34. W. H. Griffith Thomas (1861–1924)
34
W. H. Griffith Thomas
1861–1924
When William Henry Griffith Thomas died in Duluth, Minnesota, on June 2, 1924, the religious press in both America and England paid tribute. In the Sunday School Times for June 21, W. Graham Scroggie wrote:
By the passing of Dr. Thomas the Christian Church has lost a scholar and teacher. . . . I can with utmost confidence say that the reading of Dr. Thomas’s books creates in one a deeper love of and desire for God as is revealed in His Word, and that is more than can be said of much which the Christian press of today is turning out.
(Scroggie should have seen some of the books that are being published now!) R. A. Torrey wrote in the July 5 issue of the same publication:
The first thing that impressed me about Dr. Thomas was his sound, wide, thorough, sane, well-balanced scholarship. His interpretations of Scripture were always scholarly and dependable. . . . Along with his scholarship and his clearness of vision there went a very unusual ability to state profound truth with a clearness and a simplicity to which very few attain.
James M. Gray, president of Moody Bible Institute at the time, wrote in the June 28 issue:
Many will speak of Dr. Thomas as an author, editor, preacher, and expositor; but I should like to say a word about him as a contender for “the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints.” He had a great advantage there in his broad knowledge and his early experience as an evangelical leader in the Anglican church before he came to this country.
Griffith Thomas had no advantages in childhood or early manhood. From the beginning, circumstances seemed to be against him. Yet in the furnace of affliction and on the battlefield of life, God made him a great man. His mother had been widowed before he was born on January 2, 1861, in Oswestry, Shropshire. He spent his early years with his grandfather William Griffith. His mother married again, but family financial pressure forced young Will to leave school when only fourteen. In later years he was recognized throughout the English-speaking world as a brilliant educator, teacher, and writer; yet his own education was obtained with the greatest difficulty and sacrifice.
When he was sixteen, he was asked to teach a Sunday school class at Holy Trinity Church in Oswestry. Not yet a professed believer, he thought he was volunteering for the choir! For four months he did his best, but he found it impossible to teach something he had never experienced. God used the witness of two young men in the church to bring him to salvation on March 23, 1878. “When I awoke the next morning,” he related, “my soul was simply overflowing with joy, and since then I have never doubted that it was on that Saturday night I was born again, converted to God.”
He moved to London in 1879 and worked in his uncle’s office. From 10:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. he devoted himself to serious study, a discipline that made him into a scholar. He always admonished his students to devote themselves to reading and thinking no matter what price had to be paid. His vicar, the Reverend B. Oswald Sharp, offered him a lay curacy in 1882. This enabled him to attend morning lectures at King’s College in London while fulfilling his pastoral responsibilities during the afternoons and evenings. He earned his AKC (Associate of King’s College) degree and was ordained in 1885. At that service the bishop of London, Frederick Temple, admonished him never to neglect his Greek New Testament for a single day. (We wonder how seriously a young minister today would take that admonition.) “G. T.” kept his promise to Bishop Temple by reading a chapter each day the rest of his life.
After three and a half years as curate of the church in London, Griffith Thomas accepted a curacy at St. Aldate’s Church, Oxford. While there, he earned his BD in 1895 at the university, again as the result of disciplined study and the wise investment of early and late hours. When I visited the Bodleian Library in Oxford, I thought of Griffith Thomas studying there, hiding in a special corner known only to the rector, the beloved Canon Christopher. The canon, a kind, spiritual man and a great soul-winner, was failing in health and becoming deaf. Consequently much of the parish work fell to Griffith Thomas, who entered into it with as much zest as he did his Greek studies. He preached often, led the Sunday school, managed the various parish organizations, and did a thorough job of visitation. He was a scholar, but never in the slightest degree a recluse. Both young and old loved him, and he had a particular love for them.
About this time, the larger fellowship of the Anglican church began to notice him. I have in my file a copy of the Record for Friday, January 17, 1896, which includes a full report of the Islington Clerical Meeting held the preceding Tuesday. The vicar of Islington, Dr. Barlow, had invited the young curate to read a paper on the doctrine of the church, the first young assistant thus to be honored. “Mr. Thomas treated his subject popularly,” the Record reported, “and he received the cordial recognition and praise of the entire Meeting.” The great scholar Handley C. G. Moule, later the bishop of Durham, was also on the program; young Griffith Thomas was in good company.
Later that year Griffith Thomas accepted a call to St. Paul’s, Port-man Square, now devoted almost entirely to small hotels and business offices. St. Paul’s Church today is located a few blocks from its original site.
Scholar that he was, Griffith Thomas did not make the mistake of trying to build his ministry on bookish sermons. He depended on prayer as well as careful preparation. The church conducted six prayer meetings each week! There were a multitude of organizations within the church. They even had an orchestra society and a cycling club. (Griffith Thomas, a cycling enthusiast, was such a big man that his bicycle had to be specially made.) The main meetings of the church emphasized the study of the Word. Most of Griffith Thomas’s later expository books grew out of these early Bible classes. To learn his philosophy of Bible study, read Methods of Bible Study, published originally in 1902 and recently reprinted. For his views on preaching and pastoral work, read The Work of the Ministry (reprinted as Ministerial Life and Work).
In October 1905, Griffith Thomas was named principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, the center of ministerial training for evangelical Anglicans. During his five years there he was the pastor, teacher, and friend of more than eighty students. He also conducted a weekly Greek New Testament reading at the university on Sunday afternoons. Attending one of these meetings were undergraduates T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and his two brothers. During the years at Oxford, Griffith Thomas earned his doctoral degree (DDOxon). His dissertation was titled “A Sacrament of Our Redemption.” Also during those years he began to minister at the British Keswick Convention. He was also busy writing, editing, and taking a leading part in church affairs that affected evangelicals.
He and his family moved to Toronto in 1910, where he joined the faculty of Wycliffe College, having been persuaded that a wider ministry would be his in Canada. Originally he had been invited to serve as professor of systematic theology, but when he arrived, he discovered that one of the local graduates had been given the position instead! A lesser man would have resigned and returned to England. But Griffith Thomas believed so strongly that God had called him to Canada that he remained and taught Old Testament literature and exegesis for nine years. The students were the losers, in that no one in the Anglican church at that time could surpass Griffith Thomas in teaching biblical theology. It was largely by this means, however, that he became known in both North America and many other parts of the world. When approached to return to an English parish, he replied, “But now a continent is my parish!”
In 1919, the family moved to Philadelphia, and Griffith Thomas carried on an extensive conference and writing ministry. He joined with Lewis Sperry Chafer and Alex B. Winchester in founding Dallas Theological Seminary. He was to have served as a visiting lecturer and later as a faculty member, but his untimely death in 1924 intervened. Today his library continues its ministry to the hundreds of students at the school, however, and his memory is also kept green through the annual W. H. Griffith Thomas Memorial Lectures.
Today we know W. H. Griffith Thomas primarily from the printed page. Add every one of his books to your library. Begin with his great commentaries on Genesis and Romans. Unfortunately, some of his best books have gone out of print, including The Apostle John, The Apostle Peter, and Christianity Is Christ. Still available are his masterly Stone lectures, presented at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1913, on The Holy Spirit of God, and his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Let Us Go On.” You do not have to be Anglican to appreciate The Principles of Theology and The Catholic Faith, both published in London by Vine Books (formerly Church Book Room Press), which plans to issue new editions of as many of his books as possible. The Prayers of St. Paul is a devotional gem, as is Grace and Power. He published twenty-six booklets and twenty-four larger works, a tremendous accomplishment for a man who began his career with severe educational limitations.
Griffith Thomas’s daughter, Winifred G. T. Gillespie, has also edited and issued posthumously several volumes of her father’s unpublished material: Outhne Studies in the Gospel of Matthew, Outhne Studies in the Gospel of Luke, Outhne Studies in the Acts of the Apostles, Through the Pentateuch Chapter by Chapter, and Studies in Colossians and Philemon. She has also worked on notes he used at Toronto in his course on Old Testament introduction.
Griffith Thomas’s advice to young preachers was: “Think yourself empty, read yourself full, write yourself clear, pray yourself keen— then enter the pulpit and let yourself go!” He practiced this counsel himself, becoming a first-rank evangelical scholar and preacher, always keenly alert to encroachments of both modernism and ritualism. Academic achievement did not come without sacrifice—but then, it rarely does. He dedicated and applied himself, and the Lord did the rest. His books are exposition at its best: sound exegesis, pastoral concern, clear outhning, practical application, and relevance to the needs of the day. He did not attempt to be sensational; he wanted only to be biblical. Griffith Thomas was a rare blend of spirituality and scholarship, a true “pastor-teacher.”
“We cannot make up for failure in our devotional life by redoubling energy in service,” he wrote. “As water never rises above its level, so what we do never rises above what we are. . . . We shall never take people one hair’s breadth beyond our own spiritual attainment. We may point to higher things, we may ‘allure to brighter worlds,’ but . . . we shall only take them as far as we ourselves have gone.” In other words, the pastor must be both a man of God and a student. If he is careless in either his praying or his studying, he cannot enjoy God’s blessing. One of his students at Wycliffe Hall, G. R. Harding Wood, wrote in the December 29, 1960, issue of Life of Faith: “One was conscious that all his work, especially his teaching, was steeped in prayer; and it was the same in the more intimate talks about personal problems. . . . He truly walked with God, and made that spiritual exercise something to be coveted and practiced.” Can a man be both saint and scholar, a man of books and a man of the Book? W. H. Griffith Thomas is convincing proof that one can—if one is willing to pay the price.