Philip, center, with sons Doug and Fisher.  Below left, daughter Myra Norton.

Andalusia (1949-1966)    Philip Douglas Wise was born in Andalusia, Alabama, on January 3, 1949. He had an older brother,Harry, and a younger brother, Brent.  Their parents were Harold and Doris Wise. Philip said that from his father he acquired a desire to win and an understanding of how torelate to different kinds of people. From his mother, whom he described as kind and loving, Philip acquired a love for books and reading. Doris died when Philip was 18 years old; Philip’s pastor at the First Baptist Church of Andalusia, Bob Marsh, remembers Philip as a mature young man who cared thoughtfully for his mother during the two years of her final illness. 

As a child Philip wanted to be a garbage collector; he liked the big trucks. As a boy he delivered newspapers. Later he kept up the field at a ball park and ran a concession  stand there.From his early years he displayed a shrewdness about business and financial matters which would benefit the churches and other institutions he was to serve in the future. He was an excellent student and won a National Merit Scholarship. He also was an excellent athlete and was on the All State Basketball team in his senior year in high school; inthe 1960s it was still possible for a 5’11” young man to excel in basketball, especially if he was a natural leader like Philip. 

Birmingham (1966-1970)  In high school Philip began dating Cynthia Adams whom he had known for several years; she was a cheerleader, and he was a basketball star. She graduated from high school in 1966 and entered Judson College in Marion, Alabama. In 1967 Philip graduated from high school and moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where he entered Samford University on a basketball and academic scholarship.  

That same year Cynthia transferred to Samford, and they were married on June 22, 1968. After completing her undergraduate degree with a major in history, Cynthia entered a Master of Arts degree program in history, studying with Wayne Flynt; her thesis was on the history of The Alabama Baptist, the weekly newspaper of the Alabama Baptist State Convention; she wrote about Leon Macon, the editor of the paper from 1950-1965, and aspects of his social thought. Cynthia was awarded the M. A. degree and Philip the B. A.degree at Samford’s spring commencement ceremony in 1970. While at Samford Philip served as youth minister in two nearby Baptist churches. 

New Orleans (1970-1973)  In the fall of 1970 Philip and Cynthia moved to New Orleans, and Cynthia began teaching in an elementary school there. Philip entered the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Following the counsel of his former pastor Bob Marsh, Philip introduced himself to a theology professor at the seminary, Fisher Humphreys, and they quickly became friends, as did their wives, Cynthia and Caroline. Along with his own studies Philip was a lecturer in systematic theology at the Union National Baptist Seminary in New Orleans. He completed the Master of Theology with Honors degree in 1973, and in the same year their first child, Myra Diane Wise (Myra) was born. 

Oxford (1973-1976)  In the fall Philip, Cynthia, and their new baby Myra moved to England where Philip began a research degree in theology at Oxford University. Philip had intended to write his dissertation about the biographies of Jesus written in English in the nineteenth century, similar to Albert Schweitzer’s review of biographies of Jesus written on the European Continent during the same period. But his supervisor, Dennis Nineham, was a New Testament scholar, and he instructed Philipto rearrange his research program and to study the effects of the historical study of the life of Jesus on three English theologians, William Temple, Oliver Quick, and W. R.Matthews. 

While they were at Oxford Cynthia gave birth to a second child, Philip Douglas Wise,Jr. (Doug). In addition to his own studies in Oxford University, Philip taught historical theology and ethics at Culham College in Abingdon near Oxford. He was active in the junior common room at his college, Mansfield, and he rowed for his college eight. Philip became president of the Graduate Representatives Conference of Oxford University, and his gift for leadership is evident in two things he achieved in that role. He convinced university authorities that the colleges needed, in addition to junior common rooms for undergraduates and senior common rooms for faculty, middle common rooms for mature students who had completed their undergraduate work; many of the colleges of Oxford now have middle common rooms. Philip also convinced the authorities that the degree Bachelor of Letters (B. Litt.), a research degreefor students who have already completed their undergraduate work, ought properly to be called a Master of Letters (M.Litt.), and the university made that change as well. 

In the spring of 1976 Philip and his family returned to the United States without his having finished the dissertation. He later said that not finishing it was one of his great disappointments, but his father had become seriously ill (Philip was told that his father was terminally ill), and Philip felt he ought to return. 

New Orleans, Again (1976-1978)  When Philip, Cynthia, Myra, and Doug returned to the United States, they went to New Orleans. After a year of work as an industrial chaplain at Avondale Shipyards there, Philip entered the doctoral studies program at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. His doctoral dissertation was entitled God and Christ in the Theology of E. L.Mascall. It is difficult to imagine that Philip could have written it so well had he not had the experiences he did at Oxford. In addition to his own studies, Philip taught courses in systematic theology and ethics for the seminary. 

Selma (1978-1982)  In 1978 Philip accepted a call to become pastor of the Fairview Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama. Philip and Cynthia’s third and last child Fisher Edward Wise (Fisher) was born there. In addition to his pastoral ministry, Philip served as president of the Selma Ministers Association, and he refereed high school basketball games.  

Montgomery (1982-1989)  In 1982 Philip was faced with a dilemma. He was simultaneously offered two positions, one a teaching position in a fine Christian college, the other the pastorate of the Morningview Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Philip loved both kinds of work and was skilled in both kinds, so the decision was a difficult one. In the end he decided to accept the call to Montgomery, and he and his family were to live there for the next eight years. The biggest factor in deciding to go to Morningview was that he felt that he might have an opportunity later on to teach; he thought that, if he had served as pastor of a large church before beginning a career teaching theology, his  students would recognize that theology is more than a merely academic exercise. 

Philip soon became involved in civic and denominational activities in Montgomery. He served as chairman of the Christian Life Commission of the Alabama Baptist State Convention. Hewas president of the Parent-Teacher Association of Morningview Elementary School and president-elect of the Montgomery Lions Club. He served on the boards of directors of the Red Cross,the American Cancer Society, the Baptist Health Services, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes,and the Blue-Gray Football Association. Philip’s church was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. Beginning in 1979 the Convention experienced a major controversy whose outcome was the replacing of the old leaders of the Convention with new leaders. From 1979 Philip was actively involved in opposing this change.

In 1988 he contributed to The Theological Educator an article challenging the claim of the new leaders of the Convention that it is necessary to describe the Bible as inerrant. That same year he attended a meeting related to a new organization which today is known as the Alliance of Baptists. Two years later, in 1990, he attended the initial meeting of the organization with which he was to identify most fully in the coming years, now called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Over the following years Philip made many major contributions to the Fellowship. Philip’s writing was not all controversial. In 1982 he wrote an article on biographies of Jesus, and in 1984 one on theology and pastoral ministry, a subject which he later chose for his contribution to the present volume (For Faith and Friendship). 

In 1983 Philip and Fisher Humphreys wrote A Dictionary of Doctrinal Terms which contains brief essays on 100 words and phrases used in Christian theology. While he was in Montgomery Philip made the first of several trips to mission schools abroad. He traveled to Nigeria where he was a guest lecturer in apologetics at the Baptist Seminary in Ogbomosho. 

Dothan (1989-2002)  In 1989 Philip accepted a call to serve as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dothan, Alabama, and he and his family were to live there for the next thirteen years. During this period Philip became active in the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) and in its Commission on Doctrine and Interchurch Cooperation. In 2000 he was a Representative of the BWA at a meeting with leaders of the Vatican; in that meeting Philip read a paper entitled “A Response to Dominus Iesus,” and among those in attendance was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

This was not Philip’s first encounter with a man who was later to lead a church; at Oxford he and his fellow student Rowan Williams attended a seminar together; Williams is now the Archbishop of Canterbury. While in Dothan Philip continued to travel to mission schools and to teach. He gave guest lectures in theology in Singapore in 1990 and in South Africa in 1992. He spoke to missionaries in South Africa in 1992, in Ecuador in 1993, and in Peru in 1994. 

His work in civic organizations accelerated while he was in Dothan. He was the founding president of Wiregrass Habitat for Humanity. He served as founding Chairman of the Dothan/HoustonCounty Substance Abuse Board. He was president of the Dothan Ministerial Union.He served as president of the Dothan Rotary Club. He was a member of the board of the United Way and a member of the Southeast Alabama Medical Center Ethics Committee. He was also engaged in denominational work while he was in Dothan. He served on the Committee on Order of Business of the Alabama Baptist State Convention. In 1994 he was named the Minister of the Year by Samford University, and three years later he was elected a member of the Board of Trustees of Samford University. He became a member of the Coordinating Council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. 

The Wise family experienced many changes while they were in Dothan. The three children left home for college and other studies. Myra is a graduate of the University of Alabama and holdstwo master’s degrees, one in mathematics and one in statistics, from Temple University in Philadelphia; she is now the Chief Executive Officer of Community Analytics in Baltimore and is married to Pat Norton, an information technology project manager. Doug is a graduate of Samford University and holds a master’s degree in business administration from Texas Tech University. He is Director of Client Engagement for Community Analytics. He is the father of William Douglas Wise (Will), and he and his wife Daria, an attorney, live in Atlanta. Fisher is a graduate of Samford University and of Cumberland School of Law; he practices law in Birmingham. With the children grown, Cynthia returned to teaching; she became a professor of American history at Wallace Community College in Dothan. She wrote The Alabama Baptist Children’s Home: The First One Hundred Years (1991), the official history of that wonderful institution. 

Lubbock (2003-2008) In 2003 Philip and Cynthia moved to Lubbock, Texas, where Philip became pastor of the Second Baptist Church, his fourth and final pastorate. Cynthia continued to teach American history, this time at South Plains Community College. Philip continued his work in civic organizations. He was president of the Board of Directors of Lubbock Habitat for Humanity and chair of the Golf Committee of the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce. He continued his work on the Coordinating Council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and he was chair of the Steering Committee and Program Committee for the General Assembly of the Fellowship in 2005. He was chair of the Convention Order of Business Committee of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and also a member of the Board of Directors for the Christian Life Commission of the Convention. He served as vice-president of the North American Fellowship of the Baptist World Alliance. In 2006 he became chair of the Board of Directors of Christian Ethics Today. He served on the Program Committee for the New Baptist Covenant which was launched by President Jimmy Carter and others in 2008. 

Panama City Beach and Birmingham (2008-2009)  In the spring of 2008 Philip, having never forgotten that his mother had died of metastatic melanoma, asked his doctors about some lumps he discovered under his arm. In May he received the diagnosis that he had metastatic melanoma. Having resigned from his church, he and Cynthia began a series of trips to Bethesda, Maryland, where Philip received state-of-the-art treatment at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. He qualified for and agreed to participate in several clinical research protocols designed to find a cure for metastatic melanoma. Late in 2008 Philip and Cynthia sold their house in Lubbock and moved to a family beach house in Panama City Beach, Florida. By the time he reached his 60th birthday on January 3,2009, Philip was very weak. A few weeks later he and Cynthia decided to move to Birmingham where they had many longtime friends and where Philip could receive excellent hospice care. They arrived at their new home in the Bluff Park area of Birmingham on March 1, and Philip died on March 30.

During his last month Philip visited with his family and with many friends. He accepted his approaching death with the same realism and the same trust in God that he had displayed throughout his life. He also continued to engage in the kind of theological reflection that he had done all his adult life. At one point Fisher Humphreys asked him, “Here at the end, are there any things in your theology that you think need to be changed?” He said, “No. Everything is all right.” His cremains were buried in Andalusia, Alabama, on April 2. The next day a memorial service was held for him in Reid Chapel at Samford University with hundreds of family members,friends, colleagues, church and denominational leaders, and members of his churches in attendance. 

Remembering Philip  Many authors’ writings reveal a lot about them, and that is certainly the case withPhilip’s writing. In the chapter which Philip contributed to the present volume there are numerous clues to what mattered most to him: his commitment to the ministry of the gospel, the importance of acting as responsible managers (stewards) in church life, and integrity.   Philip revealed a lot about himself in a response he gave to a question he answered for his children. The question was about how to deal with hard times, and Philip wrote: “I believe that you deal with hard times by keeping your faith in God strong, by a good sense of humor, and by hard work.” Philip did those things all his life: His faith was strong, he had a wonderful sense of humor,and he always worked very hard. During difficult times, when others were diffident, Philip was brimming with confidence and good ideas, and with the practical sense and energy to carry them out. “I have always been an optimist,” he wrote to His children; “I have never been a great worrier.” During the controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention, Philip said repeatedly, “We will brook no pessimism.” In 1990, during the annual meeting of the Convention, he telephoned Fisher Humphreys and began the conversation with the words, “It’s over.” From that time forward he threw himself energetically into the work of creating for Baptists in the South an alternative to Fundamentalism. 

In 2004 Philip wrote a second book with Fisher Humphreys; it is entitled simply Fundamentalism, and it was written to assure non-Fundamentalist Christians that they are good Christians, too, and to sketch out a non-Fundamentalist version of Christian faith and practice. Philip did not resist Fundamentalism simply because he disagreed with it, but because he was convinced that there are more spiritually healthy and mature ways to follow Christ than the way of Fundamentalism. Philip was averse to whining and didn’t have an ounce of self-pity, so he would never have complained about the price he paid for resisting Fundamentalism, but in fact his opposition to Fundamentalism was costly. In an unusually candid statement to his children he alluded to that cost: “I suppose my greatest achievement has been to stand against the tide of fundamentalism in Southern Baptist life. Of course, my side lost in the great SBC battle. However, I kept my integrity and continued to contend for what I thought was right. I paid a price for that, but I’m proud of the stands I took.” 

He brought the same energy and enthusiasm to all his commitments that he brought to the struggle against Fundamentalism. For example, he was intensely patriotic: “I love our democratic form of government, the beauty of our natural resources. . . . I love the flag, the national anthem,and the pledge of allegiance—the whole nine yards. I do believe that this is a wonderful country, and that we are the most blessed nation of our time.” He was a loyal Democrat. “It began in 1960 when I was in the sixth grade. Almost all of my classmates were for Richard Nixon. I was for John Kennedy.” He wrote that Democrats “seem to meto be the party of the poor and disenfranchised. To support them seems the Christian thing to do.” He listed President Jimmy Carter as one of the three persons he most admired (the person he admired most of all was Cynthia). 

Philip the Pastor  Across the years of his ministry Philip received thousands of letters, notes, and e-mail messagesfrom people expressing their appreciation for him and his ministry. They came from civic and denominational leaders, from fellow ministers, and from children some of whom illustrated their words with stick drawings. Most of all, they came from grateful church members. Here are a few examples. 

“I want you to know I really appreciate you and thank you for all the many encouraging things you do each and every day.”   

“Your love, your concern and your leadership continue to touch lives and help them grow.” 

“I want to thank you for touching the lives of my family and me.” 

“I am proud to have a pastor who is a man of such faith. Our church and our community are better for it.” 

“We all draw strength from your steadfast integrity and courage.” 

“You have a special gift for placing all men at ease. You seem to know just what to say in all situations.” 

“It is an honor to serve with you.” 

“I just wanted to drop you a note to tell you what a great job you did at [my friend’s] funeral. I also wanted to say you make all of us proud to say ‘That’s our preacher.’” 

“I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the way you handled the business meeting Sunday night. Because of your leadership it did not go where Satan wanted it to go. I felt reaffirmed in our decision to join a church led by someone who preaches and lives the Word.” 

“I want you to know we were impressed with the way you conducted yourself at the budget discussionon Sunday evening. You exhibited remarkable restraint in the way you handled a very ugly situation.” 

“We know that you are a man of God in many ways—you reach out to each and every person you meet; no one feels that you are ever unavailable; there is no feeling that only the ‘moneyed’ few have your attention—we feel that everyone gets the same consideration, and that is refreshing.” 

“There have been many times I have meant to write and tell you what a blessing your sermons are Sunday after Sunday.” 

“Your sermons have been a source of guidance, inspiration, and challenge for me.” 

“It is a privilege to hear such complex theological themes plainly taught! I pray that your ministry will continue to flourish.” 

“I want to write and thank you for the leadership you give to our church. I am always impressed with your knowledge of Scripture, and this Sunday’s sermon was very meaningful tome.” 

“I wanted to take a minute to thank you for all the prayer, time, and Bible study that goes into your sermons. I cannot think of one that I have heard that did not speak to a need in my life. Your message last Sunday—‘Good News When I’m Feeling Lonely”—spoke to my own needs and helped me to put things back into perspective.” 

“Your sermons never fail to stimulate my mind or inspire my heart. I especially sense a fair and open-mindedness about you, combined with a strong faith and a vast knowledge of theology, that makes you a wonderful and powerful representative of our church and of all God’s family.” 

As the Lord said, sheep know their shepherd (John 10:14). 

Philip the Friend  Philip was a perfect friend. For him the default setting was that he was your friend. You didn’t have to earn his friendship; he gave it to you. He was completely loyal; he never betrayed his friends or let them down. They could count on him. He was, to use biblical language, faithful, one in whom you could place full faith. Of course, you could forfeit Philip’s friendship. If you betrayed him or his friends or the things he believed in, he would resist you, and he resisted his opponents as energetically as he supported his friends. People responded to Philip’s friendship by loving him in return. The Caring Bridge website which he and Cynthia used during the last year of Philip’s life to keep their friends informed about his health received more than 29,000 visits.

We in the Trinity Group considered Philip our close and dear friend. That is why we have entitled this book For Faith and Friendship. Philip had a profound understanding of friendship. In the letter he sent to his children in 2000 he wrote: “A real friend is one who truly cares about you, one who will accept you at your worst and still be for you. A true friend wants the best for you–even at his own expense.” Not long before he died Philip wrote a long, scholarly essay entitled “Friendship as a Theological Virtue.”  In it he wrote: "We are devoted to our friends and they are devoted to us. We want to be with our friends and they want to be with us. We want to act in the best interest of our friends and they want to act in our best interest. When taken together, then, this picture of friendship, if raised to perfect proportions, becomes an explanation for what Paul had in mind when he argues that faith, hope, and love are the greatest Christian virtues."

We are pleased to dedicate this book to our beloved friend, Philip Wise.

                                                                   Requiescat in pace.

Note: This essay on the life and ministry of Philip Wise is taken from the book For Faith and Friendship, written and edited by Philip's friends in the Trinty Group.