March 27, 2005
Dr. Andrew N. Woodring
It's about time that I published another eulogy. This one will be shorter and less personal than most of my others have been, mostly because my relationship with and feelings for Dr. Woodring are more professional and less personal.
That said, both I and the entire Honors program owes an enormous, unpayable debt to Dr. Andrew Woodring. He welded us together and gave us an inspiration for what we really wanted in this program. It was in his class that nearly all of us found a professor we loved and admired. It's no coincidence that Dr. Woodring would be an almost perfect member of the Shadow Council, sharing many of its attributes ... including one that most people don't see. Dr. Woodring can be extremely sarcastic and enormously funny and very cynical ... but he is also a marvelous professor, a deeply committed Christian, and a vastly wise man. He can speak gently as well as cuttingly, he can heal as well as wound, and he can build up as well as tear down.
I loved his class "Biblical Worldview." We all did. From the very first day, we enjoyed going to that class. It's hard to explain why (and it's been a few years now) ... one of the reasons we loved it is because Dr. Woodring was so different! He has a way of presenting his lectures that made us learn, made is interested and fascinated with the material. He shares with the SC a keen eye for BS, and cuts as much as possible out. I remember looking forward to his class more than anything other class my first semester.
I think his greatest gift to the Honors program was his style of conducting devotions and, most of all, the way he brought the entire class together in prayer. In his class, we all prayed for one another. We all shared prayer requests. There was a unity there that first year we've never had since (though we've approximated it). Not only members of the SC, but nearly everyone united in prayer. Through prayer requests, we discovered who we all were, what we cared about, and what was going on in one another's lives. Dr. Woodring deeply challenged all of us to think seriously about the Bible and a Christian Worldview. He was great.
I've had him in only one class since that first semester - for Only Inklings, which was team-taught by Dr. Woodring and Dr. Annie Olson. It was no coincidence that, to my knowledge, that class is the single most popular, well-thought-of class in the entire Honors program. We really learned in that class, we had so much fun in that class ... and presenting our papers the next semester was awesomely fun and cool. Getting to visit our professors' homes and hold class there and talk about the Inklings was delicious ... absolutely delicious. I thank God for that class.
Sadly, that's almost all I can say about Dr. Woodring. Unlike many of my wiser friends, I really haven't visited him many times in the intervening years. I really haven't talked with him very much. I think I've gone personally to see him (for any extended amount of time) only once. And I'm dreadfully poorer for that. Dr. Woodring and the classes he's taught have been the best single gift to the Honors program that I can think of.
Oh - I nearly forgot! On one occasion (that I was there, anyway), Dr. Woodring spoke in chapel. He gave an exegesis of a passage in Psalms (one I'm sorry to say I've forgotten). As he gave it, and ever afterwards, I've thought to myself that "this is exegesis." Remember what I said about Jonathan Wilson? It's much the same feeling, only about the Bible. He used the exegetical tools we studied to actually unearth something not easily seen from a passage - something that was actually legitimately there. Most of the uses I've seen of biblical exegesis have either uncovered nothing new, or engage in biblical sophistry that caters to whatever political persuasion the exegetor has in mind. I've gotten so sick of historical context and word studies, because most of the time I've seen them used have been in an attempt to weasel around an uncomfortable passage, something like a lawyer or a politician attempting to get a clearly guilty person off on a technicality. But Dr. Woodring did it right. He did it well. And it was delicious.
To Dr. Woodring:
Thank you so much, sir. You gave us in the Honors program a tremendously precious gift - each others' prayers. You taught us about the Bible in a wonderful way ... thanks. You helped teach us about the Inklings in just as wonderful a way ... thanks. I've appreciated what you did so much in these last few years. I wish I knew you better. Thanks for being a blessing. To me, to your classes, and to the Honors program as a whole. It's meant more than I can say. Thank you. Thank you so much. God bless you.
Sincerely yours,
~ Daniel Leatherwood
