by John D. Hannah
John F. Walvoord, theologian, writer, and teacher, seminary president; and defender of dispensational pretribulational premillen- nialism, was born on May 1, 1910, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Walvoord was raised in a home that valued education in general and religious training in particular. His father, John Garrett Walvoord, was a school teacher. During Mary Flipse Walvoord's difficult pregnancy, her doctors advised an abortion; however, because of their conviction that the child was a gift from the Lord, they brought John to term. The child proved to be robust, and Mary lived to be 102. The family were members of the First Presbyterian Church, his father an elder and Sunday school superintendent. His parents determined that their children would be reared on the Westminster Shorter Catechism and Scripture memory.
When John was fifteen, the family moved
to Racine where his father was a junior high school superintendent. During his high school years, John excelled
in academics and athletics but continued to have only a nominal interest in
Christianity, although he had committed his life to Christian work when he was
twelve. His family joined the Union
Gospel Tabernacle (now the nondenominational Racine Bible Church). While attending a study of the book of
Galatians, he became assured of God's mercy toward him. Three years later
(1928), he entered Wheaton College.
John continued to excel in academics and athletics, though he also
distinguished himself as a member of the debate team that won state
championships in 1930 and 1931.
Additionally, he was president of the college's Christian Endeavor where
he made a commitment to foreign missions.
He completed his undergraduate degree in 1931 with honors having accelerated
his progress due to summer school work at the University of Colorado.
Walvoord was counseled against entering
seminary at Princeton, although he considered himself of Presbyterian heritage
and expected a Presbyterian ministry for two reasons. First, he had been impressed by the ministry of Lewis Sperry
Chafer, a man of Presbyterian affiliations and president of the Dallas
Theological Seminary (then called the Evangelical Theological College). Second, J. Oliver Buswell Jr., president of
Wheaton College, was also a Presbyterian and more institutionally and
theologically attuned to Chafer's school than Princeton (both schools shared an
aversion to modernism, an attachment to the Bible conference tradition, and a
distaste for the fanaticism of fundamentalism in the 1920s and 30s).
He pursued a regular program of studies at Dallas Seminary and graduated in 1934, deeply impressed once more with the character and teaching skills of Chafer (as well as others such as Harry Ironside and Henry Theissen). He was drawn increasingly to the Bible conference tradition, but remembering his college pledge to foreign missions, he was active in Christian work on the weekends and during the summers while in seminary. Having an application for the China Inland Mission, he found no peace about completing it, though his mother had dreamed of such a calling for her son. Instead, he sought a pastoral charge. Due to Chafer's influence, he assumed the pastorate of the Rosen Heights Presbyterian church in Fort Worth (now the Northwest Bible Church), in the Presbyterian Church, USA. He was able to complete his Th.D. degree in 1936 at the seminary.
In the same year, Walvoord was
appointed by Chafer as the seminary's registrar and associate professor of
systematic theology, thus becoming
Chafer's assistant in the classroom. He
excelled as a teacher and administrator.
In 1939 he married Geraldine Lungren, and the couple would eventually
have four sons. Walvoord served as
moderator of the Fort Worth Presbytery twice and permanent clerk for ten
years. He also completed an A.M. degree
in philosophy from Texas Christian University in 1945. He considered further doctoral studies at
Princeton University, but the strain of increased duties at the seminary
precluded the opportunity.
Chafer's
increasingly poor health in the 1940s made him determined to bring his protégé
into a more prominent role in the school.
Though continuing in the pastorate, teaching at the seminary, serving as
registrar, and being the secretary of the faculty, Walvoord became an
administrative assistant to the president.
He did most of the institutional correspondence, served as director of
publicity, officiated as chairman of the faculty, and took on an increasing
portion of Chafer's Bible conference work.
After Chafer's death in 1952, Walvoord
became the institution's second president and was promoted to fill Chafer's
chair as professor of systematic theology (1953). As a result of the new duties, he resigned from the Rosen Heights
Presbyterian church after twenty-four years of service and subsequently
withdrew from the Presbyterian Church, USA, joining the Independent Fundamental
Churches of America. Walvoord lead the
seminary until his retirement in 1986.
In the midst of his duties and burdens associated with a growing
institution, he also emerged as one of the foremost scholars and writers in
eschatological studies. He was
recognized for his professional achievements with both a D.D. from Wheaton
College in 1960 and an Litt. D. from Liberty Baptist Seminary in 1984.
First, Walvoord's tenure at Dallas
Theological Seminary effected evangelicalism both nationally and
internationally. He taught systematic
theology at Dallas Seminary for over fifty years, and for over thirty of those
years, he also served as the institution's president. Under his administration, the school emerged as a major
evangelical seminary, sending out hundreds of graduates into pastorates,
missions, and teaching posts throughout the world and becoming the largest
independent seminary in the world.
Walvoord was also committed to continuing Chafer's legacy with an
ongoing emphasis on the Bible conference and Bible institute distinctives at a
graduate seminary level. On the one hand, he sought to stabilize the school
maintaining its distinctive educational emphases; on the other hand, he
recognized the daunting task of preparing the seminary for a future that would
be different from its past. Whereas
Chafer was a visionary and founder, Walvoord was concerned with establishing
and stabilizing the school in academic and professional excellence. Walvoord achieved a balanced budget, debt
retirement, and the launching of building programs that transformed the campus. There was a continual move to acquire property
and erect buildings. Academic programs
also escalated, and the school attained accreditation in 1969 by the Southern
Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.
Second, in addition to directing an
increasingly complex school, Walvoord emerged in the same decades as an eminent
scholar in the realm of prophetic and eschatological studies and in defense of
pretribulational premillennialism. His
stature in the premillennial dispensational movement is evidenced by his
service on the committee of scholars and churchmen who produced the New
Scofield Reference Bible in 1967, a revision of Scofield's work of 1909 and
1917. Far more crucial in the defense of modern premillennialism (distinguished
from historic premillennialism), however, has been his personal literary
output. As president of the seminary,
he also served as editor of the school's journal, Bibliotheca Sacra. From 1952-85, he directed the journal in
the defense of evangelical theology in general and dispensational
premillennialism in particular. In this
work alone, he contributed a total of 127 articles, specializing in biblical
eschatology. Walvoord also authored
nineteen books: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (1943, revised in 1954
and 1958); The Return of the Lord (1955); The Thessalonian Epistles (1956);
The Rapture Question (1957, revised in 1979); The Millennial Kingdom (1959);
To Live Is Christ: An Exposition of the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians (1961,
reissued in 1971 as Philippians: Triumph in Christ); Israel in Prophecy (1962);
The Church in Prophecy (1964); The Nations in Prophecy (1967, the
last three were published together in 1988 as Israel, the Nations, and the
Church in Prophecy); Truth for Today (1963); The Revelation of Jesus
Christ (1966, a commentary on the book of the Revelation); Jesus Christ
Our Lord (1969); Daniel, The Key to Prophetic Revelation (1971); The
Holy Spirit at Work Today (1973); Matthew: Thy Kingdom Come (1974); Armageddon,
Oil, and the Middle East Crisis (1974, revised in 1990); The Blessed
Hope and the Tribulation (1976); The Prophecy Knowledge Handbook (1990)
and Major Bible Prophecies (1991).
He also edited several works such as Inspiration
and Interpretation (1957); Major Bible Themes (1974, a revision of
Chafer's 1926 volume by the same title); The Bib Sac Reader (1983, a
collection of articles that appeared in the journal between 1934 and 1983); The
Bible Knowledge Commentary (1983, a two-volume work by the seminary's
faculty); and Systematic Theology (1988, a two-volume abridgment of
Chafer's eight-volume 1947-48 publication).
Third, Walvoord has made a significant
contribution to the delineation and defense of dispensational
premillennialism. A perusal of his
writings makes it clear that his focus was not upon modern dispensationalism as
a system, but upon its eschatological implications. He accepted the theological structure that dispensationalists
placed upon the Bible (i.e., literal interpretation, progressive revelation,
discontinuity between the covenants, and a sharp contrast between Israel and
the church in the economy of God, i.e., two peoples, two programs, and two
destinies). Embracing the tenets of modern dispensationalism as derived from
Chafer (who was influenced by Scofield) and cogently expressed later by Charles
Ryrie, Walvoord delineated the prophetic details of that system. Though not to be identified with the recent
revisionist approach taken by progressive dispensationalists, Walvoord's
dispensationalism does evidence a revision at some points of Scofield and
Chafer, although some would judge these to be of minor significance. For example, Walvoord's understanding of the
distinction between Israel and the church, a rather important issue for
dispensationalists, has evidenced revision.
In his earlier writings, he struggled with the relationship of the
church to the new covenant (Jer. 31, Heb. 8) and concluded with Chafer that
there must be two new covenants, one for each of the distinct peoples of God.
More recently, he has come to Scofield's position of a single covenant with two
separate fulfillments. With regard to the Davidic covenant (2 Sam. 7), however,
he is, in contrast to Scofield and the progressive dispensationalists,
unwilling to grant a fulfillment of it in the church era.
Fourth, Walvoord must be seen as a defender
of the historic Christian faith. His
writings on the themes of Christ and the Holy Spirit, for example, as well as
the republishing of Chafer's Major Bible Themes and the abridgment of
Chafer's Systematic Theology reveal him, like his mentor, to be a
proponent of orthodoxy. While viewing
Christianity through the grid of the Bible conference tradition (i.e., mildly
Keswick relative to the doctrine of sanctification, Warfieldian in the defense
of inerrancy, and eschatologically rooted in the tradition stemming from John
Nelson Darby and the eighteenth-century Brethren movement), he defended the
Augustinian, Calvinist interpretation of sin, Christ, redemption, and grace
(though embracing, as did Chafer, unlimited Atonement).
Donald
K. Campbell, "Walvoord: A Tribute" in Kindred Spirit 10:5-7
(Spring 1986); Michael Fluent, "John F. Walvoord: Staunch Conservative
Retires from Dallas Seminary" in Fundamentalist Journal 5:61-63
(April 1986); Timothy G. Mink, "John F. Walvoord at Dallas Theological
Seminary" (Ph.D. diss., North Texas State University, 1987); "Q &
A: An Interview with John Walvoord" in Fundamentalist Journal 3:47-49
(October 1984); Rudolf A. Renfer, "A History of Dallas Theological
Seminary" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1959); John A. Witmer,
"'What Hath God Wrought:' Fifty Years of Dallas Theological Seminary"
in Bib Sac 131:3-13 (January-March 1974). g
Taken from Dictionary of
Premillennial Theology by Mal Couch, General Editor. Copyright © 1996, Kregal Publications, Grand
Rapids, MI (p. 67-70). Used by permission.