OUR ONCE AND FUTURE THEOLOGIAN: CARL F. H.

HENRY AND CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT

Dr. Jason G. Duesing

Each semester in my Baptist history classes I require students to write a

theological biography of one of ten significant Baptist figures. I always
include Carl F. H. Henry on the list, as he remains largely unknown to current
students, with the hopes that a few will select him and have their lives
changed and challenged by someone I like to think of as our once and
future theologian.1

Theologian Once
To be sure, Henry was a towering figure of key doctrinal shaping influence
in the twentieth century. For those classified as Generation X, Henry serves
as a spiritual grandfather, a faithful example from the Greatest Generation of
advocacy for theological truth and balanced cultural engagement, all
harnessed and put to use toward the end of global evangelization. For those
in my denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, Henry is like a William
Tyndale, forerunner of the English Reformation, as his clear arguments for
the trustworthiness and usefulness of Scripture served as a foundation upon
which many conservative leaders built and solidified their defense of biblical
inerrancy during the 1980s and 1990s. Barry Hankins places Henry alongside
Francis Schaeffer in this regard,

The most prominent among the nonsouthern intellectual influences

were Carl F. H. Henry and Francis Schaeffer, two northern
evangelical thinkers who stressed cultural crisis in a way that
resonated with SBC conservatives. It would not be going too far to
say that Henry has been a mentor for nearly the entire SBC
conservative movement.2

For many of us, when we think of the legacy Henry left, we feel like that
generation of Israelites given the land promised first to Abraham. Thanks to
Henry, we have great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full
of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and
vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant (Deut. 6:1012 esv).
Theologian Future
But Henry can resurface well as our future theologian. That is, if we
were to rediscover the life and thought of Carl Henry in our own day, we
might just find again a helpful voice laying before us a clear path for
navigating our increasingly complex world. Henry stands ready always to
give a word of hopeful optimism and clear warning. He reminds us of the
importance of the Bible.
First, Henry was convinced evangelicals had something helpful and
hopeful to say to the culture. His 1947 work, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern
Fundamentalism, called for contemporary evangelicalism to reawaken to the
relevance of its redemptive message to the global predicament. Henry
believed that the truth was stronger than fiction and that evangelicals not
only had a message for the world but also had the message for the world. He
said, The message for a decadent modern civilization must ring with the
present tense. We must confront the world now with an ethics to make it
tremble, and with a dynamic to give it hope. 3 The Uneasy Conscience of
which Henry spoke was the tendency of 1940s fundamentalists to grow
uneasy with how to interact with a changing culture and to retreat instead of
engage. The fundamentalists were not uneasy about the truths of the Bible
but rather with how to apply them well to the modern situation. For the
growing evangelical minority today, the same temptation is present. Not
knowing how to withstand the cultural pressures, the easiest thing to do
appears to be to retreat. If a great tsunami of cultural change is coming,
many want to run for the hills rather than find a way to stave it off. But as
Henry said, this mentality leaves no voice speaking today as Paul would,
either at the United Nations sessions, or at labor-management disputes, or in
strategic university classrooms whether in Japan or Germany or America. 4
There is a great need today for evangelicals to engage the culture and stand,
like Paul, with the word of hopeful truth.
Second, Henry had a clear warning for evangelicals. Perceptively, he
observed in his 1986 autobiography,

The evangelical movement looks stronger than in fact it is.

Evangelicalism presumptively acts as if it were the permanently
appointed preserver of the faith once-for-all delivered and
specially entrusted with ecclesial keys to the Kingdom. But no
earthly movement holds the Lion of the Tribe of Judah by the tail.
We may need for a season to be encaged in the Lions den until we
recover an apostolic awe of the Risen Christ, the invincible Head of
a dependent body sustained by his supernatural power. Apart from
 life in and by the Spirit we are all pseudo-evangelicals.5

These words are even more relevant for evangelicals living in the twenty-
first century. Encagement, though perhaps not in a lions den, increasingly
seems like a coming reality.
Third, Henrys arguments for biblical inerrancy outlined in his majestic
God, Revelation and Authority (see especially vol. 4) still answer well
contemporary critical questions. For example, he wrote, The indispensability
of personal faith in Christ in no way implies the dispensability of the
Scriptures as the Word of God written; apart from Scripture, we can say
nothing certain either about Jesus Christ or about the necessity of personal
faith in him.6 Henry was a man of the Bible and who spent much of his life
writing and defending the truthfulness of the Bible. He defined an
evangelical as one who was Scripture accordant (from 1 Corinthians 15
according to the Scriptures), and he wrote that without dependence on
and submission to biblical revelation, there is no evangelicalism.7
While many will never know of Henry and his efforts to help evangelicals
in cultural engagement, his legacy still lives on through this commitment to
the Scripture. For true Bible teaching is the best thing churches can do to
equip their members to engage the culture. Training people to see the world
through the lenses of Scripture allows them to see the lost as sheep without
a Shepherd and not as people so foreign and different from who they are.
Henry never forgot the supernatural transformation of his conversion and
neither should we.
As students in my classes discover Henry, I am grateful that they will
learn of Henrys influence in his own day that inspired so many to
faithfulness to God and His Word. As I think about the present theological
skirmishes and cultural quagmires in the world, I am grateful for this
evangelical who, though dead, still gives hope, warns, and points continually
toward a trustworthy Bible. Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry, our once and
future theologian.