Tag: Moody Bible Institute

Otis Q. Sellers’s Ecclesiology and Eschatology: An Overview, Part II

Otis Q. Sellers in 1921, the year he studied at Moody Bible Institute

[This brief series began in Part I. Readers should consult the notes for links to posts that document many of my dogmatic assertions.—A.G.F.]

Otis Q. Sellers’s work was effectively, although not explicitly, rooted in sola Scriptura. It was his presupposition. No alternative view of Scripture attracted him. A possible reason why he never referred to this doctrine was that sola Scriptura is a “church” doctrine that defines the criteria by to which Christians should accept or reject other doctrines.

If Sellers concluded that no individual or group today answers to ekklēsia, he could hardly have been interested in a doctrine that was formulated to guide the ekklēsia. Ironically, sola Scriptura is a doctrine by and for Christian individuals living in the Dispensation of Grace who are “shut up” to the Bible. As Sellers once put it:

I believe that God’s word to me is encompassed in the Bible, and that in this dispensation we are shut up to the written Word. So for sixty years I have made it a practice to study this book and then to take God at His Word and respond accordingly. I know that faith without works is dead, and I want nothing to do with a dead faith. To me the work is that I respond in harmony with what has been said. Sometimes the “works” part requires only that I so think. At other times it means that I must act.[1]

He was trained by those who had been leaders in the Bible Conference Movement, forerunners of American Fundamentalism, who shared that presupposition. As we shall see, however, he took it further than even the most radical scripturalists among them were willing to go.[2]

 

Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s Ecclesiology and Eschatology: An Overview, Part II”

Soul polemics: Sellers’s unpublished 1950 letter

Otis Q. Sellers on horseback, Grand Canyon, September 20, 1947. (Detail of larger photo given to me by Jane Sellers Hancock.)

We often learn best by contrast. In this long post, I reproduce much of the text of an unpublished letter, dated July 28, 1950, in which Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) laid out his theology of the soul (psychology) and spirit (pneumatology) against the misapprehension of both by Dr. Keith L. Brooks (1888-1954).

In the November 1949 issue of Prophecy, Brooks had analyzed Sellers’s 1939 What Is the Soul?; Sellers thought it merited a reply. (Some of you know the latter publication was the focus of many recent posts, starting with “Spadework on Display: Sellers the Maverick Workman on the Soul—Part I,” December 14, 2021.) The letter contains an excellent summary of his view that the human being is a unity of diverse “aspects,” but not a composite of discrete “parts.”

During his 1978 New York conference at the Holiday Inn on West 57th Street, Sellers gave that letter to my friend Sam Marrone. “You can have this,” he told Sam, “this” being a twelve-page, single-space typescript.[1] A couple of weeks ago, Sam gave it to me, another of his  many contributions to my effort to tell Otis Q. Sellers’s story.

As for Brooks, except for the titles of his books in the Teach Yourself the Bible series, I could find little information about him. Moody Publishers, the publishing arm of Moody Bible Institute (which Sellers attended for the first eleven months of 1921), has this snippet:

Keith L. Brooks founded the American Prophetic League of Los Angeles in 1930. He was the author of numerous Bible study courses, books, and tracts. Although Keith passed away in 1954, his wife, Laura, continued the ministry of the American Prophetic League until 1960. The League’s Prophecy Monthly eventually merged with Moody Bible Institute’s Moody Monthly. The published Bible study became the Teach Yourself the Bible Series from Moody Publishers.

Sellers starts off irenically enough—“I wish to commend and thank you for the Christian spirit manifested. We see all too little of this in this day.”—but quickly gets down to business.

Continue reading “Soul polemics: Sellers’s unpublished 1950 letter”

Otis Q. Sellers: The Autodidact Who Returned ad fontes

From the Renaissance humanists the Reformers borrowed a motto: “Ad fontes!,” that is, “[Back] to the sources or fountains of truth.” The sources were texts, the Greek and Roman classics for the former, the Bible for the latter.

The phrase comes from Psalm 42:1, or rather from Jerome’s Latin translation of the Hebrew for his Vulgate edition of the Bible:

Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus.

As the New King James Version renders it:

As the deer pants for the water (מָ֑יִם, mayim) brooks (אֲפִֽיקֵי, ha-pi-que), so pants my soul for You, O God.

“To be short of breath” or “to pant” renders the Hebrew תַּעֲרֹ֥ג (ta-a-rog), which Jerome represented by desiderare: to desire, wish for, long for. It refers to a want or desire that induces gasping, breathlessness.

The psalmist’s desire is, figuratively, for a source of water (ad fontes aquarum). Thirst is symptomatic of a lack, and God is the divine analogate of the thirst-quenching brook, the supplier of the spiritual hydration we need at our core.

Jesus Christ spoke of Himself that way. He promised that

… whosoever drinks of the water (ὕδωρ, hudor; whence our “hydration”) that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4:14

Babbling brooks extinguish the thirst of deer whose throats will again dry up. Jesus’ quenching of spiritual thirst, however, is a gift of a spring of water (ὕδωρ) that wells up (ἁλλομένου, allomenon) into life. What kind of life? Not “eternal” in the sense of “timeless,” but dynamically outflowing (αἰώνιον, aionian).[1] Otis Q. Sellers’s research sheds light: Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers: The Autodidact Who Returned ad fontes”

Otis Q. Sellers on “fortifying,” and then examining, one’s beliefs

Otis Q. Sellers, 1920. Whereabouts unknown to this writer. Perhaps the bench he was leaning against was in a Cincinnati park. If so, maybe the statue behind him provides a clue.

In 1940 Otis Q. Sellers reviewed the approach to Bible study he had exhibited during his early years as a believer (1920-1921). It was marked, he admitted, by the tendency to study only to validate what one already believes. Today we’d call it “confirmation bias.” He achieved victory over it, but it took about fifteen years.

The following account, first made in The Word of Truth, IV:2, March-April 1940, was essentially carried over into “Early Experiences,” a section of his The Study of Human Destiny: A Testimony and an Appeal, Los Angeles, 1955, 7-12. His reverie’s homespun air contrasts refreshingly with the academic prose I’m used to reading (and, I confess, often guilty of falling into).

The Study of Human Destiny (excerpts)

It has now been almost seven years [1934-1940] since I determined that the entire subject of the nature of man and the destiny of man should be reinvestigated, reexamined, and restudied. This determination became a powerful conviction, that in turn became a consuming passion, and this has kept me steadily engaged at the task throughout the years that have passed. . . . (25)

It is now my earnest desire to lead others over the steps that I have trod, in order that they may see for themselves the things that I have seen, and discover for themselves the things that I have discovered. My reward for doing this will be to see things again for myself, to see them more clearly, and to discover things that I had not uncovered before. . . . It troubles me to hear that those to whom I once ministered the Word of God are saying that I “have taken up with some new belief.” This is not true. The truth is that the student you knew, came as a result of his studies to a place where certain inexorable facts and all their implications had to be faced. I came to a place where a decision had to be made and the results of my own studies in the Word of God had to be embraced or rejected. (25)

. . . I had not known the Lord many months before I was busily engaged preaching on the streets, in mission halls, and in churches. Inasmuch as I went from place to place, such work did not require many messages, and the half dozen that I had developed, on as many subjects, soon became very familiar to me. I was soon able to give them with all the assurance of an experienced veteran. I had no background of Biblical knowledge, but by putting together the things I did know, condemning things that were wrong, commending things that were good, adding to this some anecdotes and illustrations, I was able to satisfy that class of people who have no thirst for knowledge, but who do like to hear a lively and interesting message. (26)

This group was predominant at that time, and it still dominates the religious world today. It is this group that the average minister keeps in mind in all his study and service. They provide the character for the church today. The hireling shepherd feels it is best to go along with them. He does not permit his messages to rise above the level of their superficial knowledge. Neither does he say anything that will disturb them or cause them spiritual exercise. He excuses his own superficiality by saying that all that his people want is just the simple gospel. I remember well how I covered up my own lack of knowledge by claiming to be a preacher of the simple gospel. (26)

As I look back upon my first year of Christian experience [1920] I am both amazed and amused at how little a man can know and yet satisfy the average audience that comes to hear a sermon. . . . [I]n those few messages I had quite a bit to say about hell fire and eternal conscious torment. No hesitation was shown in declaring these things and, since they were in harmony with what the world and religious men believed, they were usually good for some resounding “amens.” It was with some satisfaction that I felt I held men over the pit until they smelled the smoke. I fear now that it was true of me that I spoke about hell with all the assurance and knowledge of one who had recently been there. I am still wondering just where all this knowledge came from. I had never been a student of the Bible, had never sat under the ministry of a Bible teacher, yet my beliefs on the nature of future punishment had already reached finality of truth. At that time I would have readily admitted that I could learn more about my beliefs. but I would not have admitted that I could learn a thing to change my beliefs. These were fixed before I ever began to study. (26) Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers on “fortifying,” and then examining, one’s beliefs”

Yielding to Scripture outwardly and inwardly

A friend sent me an image of Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, vested as Pope Benedict XVI, his title from 2005 to 2013, the year he retired, now living a life of prayer, meditation, and Scripture study. Inscribed on it is an exhortation:

I urge you to become familiar with the Bible, and to have it at hand so that it can become your compass pointing out the road to follow.

It comes from his April 9, 2006 message to on World Youth Day. The Scripture chosen for his address is from Psalm 119:105.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.“

In his homily, Benedict doesn’t consider the internal resistance some Christians have to letting the Word of God operate as a compass, light, and lamp unto their feet. To understate things, God’s speaking can wrench one out of one’s comfort zone and bring one into conflict with one’s neighbors, business associates, friends, family, and even fellow believers. Continue reading “Yielding to Scripture outwardly and inwardly”