In 2017, while I was serving as a pastoral intern in Goa, my village
church (Mukti Namdaih Baptist Church) invited me to be a Christmas speaker. I
set out from Goa on December 7 and reached Nungba, the nearest town to my
village on December 13. It was a long, tiresome, yet adventurous journey. In those
days, there was no network coverage in many parts of Manipur, including my
village and the town where I was staying. On the evening of December 15, 2017,
I walked a mile searching for a place where there might be network connectivity
so that I could call up friends. Lo, I got the faintest signal and managed to
make a call to one of my friends in Goa. I was informed that R. C. Sproul
passed away a day before. I was sad for three reasons: I admired the man, and
his death was not good news. I was not aware of his passing until that evening.
Moreover, there was no sufficient network strength for me to google the news.
I am sure I was the only person who knew and cared about the life and
death of R. C. Sproul in that whole town those days, and there I was, alone.
There was nobody to talk to, no network to make further calls to friends, and
no internet connectivity to read about the circumstances of his death and the
funeral. It was only after Christmas when I went to Imphal (the capital city of
Manipur) in 2018, I managed to catch up with the news, read obituaries, and
watch the recorded memorial service.
In December 2020, I learned that a biography of R. C. Sproul by Stephen
Nichols would be released in 2021; and I put up the picture of this book, and
its price in one of my blog posts as one of the top three books I would
like to read in 2021.
It was a little expensive for me, so I never bought it. In 2024, when I was in
Los Angeles, a friend asked me if I would like to take some books from him for
free. This January, I finally got to read it.
Stephen
Nichols was closely associated with R. C. Sproul and is the president of the
Reformation Bible College founded by R. C. Thus, this biography is written by a
personal and family friend of Sprouls. It has 11 chapters, 7 appendices, and
about 300 readable pages on R. C. The chapters are arranged thematically, or
one might say theologically. However, one can see the chronology of R. C.’s
life in the chapters. The prologue is about the final days and his last sermon
of R. C. The sermon was on Hebrews 2:1–4 with the title “A Great Salvation”
(12). Nichols finds it appropriate to title the prologue “The Great Escape,”
perhaps because R. C. has escaped (“exit stage left”) into heaven after
preaching about the Great Escape of Hebrews 2:1–4 (14).
The
first chapter is titled “Pittsburgh,” which is about the ancestry and
beginnings of R. C. His grandfather specialized in bankruptcy, working in an
accounting firm (16). His father was a World War II veteran and “a lay minister
at times and regularly taught Sunday school” (22). In first grade, he met Vesta
who was in second grade, and “he knew he would marry her” (24). He grew up in a
liberal church where they were taught Albert Schweitzer was the greatest
Christian who ever lived (27). R. C. was good in baseball, basketball, and
football (28). He was captain of the basketball team, and president of the
student council, and earned the second rank academically (29). His father fell
ill and died at the age of 53 when he was 17. R. C. took a part-time job at a
TV repair shop and mastered the art of sleeping in the “classroom with a book
propped up in front of him” (30). When his father quoted 2 Timothy 4:7, he
unwittingly rebuked his dad for saying so. That incident haunted him from time
to time because “in the most valiant moment of his life, I trampled on his soul
with my unbelief” (32).
The second chapter is Ecclesiastes 11:3. It is about R. C.'s college
days and his conversion. When he and his friend were on their way to a
Youngstown bar, they ran out of cigarettes. They returned to their dorm to get
them but were interrupted by two senior football stars inviting them to a Bible
study. The Bible was open to Ecclesiastes 11:13. R. C. saw himself as a dead
tree, fallen, rotting, and decaying (39). He got converted that night, never
making it to the Youngstown bar. He then read the entire Bible in a couple of
weeks (41). Strangely, his liberal pastor considered him to be a “damn fool”
for believing in the physical resurrection of Christ (43). R. C. regarded Dr.
Thomas Gregory to be his earliest mentor in his years at Westminster College
(43). One night in those years, he had a “sudden epiphany of the grandeur, of
the otherness, of the majesty of God” (48). Nichols called it the second
conversion of R. C. That experience changed the man forever, forming him to
have a ministry that emphasizes the holiness of God.
The third chapter is about how R. C. got into the seminary as a student
and eventually became a professor, pastor, and teacher over the years. Nichols
also highlights the influence of his second mentor Dr. John Gerstner on his life.
Gerstner directed him to go to Amsterdam to pursue doctorate studies under G.
C. Berkouwer. Subsequently, Berkouwer became the R. C.’s third mentor. At the
time he met Berkouwer, R. C. was not strong in Latin, and did not read German,
Dutch, or French, but later, he learned them enough to pass the Drs exam (71). When
he started to read Dutch, it took him 12 hours to read one page (71).
The fourth chapter focuses on the ministry of Ligonier. The fifth
chapter addresses the controversy of inerrancy. The sixth chapter discusses the
apologetics of R. C. The seventh chapter explains how the holiness of God has
become the theme of his ministry. The eighth chapter covers his stand on
various issues he encountered in his life and ministry. The ninth chapter highlights
the St. Andrew’s Chapel, as he was its founder and pastor. The tenth chapter is
about the Reformation Bible College and the succession planning for his various
ministries. The last chapter reflects on the praiseworthy influence of R. C. to
the glory of God. Appendix 1 is the edited version of R. C. Sproul’s final two
sermons. Appendices 2–7 are the timelines, books, booklet series, conference
themes and lecture titles, teaching series, and sermon series of R. C.
R. C. developed his love for philosophy when Dr. Gregory started
lecturing on Augustine’s concept of creation “ex nihilo” (46). Then he
changed his major from history to religion to philosophy. He ended up writing a
thesis titled “The Existential Implications of Melville’s Moby Dick, combining
literature and philosophy (52). While in seminary, he mowed the grass for the
church he pastored (67). His first published work was an analysis of Luther’s “Bondage
of the Will,” presented at ETS (78).
Ligonier ministry started from the land purchased by Dora in 1970 (91).
He met Francis Schaeffer to learn from Schaeffer’s experience with the L’Abri
Fellowship (92). Nichols mentioned that Tim Keller and his wife Kathy Keller
took classes in the study center, and R. C. even married them (102).
In October 1973, R. C. organized a Ligonier conference on the “Inspiration
and Authority of Scripture,” and the sermons/lectures were published in 1974.
This marked the beginning of the movement for the doctrine of inerrancy. Three
years later in 1977, ICBI was launched. Billy Graham refused to join openly but
supported secretly (124). When the council members met before the council was
convened, a person responsible for drafting affirmations and denials did not
have them. R. C. was asked to take the job. He drafted 19 articles of
affirmations and denials from midnight to 4:00 a.m. to be presented later that
day at plenary sessions (125). In 1982, R. C., again, wrote the articles of
affirmation and denial for the ICBI’s summit on Biblical Hermeneutics (132).
R. C. shifted from presuppositional apologetics he learned under Dr.
Gregory to classical apologetics under Dr. Gerstner. To R. C. the fundamental
question is, Why is there something rather than nothing? (149) He employs the
cosmological, the teleological, and the ontological arguments. He also loved
Aquinas’s Argument from Necessity (150). R. C. held four basic epistemological
principles in apologetics: noncontradiction, causality, reliability of sense
perception, and analogical use of language (151).
Nichols captures the dominant theme of R. C.’s ministry by mentioning
that the 1979 teaching series on the Holiness of God featured an advertisement
in Tabletalk magazine: “Holy. Holy. Holy. What a shame. What God
repeated most we understand least” (164). John Piper wondered if there is any
other ministry that has the holiness of God in its mission statement like
Ligonier (167). Nichols believes R. C. learned a great deal from Otto’s The
Idea of the Holy (169). For R. C. and Otto, the holy invokes dread, fear;
not just the moral perfection of God (170). So, he also loved the Negro
spiritual “Were You There?” which has a refrain “Sometimes it causes me to
tremble, tremble, tremble” (170). Nichols traced what R. C learned from
Melville and Otto and compared him to them and wrote: “Otto spoke of the numinous,
a word he invented. Melville spoke of whiteness, intrigued and terrified by its
manifestation in nature. R. C. used a word straight from the Bible – holiness”
(177).
R. C. had correspondence with Carl Sagan and admired him, however, he
wrote a book Not a Chance against him (193). On page 194, Nichols
narrated the story of a train accident in 1993 that killed 47 people, while R.
C. and Vesta survived providentially. The most rewarding part of this biography
for me is the story of ECT (Evangelicals and Catholics Together). Colson and
Packer, in a sense, betrayed R. C. (198–199). R. C. could not think of any
disagreement with Packer until the statement of ECT (197). Nichols traces the
beginning of ECT to Schaeffer, but Schaffer’s idea of cobelligerency
(the enemy of my enemy is my friend) was restricted to common-grace issues and
not of “soteric or saving grace” (196–197). The ECT was more than cobelligerency
but as allies (197). To Packer, justification by faith is the small
print of the gospel, but to Boice, it is the bold print of the gospel (199). R.
C said justification by faith is “essential”; Packer said, “central” (199).
Nichols also mentions that Lloyd Jones and Packer divided in 1970 over Packer’s
Anglo-Catholic ecumenical efforts (205).
The brief story of the church plant of St. Andrew’s Chapel, its
beginning, its building structure (interior and exterior design), and its style
of worship is interesting, in a positive way. It was called a chapel because it
was small in the beginning, and they never imagined it would grow large. It
took the name of Andrew because, in the Bible, Andrew was always bringing
people to Christ (221). But what an irony! If they hoped to bring people to
Christ, they should envision their congregation growing large later. I like
what is written on its threshold: “We cross the threshold
of the secular to the sacred, from the common to the uncommon, from the profane
to the Holy” (224). R. C. viewed the Church as Holy Space and the Lord’s Day as
Holy Time (225). In other words, “the holy invades the profane in sacred space
and sacred time” (226). Wow! What a thought, what a statement!
R. C.’s distinction
between a learner and a disciple is insightful. They both learn but the
disciples obey. Disciples are committed to following commands (249). Nichols
writes that R. C. hates “declension narratives” as illustrated by the story of
a seminary that changed its Department of Theology to the Department of Religion
(254). Faithfulness to the Scripture yields much fruit, as R. C. observed that
99 out of 100 leaders of Reformed faith can be traced to Westminster
Theological Seminary, which was founded by a faithful man J. Gresham Machen
(257).
After the death of R.
C, Crossway asked people to share their gratitude for him, and there were
17,000 responses in a few days (280). R. C. was even quoted in a movie (The
Addiction, 1995) (281). Nichols writes that R. C. was a rare man who mastered
the art of combining complex ideas with clear teaching; philosophy with
theology; and Aristotle with the presentation of the gospel (281). R. C.
exhibited a sense of humor and a somber view of God (281). R. C.’s gravestone reads,
“He was a kind man redeemed by a kinder Savior.”
Nichols writes of his
friend and boss R. C. as a battlefield theologian, a modeled marriage (with
Vesta), and a winsome teacher who bridges the gap between Sunday school and
seminary. To Nichols, R. C. is a Luther of his time.
A Few Negative
Remarks:
At least twice, Nichols writes disparagingly of dispensationalism (213,
248). Perhaps, Nichols, having abandoned dispensationalism for covenantal
theology has a bias in his choice of expression. Nichols does not write much
about the story of Vesta and R. C., though he compares their marriage to that “modeled
marriage” of Luther and Katie (119). Perhaps, Vesta did not allow him to write
about her. A few times, the events are neither chronological nor topical when
it seems fitting, such as the event of “the 35th General Assembly.” This
section should perhaps be better suited under the chapter “Stand.”
Final Remarks:
When I was reading the first three chapters, I felt it was boring, primarily
because R. C.'s life is so different from mine. When I read biographies, I want
to see some common ground and common directions so that I may find motivation
(and assurance) to imitate some of their virtues. To mention a few: R. C. was a
good sportsman, in multiple sports. He married young. He had a lot of life
skills. And he had world-class mentors. However, I read the whole book in two
sittings. The most interesting chapters for me are from chapters 6–9. This
biography is theological and edifying. While more biographies of R. C. can be
expected in the future, I believe this will stand out among them. R. C. was
indeed a rare man God raised for the church to learn a great deal from.
