The Lord Knoweth His Own
The Eclipse of Mere Christianity & the Vision of the Elect
I do not think it good to hold such a conference at such a time without paying tribute to our friend William J. Abraham, who died unexpectedly last week. Billy was an Irish Methodist theologian and philosopher who taught for most of his career at Perkins Theological Seminary in Dallas. He is best remembered, I believe, with his own words, from an online lecture he gave last year [9/18/20]. He said:
If we’re to renew the Christian tradition and reform the nation we’re going to need to have the deep resources of the widely Christian tradition, and in my book that means we’re going to have to revisit the deep faith of the church that was developed in the first seven great councils of the church in terms of the great creeds . . . the doctrine of the Trinity, deep version of the incarnation, and the doctrine of atonement. All of that material is going to have to be available to [a corrected Methodism] because we’re not going to be apologetic about it. The new Methodist Church will have the deep doctrinal resources to be able to face the culture....
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S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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