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My father came to Malone in the fall of 1967. Shortly after this I became acquainted with one Dr. Archie Penner. It was not unusual to see him marching across the campus always appearing to be on a mission. He had a distinctive bald head encircled by brownish red hair giving him the look of a monastic cleric reminiscent of Robin Hood’s Friar Tuck. |
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However, my real introduction to Dr. Penner came my freshman year when I took his class. I remember one day early in the semester when a young lady walked in having had her hair streaked with blond highlights. Dr. Penner looked at her in surprise and asked her what she had done with her hair. Suddenly from my right an upper classman piped out, “What’d you do with yours, Arch?” |
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I sat there stunned…waiting for the wrath of God, or at least Archie Penner, to fall upon this brazen student. Dr. Penner’s face took a serious tone, then almost immediately it softened as he looked at us and smiling said, “Wouldn’t it be shame if I were to be so egotistical as to rob us of the humor of this moment.” That was Dr. Penner, a humble servant of God incapable of being offended because he had indeed been crucified with Christ and he no longer lived and therefore could not be slighted. |
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On many occasions Dr. Penner would begin class praying in tongues – usually Greek or German. And while I was fluent in neither, it didn’t matter…the intensity of his beseeching the Lord was contagious and inspiring. One didn’t need to know the words to understand the heart of his prayers. He was indeed a man after God’s own heart. |
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His New Testament was always the Greek from which he would read and comment with great gusto tempered by sincere reverence. I seem to recall that in one of his classes we spent what seemed like a week or so dissecting Romans 3:23-26 considering whether it should read “propitiation” or “expiation.” In the end I came away with the great assurance that it really didn’t matter as long as we were made righteous by the shed blood of the Lamb. |
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One of my favorite memories of Dr. Penner was his customary response to questions concerning the gray areas of theology. He would raise his left hand, fingers curled as if he were holding a baseball, and as it dropped, glancing to his left he would drop his head and reply, “the answer is ‘yes’” – and then raising his right hand and allowing both hand and head to drop in similar fashion to his right, he would finish – “and ‘no’.” This would be followed by several minutes of his discourse on the merits of both the “yes” and the “no” of the issue. |
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Dr. Penner was an Evangelical Mennonite raised in the northern lands of Manitoba, Canada. He was an outspoken pacifist. And while I struggled to embrace the way he applied his position to certain scenarios, I did respect him for his theological thoughts on the matter. His reasoned balance in many areas of theology and practice has left a lasting impression on my own, even some 30 years later. And though I never remember him preaching during a chapel time, his preaching in the classroom impacted my life deeply. |
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Another of my favorite “Pennerisms” came in response to a question from a student in class. When asked if he believed in extraterrestrials, Dr. Penner thought a moment, and then in classic Penner-style replied, “I think it would be extremely arrogant of us, given the great failure of the human experiment on this earth, to not consider that God may have gone to another distant part of His universe and tried it all over again.” Now, there was no doubting Dr. Penner’s understanding of the place of the Word and the plan of redemption at the beginning of creation. However, again in this “gray” matter, his answer was “yes” and “no.” |
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If one were to visit the website of Dr. Penner’s alma mater, Providence College (formerly Winnipeg Bible Institute), and read his Alumni of the Year for 2004 article, one would learn much more about this marvelous godly man’s life and career. He felt his call to ministry early in life. After high school he attended Winnipeg Bible Institute where he studied music and the Bible. He taught his first classes at Steinbach Bible College in 1945. There he met and soon married Elvira. His vision helped launch the Red Rock Bible Camp. After graduating from WBI, he pursued a bachelors degree at Goshen College, then a Masters from Wheaton and finally a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. |
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For forty years Dr. Penner taught at Steinbach and Malone (1966-1983). And as it states in the article from Providence, “Dr. Penner not only taught the word of God but also lived it, and students recognized this. He impacted students not only academically but also spiritually.” I am just such a student who can attest to the accuracy of these words. |
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The Providence article reports that after retirement, Dr. Penner and Elvira returned to Manitoba. His plans were to “putter with carpentry” but God had other plans. Archie Penner spent hours of his retirement writing books and now future generations can benefit from his critical thinking and sound theology. |
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