What I Appreciate about Methodism

Roger E. Olson

*This is a presentation I gave to a Baptist-Methodist dialogue event held at Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University on February 20, 2020.*

I recently endorsed a new book entitled The Spirit of Methodism by Jeffrey Barbeau. It’s one of several books with that title. Reading this book was just the most recent in a long history of my non-Methodist encounters and interactions with Methodists. But before talking about my acquaintance with Methodism, please be patient as I talk about what I mean by “Methodism.” Here, in this presentation, I am not specifically talking about the United Methodist Church but about the spirit or ethos of Methodism that stems from the ministries of John and Charles Wesley in the 18^th century. That includes many churches and ministries that do not contain the word “Methodist” in their names. For example, the many so-called “Holiness churches” that arose mostly in the 19^th century to renew the spirit of Methodism that they perceived as being lost in the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. Nazarenes, Churches of God, Wesleyans, even the Salvation Army—all are part of the spirit of Methodism. Then there are those “other Methodists” such as the Free Methodist Church and the Evangelical Methodist Church—small Methodist denominations not part of the United Methodist Church. These I also consider when I think and talk about the spirit of Methodism. So, to me, “Methodism” is trans-denominational.

Now, a little bit about my own personal encounters and interactions with Methodism. My stepmother and her many siblings, my aunts and uncles, were raised in the Methodist Episcopal church in Iowa. Some of them, including my stepmother, became Pentecostals through the ministry of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson who belonged to the Salvation Army before founding her own quasi-Methodist Pentecostal International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. My grandparents on my father’s side were member of the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) whose founder Daniel Warner was a Methodist (among other things). When I was a child and youth my parents took me every summer to the Nazarene camp meeting in West Des Moines and I knew many Nazarenes when I was growing up. During my doctoral studies at Rice University my mentor was Methodist theologian Niels C. Nielsen. Another professor was Methodist James Sellers. I taught a series on Wednesday evenings at Memorial Drive Methodist Church in Houston. In 2003 I was invited to give a plenary address about Wesley’s Arminian theology at Asbury Theological Seminary’s celebration of Wesley’s 300^th birthday. I have spoken at Methodist churches including First United Methodist of The Woodlands. I have two books published by the United Methodist Publishing House/Abingdon Press and perhaps my greatest claim to Methodism is Adam Hamilton, pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, a mega-church in Kansas City, Kansas. Adam was in the very first theology class I taught at Oral Roberts University. When I taught at ORU it was trying to become a Methodist-related university and seminary. Many of the professors in the Graduate School of Theology were UMC ministers and one, I recall, was a retired UMC bishop. I had lively interactions with them. Over the years I have formed relationships with UMC theologians such as Billy Abraham, Don Thorsen, and Kenneth Collins.

Now to what I appreciate about the Methodist tradition. Again, I want to say that my focus will be on the spirit of Methodism, not any particular Methodist denomination or church.

The Methodist spirit is experiential.

The Methodist spirit is Arminian.

The Methodist spirit is activist.

The Methodist spirit is transformational.

The Methodist spirit is ecumenical.

The Methodist spirit is quadrilateral.

The Methodist spirit is intellectual.

First, then, the Methodist spirit is experiential. This goes back to John Wesley’s famous “warmed heart” experience at a Moravian gathering on Aldersgate Street in London on May 24, 1738. To this day many Methodists celebrate May 24 or the Sunday closest to it as “Aldersgate Day.” Debate continues among Methodists over whether this experience was Wesley’s “conversion” or simply a kind of epiphany. I personally know two influential Methodist scholars who disagree about that I’ve heard them debate it publicly. I respect them both and don’t take a side. However, clearly, it was an emotional experience for Wesley, an experience of immediacy of God to his soul, his heart. At their best Methodists have always emphasized the importance of having what I will call “epiphanies” of God the Holy Spirit in the heart. And in the Methodist spirit these are not just new insights of the mind; they are “inner man” experiences as the Pietists called them. Methodism was strongly influenced by European Pietism but took it to a new level while at the same time avoiding some of its excesses.

What I am talking about here is best illustrated by pointing to alternative views of Christian experience and spirituality. Many Christians in Wesley’s time viewed becoming Christian and remaining Christian as primarily a matter of learning doctrines and giving mental assent to them. Many others emphasized Christian initiation and existence as primarily a matter of worshiping in the right way—according to a defined liturgy—and participating in the sacraments. Finally, many other Christians have regarded Christian initiation and existence as primarily about using the will to turn over a new leaf and do the will of God as a matter of duty.

Wesley and the spirit of Methodism do not discard these as invaluable, but they view them as insufficient for holistic, robust Christian existence. Experiencing God in the “inner man” such that one’s “heart” feels “strangely warmed” lies at the center of the spirit of Methodism. And as a post-Pentecostal Pietist Baptist I love that about the spirit of Methodism.

Second, the Methodist spirit is Arminian. People who know me well will not be surprised that I bring that up here. The first Baptists were also Arminians—whether they used that label or not. They probably did not. However, John Wesley knew he was Arminian; he named his magazine The Arminian. But he was what theologian Alan P. F. Sell called an “Arminian of the heart” and not an “Arminian of the head.” During Wesley’s life many Arminians had become theologically liberal; Wesley did more than anyone else to reclaim true, historical Arminianism—as it was intended by Jacob Arminius himself and his immediate followers the early Remonstrants. So what does this mean? I have written a whole book about it and I will be shameless here and mention that: Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities published by InterVarsity Press. In it I quote Wesley extensively—together with later Methodists such as Philip Watson and John Miley. In a nutshell “Arminianism” simply means belief that sinners are given the free will by God to repent and believe in Jesus Christ and that whether they do so or not is not determined by God alone. The sinner who repents and believes unto conversion is not earning or meriting any part of his or her salvation but is freely choosing, enabled by prevenient grace, to cooperate with God’s saving grace. Grace alone is the efficient cause of salvation, but human repentance and faith are the instrumental causes of salvation. In other words, Arminians are Christians who reject unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace—hallmarks of the Calvinist system of belief.

Third, the Methodist spirit is activist. Wesley was renowned as a revivalist and there have been many Methodist revivalists. The revivalist spirit may have been born with Wesley and his colleague George Whitefield—also a Methodist (even if a Calvinist one). But evangelism was not the only activity dear to their hearts or to Methodism since its beginning in the revival fires of the Evangelical Awakening. Methodists were in the forefronts of social change from the beginning. Wesley strongly opposed slavery as did many Methodist in the nineteenth century. The first Christian denomination to ordain women was the Free Methodist Church—on offshoot of the Methodist Episcopal Church around 1860. Deliverance from oppression has long been at the heart of Methodist activism. One of the only Protestant Latin American liberation theologians, Jose Miguez Bonino, was an Argentinian Methodist. All around the world Methodism has been a light of liberation from all that dehumanizes people—from sin to sexism to racism to poverty.

Fourth, the Methodist spirit is transformational. Wesley was not satisfied for himself or his followers merely to be forgiven and reconciled to God; he wanted himself and his followers to be transformed inwardly—even promoting the possibility of “entire sanctification” if not sinless perfection. His heart was not only warm; it was filled with love. Wesley himself never claimed to be entirely sanctified, perfected in love, but he preached that possibility—even before the resurrection. Something that is not well known about Wesley, even among Methodists, is that he was strongly attracted to the Eastern Orthodox concept of deification (“theosis”)—becoming partial partakers of the divine nature-through faith. Ever since Wesley, Methodists have rejected the typical Lutheran idea of simul justus et peccator—“always righteous and a sinner at the same time.” They have preached and taught that the Holy Spirit can so invade and take over a person’s heart and mind that he or she rises above the constant struggle with sin.

Fifth, the Methodist spirit is ecumenical. Wesley’s motto toward non-Methodist Christians was “If your heart is as mine, give me your hand.” In other words, even if we disagree about some doctrines and about the sacraments and about church government, if your heart has been truly warmed by the Holy Spirit and is warm toward God and the things of God, we can cooperate. So far as I know Methodists have always had open communion. They have been in the forefront of ecumenical dialogue and cooperation between Christian denominations and communities. Wesley did not intend to found a separate denomination; that happened as a result of his appointing bishops to lead the Methodist churches in America when they could not function under the authority of the Church of England because of the War of Independence. It was the Church of England that broke off fellowship and created a schism with Methodism. Wesley always only intended Methodism to be a renewal movement within the Church of England. Ever since then Methodist denominations have been reluctant sectarians, always seeking out other warm-hearted and activist Christians for cooperation and fellowship.

Sixth, the Methodist spirit is quadrilateral. Methodist scholar Albert Outler created this term to describe John Wesley’s approach to doctrine and theology. Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience are the four sources and norms of Methodist theology and doctrine. I personally think that this approach existed before Wesley. In fact, he borrowed it partly from Church of England theologian Richard Hooker but added “experience” to Hooker’s “three legged stool” of Christian authority which omitted it. I think Christians have always taken experience into account in developing doctrine and theology and church practice—whether they call it a “quadrilateral” or not. But Methodists have especially elevated and promoted the so-called “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” as the proper method for carrying out the critical and constructive tasks of theology. I agree with them, but I am confident that, contrary to some modern Methodist theologians, Wesley would have insisted that the quadrilateral is not an equilateral; Scripture trumps tradition, reason and experience if there’s any conflict between them. The Methodist spirit, at its best, has always focused on the Bible as the supreme source and norm for Christian belief and practice but without neglecting other sources such as tradition. Wesley himself was steeped in the church fathers, for example, and held firmly to the Nicene Creed. But when the Bible was not as clear about a subject as he wished it would be, Wesley turned to tradition, reason and experience as tools for understanding the Bible and supplementing it.

Seventh, and finally, the Methodist spirit is intellectual. Revivalism and intellectualism are often considered alternatives, competitors, incompatible with each other. The Methodist spirit, however, has always, at its best, combined them. My favorite biography of John Wesley is Reasonable Enthusiast by Henry D. Rack (Abingdon Press). The “hook” of the title is that it seems to signal an oxymoron. “Enthusiast” was a bad word in England in Wesley’s time; it was the equivalent of today’s “fanatic.” “Reasonable” speaks for itself. But being reasonable is not what many people think of when they hear John Wesley’s name mentioned. Nevertheless, like his American revivalist counterpart Jonathan Edwards, Wesley was a highly educated scholar, a modern man in many ways. His critics, such as Bishop Joseph Butler, did not see Wesley as reasonable, but that says more about Butler than about Wesley.

I won’t go more deeply into the reasons for Rack’s title; I will only strongly suggest that you read the book if you are interested in Wesley’s life, character, career—and the Methodist spirit he created.

At its best, throughout three centuries plus, the Methodist spirit has encouraged education, biblical and theological scholarship. Methodists have founded many universities and seminaries around the world. Westminster College, Oxford University, was founded by Methodists. In the United States one can mention Boston University, Duke University, Northwestern University and many others—as examples of Methodist intellectualism. For those of us devoted to the evangelical spiritual ethos mention must be made of Asbury College and Seminary, Seattle Pacific University, and the numerous Free Methodist schools such as Roberts Wesleyan University.

Methodism has put its indelible stamp on American culture. One scholar of American religious history, I don’t remember who at the moment so I’ll just say it was Martin Marty, called the nineteenth century in America “the Methodist century.” During that century Methodism grew from a tiny sect still somewhat attached to the Church of England to a robust and independent truly American denomination that had more members than any other American religious group. At its height the Methodist Episcopal Church, now known as the United Methodist Church, had almost fifteen million members in the U.S. and many, many more around the world. Membership in the UMC has declined in the U.S. but the Methodist spirit lives on in numerous churches and institutions even outside the UMC’s own boundaries.

As editor of the 14^th edition of the Handbook of Denominations in the United States (published by Abingdon Press) I found nineteen distinct denominations that I would say embody the Methodist spirit each in its own way. Each one looks back to the ministry of John Wesley as the founder of its distinctive Christian ethos with strong emphasis on sanctification. Many Pentecostal denominations are not included among those nineteen but were founded by people imbued with the Methodist spirit.

Especially in the South, Methodists and Baptists have often been regarded as competitors, but those days are fading away. Today Methodists and Baptists find much common ground. Speaking only for myself, I would say that Baptist could learn something about church connexionalism from Methodists even as we maintain the formal autonomy of the local congregation. I believe we also can learn from Methodists much about the Holy Spirit’s power to sanctify people toward, if not into, true holiness of mind and heart. And I believe we can also learn much from Methodists about how mind and heart can work together, how we can be “reasonable enthusiasts.”

*As always, here, on this blog, I speak for no one but myself. If you choose to post a response, please make sure it is civil, kind, and respectful. Please keep your response brief and do not include a photo, image or internet link in it.*

A Great Evangelical Theologian to Read: Donald G. Bloesch

Very few, if any theologians have influenced me as profoundly as the late Donald G. Bloesch (d. 2010). Fortunately, many of his books are still in print or readily available through used book resellers on line.

I realize that many Christians who are deeply interested in theology cannot avail themselves of a formal theological education. For you I strongly recommend that you read Bloesch’s books. Here I will mention a few and give an overview of his approach to theology and themes that pervaded his theological works.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

I first encountered the name “Donald G. Bloesch” in the pages of Eternity magazine. I don’t recall now how or when or why I first began reading that monthly magazine that some described as Christianity Today Lite. (Back then, in the 1970s, CT was quite “heavy” with theological articles.) Eternity was a widely read evangelical Christian publication that began out of the ministry of Donald Grey Barnhouse and his church, Tenth Presbyterian in Philadelphia.

Eternity opened my eyes to the wider evangelical world outside of Pentecostalism and fundamentalism. I still own three bound volumes of Eternity magazines from the 1970s and occasionally peruse them to remind myself of how I was formed theologically as I struggled almost alone to find my way into that wider evangelical world and out of my extremely narrow, sectarian upbringing.

Now, when I look into those issues of Eternity I see that many of the themes being talked about today were already matters of conversation then—the “worship wars,” contemporary Christian music, science and religion, homosexuality, women’s roles in church, family and society, etc.

The articles in Eternity were not especially “heavy” theologically (compared with those in CT), but the book reviews section usually contained reviews of new books of evangelical theology. In fact, the very first piece I ever wrote that was published was a book review in Eternity. It was a review of two books about liberation theology. Thanks to editor Stephen Board who helped me revise the piece for publication and then published it. He took the time to give me helpful guidance about writing for publication.

Donald G. Bloesch’s books were often reviewed in Eternity and he wrote some reviews of others’ books for the magazine. Something about his book titles and the reviews of the books caught my attention and I latched onto Bloesch as my chosen theological mentor long before I met him. Over the years I have met many men and women theologians around my age (some quite a bit younger) who confess that they also were nurtured in theology by Bloesch’s books.

You can do no better now than read Bloesch’s seven volume Christian Foundations series that brings together his whole life’s work in theology. It is published by InterVarsity Press. The first volume, A Theology of Word and Spirit: Authority and Method in Theology was published in 1992. (See the entire series at InterVarsity Press’s web site ivpress.com or on Amazon.) So far as I know the seventh volume in this series was his last published book.

Christian Foundations is not exactly a systematic theology although several themes pervade it. The same themes pervaded his earlier writings which “flowed into” the Foundations series.

I label Bloesch a confessional pietist, a progressive evangelical (a label he accepted), a mediating theologian (in the best sense), and an evangelical Barthian. Barth’s influence on him is obvious, although he did not agree with Barth about everything. In fact, he wrote an entire (small) volume both celebrating and critiquing Karl Barth’s theology: Jesus Is Victor! Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Salvation. Of course many will know that the proclamation “Jesus Is Victor!” comes from Christoph Blumhardt who influence both Barth and Bloesch (and also Emil Brunner).

Bloesch was ecumenical in his use of Christian sources, frequently quoting from church fathers, Catholic mystics, Pascal, both Edwards and Wesley, Kierkegaard and Hodge, Barth and Brunner.

Bloesch was an evangelical alternative to Carl F. H. Henry and the “Gordon Clark” tradition of evangelical rationalism so well critiqued by Molly Worthen in Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2014). Somehow Bloesch doesn’t be get a mention in that otherwise excellent book. He would have provided an excellent foil to the rationalist evangelical tradition she critiques.

I once corresponded with Carl Henry. I still have that correspondence. I was writing a chapter about his career and theology for an edited volume about American theologians. In one letter Henry referred to Bloesch as a “mediating theologian” which, in context, clearly meant “not authentically evangelical.” By that time Bloesch had made clear that he did not believe in biblical inerrancy—at least not in the way expressed by Henry and other signers of the Chicago Statement. And Henry was making clear (at least in his letters to me!) that he believed biblical inerrancy was a crucial evangelical doctrine.

Bloesch was a deeply spiritual person who wrote hymns and devotional literature as well as theology. And his theology was pervaded by spirituality. He could not and would not separate them. And by “spirituality” I do not mean some generic sense or experience of something sacred; I mean classical Protestant pietism with a deep appreciation for Catholic mysticism.

Some of Bloesch’s early books that deeply inspired me and guided me into classical evangelical orthodoxy with a strong flavor of pietism and even somewhat of neo-orthodoxy were: The Evangelical Renaissance, The Ground of Certainty, The Crisis of Piety, and The Future of Evangelical Christianity. He also wrote on specific topics such as Is the Bible Sexist? And The Battle for the Trinity.

If you are intrigued, I suggest you get yourself a copy of the first volume of Bloesch’s Foundations series mentioned above and see if it offers an alternative to so much of what has gone under the label “evangelical theology” in the past fifty years.

A few last thoughts about Bloesch that might further intrigue potential readers.

Unlike so many evangelical theologians Bloesch was not “haunted by fundamentalism.” He had no roots in fundamentalism. His own ecclesiastical roots were in the German Evangelical and Reformed Synod that merged into the United Church of Christ. He was probably one of the most conservative UCC theologians and he taught at a mainline Presbyterian seminary (University of Dubuque Theological Seminary). He was not part of the so-called “neo-evangelical movement” of the 1940s and through the 1960s and did not participate in the Evangelical Theological Society although Christianity Today reviewed his books as if he were a neo-evangelical.

I got to know Bloesch personally during the 1990s—through the American Theological Society (Midwest Division) that met (still meets) twice yearly in the Chicago area. We had some very interesting conversations over meals and during breaks between sessions. I found him to be a very humble man who was totally unaware of his tremendous influence on me and numerous other younger evangelicals struggling to free ourselves of the shackles of fundamentalism without throwing the baby of biblical authority and Christian orthodoxy out with the bathwater of fundamentalism. By all accounts he was a gentle man of deep personal piety without an ounce of liberal (“modernist”) theology infecting him. In fact, he was highly suspicious of and worried about the rise of liberal theology and its false attraction for many people fleeing fundamentalism.

In many ways he was our American evangelical Barthian (as Thomas Torrance was the British evangelical Barthian). His theology was imbued with the spirit of Barth’s theology without Barth’s early strongly dialectical approach to Scripture. And he was critical of Barth’s “objectivism” of salvation which, as he saw it, anyway, left aside the dimension of personal decision. Although Bloesch’s roots were in the Reformed tradition he was no Calvinist. He was a non-Calvinist but avoided being labeled “Arminian” or “synergist.”

In his second volume of Foundations about Scripture Bloesch provided an image about the Bible and the Word of God that I have used many times. To him, the Bible is like the glass and filament of a light bulb and the Holy Spirit is like the electricity that creates the light within the light bulb. Without the light bulb you have no light but the bulb is not the light. He described his understanding of the Bible “sacramental.”

So, if you are someone who is hungry to read good theology that is neither liberal nor fundamentalist, I can do no better than recommend that you read Donald Bloesch and you don’t need to worry about where to begin. It’s all in the Foundations series. Start there and find out if Bloesch can be for you what he was and still is for me—a paragon of moderate-to-progressive evangelical theology pervaded by deep Christian spirituality.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

An Almost Forgotten 20^th Century Christian Theologian: Christoph Blumhardt

Christoph Blumhardt was born in 1842 and died in 1919. He was a German Lutheran minister raised in a family steeped on “Baden-Württemberg Pietism”—a particular type of German pietism. His father Johann was also a Lutheran minister. Both father and son were famous in Germany, throughout Europe and Christoph in America and throughout the world. Their fame began with a months-long exorcism carried out by Johann. This was unexpected; Johann did not consider himself an exorcist. The story of the exorcism has been well-documented and created quite a stir in Germany after it was revealed. When the exorcism was complete, the young woman who was delivered cried out “Jesus is victor!” and that became the Blumhardts’ motto.

Johann founded a Christian retreat center at Bad Boll, Germany to which numerous people came for physical healing, exorcism, spiritual direction and formation, and even infilling of the Holy Spirit. Neither Blumhardt was ever part of the Pentecostal movement as such, but some Pentecostals, especially Pentecostal scholars, look back to them as forerunners of the movement. (To the best of my knowledge, however, speaking in tongues did not play any role in their ministry or among their followers.)

Unlike many European Protestants of their time, the Blumhardts believed in miracles. And many people who came to their retreat claimed to have experienced supernatural healings there. (The retreat center at Bad Boll still exists but has changed dramatically; it is now an ecumenical center for dialogue between Christians of various denominations and traditions and between adherents of various religions.)

Christoph took over leadership of the retreat center and ministry from his father and became more famous than his father ever was for various reasons. He became a well-known traveling evangelist who preached revivals throughout Europe. Many of his sermons have been translated into English are available in edited volumes published by especially Plough Publishing House.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

Christoph Blumhardt is noted for his strong emphasis on the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God from the future in various manifestations. His emphasis as on the “already-ness” of the Kingdom of God even though he always acknowledge that, ultimately, only God can bring about the fullness of his kingdom of earth.

Blumhardt was visited by many American healing and “higher life” evangelists around the turn of the century (1900-1901). Through them he became well-known in America as a European counterpart to the great healing revivals taking place in America in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries—before Pentecostalism really took off with the Azusa Street Revival in 1906.

But Blumhardt was also a theologian, politician and social reformer. He was a pacifist who opposed war and refused to support Kaiser Wilhelm’s declaration of war in 1914. He was a premillennialist who believed the coming Kingdom of God on earth serves as a critical principle for contemporary Christian witness and practice. In other words, for him, the future earthly rule of Christ is not “pie in the sky by-and-by” and Christian ethics of premillennialism is not escapism (“lifeboat ethics”). It is a strong impetus to Christian social reform now.

Blumhardt had to surrender his Lutheran ministerial status when he joined the Social Democratic Party and was elected to the Württemberg parliament. He as a socialist but not a communist.

Finally, about Blumhardt’s theology, he was a universalist; he believed that end the end hell would be emptied.

So, here we have one man who embodied these characteristics: Christian evangelist and revivalist preacher, “faith healer,” exorcist, spiritual director, retreat center leader…wait for it…socialist reformer and politician, pacifist, universalist. He fits no known category.

During his lifetime and long afterwards Blumhardt was famous especially in Germany and Switzerland but also in America. There can be no doubt about his influence on (among others) Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Jürgen Moltmann. Brunner dedicated his third volume of his Dogmatics to Blumhardt and mentioned in the second volume the miracles at Möttlingen and Bad Boll. (Möttlingen being the town where Johann Blumhardt’s healing and exorcism ministry began.) Brunner names Christoph Blumhardt as his spiritual mentor. Barth’s “Christocentric method” in theology owes much to Blumhardt. Moltmann wrote an article in Pneuma (the journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies) in which he specifically named Blumhardt as one of his three greatest influences.

Why has Blumhardt been largely forgotten (except for a few Christian scholars who know about him and his influence)? For one thing, not a lot of his writing has been translated into English; that is in the works. For another thing, and I think this is the main reason, he is impossible to pigeon-hole, to categorize, even to understand—in terms of how one person could embody such seemingly (to most people’s minds) contrary features. I believe we have a tendency to dismiss and forget people we cannot categorize, people who stand alone and break out of all known categories.

There is a small revival of interest in Blumhardt led by evangelical Christian scholars who are also interested in Pietism. I look forward to the day when a complete biography of Christoph will be published in English (there is one of Johann). I would like to use my blog to increase anticipation of such and interest in this amazing man and his ministry and influence.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

Book Recommendations: Most Important Books for Seminary Students and Books that Have Influenced Me Most

Occasionally I am asked by someone, often a seminary student, for a list of books. Most recently a beginning seminary student asked me for two lists: 1) Those 5-10 books would I want every seminary student to read before they graduate, and 2) Those books have been most influential in my own development.

This is always a challenge because I would want every seminary student to read so many books it’s difficult to narrow the list down to “5 to 10.” Also, deciding on a list of “most influential” books in my own development raises questions such as “at what point or time frame or stage in my development?” I will assume the students (and readers here) would like to know about spiritual-theological books and not novels or non-religious non-fiction books.

So, these two lists are the ones I think of today; ask me again tomorrow and perhaps they will be different ones. However, the books in these two brief lists are ones I would always want seminary students to read and ones that I always remember as having influenced my own spiritual-theological development. I will keep the two lists separate even though there could be overlap.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

First, the five to ten books that I would want every seminary student to read before they graduate. Here I will omit ones that I suspect are widely used as textbooks in contemporary evangelical seminaries. (I will also omit all but one of my own books.)

1) A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by German pastor-theologian Helmut Thielicke.

2) Good Arguments: Making Your Case in Writing and Public Speaking by Richard A. Holland and Benjamin K. Forrest. (This is a new but much-needed book by two evangelical Christian scholars.)

3) The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard.

4) The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis.

5) The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark A. Noll.

6) A Passion for Truth: The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism by Alister McGrath.

7) Proper Confidence by Lesslie Newbigin.

8) After Fundamentalism by Bernard Ramm.

9) Essentials of Christian Thought by Roger E. Olson

10) The Transforming Power of Grace by Thomas Oden.

Second, the five to ten book that have most influenced me in my spiritual-theological development. The student did not specifically limit this list to five to ten books, but I have to or else creating the list could take many hours, days or even weeks! Here, in this list, I am reaching way, way back to the formative stages of my spiritual-theological development as I struggled to understand, embrace, and defend a moderate evangelical Protestant Christian theology of my own. Most of these books are out of print, but, with the internet/world wide web, most of them can be found in libraries or in used book re-sellers sites.

1) The Ground of Certainty by Donald G. Bloesch. This was one of the first books I read when I was beginning to search for a moderately evangelical Protestant Christian approach to knowledge (epistemology) beyond the kind of authoritarianism in which I grew up and was trained as a child and youth. Bloesch became my earliest theological “mentor” from afar in those early days. (I only had the privileged of meeting him many years later.) I think I read every book Bloesch wrote—eventually. He remains—even after his death—the single most formative Christian theologian because this book and others he wrote around the same time (1960s/1970s) changed my inner world.

2) The Christian View of Science and Scripture by Bernard Ramm. This book pulled me out of biblical literalism and naïve fundamentalism and opened doors to me—about Bible interpretation—that revolutionized my spiritual-theological thinking. Of course, I went on from there to read many more books of the same genre and in the same vein. But this one was, for me, at an early stage of my spiritual-theological maturation, absolutely crucial. It, too, changed my inner world.

3) A Theology for the Social Gospel by Walter Rauschenbusch together with Discovering an Evangelical Heritage by Donald W. Dayton. When I was growing up in fundamentalist Pentecostalism, the worst thing my then spiritual mentors could label any church (after “cult”) was “Social Gospel.” That meant it was spiritually dead, a humanistic club, hopelessly “liberal” and a mission field. I don’t recall in which order I read these books, but together they rocked my world. I discovered that “evangelical Christianity” had a history of progressive social reform (19^th century) and that “social gospel” did not have to be a dirty phrase.

4) Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical by Jack Rogers. This little book absolutely shook me out of my “fundamentalist slumbers” and laid the foundation, or forged the path, toward what I eventually came to call “postconservative evangelicalism.” It is autobiographical. Rogers was then (1970s) a professor of theology at Fuller Seminary. The book is his story of his own emergence out of fundamentalism and into a moderate evangelicalism. Some years ago I talked with Rogers on the phone and asked him what was his intended title for this little book. He said “Confessions of a Post-conservative Evangelical.” The publisher dropped the “Post-.” I had always suspected that because the story is not about him becoming a conservative evangelical; it is his story of coming out of conservative evangelicalism.

5) God after God: The God of the Past and the Future as Seen in the Work of Karl Barth by Robert W. Jenson. This was a real stretch for me when I first read it, but it set my feet on the path that eventually led to my doctoral research project and my dissertation (which, ironically, was about Wolfhart Pannenberg!) This book changed my whole view of God (theologically) and convinced me that I needed to read Barth and eventually Pannenberg (strange “bed partners” in theology, to be sure!). After reading this book I (somewhat secretly) began thinking of the God of the Bible as truly historical and not immutable. Because of this book I began reading Moltmann and other revisionist theists while rejecting process theology as “a bridge too far.”

6) Crucial Questions about the Kingdom of God by George Eldon Ladd. Honestly, I don’t remember if I read this one first. Ladd wrote at least three books about eschatology that critiqued “dispensationalism” and “rapture theology” and promoted “historic premillennialism.” I think two of them, published under different titles, were basically the same book. But I have this one on my shelf and just touching it brings back memories of the shock and awe I felt when I read Ladd’s writings on eschatology and the kingdom of God. “Rapture fever” was rampant and profound in American evangelicalism then (at this early stage of my spiritual-theological development) and I had doubts about the so-called “rapture” and about dispensationalism—which is what I was taught to believe as a child and youth. Ladd’s books sealed the fate of that eschatology for me and I adopted his “historic premillennialism” and have held it ever since.

7) The Crucified God by Jürgen Moltmann. What can I say about this classic except that it absolutely revolutionized my own, personal spiritual-theological journey? Reading it brought about a quantum leap in that journey (for me). I have read it several times since the first time and I always find riches previously unrecognized. I suppose one thing I could say about it (among many things) is that it cause me to adopt social trinitarianism.

8) A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutierrez. During seminary I “stepped out” of the seminary to take an elective course (given credit by the seminary) taught by a liberation theologian at a local Lutheran college. It was a graduate level course and the credits for it came to me at my seminary via Luther Seminary (St. Paul) where the professor was on the faculty. The class met once weekly for three hours and was an intensive immersion in Latin American liberation theology. This book opened my eyes to things I had never known or thought about. One thing it did for me was convince me that most critics of liberation theology had not really read this classic book that helped launch that movement.

9) The Struggle of Prayer by Donald G. Bloesch. As I said above, Bloesch was my spiritual-theological mentor “from afar” during my early stage of emergence out of Pentecostal fundamentalism and into the wider world of moderate to progressive evangelicalism. This has always been, for me, the best book on prayer ever written. It convinced me (to make this testimony very personal) that a person could be Spirit-filled and not be Pentecostal-charismatic. Bloesch was neither, but in this book (like his other ones) I detected a Spirit-filled life and a model for true Christian Pietism of the best kind.

10) The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen. Now, with this last book in this list, I am jumping far beyond my youth and early stage of turning away from fundamentalist authoritarianism toward a broader, even progressive evangelicalism. Years later, still trying to understand what was done to me during my college years, I came across this little but powerful, liberating book. I now had a name for it: “spiritual abuse.” Johnson and VanVonderen were the first to explain to me, through this book and another one (Tired of Trying to Measure Up?) the dynamics of spiritual abuse especially in evangelical circles. This book changed my life by helping me understand my own history and confirm that I was right to struggle out and away from that authoritarian religious ethos of my childhood and youth.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

A Personal Perspective on Black and White Evangelicalism

These are merely thoughts based on my own, personal history, my historical researches, and my inner anguish—over the state of American evangelicalism. I apologize for any concern, consternation or other harm my thoughts may cause anyone. I welcome thoughtful, civil responses.

My own spiritual-theological identity has always, for sixty-five years, been “evangelical.” I won’t go into all the reasons for that, but only say that I grew up and remain evangelical in what I understand to be the truest and best sense of the word.

The seminary where I teach calls itself “evangelical.” That is a problem for many folks who, in my opinion, tend to interpret that word through the media’s misrepresentations of it. The American media tend to portray American evangelicalism as exclusively white, male-led, nationalistic (American exceptionalism) and ultra-conservative socially and politically. That was not my experience growing up and living among American evangelicals.

My great-grandparents and grandparents were members of two evangelical denominations: The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) and the Evangelical Free Church of America. When I was a child, growing up, I knew both of those churches to be what would now be called “progressive”—among evangelicals. Both, for example, were pioneers in ordaining women and having women pastors. My parents “converted” to Pentecostalism; I grew up in churches that were open to African-Americans and people of all races and ethnicities and had women pastors, evangelists, church planters and denominational leaders.

I never heard the word “inerrancy” until I attended a mainstream, evangelical Baptist seminary. Only then did I learn that “women should not be pastors or teach men.” The social location of the seminary was predominantly white, middle class, and male-led and I struggled with that.

During my seminary years I gravitated away from Pentecostalism toward being Baptist and toward inserting myself, hopefully influentially, in the wider American evangelical world. Over the years I have taught in three Christian universities with evangelical reputations (more or less).

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

While I was still in seminary I began to read and then associate with what I call “progressive evangelicalism.” I saw and experienced that fundamentalism was gradually inserting itself into mainstream evangelicalism and pushed back against that as best I could. I was taught that “we evangelicals” were not fundamentalists. Gradually, however, the line between the two communities of relatively conservative American Protestants began to blur and even dissolve. I was not then and I still am not prepared to give the identity “evangelical” to the neo-fundamentalist (almost all white and male) who have somehow convinced the media that they are the “true evangelicals.” I have written many articles and some books pushing back against that, but it feels like trying to hold back a flood with a finger in the dike (to use a Dutch illustration).

Along the way, as an American evangelical student, scholar, teacher, editor, author, I have developed strong resistance to any identification of true, authentic “evangelical Christianity” with American nationalism, conservative political ideologies, “whiteness” and “maleness.” I think my “new consciousness” about these issues began from my own roots and also from reading every issue of a magazine published while I was in seminary titled The Post-American. It later became Sojourners. Through reading it and coming to know its editors, writers, publisher, etc., I adopted the view that “mainline American evangelicalism” as a movement is deeply, profoundly flawed. Its whiteness is one of its major flaws and that, in my opinion, is tied in with its “take over” by fundamentalists who tend to blend together American nationalism, ultra-conservative political ideology, and evangelical Christianity.

Over the now thirty-six years of my academic involvement with American evangelicalism I used whatever influenced I had to “push back” against the flood of neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism and especially the popular image of all evangelicals as American nationalists, white, male-dominated, and politically and economically conservative. So I have tended to associate myself with like-minded evangelicals who, in my opinion, are all too few because the media has portrayed “us” (evangelicals in America) in their own way. Popular opinion, shaped by the secular media, has come to think of “American evangelicalism” as something I cannot personally identify with.

However, I have never been ready to surrender my own evangelical identity. It is a big part of who I am.

What I have done is state very publicly (on my blog, in books and articles, in papers read at professional society meetings, etc.) that, in my own personal opinion, the American evangelical movement is dead and gone. The major reason is the divisive influence of ultra-conservative neo-fundamentalists who have somehow managed to capture the label “evangelical” in the public mind.

What I have done, then, is argue that there is a difference between evangelicalism as a movement and evangelicalism as an ethos. When I call myself “evangelical,” and when my seminary calls itself “evangelical,” I/we are not identifying with any movement; I/we are identifying ourselves with a historical-theological-spiritual ethos deeply shaped by post-Reformation: pietism, revivalism, missions, and profound emphasis on the gospel of Jesus Christ as the only message that brings true and holistic transformation—both individually and socially.

There really is no alternative label for this distinctive theological-spiritual ethos than “evangelical” and Christians around the globe have adopted it; it is not unique or even distinctive to the United States. And therein lies part of the problem; today’s secular media, influenced by certain neo-fundamentalist, self-appointed spokespersons for “evangelicalism,” have identified being evangelical with being pro-American nationalism, white, ultra-conservative socially and politically, and male-led. None of this is true of the universal evangelical ethos.

What I am calling the “evangelical ethos” is found just as strongly in African-American churches as in predominantly white churches. There are many African-American evangelicals in this sense of “evangelical” and many of them have and still do identify as “black evangelicals.” What they mean is what I mean—“evangelical” in the ethos sense, not in the movement sense.

Please be patient with me as I mention some leading, influential African-American evangelicals who have played a part in my life and have informed my “brand” of authentic evangelicalism. I have met all of these people and consider them true evangelicals—as they do so consider themselves. They are, to me, heroes of authentic evangelicalism that transcends race, gender, culture and nationality.

Before I mention names, however, I will note that there exists and has long existed an organization in the U.S. called The National Black Evangelical Association (www.the-nbea.org). This organization’s Statement of Faith is thoroughly evangelical in the broad, ethos sense. It is essentially no different from most white evangelical Statements of Faith. Their spirituality is Bible-centered, Jesus-centered, gospel-centered and conversionist.

One of the first black evangelicals who came onto my personal “radar screen” and whose books I read and whom I eventually met and had “table fellowship” with was black evangelist Tom Skinner. His widow still leads a “leadership institute” named after him. He was a prophet to predominantly white evangelicalism as well as to black evangelicals. He wrote several books and spoke at national meetings of both black and white evangelicals about subjects like “How Black is the Gospel?” He was never afraid to confront white supremacy among evangelicals while remaining authentically evangelical without apology.

Another black evangelical who influenced me and with whom I also had “table fellowship” was William Pannell who is an “icon” among progressive evangelicals. Evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary has an institute named after him. He still lives and is active in promoting racial diversity and even “blackness” among American evangelicals.

More recently (speaking here of younger black evangelicals) two very influential African-American evangelical scholars, authors and speakers are my friendly acquaintances Wheaton College theology professor Vincent Bacote and Fuller Seminary theology professor Anthea Butler.

These black evangelicals are among a vanguard of evangelical Christians in the U.S. pushing back against the “whiteness” of the evangelical movement while at the same time calling themselves “evangelical”—in my “ethos” sense of the term. Both, however, are deeply embedded in evangelical institutions and in the larger (non-fundamentalist, progressive) evangelical movement (if it can be called that anymore).

I will go out on a limb here (and hope for understanding or at least forgiveness) and claim that allowing the American secular media to re-define religious categories such as “evangelical” is very wrong. I believe that that Satan want this to happen and we who allow it to happen are cooperating with them (mostly unconsciously and unintentionally). The secular media, who have no real Christian sensibilities, are not interested in truth in religion; they are only interested in sensationalism. And they have played directly into the hands of neo-fundamentalists who are often more dedicated to American exceptionalism, white supremacy, male superiority, and anti-human capitalism (Social Darwinism!) than they are in the true gospel of Jesus Christ which is liberating of all that dehumanizes people and which transcends all human differences.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

“The Legacy of the Reformation in Contemporary Evangelicalism”

(Address at Symposium “The Living Reformation: 500 Years of Martin Luther” at Brigham Young University, September 15, 2017)

Roger E. Olson

Someone, somewhere, at some time, decided that the Protestant Reformation began on October 31, 1517 when German monk Martin Luther nailed “95 Theses”—propositions for public debate—to a church door in Wittenberg, Saxony. Throughout Christendom Protestant Christians celebrate the Sunday closest to October 31 as “Reformation Day” and sing Luther’s great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and talk about distinctively Protestant doctrines such as “justification by grace through faith alone.”

This year, 2017, is being celebrated by many Protestants around the world as the 500^th anniversary of the birth of Protestantism with symposia being held in many places focusing on the Reformation. Most of them will focus primarily on two Protestant reformers—Martin Luther and John Calvin—because of their inestimable contributions to especially European and North American Protestant Christianity.

I am personally somewhat ambivalent about this celebration and focus. I will explain why in a moment. First, let me say publicly that I proudly call myself a Protestant Christian but without in any way excluding from Christianity faithful Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers. At the same time, however, I do not feel the same enthusiasm some Protestants do for the Reformation as they remember and celebrate it.

One reason for my ambivalence is simply historical but with theological reasons wrapped up in the historical ones. Everyone who has studied the Reformation of the sixteenth century knows, but many conveniently forget, that, for the most part, especially with regard to the doctrines he espoused that brought about his excommunication from the church of Rome, Luther’s ideas were not new with him. What made Luther different from John Hus of Prague who was also a Protestant, who also founded a schism from the Catholic Church, and who a century before Luther preached the same then controversial religious doctrines? Only that Hus was burned at the stake, largely ending his ministry and movement, and Luther was not. But Luther was recognized as and labeled “The Saxon Hus” because of the similarity, if not identity, of his doctrines with those Hus preached earlier and not far away.

We could go back further to identify the real beginnings of Protestant Christianity. Peter Waldo of Italy founded a Protestant movement that survives as a distinct ecclesiastical body to this day and he preached many of the same doctrines as Hus and Luther—two hundred and three hundred years before Hus and Luther. The Waldensian Church of Italy—now existing in other countries such as Paraguay—may have historical claim to being the first continuing Protestant denomination. It is a full member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

Then there’s John Wycliffe of England who influenced Hus and through Hus Luther and whose followers, known as the Lollards, prepared the way for the later English Reformation. His doctrines were basically the same as Hus’s, Luther’s and Calvin’s.

So, my point is that there is something arbitrary and misleading about pinning the “birth of Protestantism” or the “beginning of the Reformation” to October 31, 1517 and identifying Luther as the first Protestant and real founder of the Reformation.

But I earlier mentioned that some of my ambivalence about the historical memory and celebration has to do with theology. Now I will explain that.

The three great Protestant reformers most talked about and celebrated were Luther, his contemporary Swiss counterpart Ulrich Zwingli, and the younger French reformer and theologian John Calvin in Geneva. These three, together with other contemporary reformers and theologians, are often referred to as the “magisterial reformers” to distinguish them from the so-called “radical reformers.” The radical reformers were a diverse group of preachers and theologians who believed Luther, Zwingli and Calvin did not go far enough in reforming the European churches. Once the break with Rome happened, the radical reformers all wanted to abolish medieval Christendom with its links between church and state. They decried and denounced the so-called magisterial reformers for permitting the princes and the city councils to determine the course and pace of the reformation. The radical reformers were restorationists; in spite of their manifest differences, they all agreed that the task of the Reformation was to recreate the New Testament church and they saw themselves as living in a cultural situation in the Holy Roman Empire much like that of the earliest Christians. And many of them were martyred, by both Catholics and magisterial Protestants, just like the primitive Christians of the Roman Empire.

As a Free Church Protestant I will celebrate the real beginning of the Reformation in 2025—the 500^th anniversary of the birth of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland. Not all of the radical reformers were Anabaptists, but that movement was the first major and enduring one, among Protestants, to declare openly that the church of Jesus Christ should not be controlled by the state or the empire. And they argued that true, authentic Christianity is a voluntary relationship with God and with the church that must involve a personal decision of faith in Jesus Christ marked by believer baptism as an act of mature commitment to Christ and his church.

Also, pushing further with my critique, while the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century recovered important biblical doctrines such as justification by grace through faith alone without merit, Scripture as the ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice, even over centuries of ecclesiastical tradition, and the right and ability of every true believer in Jesus Christ to approach God without an earthly human mediator, there were later Protestant movements that corrected and further reformed Protestantism in Europe and America.

Almost all, if not all, of the sixteenth century magisterial reformers were divine determinists who preached and taught that God alone, unilaterally, decides who is saved and who is damned. They denied free will participation in salvation, labeling that covert Catholicism by means of a return to human merit in salvation. In the first decades of the seventeenth century Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius and his followers, known as the Remonstrants, another word for “Protestant,” broke away from that deterministic theology of divine predestination and taught that although salvation is all of grace and by faith without good works the individual sinner must freely consent to the saving work of God in order to be saved. Like the Anabaptists before them, they were persecuted by both church and state but survived. The Remonstrant Brotherhood of the Netherlands, curiously enough, is also a charter member denomination of the World Communion of Reformed Churches—something that challenges any simplistic identification of “Reformed” with “Calvinism.”

Another later Protestant movement that added to the Reformation of the sixteenth century and corrected it was the Pietist movement launched primarily by three German Lutheran theologians: Philip Spener, August Francke, and Nicholas Zinzendorf. They added into Protestantism the idea of a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” that is transformative even toward perfection of character. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was profoundly influenced by the Pietists.

I grew up in the “thick” of American evangelical Christianity; my father was an evangelical pastor and many of my close relatives were evangelical ministers, evangelists, missionaries and denominational executives. As a child I had a vague sense of Protestantism and knew a little about the Reformation from looking at books in my father’s library. One was about Protestant martyrs and contained graphic depictions of their deaths at the hands of French Catholics. We were most definitely Free Church Protestants, Arminians and Pietists, so our feelings and thoughts about Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, insofar as we talked about them at all, were at best ambivalent. But, as I recall, we did always sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” on Reformation Sunday.

I attended a Pentecostal Bible college and there endured my first church history classes. I say “endured” because, now as I look back on them, I don’t think they were very accurate or did justice to the richness of church history. It may be a caricature to say that they tended to focus on which church fathers, Reformers and post-Reformation Protestants might have spoken in tongues, but there was that constant issue being taught and discussed. Our study of church history actually began with Luther, almost completely ignoring everything before him since the New Testament. Only later, in seminary and doctoral studies did I really learn about church history and theology between the apostles and Luther.

In an evangelical Baptist seminary and then in my doctoral studies in theology at a major research university I was taught and I read the history of evangelical Christianity in its many facets including the historical and theological. Not until recently was “evangelical” a political identity; in my opinion the media has created that identity. “My evangelicalism,” the evangelicalism I grew up in and studied and still consider my religious identity, was not “the Republican Party at prayer” as the American media now portray it. In fact, my more mature studies of American and British evangelicalism taught me that throughout much of the nineteenth century evangelicals were in the forefront of progressive social and political change working hard as abolitionists of slavery, liberators of women from chattel status, and even for redistribution of wealth to help abolition poverty.

Eventually I came to consider true, authentic evangelical Christianity not so much a movement as a spiritual-theological ethos. Various movements, coalitions and alliances among evangelical Christians have emerged over the centuries, but what binds them together, if anything does, is not politics or even fundamentalist theology but four or five spiritual-theological commitments identified and now generally agreed on—as the hallmarks of evangelical Christianity—by David Bebbington, a leading Scottish evangelical historian. Mark Noll, perhaps the leading American historian of evangelicalism agrees.

Evangelical Christianity is marked by biblicism which Bebbington and Noll describe as belief in and love of the Bible as God’s uniquely inspired Word written. Contrary to most fundamentalist evangelicals, however, it does not necessarily include inerrancy or literalism of interpretation. Evangelical biblicism, however, in distinction from much liberal Protestantism, does believe the Bible is different in kind and not only in degree from other religious books; it is supernaturally inspired and uniquely authoritative for Christian faith and practice.

Evangelical Christianity is also marked by conversionism which Bebbington and Noll describe as belief that true, full, authentic Christian life, life in fellowship with God, always and necessarily includes a personal decision of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord which is more than “turning over a new leaf;” it is a work of the Holy Spirit and not merely a decision to join a church or live a better life.

Evangelical Christianity is also marked, according to Bebbington and Noll, by crucicentrism which is a strong devotion to the cross of Jesus Christ as the event that reconciles God to people and people to God. Christ’s atoning death on the cross, his atoning sacrifice for sins, is crucial to evangelical faith, life, worship and piety.

Finally, according to Bebbington and Noll, evangelical Christianity is marked by activism in evangelism and social transformation. How that activism is worked out, manifested, differs much among evangelicals, but the point is that evangelical Christianity is not quietist in the sense of a mystical withdrawal from the world. At its best, when it is true to its roots and essence, it includes a robust desire and effort for changing the world.

I have personally suggested a fifth hallmark of evangelical Christianity. It is historically and theologically committed to basic Christian doctrinal orthodoxy including belief that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity, and that salvation cannot be earned but is a gift of God’s grace.

So that is a quick and unsophisticated portrait of evangelical Christianity as a spiritual-theological ethos. Its roots are in the Protestant Reformation but it is deeply influenced by Pietism and the revivalism of the first and second Great Awakenings.

The most recent evangelical movement was the post-World War 2 one led especially by evangelist Billy Graham. It was born out of dissatisfaction with the strong influence of liberal Protestantism in American society as well as with the anti-intellectualism and cultural indifference of American fundamentalism during the first half of the century. It was founded by evangelical pastor-theologian Harold John Ockenga who, together with some other non-fundamentalist conservative Protestants with an evangelical ethos, founded the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942. During the 1950s Billy Graham became its figurehead and he remained the “glue” that held it together for almost fifty years. With his retirement from the scene that evangelical movement has dissolved; it no longer exists. However, the evangelical ethos lives on in numerous manifestations. Unfortunately for those of us who grew up in and still identify with non-fundamentalist evangelicalism, contemporary American evangelicalism is increasingly being dominated publicly by fundamentalists and religious nationalists.

So where is, where can one still find, historical evangelicalism as an ethos not identified with separatistic, narrow-minded, anti-intellectual, anti-cultural, pro-nationalistic fundamentalism? Certainly not on television or in the print media. The media have turned popular opinion toward identifying evangelical Christianity with fundamentalism and nationalistic political conservatism. As an evangelical historian and theologian I find historical evangelical Christianity still alive and well in mostly Protestant denominations such as the Evangelical Covenant Church of America—one of the least known but one of the fastest-growing denominations in the United States. And I find it everywhere I travel and read and look; it’s just that most people whose thoughts are controlled by the media don’t identify those people and places, publishers and magazines, churches and parachurch organizations, as “evangelical” because they are not fundamentalist or politically conservative in any overt or activist way.

Now I want to turn to the historical-theological relationship between the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and contemporary evangelicalism—as I have described and portrayed it here.

First, the relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the evangelical ethos. The evangelical Christian ethos, as I have described it here, pre-dates the Protestant Reformation but was given great impetus by it. Unlike most medieval Catholics, Luther freely talked about being “born again” in his so-called “Tower Experience” at the University of Wittenberg as he read and studied Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Evangelicals like to think that this was Luther’s real initiation into authentic Christian life and experience. Of course, Luther placed high value on the Bible as God’s Word and translated it into the common language of the German people so that everyone could read it. This at a time when reading the Bible was restricted largely to priests, monks and noblemen. Luther also placed great emphasis on Christ’s death as the only means of salvation understood as justification—forgiveness and reconciliation with God. His own doctrine of the atonement focused on Christ’s triumph over Satan and the “powers and principalities” under Satan’s leadership. And yet one can find other images and metaphors including sacrifice in Luther’s treatments of the atonement. There can be no question about Luther’s strong emphasis on the cross which is not in any way to deny the medieval Catholic Church’s equal emphasis on the cross. But they were different. Like modern and contemporary evangelicals Luther regarded the cross as sufficient alone to effect salvation without any need of atoning suffering or punishment on the part of the repentant sinner who has faith in the cross. Finally, Luther was an activist in seeking to bring about change in the world. True, he did believe Christ would return during his own lifetime and no doubt died disappointed that it had not happened, but his belief in the imminent return of Christ did not stop him from seeking to influence worldly society for the better. His vehement opposition to the revolting peasants continues to dismay and disappoint church historians, but Luther did put pressure on the Protestant princes to treat their peasants more humanely.

And, finally, contrary to what so many people believe, Luther was not anti-tradition; he highly valued the church fathers and especially Augustine. In many ways he and Calvin, especially, considered their reforming works in theology a recovery of true Augustinian Christianity. But more to the point here, comparing Luther with the evangelical ethos as I have described it, the Saxon reformer held firmly to ancient Christian orthodoxy and considered the major councils and creeds of Christendom authoritative. He strongly opposed the radical, anti-Trinitarian reformers such as Faustus Socinus and Servetus.

The evangelical ethos can be found before the Reformation of the sixteenth century, but Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Cranmer, Calvin and other magisterial reformers embodied it and promoted it more strongly than medieval Catholicism even if incompletely and imperfectly. One evangelical hallmark where many of us believe they fell short is conversionism. All the magisterial reformers, including the ones I have named just now, believed in infant baptism as a means of special grace and not only as a special means of grace. Many evangelicals baptize infants. The Evangelical Covenant Church of America which I mentioned earlier baptizes infants or mature believers after conversion. The difference is that the magisterial reformers did not emphasize conversion, making a personal decision for Christ, as strongly as evangelicals do.

I think it is fair to say, and most historians of evangelicalism agree, that what I am calling the evangelical ethos really was born, or at least given strong impetus, within the Pietist movement. The founders of Pietism were faithful Lutherans but believed Luther and the other magisterial reformers neglected the importance of individual faith in conversion and the Holy Spirit inspired and empowered life of holiness. This is what my friend evangelical theologian Stanley J. Grenz called “convertive piety” and it is not to be found in the magisterial reformers as strongly as in their Pietist heirs.

Now what about the Radical Reformation of the sixteenth century—especially the Anabaptists? Without any doubt they also embodied much of the evangelical ethos and perhaps more strongly than the magisterial reformers. The one weakness in that regard was their tendency to retreat from world transformation—activism—into communal collectives separated from the world. But unlike the magisterial reformers they did emphasize the necessity of individual, personal conversion followed by baptism as a non-sacramental commitment to Christ and his church.

If I had to identify the first true evangelical Christians in the full modern sense of the word I would name the Anabaptists of the 1525 Swiss Brethren movement in Zurich. But I would criticize them for lacking a vision for world transformation and for their understandable but undesirable withdrawal into quietist communities apart from the world.

Now I want to turn to the modern and contemporary evangelical movement referred to earlier, the British and American one that had Billy Graham as its figurehead. This is what most American scholars mean when they refer to the modern/contemporary “evangelical movement.” Of course, it has much deeper roots and those I’ve already talked about. The catalyst for its formation as a coalition of relatively conservative Protestants sharing an evangelical spiritual-theological ethos was strong dissatisfaction, even bitter disillusionment, with American fundamentalism which coalesced as a movement in the early twentieth century with roots in the revivals of D. L. Moody in the late nineteenth century. Like evangelicalism, fundamentalism is both an ethos and a movement and the two can be distinguished. The ethos pre-dated the movement and will no doubt outlive it.

The fundamentalist ethos goes back at least to the rigid, narrow, dogmatic separatism of post-Reformation Protestant scholasticism that brought about many schisms among Protestants over relatively minor points of doctrine. One leading Protestant scholastic, Swiss theologian Francis Turretin, argued that, in order to protect the authority of the Bible, we must believe that God inspired the vowel points of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. In the fight against free thinking Christianity in the nineteenth century Princeton Seminary theologian Charles Hodge, a leading grandfather of the fundamentalist movement, argued for the inerrancy of the entire Bible and scorned belief in evolution as incompatible with Christian belief in the inspiration of the Bible. The fundamentalist ethos appears in any tendency to elevate secondary doctrines of Protestant Christianity to the status of essentials of the Christian faith itself.

During the first decades of the twentieth century several pastor-theologians began to organize American fundamentalists to fight against the rise of what they called “modernism” in the Protestant churches. Two early leaders, both Baptist ministers, who joined hands across the Mason-Dixon Line stand out as examples. William Bell Riley pastored First Baptist Church of Minneapolis while J. Frank Norris pastored First Baptist Church of Fort Worth. Together they formed the Christian Fundamentals Association and preached that premillennialism is a “fundamental doctrine” of Christian faith. Some Reformed and Presbyterian fundamentalists disagreed but elevated double predestination to the status of a fundamental of Christian faith. Throughout the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties American fundamentalism degenerated as a movement into a cranky, fissiparous, separatistic and fragmented movement noted for being against “godless evolution,” “godless communism,” “godless racial integration” and a host of other things they perceived as “godless.”

In 1942 New England Congregationalist pastor Ockenga formed the NAE, the National Association of Evangelicals, to give collective voice to a diverse group of relatively conservative American Protestant Christians with an evangelical ethos who were not fundamentalists. Although he invited fundamentalist leader Carl McIntire to bring into the NAE his American Council of Christian Churches he knew that was not likely to happen and, indeed, much to Ockenga’s relief, it did not. McIntire and fundamentalist leaders such as Bob Jones and John R. Rice shunned the new evangelicals as “neo-evangelicals” and wolves in sheep’s clothing.

The new evangelical movement probably would not have grown and had much influence if it were not for Billy Graham, the young Youth for Christ evangelist who departed from fundamentalism and became the figurehead of the new evangelical movement. Of course, from a liberal Protestant and probably from a Catholic perspective, there isn’t much difference between fundamentalism and the new evangelicalism, but a close examination, especially an insider’s one—of either movement—reveals tremendous differences. Yet, to be honest, there has always also been some overlap and movement back and forth.

Now to the influence of the Protestant Reformation on the new evangelicalism by which I mean the post-fundamentalist evangelical movement symbolized by Billy Graham, educated to a very large extent at Fuller Theological Seminary (or by its professors through their writings), and given voice since 1956 by the magazine Christianity Today.

The leading historians of the movement were, throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1990s, George Marsden and Mark Noll. However, many of us who grew up in the movement first studied its theological foundations by reading evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm’s extremely influential 1973 book The Evangelical Heritage (Word). Like Marsden and Noll and many other evangelical historians and theologians Ramm’s story of the “evangelical heritage” began with the Protestant Reformers, moved through the post-Reformation scholastics including the Old Princeton School theologians, and then jumped to the rise of liberal theology and then neo-orthodoxy. That story of evangelicalism strongly emphasizes the roles of Luther and Calvin and their heirs to the neglect of Pietism, Wesleyanism, revivalism and, of course, Pentecostalism.

Evangelical historian and theologian Donald W. Dayton, a Free Methodist, rebelled against this evangelical self-narrative in the 1980s and 1990s, publicly criticizing it in the pages of Christian Scholar’s Review, an evangelical scholarly journal jointly published by about fifty Christian liberal arts colleges and universities. Dayton labeled the Marsden-Noll-Ramm majority evangelical narration of evangelical history the “Puritan Paradigm” and argued for an alternative narration he labeled the “Pentecostal Paradigm.” This was at a time when the largest denomination in the NAE was the Assemblies of God and the second largest was the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Dayton argued quite cogently that evangelical history and theology was being unfairly dominated by Reformed historians and theologians and Calvinism was central to that one-sided narrative of evangelical history and theology. He also argued cogently that evangelical history, theology and spirituality have been just as much influenced by Pietism, revivalism and Pentecostalism and that the Wesleyan contribution to evangelicalism was being ignored or at least neglected by the likes of Marsden, Noll and Ramm.

I think Dayton was right, but I have preferred to label the two paradigms of evangelical self-description the “Puritan-Presbyterian Paradigm” and the “Pietist-Pentecostal Paradigm.” The former places at the center of the story of evangelical Christianity people like John Knox and Jonathan Edwards whereas the latter places at the center people like Philip Spener and John Wesley. Both paradigms admit that evangelicalism is an attempt to take the basic impulses of the Protestant Reformation along the reformers’ trajectory to its right and ultimate conclusion. But the paradigms diverge when it comes to saying which post-Reformation leaders best represent that trajectory.

I believe that one of the weaknesses of the new evangelical movement launched by Ockenga in 1942 was its being a combustible compound. Patched together with their basic differences papered over were these two very different versions of evangelical history, spirituality and theology. On the one hand were the Reformed represented, for example, by Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. On the other hand were the Wesleyan-Holiness represented, for example, by Asbury Theological Seminary and the Free Methodists. What do these two parties have in common? Well, in 1942 they shared in common an antipathy to liberal Protestantism and disillusionment with separatistic fundamentalism. They shared in common admiration for the recovery of the gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone in the Protestant Reformation. They shared in common a strong belief in the Bible as God’s inspired and authoritative, if not inerrant, written Word. They shared a common confessional belief in the deity of Christ and the Trinity. However, their differences symbolized by Edwards and Wesley, for example, could not forever be papered over.

In a way, Edwards and Wesley represent the two grandfathers of the evangelical movement. Both were born in 1703 and both became leaders of the first Great Awakening in Great Britain and North America. Both indirectly influenced the second Great Awakening in the relatively young United States—Edwards more in New England and Wesley more in the Middle States and along the frontier. Edwards was a five point Calvinist who believed that God sovereignly and unconditionally chooses whom to save and gives them the gift of irresistible grace. His admirer Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary carried on his legacy among evangelicals. Today evangelical pastor-author-theologian John Piper channels Edwards. Wesley was an Arminian who believed that Calvinism besmirched the character of God and taught grace-enabled free will and human cooperation with grace in salvation. Edwardian evangelicals tend to emphasize biblical inerrancy and view the Bible as a not-yet-systematized systematic theology. For many of them the three volume system of Hodge remains the unsurpassed summary of biblical truth. Wesley-inspired evangelicals tend not to believe in biblical inerrancy and view the Bible as the inspired story of God’s love for all people and emphasize evangelism, conversion and sanctification over theology.

And then there are the Anabaptist evangelicals who form a third paradigm of evangelicalism which time forbids exploring here. I will just say that, in my estimation, that paradigm of evangelicalism will emerge in the future as equally important and influential. Unfortunately for Anabaptists their paradigm has no single champion like Edwards or Wesley and, unlike both of them, descends from the Radical Reformation with strong emphasis on pacifism, separation of church and state, soul liberty, congregational autonomy and a strong aversion to Christendom as a unification of church and culture. However, especially among evangelical “millennials,” Anabaptism is gaining ground and emerging as a live spiritual and theological option. These younger evangelicals have little use for Luther or Calvin, Edwards or Wesley and, because “evangelicalism” as a religious identity has been so tied to those men and their legacies, these younger Anabaptist evangelicals are comfortably shedding the evangelical label and identity even if they share the evangelical ethos.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

Was Søren Kierkegaard a Poet, a Prophet, a Philosopher, or What? (Thoughts Sparked by a New Biography of the “Melancholy Dane”)

I was recently in Grand Rapids, Michigan and spent some time at one of my publishers—Zondervan (a division of HarperCollins). (I recorded a video course based on my most recent book Essentials of Christian Thought which is published by Zondervan.) During lunch with friend Stan Gundry, chief editor of Zondervan, he gave me a copy of a new Zondervan publication: Kierkegaard: A Single Life by Stephen Backhouse. Stan knows my penchant for Kierkegaard. I mentioned to him that I had recently read a massive, exhaustive biography of the “melancholy Dane” by Joakim Garff entitled Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (Princeton University Press). The latter biography is 867 pages long! Trying to read and absorb it was like drinking out of a firehose. Just way too much material, too many details—not only about Kierkegaard but also about Danish culture during K’s (which is how I will refer to him henceforth) lifetime (and before and afterwards).

Stephen Backhouse admits (in Kierkegaard: A Single Life which is only 300 pages long) that his is no match for Garff’s exhaustive treatment of the life and times of K. However, I can say I enjoyed reading Backhouse’s briefer biography more than Garff’s. (But I’m glad I read both.)

If you have any interest in the life, thought, contribution, enigma and reception of K, I highly recommend Backhouse’s new biography (2016). If you already know much about K and want to know much more, read Garff’s biography.

Why my interest in K? Well, that’s not an easy question to answer—even to myself. Some of my reasons will be the same as others’. K was by all accounts a singular man, enigmatic and impossible to categorize or pigeonhole. He was a Christian, even one strongly influenced by Pietism, but he was no “type of Christian.” He was a contrarian, a controversialist, probably mentally and emotionally challenged in certain ways. (I’m no expert, but my “armchair diagnosis” would be “borderline personality disorder.”) But most of all, he was a radical Christian who could not find true Christianity in his time and place. I wonder if he could have found his version of “true Christianity” anywhere except among Jesus and his disciples?

What did K want? What did he seek? What did he call for? According to Backhouse, K wanted “honesty.” He wanted the “Christians” of his time and place to admit that they had created something other than authentic Christianity called “Christendom.” One famous quote (quoted here from memory so paraphrasing) is that in a country where everyone is a Christian by birth [true] Christianity does not exist. After reading his essays collected and published under the general title Against Christendom one has to wonder what K would say about “American Christianity.”

Although people often categorize K as a philosopher and a poet, I think of him as primarily and above all a Christian prophet. I think that was his self-understanding as well. For him, authentic Christianity is New Testament Christianity and that means not a religion accommodated to culture but a way of life devoted entirely to self-sacrificing love as modeled by Jesus Christ. We hear that language often, but K thought most such talk was just that—mere talk without intentionality.

One of the great enigmas of K’s life—always discussed by biographers and others who think they know something about K—was his breakup of his engagement to marry Regine Olsen. By all accounts it was cruel to her and cost him dearly—in terms of his reputation in polite Danish society. Also by all accounts K loved Regine to the day he died. There are many theories about why K broke off the engagement—a very serious act in those days and in that place. I think it was because he felt called to become a martyr and didn’t want her to suffer with him and because of him. His martyrdom, of course, was not literal but figurative. And it was partly brought on K by himself—through his writings which were sometimes intended to provoke his being treated by Danish society as a pariah.

As I finished Backhouse’s biography I mused in my own mind about my own relationship with K. When did his influence on me begin and how and why? Why have I always considered him the most important Christian influence on me—indirectly—outside of the prophets and apostles? (I don’t mention Jesus here because I don’t consider Jesus to have been a “Christian.”)

I grew up in a form of Christian life that attempted, perhaps pretended, to draw a clear line of demarcation between “us” and “them” with “them” referring to “nominal Christians”—those who pretended, even to themselves, that they were Christians but were not really so. To us, true, authentic Christianity was a life of martyrdom—in the sense meant by K about himself. Our heroes, however, were literal martyrs—missionaries who died in “foreign lands” for the sake of the gospel. I tried to live up to my family’s and our church’s and denomination’s expectations in this regard. I provoked persecution by fellow students in school by doing things like clumsily witnessing to them and telling them that the so-called Christianity they claimed was false.

Sometime during high school I was introduced by someone to K. I don’t recall the details. I must have been regarded as a pretty serious student by some others for anyone to recommend that I read K at age 16 or 17. (My grades weren’t all that good, but I was a voracious reader and talked a lot about things I was reading and learning—much to the annoyance, I’m sure, of my fellow students and teachers.)

I began to attempt to read K but found his own writing too difficult to understand. So I read secondary sources about him. There weren’t many in any library or bookstore in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in the 1960s—except in the libraries and bookstores of the two liberal arts colleges there (one Baptist and one Lutheran). Sometime during my high school years I began to “hang out” in those places—browsing and reading. I would go into the Augustana College campus store (just blocks from where I lived) and spend hours reading books about existentialism. I couldn’t afford to buy them and I couldn’t check them out of the college libraries. So I would just park myself somewhere in the bookstore or library and read as much as my free time (which wasn’t much) would allow.

I found a lot about atheist existentialists Sartre and Camus and, in fact, we read some things by them in certain high school classes. (I was privileged to attend a really excellent high school that was brand new and populated by mostly very good teachers who encouraged my intellectual curiosity.) I found K’s books in the Augustana library but, as I said, found him difficult to understand. But I persevered and kept picking up his books and trying. Somehow I knew he was someone I was looking for—an intellectual Christian. But I had to keep that search somewhat secret. Both at school and at home that phrase was considered by most people in my circle of friends, mentors and acquaintances an oxymoron. But I somehow suspected K was one and that intrigued me.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

Now some will no doubt say (if they know me well at all) that my penchant for K was partly biological and cultural. Even as a teenager I was also a “melancholy Dane.” My father was half Danish and half Norwegian; his mother (my paternal grandmother) was a Danish immigrant who spoke fluent Danish. I grew up having to eat lutefisk at family reunions and especially Christmas, but that was probably more due to my grandfather’s influence. (He was a Norwegian immigrant.)

But I really think my early penchant for K had more to do with his quest for authentic Christianity in a culture that thought it was Christian but wasn’t. As a teenager I was trying to be a serious, authentic Christian, but had few guides and mentors on that path that I trusted. I innately knew, somehow, that even our radical Christianity was inauthentic in many ways. Our peculiar form of inauthenticity was self-righteousness—a deep dishonesty about ourselves as sinners. We, or at least our leaders and heroes, has the Holy Spirit, so….

I remember that sometime during my senior year in high school I was with my father, a Pentecostal preacher and pastor, in a Lutheran-owned “book and Bible store” in downtown Sioux Falls. The only reason we were there was to pick up blank “church bulletins” to take next door to the printers for Sunday morning. While my father was busy at the counter with the owners I searched the shelves for anything by or about K and found a book about him and his philosophy and theology. I wanted to buy it but didn’t have the money. My dad took it out of my hand and said (paraphrasing because I don’t remember his exact words) “No, son, you don’t need that. He [K] was not a real Christian.” By then I knew enough to know he was wrong, but you didn’t argue with my dad—especially about that subject (viz., “true Christianity”).

Later, when I had saved up some money, I went back to that Lutheran bookstore and surreptitiously bought the book and kept it hidden from my father and everyone else. It was my first owned book about K. Now I don’t even remember the author’s name or the book’s title. But it guided me to K’s own works and helped me know which of them to read first and later. Later, during seminary, I read Either-Or, Sickness unto Death and K’s journals. I tried to read Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript but struggled with them a lot. Eventually, though, I did read them both and most of K’s other works translated into English. (No, in spite of my Danish-ness I never learned to read that language.)

Throughout my life K has remained my “distant” philosophical-theological inspiration and mentor. I admit, though, that I always felt the need to have a somewhat more systematized version of K’s basic ideas—put into a more specifically theological form. During seminary I found that in Swiss theologian Emil Brunner’s Dogmatics. Clearly, although he only mentions K a few times, K was one of his main conversation partners and inspirations.

Back to Backhouse’s biography. It sparkles with marvelous paragraphs about other subjects than just K’s life. For example, the best one paragraph description of Hegel’s philosophy of religion I have ever encountered is on pages 66-67. Henceforth, when attempting to explain Hegel’s idea of God as “Absolute Spirit” to students I will include reading those paragraphs from Backhouse’s K biography. Also, the very best, pithy description of what K meant by “Christendom” is to be found on page 172. For K it meant much more than simply the melding of church and state; it was any accommodation of New Testament Christianity to culture that “pulled the teeth” out of it.

So what was K? A poet? A prophet? A philosopher? A theologian? He was all those things but thought of himself as a writer and martyr. Without doubt he was as contrarian. I consider him a prophet—to Christians of all times and places. And his main message to us was to beware and repent of adapting and taming New Testament Christianity in order to make it respectable.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).