The Legacy of John Warwick Montgomery (1931-2024)
Above — Dr. Montgomery as a Guest on the White Horse Inn (2007)
Dr. John Warwick Montgomery died in Christ on Thursday, September 25, from various complications associated with old age. He was 92. Dr. Montgomery had a huge impact on me, and I look back on my time with him as the major turning point in my life and career.
The first time I heard the name John Warwick Montgomery was when a salesman from Bethany Fellowship Publishers told me about Montgomery’s books on apologetics. He suggested that we carry them in our Christian bookstore. I did, I read them, and found them to be far superior to other Christian apologists I had been reading (i.e., Josh McDowell). When Walter Martin announced on his popular Bible Answer Man radio program (broadcast live on Saturday nights in the early 1980s) that he would be teaching at a new law school to be opened in Orange County by Dr. Montgomery, The Simon Greenleaf School of Law (SGSL)[1], I was one of the first to sign up. The school was named for the famed American jurist, who had written a masterful case for Christ’s resurrection marshaling evidence along the lines of a legal argument in a court of law—The Testimony of the Evangelists. Both A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield referred to Greenleaf’s work quite favorably. Montgomery used much the same method to defend the faith in the face of rejuvenated critical scholarship.
Montgomery’s massive list of accomplishments is simply amazing, and I won’t recount them here. But please do check out his Wikipedia entry and you’ll see what I mean. Absolutely mind blowing—eleven degrees including three earned doctoral degrees, and more than forty books on a variety of subjects—mostly apologetics. Shane Rosenthal, as well as the folks at 1517, have written eloquent pieces offering their take on Montgomery’s life, influence, and legacy. For a more exhaustive memorial, see Craig Parton’s Full Obituary. I encourage you to read them.
Montgomery’s Legacy as an Apologist
Dr. Montgomery is often described as an “evidentialist,” a label frequently used in contrast with those who identify as presuppositionalists, most often Reformed followers of the apologetics method of Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. But matters are not that simple. Dr. Montgomery grounds his apologetic in factual evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who as risen, proves our Lord’s claim to deity and whose view of Scripture is the basis for all Christian teaching, theology, and ethics. He speaks of the miracle of the resurrection as God’s revelational solution,[2] making clear that the facts we use in the defense of the faith were given us by God, and are not the mere product of human reasoning. Montgomery felt that the best summation of his apologetic method can be found here.
Montgomery stands at the headwaters of those currently doing ”biblical” and historical apologetics—those who defend the veracity of Scripture usually in response to critical scholars and skeptics, who attack the reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible. The list of well-known apologists upon whom his influence is apparent is long. Montgomery’s approach is that the apologist works from historical facts to Christ’s resurrection, which then gives you both the the truth of biblical miracles and an authoritative Bible.
When I was first learning Reformed theology and reading B. B. Warfield, it soon dawned on me that Montgomery was making a number of the same arguments that Warfield offered in defense of the veracity of the Bible. When I asked him about this, he smiled wryly, nodded and said, “don’t forget to add Machen.” He chafed at Van Til’s accusation that “evidentialists” use humanly devised facts to defend the faith instead of presupposing biblical authority when Montgomery repeatedly affirmed that the “facts” we use to defend the resurrection were given us by God in biblical revelation—and did not come through human reason. Dr. Montgomery expressed appreciation for Van Til’s skill and abilities, but felt that Van Til’s approach was circular, confused ontology (the order of being) with epistemology (the manner of knowing) and downplayed the use of Christian evidences (which Christians had used to defend the faith from the beginning). In fairness to Van Til, much of the Reformed critique of Montgomery’s apologetic method arose as a consequence of the latter’s personal pique when being challenged. Montgomery could be, let me say it guardedly, a bit “prickly.”
Throughout his career, Montgomery was an ordained Lutheran clergyman (LCMS) and often wrote in defense of Luther. He was an ardent defender of the Five Solas of the Reformation (albeit with a Lutheran twist). But his career (at least when I was working for him) was largely conducted in Evangelical circles, where he was most popular and influential. He exposed many of us to the Reformation for the first time.
I still use many of Montgomery’s arguments when teaching on apologetics (scroll down to listen to my 2018-2019 series of lectures entitled Apologetics in a Post Christian Age). When Montgomery relocated to the UK and then later to France his influence in America faded quickly. But his influence upon many of us is profound and ongoing.
My Personal Reminiscences
When I first encountered John Warwick Montgomery, it became immediately clear that he was “Dr.” John Warwick Montgomery. When a caller to his radio program Christianity on Trial (on the same station as Martin’s Bible Answer Man, but on Sunday night) called in and spoke with a bit too much informality, “hey, John, I’ve got a question,” Montgomery curtly told the caller, “sir, we have not been properly introduced,” and then dropped the call. Montgomery was a man who did not suffer fools and decried what he called “greasy familiarity.”
Dr. Montgomery had a friendly, chatty demeanor, but could, in a flash, become brusque and surly. He was obviously brilliant, and was able to converse on just about any subject except rock music and sports. Rumor was that he passed the California BAR exam with one of the highest scores in the state with less than a week of preparation.
He wore expensive European suits and clothing, but often looked as though he had slept in them. He would approach you head-on, make eye-contact and gesture in a friendly manner, but which exposed a fair bit of awkwardness. He would almost dare you not to look up from his eyes to his forehead because he wore an ill-fitting toupee—if you could do so without getting caught, you could see daylight between his head and the hair-piece. I say that not to belittle him but if you met Dr. Montgomery back in the day, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. The students at SGSL giggled about it whenever he left the room. But you waited until he left, because we were all intimidated by him in person. As they say, “the worst thing a bald guy can do is try to hide it.” Trust me, I know. The good Dr. was both a charming man of the world and an odd eccentric. He was also a brilliant lecturer—one of the best I have ever heard, and he absolutely loved the classroom riposte with the students.
I was among the first-ever graduates from SGSL to earn the MA in Apologetics. Dr. Montgomery announced on Christianity on Trial that the oral defense of my thesis (on Reformed apologetics) was to be conducted in public. To my chagrin, over one hundred strangers turned out to listen while the faculty examined me. By the grace of God it went well, and upon graduation Montgomery asked me to join the faculty at SGSL provided I complete an additional theological degree and then seek PhD studies. That course of life had never yet entered my mind, until that moment. Knowing my burgeoning Reformed commitments, Dr. Montgomery (along with Rod Rosenbladt), urged me to attend the new Reformed seminary in Escondido—Westminster Seminary in California (WSC). I did, commuting from North Orange County eighty miles south to Escondido three-four times a week, while working full-time running the family bookstore at Knott’s Berry Farm. It was grueling, but I am so thankful for that urging.
While studying at WSC, our bookstore supplied the textbooks for SGSL’s MA program. And upon completion of my MAR from Westminster (I had no inkling yet I’d become a pastor), Montgomery asked me to join the faculty, teaching a course upon the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. I regularly assigned Warfield’s Inspiration and Authority, along with God’s Inerrant Word, one of the first volumes from the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (with contributions from John Gerstner, R. C. Sproul and J. I. Packer, among others). I was soon asked to teach the required theology course, so I taught Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology to “five-sola” evangelicals from all sorts of students from various churches and denominations throughout Orange County. Many of these students showed up at Christ Reformed Church when it was founded in 1996.
Dr. Montgomery also assigned me to chair SGSL’s MA program’s accreditation report (I learned what purgatory must be like). I also did my first radio broadcast with Montgomery (he asked me a question he knew I could not answer on live radio—he had a playful streak). I was the SGSL representative for the school’s recruiting booth at the first International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, held in San Diego. I met Francis Schaeffer, who came by the SGSL booth to chat with Montgomery—that was beyond my imagination, listening to the two of them talk about the decline of Western civilization. Best of all, knowing that I was Reformed, Drs. Montgomery and Rosenbladt assigned me to help R. C. Sproul set-up for a lecture he gave in Orange County under the auspices of SGSL. That too was beyond my wildest expectation.
The last time I saw Dr. Montgomery was at a White Horse Inn recording session in 2007 (see the photo above). As you can imagine, watching him and his dear friend Dr. Rosenbladt behave like two bad little boys while we tried to record is a memory I’ll always treasure.
When the news of Dr. Montgomery’s death came, my wife and I were saddened by the end of an era, and we spent a fair bit of time reminiscing about the influence both he and Rod had on the course of our lives. Dr. Montgomery ran the race flat out, finished the course strong in faith (Hebrews 12:1-3), and has now experienced the joy of the Risen Savior (2 Timothy 4:8), and this after a life of defending the Lord’s resurrection as a fact of history with everything in him. I am so very grateful for him and the impact he had on my life.
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[1] Now the Trinity Law School in Santa Ana.
[2] John Warwick Montgomery, Human Rights and Human Dignity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 131-160.