People of Ideas during the Second Half of the Twentieth Century: THE THEOLOGIANS

By Alphabetical Order:

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By Subject Area:

Francis Schaeffer
Os Guiness
Carl Henry
Hal Lindsey
Norman L. Geisler

Eugene Carson Blake
Martin Marty
John Shelby Spong

Gerrit C. Berkouwer
Malcolm Muggeridge
Austin Farrer
Lesslie Newbigin
Helmut Thielicke
Jürgen Moltmann
Wolfhart Pannenberg
Carl Braaten
John R. W. Stott
Lausanne Conference (1974)
F. F. Bruce
R. C. Sproul
Harvey Cox
Billy Graham
Chuck Colson
James Dobson

Pius XII
Jacques Maritain
Etienne Gilson
John XXIII
Hans Küng
Vatican II (1962-1965)
Paul VI
Bernard Lonergan
Karl Rahner
Edward Schillebeeckx
John Paul II
Thomas Merton
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Martin Luther King Jr.
World Council of Churches
    Uppsala Conference (1968)
    Bankok Conference on World Mission and Evangelicalism (1973)
    Nairobi Conference (1975) Confessing Christ Today (more truly evangelical)
    Vancouver Conference (1983)
    Second Latin American Episcopal Conference
Archbishop Oscar Romero
Camillo Torres
Ernst Bloch
Gustavo Gutiérrez
José Porfiro Miranda
Jon Sobrino
Leonardo Boff
Juan Luis Segundo
Jose Miguez Bonino
Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu
The Kairos Document (South African)
James H. Cone

Mary Daly
Rosemary Radford Reuther
Letty M. Russel
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott
Jacquelyn Grant White
Susan Griffin
Carol P. Christ
Elaine Pagels

Matthew Fox
Thomas Berry
John Hick

Norman Vincent Peale
Kenneth Hagan
Kenneth Copeland
Freddie Price
Benny Hinn
John Wimber
Bill Hybels

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Charles Hartshorne
W. Norman Pittenger
John B. Cobb, Jr.

Abraham Joshua Heschel
Ellie Wiesel

General Sources on the History of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

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Francis Schaeffer  (1912-1984)

Schaeffer was born into a family with no strong religious interests--but himself underwent a religious conversion at an early age. Later--especially under the urging of his determined young wife, Edith--he entered Westminster Seminary, the conservative breakaway Presbyterian seminary in Philadelphia.  He pastored conservative Presbyterian Churches--until after World War Two when he was sent as a missionary to develop Christian youth programming in Europe.  Eventually he continued that work under his own auspices.

Schaeffer was a strong individualist who approached Christianity from the vantagepoint that it alone truly had the answers to the kinds of questions that modern culture raises--the existence of God in a materialistic universe, the humanity of man in a mechanistic culture.  His individualism was particularly pronounced in the format by which he presented his thoughts--in his own living room before a group of young, usually college-age guests, at the family chalet in Switzerland called L'abri (the Shelter).

But his discussions became widely recognized as insightful--and when in 1960 Time magazine wrote about this strange miniature seminary at home, he came into international notice.  Then in 1968, when he was 56 years old, his first book was published from a series of lectures he presented at Wheaton College.  From then on the published work began to come forth in great quantities.

Finally, he put his challenge to late-modern Western culture before his audience in the form of a movie, produced in the period 1976-1977 by his son Franky from Francis' book How Shall We Then Live?  This was followed up in 1979 with another film, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, again produced by son Franky--in cooperation with C. Everett Koop.  The subject here was abortion--and was a strong indictment of the way in which modern life dehumanizes humanity. Though the second effort seemed not to draw audiences, which was a big disappointment to Schaeffer, in fact it probably had a greater impact on shaping the direction of Evangelical Christianity than the earlier effort.

In the late 1970s it was discovered that Schaeffer had cancer--and he battled it off and on until it took his life in 1984.

Schaeffer's major works or writings:

The God Who Is There (1968)
Escape from Reason (1968)
He Is There and He Is Not Silent (1972)
How Should We Then Live? (1976)
Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (1979)
A Christian Manifesto (1980)
The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984)

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Os Guiness

Guiness' major works or writings:

The Dust of Death (1973)

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Carl Henry

Henry's major works or writings:

Jesus of Nazareth (1966)
Twilight of a Great Civilization (1988)

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Hal Lindsey

Lindsey's major works or writings:

The Late Great Planet Earth (1970)

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Norman L. Geisler

Geisler's major works or writings:

Inerrancy (1979)

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Eugene Carson Blake

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Martin Marty

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John Shelby Spong

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Gerrit C. Berkouwer (1903- )

Berkouwer's major works or writings:

Faith and Justification (1949)
Studies in Dogmatics(1952)
Heilige Schrift(1966-67) (Holy Scripture) (1975)

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Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)

Muggeridge's major works or writings:

A Third Testament (1976)
The End of Christendom
Vintage Muggeridge (1985)

Links to other information on Muggeridge:

Malcolm Muggeridge: The Iconoclast (Dave Armstrong)
Malcolm Muggeridge (Wheaton Coll)

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Austin Farrer

English

Farrer's major works or writings:

Faith and Speculation (1967)

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Lesslie Newbigin

Newbigin's major works or writings:

The Open Secret (1978) (critical of universalism)

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Helmut Thielicke (1908- )

Applied Christianity: ethics driven by a transformed Christian life; evangelical zeal shaped by an understanding of the need to contemporize the message to reach the people

Thielicke's major works or writings:

Theological Ethics (1955)
The Evangelical Faith (1968-1978)

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Jürgen Moltmann (1926- )

Moltmann's major works or writings:

Theology of Hope (1965)
The Crucified God(1972)
The Church in the Power of the Spirit (1975)
The Trinity and the Kingdom of God (1980)

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Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928- )

The "Jesus of history" is essential to the faith--not to be so easily dismissed as Barth and Bultmann do (who substitute the "Christ of faith" in its place--what Pannenberg calls "Christology from above"); the resurrection must be understood as an historical event--not just an event seen only by the eyes of faith. Christian truth is not just for an in-group of the faithful--but naturally evident for all eyes to behold, to bring people to faith. Faith certainly takes one beyond the limitations of the evidence; but the evidence nonetheless is very important as the grounding for faith. It must not be dismissed. True, the evidence is not full or complete; this will not come until the end of history. But God did not leave us without evidence. The testimonies of those who witnessed the Resurrection of Jesus were given by God to the people as direct proof or factual evidencethat Jesus indeed was the Christ ("Christology from below") . The Scriptural accounts of the Resurrection were not just spiritualized testimonies of faith of the first century believers. The Jesus of the historical Resurrection is the historical completion of the act of Divine Self-revelation--not its starting point (i.e., to be completed by faith in the heart of the believer).

Pannenberg's major works or writings:

Revelation as History (1961)
Jesus--God and Man (1964)
Theology and the Philosophy of Science (1976)
The Church(1983)

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Carl Braaten

Braaten's major works or writings:

Eschatology and Ethics (1974)
Justification (1990)

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John R. W. Stott

Stott's major works or writings:

Basic Christianity (1958)

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Lausanne Conference (1974)

The major works or writings resulting from the conference:

The Lausanne Covenant

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F. F. Bruce

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R. C. Sproul

Sproul's major works or writings:

The Holiness of God (1985)
Chosen By God (1986)
Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology (1994)

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Harvey Cox

Cox's major works or writings:

Many Mansions (1988) (critical of universalism)
Religion in the Secular City
Fire from Heaven:  The rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (1994)

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Billy Graham (1918- )

Graham was born on a farm near Charlotte, North Carolina.  Underwent a strong conversion experience at age 16, which set the course of his life from then on.  He undertook studies at at Bob Jones University and the Florida Bible Institute before being  ordained a Southern Baptist preacher in 1940.   He continued his studies at Wheaton College, Illinois, and graduated in 1943 with a degree in anthropology.  He served as pastor of a Baptist church in Illinois-- before undertaking a new career as itinerant evangelist.

In 1949 he entered the world of big-time evangelism when he preached in Los Angeles before a gathering of 350,000 people. The following year (1950) he constituted his new ministry as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Graham's major works or writings:

Peace with God (1952)
World Aflame (1965)
Just As I Am:  The Autobiography of Billy Graham (1997)

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Chuck Colson

Colson's major works or writings:

Against the Night (1989)
The Body (1992)

Links to other information on Colson:

Chuck Colson's Home Page (Prison Fellowship Online)
Chuck Colson:  God's Surprises: The Influence of C. S. Lewis (CBN)

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James Dobson

Dobson's major works or writings:

Focus on the Family

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Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) (pope: 1939-1958)

Pius XII's major works or writings:

Mystici corporis Christi (1943)
Munificentissimus Deus (1950) the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary
Humani generis (1950)

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Jacques Maritain (1882-1973)

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Etienne Gilson (1884-1978)

Gilson's major works or writings:

The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas(1961)

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John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppi Roncali) (pope: 1958-1963)

John XXIII's major works or writings:

Mater et magistra(1961)
Pacem in terris (1963)

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Hans Küng (1928- )

Küng's major works or writings:

Justification(1957)
The Church (1967)
Infallible? (1970)
On Being a Christian (1974)
Does God Exist?(1978)
Eternal Life (1985) (ed.)
Paradigm Change in Theology (with David Tracey)

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Vatican II (1962-1965)

The major works or writings resulting from Vatican II:

Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy
Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church
Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation
Decree on Ecumenism

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Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Montini) (pope: 1963-1978)

Paul VI's major works or writings:

Humanae vitae (1968) encyclical opposing all forms of articifial birth control
Evangelization in the Modern World (1975)

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Bernard Lonergan

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Karl Rahner (1904-1984)

German Jesuit professor.  There are "anonymous Christians" throughout creation (not self-awaredly Christian).  God is self-communicating to creation through evolution.  Christ is fulfillment of evolution.

Rahner's major works or writings:

(ed.) Encyclopedia of Theology
Theological Investigations
Foundations of the Christian Faith (1976)
On the Theology of Death (1961)
Hearers of the Word
Meditations on the Sacraments (1977)

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Edward Schillebeeckx

Schillebeeckx's major works or writings:

Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (1977)
Interim Report(1981)

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Pope John Paul II (1920-present)

Born in Wadowice, Poland, as Karol Wojtyla.  He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1946.  He received a doctorate in theology in 1948 at the Angelicum in Rome. From 1948 to 1951 he served as a parish priest in Krakow.  In 1952 he became a professor of moral philosophy at at the Krakow Seminary.  In 1956 he received a similar appointment at the University of Lublin.  In 1958 he was appointed auxiliary Bishop and then in 1964 Archbishop of Kracow.  He was very active at Vatican II, and was a key source of the writing of some of the documents emerging from Vatican II.  In 1967 he received the appointment as Cardinal.

In 1976 he preached the Lenten sermons to the Papal Household--indicating his rising status within the hierarchy.

In 1978 he was elected Pope, the first non-Italian elevated to that office since the early-1500s.

One of the characteristic features of his pontificat has been his effort to promote Catholic spirituality--and the role of Mary as joint source of salvation ("corredemptrix") with Jesus Christ.

In 1981 an attempt to assassinate him nearly was successful when Turkish nationalist Mehmet Ali Agca shot him (for reasons still unknown).

John Paul II's major works or writings:

Love and Responsibility (1960)

Links to other information on Pope John Paul II:

Pope John Paul II: Vicar of Christ  (Apostolate Alliance)
Pope John Paul II (Time 100: William F. Buckley Jr.)

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Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

He was born in Prades, southern France (near the Spanish border) to an artistic New Zealander father and American mother.  Then after the early death of his mother, he moved to England and the U.S.A.

He received both the bachelor's and master's degrees in English (1939) from Columbia University.  He subsequently taught English--and then went to work in a Harlem settlement house in New York city. But experiencing a deep religious conversion, in 1941 he entered a Trappist monastery at Gethsemani, Kentucky.

His writing talents soon gained him widespread recognition as a religious writer--particularly after the publication in 1948 of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain.   In the life of the monastery he assumed the natural role as teacher.

But eventually his interests expanded into social concerns and in the 1960s he became deeply involved in the antiwar movement.

Meanwhile his own spiritual pilgrimage deepened in the mid 1960s as he sought to live the life of the hermit.  Then in 1968 he traveled to Asia to try to deepen his own grounding in mysticism.  But faulty electrical wiring in a hotel room in Thailand where he was attending a religious conference electrocuted him.

Merton's major works or writings:

The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
No Man Is an Island
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1968)

Links to other information on Pope John Paul II:

A Biographical Sketch of Thomas Merton  (Brother Patrick Hart)

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Henri J. M. Nouwen

Nouwen's major works or writings:

The Living Reminder

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Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)

Founded the Society of the Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Calcutta in 1948.   Her desire was to bring comfort and dignity to impoverished and dying Indians--a daunting task, given the size of the problem in Calcutta.  But she remained undaunted--and eventually expanded her work by establishing other such Societies in various parts of the larger world. Her work succeeded in becoming widely recognized--both by church, charity and international relief organizations and by the broader world community.  She was a profound source of inspiration for many to take up the task of giving aid and support to the forgotten ones of the world.
 

Mother Teresa's major works or writings:

A Gift for God:  Prayers and Meditations (1975)
The Love of Christ:  Spiritual Counsels (1982)
Life in the Spirit: Reflections, Meditations, Prayers (1983)

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Martin Luther King Jr. (-1968)

King's major works or writings:

"Letter from Birmingham Jail" Christian Century (1963)

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World Council of Churches

Major works or writings resulting from meetings of the World Council of Churches:

Uppsala Conference (1968)
    Renewal in Mission (liberationist)
Bankok Conference on World Mission and Evangelicalism (1973)
    Salvation Today (liberationist: written by Moltmann)
Nairobi Conference (1975)
   Confessing Christ Today (more truly evangelical)
Vancouver Conference (1983)
    An Ecumenical Affirmation (in closer conformity to Roman Catholics and Evangelicals)
Second Latin American Episcopal Conference

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Archbishop Oscar A. Romero (1917-1980)

Killed by a gunman firing into a Carmelite chapel from outside on March 24, 1980--the day after he had made a special appeal in his Sunday sermon for the Salvadoran police to stop the killing of their own people, to refuse orders requiring them to commit murder.

Archbishop Romero's major works or statements:

The Last Sermon (1980) (Third World Traveller)
The Church: Called to Repentance, Called to Prophesy (selections of his statements) (Religious Task Force on Central America)

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Camillo Torres

Colombian priest killed in 1966

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Ernst Bloch

Bloch's major works or writings:

The Philosophy of Hope (3 vols. 1985)

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Gustavo Gutiérrez

Peruvian

Gutiérrez's major works or writings:

A Theology of Liberation (1971)
We Drink from Our Own Wells (1984)

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José Porfiro Miranda

Mexican

Miranda's major works or writings:

Marx and the Bible (1971)
Being and the Messiah (1973)
Communism in the Bible(1981)

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Jon Sobrino

Salvadoran

Sobrino's major works or writings:

Christology at the Crossroads (1978)
Jesus in Latin America(1981)

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Leonardo Boff

Boff's major works or writings:

Jesus Christ Liberator (1978)
The Church (1985)
Passion of Christ, Passion of the World (1988)

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Juan Luis Segundo

Uruguyan Jesuit

Segundo's major works or writings:

A Theology for the Artisans of a New Humanity (5 vols: 1968-1972)
The Liberation of Theology (1975)
Jesus of Nazareth Yesterday and Today (5 vols: 1984-1988)

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Jose Miguez Bonino

Argentinian Protestant

Bonino's major works or writings:

Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (1975)
Revolutionary Theology Comes of Age
Christians and Marxists (1976)

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Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu (1931- )

Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of South Africa.  Secretary general of the South African Council of Churches.  Received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Born in Klerksdorp, Transvaal in 1931.  Raised in a family in which his father was a teacher and he himself expected eventually to become a teacher.  He studied at the Pretoria Bantu Normal College.  In 1954 he graduated from the University of South Africa.  He taught school for three years.

But he decided to pursue theology and in 1960 was ordained as an Anglican priest.  In 1962 he resumed his theological studies, this time in England however.  In 1966 he received a Master of Theology degree.  He returned to South Africa to teach theology, from 1967 to 1972.  Then he went back to England, to serve three years as assistant director of a theological center in London.

In 1975 he was appointed Dean of St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg.  The following year he was appointed as Bishop of Lesotho, serving in that position until 1978 when he became General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches.

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The Kairos Document

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James H. Cone

Cone's major works or writings:

Black Theology and Black Power (1969)
God of the Oppressed (1975)

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Mary Daly

The Church and the Second Sex (1968)

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Rosemary Radford Reuther

Liberation Theology (1972)
Religion and Sexism (1974)
New Woman, New Earth (1975)
To Change the World (1981)
Sexism and God-Talk (1983)

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Letty M. Russell

Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (1985)

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Virginia Ramey Mollenkott

The Divine Feminine (1984)

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Jacquelyn Grant White

Woman's Christ and Black Woman's Jesus (1989)

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Susan Griffin

Woman and Nature (1978)

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Carol P. Christ

Diving Deep and Surfacing (1980)

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Elaine Pagels

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Matthew Fox

former Dominican scholar; director of the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality

On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear
Whee, Wee, We, All the Way Home (1981)
Original Blessing (1983)
Manifesto for a Global Civilization
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (1988)

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Thomas Berry

Jesuit theologian

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John Hick

God and the Universe of Faiths (1973)
Philosophy of Religion(1983)

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Norman Vincent Peale

The Power of Positive Thinking

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Kenneth Hagan

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Kenneth Copeland

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Freddie Price

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Benny Hinn

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John Wimber

PowerEvangelism (1986)

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Bill Hybels

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

We include Pierre Teilhard de Chardin here in this section because it really was only until after his death in 1955 that his real influence began in the West.

He was born in Sarcenat, France.  He studied geology and paleontology and lectured in science at the Jesuit College in Cairo, Egypt.  He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1911--and continued in service as a teacher.  In 1918 he became a professor of geology at the Catholic Institute (Institut Catholique) in Paris.  He was an active field researcher in paleontology, journeying to China and Central Asia.

As a development from his paleontological studies he ventured into the realm of humanistic studies.  His ideas were quite unorthodox in his time--at least for a Jesuit priest.  Basically he viewed the human experience as something still underway in its development--moving ever forward to perfection.  As he put it, all creation is moving forward to the "Omega Point," when everything will be climaxed (redemptively) in Christ.  The"cosmic Christ" is himself evolving with the human order.  Sin is the by-product of the struggle of the present order toward such perfection

Eventually  his ideas on evolution got him in trouble with his Catholic superiors and he was banned from further teaching and publishing.  This did not keep his work in Cenozoic geology from becoming recognized--uncluding recognition in the form of academic awards.  In 1951 he moved to the United States where he lived until his death in 1955.

Teilhard de Chardin's major works or writings:

Le milieu divin
The Phenomenon of Man (1959)
The Future of Man
Man's Place in Nature(1966)
Human Energy (1969)
Christianity and Evolution (1971)

Links to other information on Teilhard de Chardin:

Philosoph ers Corner Presents Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Teilhard de Chardin (Anodea Judith)

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Charles Hartshorne

Hartshorne's major works or writings:

The Divine Reality (1948)

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W. Norman Pittenger

Pittenger's major works or writings:

The Word Incarnate (1959)
"The Last Things" in a Process Perspective (1970)
Picturing God

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John B. Cobb, Jr.

Cobb's major works or writings:

Is It Too Late? (1972)
Process Theology(1976) (with David Ray Griffin)

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Abraham Joshua Heschel

Heschel's major works or writings:

Man Is Not Alone (1951)

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Elie Wiesel

Wiesel's major works or writings:

The Town Beyond the Wall (1964)
The Gates of the Forest (1966)
Legends of Our Time (1968)
A Beggar in Jerusalem (1970)

 

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The Second Half of the Twentieth Century (Spiritual Pilgrim)

  Copyright © 1999 by Miles H. Hodges. All Rights Reserved.