A tribute to Donald Bloesch

Last updated on: May 17, 2016 at 10:39 am by Gerald McDermott

A tribute to Donald Bloesch 2016-05-17T10:39:17-04:00 Gerald McDermott

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Donald Bloesch was a theologian who was also a saint. He was a clarion voice for Reformed evangelical orthodoxy in the second half of the twentieth century. This is the foreword to Bloesch’s last book (The Paradox of Holiness), soon to appear from Hendrickson Publishers.

Michael McClymond has remarked that the only theologians worthy of deep study are those who are also saints. One thinks immediately of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Jonathan Edwards. I would add Donald Bloesch.

I first met Bloesch when I was in graduate school at the University of Iowa. I remember being one of several Ph.D. students invited by “Dr. Bloesch” aand his lovely wife Brenda to their home for dinner, and then to hear him lecture at a nearby college. One of my friends struggled with his advisor and committee at Iowa, and Dr. Bloesch, who had taught there for a semester, intervened on his behalf and shepherded him through a long ordeal. From my friends who had been to Iowa before me, I heard story after story of the kindness and sacrifices Bloesch had expended for students, colleagues, and assorted souls wrestling with the vicissitudes of life.

Bloesch helped me through my own theological vicissitudes. As I struggled to find the meaning of Christian orthodoxy, I turned so often to Bloesch’s Essentials of Evangelical Theology that my copies of those two volumes are now dog-eared. Shortly before his death I asked him to write an essay on justification and atonement for The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology. As always, it was balanced and wise, advising that atonement in the Bible represents “much more than the forgiveness of sins . . . [but also] liberation, acquittal, regeneration, satisfaction, expiation, propitiation, and certainly also sanctification.” This was an important word when much of Protestant theology limited the meaning of justification to pardon.

Donald Bloesch unabashedly called himself an evangelical when it was unpopular in the academy to do so. When evangelicals themselves debated whether the term had clear meaning, Bloesch fought to reorient its meaning by teaching them and the wider world to return to the enduring visions of the Reformers and the Fathers.

These visions, receptured by Bloesch, are timely for our troubled Church and world. When some Christians reduce the gospel to a declaration of forgiveness, Bloesch reminds us of the inseparability of orthodox doctrine and holy living. As he put it (in one of his countless expressions that are pithy and memorable), “Sin is behind us but righteousness before us.”

But righteousness, he warned, must beware of being merely social, and it must not try too hard to be relevant. The gospel contains its own relevance. Faith, he urged, resists accomodating truth to social programs. God’s revelation might strike some as insensitive to today’s cultural orthodoxies, but Bloesch advised that altering the form of revelation risks altering its content. Truth must never be sacrificed at the altar of unity. Greater than the sin of disunity, he cautioned, is the sin of disloyalty to the Scriptures and the Lord of the Church.

These words of wisdom, which run throughout these two last works of Bloesch’s fertile career (over 400 publications, and without a computer!), are the perfect medicine for today’s ailing evangelicalism. The very last work was his spiritual autobiography, Faith in Search of Obedience. One of its recurring themes is the course evangelicalism must take if it is not to go the way of all flesh.

First it should be reminded, he avers, that good theology is reflection on Scripture, and that our best commentaries on Scripture come from the Fathers and the Reformers. Evangelicals can also learn from Pietism the necessity of costly discipleship and the need for life in the Spirit. But they should beware that rationalism and pietism are not necessarily antithetical, for both are focused on the human response to God rather than God’s revelation. They should adopt a theology of Word and Spirit rather than a theology of experience (pietistic subjectivism) or moral commitment (liberal moralism).

Yet Bloesch was not uncritical of the Reformers. He believed that Luther was wrong to put law before gospel, for he learned from Barth that the law itself was a gift–after the gift of the Exodus. From Barth he also learned our need to subordinate subjective experience to God’s objective revelation. Yet at the same time Bloesch warned that Barth wrongly taught an incipient universalism and could be perilously anti-sacramental.

From Reinhold Niebuhr Bloesch learned the dangers of pacifism. As he put it so memorably, love without power surrenders the world to power without love.

Niebuhr also taught Bloesch the importance of public theology. The voice of faith, Bloesch proclaimed, should never be excluded from the public square. Public policy must never impede the evangelical thrust of the Church’s message.

In a day when the meaning of marriage is so sharply contested, thse last works portray the beauty of biblical marriage. Donald and Brenda steered a way between patriarchalism and feminism. She was his helpmeet, though a Ph.D. and theological partner. Both believed in women in ministry. She reproved and instructed her husband, and he instructed husbands to always listen to their wives.

Both Kierkegaard and Solzhenitsyn observed that courage is rare in the modern world. Yet Bloesch exemplified it. He was not afraid to present a paper on the reality and theological importance of the devil to a liberal faculty, one of whom walked out of the room. At a faculty-staff retreat he boldly lectured on the second coming of Christ, knowing this might not be appreciated by his colleagues. He regularly spoke at regional and national meetings dominated by liberal theologians on themes that challenged their presumptions. That same boldness characterized his ministry in the church. He insisted that godparents to a baptized child be god-fearing, and lost some church members as a result. Three times he walked out of evangelical services that he felt were exalting the preacher rather than our Lord.

Readers might notice in this autobiography a brief mention of his Jewish grandfather. Perhaps that is why he developed such a profound view of Israel in his book Last Things. There he suggested that Jews are hated because they are Christ-bearers, an irrevocable sign of divine light. They are a witness to Christ even in their rejection of him. Christ was and is Torah personified. Ethnic Israel still has a role to play in salvation history.

The first work within this volume is The Paradox of Holiness. I would call this a twenty-first century Imitation of Christ. More accurately, it is about the imitation of the saints, which St. Paul calls us to in 1 Cor. 4:16 and elsewhere. It is in the tradition of spiritual theology, which is ordered reflection on the life of God in his ordinary saints. The Eastern churches call this theosis or divinization. They refer to St. Peter’s description of it as “participation in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).

Bloesch calls this paradoxical because, as he puts it, only those who believe can become holy, and only those who make progress in holiness can believe in Jesus Christ.

There are many precious gems in this spiritual theology, but three stand out. First, Bloesch tells us rightly that holiness is the goal of the Christian life. In other words, escape to heaven should not be our goal. Second, this is the good news of the gospel, that we can share in the life of the Trinity. The third nugget is what I call Bloesch’s spiritual optimism—his confidence that the life of sanctity is wholly within the grasp of believers. This is a refreshing word when so many in the church are devoted to a so-called gospel that neglects or ignores the gospel’s call to holiness. Bloesch teaches us that rather than being legalistic and burdensome, a gospel of justification and sanctification is good news. It proclaims that we can become free to live a life of holiness by the indwelling Spirit of God.

Finally, both of these treatises testify to joy. Bloesch writes in Paradox that joy is a hallmark of genuine faith. His wife Brenda tells us that in his dying days, while suffering excruciating pain, Donald Bloesch sang gospel hymns at the top of his voice. As he lay dying, he was filled with praise. That is gospel joy.

Gerald R. McDermott

Beeson Divinity School

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