Oden’s story provides a rare glimpse into the world of modern liberal scholarship from the perspective of someone who used to believe all the standard critical views but then changed his mind. Thus, there are a number of lessons we can learn from his journey.

Over the last couple of weeks, many evangelical scholars (including myself) attended the annual conferences of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society of Biblical Literature (not to mention, the Institute for Biblical Research).

Many good papers were delivered (and heard), old friendships were rekindled, and everyone was asked the same question over and over: “So, what are you working on right now?”

While such conferences remind me of the joys of scholarship, they also remind me of the challenges.  Sadly, there are many stories of well-intended evangelical scholars who set out to influence the academy, and the academy ends up influencing them. Some end up abandoning the very commitments that led them towards advanced study in the first place.

So, as these conferences come to a close, it seems fitting to reflect on the challenges of being an evangelical scholar in the secular academy. Or, more to the point, what lessons do we need to remember as we pursue our scholarly endeavors?

To answer that question, I turn to a story of a scholar who’s academic career took a highly unusual path.  Rather than being an evangelical scholar who became liberal, he did the opposite. He abandoned his commitment to liberal thinking and actually became an evangelical. And when that happened, his eyes were opened up to a number of truths that he had never noticed before (or at least refused to notice).

That scholar was Thomas Oden. Oden received his Ph.D from Yale under Richard Niebuhr and was enamored with the theology of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Bultmann. He interacted with some of the greatest minds of his generation such as Gadamer, Pannenberg, and Karl Barth. He was a classic liberal scholar.

But, then Oden had a change of heart. He tells the story in his book, A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir (IVP, 2014). One day a Jewish friend looked him in the eye and reminded him of something very few would dare to say: that he would stand under divine judgment on the last day.

Then his friend said, “If you are ever going to become a credible theologian instead of a know-it-all pundit, you had best restart your life on firmer ground” (137).

Ouch.

The words struck a nerve and Oden began a journey that eventually resulted in a 180 degree turn away from liberalism and towards historic, traditional Christianity. Oden’s story provides a rare glimpse into the world of modern liberal scholarship from the perspective of someone who used to believe all the standard critical views but then changed his mind. Thus, there are a number of lessons we can learn from his journey:

Lesson 1: Contemporary scholarly methods do not always lead one to truth.

The Goliath of the modern academy can be an intimidating foe. People naturally assume that the consensus of modern scholarship must be right. But, Oden discovered that much of what he was taught was flat out wrong. He states, “I had put too much uncritical trust in contemporary methods of historical study and behavioral engineering…the change in perception was momentous for me.” (139).

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