Requiem: A lament in three movements

by Thomas C. Oden

In a post-liberal critique of the mainline establishment, Oden identifies the failures of contemporary theological education and its accompanying ideology, maps out the ultra-liberalization of church bureaucracies and special interest politics, and calls for a return to classical Christian theological roots and categories.

Genres: Theology, Christianity, Cultural

176 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1995

About the author

Thomas C. Oden was Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics at Drew University in New Jersey from 1980 until his retirement in 2004. He remained faculty emeritus until his death. He was the general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and the Ancient Christian Doctrine series as well as the author of Classic Christianity, a revision of his three-volume systematic theology.

Reviews

[Zach Waldis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having survived the "liberated" seminary, you would think I would resonate with the invective Oden writes here. And I do. The "suicide" of liberal Christianity (to quote another work) is real and seen in seminaries like the one I attended and apparently Drew, where Oden used (?) to teach. But after a hundred pages of name calling the book gets old. I prefer arguments to name calling, and this book unfortunately really doesn't rise above that level.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn’t so much Oden’s official memoir or autobiography. Rather, it is the beginning of autobiography, for it seems this story must be told more than once. He is documented his leaving of the liberal (or as he calls it, “liberated”) mindset. This leads him to ask the question if the mainline seminaries can be reformed.

His narrative is structured around three feasts: Sophia, a Mass, and a charismatic eucharist. In the first one a feminist polytheist came to Drew Seminary and preached a message on Divine Sophia. Oden knew he would have been communing with demons had he attended Eucharist afterwards, so he left. The second one was a Roman Catholic Mass that he chose not to participate in. The last one was when he accidentally found himself in a Chinese Holiness church in New York.

Oden writes this as he is leaving liberalism (or those whom he facetiously calls “liberated”). It reads like a memo from the battle lines. It’s depressing but he is moving in the right direction. He has a good discussion of modernity, postmodernity, and how the classical/patristic position can address these problems.

Those whom we call “postmoderns” are simply hyper or ultramoderns. They haven’t challenged the key assumptions (Note: whenever someone calls himself postmodern, ask him to deconstruct human rights and democracy). Therefore, in Oden’s case postmodern simply means “after” modernity.