John Warwick Montgomery
John Warwick Montgomery is a lawyer, professor, Lutheran theologian, and author living in France. He was born in Warsaw, New York, United States. Since 2014, he has been Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University, Wisconsin, and continues to work as a barrister specializing in religious freedom cases in international Human Rights law.
He is chiefly noted for his major contributions as a writer, lecturer, and public debater in the field of Christian apologetics.
From 1995 to 2007 he was a Professor in Law and Humanities at the University of Bedfordshire, England; and from 2007 to 2014, the Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and Christian Thought at Patrick Henry College in Virginia, United States. He remains Emeritus Professor at the University of Bedfordshire. He is also the director of the International Academy of Apologetics, Evangelism & Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, and is the editor of the theological online journal Global Journal of Classical Theology.
Family
Montgomery's family derives from County Antrim in Ireland. His parents were Maurice Warwick Montgomery and Harriet Montgomery. His one sibling, a sister, died in 2008. Montgomery has been married twice. His first wife is deceased. He has three children from his first wife: two daughters and a son. He married Lanalee de Kant, a professional harpist, in 1988. They have an adopted son and two grandchildren.Education
Montgomery is a scholarly maverick who has 11 earned degrees in multiple disciplines: philosophy, librarianship, theology, and law. His degrees include: the A.B. with distinction in Philosophy, B.L.S. and M.A., B.D. and S.T.M., LL.B., M. Phil. in Law, Ph.D., Th.D. Doctorat d'Universite, LLM and LLD in canon law. He also holds an honorary doctorate awarded in 1999 by the Institute for Religion and Law, Moscow.Career
Montgomery became a Christian in 1949 as an undergraduate student majoring in the classics and philosophy at Cornell University. Upon graduation Montgomery then began studies in librarianship through the University of California, followed by two degrees in theology and ordination as a Lutheran clergyman. His M.A. thesis in library science was published by the University of California as A Seventeenth Century View of European Libraries. In 1959–60 he served on the faculty of theology as principal librarian in the divinity school's library at the University of Chicago, while simultaneously undertaking doctoral studies in bibliographical history.He then served as Chairman of the Department of History at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada, where he began to develop a reputation as a Christian apologist. Some of his earliest apologetic lectures in defending the historical reliability of the gospel records were presented at the University of British Columbia and the lectures were subsequently published in his book History and Christianity.
On receiving a Canada Council Senior Research Fellowship, Montgomery commenced doctoral studies in theology at the University of Strasbourg, France. His doctoral dissertation, which was on the life and career of the Lutheran pastor Johannes Valentinus Andreae and his alleged connections with Rosicrucianism, was subsequently published as Cross and Crucible. Montgomery regards this particular text as his most important piece of scholarship.
After completing his Th.D in 1964, Montgomery assumed a post as professor of church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. It was during the 1960s that he emerged as a significant spokesman for Protestant Evangelicals, writing as a regular columnist in the flagship periodical Christianity Today.
He injected himself into the theological controversies of his denomination, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, concerning Biblical inerrancy and higher criticism. On the wider church scene he wrote against the Death of God theology, and publicly debated one of its proponents, Thomas J. J. Altizer, at the University of Chicago in 1967. He was also critical of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Rudolf Bultmann. He summed up much of his opposition to Liberal Christianity and radical theologies in works such as Crisis in Lutheran Theology, The Suicide of Christian Theology, and God's Inerrant Word.
His role as an apologist for the Christian faith extended to debates with the American atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, situation ethicist Joseph Fletcher, Australian atheist Mark Plummer, humanist George A. Wells, and Jesus Seminar scholar Gerd Ludemann.
Montgomery, since 1965, isan ordained minister in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.
During the 1970s, Montgomery began training in the law with the twin aims of reintegrating Christian foundations into jurisprudence, and to integrate insights from legal theory and doctrines of proof relevant to furthering Christian evidentialist apologetics. To that end Montgomery established, in 1980, the Simon Greenleaf School of Law in California, which is now Trinity Law School, the law school of Trinity International University. Montgomery worked as dean and professor from 1980 to 1989. Montgomery was editor of The Simon Greenleaf Law Review, which was published in seven volumes between 1981 and 1987. Montgomery resigned his post as dean and professor in 1989, under a cloud of controversy The same year, Montgomery and Michael Richard Smythe founded the Irvine, California.-based Institute for Theology and Law which, in 1995, became the current International Academy of Apologetics and Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. In 1991 Montgomery relocated to London, where he became a Barrister-at-Law, wrote widely on apologetics, defended international cases of religious freedom, and taught at the University of Bedfordshire. In 2009, Montgomery passed the French bar examinations and became an avocat à la Cour, barreau de Paris; he is a member of the Paris law firm of Noual Hadjaje Duval.
Montgomery's apologetic work has generally centred on establishing the divinity of Christ by assessing the historical and legal evidences for the resurrection. Much of this work has influenced popular apologists such as Josh McDowell, Don Stewart, Francis J. Beckwith, Ross Clifford, Terry Miethe, Gary Habermas, Craig Parton, Rod Rosenbladt, Loren Wilkinson, Kerry McRoberts, and Elliot Miller. He is an advocate of evidentialist apologetics, offering a distinctly Christian philosophy of history in his books The Shape of the Past and Where Is History Going?
Montgomery researched the claims of evidence for Noah's Ark for two years. His quest took him through two thousand years of reports, sightings, and claims, and on two ascents of Mount Ararat: in August 1970 on the South Face and in summer 1971 on the North Face. His effort to collect data and sift fact from fiction yielded his work "The Quest for Noah's Ark". In the introduction he writes that he merely presents the facts and allows the readers to come to their own conclusions. He was a contributing scholar on two film documentaries on the topic: "Noah's Ark and the Genesis Flood" and "In Search of Noah's Ark".
Montgomery's interests in the occult has also yielded his studies on early Rosicrucianism, demonic phenomena, and analytic considerations of the occult as a spiritual search for truth. In the 1980s, he spent eight years as a Sunday evening radio broadcaster in California, and from 1988 to 1992, as a television presenter of "Christianity on Trial".
In his legal career Montgomery, in addition to teaching law, has practiced law in California, been admitted to the English bar as a barrister, been licensed in France, taken higher degrees in ecclesiastical law at Cardiff University, and served as Director of Studies for the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg. He has written on legal-moral problems such as cryonics, stem-cell research, euthanasia, abortion, and divorce, as well as arguing for a transcendental perspective in international human rights and jurisprudence. He has successfully represented clients in religious liberty cases before the Court of Appeals in Athens, Greece, and the European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg.