I just heard the news that American Methodist Theologian Tom Oden has passed away.
Oden was a former liberal who turned "orthodox" after discovering the church fathers -- under the wisdom of a Jewish theologian, Will Herberg. He was deep in liberalism, writing his dissertation on Freud and Bultmann -- Kerygma and Counseling. But the church fathers turned him towards the light of the evangelical and apostolic faith, for which he became a key advocate.
He exposed the suicide of liberalism in his book Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements -- which is the best critique of contemporary liberal theology I've ever read.
I was introduced to Oden as an undergrad. One of my profs had written on Oden's theological return to the fathers as a pastoral theology. Oden's Pastoral Theology shaped so much of what I understand about the pastoral life, and his three-volume Systematic Theology is a wealth of information for preachers. For Methodists, Oden's work on John Wesley's theology is absolutely essential reading.
I will always remember Oden for his attempt to advocate a form of "consensual Christianity", which is basically CS Lewis' "mere Christianity" reading the church fathers and John Wesley. The result was not a new fundamentalism, but what he called paleo-orthodoxy. Tom Oden and JI Packer teamed up to write a terrific book called One Faith which is proof -- no matter what you're told -- that Calvinists and Arminians really do have a common faith and can work together in the cause of the Gospel. The final decades of his life were committed to editing a series of patristic commentaries and excavating the rich Christian history of North Africa. It's that historical work on North African Christianity that I think is the most under-appreciated of Oden's work, but which will prove the most important in coming years.
Oden was a former liberal who turned "orthodox" after discovering the church fathers -- under the wisdom of a Jewish theologian, Will Herberg. He was deep in liberalism, writing his dissertation on Freud and Bultmann -- Kerygma and Counseling. But the church fathers turned him towards the light of the evangelical and apostolic faith, for which he became a key advocate.
He exposed the suicide of liberalism in his book Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements -- which is the best critique of contemporary liberal theology I've ever read.
I was introduced to Oden as an undergrad. One of my profs had written on Oden's theological return to the fathers as a pastoral theology. Oden's Pastoral Theology shaped so much of what I understand about the pastoral life, and his three-volume Systematic Theology is a wealth of information for preachers. For Methodists, Oden's work on John Wesley's theology is absolutely essential reading.
I will always remember Oden for his attempt to advocate a form of "consensual Christianity", which is basically CS Lewis' "mere Christianity" reading the church fathers and John Wesley. The result was not a new fundamentalism, but what he called paleo-orthodoxy. Tom Oden and JI Packer teamed up to write a terrific book called One Faith which is proof -- no matter what you're told -- that Calvinists and Arminians really do have a common faith and can work together in the cause of the Gospel. The final decades of his life were committed to editing a series of patristic commentaries and excavating the rich Christian history of North Africa. It's that historical work on North African Christianity that I think is the most under-appreciated of Oden's work, but which will prove the most important in coming years.