Personal Update

    At the American Academy of Religion, one of my mentors, Wolfhart Pannenberg, made a presentation today entitled, "An Intellectual Pilgrimmage."  It highlighted his journey from a young man in a home that had dropped out of church, through a short period of atheism, to an awakening of Christian faith under an influential teacher, and on to his life as a well-known theologian.  He was in his last semester at the University of Munich in 1993-94 when I had the remarkable opportunity to study for a term with him.  He and his wife have been good and gracious friends ever since, and he was very kind to write a generous introduction to my book (over in the margins, under recommended books) which deals largely with his theology.  We also had the opportunity to eat with he and his wife last evening, and today several of us gathered together over lunch.  I have a couple of pictures below:
Professor Pannenberg is in the middle, I'm to his right, Professor Phil Clayton to my right, and then my wife, Bobbie.  On the opposite side is a young lady whose name I did not catch, and then Professor Keith Brewer and Professor Cornelius Buller.

Same cast of characters, but now Frau Pannenberg is to my wife's right.

And, a good time was had by all.
chuck gutenson

Comments

[Kate]

Chuck, I'm not falling for that. I already mentioned that I had a ten-year old.

[jerry]

No, dog years would likely not convert favorably. I would recommend hexadecimal (base 16). So 25 would be: 15!

[chuck]

Oooppps, musta been the new haircut:>)

[jerry]

oops, that's 19.

[Kate]

I don't know about you guys but I have no desire to be 19 again.

[zero]

amen, kate. i was thinking that as i read through all the posts on age. now is just fine and age is just a number anyway!

[chuck]

A friend of mine recently said, in response to how he was enjoying retirement, that he enjoyed retirement just fine, but did not like getting old:>)

[zero]

i do a lot of volunteer work with the very aged and they say the worst part of age is the body breaks down. inside, their heart, their spirit is who they were years and years ago. that would be the important part of having a good life at that age, a good spirit.

[zero]

so how old are you, kate?
you can't be as old as i am.

[jerry]

Kate has done a masterful job of extracting info without giving up any ;-) We should just assign her at "25" and call it a day.

Btw Chuck, a friend of mine pointed out to me a few years ago that "retirement" is not a biblical concept. What say you?

[Matt]

Yep, I'm just a kid - 28. But it sure seems like more!

[chuck]

I'd say if he means "explicitly exemplified in Scripture," that he's right. I'm not sure what that would prove, exactly. Did he have a reason for making the claim?

[Kate]

Thank you Jerry, I'm considering a career in debriefing. ;) But to be fair I will tell you that I was born the year the Beatles came to America.

[chuck]

Gee, I thought we'd always had beatles in the US...does that mean....nah, couldn't mean that:>)

[jerry]

Chuck: besides pointing out that Moses was 80 when God called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Abraham was 80 when he fathered Isaac, etc., I think he was telling me that I was playing far too much golf!

Kate: you threw us off a bit when you mentioned your music taste, but I suppose even Green Day was inspired by The Beatles :-)

[chuck]

Ah, I see:>) The whole "retirement age" question is often undertaken with what one of my doctoral mentors used to call "a fatal loss of complexity." In other words, to make things simple and avoid complexity, the argument becomes meaningless. Sometimes, for example, we argue that raising the retirement age will solve the social security problem, but what other economic problems does it create? For example, it appears, currently, as if something like 5% unemployment is "systemic," i.e., we all benefit when there are a fair amount more workers than jobs (my own reading suggests that unemployment is actually much higher, but let's save that for another day). What would happen to unemployment if the retirement age where raised by a few years, for example? What obligations do we have when we create an economy in which we all benefit from having some unemployed? Well, I'd say we have an obligation to provide care for them at some level. Does this help or hurt the health care problem? and on and on it goes. I often feel that even our best economists have a very poor handle on what sorts of impacts these things have, though that should, by no means, preclude discussion of the issues:>)

[zero]

see, kate. you are younger than i am!

[zero]

so far, i'm the elder on the block of those who have revealed their age. does any privileges come with that?

[chuck]

Zero, yep!

[jerry]

Or should that be yep, Zero!