http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Selected-Writings-of-Victoria-Woodhull,674201.aspx

Thanks!

Lyle W. Dorsett has done a masterful job of taking the true story of the life of A.W. Tozer and has left us with this wonderful biography. The lessons about living with a passion for God and the warnings of family neglect from the life of A.W. Tozer are valuable treasures for all looking to grow closer to God, yearning to stand for truth, longing to lead a powerful prayer life, and learn about the dangers of neglecting your family in doing so (losing focus on those closest to you when it does not and should not be this way). This, in my opinion, is a must read.

Rating: 5 / 5

This latest biography of A. W. Tozer, A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer, is the latest in a series of short, informative biographies of influential evangelical Christians by Lyle Dorsett, Professor of Evangelism at the Beeson Divinity School of Samford University. Dorsett’s goal is to provide a biography of Tozer that portrays him as a real human being, one who was far from perfect but saved by God’s great grace and used by God to lead other Christians into a deeper, more meaningful Christian faith.

Like Dwight L. Moody, about whom Dorsett has also written a biography, Tozer had very little formal education and a lifelong passion to lead people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Unlike Moody, who was never ordained, Tozer was ordained by the CM&A in 1920. For the remainder of his life, he served the Alliance in pastorates in the U.S.A. and Canada, as editor of the denomination’s magazine, The Alliance Weekly (later The Alliance Witness), and through his many widely popular books. A. W. Tozer did more to spread awareness of the CM&A than any other spokesperson.

Although he had little formal education and no formal seminary training, Tozer read widely and deeply in the works of great secular thinkers like Aristotle, Plato, Spinoza, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, and Karl Marx, as well as the early Church Fathers, and other great Christian thinkers like Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, Madame Guyon, John Newton, the Wesley brothers, and many more. Tozer believed that there was much to learn through reason, “But knowledge of God and the human spirit and the soul can be grasped only through the Holy Spirit” (96). He believed that reason was a valuable tool, but, he insisted, [God] “is above human reason and He is above human science” (qtd in Dorsett 96). Like Moody, Tozer wanted Christians to “enter into a deeper life with Christ.” He was convinced that God wanted his people to “know Him” not just “about Him” (125). When faced with a difficult passage in the Bible, Tozer urged believers to “[g]o to God first about the meaning of any text” before consulting human authors. Once when he was accused of disliking the Scofield Bible, he said that on the contrary, “I’ve worn four of them out, and I have number five now at home . . . I just don’t believe its notes. When it starts telling me things are otherwise than they are, I just write that off. But he does divide up things nicely for you” (qtd. 139).

A major part of Tozer’s appeal in his sermons and books was the obvious fact that he read much wider than was common for most seminary and Bible college graduates. Also, it was very evident that he knew God intimately. He had experienced the deeper life that he urged other believers to seek. What Tozer found in the CM&A was a celebration of “Jesus Christ as Healer, as well as Savior, Sanctifier, and Coming King.” All too many believers, Tozer was convinced, “tend to substitute logic for life and doctrine for experience” (qtd. 126). The cure for such a shallow relationship could be found in the “Four-fold Gospel” as taught by the CM&A’s founder A. B. Simpson.

Perhaps the finest feature of Dorsett’s book is how he reveals to the reader the human side of A. W. Tozer. The Tozer we encounter in A Passion for God is one whose zeal for God’s house brought great pain to his own. No doubt in part due to the very difficult relationship he had with his own father, A. W. Tozer found it near impossible to relate to either his wife or his children on an emotionally intimate level. He seems to have wanted only a surface relationship with his wife, Ada, and remained always distant from his children. His youngest child and only daughter, Rebecca, knew him best. She once said that the estrangement between her parents may have been due in part to the fact that her mother was a romantic to the core, whereas her father eschewed sentimentalism and displays of emotion, and seemed to fear intimacy” (142). Rebecca also noted that her mother never read anything but the Reader’s Digest. There was something that drove a wedge between her parents, something that she was never able to understand. From the children’s perspective, both parents remained distant from their offspring. According to their son Lowell, “We were known ironically as `the Tozer kids.’ But we were not a unit or tight-knit family. We were a family full of individuals” (qtd. 108).

A. W. Tozer and his wife Ada both suffered from depression, but neither knew how to be healed. Ironically, as Dorsett concludes, both confessed to friends late in their life together that they had lived a lonely life. Even after the children were grown and gone, and his pastoral and other duties were lessened, Aiden seems to have kept himself busy so as to have “no time to develop the marital intimacy that they had both learned to live without” (158). After Aiden’s passing in 1963 and her remarriage to Leonard Odam in 1964, the former Mrs. Tozer said of her first husband: “My husband was so close to God, a man of such deep prayer, always on his knees, that he could not communicate with me or our family. No one knew what a lonely life I had, especially after the kids left home” (qtd. 144). Of her new life with Odam, she said, “I have never been happier in my life. Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me” (qtd. 160). As for Aiden, shortly before his death, he confided to a fellow pastor, “I’ve had a lonely life” (qtd.144).

A. W. Tozer is remembered as “one of the great spiritual giants of the past century.” Whether already a Tozer fan or one desiring an introduction to him, Lyle Dorsett’s A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer is an interesting and delightful read. The only criticism this reviewer can make is to note the absence of an index. Only novels should be published without an index.

Rating: 5 / 5