The Pursuit of God reflects a broad stream of historic Christian devotional writing rather than one modern denominational source. Samuel M. Zwemer’s original introduction specifically names Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, Thomas à Kempis, Friedrich von Hügel, Charles Finney, John Wesley, and others. The book itself also draws from writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux and The Cloud of Unknowing. Tozer’s official biography says his reading ranged across church fathers, mystics, medieval writers, Reformers, Puritans, philosophers, and contemporaries.
The result is a book that is evangelical in conviction but deliberately connected to centuries of Christian reflection on knowing and desiring God.
Start with Samuel Zwemer’s introduction
The strongest first-edition evidence is Zwemer’s 1948 introduction.
He describes Tozer as an unusually wide reader and says that although the book contains relatively few quotations, Tozer clearly knows the saints and mystics of Christian history.
Zwemer’s list is revealing because it crosses traditions.
Tozer is not drawing from a single school.
That breadth explains why the book sometimes feels different from ordinary twentieth-century American evangelical prose.
Augustine: restless desire directed toward God
Augustine’s influence is most visible at the level of spiritual instinct.
Augustine famously wrote about the human heart finding rest in God. Tozer repeatedly works with a similar conviction: created things cannot finally satisfy a heart designed for the Creator.
The point is not that Tozer copies Augustine’s arguments.
It is that both writers treat desire as theological.
What we love, seek, fear losing, and call "enough" reveals something about our relationship to God.
That theme is especially strong in chapters on possessing nothing, the Creator-creature relationship, and meekness.
Nicholas of Cusa: the language of vision and gaze
Nicholas of Cusa appears directly in Tozer’s discussion of faith and spiritual attention.
Tozer’s "gaze of the soul" language fits a wider Christian tradition of describing contemplation through the metaphor of seeing.
The important biblical safeguard is that this is a metaphor for faith and attention—not a claim that Christians literally see God with physical eyes in ordinary life.
Tozer uses the image to help readers understand sustained, Godward trust.
For the biblical application, see What Does It Mean to Make God the Gaze of Your Soul?.
Thomas à Kempis: inward devotion and imitation
Thomas à Kempis is associated with the devotional classic The Imitation of Christ, which emphasizes humility, inner devotion, detachment from worldly vanity, and following Christ.
Those concerns overlap strongly with Tozer’s treatment of:
- self-denial;
- humility;
- inward surrender;
- freedom from reputation;
- devotion that goes beyond external religious form.
Again, influence does not mean identity. Tozer remains a twentieth-century evangelical Protestant with his own theological assumptions.
Bernard of Clairvaux: loving desire for God
Tozer uses Bernard in Chapter 1 to express the paradox of having found God and still longing for more of God.
That paradox is central to the book.
Christian pursuit is not presented as searching for a God who is totally absent.
It is the desire of someone who has received grace and therefore wants deeper knowledge and fellowship.
That theme should be read alongside the biblical teaching of Psalm 63, Philippians 3, and John 17.
The Cloud of Unknowing: simplicity of intention
Tozer quotes The Cloud of Unknowing, an anonymous medieval devotional work, while discussing the simplification of desire.
He is attracted to the idea of directing the heart toward God Himself rather than endlessly multiplying spiritual techniques and secondary goals.
Modern readers should be careful here.
Medieval contemplative vocabulary can carry assumptions that need biblical evaluation. Tozer does not ask readers to abandon Scripture or Christ. His use of older mystical language should be interpreted inside his evangelical framework.
That is a good example of why How Should Readers Test Tozer’s Teachings Against Scripture? matters.
Friedrich von Hügel: "God is always previous"
Tozer invokes von Hügel in Chapter 1 while explaining divine initiative.
The phrase supports Tozer’s insistence that human pursuit of God begins because God first acts.
This is one of the most important theological controls in the book.
If readers miss it, "pursuit" can sound like spiritual self-salvation.
Tozer’s actual argument is that grace awakens the desire that then responds.
See How Does Tozer Hold Together God’s Grace and the Believer’s Pursuit of God?.
John Wesley: doctrine must become lived holiness
Zwemer names Wesley among Tozer’s influences, and Tozer quotes Wesley in the preface to warn that right opinion can exist without right spiritual disposition.
That concern fits Tozer’s entire project.
He does not despise orthodoxy.
He fears orthodoxy without transformed affection and conduct.
Wesley therefore functions as a witness to an older Protestant conviction that doctrine and holy life should remain joined.
Charles Finney: revivalist urgency
Zwemer also names Charles Finney.
Finney’s presence helps explain some of the urgency and direct appeal in Tozer’s rhetoric, although readers should not assume Tozer adopted every part of Finney’s theology or revival methods.
Influence can be selective.
Tozer could appreciate a writer’s seriousness about repentance, prayer, revival, or spiritual response without becoming a disciple of that writer’s entire system.
The Christian and Missionary Alliance tradition
Tozer’s immediate denominational home was The Christian and Missionary Alliance.
The Alliance’s deeper-life emphasis supplied a contemporary evangelical setting for his concern with:
- Christ-centered living;
- the Holy Spirit;
- holiness;
- missions;
- prayer;
- deeper spiritual experience.
This background belongs beside, not instead of, the older writers.
Tozer’s spirituality was formed by both a living church tradition and a wide personal library.
See What Denominational Background Shaped A. W. Tozer’s Spirituality?.
Did these influences make Tozer a "mystic"?
The word can help or confuse.
If "mystic" means a Christian who emphasizes experiential knowledge, prayer, contemplation, and communion with God, then Tozer clearly valued that stream.
If "mystic" means someone who treats private spiritual experience as authority independent of Scripture and Christ, that description does not fairly capture his stated framework.
Tozer’s book assumes historic Christian doctrine, Scripture, Christ, the cross, regeneration, the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity.
Still, because he borrows devotional vocabulary from diverse sources, readers should test his formulations carefully.
Why Tozer read outside his own era
The official Tozer biography portrays him as a self-taught reader whose formal schooling ended early but whose private study ranged widely.
That breadth served a purpose.
Older Christian writers gave him categories that were not dependent on modern evangelical fashion.
They also gave him language for:
- desire;
- surrender;
- contemplation;
- holiness;
- humility;
- spiritual perception;
- divine presence.
This allowed Tozer to criticize his own era from a larger Christian conversation.
What should modern readers do with Tozer’s sources?
Use three filters.
1. Identify the source
Do not assume every memorable phrase originated with Tozer.
2. Read the idea in context
A quotation pulled from Augustine, Bernard, Wesley, or a medieval work may have a larger argument behind it.
3. Test the idea biblically
Historical pedigree does not make an idea true.
Age is not authority.
Scripture remains the standard.
Why these influences matter for the book’s distinctiveness
The Pursuit of God is not simply 1940s American evangelicalism in book form.
It is a 1948 evangelical pastor drawing on a much older Christian vocabulary of desire, contemplation, surrender, and holiness.
That mix helps explain the book’s unusual texture.
A reader may encounter a thoroughly Protestant concern for grace and Scripture alongside language shaped by medieval devotion.
That combination is one reason the book has appealed across denominational boundaries.
How to read Tozer’s influences responsibly
Tozer was influenced by a wide Christian devotional tradition—including Augustine, Bernard, Nicholas of Cusa, Thomas à Kempis, von Hügel, Wesley, Finney, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the deeper-life heritage of The Christian and Missionary Alliance.
The right response is neither uncritical admiration nor automatic suspicion.
Read the sources historically.
Read Tozer contextually.
Test every major spiritual claim biblically.
Related reading
- Who Was A. W. Tozer, and Why Did He Write The Pursuit of God?
- What Denominational Background Shaped A. W. Tozer’s Spirituality?
- How Should Readers Test Tozer’s Teachings Against Scripture?
- The Pursuit of God Knowledge Catalogue