Editor’s Note: This remembrance on the life of Thomas Oden originally appeared on the Gospel Coalition blog. It is available in its entirety here.
Of the many personal memories I have of theologian Thomas Oden, one is most prominent. It was the late 1990s, and he was sitting at our conference table after hours of a drifting committee meeting. Without prompting, he spontaneously delivered a 15-minute talk about his parallel spiritual life with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. They had both been raised in Methodist homes, read the same church publications, attended the same kind of church activist meetings, known the same church personages, and enthusiastically adopted the same commitment to political progressivism. We all listened with rapt amazement.
In those days there were no smartphones for quick recording. Afterward I asked him to publish his extemporaneous tour de force. He politely said he’d try but weeks later regretted he couldn’t since he lacked the time to reassemble his thoughts. No doubt Tom was back to work writing another of his dozens of published books. Over the next couple of decades there would be other spontaneous, masterful perorations from Tom, but I never learned to stand by with a recording device.
…
How I wish there could be from Tom at least one more soaring, extemporaneous recollection of great theological and ecclesiastical events. This time I’d make sure to record it. But the Lord whom Tom rediscovered and served for so long has preserved for us his own grace-filled record of Tom’s countless accomplishments in his service.
May Tom as faithful theologian and friend to so many never be forgotten in this world. And may he forever rejoice with the early saints whose lives and teachings he so closely studied—that we might know them and our triune God better.
Read more of Mark Tooley’s thoughts here.
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