by: Dr. Ellsworth Kalas
I remember a summer day some years ago when Dennis Kinlaw told me with holy excitement that Methodism and wider Wesleyanism now has a major theologian. He was referring to Thomas Oden, long-time professor at Drew University.
I have just finished reading Oden’s autobiography, “A Change of Heart.” I’ve read with particular interest because while Oden is a few years younger than I am (almost everyone is), we have lived through the same period of intellectual and theological change. We both knew the Methodism of social conscience, admirable for as far as it went but lacking in doctrinal substance. Those were the days when certain mainline (as we then said) Protestant bodies seemed to speak for all of Protestantism. At that time we could never have imagined where those bodies are today, as the evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic bodies have become the liveliest part of the American religious scene.
As I have indicated, Oden’s book is titled “A Change of Heart.” It is that for sure, but it is also a change of mind. Oden tells how a Jewish colleague at Drew University challenged him to know his own faith. He realized how little he knew of his basic doctrinal roots, the teaching of the church fathers and the decisions of the great Church Councils. As Oden read, a whole new world opened before him.
It’s an exciting story, told without malice. It is the story of one person’s dramatic move into classical Christianity – the faith of nearly twenty centuries of church history. I sense that we may be part of an increasingly secular age, but I take great hope in knowing that the faith of two millennia stands, ready for whatever comes, if only it will remember its roots.