Mildred Olive Bangs Wynkoop (September 9, 1905, in Seattle, Washington – May 21, 1997, in Lenexa, Kansas) was an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene, who served as an educator, missionary, theologian, and the author of several books.
Donald Dayton indicates that "Probably most influential for a new generation of Holiness scholars has been the work of Nazarene theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, especially her book A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism.
[1]"[2] The Wynkoop Center for Women in Ministry located in Kansas City, Missouri, is named in her honour.
[3] The Timothy L. Smith and Mildred Bangs Wynkoop Book Award of the Wesleyan Theological Society also jointly honours her "outstanding scholarly contributions.
She is the older sister of theologian Carl Bangs (born 5 April 1922 in Seattle, Washington; died 7 July 2002), the author of Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971; rev, ed.
[9] Mildred Bangs entered Northwest Nazarene College and travelled in its collegiate quartet with president H. Orton Wiley on the weekends.
Two years later, she followed Wiley to Pasadena College, (now Point Loma Nazarene University) to complete her bachelor's degrees.
While studying at Pasadena College, Mildred met her future husband, fellow student Ralph Carl Wynkoop (born 5 October 1905 in Omaha, Nebraska; died 3 March 2001 at Kansas City, Missouri).
Her thesis was entitled "A Historical and Semantic Analysis of Methods of Biblical Interpretation as They Relate to Views of Inspiration.
[9] For about 20 years, until they decided that Mildred would begin graduate studies, the Wynkoops served together as co-pastors or full-time itinerant evangelists.
Stimulated by Wiley, Wynkoop's brother, Carl Bangs, became a world authority on the Dutch reformer James Arminius and Arminianism's spread in England and America.
[9] In John Wesley: Christian Revolutionary (1970)[13] Wynkoop showed how the Wesleyan tradition's founder held together two strains torn apart by American fundamentalism: personal piety and social compassion.
Wynkoop taught the decisive moment of salvation was justification and that believers received the Holy Spirit at that time.
If man is only the sum of so many entities, he is simply an aggregate of selves, a split personality, a double mind; not a responsible, valid, centralized self.
It has always been the most profound conviction of Wesleyanism that the Bible speaks to the moral relationships of men and not about sub-rational, non-personal areas of the self.
Could the dogma of particular election as understood by some theological traditions be the projection of faulty human love into the very nature of God?
To say holiness and love are not identical but related would imply that they were associated in experience but not vitally and essentially connected in life.
[19]Wynkoop wrote "an admirable college history in The Trevecca Story,[2] beginning with an analysis of the school's theological roots.