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Wednesday, February 21, 2018

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."


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. 

11 comments:

  1. He lived a full life - 99 years old. Amazing. What you have written is right; and good positive aspects of Billy Graham that others who criticize him don't say.

    Except for the decision - ism / altar call stuff - his preaching seemed to me to always be good and sound and I heard him many times call for repentance and he clearly often preached Christ, the cross, the resurrection, and that Christ is the only way to salvation. (John 14:6; John 3:18; Acts 4:12) ( I only listened to him maybe 10 or 15 times over the years.)

    But then I remember hearing about his interview he did with Robert Schueller, and hearing it for myself, and I was shocked. ( It is all over You Tube in various forms) - that he agreed with Schueller that there are people who have never heard of Christ in other false religions who are going to be saved, etc. (the Wider Hope & mercy theory). From what I understand, his ministry had to release statements doing damage control to that interview.

    It was shocking to me and seemed contradictory to his other many years of preaching Christ and Him crucified and resurrected, etc.

    Then I heard later that he allowed Roman Catholic priests to follow up with people at the Evangelistic Crusades and encouraged people who "made a decision for Christ" to go back to the churches that they were already associated with. (Including other liberal Protestant churches.) That was a negative.

    As I recall, according to Ian Murray in "Evangelicalism Divided", Martyn Lloyd Jones was asked to lead the follow-up program for the Crusades; Martyn Lloyd Jones refused; he would not participate with follow-up because of the compromises with other churches in follow-up.

    Those things seemed very contradictory to what I heard when I heard Billy Graham preach.

    I remember in seminary (1983-1985; 1987-1988) - one of my Reformed Professors ( PCA) said that Billy was asked if he had to do it all over again, he would speak and travel less; and pray and meditate and study more.

    Also, I remember that several have made the comment that even he (BG) admitted that 80 % of those that came forward to the altar calls are not continuing with the Lord or go to church afterward (many fall away - like the first 3 soils in the parable of the sower, seed, and soils); only 20 % are persevering in the faith.

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  2. He lived a full life - 99 years old. Amazing. What you have written is right; and good positive aspects of Billy Graham that others who criticize him don't say.

    Except for the decision - ism / altar call stuff - his preaching seemed to me to always be good and sound and I heard him many times call for repentance and he clearly often preached Christ, the cross, the resurrection, and that Christ is the only way to salvation. (John 14:6; John 3:18; Acts 4:12) ( I only listened to him maybe 10 or 15 times over the years.)

    But then I remember hearing about his interview he did with Robert Schueller, and hearing it for myself, and I was shocked. ( It is all over You Tube in various forms) - that he agreed with Schueller that there are people who have never heard of Christ in other false religions who are going to be saved, etc. (the Wider Hope & mercy theory). From what I understand, his ministry had to release statements doing damage control to that interview.

    It was shocking to me and seemed contradictory to his other many years of preaching Christ and Him crucified and resurrected, etc.

    Then I heard later that he allowed Roman Catholic priests to follow up with people at the Evangelistic Crusades and encouraged people who "made a decision for Christ" to go back to the churches that they were already associated with. (Including other liberal Protestant churches.) That was a negative.

    As I recall, according to Ian Murray in "Evangelicalism Divided", Martyn Lloyd Jones was asked to lead the follow-up program for the Crusades; Martyn Lloyd Jones refused; he would not participate with follow-up because of the compromises with other churches in follow-up.

    Those things seemed very contradictory to what I heard when I heard Billy Graham preach.

    I remember in seminary (1983-1985; 1987-1988) - one of my Reformed Professors ( PCA) said that Billy was asked if he had to do it all over again, he would speak and travel less; and pray and meditate and study more.

    Also, I remember that several have made the comment that even he (BG) admitted that 80 % of those that came forward to the altar calls are not continuing with the Lord or go to church afterward (many fall away - like the first 3 soils in the parable of the sower, seed, and soils); only 20 % are persevering in the faith.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://www.misterrichardson.com/mlj-int.html

      https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2003/dr-lloyd-jones-on-the-altar-call/

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  3. A funny story that my dad told me:
    My father, John Temple, was on a business trip sometime back then in the late 40s (after my dad got back from WW2) or early 50s when Graham was still with Charles Templeton. The hotel my father was staying at, when he got there to check in, the hotel folks thought he was Charles Templeton and said, "yes sir, Mr. Temple, everything is ready for you", etc. and my dad was surprised but went along with it for a while, because he did not know what to say - they took him to a very nice room, etc. only to later be told, "oops, so sorry, we made a mistake; we have a different room for you and you need to go to the different room". Then later my dad went to the bar to get a drink (My father was a WW2 B-17 co-pilot, was an alcoholic, and an agnostic, until 3 years before he died in 1996.), he actually met Billy Graham, who was drinking milk there.

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  4. By the way, it was a wonderful conversion my father had 3 years before he died; and I could see fruit and he asked me to preach his funeral. Before his conversion, I would try to read quotes from Francis Schaeffer, or C. S. Lewis, or Josh McDowell, or the Bible, and my father would get angry and say "don't read to me; I am not a baby", etc. After his conversion, he loved for us to read Scripture to him and other quotes. Tears ran down his face as I read John 1:1-18 to him, and he confessed Christ; I will never forget. (with many other passages)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for sharing these stories, Ken. It's especially wonderful to hear of your father's conversion.

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    2. You are welcome.
      By the way, I did not lead my dad to the Lord, my uncle Herbert, his brother did. He worked on him for almost 40 years sharing the gospel with him. from around 1955 to 1992.

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  5. People can be saved with some areas of wrong theology and inconsistencies. (we all have them to some degree); but what Graham said to Robert Schueller in that interview really has bothered me for a long time.

    I guess that was similar to C. S. Lewis' view that some in other religions who have never heard will be saved, based on their sincerity to the light that they have. Sounds a lot like the Vatican 2 theology, "through no fault of their own" - CCC paragraph 847.

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    Replies
    1. There's a basic tension in evangelical freewill theism. They typically believe that:

      i) God loves everyone

      ii) God wants to save everyone

      iii) God makes provision to save everyone (e.g. universal atonement, universal sufficient/prevenient grace)

      That, however, is on a collision course with making salvation conditional on faith in the Gospel. To relieve the contradiction, something has to give.

      One way is to simply deny that faith in Jesus is necessary for salvation. That, however, torpedoes the whole raison d'être for evangelism.

      The consistent position (a la Calvinism) is to say that God does not intend to save everyone. That may be a hard truth, but it's consistent.

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  6. Something I just remembered - my uncle Herbert was truly converted at a Billy Graham crusade around 1955!

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  7. These are also very positive things from Billy Graham's life that I saw on Michael Brown's twitter posts:

    "The same Billy Graham who, with his own hands, took down the barriers that separated races at his meetings, is the same man who, with his own money, paid for advertising to preserve the God-given barriers against same-sex "marriage." Racism is wrong; preserving marriage is right."

    Dr. Michael L. Brown Retweeted

    "Billy Graham held his first integrated rally in 1953, taking down the physical barriers himself. He wrote an article for entitled, "No Color Line in Heaven" for Ebony magazine in 1957. In 1963, he bailed MLK out of jail.

    The Gospel is freely given, and all are welcome to it."

    Wow. What a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King: "Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the Civil Rights Movement would not have been as successful as it has been.”

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