Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Greek Emeritus Gerald Hawthorne (who taught at Wheaton from 1953-1995) was featured in the June/July 1991 issue.

1951. Years ago, now. More than half the span of my life ago, to be exact. Certainly a very long time for one single idea to have been on my mind. But that is the case, nonetheless.

In the fall of 1951 a seed-thought dropped into the furrows of my mind. It germinated quickly, and sprouted somewhat prematurely in the form of my master’s thesis, “The Significance of the Holy Spirit in the Life of Christ,” submitted in 1954.

But my interest in this topic did not end when I handed my thesis over to the librarian, nor did it diminish with the passing of the years. Quite the contrary, its sturdy roots burrowed deep within my thinking; so that while I was busy doing other things, it was always there, taking shape as the years passed. My spare time for reading was taken up with books that focused on this topic. When I was not thinking about more immediate, more pressing matters, my mind turned without prompting to concentrate on this idea, striving to understand ever more fully why it was that the Spirit of God played such an important role in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

The idea that has now come to full term, was at first frightening to me, and then exhilarating. Frightening, because it seemed foreign and “unorthodox.” Even the teaching of my church seemed to so emphasize the divinity of Jesus that it was difficult for me to think of him as genuinely human. Exhilarating, because I discovered a new understanding of and appreciation for the person of our Lord, as well as an ever-deepening gratitude to him. The New Testament writers, while never surrendering the truth of the divinity of Jesus, nevertheless championed the reality of his humanity. Thus, whatever else one may say about Jesus (that he was divine, the eternal Son, God incarnate), it is also necessary for that person to say that Jesus was a human being in the fullest sense of this term, lacking nothing that makes a person human, with the exception of sin.

But how can this be? How can one he God and human simultaneously–fully God and fully human? The answer I have been driven to by the force of the New Testament evidence is this: without giving up any attribute of divinity, the eternal Son, before time began, in obedience to the Father, made a conscious decision to completely “encapsulate” his divinity within the confines of humanity. With his birth in Bethlehem, he began life precisely as any other human being begins life.

I now see that–although Jesus was indeed unique, extraordinary, God become human–in the incarnation he did not know what he knew, think what he thought, teach what he taught, say what he said, or do what he did by virtue of his own inherent divinity. Rather, he did so as a genuine human being, one filled unstintingly with and empowered by the Holy Spirit to think and speak and act as he did. The Spirit, the wonderful gift of the Father, was at work in every phase of the life of Jesus–creating his body from the substance of Mary, giving him gifts and graces that protected him and provided for him in the years of his boyhood and youth, enlightening his mind so that he might understand his unique relationship with the Father and his special mission in life, filling him at his baptism, leading him into the arena of conflict with the devil and assisting him in overcoming that adversary, guiding him throughout his life, enabling him to preach and teach with authority, infusing him with the power to do his mighty works, strengthening him to face and accept his own mortality, being powerfully present with him in his death, and working mightily in raising him from the dead.

Now if this is so, then Jesus is not only our Savior, our Lord to be worshiped and adored; he is also our example to be followed. The penultimate (if not the ultimate) significance of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus was to demonstrate clearly what God is able to do through a human being wholly yielded to his Spirit. The Spirit that Jesus depended on throughout his entire life to enable him to burst the boundaries of his human limitations, the Spirit that helped Jesus to overcome temptations, that strengthened him in weakness, that aided him in the hard job of taking on himself the hurts of the hurting, that infused him with a power to accomplish the impossible, that brought him through death and into resurrected life, is the very same Spirit that Jesus now freely shares with those who in faith and love choose to follow him today (John 20:22; Acts 1:8; Rom. 8:9-11).

This idea has revolutionized my too-limited way of thinking about Jesus. It has also been a life-changing idea, showing me that the Holy Spirit is present and active today, not to make life rich and comfortable for me, hut to equip me so that I might fulfill God’s mission for me in the world–a mission of helping, serving, healing, restoring, giving, and loving. A mission of binding up the broken, of being just and striving for justice, of proclaiming the good news that God is King, and that he has acted to save and transform people in and through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.

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Dr. Gerald F. Hawthorne was a professor of Greek at Wheaton College for 42 years. Having received his bachelor’s degree in Greek and his master’s degree in theology from Wheaton, he earned his doctorate from the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago in 1969. He and his wife Jane Elliot Hawthorne ’53 have three children, all of whom are Wheaton graduates. He is the author of or contributor to several books, including Philippians, in the Word Biblical Commentary Series; Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation: Studies in Honor of Merrill C. Tenney; and The Presence and the Power: The Significance of the Holy Spirit in the Life and Ministry of Jesus (Word, 1991). Gerald Hawthorne died on August 4, 2010.

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Business and Economics Bruce Howard was featured in the Summer 1993 issue.

Depending on who you listen to, the U.S. economy is poised for recovery, recession, significant expansion, or disaster. No one really knows what the economic future will hold, but what we do know is that definite economic challenges face our society today.

One challenge is in the area of productivity. Productivity gains enable a society to increase its standard of living. In 1990, U.S. workers produced, on average, $46,000 worth of goods and services per worker, 25% more than the average Japanese worker and 35% more than the average German worker.

Our growth in productivity, however, has slowed considerably. Over the 35 years from 1937 to 1973, productivity increased by an average of 3% each year. But during the 15-year period from 1973 to 1989, productivity only increased, on average, by .9% a year.

One little-known factor that explains this slowdown in productivity growth is the literacy of our work force. Many estimates show that one in five American adults is functionally illiterate. At least 40 developed nations today have higher functional literacy rates than the United States.

To be illiterate is to be economically disenfranchised. Consider the following: in the decade of the 1980s, college graduates experienced a 16% increase in their real wages. High school graduates saw their real wages fall by 1% and high school dropouts experienced a 12% decline in their real wages. In 1980, a college graduate 10 years into his career was earning 31% more than a contemporary with only a high school diploma. But by 1990, that differential had soared to 86%. This disparity in income is reflected in income taxes. In 1991, Americans with incomes that put them in the highest 5% paid 44.2% of federal income taxes. The top 20% by income paid 72.3% of the federal income tax. The lower 40% by income paid only 1.7% of the federal income tax, mainly because they are generating so little personal income.

We are moving from a manufacturing economy to a “mental” economy. Most of the value that is added to products today is the result of people using their intellect rather than their craftsmanship. Decades ago, people began leaving the farms and moving to factories because that was where the high-paying, value creating jobs were. We had become so good at farming that we just didn’t need as many people to produce all the food we needed.

I was recently in a factory where I watched men and women take plastic caps out of a box and place them on a conveyor belt. They performed this task eight hours a day for a wage of $17.00 an hour. Ten feet away, a million-dollar robot intricately wove and soldered hair-thin wires into a computer for electronic ignitions. What will the future hold for these men and women in a free-trading global economy where billions of others would gladly do the same job for a fraction of their $17.00 wage?

To cope with the changing economic horizon, we need to recognize and deal with the challenge of economically empowering the people in our society so they can participate in the value-creating activities of the next century. One tangible thing that we can do is help people learn to read and develop other basic skills so that they can be full participants in the economy.

Societies today need to focus on the economics of change. In 1960, 25% of the people in France lived or worked on a farm. Today, that number has decreased to less than 6% and continues to fall, Think as well of the enormous changes in the political economies around the world. As people in the world today try to cope with the pace and scope of change, they search for something that is stable, trustworthy, and utterly dependable.

What an opportunity for the Gospel! Christianity offers the glue that can keep a life and world from falling apart. The hope of Christians is based on that which is eternal and unchanging. It is a message for our time; it is a message for all time.

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Bruce Howard is Professor of Business and Economics. Prior to joining Wheaton’s faculty in 1980, he was senior auditor for the Northern Trust Company in Chicago. He received his B.A. from Wheaton and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University. Dr. Howard’s current research explores the impact of interest rates on consumer behavior with respect to the use of debt to fund purchases of consumer durables and housing. He has an interest on the impact of taxation at the state and local level. For the last several years he has been studying the historical underpinnings of societal values as they relate to ordering of economic activity. In conjunction with his teaching career, Dr. Howard maintains an active professional association with Tyndale House Publishers in matters of accounting, taxation and employee benefits. He also has work experience in health care administration and banking. In recent years, Dr. Howard has traveled to Kazakhstan to teach and present papers at Kazak-American Free University and University of Kazakhstan.