6/23/00 4:15 p.m.
Dr. James Boice, R.I.P.
The passing of a larger-than-life figure.

By Ben Domenech, NRO Contributing Editor---------------btdome@wm.edu

n Philadelphia today, the friends, family, and followers of Dr. James Montgomery Boice are gathering in the Tenth Presbyterian church for his funeral service. It was on Good Friday, two hours before he climbed to the pulpit to give a sermon on Christ's crucifixion, that Boice received his physician's diagnosis. The results were numbingly bad — he had contracted a fatal form of liver cancer — but as Boice told the news to his congregation, he paused to ask a question: "If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you'd change it, you'd make it worse. It wouldn't be as good."

Since he began teaching at the Tenth Presbyterian church over 32 years ago, Boice provided a powerful and intellectual voice within the evangelical Christian community. His death last Thursday marked the passing of a larger-than-life figure, a world-famous minister and a profoundly influential voice on the subject of Reformation theology — the void Boice leaves behind is of immense proportions.

"Doctor Boice was a remarkable man, modest and brilliant, diligently pursuing Scripture and instruction throughout his life," says Congressman Charles Canady, a personal friend of the minister. "But he also had a special calling in his heart to minister to those in the inner city, reaching out to the whole city of Philadelphia."

Boice's outreach was much broader than his church body or the urban area he inhabited. It was in April of 1996 that 110 conservative Christian leaders gathered, under the leadership of Boice, to share their concerns about the path of the evangelical church. The broad-based group, which included Presbyterians, Southern Baptists, Christian Reformed, Missouri Synod Lutherans, independents, and others, united to produce the "Cambridge Declaration." The document called for a "return to the historic Christian faith," and warned against the surge of secularism within the church. After the conference ended, Boice became president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, a group of several ministries that united to organize seminars on Biblical interpretation, publish books and magazines, and assemble "Reformation Societies," which currently teach and encourage young church leaders in all 50 states.

Holding degrees from Harvard, the University of Basel, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Boice wrote and contributed to over 60 books in his lifetime, including Foundations of the Christian Faith, Renewal in a Mindless Age, and expositional commentaries on Genesis, Psalms, and the Epistles of John. Boice's four-volume commentary on Romans was recently named by World Magazine as one of the greatest books of the century. The cornerstone of his work, though, was Two Cities, Two Loves — a modern reconstruction of Augustine's City of God.

Near the end of his life, Boice began writing hymns. Drawing material from his sermons, writings, and the personal experience of his outreach within the inner city, his creations remain a testament to his life's work.

Boice, in his humble nature, would never want much of a fuss made over his passing — perhaps singing his own words, from the hymn "Perseverance," will suffice:

We face death for God each day
What can pluck us from His way?
Let God's people ever say
"Nothing!"