by Ingrid Schlueter and Rev. Wayne Sedlak
Excerpts from Renegade Prophet? A Look at the Teachings of Tony Campolo
to be released by VCY America Press. Copyright 1997 VCY America, Inc.

Tony Campolo got into a lot of trouble for his 1985 book, A Reasonable Faith. He was cancelled as speaker at Youth Congress '85 in Washington D.C. This conference marked the first time that Campus Crusade for Christ and Youth for Christ combined efforts for a youth event. The goal was to bring together 25,000 high school students for a five-day event. Campolo was asked to withdraw by Dr. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade because of the theology put forth in A Reasonable Faith.

Professor Randy Rodden, at that time a teacher at Campus Crusade's International School of Theology, drafted a 35-page theological critique of Dr. Campolo's book that pointed out the numerous departures from biblical orthodoxy. Rodden sums it up this way:

      C.S. Lewis once wrote, 'Our own business is to present that which is timeless (truth, Christ) in the particular languages of our own age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and trucks them out in the language of Christianity.' Dr. Anthony Campolo, a professor of sociology at Eastern College, and one of the most dynamic youth speakers in the country, has attempted in his foundational book A Reasonable Faith: Responding to Secularism to heed the call of C.S. Lewis. He attempts to put the Truth of Christianity in the language of secular society. He believes his approach is an effective way to evangelize the secular man. And if we judged his claim by his enormous popularity, we would have to agree.

      "However, the question we are raising and attempting to answer is: has Tony presented 'that which is timeless in the languages of our own age' or is he doing exactly the opposite and taking 'the ideas of our own age (Evolutionism, Marxism, Humanism, Existentialism, and Pantheism) and trucking them out in the language of Christianity'? It is our contention that the second thesis is the correct one."1

One of the major issues raised in Rodden's critique is Tony Campolo's assertion that Christ lives in all human beings. On page 171 of A Reasonable Faith, Dr. Campolo says the following to a student who rejects the idea of praying a prayer of repentance but still wants to know how to find Christ:

      "He can be found exactly where he said. He told us that he did not dwell in temples and churches that we build in his honor. Instead, he encouraged us to look for him in one another. He said, "You are my temples I dwell in you. What I am trying to say is that Jesus who incarnated God 2,000 years ago is mystically present and waiting to be discovered in every person you and I encounter."2

Rodden says, "There can be no mistake that Tony is not speaking symbolically or referring to all men being created in God's image when he claims that Jesus is in all people. If there is any question in anyone's mind about this, Tony wants to make his claim perfectly clear at the close of his book. On page 192 he says:

      "...In describing the resurrected Jesus as the sacred presence waiting to be encountered in other people, I was making a literal statement. I do not mean that the others represent Jesus for us. I mean that Jesus actually is present in each person. He continues to live in our midst, not as a religious influence or a sacred idea. He is personally alive. It is the historical Jesus who is encountered in the I -Thou. It is the resurrected Lord of the universe who is revealed to those who are open to his presence in others. Jesus is a real presence in other people and this convinces me that there are infinite possibilities for the future and great hope for the world."3 (emphasis Campolo's)

Randy Rodden correctly points out that "this is not the Gospel of the Scripture. Tony has rejected the very heart of what Christians have believed since the day of Pentecost."

A Reasonable Faith was published in 1983. Has Campolo changed his views over the years? According to a January 24, 1997 television interview, not a bit.

Charlie Rose: This is an age old question --I want to move to some other things but just stay with me on this one--Jesus says I am the way and the light.

Campolo: That's right.

Charlie Rose: What is he saying to his Jewish brothers and his Muslim brothers, and his brothers from other places?

Campolo: I can only answer that with a story and that's this. A friend of mine was in China and he met a Buddhist monk and he opened the Bible to him and explained to him the things of Jesus. The Buddhist monk was weeping as the story was told and when my Baptist evangelist friend said, "will you accept Jesus as your Saviour?" The Buddhist monk said, "accept him? I've always known this Jesus, you have given me his name. You have told me what he's done on the cross. You have talked about the resurrection, but even as you were speaking, the spirit within me was saying as you read from the book, 'he's speaking of me'.

And what am I going to say, that Jesus was not a presence in that man before that Baptist missionary ever got there? I'm saying that Jesus is alive in places where we don't imagine.

Charlie Rose: So, in fact Jesus lives or the idea of Jesus lives in the heart of whoever they are and whatever religion they are in. So they can--

Campolo: I am saying that there is no salvation apart from Jesus, that's my evangelical mindset. However, I'm not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians.

Charlie Rose: Okay, but you gotta have Jesus.

Campolo: Yes, Jesus is my Saviour.

In the emotional story Dr. Campolo just related, he gives more credence to the wisdom of the rather confused Buddhist monk, than to the clear teachings of Scripture. Once again, propositional truth is rejected in favor of the emotional, mystical religion Campolo espouses. He ignores verses such as Romans 10: 14. "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?"

Tony Campolo was confronted about his beliefs in Ontario, California at the Red Lion Hotel, May 8, 1985. Jay Kessler (Youth for Christ), Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ), Chuck Klein, Craig Hammon, Randy Rodden and Chuck Swindoll were present at the meeting. At the end of the meeting, Campolo was asked to step down from participating in Youth Congress '85. Campolo made it clear he was not doing so willingly.4

Despite such incidents, Campolo continues to sell his book, A Reasonable Faith, from his office at Eastern College.

Interestingly, Dr. Campolo was aware in 1983 that he would be accused of distorting the Gospel. He writes the following in A Reasonable Faith:

      "There are some warnings that I wish to issue to anyone reading this book. The first is to be aware that the theology expressed in this short volume represents a personal attempt to state my Christian faith in a way that might prove meaningful for my secularist friends. I am sensitive to the fact that any attempt to state the Gospel in the dominant categories of a culture inevitably leads to a distortion of the Gospel. Consequently, anyone who accuses me of violating the biblical message is correct."5

Let that one sink in for a moment. Let's make sure we are citing Tony correctly.

      "...I am sensitive to the fact that any attempt to state the Gospel in the dominant categories of a culture inevitably leads to a distortion of the Gospel. Consequently, anyone who accuses me of violating the biblical message is correct." (emphasis added)

Here is yet another example of Campolo's self-proclaimed violation of the biblical message:

      "My student was beginning to grasp my line of thinking. He was not convinced that I was right, but nevertheless able to understand that what I was saying had some interesting implications. He said, 'If Godness is humanness and vice-versa, then we have to have a new way of talking about Jesus. Jesus is God because He is fully human, not in spite of his humanness. When I was a kid growing up in Sunday School , they always made it seem weird that God could be a man, but if I follow what you are saying, it is the most logical thing in the world. Jesus was God because He was fully human and He was fully human because He was God. I had always been led to believe that becoming human was some terrible condition that Jesus had to endure for a few years in order to communicate with us in the form that we could understand. But if you are right, His humanity was the fullest expression of His deity."6 (emphasis Campolo's)

Tony Campolo never corrects the student. Rather, he agrees with what the student has just said about the nature of Jesus Christ. Professor Rodden responds:

      "Is Jesus God because he is fully human? Was Jesus not God before the Incarnation?...He is not God because He is human, as Tony would have one believe. He is able to become human because He first was our eternal God. This is a foundational truth of the Scriptures, which Tony's "personal theology 'contradicts.' "7

      Dr. Campolo was also confronted by Professor Randy Rodden's brother, Dan Rodden. Dan Rodden met with him twice and called him to repentance. When Dr. Campolo refused, Dan printed an article entitled, "Tony Campolo: A Great Evangelical Disaster" in Issues and Answers newsletter.

      Both Randy and his brother Dan were openly lampooned and jeered by the June/July 1985 issue of The Wittenburg Door, a left-wing magazine, for their attempts to address the concerns about Tony Campolo's false teachings. (R. Michael Sanders, the writer who interviewed Dan Rodden for The Wittenburg Door later wrote a letter of apology for the way the interview was radically edited and distorted.)

      Despite the careful and Scriptural approach Professor Rodden took in his 35-page critique, Campolo responded somewhat predictably.

            "Mr. Rodden did not handle my book fairly. His desire to have me run out of evangelical circles, so forcefully declared on pages 32-34 of his critique, colored his perception of what I stated in my book. I will not belabor that matter nor further explore its consequences. Rather, I find it more interesting to explore why Mr. Rodden chose such a vitriolic style and why he is so anxious to prove me a heretic."8A sample of Rodden's "vitriolic" style?

            "We as evangelicals must say with compassion, 'Tony, you are wrong; this is not evangelical; this is not Truth.' We must pray that he can be won to the historic Christian faith."9 (emphasis added)On page 12, Professor Rodden leads into a point saying, "We say with compassion and tears, it is not that this sounds mystical, but this is purely heretical." (emphasis added)

      Professor Rodden's critique was not vitriolic. It was thorough. However, in his response to the critique, Tony Campolo resorts to a favored tactic of turning to emotionally charged language. Saying someone is "vitriolic" is a more effective way of discrediting a person in today's evangelical world than calling them a heretic. And it shifts the focus of the public from the real issue at hand. The issue in this matter is simple: Campolo is at odds with 2,000 years of Christian orthodoxy.