“I’ve had a lonely life.” This is a statement made by Dr. Aiden W. Tozer shortly before he died in 1963, at age 66. The truth is that he “kept almost everyone he knew at a personal distance” throughout his life.[1] Only by tracing his heritage do we get an idea of why he was so distant.
He grew up in the harsh mountain country of Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Alleghenies. His father, Jacob, was a hard-working, uncompromising man, completely unsentimental. Although he was always very grateful for his heritage, Aiden carried a heavy burden for the family from the age of ten, after a fire tragically swept through the family home. Educationally, the readers of McGuffey played a very important role in the education of the Tozer children, providing strong moral direction based on Christianity. The fire, which significantly disrupted much of the family dynamic the Tozers had, was later seen as a good thing, but only after a lot of adjustment pain. The fire marked the end of an era and Aiden was never a child again.[2]
Some books are refreshingly lively in their portrayal of truth, and Lyle Dorsett’s portrayal of 20th-century prophet Aiden Wilson Tozer, aka AW Tozer, is abundant in its accuracy and thoroughly researched.[3] This article is based on and summarizes Dorsett’s book.
The “Fiery Heart Society” and “meeting God in adoring silence” were always what captivated Dr. Tozer. He loved his Lord Jesus Christ par excellence, first of all in his life. Wrapping the mysticism of God with the infallibility of the biblical Word regarding the theology of the Godhead, Tozer was a spiritually fervent and well-rounded minister that anyone could find. Drawn to Christianity when he heard Matthew 11:28-30 preached, he was burdened and weary for Christ and found early encouragement to invest spiritually in his soon-to-be mother-in-law, a Spirit-filled worship fanatic. .[4] This unleashed within him a call from God that would faithfully endure for the next forty-five years.
Although he was called and responded very soon, he and his new wife Ada fell short in World War I, and Aiden was recruited under strange circumstances that would have proved a major test of his calling. This part of the story is truly disconcerting, an inspiration of fidelity.[5]
His ordination on August 18, 1920 was marked by the reason that he did not celebrate with others afterwards; he sought “his Savior in a secret place” preferring to be alone to pray and seek the face of God.[6] His Prayer of a minor prophet[7] it reflects his burning desire to follow his ‘terrible, wonderful and fascinating’ God. He prays for protection against the “curse of compromise, of imitation, of professionalism.” He said in it: “I am a prophet, not a promoter, not a religious administrator.” He asked God instead to “lead [him] to the place of prayer. [8]
Despite the claim that he was one of the most respected pastors of the 20th century, it is ironic that Tozer “was not an example of how to do pastoral work.”[9] Yet he was a tower to all the ministers, youth, and college-aged people he mentored. His teaching and preaching ministry was said to be of the highest class. Young people saw him as an authority figure because he lacked ambition and never pushed his own wheelbarrow; he was worth up to an inch.
One of the harshest critics of his own ‘profession’, he made his share of enemies both in the ministry and beyond. He seriously lamented the decline he saw in the modern church at that time and its commitment to biblical principles. Dr. Tozer attributed the ‘personality guys’ penchant for spiritual commitment as ‘edgy’ and too attached to the world.
Tozer’s strengths were many. First, he was an anointed lover of the Deity. He loved Jesus Christ more than anything or anyone. He truly adored him and spent up to five or six hours a day (his entire morning for him six days a week) praying and reading the Bible. He was also fiercely ecumenical as long as other denominations and leaders supported biblical infallibility and did not compromise biblical ideals for worldlings.
He was a voracious reader, reading more books and authors in a week than some people in a lifetime. He also read widely on the sciences, history, poetry, philosophy, arts, and ethics, as well as on the early Church Fathers, influences on Church history, and theologians. Second-hand bookstores and libraries were frequent places. He literally took the wonder of Psalm 8 and was a firm believer in learning all he could about creation. The cliché “All truth is God’s truth” was not a cliché for AW Tozer, and “he was just as motivated” as secular men, but his motives were “to know God and make him known,” not to make money.[10] Above all, he “became magnificently obsessive about shaping the soul into the likeness of Christ.”[11]
Tozer loved children and routinely met with them at Sunday school after services rather than respond to the platitudes of well-meaning parishioners after his weekly sermons. Many mothers were delighted that her famous pastor would sow into the lives of their sons and daughters in this way.
Tozer’s prayer life was amazing in any language. He would pray on his knees or prostrate on the ground often moaning or crying as he bathed in the Presence each day. Infallibly infallible in his view of Scripture, he would use the Bible alone in much of his daily reflection and meditation. His prayer life was the main food for his preaching, as he sought to know God’s will through personal experience rather than writing a ‘self-made’ sermon. He strongly wanted to “experience [truth] before the proclamation [of it].”[12]
Tozer’s not-so-good points were probably surprisingly numerous, which is a huge boost for the rest of us, in short, the ill-equipped, which is all of us. He had the gift of discernment, but the use of this gift often left Tozer depressed as he lamented the destructive influences that affected the Church and the people. He often warned his associate pastor Raymond McAfee: “If you want to be happy, don’t ask for the gift of discernment.”[13]
Though Tozer was capable at home, he was anything but a loving husband and father. None of his children, with the possible exception of his last, Rebecca, could say that she enjoyed any real sense of intimacy with her father; Tozer kept his affection for the Lord from him. Remarrying after Tozer’s eventual death in 1963, Ada Tozer said, contrasting her husbands, “Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me.”[14] A summary of Aiden and Ada’s relationship revealed that they both lived lonely and emotionally separate lives. Aiden used to travel and preach, leaving Ada behind. Dr. Tozer also never encouraged fraternization with his or Ada’s family and even actively discouraged it; family vacations weren’t his thing either.[15]
Dr. Tozer, already mentioned, was not a pastoral caretaker. He was a stubborn prophet, and could even be called a separatist at times.[16] He sensed a “sharp spiritual contradiction” between most pastors and the minds and hearts of believers; that in fact they were not ‘seekers yet’. “They seek and they find and they seek no more,” he said. This was a horrible dichotomy for Dr. Tozer, and it irritated him greatly. He simultaneously held biblical infallibility and spiritual experience like no other. He had nothing but “disdain [for ministers] by materialism, consumerism and worldliness.” He freely criticized ministers and churches for any evidence he saw of this.
High above it all, Dr. AW Tozer stands out as the prophetic light of the mid-20th century; his legacy has been felt very personally and indelibly in Chicago, Illinois and surrounding states within the US Dorsett’s offering is very well researched and written. It’s a hard book to put down. The book is also a resource; I have returned to it in various stages.
Copyright © 2008, SJ Wickham. All rights reserved throughout the world.
GRADES:
[1] Lyle W Dorsett, Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of AW Tozer, (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 2008), p. 17
[2] Ibid., pp. 33-38. Again, Aiden was 10 years old when the fire occurred.
[3] This book is highly cited.
[4] Ibid., p. 51.
[5] ibid., p. 57.
[6] the full Prayer of a minor prophet it is widely available and is printed verbatim on pages 65-68 of Dorsett’s book.
[7] This work was finally published in the Weekly Alliance in 1950.
[8] Ibid., pp. 65-68.
[9] Ibid., p. 135. This quote is from Rev. Ed J. Maxey, who helped Tozer for two years in the mid-1950s.
[10] Ibid., p. 94.
[11] Ibid., p. twenty-one
[12] Ibid., p. 136.
[13] Ibid., p. 134.
[14] Ibid., p. 160.
[15] Ibid., p. 143-4. This reference applies to the two previous sentences.
[16] Ibid., p. 138-9.