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Author Oden, Thomas C., author.

Title A change of heart : a personal and theological memoir / Thomas C. Oden
Published Downers Grove, Illinois : InterVarsity Press, [2014]

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Description 1 online resource (384 pages)
Contents Early years -- The 1930s: prairie dawn -- The 1940s: a world at war -- The 1950s: love and learning -- The 1960s: the church of what's happening now -- Change of heart -- The 1970s: the u-turn -- The 1980s: charting the course -- Homeward bound -- The 1990s: the outpouring of grace -- The 2000s: a time of harvest -- The 2010s: after eight decades
Summary "How did a celebrated theological liberal of the mid-twentieth century have such a dramatic change of heart? After growing up in the heart of rural Methodism in Oklahoma, Thomas Oden found Marx, Nietzsche and Freud storming into his imagination. He joined the post-World War II pacifist movement and became enamored with every aspect of the liberal 1950s Student Christian Movement. Ten years before America's entry into the Vietnam war, he admired Ho Chi Minh as an agrarian patriot. For Oden, every turn was a left turn. At Yale he earned his PhD under H. Richard Niebuhr. Later during his academic year in Heidelberg he met with some of the most formidable minds of the era -- enjoying conversations with Gadamer, Bultmann and Pannenberg, as well as a lengthy discussion with Karl Barth at a makeshift office in Barth's hospital room. Being in Europe allowed Oden to attend Vatican II as an observer and to get his first taste of ancient Christianity. He traveled with his family in a VW microbus through Turkey, Syria and Israel. But slowly he stopped making left turns. His enthusiasm for pacifism, ecumenism, and the interface between theology and psychotherapy were all ambushed by varied shapes of reality. It was a challenge from a Jewish scholar, his friend and mentor Will Herberg, that precipitated his most dramatic turn -- back to the great minds of ancient Christianity, . Later a meeting with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) planted the seeds for what became Oden's highly influential Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Thomas Oden's fascinating memoir walks us through not just his personal history but some of the most memorable chapters in twentieth-century theology."--Inside Cover
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Oden, Thomas C.
SUBJECT Oden, Thomas C. fast
Subject United Methodist Church (U.S.) -- Biography
SUBJECT United Methodist Church (U.S.) fast
Subject BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Religious.
RELIGION -- Christian Theology -- Systematic.
RELIGION -- Christianity -- General.
Genre/Form collective biographies.
autobiographies (literary works)
Autobiographies
Biographies
Autobiographies.
Biographies.
Autobiographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780830880195
0830880194