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One of the first adjectives people use to describe Stanley J. Grenz is prolific. People also described him as ambitious. During his 25-year career he published more than 20 books. He also produced numerous articles on a wide range of theological subjects. Additionally, he wrote many chapters of edited books, contributed many book reviews, and read papers at countless theological meetings. He lectured at many universities and seminaries and preached from scores of pulpits. He was always juggling two or three projects, often in collaboration with other theologians.
Stan seemed driven to make his mark on the theological world, and he accomplished that beyond anyone's expectations. Yet he never seemed satisfied and continually strove to surpass himself in scholarly output. Perhaps somewhere deep in his subconscious he knew his time might be brief. Stan died suddenly and unexpectedly on March 12, 2005 at age fifty-five. At the time of his death he was hard at work on another ambitious project.
Stan was raised in the thick of evangelicalism. For a time his father pastored a Baptist church attended by seminary professors and students, an experience which no doubt influenced Stan's vocation. After earning an M.Div. from Denver Seminary, he headed to Munich, Germany to study with theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, who left a powerful impression on the young American student. Stan wrote his doctoral dissertation on 18th-century Baptist theologian Isaac Backus. After earning his doctoral degree from the University of Munich, he pastored in Canada and then took his first full-time teaching position at North American Baptist Seminary in Sioux Falls, S.D., where he distinguished himself as a teacher, colleague, and author. His first major book, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), was published while he was there.
Stan joined the faculty of Carey Theological College in Vancouver, B.C. in 1990 and also taught classes at Regent College. Students came to Vancouver to study with Stan as his reputation spread as an energetic, young evangelical theologian willing to rethink old positions. While on the Carey faculty he also taught adjunctively at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and later at Mars Hill Graduate School. He served as president of the North American Baptist Professors of Religion and was ever active in the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Theology Group of the American Academy of Religion. In 2002 he joined the faculty of Baylor University as distinguished professor of theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary. After one year he returned to Carey. He and his wife Edna were deeply involved in Vancouver's First Baptist Church, where she is minister of worship. At the time of his death Stan was being considered for the chair of evangelical theology at Harvard Divinity School.
Stan wrote on many theological subjects, including but not limited to Baptist church polity, 20th-century theologians, the Trinity, prayer, theological method, evangelical theology, the image of God in humanity, and the millennium. His magnum opus was undoubtedly Theology for the Community of God (Eerdmans/Regent College Publishing, 2000), a massive systematic theology covering the entire range of doctrines under the unifying theme of community. Some critics believed the placement of the doctrine of Scripture within the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was novel rather than innovative, but Stan argued that theology should be thoroughly Trinitarian, following the pattern of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Where better to discuss the inspiration and authority of Scripture than within the locus of the Spirit who inspired it and illumines it to human hearts and minds? Theology for the Community of God continues to be used as a text in numerous Christian universities and seminaries.
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