| Honorific Prefix: | The Reverend | ||||||
| Gerhard O. Forde | |||||||
| Birth Name: | Gerhard Olaf Forde | ||||||
| Birth Date: | 10 September 1927 | ||||||
| Birth Place: | Pope County, Minnesota US | ||||||
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Gerhard O. Forde (September 10, 1927 - August 9, 2005) was an American Lutheran theologian who wrote extensively on the Protestant Reformation and Lutheran theology and tradition.[1]
Gerhard Olaf Forde was born in Pope County, Minnesota, and raised near Starbuck. He was the son of Gerhard Olavus (1884–1964) and Hannah (Halvorson) Forde (1888–1928).[2] He received the B.A. degree from Luther College in 1950, attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for one year, and then earned the Bachelor of Theology degree from Luther Seminary in 1955. He earned the Th.D. degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1967. Forde also studied at the University of Tübingen and was the Lutheran tutor at Mansfield College, Oxford University, 1968 - 1970. He also spent sabbatical years at Harvard (1972–73), Strasbourg (1979–80), and St. John's University Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, Collegeville, Minnesota (1988).[3]
Forde was a pastor in the American Lutheran Church and later in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America after its founding. Forde's teaching career began at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, where he was instructor in religion in 1955–56. Gerhard Forde joined the Luther Seminary faculty as lecturer in church history in 1959–1961. After moving to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, as an assistant professor of religion in 1961–1963, he returned to the seminary as instructor in 1964 and was promoted to professor ten years later. Even after his retirement in 1998, he remained active as a teacher and lecturer for several years.[4]
A member of the American Academy of Religion, Forde was also active as a member of the board of dialog, A Journal of Theology; the Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue; the commission for the new Lutheran Church; and the editorial board of The Lutheran Quarterly.
In 1987, the Lutheran Quarterly was relaunched in the midst of the negotiations that led to the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In the lead issue of the "new series" of the journal, Forde provided a future view for American Lutheranism titled "Radical Lutheranism".[5] In the article, Forde addressed the future of Lutheran identity that he viewed as being bound largely to ethnic and cultural backgrounds, not the theological identity forwarded by Forde that he stated as being a dedication to the "radical" gospel of Jesus Christ and the concept of justification by faith.[6]
Forde would continue to expound on the concept of Radical Lutheranism, most pointedly in his later book On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 and essays published in A More Radical Gospel.