales about the foibles of scribes and scholars–both ancient and contemporary. By telling the story of “St. Paul and the Baptized Lion” from a fourth century writing, The Acts of Paul, he would argue that some of the apocryphal writings are more useful for their insight into the imaginations of early Christians than for the claim that these writings had been maliciously excluded from the church’s canon.
On another occasion, recalling a then-current argument whether angels were actual beings to be believed in, Dr. Metzger lightened some of the controversy by describing stained glass windows in Europe, created in the wake of Marco Polo’s visits to the orient in the thirteenth century. The explorer brought back eyeglasses, so wearing spectacles became all the rage; even the angels in these windows wore glasses! When, because of suggestions in a scholarly paper commended for study, critics accused the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of “putting to a vote” the existence of Satan as a personal being, Dr. Metzger quipped that, “while it is an important subject for discussion, the devil does sometimes talk to Metzger!”
How we loved the annual invitations to the Metzger home, where we would enjoy refreshments prepared by Mrs. Metzger, see the grandfather clock he had built on the staircase, and hear about his other hobby–ships in a bottle–all of which we thought perfectly suited the character of a man devoted so thoroughly to the study of the meticulous minutiae of those books that are to the church words of eternal life. Then, with a bit of prompting he would tell the story of the North Carolina preacher who had burned a copy of the Revised Standard Version Bible in the pulpit with a blowtorch and sent the ashes to Dean Luther Weigle at Yale–a “souvenir” later entrusted to Dr. Metzger when he became chair of the RSV committee. These anecdotes humanize the scholarship of a gentleman we believed could recite the New Testament from memory–in Greek–and who could comment without notes on the principal challenges for its students and translators in verse-by-verse fashion.
Far from being an isolated, ivory-tower kind of scholar, our professor–wearing his signature rimless glasses–embraced the latest technological tools to advance the study of the New Testament. Among his latest projects (2004) was transfer of his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament to a CD-Rom to facilitate its use by translators far removed from a theological library.
One can perhaps see why a hesitant young student far away from home was made to feel so at home in the scholarship and environs of Princeton. I am sure that in this I was not alone. It was a highlight of my ministry when Dr. Metzger came to preach in the church where I serve and to give lectures in the University of Mississippi. He performed this humble service for students all over the world. In his work he emphasized the most basic and foundational aspects, and in so doing, advanced the world’s knowledge of the Bible’s content and message through simple, straightforward forms. As he said of his own teacher Emil Brunner, “his ability to use simple English to express profound thoughts could be electrifying” (Reminiscences, p. 22). Of this I am sure: Professor Metzger’s work will stand the test of time.
Milton Winter received a Th.M. in New Testament from Princeton Seminary in 1981. He is pastor of First Church in Holly Springs, Miss.
