W. T. Conner—As I Knew Him
By Darold Morgan, Executive Director of the SBC Annuity Board (ret.)
Richardson, TX
Walter Thomas Conner (1877-1952) is still recognized as one of Baptist`s truly great theologians. Hebegan his teaching career in 1910 as Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary moved to Fort Worth from Waco, where it had been a part of Baylor University under B.H. Carroll`s powerful leadership. His last year of teaching was in 1949 when a debilitating stroke ended his extraordinary ministry of lecturing and writing and preaching—a ministry which shaped literally thousands of preachers, missionaries, and teachers around the world. He died in 1952.
I had the unique privilege of being in his last group of doctoral students and can recall to this day the shock that followed the announcement of his stroke in the spring of 1949, which ended his active involvement at Southwestern.
Our class was just days away from completing our last required doctorial seminar when this tragedy occurred. Several of us in that group experienced the peculiar frustration of having our doctoral orals and dissertation literally thrown to the winds because our major professor was unable ever to help us again. The seminary leadership did rally to assist us in this demanding part of our degree work, but it was hectic in those first difficult weeks following Dr. Conner`s illness.
Interesting enough, that last seminar he led was on "Great Devotional Literature," the only time he ever taught that course. In his final years of teaching he had an increasing interest in the mystical side of the Christian faith. Preeminently a systematic theologian, some of us can recall in those last months of this seminar that he expressed repeatedly some remarkable insights of an intense devotion personally to Jesus as Lord and Savior. For these months we studied some of the masterpieces of Christian devotional material. My assignment was William Law`s A Serious Call to A Holy and Devout Life. Frankly, I was unaware of this book, but I soon learned why it was so influential upon John Wesley.
What a joy even today to recall listening both to the other students in the seminar and to Dr. Conner as he made such insightful comments on the material. There were papers on Augustine`s Confessions, Bunyan`s Pilgrim’s Progress, Thomas Kelly`s Testament of Devotion, Thomas a` Kempis Imitation of Christ, John Woolman, and other works. This was in such contrast from the obviously practical approach he had made for years in his crowded and mandated classes in Systematic Theology. But it does con stitute a beautiful memory about a side to Dr. Conner not many were privileged to experience.
Dr. Conner lived for three years after his stroke. An unusual report circulated around the campus one day that he had repeatedly asked Mrs. Conner the sad question, "Why did God leave me like this?" He was limited to a wheelchair and his bed, and his last years were grim indeed. One day in response to that frequently voiced question, she responded somewhat testily, "Perhaps He left you this way so you could catch up on your praying. You always said before that you didn`t have time to pray as you wanted to because you were so busy." Later as she checked on him in the late night hours, she could tell he was awake despite his eyes being closed. His lips were moving in prayer, and often she saw tears on his face as he was in prayer and worship. In the morning hours sometimes he would mention the extraordinary prayer encounters he had experienced in the night.
When I think of Dr. Conner, I recall a tall, gangly, thin man teaching in the large basement classroom of Cowden Hall, long before that array of new buildings graced the campus at Southwestern. We first-year preachers were required to take his year-long courses in theology. Our texts were his famous books Revelation and God and The Gospel of Redemption. These were revisions of his older text A System of Christian Doctrine. As I began my seminary years, World War II was ending and suddenly large numbers of students began showing up on campus. Many were older men, fresh from military service, whose main concerns were evangelism and missions, not systematic theology! The classes were crowded, and Cowden Hall was not air-conditioned.
Conner`s approach was the lecture method—period! There were times for questions, but these times were rare. When questions were raised, it confirmed that mature stu-dents could ask some very immature questions. He was usually patient with this problem, but there were times when his patience wore thin.
The overflow of new students whose priorities were not learning systematic theology was the setting for one his memorable "Connerisms."—"There is enough ignorance in the Southern Baptist Convention to ignorance the world." This oft-quoted remark, which I first heard in 1945, has been confirmed again and again in the recent SBC conflicts.
Much of his teaching career dovetailed with the exceedingly bitter conflicts of the seminary with the pastor of Fort Worth`s First Baptist Church, J. Frank Norris. This original fundamentalist had an almost visceral hatred of L.R. Scarborough, Southwestern`s gifted president, and George W. Truett, the long-time chairman of the seminary trustees and the famed pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. To recall these sad days is to remind us all that conflicts about seminary education among Baptists is perennial!
But Dr. Conner kept to the course of trying to mold the hearts and minds of the students in his classes. "Young men," he would say to every class (no issue then of ordaining women), "test everything you believe by one question—where does it put Jesus Christ!" One of his finer books, The Faith of the New Testament, was the text of one of his most interesting classes on New Testament Theology and points to this cardinal truth in his approach. I also recall a colleague mentioning repeatedly the skills Dr. Conner had in New Testament Greek. His little known commentary on John confirms this skill.
Over these fifty plus years in my own pilgrimage since those distant days at Southwestern, I have heard preachers and teachers and others in numberless settings of seminaries, conventions. and worship services. But I have never been as moved as I was so many times in Dr. Conner`s classes. There were moments when his eloquence was so overpowering, his logic so forceful, his devotion to Christ so apparent that the force of those moments are still alive and dynamic in me. Although his lectures and prayers were usually monotone, when he shifted gears into the excitement of a particular truth, he was for me beyond Moses and Elijah.
I also treasure the elective courses and the doctoral seminars where even deeper truths were plumbed. Spending an entire semester under his tutelage on specific doctrines was a lifelong privilege of inestimable influence. The topics included the Atonement, the Doctrine of God, the Holy Spirit, and numerous other theological treasures. His last book, The Work of the Holy Spirit (1949, and out of print for many years) is still brimming with valuable insights, particularly in light of the current Pentecostal resurgence.
An evaluation of Conner`s theology is found in several excellent volumes. James Leo Garrett (also in Conner`s last group of doctoral students and one of the genuine scholars of our day) wrote his doctoral dissertation on The Theology of W.T. Conner. Dr. Garrett has condensed this in his chapter on Conner in Baptist Theologians, a superb collection edited by Timothy George and David Dockery. (Broadman Press, 1990) Stewart Newman`s biography of his Southwestern colleague, W.T. Conner, Theologian of the Southwest, is mandatory reading both as to the details of Conner`s long life as well as a very helpful insight into his theological development.
I am suggesting that it is meritorious and worthwhile
to study both the life and teachings of Dr. Conner. We need his balance, as we sense the increasing furor of fundamentalism, so strangely similar to Frank Norris` views in the 1920s and the 1930s. Dr. Conner`s conclusions are biblically true to the very core of things.
Plain spoken, direct, and easy to read, Conner`s approach theologically is so refreshing in these days of theological confusion. His conclusions are biblically sound to the core. Connor himself would probably be surprised at the emergence of a hyper-Calvinism in some SBC seminary circles. Though he was a "mild" Calvinist, Dr. Conner struck a balance between election and predestination—his assertions about evangelism and the Baptist missionary impetus are strikingly appropriate for our day.
Though he was cognizant of the emerging neo-orthodoxy movement, led by Barth, Bruner, Bultmann and others (a movement that dovetailed in time with his teaching career), he deliberately chose to approach what he considered to be the heart of New Testament Christianity quite uncritically. Perhaps this was a limitation in his teaching, for his final group of graduate students had to dive into these deep waters alone. Newman suggests in his biography that this was a deliberate choice on Conner`s part because the territory where he lived and taught was the American Southwest! Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Oxford, and Germany seemed far from the area where his students lived and ministered—pragmatism ruled the day. One can only conjecture what he would say in light of the current ebb tide of post-modernism!
Today, more than a half-century after his life in a time when Conner has been relegated to dusty library shelves, could it be that echoes of this plain and unvarnished teacher call us back to basic truths we need? Today dispensational millennialism is popular and a strident creedalism has become mandatory in many Baptist educational institutions, could it be that an Arkansas-born, Texas-raised, old-time Baptist theologian, one deeply influenced by masters like A.H. Strong and E.Y. Mullins, has a word for our ears to hear? My how we need his refreshing ideas on the inspiration of the Scriptures!
In the sequence of classes and the flow of his writings, Dr. Conner had a distinct apologetic—his defense of the Faith! To his credit, he confronted the dangerous teach-ings of J. Frank Norris, the Scofield Reference Bible, and its child, dispensationalism. Likewise, he was unapologetic when confronting Christian Science, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, Roman Catholicism, and Pentecostalism. Yet, he was never just a negative critic. At the center of all his writings, there was an intense love and devotion to Jesus as Lord and Savior.
W. T. Conner blended a brilliant mind with a down-to-earth approach, replete with humor and gratitude to God. I think I am one to whom another oft-quoted Connerism applies: "Education is the process of getting abstract ideas into concrete heads."
