Feature
The Prophetic Preacher
In Memoriam: Father Thomas Hopko
by Ralph C. Wood
There are many who knew our dear friend of blessed memory, Father Thomas Hopko, much better than I did. An encompassing assessment of his life and work belongs to them. I spent a total of six days in his presence—three at a retreat in South Carolina during the late 1980s and three more during the mid-1990s, when I sponsored his giving of endowed lectures at Wake Forest University. Yet during these brief encounters, and then in subsequent correspondence, he shaped my Christian existence in ways so transformative that they call for gratitude from one who still calls himself a Baptist. And I would call him a preacher of the gospel.
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Ralph C. Wood was, until his retirement, University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. His books include The Comedy of Redemption (University of Notre Dame Press), Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Eerdmans), and Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God (Baylor University Press).
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