John Templeton (1912-2008)
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Sir John Templeton--the billionaire philathropist, PCUSA elder, and founder of the Templeton Prize to foster "progress in religion" and the discovery of "spiritual realities"--has died. Here is the NYT eulogy.
posted by JT at Tuesday, July 08, 2008
16 Comments:
The Case for Faith by Strobel contains an interview with Charles Templeton, not John Templeton. Charles died in 2001.
Jeff and Danielle,
D'oh! Thanks for the correction. I changed the post; sorry about the mistake. At least I had the last names right! :)
JT
Wow. I just applied for a job at the foundation the other day. How will this all shake down?
If what the NYT reporter, Robert McFadden, says of Templeton is true, what an incredibly sad testimony of a man who could have done so much more for the kingdom of Christ.
"Contending that almost nothing of God was actually “known” through Scriptures and theology, he founded the Templeton Prize in 1972 to foster “progress in religion” — an idea that included philosophy and exemplary conduct relating to love, gratitude, forgiveness and creativity."
"[Templeton] bestowed much of his fortune on spiritual thinkers and innovators: Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, the physicist Freeman Dyson, the philosopher Charles Taylor and a pantheon of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus.
What a total waste of a life.
Sad, really.
daryl, I am curious--do you know anything else about Sir John than what you have read in the NYT obit? It seems to me that you may be a bit hasty to declare someone as innovative as Templeton to be a "waste." I wonder, do you own any mutual funds or a 401K plan?
His son, John. Jr., has led the foundation for a number of years and is an evangelical. I think he is a member of the PCA. So, perhaps, his estate will do much for the kingdom of Christ.
Phillip,
If all he could do, while claiming to be a Christian, is improve someones 401K all the while insisting that the Bible isn't reliable for knowledge of God and that Hinduism etc. is a good option...then yes, it was a waste.
I read something once about he being a fool who gains the whole world and loses his soul.
I have no way of knowing how orthodox his theology was (although having followed his career from a distance, I find myself surprised by the NYT characterization of it) but do not hestitate to defend him as someone who actually sought to translate theological truth into his investment practices and had the courage to confront mainstream economic and cultural thinking.
see, that is precisely the point: if you say "if all he could do was X, then his life was a "total waste" then you are operating off of a completely false premise.
That is not all he could do in his 95 years of life and in declaring his life a "total waste" you have reduced a really remarkable man (by all accounts) not only to the sentences of his obituary but to a selected few statements at that!
Along with Ray, I am not in the business of measuring a man's beliefs against a standard of "orthodoxy" but it seems to me that the law of love is broken when, upon hearing of someone's passing, we malign them and their memory as a "total waste."
"I am not in the business of measuring a man's beliefs against a standard of "orthodoxy" "
Well, as a Christian, I think we all have to be.
very well daryl, point taken. Do tell, if you will, to what end is this assessment? That is, what do you gain from declaring the life of John Templeton to be a "total waste?"
Excellent question Phillip.
Before I answer, I'll just add this bit in response to your first response to me.
I confess that my response was based entirely on the eulogy in the original post. What I should have said was "If the eulogy is an accurate representation of the Sir John's life, then what a waste."
I am sorry for that. The eulogy could, of course, be incorrect, leaving me saying his life was a waste, with no justification for saying it.
To this last question...
What do I gain? Nothing directly, of course. I wan't looking for gain. But we all gain something in making an assessment of a life, if only as a cautionary tale for those who see mere material gain, for oneself or for others (or any other philanthropic endeavour for that matter), at the expense of Biblical truth, as something to be impressed by.
Given what the eulogy said I'm not clear as to why characterizing his life as a waste is a bad thing.
Again I refer you to the parable of Lazarus. Why was the rich man's life considered a waste? Because he lost his soul. That, in itself, made all the rest of his life irrelevant.
Very well, I am glad to let the conversation go in a different direction if others are willing to take it there. To your point, I am well aware of the parable of Lazarus and thank you for referring my attention to it once again.
I refer you simply to the law of love and am trying to make the point (albeit indirectly) that one's life cannot be reduced to what is written in a newspaper. If that is true (and, empirically, it is) then it seems to me imprudent to make wholesale declarations concerning a long, illustrious, and undoubtedly complex life.
Phillip,
I didn't intend to come across as though I was schooling you on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. My apologies if that was how I came off.
No doubt I'm impossibly blind but I'm not sure how the "law of love" is being broken here. Must we speak only good of the dead? May we not speak of those things that are not good?
I was, after all, speaking of a stranger to strangers, I wan't speaking to his family. (Although would that his family would see it that way and repent so that they would not waste their lives)
Oops. I read the original post on my RSS feed, including the itnerview with Charles Templeton. Anyone could've made that mistake--and it was fascinating to read anyway. Thanks for posting that dialogue--even if it was a mix-up.
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