Book Review: The Professor In The World’s Court -- By: Boyd Pehrson

Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 13:1 (Apr 2016)
Article: Book Review: The Professor In The World’s Court
Author: Boyd Pehrson


Book Review:
The Professor In The World’s Court

Boyd Pehrson

A Review of Dr. John Warwick Montgomery’s autobiography,

Fighting the Good Fight: A Life in Defense of the Faith. Bonn, Germany: Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, 2015. 288 pages. Paper. $47.00. Also available in hardcover and paperback from Wipf and Stock.

John Warwick Montgomery’s 60 plus years of research, writing and teaching on theology, law, and Christian apologetics, has earned him a fair share of admirers, as well as critics. Regular readers of his works, in recent years, have patiently waited for a particular volume—his autobiography, now delivered!

“Fighting the Good Fight: A Life in Defense of the Faith” refers to 1 Timothy 6:12, “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”

This is true of the life work of Prof. Dr. Montgomery. Chiefly referred to as an “evidentialist” (a term Dr. Montgomery himself embraces), his work is only in part represented by this term. No one person has integrated more intellectual resources in defense of the Christian faith. Indeed, in his Tractatus Logico-Theologicus alone we find integrated all five spheres of classical philosophical investigation: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Ethics, Logic, and Metaphysics (as is found in almost all his works). Here, for instance, he utilizes analytical philosophy, patterned after Ludwig Wittgenstein’s formal presentation, as a framework for a comprehensive Christian apologetic. This results in sorting out everyday difficulties of language and thought that cloud the unbeliever’s mind of the Gospel’s truth claims. It is not only the commonality of language that believers share with unbelievers, but, most importantly, a commonality of sin nature, the one prerequisite to the need for the Gospel—wherein salvation is found outside of ourselves through faith in the person and work of the atoning and justifying Christ. Too often the commonalities are overlooked, in preference to withdrawing from the world, in order not to be somehow infected by it. Thus, it seems easier to “Love thy neighbor as thyself” when our neighbor is a like-minded fundamentalist hiding alongside us in a rabbit-hole of Christianity. Sadly, too often the Christian resigns their actual neighbor to hell by withdrawing their presence from sin-inspired unbelievers.

However, Christ’s Great Commission—“Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt 28:18) supersedes our fear of sin and death (which Christ has already conquered). So Dr. Montg...

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