George S. Hendry: Bicentennial Reflections on His Theological Legacy

I. Principle and Method of Theology

Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1904, Hendry graduated from the University of Aberdeen (A.M., 1924) and the University of Edinburgh (B.D., 1927). After further study in the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin, he served as pastor of the Bridge of Allan Church in Scotland for almost 20 years. In 1949 he accepted the invitation to Princeton Seminary to serve as the Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology. In his first, and later in his final sermon at Bridge of Allan, he took as his text the words of John the Baptist: “He must increase but I must decrease” (John 3:30). An important part of his message on both occasions was:

Nothing that we have done or can do for God can take the place of what God has done and can do for us. With God we can only be recipients; try to come to God on any other terms, be our tower of Babel never so lofty, we shall come, not to God, but only to the figment of our own minds. We shall not come to God till we first let God come to us. ⁴

Hendry began his inaugural lecture at Princeton by weighing the value that his prior pastoral experience might have in his new calling:

There is an obvious disadvantage in the fact that I come to the position from twenty years in the pastoral ministry. One’s academic equipment is bound to have fallen somewhat into disrepair. Yet at the same time there are good reasons why the professor of theology should come to his task fortified with practical experience of the ministry. For one thing, the great majority of those whom he will teach are men who are preparing for the work of the ministry, and it is well that their teacher should have practical understanding of the duties and responsibilities which they will have to face. And then, it is in the nature of Reformed theology that it should be closely bound up with the life of the church. Theology is a science, deserving of all academic respect, but at the same time it is the handmaid of the church, auxiliary to the ministry of the Word; and it is most truly scientific when it is most mindful of its chief end. ⁵

As the thesis of his lecture, Hendy contended that

Nothing is so needful in theology as just that it should be theology, that it should stand on its own feet and obey the laws of its own being, and resist the demands for conformity which are thrust upon it from the side of philosophy, history, and science. It is a main weakness of much modern theology that it has been so subservient to these demands; it has pursued a policy of appeasement; it has been concerned to seek a basis for itself in presuppositions which are generally acceptable, and in so doing it has betrayed an unsureness of its own ground. Theology is a work of faith. It is no part of its business to go behind faith and seek other, presumably firmer, foundations for faith …. Theology is a work of faith in the revelation of God. That is its ground, its principle, its presupposition, its axiom. The revelation of God is his free, sovereign act; it confronts us as unique, contingent event; it cannot be deduced from philosophical premises or confirmed by historical evidence or verified by scientific experiment. It is miracle; it springs from the initiative of God and is not dependent on conditions or presuppositions derived from elsewhere. God is the sole premise of any proposition that can be made concerning him. Theology must hold fast to this principle, as a drowning man clings to a plank. ⁶

Hendry expanded the thesis of his inaugural address by identifying four distinctive marks of a theology determined by the event of revelation: such theological thinking will necessarily be exegetical, christological, ecclesiastical, and eschatological in nature. In this article, I will follow Hendry’s fourfold list but will add the mark of theological thinking as pneumatological. The addition is appropriate in view of the fact that for Hendry the endeavor of theology, like Christian life generally, is ever dependent on the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit. A corollary of this fact, in Hendry’s view, is that prayer for the Spirit’s illumination and guidance is a sine qua non of the theological task.

II Theology as Exegetical Thinking

As all who heard him lecture or preach or read one of his books or essays would attest, Hendry was a theologian who looked continuously to Scripture as the unique and irreplaceable witness to God’s revelation. In his judgment, theology apart from sustained study of Scripture is an oxymoron. “Theology knows the revelation of God because it knows the testimony which is borne to it in the Bible. It has no other means of access to it. It cannot by-pass the Bible and find some other more direct and immediate approach to its subject.” ⁷ In brief, for theologians no less than for Christians generally, “We are bound to the Bible.” ⁸ In Hendry’s view, the witness of the prophets and the apostles can no more be separated from the self-revelation of God than the humanity of Christ can be separated from his deity.

At the same time, for Hendry, Scripture, while inseparable from the revelation of God, must also be distinguished from it. The Bible cannot be directly identified with the Word of God, a confusion that has obscured the true scandal of the gospel for many believers. Acknowledging the primacy and authority of the biblical witness for faith and theology does not entail an elaborate theory of verbal inspiration or a claim to biblical infallibility. The point of theology true to the biblical witnesses is to proclaim the same gospel they proclaimed, not to assert their infallibility in every respect. A right understanding of Scripture is one that is in accord with the witness of its writers. Viewing the Bible as prophetic and apostolic witness to the Word of God thus “liberates us from the false antithesis which had been set up by ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘liberalism.’” ⁹

Hendry was critical of efforts of earlier Reformed theologians—including the earlier Princeton theologians—to demonstrate that the Bible is the Word of God by pointing to its literary quality, historical veracity, and sublime content, or by advancing elaborate theories of the Bible’s supernatural origin. He held that it would be truer to say that “the Bible becomes the Word of God; it becomes the Word of God when it overpowers us and gains the mastery over us, i.e. when it creates faith in us.” ¹⁰ In identifying what constitutes biblical authority, Hendry was fond of quoting Luther’s provocative criterion of canonicity as “what preaches Christ.” Hendry also reminded his students that for Calvin, too, the scriptural witness proves itself to be “the Word of life” when it is “really branded upon hearts” by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.” ¹¹ Properly understood, “The doctrine of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit means that what we need, if the word is to accomplish its purpose with us, is not a theory of inspiration, but prayer.” ¹²

Although judging that modern historical criticism had been the occasion of the demise of the old orthodox theory of biblical inerrancy, Hendry argued that “the real argument against the theory is to be found in the distorted conception of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit.” ¹³ “The Reformers’ doctrine of the testimony of the Holy Spirit was to affirm that Christian faith means nothing less than personal experience of the living Christ, and that it is the function of Scripture to serve as means to that end.” ¹⁴

If Hendry rejected objectivist doctrines of the authority of Scripture based either on its observable qualities or on its supernatural origin, he was equally critical of all subjectivist views of Scripture that make the reason or experience of its readers the ultimate judge of its validity and meaning. To affirm with the Westminster Confession of Faith (I.10) that “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” is the “supreme Judge” in matters of religious and theological controversy is very different from giving license to arbitrariness in scriptural interpretation. ¹⁵ The witness of Scripture in its fullness must be taken into account rather than lifting individual texts out of their larger context. Moreover, Hendry valued highly “the historical testimony of the Church’s faith” found in its classical creeds and confessions. The faith, confession, and worship of the Church, not the experience of an individual or group in isolation, constitute “the external correlate or counterpart of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁶

III Theology as Christocentric Thinking

Although placed second in his list of marks of theological thinking tethered to the event of revelation, christocentricity for Hendry belonged first in the order as far as content is concerned. The revelation of God has its center in the history of God with the people of Israel which comes to its culmination in the history of Jesus Christ. According to Hendry, the scriptural witness is, in Luther’s well-known metaphor, “the cradle in which Christ lies,” and it is so to be read and honored. ¹⁷ Theology’s understanding of the authority of Scripture is rightly ordered when primacy is given to the person and work of Christ to whom Scripture decisively points either in anticipation or in recollection.

Two major tasks occupied Hendry’s reflections in the area of christology. The first arose from what he called the “fragmentation of the gospel” in the Christian theological tradition. ¹⁸ By the gospel’s fragmentation Hendry meant the one-sided emphasis typical of each of the great families of the Christian church, which stress either the sacrificial death of Christ (Roman Catholicism), the birth and resurrection of Christ (Eastern Orthodoxy), the life of the so-called “historical Jesus” (liberal Protestantism), or the coming of the Pentecostal Spirit (“free churches”). What Hendry found often lacking in each of these emphases was any constitutive significance assigned to the earthly life and ministry of Jesus as attested in the scriptural witness. In response to this situation Hendry undertook the task of “the reintegration of incarnation and atonement” in christology. ¹⁹

According to Hendry, the christological task is by no means a matter of highlighting the importance of the ministry and teachings of Jesus at the expense of his sacrificial death and resurrection; the centrality of cross and resurrection in the Gospel narratives is not at issue. The point instead is how to understand the scriptural portrayal of the life of Jesus as integral to the message of his cross and resurrection. It is not the birth alone, or the death alone, or the resurrection alone, but the “total fact of Christ,” “his whole being for us,” “the whole course of his incarnate life,” that constitutes the Christian gospel. ²⁰

Any attempt to reintegrate incarnation and atonement must, Hendry contended, involve a re-examination of the doctrine of atonement. This constituted his second major christological endeavor.

The history of the doctrine of the atonement is a long record of attempts to find one single key that will unlock the mystery. But the effect … has been to concentrate undue significance on one aspect of the total fact of Christ, as it is presented in the New Testament, and to abbreviate or obscure the rest. And it is the humanity or human life of Christ that has been lost to sight for the most part. ²¹

Hendry found weaknesses in all three of the traditional theories of atonement, commonly labeled the Christus Victor (or patristic), the satisfaction (or Anselmian), and the moral influence (or Abelardian) theories. Particularly problematic for Hendry was the penal-substitutionary theory, a later variant of the Anselmian satisfaction theory, which for centuries dominated atonement thinking in Calvinist circles. In his judgment, the crux of the atoning death of Christ is not in making the forgiveness of God possible by suffering punishment in our place and thus satisfying divine justice; it is in the encounter of God’s judgment on sin in the form of forgiving grace. “In other words, the necessity of his suffering is a necessity of grace, not of satisfaction … This is the mystery and the miracle of grace, which overcomes rejection by accepting it, and achieves victory by submitting to defeat.” ²²

Hendry entitled the central chapter of his Gospel of the Incarnation “The Living of Forgiveness.” Departing from metaphysical or juridical frameworks, he employed historical and relational categories in his understanding of the atoning work of Christ. Borrowing a phrase from Barth, Hendry described Jesus as “the man for others,” personally mediating the grace and forgiveness of God to sinful humanity. In the totality of his life as the incarnate Son of God, Jesus lived the forgiveness of God into human life and the relationships that constitute it. “Christ did not make forgiveness possible; he bestows it on us.” ²³ In sum,

Salvation was not a result of something he did in entering humanity, or of something he did in dying a human death; it was the work of his life and his death to relate himself freely to men and them to himself: and this relation is the core and foundation of their salvation … The death of Christ is … of truly decisive significance, not because he wrought salvation for us by it alone, but because it was the end and fulfillment of his life. In his death he finished the work that it was the mission of his incarnate life to perform. ²⁴

As the incarnate Word of God and singular bearer of the Spirit, Christ accomplished our salvation in our humanity, living out the love and forgiveness of God in personal relationships with others. ²⁵ It is in the power of his Word and Spirit that God’s forgiveness continues to be mediated to us today.

IV Theology as Pneumatological Thinking

As noted earlier, Hendry’s inaugural lecture did not include pneumatological thinking in his list of distinctive marks of a theology of revelation. Nevertheless, from his earliest years in Princeton he called for a re-examination of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, arguing that “the definition of the church’s faith concerning the Holy Spirit belongs in the category of unfinished business.” ²⁶ The importance of this doctrine for Hendry is everywhere evident in his writings: the word of Scripture is a dead letter apart from the work of the Spirit; Jesus as the Word of God incarnate, far from reducible to “the historical Jesus” as reconstructed by modern historians, accomplishes his mission as the “the unique bearer of the Spirit” and in the power of the Spirit; and as we shall later see, according to Hendry both ecclesiology and eschatology become distorted when separated from the sovereign activity of the Holy Spirit.

Two features of Hendry’s theology of the Spirit stand out. The first is the great stress he places on both the intimate relationship of and definite order in the work of the Spirit and the work of Christ. As to the closeness of this relationship, Hendry wrote, “There is no reference in the New Testament to any work of the Spirit apart from Christ. The Spirit is, in an exclusive sense, the Spirit of Christ.” ²⁷ As to the order of the relationship, “The Spirit is after Christ in the divine economy; the earthly ministry of Christ must be completed before the Spirit comes.” ²⁸ In Hendry’s judgment, “The presence of the Spirit is always secondary to, and consequent upon, the presence of the incarnate Christ.” ²⁹

This theme of the subservience of the Spirit to the work of Christ occurs frequently in Hendry’s early writings in pneumatology. At times, he even speaks of the work of the Spirit as essentially of a “reproductive” or “unoriginal” nature. ³⁰ His point, however, is not to diminish the importance of the Spirit’s work but to say that the work of the Spirit does not compete with that of Christ; rather, it is the “subjective complement or counterpart to the objective fact of Christ.” ³¹ In calling the work of the Spirit the “subjective complement” to the work of Christ, Hendry holds fast to the priority of God’s activity over human activity in both the objective and subjective aspects of revelation and reconciliation. If Christ is God in movement to the world, the Spirit is God in movement from the world to God. ³²

In later years Hendry’s doctrine of the Spirit expanded beyond its earlier focus on the subjective realization of the work of Christ in human beings. ³³ In his final book, Theology of Nature, he sets the creative and redemptive work of both Logos and Spirit in cosmic perspective and summarizes their interlocking activities as self-utterance, embodiment, and kenosis. ³⁴

The second feature of Hendry’s doctrine of the Spirit is his attempt to understand the Spirit’s work in creation and redemption as having its basis in the eternal Trinitarian life of God. He argues that while the New Testament does not speak in the Trinitarian conceptuality of the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, there is nevertheless a “Trinitarian pattern” in the biblical witness, evident especially in Paul and John, and most particularly when they speak about Christian worship and prayer. “The worship of God in spirit and truth is … Trinitarian worship; it is to worship God through Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit.” ³⁵ Hendry affirmed that the Spirit, like Christ, belongs to the very essence of God. He followed Barth in holding that if the life in communion that believers have with God through Christ in the power of the Spirit did not have its basis antecedently in the eternal triune life, it “would lack objective content and ground.” ³⁶ Especially in his earlier writings, Hendry seemed reluctant to venture a detailed discussion of the relationship between the economic and immanent Trinity. Unmistakably clear at every stage of his work, however, was Hendry’s rejection of any mission of the Spirit in the world separated from the mission of Christ.

In later writings, Hendry gave increased attention to the connection between God’s work of creation and reconciliation, the role of the Spirit in creation, and the problem of overcoming the apparent dilemma of thinking of God’s creation of the world as either an arbitrary or a necessary act. Rethinking the doctrine of the Trinity is indispensable to the clarification of these issues, and Hendry was well aware of this. ³⁷ In our own time, Trinitarian doctrine and especially the role of the Spirit in the economy of salvation have been given increasing attention as theologians attempt to forge both an adequate theology of nature and a deeper understanding of the relationship between Christian faith and other religions. While the former topic is given book-length treatment by Hendry, the latter task finds no sustained treatment in his writings.

V. Theology as Ecclesiological Thinking

An active participant in the Lutheran–Reformed dialogues, Hendry knew that many of the difficult controversies in ecumenical theology take place in the area of ecclesiology. Always a central question in these discussions is the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Church. Hendry’s primary contention on this topic was that “in the New Testament, the authority of the Holy Spirit is an authority to which the Church remains subject.” ³⁸ Conjoined with the living Word of God, the Spirit is free to guide and order the Church and to call it again and again to repentance and reform. This emphasis on the freedom of God’s grace in his work by Word and Spirit is the theological underpinning of the classical Reformed watchword: Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda (“The church reformed, always to be reformed”). ³⁹

Hendry’s strong affirmation of the freedom of the Spirit sets his ecclesiology against both the absorption of the Spirit in church structures and practices and the detachment of the work of the Spirit from the work and word of Christ in the religious experiences of individuals or groups. The church is not lord of the Spirit; the Spirit is Lord of the church. Indeed, in Hendry’s view, “The Spirit is the true vicar of Christ, Christ’s alter ego.” ⁴⁰ Hendry’s rejection of an institutional control of the Spirit in the church’s organization, regulations, and rites does not in the least diminish for him the importance of the sacraments and prayer along with the proclamation of the word as indispensable means of grace. The living Lord truly encounters us in these practices, but does so only and always in the power of the Holy Spirit who comes again and again as a gift for which we must pray. The Spirit is never at our disposal or control.

If institutional absorption of the Spirit is one form of endangerment of the freedom of the Spirit, the opposite extreme is an “enthusiastic repudiation of all historical mediation.” ⁴¹ When experience of the Spirit is severed from the work of Christ and his continuing presence with us through the means of grace, the Spirit is taken captive every bit as much as in the Spirit’s control by the institutional church. The Spirit no longer comes as the free gift of the living Christ but is something given over to us and now under our control.

Hendry’s understanding of theology as ecclesiological thinking includes, as previously mentioned, a certain deference to the historic creeds and confessions of the Church. While in his view these confessions are not additional sources of revelation and are not to be considered flawless, they are nevertheless exemplary, communally endorsed interpretations of the biblical witness. Accordingly, Hendry’s volume on the Westminster Confession is both deeply appreciative and at points candidly critical. He approved the addition of a separate chapter on the Holy Spirit in the Westminster Confession in 1903, saying that it reminded the church of “the limited scope and function of all doctrinal formulation, which can point toward the gospel but can never contain it.” ⁴² Hendry later served on the General Assembly committee that prepared the Confession of 1967 and that also assembled a Book of Confessions to document the richness of the Reformed confessional tradition. At the same time, however, Hendry felt compelled to raise objections to some of the phrases of the Confession of 1967 that were incorporated in its final draft and that in his view obscured the important distinction between, as well as inseparability of, Word of God and Bible. ⁴³ In reflecting on the Barmen Declaration, Hendry lauded it as “a shining example of faithfulness and courage” in an apocalyptic situation and related how he had been fortified and exhilarated by its brave witness when he served as a pastor. Nevertheless, even with respect to this powerful Declaration, Hendry warned against assuming that its witness offered the last word on all theological issues. ⁴⁴

An important element in Hendry’s characterization of theology as ecclesiological thinking was his view of theology as primarily a work in the service of the church’s life and mission and above all for the sake of the faithfulness of the church’s preaching. He knew that for good or ill one’s theology informs one’s preaching, and, conversely, that preaching is an important test of the adequacy of one’s theology. Evidence of the seriousness with which he took the task of preaching is found in his own surviving sermons, noted for their honesty, clarity, and power. ⁴⁵

VI. Theology as Eschatological Thinking

Theological thinking as eschatological thinking meant for Hendry that theology must be a “thinking within frontiers.” ⁴⁶ That is, theology thinks not only from but also towards the revelation of God. Whatever the case may be for philosophy, theology has no foundational starting point in the sense of a self-evident truth or given set of propositions from which a comprehensive system of thought can be logically deduced. Because its object is the living God, the arche of theology is also its telos. This means that theology, like the church, is always on the move. Faith and theology indeed seek understanding, but they must never stop seeking and must avoid every arrogant claim to know more than they do. Eschatological thinking entails modesty in theology. While theology stands with and in the church in confessing Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, this is far from claiming to know already all the truth that is in Christ. Indeed, “there are problems to which faith provides no solutions. We walk by faith and not by sight. And now we see through a glass darkly, but then—then, when the new creation of God is finished—we shall know even as we are known.” ⁴⁷

The eschatological dimension of theological thinking came increasingly into play in Hendry’s later work. Noting that there are different frameworks within which theology can be pursued—including the metaphysical, the existential, and the political—he spoke of theology’s cosmic framework as especially neglected until recent times. In his final book, Hendry took as his topic the theology of nature. He argues that theology has too often limited itself to the realm of the individual, or to “God and the soul,” as Augustine expressed it. While noting that the ecological crisis of recent times has awakened theology to the need for a far larger perspective than the life and destiny of the individual, Hendry argued that the deep theological basis for a proper understanding of nature is the reality and purpose of God as creator and redeemer not of individuals in isolation but in essential relationships with God, with each other, and with the whole cosmos.

In his explorations of a theology of nature, Hendry did not give up his principle of God’s self-revelation as the source and norm of responsible theology: “The Bible does not look to nature for light on God, but it looks at nature in the light of God.” ⁴⁸ Basing his reflections chiefly on Rom 8:18–23, Hendry pointed to the solidarity of humanity with the whole realm of nature in its suffering; to the striking imagery of biblical apocalyptic and especially of the message of the resurrection of Christ as vehicle of a hope of cosmic scope; and to the responsibility that rests on human beings for the well-being of the world of nature.

The resurrection of Christ is … the link that binds the consummation of the world to its creation, and the decisive proof of the faithfulness of God. Christians who believe in the resurrection cannot restrict their hope to a future life for themselves; they extend it to the whole created world, which, as it proceeded from God in its entirety in the beginning, will, through his faithfulness, attested in the resurrection, proceed toward him in its entirety at the end. The word that was in the beginning, and through whom all things were made, will receive its appropriate response from all things—“and earth repeat the long Amen.” ⁴⁹

VII. Theology in a New Century

Hendry would not have expected his successors at Princeton to copy his theological work, any more than he imagined his responsibility in his time was simply to repeat the impressive theological work of his Princeton predecessors. To be sure, continuities can be found between the “old Princeton theology” and the theology pursued in the second century of the seminary’s existence, including one of its notable expressions in the work of George S. Hendry. While it is important to acknowledge these continuities, it is no less important to recognize the discontinuities. One can be certain there will be both continuities and discontinuities between the theologies of the first two centuries of theology at Princeton and the theology that will characterize its third century of service.

Looking forward, one can hope for a continuation of biblically rooted, Christ-centered, Spirit-guided theology, enriched by the faith and worship of the ecumenical church, pursued in the service of its life and mission, alert to and in critical conversation with its concrete historical and cultural context, and informed by the past and present but always eschatologically oriented. One can further hope that theology at Princeton will continue to be a theology suspicious of neat systems and totalistic ways of thinking, just as Hendry himself was leery of “untimely systems.” In his view, an effective theology in our time would have to be developed “pluralistically” and would need “to embrace different perspectives and explore the possibility of a relation of complementarity between them.” ⁵⁰ What Hendry saw only from a distance in this regard has become increasingly important to theological work in the twenty-first century. “The voices long silent,” as they are called in the Brief Statement of Faith of the PCUSA, are no longer silent and will undoubtedly play a leading role in the century ahead.

Hendry was heir of the critique of religion by Barth and Bonhoeffer, and in this writer’s judgment, this critique will and should survive into the coming century of theological service. Its need has been reinforced recently by the superficiality of the so-called neo-atheist critiques of religion. The strongest critique of religious arrogance and self-justification, as it surfaces in Christianity and in other religions, is mounted by a faithful theology of the freedom of God’s grace and a corresponding life of thankfulness and service. This theme will acquire fresh importance in interfaith encounters and dialogues among the world religions in our time.

The inseparable relationship of faith and life, so familiar to students of Barth’s theology, was evident in Hendry’s work. For the most part, however, his doctrinal reflections did not draw explicit lines of connection to current ethical issues. While he did comment from time to time on ethical topics and public policy questions, these comments remained mostly at the periphery of his endeavors. Still, when he did venture into this terrain, his comments were characteristically acute, as in his remark on the place of faith and theology in the political sphere: “Can we invoke the help and protection of God, and ignore his judgment? … The danger of political piety is that we tend to assume God will support our politics. But what of the politics of other people? What if God has his own politics?” Politics, Hendry added, is not “too dirty a sphere” for God to enter. “Let us have him come in, but let us remember we can have him only on his own terms, not on ours.” ⁵¹

Among the classical theological loci, the doctrines of God’s electing grace and the Trinity are being given renewed attention in theological discussion today. While not avoiding these topics, Hendry did not pursue them at length in his writings. This was not for lack of interest or requisite aptitudes. A theologian who was well versed in ancient philosophy, the patristic writers, the eighteenth-century romantic thinkers, and the nineteenth-century idealist philosophers; who examined the influences of Plato and Kant on Karl Barth’s thinking; who had begun a book on Hegel as theologian; and who invited distinguished contemporary philosophers like Paul Ricoeur and John Smith to Princeton to deliver the Warfield lectures, ⁵² could hardly be described as anti-philosophical or as opposed to careful reflection on the ontological presuppositions and implications of Christian truth claims. Perhaps Hendry’s caution in some areas of Christian doctrine resulted from his conviction that we walk now by faith and not by sight and from his concern to guard theology from speculative cul-de-sacs. In any case, Hendry would surely have been glad to see theologians today take on the task of creative rethinking of the entire range of Christian doctrine provided that their inquiry remained true to “the principle and method of theology,” that is, theology grounded in and guided by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

An appropriate last word in an appraisal of George Hendry’s legacy would be his often-repeated refrain about the indispensability of prayer in theological work. Students in his theology courses will remember that he began every class with a brief and often moving prayer. In his 1972 Convocation Address in Miller Chapel at the opening of the school year, he spoke on the theme, “The Life Line of Theology”:

For some time, I have employed a simple device in forming a judgment on the systematic writings of theologians, new and old. I read what they have to say about prayer … [If the theologian] takes prayer seriously, I take him seriously, even if I am not able to agree with him in everything … because without prayer theology will founder on the rocks. Prayer is the life line of theology. ⁵³