The Theologian And The Evangelist -- By: Haddon W. Robinson

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 28:1 (Mar 1985)
Article: The Theologian And The Evangelist
Author: Haddon W. Robinson


The Theologian And The Evangelist

Haddon W. Robinson*

In 1966 a World Congress on Evangelism was held in Berlin, West Germany. While the honorary chairman of that gathering was evangelist Billy Graham, the acting chairman was Carl F. H. Henry, the noted American theologian and editor of Christianity Today.

At the opening session of the Congress, Henry introduced Graham to the delegates by saying something like this: “Several years ago, after Billy Graham graduated from Wheaton College, I urged him to go on to seminary. Fortunately, Billy did not take my advice. Had he done so, we might have lost the most effective evangelist of our generation.”

While Henry, the distinguished scholar, made that comment with a touch of jest, educators sitting in the audience shifted uneasily in their seats. Theological education and evangelism have too often made an oil-and-water mix. A survey of the noted evangelists of the last two centuries reveals that few had a seminary education. Scores of earnest Christians suspect that seminary graduates have “emptied the churches by degrees,” and the slip of the tongue that turns “seminary” into “cemetery” has strong Freudian overtones.

Yet this antagonism between theology and evangelism developed in recent history. Theological scholarship came under suspicion when it was infected by German criticism. During the last two hundred years the most savage attacks made on the historic Christian faith have come from professing Christians. German critics starting with Bruno Baur, fortified by the agnostic philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the idealism of Hegel, produced rationalism. These scholars wrote off evangelical Christianity as outmoded and out of step with the times. They devoted their brilliant intellects and sharpened pens to ripping apart the pages of Scripture. They took the miracles out of history, the fire out of hell, and the deity out of Jesus, and they left the Bible in shreds. The OT was dismissed as fables about a tribal god, and the NT documents were treated like old letters from a distant time stored in the attic of religion.

German criticism arose at the same time that changes took place in American theological education. Before. the Revolutionary War, young men prepared for the ministry by living in the homes of older ministers. The younger and older men would study the Bible together, read theology, and discuss Church history, and then they would move about the parish visiting the sick and instructing families.

While this initial approach to theological education had the obvious advantage of keeping the theoretical and practical together, it had serious problems. Not all the older ministers could provide the breadth of training the younger ...

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