Scholer, David M. 1938-2008 (David Milton Scholer)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born July 24, 1938, in Rochester, MN; died of colorectal cancer, August 22, 2008, in Pasadena, CA. Minister, biblical scholar, educator, and author. Scholer was ordained an American Baptist minister in 1966, but he did not practice his vocation in the pulpit. He took his mission into the classroom as a professor of New Testament studies, beginning at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts in 1969, passing through the Midwest, and finally settling at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he joined the faculty in 1994. There, instead of preaching to a congregation that could fit into the sanctuary of a church, he taught hundreds of students how the New Testament could be interpreted to include women in the leadership of the church and to extend tolerance to all believers, regardless of personal or lifestyle differences. Scholer taught biblical studies for more than forty years, but to many of his students the lessons that will linger longest in their memories will be the ones he delivered after 2002. That was the year he began to teach by his own actions how to live with cancer and how to love life, regardless of its challenges. Scholer continued to teach almost to the last day of his life; he lost his battle against cancer only two days before the commencement of his formal retirement. Scholer did not publish his life lessons, but a recording was made of a sermon that he delivered to his fellow church members at the First Baptist Church of Pasadena, California. He called it "Prisoners of Hope: Living with Cancer." Scholer did publish within his field of early Christianity and New Testament studies. His books include The Caring God: Biblical Models of Discipleship (1989), Gnosticism in the Early Church (1993), and Women in Early Christianity (1993).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2008, p. B7.