Henry Architect of Evangelicalism

Essential Essays of Carl F. H. Henry
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68359-337-9
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 480 Seiten

Reihe: Best of Christianity Today

Discover the ongoing relevance of the essential evangelical. In recent years, the label 'evangelical' has been distorted and its usefulness questioned. No one is better equipped to provide a clear understanding of evangelicalism than the late Carl F. H. Henry, the founding editor of Christianity Today and the most influential theologian of American evangelicalism in the twentieth century. While Billy Graham was preaching the gospel to stadiums full of people, Henry was working tirelessly to help Christians adopt a worldview that encompasses all of life. Architect of Evangelicalism helps us gain a better sense of the roots of American evangelicalism by giving us the best of Henry's Christianity Today essays on subjects such as what defines evangelicalism, what separates it from theological liberalism, what evangelical Christian education should look like, and how evangelicals should engage with society.

Carl F. H. Henry (1913-2003) was an evangelical Christian theologian. Henry earned degrees from Wheaton College, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Boston University. In 1942, he helped launch the National Association of Evangelicals and served on its board for many years. In 1956, he assisted Rev. Billy Graham in founding Christianity Today and served as the editor until 1968. Henry's six-volume God, Revelation, and Authority has been widely influential in shaping evangelicals' beliefs around the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Henry, Carl F. H.

Leseproben

Introduction

On December 7, 2003, Carl F. H. Henry, the intellectual giant of the evangelical movement, was called home by our Lord at the age of ninety. Born the eldest of eight children on January 22, 1913, to German immigrant parents in New York City, Henry’s life reflected much of broader American life in the twentieth century. Following high school, Henry was focused on a career in journalism. He served as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Daily News, and covered a section of Long Island for The New York Times.

It was through his experience as a journalist that he came in touch with the Oxford Group, and at twenty he encountered the truth of the Christian gospel and trusted in Jesus Christ. After he heard Wheaton College president J. Oliver Buswell deliver a persuasive defense of the Christian faith, he left his promising journalism career to enroll at Wheaton in 1935. While there, the young Henry made friends with Billy Graham and studied with philosopher Gordon Clark. He also met his future wife Helga Bender; they would marry in 1940 and have two children. Henry went on to complete his BA and MA at Wheaton, earn an MDiv and ThD at Northern Baptist Seminary, and later a PhD in philosophy with Edgar Brightman at Boston University.

Growing Influence and Christianity Today

After teaching from 1942 to 1947 at Northern Baptist Seminary, he was invited by visionaries Charles E. Fuller and Harold J. Ockenga to join the faculty of the new Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Henry emerged as a key leader of the new seminary, serving as dean of the faculty and coordinator of the annual Rose Bowl Sunrise Service. In the same year he went to Fuller, Henry published his first significant book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. The prophetic message of this work, combined with the new platform at Fuller, paved the way for Henry to become “the architect of evangelicalism.” The themes expounded in Uneasy Conscience proleptically pointed to the emphases that characterized Henry’s life and writings for the next several decades.

Less than a decade after his move to Pasadena, Henry in 1956 accepted the invitation to serve as founding editor of Christianity Today (CT). Henry’s background in journalism as well as his growing reputation as an academic leader and evangelical statesman made him the ideal person to lead the CT project as envisioned by Graham and Ockenga. From his post as editor, he solidified his leadership within American Christianity, climaxing with the chairmanship of the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin in 1966.

This book represents the best of Henry’s contributions to the pages of CT, laying out themes that are also regularly found in the fifty books that Henry authored or edited. Throughout his writings, Henry convictionally articulated an unflinching commitment to the centrality of the gospel and the authority of Scripture while calling for serious engagement with the culture and the pressing issues of the day. Henry’s irenic spirit enabled him to interact with others in an engaging way while holding unapologetically to the truthfulness of historic Christianity.

Evangelical Distinctives

The nearly three dozen essays found in this volume represent in an exemplary fashion what can be called “the evangelical mind.” Part I offers eight essays that characterize various aspects of evangelicalism. Evangelicals are men and women who love Jesus Christ, love the Bible, and love the gospel message. Evangelicalism is a cross-denominational movement that emphasizes classical Protestant theology, which is best understood as a culturally engaged, historically shaped response to an empty and despairing mainline liberalism on the one hand and a doomed reactionary fundamentalism on the other. Evangelicals are heirs of the Reformation from the sixteenth century; of Puritanism and Pietism from the seventeenth century; of the eighteenth and nineteenth century revivalists and awakening movements; and particularly of the post-fundamentalists coming out of the twentieth century’s modernist-fundamentalist controversies. In the first section of this volume, readers will see how Henry time and again focused on central core beliefs, stressing the importance of cooperation, scholarship, and cultural engagement with an emphasis on confessional beliefs and Christian unity.

Part II focuses on evangelicals and modern theology. By the middle of the twentieth century mainline theology had lost its compass, if not its soul, while fundamentalism had grown hardline, harsh, and isolationist. Henry stressed the importance of biblical inerrancy and authority to counter the emptiness of liberalism while calling for Christian unity and cultural engagement as an alternative to the irrelevance of fundamentalism. In order to avoid errors on the left and the right, Henry, in his journalistic approach to doing theology, invited his readers to center and ground their beliefs in Jesus Christ.

Evangelicalism, claimed Henry, exemplifies both a historical meaning and a ministry connectedness, but it also includes a truth claim, a theologically and historically shaped meaning. In the pages of CT, Henry never tired of contending that evangelicalism is more than an intellectual assent to creedal formulas, as important as that may be. It is more than a reaction to error and certainly more than a call to return to the past.

We cannot and must not miss the fact that evangelicals have focused on the authoritative Scripture and the gospel, as made known in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Evangelicals believe that salvation is by God’s grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ. By grace believers are saved, kept, and empowered to live a life of service. At its heart, Henry maintained that evangelicalism is the affirmation of and genuine commitment to the central beliefs of orthodox Christianity, as these beliefs have been carefully and clearly articulated through the ages.

Evangelicalism in the World

Parts III and IV provide a vision for an evangelical educational model as well as a road map for faithful engagement with the culture. Henry rejected an anti-intellectual approach to the Christian faith. Rather, he prioritized the importance of the life of the mind, learning to think Christianly. He made a case for the place of rigorous academics, engaging all subject matter from the perspective of a Christian worldview. His vision for education displayed his own wide-ranging intellectual interests. Henry dreamed of a major evangelical research university in one of America’s major cities that would engage the arts, the sciences, the humanities, the social sciences, and professional programs from the vantage point of God’s natural and special revelation. He longed for the next generation to recognize that truth counts, that there is indeed a historic faithful orthodoxy to be confessed and proclaimed.

Henry, years before many other evangelicals, saw the importance of cultural engagement and social ethics. He used the pages of CT to become the leading voice on these important issues among the growing movement, always wanting to wed evangelism with calls for racial reconciliation and social justice. Bringing together commitments to Christian worldview, active service, and global evangelism, Henry in his day also challenged the views of communism, Marxism, and fascism. He insisted that the evangelical movement must not be only otherworldly, but must remain culturally engaged.

He was quick to remind readers, however, that such engagement cannot be this-worldly only, for service apart from the gospel, while certainly helpful, is ultimately insufficient. Thus, instead of withdrawing from the world in a separatistic or legalistic fashion, as had been the tendency of fundamentalism, evangelicalism must be engaged in cooperative and collaborative educational, missional, and ethical efforts. Indeed, Henry trumpeted the call for Christian unity and cooperation both in mission and in shared core beliefs. Simultaneously, he reminded everyone of the biblical pattern for purity, holiness, and faithful Christian living. His vision for the evangelical world could be characterized as “partly hoping, partly fearing,” as he lived between the tensions of his hopeful dreams and his fretful concerns for what he observed all around him.

Beyond the Christianity Today Years

Henry stepped down as CT editor in 1968 but continued to write a column called “Footnotes” between 1969 and 1977. The essays found throughout the pages of CT paved the way for Henry’s magnum opus, the six-volume God, Revelation, and Authority (1976–1983), which in many ways represents a portrait of the evangelical mind. In this work, Henry presented a magisterial defense of historic Christianity while framing the issues of truth, propositional revelation, authority, and hermeneutics in a way that encouraged the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) to be passed on to succeeding generations.

After leaving CT, Henry also returned to teaching, first at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity...