Daniel Treier, R.I.P.

Men in their latter years fall into three general types, which can to some degree overlap but are nonetheless distinct:

Grumpy old men

Explorers (“Old men ought to be explorers,” T. S. Eliot said, but this is not common)

Wise elders

Dan Treier would have been a wonderful wise elder, had he not died very prematurely, which happened yesterday. In 2015 I lost two dear friends — Brett Foster and Roger Lundin — within four days, and now in 2025 I have lost two more dear friends — Jay Wood and Dan — within four months. All of them died too young, Brett and Dan several decades too young.

Many years ago an acquaintance said to me, “You Christians say you believe that the dead will be resurrected, and that Christians will experience eternal joy — so why do you cry at funerals?” I replied: “If you were going to be parted, possibly for a very long time, from someone you love, would you cry?” This thought had not occurred to him. Such partings are painful, even if they’re not forever.

When people die, you typically think first of their family — and I am constantly remembering Dan’s wife Amy and his daughter Anna in my prayers — and then of their friends, and then of their larger community. Dan, whom I felt had always been a grown-up, was a repository of wisdom, compassion, and good counsel to everyone he knew, and to be parted from Dan is to be parted from those virtues, those gifts.

Dan and I had a lot of fun together, in large part because we had amassed a repertoire of jokes over the years that we deployed often and joyfully. For instance, he took a wicked pleasure in reminding me that a story I had just told was one he had heard several times before. (“You told it really well that time, though.”) But whenever I had a difficult decision to make I knew that Dan’s counsel would be immensely valuable to me, and I always sought it. Dan, though considerably younger than me, was a wise elder for me. I will miss that greatly.

Dan was an Ohio farm boy, raised in a very conservative Christian environment, and though his own theology and spirituality developed over the years in ways that could be said to set him somewhat apart from that world, it didn’t feel that way, because he was always so grateful for the faithfulness of those who raised him. This was a great lesson for many of Dan’s doctoral students: that it’s possible to hold different theological positions than one’s friends and family while remaining united with them in Spirit and in Love. “There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

I had hoped — well, really, I had expected — that Dan would be offering his wise-elder counsel to those who sought it for another thirty or forty years. That was not to be. So those of us with less wisdom and charity must take up the cause — until we meet again.