Billy Graham

A few random thoughts about Billy Graham. I'll begin with a theological criticism, then say some positive things:

i) Decisional evangelism has a fundamentally flawed understanding of conversion. Decisional evangelism basically eliminates saving faith. To make a decision is an act of the will. That pertains to the field of action. Responding to the altar call is an act of the will.

That's not the same thing as faith. Faith requires assent, conviction, an intellectual reorientation. We have a different view of God, assuming we even believed in God. We have a different view of ourselves, especially in relation to God. 

An act of the will is not an act of faith in the sense of assent or conviction. There's no essential change of heart and mind. It's just about something you do. 

Saving faith has a volitional component in the sense of commitment. But that can't be a substitute for believing and trusting in Jesus. Reciting a formulaic prayer (the sinner's prayer), like a magic incantation, or performing a ritual, like the alter call, isn't saving faith. It gives people false assurance.

ii) Graham was a great preacher. He had a fine speaking voice, and he was a natural, commanding public speaker. Intense and singleminded. He also had a nice Southern lilt. 

iii) That said, the South has produced many great preachers. I'm sure many Southern preachers are his equal or superior orators. 

In addition to natural ability, he was saintly. And that lent an aura of holiness and authority to his preaching. 

iv) He illustrates how much God can do with a man of modest intellectual endowment, who's totally devoted to God. Graham wasn't a great scholar, philosopher, theologian, or apologist. But you don't have to be great to do great things. Conversely, many very talented people waste their talent on what's trivial and ephemeral.

v) Graham threw his considerable influence behind the inerrancy of Scripture, at a time when evangelical institutions were drifting. As I recall, he wrote the preface to Harold Lindsell's The Battle for the Bible. I expect that endorsement all by itself gave the book an audience.

vi) Graham supported the prolife movement. That wasn't a given for a Baptist of his generation. Prior to Roe v. Wade, many evangelical denominations were soft on abortion. Walter Martin, ten years Graham's junior, is an example of a Christian leader to came of age when the evangelical movement was soft on abortion, and he was never able to make the transition to a harder line position. 

vii) Graham publicly opposed the candidacy and reelection of Barack Obama. 

viii) As a young evangelist, Graham had a famous falling out with a fellow evangelist turned apostate Charles Templeton:

"I believe in the Genesis account of creation simply because it's in the Bible. I've discovered something in my ministry: when I take the Bible   literally, when I proclaim it as God's Word, I have power. When I stand before the people and say, 'God says,' or 'The Bible says, 'the Holy Spirit uses me. There are results. People respond. Wiser men than you or I have been arguing questions like this for centuries. I don't have the time or the intellect to examine all sides of each theological dispute, so I've decided, once and for all, to stop questioning and to accept the Bible as God's Word." 

"But Billy," I protested, "you can't do that. You don't dare stop thinking. Do it and you begin to die. It's intellectual suicide."

http://www.templetons.com/charles/memoir/evang-graham.html

Templeton was oblivious to the irony of his statement. Atheism is intellectual suicide. Naturalistic evolution is intellectual suicide. If that's the case, then reason is the byproduct of blind evolution. 

And anyway, if there is no afterlife, if everything we cherish is the result of blind evolutionary conditioning, then what's so bad about intellectual suicide? There's no face behind the mask. The mask is it. 

Graham was not a great thinker, but his instincts were right.