Paul Simmons: The Witness to Life
By William Powell Tuck
Paul Simmons, the noted Baptist ethicist, died on March 17, 2019. How do you describe a life so well-spent as that of Paul Simmons in a few words? Reared in rural west Tennessee, where he was born on July 18, 1936, he first encountered his education in the Christian faith in a one-room Baptist church. As a young man, he felt a call to the ministry and attended Southwest Baptist Junior College and graduated from Union University and received his M.Div. and Th.M degrees from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
It was at Southeastern Seminary that I first met Paul in the late 1950’s. We roomed next door to each other in the old Hunter Dorm. We were both single then. We have remained close friends since those early seminary days. He also met his future wife, Betty, at Southeastern Seminary. Later, Paul received his Ph.D. from Southern seminary with an emphasis in ethics under Henlee Barnette, who was his mentor and later colleague in teaching at Southern Seminary. Paul would do postdoctoral studies later at Princeton Theological Seminary and Cambridge University in England.
His ministerial career included serving as pastor of Edmonton Baptist Church in Edmonton, Kentucky, First Baptist Church, Liberty N. C., and New Hope Baptist Church, Dyer, Tennessee. While teaching at Southern, he was an interim pastor in several churches and preached in many others. He also was minister to youth at First Baptist Church in Raleigh, N. C. when he was a student at Southeastern Seminary. When I was the interim pastor at First Raleigh several years ago, I invited Paul back to deliver some lectures on ethics. One of the church members, whose children had been in the youth program when Paul was there, asked me, “Is Paul as handsome today as he was then?” I assured her he was.
For 23 years, Paul taught Christian Ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. It is difficult to measure the positive impact his teaching had on the thousands of students who sat in his classes and did graduate work under him. Students spoke about his willingness to tackle and discuss the most controversial and difficult ethical issues of the day. One former student wrote about the strong influence Paul had on him and that his passing had left a hole in his heart. Wayne Hagar, who had done Ph.D. work in New Testament and Ethics under Paul, said that Paul was “friend, professor, scholar and true Christian.” He talked about Paul’s compassion to him during the illness of his wife, Joy, and after her death. Bob Browning sent me an email that read: “Most days, I sat in Paul’s class grinning and nodding my head in approval as he expressed a perspective on life that fed my spirit. He was thoughtful, logical, compassionate, inclusive, healing and refreshing. I am grateful for the many ways he built bridges of goodwill, understanding, hope and reconciliation. I cannot begin to imagine the full price he paid to remain faithful.”
For years, fundamentalists trustees tried to fire Paul because of his stand on legalized abortion and other ethical views with which they disagreed. They tried to force him to take a severance package and be silent, but he refused to accept options they presented which he believed were ways they wanted to silence him. He said, “My voice is not for sale no matter the pressures from trustees, convention leaders or administration.”
After showing a video on human sexuality in one of his classes, which had been used in other classes, some ultra-conservative students protested, and the trustees used this flimsy excuse to call for his dismal. When the administration sided with the trustees, Paul felt betrayed and submitted his resignation effective December 31, 1992.
Following this, Paul went into what he described as an “exile” which lasted for several years. This exile, he said, became a time of reflection and transition for him. He found freedom in exile and kept his voice. During this time, he was invited to teach as an adjunct professor at the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary and, in 1994, was offered a position in a secular university, the University of Louisville, where he found freedom to teach that was both challenging and productive. He soon rose to be a Clinical Professor of Medical Ethics and adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Louisville and taught there for the next 20 years. There, he not only taught medical students, but made hospital rounds with them to observe and instruct them in proper ethical behavior with patients. During these years, Paul produced some of his most significant contributions through lectures, writings, board memberships and as a witness for legal cases. His books included Faith and Health: Religion, Science and Public Policy, The Southern Baptist Tradition: Religious Belief and Human Care Decisions, and Freedom of Conscience: A Baptist/Humanist Dialogue. While at Southern, he had written three books, Birth and Death: Bioethical Decision Making, Issues in Christian Ethics, and Growing Up with Sex. Over the years, he contributed at least a hundred articles to books and scholarly journals. His curriculum vita, by the way, was 22 pages long.
Paul walked as a giant among ethical scholars; but to me, he was my closest friend for over 60 years. We began with rooms next door at seminary and with my office beside his in faculty row at Southern Seminary when I taught there. We often engaged in theological discussions long into the night, solving theological problems or catching up on the latest “whatever.” While we did not always agree, we were never disagreeable but always respectful of each other’s views. I invited him to hold a revival in my student church and to lead spiritual emphases and ethical discussions in the various churches where I served as pastor. When playing “pick-up” basketball games with him, he played against me like it was a March Madness contest. He was always a competitor in sports, as those who played tennis with him know. He loved to tell corny jokes and to tease. Our families became close through the years. Our children spoke about going to visit their “cousins,” when we went to see the Simmons. We shared many meals together, especially at Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays and Kentucky Derby days. Emily and I attended Actor’s Theater monthly with Paul and Betty for the 15 years we lived in Louisville. Paul would always have a small piece of chocolate to share. We attended football games together, walked the “Yellow Brick Road” at the Wizard of Oz Park in the North Carolina mountains, shared a small house as families on vacation at Wrightsville Beach and, in the mountains, cranked out home-made ice cream, and just loved to talk and talk.
Through the years, Paul and Betty cared for Brian, their son, with his special needs. During Paul’s health issues over the past several years, Betty, Brent, Connie, Catherine and Miguel lovingly attended to him up to his final stay in the hospital. It’s hard to believe that the last chapter of his life is closed. But his legacy will live on not only through family and friends, but through his many students at Southern Seminary and at the Louisville Medical School. We will long remember his sharp mind, his challenges to shallow thinking and cliché religion, his confronting religious narrowness, bigotry, prejudice, his battle for religious and academic freedom, and the willingness to deal with the most controversial bioethical and social issues like abortion, euthanasia, genetic problems, women’s liberation, the artificial heart, the gay issue, the separation of church and state, and many others. He received many honors for his work. These included being listed in Who’s Who in Religion and being the first recipient of the Dr. David Gunn Award, presented by the Kentucky Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
Paul wrote a dedication memorial for Henlee Barnette in his book, Faith and Health. I believe that it is a perfect summary of Paul’s life as well. See if you do not agree. “Teacher and professor extraordinaire, mentor, friend and colleague, who thought it more important to be prophetic than to remain safely conservative; more important to seek truth than to settle for comfortable platitudes and more important to be inclusive toward the different and despised than to join the ranks of the powerful who exploit the vulnerable and make bigotry an article of faith.” Paul had a love for faith, teaching, truth and people. In one of his sermons, “To Live is to Love,” he expressed his view of love. “The final affirmation is this: to live is to love; only as we love do we live. ‘God is love,’ wrote John, ‘and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him’ (v 16). Only as one participates in God’s life of love, does one live, according to John. The ethical imperative is driven home. As God is love, so we must be loving…Thus, if we are to live, if we are to have ‘everlasting life,’ we must love. To fail to love is to die; to love is to live.” Paul lived his life seeking to follow that imperative of love for God and others. So, now, Paul has “fought the good fight, he has finished the race, he has kept the faith. and now a crown of righteousness is laid up for him.” He fought the good fight fearlessly for justice, freedom, equality, integrity, civility, compassion, inclusiveness, religious liberty, love, and many others. Depart in peace, dear brother, into everlasting life.
—William Powell Tuck is author of more than 30 books. He has been a pastor in several states and a professor in both seminaries and universities. He lives with his wife, Emily, in Midlothian, Virginia.
References:
Paul D. Simmons, Faith and Health: Religion, Science, and Public Policy (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), vii.
2 Paul D. Simmons, “To Live Is to Love,” The Struggle for Meaning, edited by William Powell Tuck (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1977) 93.
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