Dr. Montgomery spent his life—even into his final year at the age of 92—contending for the whole Christian faith once and for all delivered to the saints.
Not every list or bibliography of apologetics will include the name or work of John Warwick Montgomery (and certainly not the list or bibliographies of presuppositionalism), but they should. Behind C.S. Lewis and perhaps a few others, he was one of the most influential Christian apologists of the late 20th and early 21st century. He continued to speak and write into his early 90s, delivering his last public lecture at the Here We Still Stand conference in 2023, and sadly, he died on September 25, 2024. He leaves behind a tremendous legacy.
I first encountered Montgomery's work in Rod Rosenbladt’s course on Christian apologetics at Concordia University Irvine in the late 1990s. Rod walked us through his lecture series on the topic “Sensible Christianity.” We then read some of his work on the historical case for God’s incarnation in Christ. In the years since I've read every work of his I could get my hands on, so I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that the historical case for Christ was the heart and soul of Montgomery’s apologetics. He believed strongly that Jesus Christ was God, which is a matter of fact. Using historical methodology informed by jurisprudential reasoning, he argued from primary sources for the vindication of Jesus’ claims about himself (that he was the divine eternal son of God) and his bodily resurrection from the dead. He would go even further and argue that, as God incarnate, Jesus’ claim that all of Scripture bears witness to him (John 5:39) demonstrates that we have what good philosophy can’t produce: a clear word from God found solely in the text of Scripture.
Dr. Montgomery spent his life—even into his final year at the age of 92—contending for this and the whole Christian faith once and for all delivered to the saints. You can read all about it in his fascinating autobiography, Fighting the Good Fight: A Life Spent in Defense of the Faith. From his early years in upstate New York to his last few decades in France, he lived like no other. He had eleven earned academic degrees—in library science, law, history, theology, and other things. He traveled around the globe, leading reformation history tours, climbing Mount Ararat, and defending evangelists from persecution in places like Moldova and Turkey. He more than dabbled in computer science and had interesting conversations with President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and the Hashemite King of Jordan. He even exchanged letters with C.S. Lewis.
He was a renaissance man (yet a thoroughly convinced Lutheran), but I’m certain he would especially want to be remembered for his apologetics. If you’ve not had the pleasure of learning from him, you can get a feel for the incarnational thrust of his apologetics in his 60-plus books available through the bookstore at 1517.org. This includes the recently released Art of Christian Advocacy, which he wrote with his long-time friend and colleague Craig Parton (a gifted and adept apologist himself).
More than anything else, he was a bold confessor of Jesus.
But more than his apologetics, he will be remembered for his commitment to a life centered upon and circumscribed by Christ, a life lived for the sake of the gospel so that all who hear it might know that it is true and believe that the saving work of Jesus was and is for them. This is how he concluded his memoirs:
So I leave you, gentle reader, with that oft misquoted and misunderstood aphorism of Martin Luther: “Pecca fortiter”—“Sin bravely”—but which he followed immediately with the words (invariably left out): “sed fortius fide et gaude in Christo, qui victor est peccati, mortis et mundi”—“but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly still, for he is victor over sin, death, and the world.” Luther’s point is that none of us should deceive ourselves as to our sinful character; what we need to understand is that our only hope rests with what Christ has done for us by taking away the penalty of our sins through his perfect sacrifice, thereby giving us the immeasurable gift of eternity with him. So, in evaluating the events of my life and the people described in this book, I trust that you will take them all “more bravely still” to Calvary’s cross and to Easter morning’s empty tomb.
Dr. Montgomery was brilliant, a consummate scholar, speaker, and author on all sorts of topics (from gastronomy to epistemology). He wrote and spoke with precision and crystal-clear prose. But more than anything else, he was a bold confessor of Jesus.
In his apologetic magnum opus, the Tractatus Logico-Theologicus, he concluded with the following assertion: “Whereof one can speak, thereof one must not be silent.” He was responding to the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the consensus of much of modern analytical philosophy, which decries all theologies as meaningless god-talk. Since it could not be verified or shown to be true in any factually meaningful way (in their mind), it should be passed over in silence. “Au contraire!” Montgomery would say and probably quite forcefully. God can be spoken of; his revelation through his Son and in his unerring word can be factually verified, and therefore, it must be confidently confessed that Jesus and Jesus alone is Lord and that all who believe in him will be saved. This is what inspired Dr. Montgomery’s students. This is the legacy that 1517 is committed to preserve, and the mission we pursue: to declare and defend the good news of Christ Jesus alone.
