WATERTOWN, Wis. (ABP) — Carl F. H. Henry, famed evangelical theologian and first editor of Christianity Today, died Dec. 7 in Watertown, Wis., following a lengthy illness. He was 90 years old.
Henry's contributions to evangelical Christianity were great and far-reaching. In 1977 Time magazine called Henry the leading theologian of American evangelicalism. He is credited with helping shape the defense of evangelicalism as intellectually credible.
A Southern Baptist, Henry was a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.
“The death of Dr. Henry, though not unexpected, leaves a huge void in American Christianity,” said David Dockery, a theologian and president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn. “No Christian thinker in this country has done more to advance orthodox theology and full-orbed Christian worldview thinking than Carl F. H. Henry.”
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said Henry “stood at the center of virtually every major development in evangelical life, combining tenacity with restlessness.” Mohler said Henry “devoted his long and illustrious career as a theologian to building and defending the 'intellectual struts' of evangelical theology.”
Henry was the eldest of eight children born to Karl F. and Joanna Heinrich in New York City. His mother was Roman Catholic by family tradition and his father was Lutheran. His early public education led to his first work as a journalist and reporter. Raised on Long Island, Henry became interested in journalism, and by the age of 19, he edited a weekly newspaper in New York's Nassau County. After his conversion to Christianity, Henry attended Wheaton College, obtaining his bachelor's and master's degrees.
Henry completed doctoral studies at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (1942) and later at Boston University (1949). He was ordained in the Northern Baptist Convention in 1941 and from 1940 until 1947 taught theology and philosophy of religion at Northern Seminary. In 1947, he became the first professor of theology at the new Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.
Henry took a prolonged sabbatical from his teaching duties in 1955 to become the first editor of Christianity Today, a publication conceived by Billy Graham and Nelson Bell as an evangelical alternative to the Christian Century. Under Henry's guidance, Christianity Today became the leading journalistic mouthpiece for neo-evangelicalism and lent the movement intellectual respectability.
He resigned from Christianity Today in 1968 in a dispute over the magazine's direction. After a year of studies at Cambridge University, Henry became professor of theology at Eastern Baptist Seminary (1969-74).
From the beginning of his academic career, Henry aspired to lead Protestant fundamentalism to a greater intellectual and social engagement with American culture. He is considered one of the most significant leaders — along with Graham and Fuller Seminary founder Harold Ockenga — of the “new evangelicalism” of the post-World War II era.
Henry was president of the Evangelical Theological Society (1967-70) and the American Theological Society (1979-80). Henry's many books, the most famous of which is the six-volume “God, Revelation and Authority,” consistently reiterate the themes of biblical theism, objective revelation in propositional form, the authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures and the rational, apologetic defense of Christianity.
Dockery of Union University said Henry's books and articles — more than 50 in the past 40 years — “called for serious engagement with our culture and the issues of our day. With his homegoing is the passing of a generation of intellectual and scholarly leadership that has shaped the thinking of Baptists and evangelicals for more than half of a century.”
Outside the evangelical world, few theologians paid attention to Henry until the last 20 years, said Roger Olson, professor of theology at Baylor's Truett Theological Seminary, who wrote a chapter about Henry in a book on 20th-century theologians.
“My perception is that Carl Henry turned more conservative in the last 25 years than he was in the 1950s,” Olson told Associated Baptist Press. “I'm not saying there was a major paradigm shift or anything,” Olson added, but Henry became more adamant about evangelical beliefs, “and the Southern Baptist theologians latched onto that.”
“He was very cranky toward anyone who did not believe in inerrancy,” said Olson, co-author of The Story of Christian Theology. “He didn't think you could be a consistent evangelical and not believe in inerrancy.”
But Henry's own definition of inerrancy was “fairly nuanced,” Olson added, and “might not make it past the gatekeepers” of conservative theology today. Still, Olson said, Henry embraced the term and “was outspoken enough that his opinion was useful to them.”
Henry is survived by his wife, Helga, a daughter, two sisters and five grandchildren. His only son, Paul, was a congressman from Michigan who died in 1993 from a brain tumor.
A private burial was scheduled for Dec. 10 in Watertown, Wis.
-30-