Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Dr. David C. Jones
As a prelude to the return of Covenant Seminary’s David C. Jones Theology Lectures later this month, we offer here a celebration of the life and legacy of the beloved Covenant professor whose name adorns the lectures and whose influence continues to shape the tenor of theological training for our students even after his passing into glory in 2017. The 2024 edition of the Jones Lectures will take place on campus February 29 and March 1, featuring renowned theologian and author Dr. Steven J Duby. See more details here.
Dr. David Clyde Jones, for whom Covenant Seminary’s endowed Chair of Systematic Theology and annual David C. Jones Theology Lectures are named, lived as a statesman, theologian, and musician. He applied his systematic conception of social ethics to the purpose of serving his denomination, its seminary, and chiefly his Lord with a sharp mind and witty humor. Dr. Jones taught systematic theology and ethics at Covenant Seminary for 40 years to multiple generations of pastors-in-training. He later wrote of his 2007 retirement that he taught at Covenant “just as long as the ancient Hebrews wandered in the wilderness. Some might conclude that I was in a rut; I prefer to think of it as a groove—like a diamond stylus that remains stationary while the long-playing record on the turntable changes as it moves from band to band.”
A young David Jones first arrived at Covenant College and Seminary (then one institution) in the fall of 1959 as a student. During the one year he was enrolled at Covenant, he met a student by the name of Sue Ellen Bilderback before transferring to Westminster Theological Seminary. At Westminster, he would go on to complete a BD and ThM under the tutelage of Scotch Calvinist theologian John Murray and Professor John Sanderson, who later became a colleague-mentor at Covenant. After Sue’s 1961 graduation from Covenant, she moved to Philadelphia to teach, and the Joneses married in 1962. David’s ThM thesis, entitled Eucharistic Sacrifice in Protestant Discussion in the Last Quarter-Century (1938–1963), was an early indicator that his mind was tuned to matters relevant to the contemporary church.
After a two-year pastorate in Grand Cayman Island, David and Sue returned to St. Louis for David to pursue a doctorate (ThD) at nearby Concordia Seminary. While Jones was a student there, Covenant’s Professor of Biblical Studies and Systematic Theology, J. Oliver Buswell Jr., suffered a stroke. David accepted an invitation to teach theology part-time and help in the library at Covenant in 1967. The following year, David became a full-time assistant professor. He completed his doctorate in 1970, focusing on the roots of differences in evangelical views on the essential nature of the church in American Presbyterian theology. In his research, he discovered a tendency in the mid-1800s to overemphasize the distinction between the visible and invisible church.
In 1978, the denomination to which Covenant Seminary then belonged (the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod) elected this early career assistant professor to serve as the moderator of the annual meeting of church leaders (General Synod), demonstrating widespread confidence in his ability to diplomatically govern conversations and debates with wisdom and modesty. Four years later, when the RPCES was received into the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a separate motion was adopted to receive Covenant Seminary as the official denominational seminary, and Dr. Jones quickly became more widely known in the new denomination. At Covenant Seminary, he served as Dean of Faculty from 1977 to 1988, and it was under his leadership that Covenant was first accredited by the Association of Theological Schools and the Higher Learning Commission.
From the earliest days, many in the denomination sought Dr. Jones’s counsel on thinking theologically about matters related to the second tablet of the law. His expertise in social ethics as our God-given duty toward man meant that he was often called upon to study contemporary issues facing real people in the church, to speak on complex topics, and to counsel pastors, churches, and individuals in them. Confessionally committed to the Westminster Standards and shaped by the Reformed tradition in ethics, David drew deeply from “Augustine on the goal of the Christian life, Calvin on its norms, and Jonathan Edwards on its motive,” as he stated in his 1994 book Biblical Christian Ethics.
He wrote or co-authored church position papers on divorce and remarriage, abortion, Christian responsibility in the nuclear age, and end-of-life medical decisions. Seminary students learned ethical principles from Dr. Jones in the classroom, but later returned to him as pastors with questions about the application of those principles arising from specific situations within their congregations. With candor and compassion, he entered into complex family and denominational questions that were very personal in nature and often painful. Medical advancements raised new bioethical questions in the areas of surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, stem-cell research, cloning, and cryogenics. David studied and taught on just war theory, on a Christian’s civil duties to the state, and was prophetic in foreseeing the direction that questions about sexual orientation would lead. David’s book Biblical Christian Ethics served as both a textbook for students and a resource for the broader church. He was eventually given the unofficial designation of “The PCA’s chief ethicist.”
Dr. Jones’s involvement with seminary students extended beyond the classroom as he worshiped and served with them in seminary chapel services and at The Covenant Presbyterian Church of St. Louis nearby. One could find him pulling weeds and trimming trees with students and staff on Campus Day. He often arrived at Seminary picnics and Christmas parties armed with his bluegrass guitar. David’s rich baritone bass voice blended beautifully in men’s quartets in chapel and at church. He may be best known musically for playing the tuba, as he continually recruited student musicians to join him in brass quintets. This group played at formal occasions such as chapel and commencement as “The Covenant Brass” and at informal occasions as “The Band What Am,” with a repertoire of ragtime, Dixieland, and light jazz. A new tradition began when brass-toting theology students needed dinner between rehearsals and evening classes, and David became famous for his soup suppers as word spread that dinner was served weekly at the Jones’s on-campus home. The soup tradition continues today on the Day of Prayer, with international student families providing soups for the whole community that reflect their home cultures.
David and Sue also extended hospitality to seminary students, faculty, and staff in their small 1840s German historic cottage in the wine region overlooking the Missouri River. Often more guests arrived than could fit at the farmhouse table. When the weather was not suitable for outdoor dining, Sue and David retrieved two sawhorses, laid an old wooden table over the top, and covered all with a tablecloth to add space for more diners at these family-style meals. Pastors and full-time married students often lacked resources for vacations, so the Joneses sometimes allowed weary couples to use their country cabin for a weekend away.
David’s work on ethical issues blessed the church at large beyond the walls of seminary classrooms, serving churches, presbyteries, the Presbyterian Church in America, and the broader Reformed evangelical world as he responded to questions near and far with his rigorous theological thinking and compassionate heart. Yet he never lost his sense of humor. While undergoing radioactive iodine treatment for thyroid cancer, he quipped—borrowing from a beloved hymn—that he could then sincerely say, “Lord, with glowing heart I’d praise Thee.” And as he does so now, face-to-face with his Savior, may his theological legacy live on at Covenant Seminary and beyond.
See details of the 2024 David C. Jones Theology Lectures here.
