Vive La Compagnie

A couple of weeks ago I learned that Dr. Harold O. J. Brown, was seriously ill. Last night he died. It's hard to summarize exactly what Joe meant to me over the past 6 or 7 years. Certainly a friend and in many ways a mentor, but I think the word that best describes the way I feel about Joe is "hero." The notion of heros seems a little antiquated in our modern time, but I think this might very well be one of the reasons Joe would have appreciated it.

He was the type of man with no edges. Nothing to grab hold of. No easy way to define him. In many ways he seemed medieval. Jousting, 13th Century German poetry, and awkward latin Proverbs, were all unusually familiar to him. But it would be entirely wrong to think of Joe as a misplaced medieval relic. It is much easier for me to think of him as timeless. He was more accutely aware of the political climate and zeitgeist of our times than any other person I've ever met. In fact, mere awareness is far too much of an understatement. He was extremely invovled and emotionally connected to a wide range of modern issues. Those that affected him most were sanctity of life issues. It was hard to have a conversation with Joe that didn't at least touch on abortion or the war in Iraq.

At times Joe seemed unapproachable. His intellectual pedigree was a bit intimidating and his emotions would occasionaly get the better of him, but for those who knew him well it was easy to see that he could have a conversation on almost any level about any subject. As for his verbal lashes, they were always directed toward ideas; almost never at people. One of the many, many proverbial sayings I picked up from Joe was "tolerance toward people is magnanimous, but tolerance toward an idea known to be wrong is cowardice, a lie, and a crime." As far as I can tell he lived this maxim pretty well. He hated immorality. He loved people.

Greatly respected, easy to talk to, and abounding in love. He will be missed by many. He will be missed by me. I'm proud to have knowm him.

Though he has left us, his company will undoubtedly live for many more generations through his friendships. Vive la compagnie! (make sure you pump you fist when you say it)


Here are a few verses from a poem Ann Ross Cousins wrote in rememberance of the death of Samuel Rutherford. Some of the verses were turned into the hymn "The Sands of Time are Sinking." It was a hymn Joe was very familiar with and its words seem very appropriate to me. Although Joe's battles were not exactly the same as Samuel Rutherford's, they both shared a resolute opposition to immorality and a love for Christian fellowship.

The sands of time are sinking,
The dawn of Heaven breaks,
The summer morn I've sighed for,
The fair sweet morn awakes:
Dark, dark hath been the midnight,
But dayspring is at hand,
And glory-glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's land.

The King there in His beauty,
Without a veil, is seen:
It were a well-spent journey,
Though seven deaths lay between:
The lamb, with his fair army,
doth on Mount Zion stand;
And glory-glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's land.

Oh! I am my Beloved's,
And my Beloved's mine!
He brings a poor vile sinner
Into His 'house of wine:'
I stand upon His merit,
I know no other stand,
Not e'en where glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's land!

I have borne scorn and hatred,
I have borne wrong and shame,
Earth's proud ones have reproach'd me,
For Christ's thrice blessed name:
Where God His seal set fairest
The've stampd ther foulest brand;
But judgment shines like noonday
In Immanuel's land.

They've summoned me before them,
But there I may not come, -
My Lord says, 'Come up hither,'
My Lord says, 'welcome home!'
My kingly King, at His white throne,
My presence doth command,
Where glory - glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's Land

This is an email I received from Matt Miller this morning. It sums up some of his accomplishments better than I've done.

As most of you have probably learned by now, Dr. Brown went to be with the Lord last night, ushered in with the voices of family and friends gathered around his bedside singing "Holy Holy Holy". When I heard the news this morning, my initial response was one of great relief, glad to know that the suffering he has borne in his body (and no less in his soul!) is now past. But I then went into the church's sanctuary and wept for half an hour, saddened by the thought that I shall not see Joe again for the rest of my earthly life, grateful to the Lord for his labors and his influence, and humbled by the sense that those of us who sat under him must now carry on -- and amplify, by God's grace and power -- the work that is no longer Joe's to bear.

Joe's lifework was two-pronged, as far as I was aware of it. First, he faithfully guarded and passed down "the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) in his teaching, writing, and -- perhaps where he was most persistent and effective -- conversation. Few men in his generation have had such a grasp of the history of the Church and her battles. Joe not only knew the struggles of the times, he knew them in their original languages: the Latin Fathers and Medieval Doctors, the German Lutherans and Pietists, the French Calvinists, and the Protestant and Counter-Reformation Poles. And as a professor he did his students the grand favor of distilling this massive body of knowledge into pithy and memorable phrases: "from the early to medieval eras, the Church changed from the Company of the Saved to the Salvation Co." Most of what I know about church history, I learned from Joe.

Second, his heart was tender to the plight of the unborn. For those of us born after 1973 (as were most of his students in Charlotte), and consequently anesthetized to some degree to the reality of abortion in American life, Joe's weeping moral outrage over this practice was a vivid reminder that abortion is, quite simply, not normal. "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness' (Isa. 5:20). With his pieces in "Christianity Today" in the mid-70's, Joe became one of the first leading voices to cry out against abortion. Later, he turned his efforts to counseling women to carry their babies to term and give them up for adoption instead of aborting the fetus (and, as Joe would remind us, 'fetus' is simply Latin for 'baby' -- he was always concerned that we not be fooled by language games [Poller: "Are you pro-choice?" Joe's Answer: "Pro-choice for what? The right to bear arms? Yes, absolutely!"]). Last year when he was quite downcast in Boone, wondering if his life's efforts had been in vain, I asked him how many women per year decided to give up their baby for adoption after coming through one of these counseling centers. "Oh, about eighty- to one-hundred thousand a year," he admitted. Now in heaven, I think Joe knows that his life had value to the tune of literally hundreds of thousands of lives!

So he is gone to the Lord, and we his students are still here. Joe was not teaching us for the sake of teaching; rather, he was training us to, in the words of one of his favorite hymns, "Stand up, stand up for Jesus." It's with tears in my eyes that I realize, and say, that the general has been taken from the battlefield, and it's time for us to take his place. May we guard and pass down this faith, and may we stand up and push forward on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. May we be found faithful.

And Joe would be upset if we worked hard and never paused to sing. "Gaudeamus igitur... vivant professores!"

And by way of valediction to this select group, "vive la compagnie,"

Matt