“Know Your Roots: Evangelicalism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” (1991) is a video that was professionally recorded on the campus of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. It consists of four parts that are about thirty minutes each:
- Video 1: Carl F. H. Henry, introduced by John Woodbridge, lectures on evangelicalism.
- Video 2: Kenneth S. Kantzer, introduced by John Woodbridge, lectures on evangelicalism.
- Video 3: D. A. Carson interviews Kantzer and Henry on evangelicalism (part 1).
- Video 4: D. A. Carson interviews Kantzer and Henry on evangelicalism (part 2).
Many thanks to The Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding for making this 120-minute video available digitally!
Aside: I wish this would have been available earlier! I wanted to watch these videos last year, but they were available only in VHS format. And since Jenni and I live in the twenty-first century, we don’t own a VHS player. So I checked out the VHS videos from the TEDS library during Christmas break and brought them with us on our visit to Greenville where family members have VHS. It was worth it—not least to compare and contrast how Drs. Carson and Woodbridge look and sound today!
D. A. Carson recounts one of the video’s highlights in Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), p. 58 (19:23–21:21 in video 4):
Several years ago I was asked to interview Dr. Carl F. H. Henry and Dr. Kenneth S. Kantzer for a videotaping. These two American theologians have been at the heart of much of the evangelical renaissance in the Western world, especially, but not exclusively, in America. Each was about eighty years of age at the time of the videotaping. One [i.e., Henry] has written many books; the other [i.e., Kantzer] brought to birth and nurtured one of the most influential seminaries in the Western world. They both have been connected with Billy Graham, the Lausanne movement, the assorted congresses on evangelism, the influential magazine Christianity Today, and much more. The influence of these Christian leaders extends to the countless numbers of younger pastors and scholars whom they have helped to shape not only by their publications and public teaching but by the personal encouragement at which both have excelled. Both men gave lectures for the video cameras before several hundred theological students, and then I interviewed them. Toward the end of that discussion, I asked them a question more or less in these terms: “You two men have been extraordinarily influential for almost half a century. Without wanting to indulge in cheap flattery, I must say that what is attractive about your ministries is that you have retained integrity. Both of you are strong, yet neither of you is egotistical. You have not succumbed to eccentricity in doctrine, nor to individualistic empire-building. In God’s good grace, what has been instrumental in preserving you in these areas?”
Both spluttered in deep embarrassment. And then one of them [i.e., Henry] ventured, with a kind of gentle outrage, “How on earth can anyone be arrogant when standing beside the cross?”
That was a great moment, not least because it was so spontaneous. These men had retained their integrity precisely because they knew their attitude should be the same as that of Jesus Christ (Phil. 2:5). They knew that they had been called not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him. If their Master had viewed equality with God not as something to be exploited for personal advantage but as the basis for the humiliating path to the cross, how could they view influential posts of Christian leadership as something they should exploit for personal advantage?