Never be wise in your own sight. Romans 12:16
Thomas Oden’s change of heart was sealed in 1971 when he had a dream in which he was in the New Haven cemetery and he accidentally stumbled upon his own tombstone.
In the dream he saw these words on his own tombstone: “He made no new contribution to theology.” Oden says that he woke up from the dream “refreshed and relieved.”
“After that,” he says, “I set about trying scrupulously to abstain from creating any new doctrine. It was the best decision I had made… It took no small effort to resist the constant temptation to novelty… Nothing at Yale was drummed into my head more steadily than the aspiration that the theology I would seek would be my own and my uniqueness would imprint it.”
Oden said, “I was pledged to present nothing new or original in basic Christian teaching that would have my initials stamped on it as if it were mine. I have honored that pledge, and it has been deeply gratifying for me.”
In summary of his life, Oden says this: “If my first forty years were spent hungering for meaning in life, the last forty have been spent in being fed.”
How would you characterize your own reading of the Bible? Hungering for meaning in life? Or being fed?
