Wayne Grudem


Wayne A. Grudem is a prominent evangelical theologian, seminary professor, and author. He co-founded the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and served as the general editor of the ESV Study Bible.

Life

Grudem was born on February 11, 1948, in Jim Falls, Wisconsin. As a child, he attended First Baptist Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He holds a B.A. in economics from Harvard University, an M.Div and D.D. from Westminster Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D in New Testament studies from the University of Cambridge. In 2001, Grudem became Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary. Prior to that, he had taught for 20 years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he was chairman of the department of biblical and systematic theology.
Grudem served on the committee overseeing the English Standard Version translation of the Bible, and from 2005 to 2008 he served as general editor for the 2.1-million-word ESV Study Bible. In 1999 he was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society. Grudem announced having been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease on December 22, 2015.
On July 28, 2016, Grudem published an opinion piece on Townhall called "Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Morally Good Choice". On October 9, the piece was retracted and replaced with one entitled "Trump's Moral Character and the Election". On October 19, the original piece was reinstated and another piece was published, entitled "If You Don't Like Either Candidate, Then Vote for Trump's Policies".

Theology

He is the author of multiple books, including Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, which advocates a Calvinistic soteriology, the verbal plenary inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, believer’s baptism, a plural-elder form of church government, and the complementarian view of gender relationships. Systematic Theology is a highly influential theology textbook that has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Grudem holds to noncessationist charismatic beliefs and was at one time a qualified supporter of the Vineyard Movement and one of the main apologists and spokesmen for reuniting charismatic, Reformed, and evangelical churches.
In his theological method, Grudem aims to compile what the entire Bible says about any given topic. He applied this approach in his Systematic Theology and has now done so more recently in Christian Ethics. Grudem describes the task of assembling verses and passages from the Bible on the analogy of a “jigsaw puzzle.” This manner of deploying scripture has been criticized. As Carl Braatan observed in First Things, Grudem “piles up biblical proof-texts in blithe indifference to critical scholarship.” In short, his “method is captive to the fundamentalist notion that the canon of biblical texts and their interpretation can be detached from the community that determined canonicity in the first place.”

Gender

Grudem is a co-founder and past president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. He also edited Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
All of Grudem's research on gender-related issues is now contained in his major reference work Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: an Analysis of over 100 Disputed Questions.

Works

In recent years, Grudem's publications have focused on the application of the ethical teachings of the Bible to broader areas of the culture including government and economics.

Books