Currents in Theology & Mission
June 2006, Volume 33, Number 3

Robert H. Smith--
In Memoriam

On March 16, 2006, Robert Smith died in his home of complications of leukemia. Bob was an outstanding New Testament scholar and teacher, who also edited for many years—and often wrote—Preaching Helps for this journal.

We last spoke about a month before his death, when he was beginning a new semester of teaching, fully aware that he had only weeks or at most a few months to live. That conversation was Bob at his best—literate, realistic, faith-filled, joyously connected to God and all the rest of us.

Shortly before his death he completed a commentary on John's Gospel: Wounded Lord: Reading John Through the Eyes of Thomas. Thomas protested against a Gnostic Jesus and confessed instead that Jesus was fully divine—and fully human. Ours is the ancient temptation to do cosmetic surgery on Christ's body, airbrushing away evidence of his suffering and erasing incarnation. That book must see the light of printer's day.

Bob and I lived through the trials at Concordia Seminary. I still remember those draining nights in his office, when he and I would bat out press releases that tried to tell "our story" in a way that people in society at large could understand what was at stake in fighting for the freedom of the gospel. He was a wordsmith (no pun intended) without peer and an incredible and generous friend.

Bob is survived by his wife Donna Duensing, his three daughters and their families, including six grandchildren. In the moments before his death, Donna exclaimed: "Bob, I love you so much, and God loves you even more." A smile flickered across his face, and then he died.

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. (Rom 14:7-8).

In memory and in hope,

Ralph W. Klein
Editor

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