My most vivid memory—and even this is fuzzy 29 years
later—was the day he taught about the Song of Songs. I can’t recall which approach
he took to the book—whether he read it as an allegory for God’s love for Israel
or as a human love poem. What I remember is that Jill and I raised our hands
and asked lots of questions of whichever view he took, skeptical of whatever he
had just taught. We had a good rapport by that point; our questions meant no
disrespect. We were engaging in the kind of sparring that he welcomed in the
classroom. What happened next I will never forget. Dr. Kutz tipped his head to one
side and said, “Well, I’ll have to think more about this.” We moved on to the
next topic. The next day in class, Dr. Kutz handed out new notes on the Song of
Songs. He had spent his evening rethinking his view and changed his mind completely.
His new handouts reflected what he now believed to be a better way of reading
the book.
I was stunned. I grew up in a family where, when challenged,
we doubled down to better prove our point. Karl modeled humility, curiosity,
and teachability. He was not threatened by our questions. In fact, he was
grateful for the way they made him think.
Karl invited me to be his TA. For several years I graded
tests, created handouts, edited documents, and recorded grades in spreadsheets.
Once he asked me to read through Chronicles alongside Samuel and Kings,
highlighting any differences between them. Another time he gave me the entire
semester’s worth of Greek reading for fourth year Greek (a class I had not
taken). My assignment was to underline all the words I didn’t know so that he
could create a glossary of unfamiliar words. Since I had taken 3 years of
Greek, I was in exactly the position the average student would be entering that
class. It was a sensible plan, since Karl had difficulty remembering that not
everyone knew as much as he did. He regularly assumed that others contained
mental dictionaries in multiple languages and that we had retained everything
we ever read or heard in class, the way he did.
One day Karl and I talked about the possibility of me going
on for more schooling. His advice was clear and direct. “Carmen, you should not
pay for a PhD. By the time you get to that level, someone should be paying you
to go to school.” That seemed terribly unrealistic. I thought he had again
forgotten that we were not all as brilliant as he was. But he was right. He
understood the academic world better than I did at that point. And eventually,
someone was paying for my PhD and offering me a stipend besides.
Karl arrived at Multnomah having mastered Greek, Hebrew,
Aramaic, Syriac, Akkadian, Ugaritic, German, and French. I remember when Karl
began teaching himself Chinese so he could read a manuscript related to martial
arts. When I was a student he taught fencing as a PE class. Karl’s curiosity to
learn new languages and skills was unquenchable.
One day a couple of years later we sat at his computer—I had
pulled up an extra chair beside him—while we scoured a website of Hebrew baby girl
names. I had graduated by then, and was pregnant and auditing his Hebrew class
with my free alumnus audit. He found the name Eliana, which we both loved. My
husband and I had lost our first child to miscarriage, and it devastated us.
Karl sat with me in that sacred space of emerging hope that our second child
would be born healthy. The name Eliana means “My God has answered”—such a
meaningful name for the child who was an answer to our anguished prayers.
I was among the small group of students who sat around the
lunch table with the two of them at the Old Spaghetti Factory to celebrate
Karl’s 40th birthday. Our birthdays were just one day (and 14 years)
apart. He wasn’t quite old enough to be my father, but he was like a much older
brother or fun uncle.
Karl was honest about his struggles. His wife’s health
challenges absorbed much of their married years and made it impossible to think
of having children. I remember those years as a dark cloud hovered over their
home while they tried one unsuccessful treatment after another. Karl loved
children, and it broke his heart not to be a father. He channeled his energies
into his niece and nephew—his pride and joy—and into his students, counting us
as part of his family. At his memorial service, his colleague Becky Josberger
read a message he wrote to all his former students, telling us that we were
like the children he never had.
Karl and his wife supported us monthly when we became
missionaries. Later, when I entered fully into academic life we enjoyed
catching up at conferences. I remember one such occasion when we sat on the
floor in the conference center for a long talk. It was 2012. I think he had divorced by then. I remember him sharing openly with me about his wrestling with God. I don’t remember Karl teaching me
in class about lament, but he lived it in a way that taught all who knew him.
He was intellectually honest, which meant he had nothing to hide from his
students.
Some seven years or more after I had graduated from
Multnomah, I was reading a book in seminary whose approach to Genesis 1 was
revolutionary. I wrote to Karl asking if he’d ever read the book or heard of
this approach. I needed it to pass the Karl test before I embraced it. I knew
he would not be threatened by a new idea. His response to my email was
straightforward: “Yes, that’s how I’ve pretty much always read Genesis 1.” My
jaw dropped. How had I studied and worked with him so closely for at least four
years and not known this? How had we never talked about it before? The reason
was simple. He arrived at Multnomah during my Sophomore year, after I had
already taken Pentateuch.
Later he gave me a full set of his notes on the Pentateuch,
just in case they would be useful to me. Now that he’s gone, I’m grateful that
I’ve kept them all these years.
I was sitting at my desk at Biola University the day I got
Karl’s email with his diagnosis and bleak prospects. I let out a cry of dismay and the tears started flowing. My husband responded to my plea
instantly, coming across campus to my office to hold me and let me cry.
Although Karl and I have rarely had the chance to see one another these past 10
years, just knowing he’s there for me has been enough. He believed in me,
trained me, hired me as his TA, supported us financially, and cheered me on
every step of the way. Karl never doubted that I would get a PhD and follow in
his footsteps. When we saw each other at conferences he told me how proud he
was of me. But after that initial email about Karl’s diagnosis, I never saw him
again.
During the last year of Karl’s life, he stewarded all the
energy he had left between chemo and radiation treatments for writing. In the
week before he entered hospice care, he completed his commentary on Isaiah. At his memorial service, Becky shared the story of how on the day Karl announced
he would no longer be able to send or respond to emails, his publisher had an
emergency meeting. They offered him four contracts for books he had already
written, which he signed on his deathbed.
The world of publishing has changed considerably in the
almost 30 years since Karl started teaching. An author must not only be smart
and able to communicate well, but they must have a public platform with a
built-in audience. Not only was Karl nearly silent on social media, but now
he’s no longer living. The fact that a publisher was not only willing to offer
him one contract, but FOUR is a testament to the impeccable quality of his work
and of his character. Karl wrote by teaching on paper, creating clear and
helpful synopses of what he saw in the biblical text. He poured out his life
for the sake of those around him, giving generously whatever he had. I’m so
grateful that we’ll be able to continue learning from Karl in the years to
come.
For most of his academic career, Karl studied the book of
Job. He also lived it. His years of lament gave him strength of character and
depth of empathy as well as a keen sense of his own need. Becky shared that in
his last year on earth Karl finally felt like he was experiencing the end of
Job’s story—seeing fruit where he had long waited empty handed.
Karl has been part of most of the major milestones of my
adult life—our dating and engagement, our wedding, our miscarriage, the birth
of our oldest daughter, our work as missionaries in the Philippines, my PhD
journey, when I began teaching as adjunct faculty at Multnomah and we were
finally colleagues, my move into a full-time position in Canada, the
publication of my books. I received tenure just a couple of weeks before he
died. In the week he died, Multnomah closed its doors forever.
The death of my alma mater will now perpetually be linked with
the death of one of my dearest mentors. The tragedy of Multnomah’s closing
means that I’ll never have to see what would become of Multnomah without Karl.
His absence there is unimaginable to me.
How I would love to be a fly on the wall as Karl asks the
Lord all his questions. I picture them walking through gardens, talking and
laughing, and stopping to investigate each new discovery. By the time you and I
arrive, Karl will have a 3-ring binder waiting with timelines and charts of all
the things about heaven that he thinks would be helpful for newcomers to know.
He’ll start with an apology for the things he got wrong in his class notes and
then excitedly show us how things really are.
That’s just Karl. He was, and is, a gift to the world!
