The Saint Hilarious Herald: Southern Seminary Students Build Shrine to Tom Schreiner

The Saint Hilarious Herald: Southern Seminary Students Build Shrine to Tom Schreiner
Students at the Southern Seminary Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky have begun building shrines and icons to one of their most beloved teachers, Professor Thomas R. Schreiner, the renowned biblical scholar and pastor.

Thomas R. Schreiner is James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation and Associate Dean of the School of Theology. Schreiner, a specialist in the study of the Apostle Paul, is the author or editor of several books including, Romans, in the Baker Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament; Interpreting the Pauline Epistles; The Law and Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law; The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance and Assurance; Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives of Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace; Paul, and especially his well-known volume Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology. Schreiner is  not only a first-class scholar, he is also one of the most popular professors on campus, and even finds time to preach regularly at Kenwood Baptist Church.

There is nothing strange about professors being popular with students, but Schreiner’s popularity went from stratrospheric heights to positively heavenly. A group of students, led by Billy-Joe Wachowski III of Lexington, have started venerating Professor Schreiner as a living Baptist saint. Billy-Joe and his friends are convinced that Schreiner’s textbooks not only contain biblical doctrines, but impart supernatural wisdom to students, and even emit divine healing powers. The Saint Hilarius Herald’s NASCAR and religion correspondent Michel Vogel went to Louisville to find out what all the fuss was about. He spoke to Billy-Joe in Southern Seminary’s on-campus BBQ house.

Billy-Joe chewed down a family size portion of pork ribs and a gallon of ice tea, and then related his story to Vogel: “One day right before an exam for my Romans class I went totally cray cray, I lost the plot, I couldn’t remember a thing. I couldn’t remember how many chapters were in Romans, who wrote Romans, or anything about Romans. My mind went blank and I panicked. So there in the hallway I prayed, and after a few seconds, nothing happened, brain still empty, zip, nada. I was so nervous and anxious, I was sweating like a Duke grad at a feminist convention, folks were asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t speak. So I just picked up my of copy of Tom Schreiner’s Romans commentary and gently tapped it against my head as I prayed, ‘Lord help me remember.’ And then, all of sudden, with each tap, memories came flooding back, I could see the entire Greek text of Romans in front me like it was an open book, sentence diagrams flashed before my eyes, and bibliographies were downloaded into my head. With each tap of Prof Schreiner’s book on my head, I got smarter and smarter, until I was knocking that thing on my forehead like I was headbutting  an overly amorous moose. And it worked, I calmed down, I took the exam, and got an A triple plus. I normally gets C’s, so this was a miracle. Then I told everyone my story, and word got out.”

Word indeed got out, soon hundreds of Southern Seminary students were banging Schreiner’s books against their heads or just touching his lecture notes in hope of securing a blessing before exams. As a result, the average GPA of Southern students in New Testament studies jumped to a whopping 4.0 up from a previously modest 2.9. Sale of Schreiner’s books soared as everyone on campus purchased every book they could get their hands on. Student were not only carrying the books around in their bags, they even began attaching them to chains and wearing them around their necks as jewelry. One young man nearly had his ear torn off when he tried attaching Schreiner’s New Testament Theology to his earing. Soon there was only standing room  in Schreiner’s lectures,  students cued up for hours asking to be anointed with oil by him, and a riot broke out at a nearby Lifeway store over the last copy of his recent book on Hebrews.

It was then that Billy-Joe, with the permission of the SBTS administration, built a small shrine to Tom Schreiner in an unused office on the south side of the campus. It is a place where students could come to receive the shrine of Schreiner blessing to help them with their studies. Students  light candles, thank Jesus for Professor Schreiner, touch his books, and can be anointed with holy oil by one of Professor Schreiner’s teaching assistants. “We believe Professor Schreiner is a living saint,” Billy-Joe said from the small and crowded room, “God is blessing us students with grades and achievements through Professor Schreiner that are just not humanly possible. That’s fact.” Which is why Billy-Joe and a number of his friends launched a campaign to have Tom Schreiner canonized as a Baptist saint and to have his iconic image erected in Southern Seminary’s beautiful chapel.

Billy-Joe and his wife Xanthe at Southern Seminary’s Tom Schreiner Shrine of Exegetical Remembrance.

Professor Brian Vickers, Southern Seminary’s Vice President for Baptist Saints, Relics, and Iconography said that we should not be surprised at what is happening at Southern. “There is a long tradition of Baptist saint veneration. From John the Baptist, to Lottie Moon, to Johnny Cash, to Mike Huckabee, we’ve always believed that certain Baptist believers were given special spiritual gifts, that our communion with them is more powerful than death, and that God still guides us through their example and the relics they leave behind. For instance, I keep an autographed Johnny Cash guitar in my office which I use as a prayer aid, and Southern Seminary’s President, Al Mohler, never preaches without a cigar case full of Billy Graham’s toenail clippings in his pocket, not for luck, for divine empowerment.” When asked if this was controversial Prof Vickers acknowledged that it was, “Yes, some folks accuse us of popery and worshipping men, but Southern Seminary has two theological distinctives, Reformed theology and iconodore liturgy. And we’re proud of of them, very proud!”

Kenwood Baptist Church is in the process of changing it’s name to Saint Thomas the Exegete in honor of Professor Schreiner. Billy-Joe will be leading a delegation to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual conference to campaign for the election of Prof. Schreiner as a living Baptist saint. Already former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush have co-authored a letter sent to both the Roman Pontiff and the Patriarch of Constantinople to secure their recognition of Schreiner’s canonization, and initial reports suggest that both the Catholic and Orthodox churches are warmly disposed to recognizing Schreiner as a Baptist saint. The decision of course rests with the SBC, but if the students at Southern Seminary have anything to say about, Saint Thomas the Exegete could prove to be the most popular Baptist saint in SBC history.

Professor “Saint” Tom “The Exegete” Schreiner will also be visiting Australia in May-June of 2016, and delivering the prestigious Leon Morris Lecture at Ridley College on Wed 1 June, see the website for details (FYI, this bit is true!)

Credits

Bishop photo from Phillipmartin.info

Matt and Erin Browne for posing in the make-shift Schreiner shrine.

Icon by Aaron Long of SEBTS.

Thomas R. Schreiner photo from Southern Seminary