W. H. Griffith Thomas | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | William Henry Griffith Thomas 2 January 1861 Oswestry,Shropshire, England |
| Died | 2 June 1924(1924-06-02) (aged 63) |
| Alma mater | King's College London Christ Church, Oxford |
| Religion | Christianity |
| Church | Church of England |
| Ordained | 1885 |
| Writings | The Principles of Theology: an introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles (1930) |
William Henry Griffith Thomas (2 January 1861 – 2 June 1924) was anAnglicancleric and scholar from theEnglish-Welsh border country. He has been quoted by theologianAlister McGrath in the science-versus-religion debate.[1]
Griffith Thomas was born inOswestry,Shropshire, England, to aWelsh family. According to the General Register Office marriage record for his parents, his mother (Anne Nightingale Griffith) was the daughter of William Griffith, a surgeon of Oswestry. She married William Thomas on August 30, 1860. William Thomas was adraper and the son of Thomas Thomas, a farmer. By the 1861 census, Mrs. Thomas was widowed and living in Oswestry with her parents and infant son. She married secondly, in 1864, Joseph Charles. In the 1871 census, the family was living inShrewsbury, Shropshire. By the 1881 census, Griffith Thomas was living in London. Then 20 years old, he worked for his stepfather's younger brother, William Charles, who was a watch dial maker. From 1882-85 he was a student atKing's College London where he took anAssociateship of King's College, before proceeding toChrist Church, Oxford.
In addition to severalpastorates, he taught for several years as Principal ofWycliffe Hall, Oxford (1905–1910)[2] and then atWycliffe College inToronto, Ontario,Canada (1910–1919).[3] He was a co-founder withLewis Sperry Chafer ofDallas Theological Seminary. He authored several books includingThe Principles of Theology, asystematic theology text based on the39 Articles of the Anglican Communion. Theologicallyconservative, Griffith Thomas was anAnglican and adispensationalist. Whilst at Oxford he edited the theological magazine, theChurchman.[4]
Gaining the reputation of a popular author and speaker in dispensationalism and victorious Christian life, he spent the last five years of his life writing and speaking at conservative gatherings. Partially funded by the Milton Stewart Evangelistic Fund, Thomas traveled withCharles G. Trumbull toJapan andChina in the summer of 1920. In 1920 after returning to the United States from China, he made a sweeping accusation of the modernist tendency among China missionaries in the famous speech, "Modernism in China." The speech was delivered to the Presbyterian Social Union inPhiladelphia in January 1921 and caused a great deal of debate among the churches and mission boards in North America. Thomas was accused of being directly responsible for the founding of theBible Union of China. His reply was that "I had nothing to do with the formation of the Bible Union, except in so far as my address seems to have been the immediate occasion for it." There is certainly no evidence that Thomas personally initiated the Bible Union in China, but his speeches in China during summer missionaries retreat had the effect of significantly intensifying the conservatives' negative sentiment toward modernism in the field and prompting them to take public action.
More recently, Griffith Thomas has been quoted in the current science-versus-religion debate by the theologian Alister McGrath in his argument with the scientistRichard Dawkins over the issue of whether or not religiousfaith is based onevidence. According to McGrath,[1] Griffith Thomas expressed a typical and characteristic Christian understanding of faith when he wrote:
Griffith Thomas' view of "evidence" and "proof" in relation to the Bible, can be found inHow We Got Our Bible and Why We Believe It Is God's Word.[7]
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Principal ofWycliffe Hall, Oxford 1905–1910 | Succeeded by |
