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All that wreckage still lay ahead when Ladd was converted as a young man in rural northern New England. A woman named Cora Cash, schooled in the Scofield dispensationalism of the day, discipled young George and sent him on to her school, Gordon College of Theology and Missions. There, gifted both academically and athletically, he appears to have excelled, a "Freak" no longer. Gordon was no hotbed of dispensationalism: the statement of faith spoke simply of Christ's "triumphant return." And the faculty—particularly in the Divinity School, to which Ladd returned for his theological training and at which he later taught—included several amillenialists. George Murray (1895- 1956), an autodidact with no academic qualification except a bought DD from a degree mill, taught the history of theology. His 1948 Millennial Studies (as I state in my George Murray of the U.P.) hit a raw nerve in New England and beyond with its claim that dispensational premillenialists were as heterodox as any liberal or Unitarian.
When Ladd came to Fuller Seminary in 1950, the school was dependent for much of its support on the constituency that the iconic radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller had gathered. His popular Old Fashioned Revival Hour consistently espoused the fundamentalist dispensational orthodoxy. And Harold Ockenga, the absentee president, went along with Charles Fuller for the greater good of fulfilling his vision: continuing the tradition of Princeton Seminary in the new school. But the old Princeton had generally hewed to traditional Reformed amillenialism. Meanwhile, Ladd—increasingly distancing himself from premillenial dispensationalism in favor of historic or classical premillenialism—found himself isolated from scholars with whom on every issue but eschatology he would have been in complete agreement. Exchanges with Dallas Seminary president John Walvoord, defender of dispensational orthodoxy, became more and more pointed. Finally, all communication ceased.
As D'Elia explains, Ladd's career at Fuller fell into three phases, in each of which he jousted with different adversaries. Never a man secure enough to be a combative controversialist, Ladd felt these conflicts with increasing impact: first with John Walvoord as the self-appointed defender and representative of dispensational orthodoxy; then with his non-evangelical fellow theological academics; and finally with himself as his life spiralled out of control and he found himself unable to cope emotionally with the bruising effects of academic and theological controversy. Fuller, as George Marsden points out in his magisterial Reforming Fundamentalism, was struggling with its own theological issues, including its view of biblical authority. Ockenga's protracted absences from the school meant that the community lacked its center, gaining a reputation, deserved or undeserved, as a galaxy of stars rather than a cohesive community of scholars, such as Machen had formed in the early days of Westminster Seminary. Ladd needed accountability for his massive but restlessand temperamental intellect. It was only with David Hubbard, who became Fuller president in 1963, that he had someone who demanded an explanation for his increasingly erratic behavior. But by then it was too late.
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