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Norbert O. Schedler (born March 30, 1933) is a Distinguished Emeritus University Professor of Philosophy and Founding Director of The Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas. == Education == Schedler received a B.A. in Classics from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO, in 1955. Concordia Seminary in those days was in deep theological turmoil, on the defensive against relativism, science, and secularism. Still, Schedler met with several young members of the faculty in their homes, where they talked about these ideas, especially the notion of "higher criticism," treating the Bible like any other text. Concordia's student bookstore became a liberal site on campus as Schedler, an employee, ordered books they were told not to read. The faculty eventually became aware of this, and took the bookstore over from the students. With fellow Concordia student Bob Smith, Schedler ventured into the classes at nearby secular Washington University beginning in 1955. He enrolled in a course called 'Ethics,' the first course not taught by the church. Schedler found the atheist professor a marvelous human being. He read works by Martin Buber and discovered that God was a process, entering into conversations with human beings: "And God changed his mind and repented" (Exodus 32:14). "And of course, that's a violation of everything I had ever learned. I mean, God's all knowing, right? God's omniscient, right? And God changed his mind? That can't be right." Back at Concordia pursuing master's work, Schedler began asking more difficult questions in class, which one of his professors asked him to refrain from doing. The professor told him that he could ask questions privately in his office because they embarrassed him. In a class on 'The Prophets' Schedler wrote a homily for which we was severely berated by the professor and the rest of the class. He vowed at that moment to refuse to do anything more in the class but attend. He took no tests and wrote no papers. If he flunked, he could not graduate. The faculty met, agreed to give him a D, and passed him on. He completed his Masters of Divinity in Theology at Concordia Seminary in 1958. For his thesis, Schedler wrote a Wittgensteinian defense of religious language under the supervision of Albert William Levi, S. Morris Eames, and Huston Smith. As part of his seminary training, Schedler served as a vicar at Christ Church, Washington Parish (Washington, D.C.), a position vacated by Martin Marty. This was a large, highly educated congregation, and Schedler described his preaching assignments as "stressful." He said later that he "took the job very seriously. I knew the stories of the people in the pews. You don't just write a sermon to titillate. You write it contextually because it is embedded in all of these sites, to care for all of these souls." Schedler loved teaching, and parishioners asked to get together and talk about world religions. One of them asked, "Why is Christianity superior to other religions?" a question Schedler reserved for the last class. A story on the class appeared in ''The Washington Post,'' which attracted the attention of the local community. Schedler knew nothing of the ''Post'' report, and on the last evening of the course, seven Buddhist monks in saffron robes walked into the church classroom. Schedler went through a whole assortment of feelings, from defensiveness to embarrassment to attraction to what they were saying, finally regretting that he could not be like them: "Regret is an interesting emotion, combining as it does both wish and denial. Regret is about affirmation: 'I wish in my next life to be like you.' But this is so often impossible because of the way we are enculturated." While managing Christ Church parish youth events he met the woman who would eventually become his wife, Carol Skeels. Skeels, the daughter of Norman and Betty Skeels of Miami and a journalist, followed him back to St. Louis and took a job teaching English. They have three children: Karen, Ruth Anne, and David. In 1959 Schedler enrolled at Princeton University after seeing the school's announcement of a new and selective Religion and Philosophy Ph.D. program in the journal ''Religion and Life''. Schedler intended to become a language philosopher, and he was enamored of Alfred North Whitehead, phenomenology, and existentialism. Paul Tillich's method of correlation became the major influence on his thinking. Schedler wrote his dissertation on the method of Austin Farrer and Ian Ramsey under religious scholar George F. Thomas at a time when the history of ideas approach to interpretation of texts characterized most of the faculty. He remembers that Thomas, to his credit, often "put up with my position, but did not agree with it." While completing his thesis, Schedler accepted a call to ministry in the parish of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, Cheltenham, in the Philadelphia suburbs. "Once I was out of Princeton, I went into a parish right outside of Philadelphia. And I wanted to do that because mother church educated me and I felt I owed her. I wanted to teach in a church-related school where I could help young men and young women deal with the questions that I'm sure were coming up when they confronted Darwin and Freud and linguistic philosophy, and existentialism and all that." Schedler led worship services, but also did experimental things like bringing in advisors from all walks of life - lawyers, psychiatrists, doctors, and accountants - to help parishioners better negotiate their lives. He mounted theater performances in the chancel and also religious plays. "My concern was teaching the gospel the good news in the contemporary world," he remembers. "I was not a rabble-rouser, but tried to help people find healthy ways to live." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Norbert Schedler」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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