Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers examines the intellectual and spiritual journey of a former Baptist pastor whose independent biblical research challenged established teachings about baptism, salvation, the soul, eternal life, and the Kingdom of God. What first drew you to the life and theological work of Otis Q. Sellers?

I appreciate the question, because to understand a biography, it may help to know what brought the biographer to the task. In my case, it was a (nearly half-century) long and winding road with many pitfalls along the way.

Born in 1953, I was raised Roman Catholic, but in 1979, God’s sovereign grace regenerated me. I had recently broken with Stalinist Communism (1969—1975). Otis Q. Sellers’s New York representative, Gabe Monheim, broadcast Sellers’s thinking on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in Manhattan, near my job. (I tell this story in the book’s preface.) In a few years, however, I began to crave the fleshpots of academia. Questions I now deem dead ends lured me, then a self-important Ph.D. philosophy student, off course. I lay out my Christian alternative to those dead ends in my 2022 Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him.

In other words, I gave in to “intellectual” pressure (which masked spiritual discord), and only now I see decades of wasted time (to borrow the title of Malcolm Muggeridge’s memoir) in the rearview mirror. Chief among the sidetracking issues was the “problem of evil.” Shortly after the turn of this century, I became a proponent of “open theism,” according to which the future is as unsettled (or “open”) for God as it is for man.  That “god,” however, is not the sovereign creator of whatsoever comes to pass, the God of the Bible, the God in whom I believe.

Why the intellectual instability? Why the internal dialectic? In my view, fallen man, of which type I am Exhibit A, is pulled ideologically in opposite directions, and regeneration in Christ does not necessarily exempt him from dialectical strife. Christian history overflows with evidence that the dialectic continues “till Kingdom come.” Christians can, however, prevent its potentially fatal effects by trusting in the Lord and seeking insights from His Word, which need not be a solitary affair.

The Apostle James attributes interpersonal conflict to desires that reflect our fallenness and persist even after regeneration:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? (James 4:1–2)

Among you. That is, even among the regenerate members of the widely dispersed twelve tribes of Israel. For Christians, division (internal and external) is neither the whole of the story nor its end. Each of us, as individuals, must negotiate the ideological minefields that present themselves. That’s what, in his way, Otis Q. Sellers had to deal with, and I in mine.

What does Sellers’s willingness to sacrifice professional security and religious acceptance reveal about his understanding of personal conviction?

Integrity based on fidelity to the Scriptures was everything for Sellers and impressed me from the beginning. He could not pretend to teach things that didn’t square with his understanding of Scripture, as limited as it then was early in his studies, despite the great love of and enthusiasm for the Word that was already operative in his young adult life.

Even in his early thirties, which correspond to the early thirties of the last century, Sellers (1901-1992) still considered himself a beginner. His spadework in Scripture study still lay ahead of him. He was still looking for more mature Christian leaders to follow. But they all disappointed him, one by one. The willingness your question refers to reveals that the Spirit of God can encourage—give courage to—a believer to pursue the truth of His Word even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

As the Great Depression wore on, the existential question for Sellers was: “Now that I no longer have a pastorate,” and having one was then an enviable situation, “how will I provide for my family?” Any Christian perhaps should ask: “What if I could set aside everything that the world (including its Christian precincts) expects me to profess if that’s where my studies lead me?” Sellers answered that question with his life.

How do you believe Sellers’s example speaks to contemporary Christians who are reconsidering their relationship with denominational institutions or established theological teachings?

His example resonates with them only if they are “epistemologically self-conscious,” that is, if they understand the foundational role divine revelation should play in their lives. Implicit in the mind and heart of every believer is the moral imperative to let Scripture—not inherited tradition, not even ostensibly Bible-believing traditions—regiment their views on everything.

Arriving at this commitment is neither an overnight affair nor something one undertakes casually. It will take years of wrestling with Scripture; I wrestled with Sellers growing realization that many traditional beliefs, especially about “church,” “soul,” “heaven,” “hell,” “baptism,” “the Lord’s Supper,” “eternal life,” and so forth, do not have Scriptural warrant. This is not a matter of marshaling prooftexts, but of immersing oneself in and living with the text, consulting every scholarly resource possible, then presenting the results of one’s labor so others may critically examine its fruit.

What do you hope readers take away from the book’s exploration of truth-seeking, openness to correction, and the personal responsibility involved in studying Scripture? 

I hope readers will identify with Sellers in his quest for truth and transpose the particulars of his life to their circumstances. He was a “real person,” not an academic. He learned from academics, but was not in awe of them, and was suspicious of their dependence on those who signed their institutional paychecks. Perhaps my journey in, out of, and back to Sellers’s Bible-illuminating studies, retold in the book, will pique the reader’s curiosity.

By God’s grace, none of my intellectual ups and downs were fatal. By a kind of divine irony, they only served to return me to my starting point, but with a greater appreciation of what I had once enjoyed but foolishly set aside. I can only share with them how that road appears to me in retrospect.

Sellers did not bring “Christian individualism” to his studies: it grew from them, and it’s their fruit that I’ve tried to render in my book’s chapters. Life had beaten the snot out of me: there was, and is, no presumption of intellectual superiority. Having my intellectual frailties exposed no longer immobilized. Rather, I felt strongly that I could start conversations about the Bible in ways others could not. And so, out of that cauldron of internal wrestling arose a strong desire to present my understanding of Otis Q. Sellers’s biblical theology, which I believe deserves a wider audience. Whether I’m apt to teach (1 Tim 3:2; 2 Tim 2:24) is for others to evaluate.

Author Website: www.AnthonyGFlood.com