Chad Owen Brand writes of him:
His historical analyses were often brilliant, his exegesis was often sparse, and his knowledge of the literature was generally impressive. It is a rare theologian who really likes Irenaeus, Augustine, Anselm, Calvin, Luther, Wesley, Bavinck, Herrmann, Barth, Ellul, and Rahner all at the same time. If you want to position him at all, it is somewhere between Kierkegaard and Kuyper, somewhere between Henry and Herrmann.
Bloesch made no large bold moves, hence there are no Bloeschites (or only a small group of them), but he made many small bold moves. He opposed what he called Carl Henry’s evangelical rationalism, but he anathematized feminism’s tendency to rename God into a feminine deity””he thought Henry compromised, but he considered Sallie McFague’s theology to be idolatry.
Thank God for Donald Bloesch. He will be missed, but his legacy is still here for us to learn from.
I think the obituary by Fred Sanders (referenced in the Justin Taylor piece) is far better.
Besides Bloesch’s 2 volume Essentials, I benefited from his Counterfeits; The Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call for Unity; and Is the Bible Sexist? Among his many articles I found useful was his theological self-assessment tool “What Think Ye of Christ?†It appeared in the September 5, 1980, issue of Eternity. Although Eternity (the magazine) ended within a few years, Bloesch lived on to bless us all with his work and witness. He continued as a conservative in the avant garde United Church of Christ, from which the congregation at the end of my street departed because of the UCC’s unscriptural positions on human sexuality. So Donald Bloesch should be regarded as an exemplar not only for conservative theologians and readers but also for those choosing to remain in denominations that are seeking to outdo the UCC in its rush toward the precipice. He will be greatly missed.