R. C. Sproul
1939–2017 · American Reformed theologian and Presbyterian pastor
Robert Charles Sproul (1939–2017) was an American Reformed theologian and Presbyterian pastor who became one of the most recognizable voices of the revival of Reformed theology in the late twentieth century. Through Ligonier Ministries and his daily radio program Renewing Your Mind, he reached audiences far beyond his own congregations.
He studied at Westminster College, at the Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary and at the Free University of Amsterdam, where he worked with G. C. Berkouwer. He was ordained as an elder in the United Presbyterian Church in the USA in 1965 and, around 1975, joined the Presbyterian Church in America. He taught at several seminaries and founded Ligonier Ministries, which hosted yearly theological conferences and produced a large body of audio, video and written material.
Sproul centred his thought on the holiness and sovereignty of God. He was a key figure in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy of 1978, drafted with Norman Geisler, and he defended an evidentialist approach to apologetics that set him apart from many Reformed colleagues, who favoured presuppositionalism. He also criticised Catholic theology, the 1994 Evangelicals and Catholics Together statement and the prosperity gospel.
His influence endures in his many books, in the Reformation Study Bible and in the Reformation Trust Publishing imprint he launched in 2006 to promote historic Reformed faith.
Key ideas
- Holiness of God: God's holy and transcendent character is the starting point for any reflection on sin and salvation.
- Divine sovereignty: God governs all things, a conviction that shapes his reading of grace and election.
- Biblical inerrancy: Scripture, in its original texts, is true and without error in what it affirms.
- Evidentialist apologetics: Christian faith can be defended with rational arguments and evidence, not only from prior presuppositions.
- Critique of postmodernism: he argued that relativism and the loss of rationality weakened the life of the church.
Curiosities
Aboard the Amtrak train
He was a passenger on the Amtrak train that derailed in the 1993 Big Bayou Canot train wreck, and he sometimes gave firsthand accounts of the event.
A tribute volume
In 2003 a Festschrift, After Darkness, Light, was published in his honour, with essays by Sinclair Ferguson, Michael Horton and John F. MacArthur, among others.
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