Born October 21, 1921 in Altus, Oklahoma, United Methodist Thomas Clark Oden was the child of pietistic parents who were also union organizers. During high school, he volunteered with the United World Federalist movement, and at the University of Oklahoma, he worked for the Students for Democratic Action. He received his M.A. from Perkins School of Theology in 1956 and received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1960, studying with Hans Frei and H. Richard Niebuhr and writing on the ethics of Rudolf Bultmann. He taught from 1958 to 1960 at Perkins and then taught during the 1960s at Phillips University. In 1971 he began teaching as a professor of Theology and Ethics at The Theological School at Drew University, and there he remained until his recent retirement (Hall 2011). A prolific author, Oden has written numerous books spanning 50 years.
During the 1960s, Oden wrote several works in which he argued that God’s presence in Jesus Christ could be effectively intuited through the...
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Bibliography
Hall, C. (2011). Back to the fathers: Every turn in Thomas Oden’s theology took him further left, until he came face to face with Augustine and Wesley. Christianity Today, 55. Retrieved from http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/octoberweb-only/back-fathers.html?start=6. Accessed 1 Apr 2012.
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Helsel, P.B. (2020). Oden, Thomas. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24348-7_9196
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