W.H. Griffith Thomas

Before he died, W.H. Griffith Thomas helped found Evangelical Theological Seminary, known today as Dallas Theological Seminary. Today, Stephen Nichols tells us about the life and career of this dedicated Anglican theologian.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are talking about the Anglican theologian W.H. Griffith Thomas. He was born in 1861 in Shropshire, England. Shropshire is on the English and Welsh border, and the poet A.E. Houseman memorialized Shropshire in a collection of sixty-three poems he entitled The Shropshire Lad. In that first poem, he says, “Look left, look right. The hills are bright.” And indeed, these are the green, bright hills in which Griffith Thomas grew up. His childhood, however, was not so bright. It was rather difficult for him. His father died before he was born, and his grandfather died when he was fourteen, and he had to leave school, which he dearly loved, and go to work. It was during this time, though, that he was also very active in his Anglican parish, and in 1878, at seventeen years of age, he was converted.

Shortly after this, Thomas left those bright hills for the city of London. He worked by day, and he studied on his own biblical Greek by night. He soon caught the attention of an Anglican priest, and he received a paid position as the Vicar’s assistant. He saved up enough money and studied at King’s College there in London, and then he went to Christ Church, Oxford, to finish his divinity studies. In 1905, he received his doctorate of divinity for the book he wrote on the Holy Spirit, and he was appointed principal or president of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Let’s take a pause here for a word on Wycliffe Hall. It was founded in 1877. It was named for John Wycliffe, that Morning Star of the Reformation, and it was founded as a conservative, evangelical, Anglican theological college. J.C. Ryle was among its founders, and in 1905, Griffith Thomas became its president.

He also lectured and he wrote, but his tenure lasted five years, and he received a position as a professor at another Wycliffe Hall, this time in Toronto, Canada. While he was there at Wycliffe Hall, Toronto, he continued writing and lecturing, and he traveled very widely. He was even invited by B.B. Warfield to go down to Princeton and to give the stone lectures. And then in 1919, he left Toronto and moved to Philadelphia. Now, if we think about these dates, we realize the 1910s were the times of the fundamentalist modernist controversy, and Griffith Thomas was right in the middle of all that. Once he got to Philadelphia, he was the editor of the Sunday School Times. This was a weekly newspaper that was started in 1859, and it would run until 1966. It was published by the American Sunday School Union, and it was full of articles on the Bible, on theology, and it was intended to educate Sunday school teachers who could then teach all of their pupils in Sunday school.

And Griffith Thomas was its editor. He also traveled widely. He traveled back to Canada all around the U.S. and he went as far as China and Japan. Well, all of this travel and editing and writing took its toll. He died on June 2nd, 1924. His legacy lives on, lives on in two things that came about after his death. First, published posthumously, is his Principles of Theology. It was a widely influential text, especially among conservative Anglicans for decades after it was first published in 1930. The other piece of his legacy is an institution. Thomas met with William M. Anderson. He was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Dallas and with Lewis Sperry Chafer, who was a popular teacher in the Bible conference movement. And they hatched the idea of a new seminary. Griffith Thomas gave it the name Evangelical Theological Seminary. He was supposed to be a professor there, but he died in June, and the seminary opened in the fall. A few years later, Evangelical Theological Seminary changed its name to Dallas Theological Seminary. That's the life of William Henry Griffith Thomas. And I'm Steve Nichols, and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.