Below is a draft of the afterword to Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers, the title of a book-length (103K-word) manuscript I hope to publish in 2025. A search of <Otis Q. Sellers> on this site, which I invite you to do, will return many hits. The book chapters that will, once published, precede this afterword originated as posts; familiarity with them, however, while helpful, is not necessary. Standing apart from them, it is (I hope) intelligible enough to stimulate interest in the larger work. It’s long as posts go, but I’m hungry for feedback. Comments are welcome! So, print it out, or send it to your e-reader, or scan it ocularly.
Does this have anything to do with Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Not directly, but see the fourth reference note.
I wish my visitors a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2025!
Anthony G. Flood
* * *
Allow me first to clarify something that might bother many of you upon reading the title. What Sellers called his walk in Jesus Christ seems to express a contradiction in terms. If Christianity is one of the world’s “great religions,” there couldn’t be a religionless version of it, right?
Wrong.
What Is Religion?
For one thing, “Christianity” refers to nothing in the God-breathed Scriptures. Reading Acts 11:26, we learn that Jesus’ disciples were first called “Christians” in first-century Antioch (present-day Antakya in southern Turkey). But nothing then corresponded to the abstraction “Christianity,” religious or otherwise.
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God (εἰρήνην πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν, pros ton Theon ) through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). That faith is neither a true nor false religion. We are the blessed ones against whom God will not count our sins (Romans 4:8). What religion can give the peace that comes with knowing that?
The only religion (θρησκεία, thrēskeía) that God gave anyone—that is, the only system of outward worship, ritual practices, and religious devotion, rites and rituals, prescriptions and proscriptions governing one’s relation to Him—is found in the תּוֹרָה (to-rah), commonly referred to as the Law of Moses.
Paul refers to religion exactly once in Scripture, but that wasn’t a reference to saving faith in Jesus: “. . . according to the strictest sect of our religion (ἡμετέρας θρησκείας, hēmeteras thrēskeias), I lived as a Pharisee” (Acts 26:5; ESV; emphasis added). To Christians living in the present Dispensation of Grace, he wrote:
Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship (θρησκείᾳ) of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind . . . . (Colossians 2:18 ESV).
Nowhere is the prescription of outward worship associated with saving faith. On the contrary, two verses earlier he wrote:
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath (Colossians 2:16; ESV).
In the Greek Scriptures, only James defines θρησκεία, and he identifies it not with outward forms of worship or ceremonial practices, but as acts of compassion and moral integrity.
If anyone thinks he is religious (θρησκὸς, thrēskos) and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion (θρησκεία) is worthless (μάταιος, mataios). Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (James 1:26-27. ESV. Emphasis added)
There is no reason to believe that James’s list was exhaustive.
What Is Truth?
When entertaining a proposition, Otis Q. Sellers asked: Is it true? Not: “Is it the scientific, scholarly, or ecclesiastical consensus?” Consensus be damned. He followed the lead of John who, carried by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), wrote that he had no greater joy (χαρά, chara) than hearing that his children walk in the truth (τῇ ἀλήθεια, tē alētheia) (3 John 1:4). This implies that John’s pleasure was like and reflective of God’s. That is, seeing His children walk in the truth is a divine delight second to none.
This walk is our worship of God. For as God is Spirit (Πνεῦμα, Pneuma), we can only worship (προσκυνοῦντας, proskunountas) Him integrally if we do so in spirit (ἐν πνεύματι, en pneumati) and in truth (ἀληθείᾳ, alētheia) (John 4:24).
So, what is truth? That’s what Pilate asked Jesus, his divine prisoner (John 18:39). Jesus had just affirmed the coming of His Kingdom, and therefore His Kingship (vv. 36-37) and would presently intimate the heavenly source of the earthly authority (ἐξουσίαν, exousian) Pilate had over Him (19:11).
During His ministry Jesus had identified Himself with the truth (ἡ ἀλήθεια, hē alētheia) (John 14:6); there’s no reason to think He’d have withheld that answer from Pilate—had he stayed for it. The challenge, however, of placating a bloodthirsty mob and keeping the office he held at Caesar’s pleasure concentrated his mind wonderfully, and so off to the balcony of his residence he went.
Hours earlier, Jesus had prayed that by the truth (ἐν τῇ ἀλήθεια, en tē alētheia) the Father would set Jesus’ disciples apart for special service (ἁγίασον, hagiason, i.e., “make holy,” or “sanctify”) (John 17:17). Did Jesus mean “by His person”? Or did He mean “by the truths collected in the Hebrew Scriptures plus the truths the Holy Spirit will cause them to remember, which Spirit “the Father will send (πέμψει, pempsei) in My name” (John 14:26)?
In that prayer Jesus identified His Father’s Word (ὁ λόγος ὁ σος, ho logos ho sos: “the word of You”) as truth (ἀλήθεια, alētheia) (John 17:17). In that instance, Jesus traded on a distinction between the truth of God Incarnate (the Truth Jesus claimed to be) and the many inscripturated truths that God would have its believing readers know.
“Have you not read (ἀνέγνωτε, anegnōte) what was spoken (ῥηθὲν, rhēthen) to you?,” Jesus rhetorically asked his wicked audience, alluding to passages in Genesis and Exodus. to you?” (Matthew 22:31) Not written, but spoken: to read Scripture, even the words of its narrator, is to hear God (e.g., Matthew 19:4, alluding to Genesis 2:24) and to be responsible for what one hears.
Ordinarily, we regard truth as a “property” of propositions, not of persons, but Jesus means both when referring to His primordial relationship with His Father. He is the true expression (ὁ Λόγος , ho Logos) of God (John 1:1): Whoever sees Him, sees the Father (John 14:9) with Whom He is one (John 10:30), even if the Father is greater than the Son (John 14:28).
Today, we’re epistemologically restricted to those Scriptures (“shut up to them,” as earlier parlance had it). They provide the context of the saving (σωτήριον, sōtērion; Acts 28:28) message of the Gospel, believing which message we have life in Jesus’ name. We don’t need to get it from a divinely commissioned herald, nor need we ourselves be such heralds ourselves to bring it to others.
Who Is Out-called? Who Is Commissioned with Authority?
No one is “out-called” to be an evangelist today[1], except prospectively: the right message or evangelion is no longer addressed to the Jew exclusively or first. That was true during Christ’s earthly ministry and in the Acts dispensation, but in the present one of the grace of God (Ephesians 3:2), it is freely available (ἀπεστάλη, apostalē) to all nations (Acts 28:28). That is, the Scriptures constitute our sole apostolic authority today. We believe them without having seen the realities to which they refer. For taking God at His Word we will be favorably positioned in the Kingdom.
Many (most?) Christians, however, believe there’s a “lens” of personal ecclesiastical authority through which we have access to truths of God not found in Scripture, and through them we must qualify our reception of it. Since they also cordially affirm that the Scriptures are God-breathed (θεόπνευστος, theopneustos) (2 Timothy 3:16), they have the burden of showing that the Scriptures do not make the man (ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos) of God perfect, complete (ἄρτιος, artios), equipped (ἐξηρτισμένος, exērtismenos) for every good work he undertakes (v. 17). They need something in addition to the Scriptures.[2]
John’s Gospel is about the glory of believing the truth: it was written that the reader (“you”) might believe that Jesus Christ is Son of God and, believing, have life in His name (ὄνομα, onoma; His character, not forename) (John 20:31).
Those who sailed to Capernaum “seeking for Jesus” (John 6:24) after He had miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes asked Him “What shall we do that we might work the works (τὰ ἔργα, ta erga) of God?” (John 6:28; emphasis added) They apparently wanted a religion of prescriptions. He answered, “This is the work (τὸ ἔργον) of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent (ἀπέστειλεν, apesteilen: “commissioned with authority”) (John 6:29; emphasis added). Those who wouldn’t do that one thing “walked no more with Him” (John 6:66).
In this dispensation of grace, we who believe not having seen signs or miracles (John 20:29) will be favorably positioned (μακάριοι, makarioi; “blessed”) in God’s Kingdom where His righteous judgments will be in the earth (Isaiah 26:9). We have not known those judgements: we’ve experienced only the grace of God. That is, we have not gotten what we deserved but have enjoyed blessings we have not deserved.
We’ve been chosen before the founding (πρὸ καταβολῆς, pro katabolēs) of that world-order (κόσμου, kosmou), that is, the Kingdom, to serve in it as witnesses to His grace, the graces of which we will extol (Ephesians 2:7). We will assume the position, not of divinely adopted “children,” but rather that of divinely adopted sons (υἱοθεσίαν, huiothesian)—representatives of His majesty.
How Do You “Join a Church?”
Nothing in the Bible obliges you to “join a church.” First of all, the ekklēsia wasn’t an outfit one joined after shopping around for one that “spoke to your needs”—not even if those in it convinced you they were “Bible-believing.” Rather, it was the position to which believers in the Acts dispensation were called. When it came to an end, so did their calling and the gifts that marked that phase of God’s Kingdom purposes.
Those purposes were suspended (Acts 28:28; Philippians 1:6); He’ll take them up again when He reveals His glory, which all flesh will see together (Isaiah 40:6) because He will pour His spirit out on them (Joel 2:28; Acts 23:17).
This will be Christ’s blazing forth (ἐπιφανείᾳ, epiphaneia) for which (not yet for His second advent) we are to live in expectation (1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 1:10, 4:1, 4:8).
Adam was an individual, as was Abel, Abram-Abraham, Jacob-Israel, David, Moses, Peter, Paul, John, Timothy, and so forth.
In our time, in this dispensation, God is dealing exclusively with individuals, like Jan Hus and John Wycliffe, Erasmus and Luther—and you. Yes, He had dealt with Israel as a nation and gave them the only religion He ever gave any people. He will do so again when He establishes His global reign: Israel will serve as the mediatorial nation between God’s Throne in the heavens and that of His Prime Minister David in Jerusalem. Until then, however, all nations are on an equal footing, joint bodies[3] (Ephesians 3:6).
Christian Individualism as “Religionless Christianity”
Whatever Dietrich Bonhoeffer intended by that term[4], here’s what Sellers
meant:
It was sometime after A.D. 70 that a new alignment of religions appeared in the Roman Empire. This was called Christianity. It was an amalgam of Greek philosophy, Mithraic ritualism, and religious elements from many sources. It called itself the Christian Church, and it was far removed from the simple fellowship of the first followers of Jesus Christ.
It did not come out of Him, since it was built by men who today are universally acknowledged to have been “the Church Fathers.” Fifteen of these are recognized in ecclesiastical history between 70 A.D. and 440 A.D. Ten of them are commonly called “the Greek Fathers,” and five are called “the Latin Fathers.” It was these men who produced from many sources the religion of Christendom, which today had developed into a thousand-and-one companies, a great myriad of ceremonies, rituals, acts of exterior worship, all of which together pass for Christianity today.
There are those who say that one is no part of Christ unless he is in some way a part of this conglomeration. This we repudiate. And in defense, we would point to the truth declared by Paul in Colossians 2:8-23. This portion when honestly translated and understood sets forth religionless Christianity in all its splendor. It removes from the believer in Christ every vestige of religion both human and divine, and declares without equivocation: “And you are complete in Him.”[5]
Complete. What can you add to completeness? Above we drew upon Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, written after the close of the Pentecostal Dispensation (“Acts period”). Here’s the King James Version of the context of those two verses. I’ve emphasized certain words:
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (touch not; taste not; handle not; which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.
God’s present administration or dispensation being characterized exclusively by grace, “Christian Individualism” stands for what is required of believers in Jesus Christ today. You can, and should, engage with churched brothers and sisters in the Lord to promote the things you have in common with them. Being a Christian Individualist does not, for example, bar one from engaging activities, charitable (e.g., Samaritan’s Purse) and educational (e.g., the Creation Museum), that one associates with “churches” (a term we’re stuck with). But any similarity between them and Christian Individualists who meet regularly, is purely coincidental, for no organization today corresponds—could correspond—to what ἐκκλησία signifies in the New Testament.[6]
Over their flocks, many adherents of the epistemological primacy of the Bible ironically assert an extra-Biblical personal authority that determines how one “must” interpret certain verses, especially those that pertain to the presumption of ecclesiastical authority. As you might surmise, in the end it comes down to sound biblical exegesis: everything hangs on how one interprets the Bible, beginning with whether one takes it to be the verbally inspired Word of God and (here’s the rub) therefore one’s final epistemological authority. I assume here the philosophical position I’ve defended at length elsewhere.[7]
Sellers on Ayn Rand’s Individualism
I found it ironic to find Sellers quoting Ayn Rand (1905-1982), playwright, novelist, and philosopher of individualism. I doubt he would have cited her on individualism (or anything else) had he known she was an enemy of Christianity.
In 1957 Rand published Atlas Shrugged, her magnum opus, but even in 1961 she was probably best known for The Fountainhead, a 1943 novel that was made into a movie starring Gary Cooper six years later. The year that novel came out, Rand began working on “The Moral Basis of Individualism.”[8] A “condensed” portion[9] appeared as “The Only Path to Tomorrow” in the January 1944 issue of Reader’s Digest.[10] It was already 17 years old when he cited it; it was something that would have been collected in the war-related scrap drives. I’m inclined to think he had bought it when it came out and kept it from the paper salvagers.
Sellers didn’t live to see the suffocating ideological conformity that nearly every institution in his country demands. What he quoted from Rand’s essay is ominously relevant to our day; it bears on the individualism he calls Christian. Rand wrote:
The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers, but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Totalitarianism is collectivism. Collectivism is the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.” . . . No tyrant has ever lasted long by the force of arms alone. Men have been enslaved primarily by spiritual weapons. And the greatest of these is the collectivist doctrine that the supremacy of the state over the individual constitutes the common good. No dictator could rise if men held as a scared faith the conviction that they have inalienable rights of which they cannot be deprived for any cause whatsoever, by any man whatsoever, neither by evildoer, nor by supposed benefactor.
This is the basic tenet of individualism, as opposed to collectivism. Individualism holds that man is an independent entity with an inalienable right to the pursuit of his own happiness is a society where men deal with one another as equals.[11]
Leaving aside how Rand’s atheism—she called her philosophy “Objectivism”—could possibly justify “inalienable rights,” I was fascinated to learn that the Russian émigré’s individualism resonated with her American contemporary, a Biblicist.[12] “What she said,” Sellers opined, “might well be projected to take in individualism as a way of life for the active believer in Jesus Christ.”[13]
Sellers: A Foe of Ecumenism—Not a Hippie!
One thing Sellers most loathed about churches was the pressure to conform:
Christian Individualism is for the active believer in Jesus Christ who has discovered that his interest in God’s truth and his growth in the knowledge of Jesus Christ has brought him into conflict with the status quo that is so fervently maintained by the organizations that call themselves churches. (Christian Individualism [CI], 17; see Appendix A)
Sellers was not a nonconformist for its own sake: “I am not an eccentric, subsisting on fruits and nuts, and I do not wear robe or sandals.” (CI 18) His interest was solely in the truth and the liberty to follow it wherever it led him, a freedom upon which churches do not look kindly.
My individualism is something that is reserved almost entirely for the Lord Jesus Christ. It is for His glory, not mine. I do not think it is wise to try to escape the trend toward conformity so far as the material side of life is concerned [e.g., what one wears]. (CI 18)
And he had nothing but disdain for the globalist One-Church movement called “ecumenism.”
Up to the present decade [the 1960s] ecumenicity has always been a dream. However, the tendency toward standardization and uniformity which is sweeping the Western world has given it great impetus. It is no longer a dream, it is a fact. It has received general acceptance from a majority of Protestant churches, and the whole ecclesiastical machinery is slowly grinding toward it. (CI 20-21)
In 1962, the year after Sellers published Christian Individualism, the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church convened the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican whose proceedings many Protestants were invited to observe. “There can be no doubt,” Sellers fears, “but that this movement has as its goal the complete homogenization of all professing Christians, in which all ideas and values are to be mass-produced, and in which any opinions which deviate will have no right to be heard.”
The Christian Individualist . . . is unable to fellowship with those who worship the movements and programs which are motivating the churches today. He cannot go along with those whose sole desire is to merge their identity with a group. Some men simply do not want to be free, and an organization is often a spiritual sanitarium for men who are afraid to stand alone. (CI 21)
Christian Individualism “is not for the nominal Christian. This way of living will not be satisfactory and will be of no help to that great multitude of people who at one time ‘professed faith’ in Jesus Christ and then became passive about the whole matter.” (CI 16)
By “way of life,” he did not mean “a way or manner of obtaining life.” That is, it’s not a way of salvation, but rather the “way or manner of living in respect to certain conditions and circumstances for the one who has obtained life through Jesus Christ.” (CI 16)
And it has nothing to do with belonging (or not belonging) to a church.
The believer in Jesus Christ [Sellers continues] has every right to refuse the quid pro quo that makes organized religion to be an enlargement or development of the New Testament ekklēsia. My own studies in this subject confirm what [Emil] Brunner [1889-1966, the Protestant theologian whom Sellers had just cited] declares unremitting research has found, namely that there is no similarity between the Biblical ekklēsia and the churches of today.
God’s ekklēsia . . . was not an organization which men joined. God’s ekklēsia were individuals, out-called men and women. In the Acts period these out-called ones mediated between men and Christ, as their every act and work shows. This mediatorial work came to an end at the close of the Acts period, leading Paul to declare that there is “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). This is present truth. This is truth for today. . . . We are the out-called of God in promise and expectation. . . . The word ekklēsia told them what they were. It tells us what we someday will be.[14] (CI 22; my emphasis.—AGF)
To be sure, Sellers cautions:
Christian Individualism does not mean that the believer stands alone. But it does mean that he knows how to stand alone, and that he will without complaint stand happily alone if he deems it to be a part of the worthy walk of his calling. . . . He has a profound sense of his personal responsibility to God; therefore, he will put Him first and every other consideration must be subservient. While he earnestly desires fellowship and community with others, he refuses to allow this desire to be the reigning influence of his life. He dislikes isolation and aloneness as much as anyone, yet he will not compromise in order to belong.[15] (My emphasis.—A.G.F.)
Sellers’s work depended on the prior scholarly work of “churchmen,” but that’s no reason to impute a divine status to the “churches” that underwrote their books.
We admire the great works of charity (for example, disaster relief, to name no other kind) that Christians have performed for centuries under one or another church banner. Church membership may be the occasion of the exercise of their virtue of charity, and their churches its instrument, but that does not make them ekklēsia. Neither does the worship of Jesus Christ, which may or may not occur under their auspices. True worship may be done in the company of others, but is not done at all unless by individuals:
True worship is heartfelt adoration of God because of who He is, what He is, and what He does. It is never dependent on place or ritual. It needs no established forms or ceremonies. Whenever, because of revealed truth, a heart responds with adoration and gratitude because of what God is or what He has done, that is worship. (CI 23)
And belonging to churches is not a necessary condition of being saved by Jesus Christ. What is required for that is to believe in the One Whom God has sent (John 6:29), and we find out what to believe by studying the record God gave of His Son (1 John 5:10). But
. . . in order to be obedient to the Word of God one must be acquainted with it . . . [which means] we must carefully study it. And how should we study it? Merely to find proof texts to supports our own preconceptions and ideas? Or should we study it with an earnest desire to understand its contents, with profound reverence for its authority, and with an honest purpose to obey and conform to its truth, whatever it may cost us? (CI 29)
Those who choose the latter course are Christian Individualists, whatever else they may call themselves. Their choice, however, will be tested when they find something in the Bible that contradicts what their church teaches. For “let God be true and every man a liar” (Romans 3:4) and let us “obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29) when the latter contradicts the former—even if the individual has “Reverend” before his or her name.
I close with the words of my late friend Gabriel Monheim (1936-2015), who introduced me to Sellers’s writings[16] in 1977 and whose sentiments on this score are mine:
Let it be clearly understood here and now however, that I do not believe in the destruction of any church, but in the freedoms of speech, worship and the press granted under the [U.S.] Constitution. And more than this, I believe in the freedom from fear, especially that type of fear which is instilled in a person by his religion to prevent him from either questioning, verifying, or disproving their claims. . . .
I wish to arouse in the reader an interest to compare his church’s teachings with clear statements in the Bible—if they are in conflict, to have the courage to bring them to the attention of others. This may eventually result in his expulsion from his church. . . . The Christian should now be independent, that is, an individual who should think for himself. He should be free to accept new teachings and reject old ones when compared in the light of the Bible.[17]
Learn the truth and then walk in it. Do not let the world defile you, which it can do through the most “religious” professors of Christ. Live that truth. Be not like the disciples who walked away from Jesus because their profession of belief was based on His how He filled their bellies (John 6:26), not because He was the One who had come down from heaven (John 6:38). He knew the Father had not given them to Him (John 6:37).
Rather, be the one believing continuously (ὁ πιστεύων, ho pisteuōn; John 6:35, 40, 47) so that you will not hunger concerning the Kingdom. His Take God at His Word, take the Bread of Life into you, consume it hungrily, and then act accordingly. This faith is “religionless.”
But that will entail studying the Word of Truth as a worker who has no reason to be ashamed because he rightly divides (or accurately “cuts”) it (ὀρθοτομοῦντα, orthotomounta; 2 Timothy 2:15). That is faith, and only faithfulness is required of us.
Notes
[1] In the present Dispensation of Grace, however, one does not need to be commissioned to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5).
[2] That is the explicit claim of many Roman Catholic apologists, e.g., Casey Chalk, The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity, Emmaus Road Publishing, 2023.
[3] Not “joint members of one body”: σύσσωμα, sussōma is plural!
[4] Sellers never cited theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer—who was no more a dispensationalist than Sellers was a Lutheran—but he must at least have heard of that heroic believer whom the Nazis hanged for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Both men reacted against the corruption of “Christendom,” but between Bonhoeffer’s religionsloses Christentum and Sellers’s “religionless Christianity” there is, I believe, more to contrast than to compare. I don’t know whether Sellers approved of the tyrannicide in which Bonhoeffer participated. Perhaps by cultural osmosis Sellers picked up Bonhoeffer’s term and found it useful. Sellers was explicitly a Christian individualist; Bonhoeffer, implicitly a Christian collectivist, e.g., “We must finally get away from the notion that the gospel is concerned with the salvation of the soul of the individual, or with showing the way from the despair of the sinner to the sinner’s blessedness.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gesasmmelte Schriften, 4.202, quoted by Ralf K. Wüstenberg in A Theology of Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity, trans. Doug Scott, Eerdmans, 1998, 13, which Jeffrey C. Pugh quotes in his Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times, T&T Clark, 2009, 79. See also Bonhoeffer biographer Eric Metaxas’s book-length essay, Religionless Christianity: God’s Answer to Evil, Regnery, 2024.
[5] Otis Q. Sellers, “Religionless Christianity,” Seed & Bread, No. 140.
[6] See Appendix A, “Otis Q. Sellers, ‘Christian Individualism’” below and Chapter 11, “Ekklēsia: A Kingdom Term,” above.
[7] Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him, (2022. Available on Amazon.
[8] Ayn Rand, “The Moral Basis of Individualism” [1943], The Intellectual Activist, November 1995. Originally in her journal: https://cooperative-individualism.org/rand-ayn_moral-basis-of-individualism-1995.htm
[9] http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/toptt.html
[10] Sellers cited only the magazine’s title, issue date, and the article’s range of pages; I excavated the rest.
[11] In the lower left corner of page 88 of that January 1944 issue of Reader’s
Digest, which includes the text Sellers cited, Rand’s biosketch reads: “Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg (now Leningrad [but St. Petersburg again since 1991.—AGF]), Russia, and graduated from the university there. She took up writing and in 1931 came to the United States ‘in order to write as I please.’ She is the author of the Broadway hit The Night of January 16th, which ran for three years in the ’30’s. Among her books are We the Living, Anthem, and the recent best-seller The Fountainhead, which is soon to be made into a movie.” 1931 was the year she became a U.S. citizen; she had arrived in New York City five years earlier, at age 21. The movie The Fountainhead, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, was released in 1949.
[12] For a critique of Objectivist epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics as articulated by an adherent of those theories, see my Atheism Analyzed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God” (2019), Amazon.
[13] Jennifer Anju Grossman explored this tension in “Can You Love God and Ayn Rand?,” Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-you-love-god-and-ayn-rand-1478823015 and Bishop Edward S. Little, “Ayn Rand Led Me to Christ,” Christianity Today, June 29, 2011, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/june/aynrandled.html. For a defense of Christian Objectivism, see Sean Edwards, “Are Ayn Rand and Christianity Compatible?,” The Ray Edwards Show, June 23, 2013, https://rayedwards.com/are-ayn-rand-and-christianity-compatible/. For a discrediting of this option, see John W. Robbins, Without a Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System, Trinity Foundation, 1997. See also Murray N. Rothbard’s 1972 The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult, https://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html That a cult of admirers clustered around her is ironic. Sellers saw to it that nothing like that happened around him and his teaching while he was alive, and since his passing in 1992, and nothing like it has.
[14] Sellers believed that Jesus Christ is the pre-eminently out-called one, the manifold wisdom of God (διὰ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἡ πολυποίκιλος σοφία τοῦ Θεοῦ (dia tēs ekklēsias hē polupoikilos sophia tou Theou). See his commentary on Ephesians 3:10n149 above. [Not in this blogpost! A.G.F.]
[15] The brilliant Reformed Baptist apologist, James R. White, who rejects any form of dispensationalism, must have had people like Sellers in mind when he wrote: “While Rome has gone far beyond the biblical parameters regarding the roles and functions of the Church, many Protestants have not gone nearly far enough in recognizing the divine order laid out in the New Testament. The Apostles established local churches. They chose elders an deacons, and entrusted to these the task of teaching and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Those chosen of God to minister the Word to the congregation are worthy of double honor (1 Timothy 5:17). There is no warrant for the ‘Lone Ranger Christian Syndrome’ so popular in Protestant circles these days.” James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy, Bethany House Publishers, 1996. Sellers was not, of course, a “lone ranger,” but a maverick who broke away from the churches after they made it clear they wanted little to do with him. His studies led him to the position that while churches abound on every hand, there is no ekklēsia today and therefore nothing created by apostolic authority to which he must subject himself as to Christ. He did not bring “Christian Individualism” to his studies: it grew out of his studies, the fruit of which I’ve tried to render in this book’s chapters.
[16] See this book’s preface. [Well, you can’t do that yet! A.G.F.]
[17] Gabriel Monheim, The Bible versus the Churches, 1977 (self-published), 7-8.