David M. Scholer, 70; Bible scholar advocated women in ministry, turned battle with cancer into testament of faith
David M. Scholer, a popular Fuller Theological Seminary professor and articulate advocate for women in the ministry who inspired others by showing them how to live with incurable cancer, died Friday at his Pasadena home. He was 70.
Scholer was diagnosed in 2002 with colorectal cancer. Even as he underwent harsh treatments and the cancer spread to other parts of his body, he continued to lecture and teach, turning his struggle with the disease into a testament for his faith that he shared in the classroom and from the pulpit.
A New Testament scholar, Scholer began every course by telling students he had terminal cancer. He hoped it would help them understand the debilities he could not hide: the once-booming voice made raspy by chemotherapy and other medicines, and the weakness and pain that forced him to lecture sitting down.
In 2005, he spoke about his experience with the disease to fellow parishioners at First Baptist Church of Pasadena in a sermon that often was as frank as it was moving, exploring his physical, emotional and spiritual challenges through personal anecdote, poetry and Scripture.
"Not all theologians benefit from their scholarship. There is a divorce between what they do as scholars and how they live as mere mortals," said William Pannell, a senior professor of preaching at Fuller who knew Scholer for 30 years. "I thought David did a wonderful job of integrating his understanding of life in God and God in life."
A native of Rochester, Minn., Scholer was born on July 24, 1938, and was ordained in the American Baptist Church USA in 1966. An authority on Gnosticism, he earned his doctorate at Harvard Divinity School in 1980. He taught at three other seminaries before joining the Fuller faculty in 1994.
His course "Women, the Bible and the Church" was one of Fuller's most popular electives. Scholer showed how the New Testament could be read to support women as authority figures in the church. He delivered a message of tolerance and egalitarianism, encouraging skeptics to listen to the stories of women and homosexuals who felt the calling.
"I've had students tell me the course was a life-changing experience," Fuller President Richard Mouw said. "In our evangelical world, we take the authority of the Bible seriously. Traditionally, women have been excluded from ordination and things of that sort. David really took the text seriously and led people through it to show them you can support God's call to women in all calls to leadership, including ordination. That was a major contribution."
