Fred Sanders, ed. How God Used R.A. Torrey: A Short Biography As Told Through His Sermons. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2015. See here to buy the book.
R.A. Torrey (1856-1928) worked with renowned evangelist D.L. Moody, and he also was instrumental in the creation of The Fundamentals, in which conservative Christians responded to modernism and theological liberalism. How God Used R.A. Torrey
provides a brief biography of Torrey, contains some of his sermons, and
includes his brief unpublished autobiography. Fred Sanders has edited
the sermons and autobiography for contemporary readers, but,
fortunately, they still have that flavor that marks them as from another
time.
Although Torrey had academic training in religion and was a religious
liberal who became a religious conservative, he does not really engage
religious liberalism, historical criticism of the Bible, or atheism from
an academic standpoint, at least not in this book. There is one
possible exception: Torrey argues on the basis of Nehemiah 9:20 that the
Holy Spirit was a personality in the Old Testament, against
historical-critics who would not see the Trinity in the Hebrew Bible.
This was actually a pretty good argument; his argument, however, that
the use of the plural “Elohim” for God indicates that God in the Old
Testament was a Trinity was not a very good argument, since Judges
16:23-24 uses the plural of “god” for the Philistine god Dagon, who was a
single being, not a composite being. Looking at the Internet, I can see
that there were works in which Torrey tried to engage religious
liberalism and atheism from more of an academic standpoint, but, with
the possible exception of his essay on the personality of the Holy
Spirit, that is not the case in How God Used R.A. Torrey. For
example, when Torrey engages universalism, the belief that God will
save everyone in the end, he caricatures the position by saying that
universalism implies that God does not care about sin; many Christian
universalists would disagree with that caricature.
The material in How God Used R.A. Torrey often supports
conservative Christianity on the basis of experience or anecdotes.
Torrey has seen lives changed for the better as a result of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ. He has observed that many people flock to the Gospel
but not to theological liberalism, and he thinks that illustrates Jesus’
statement in John 12:32 that Jesus, when he is lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto himself. (Like Calvinists, Torrey
interprets that to mean that Jesus will draw all kinds of people to
himself, not every single human being, for Jesus makes that statement
when there are Greeks at the Jewish festival; the point, in this
interpretation, is that Jesus will draw Gentiles to himself, not just
Israelites. Torrey himself does not strike me as a Calvinist, however,
for he speaks favorably of Arminian preachers and believes that God
wants to save everyone, while also believing that not everyone will be
saved.)
A lot of Torrey’s anecdotes reminded me of the sorts of stories that I
read in evangelical chain-mails: there were times when I felt that I
was reading pablum, and yet there were also times when I could
understand why a person, including myself, could find comfort or
edification in such stories. There was a coziness that I felt in
reading them. Sometimes, I was skeptical about whether events actually
transpired as Torrey narrates them in his sermons. Did a theological
liberal on his deathbed really ask to see Torrey and repeatedly express
his desperate longing to become a Christian? I have no evidence one way
or the other, but I do know that some evangelicals tend to remember
events in light of their religious ideology, or to embellish things a
bit (intentionally or unintentionally). At the same time, do I dismiss
that God can impress a person’s mind with an idea, or get inside the
head of someone who is hostile to God so that the person is more
inclined to make peace with God, the sorts of things that Torrey
narrates? No I do not.
Torrey’s narration of his personal struggles resonated with me.
Torrey said that he was afraid to become a preacher because he was very
bashful around strangers. I identified with his story about how his
mother rebuked him for not saying hello to her guests, when he thought
that he had said hello to them; he must not have done so loudly enough
for them to hear him! I also appreciated Torrey’s presentation of Jesus
Christ and D.L. Moodly as humble people, as people who did not seek
their own glory but the glory of God. My impression is that the Bible
often appeals to people’s self-interest and desire for glory, honor, and
prosperity rather than demanding that people leave those things
completely behind, and yet the idea of someone being so devoted to God
that those things do not matter to him or her is something that I find
inspiring, appealing, intriguing, and admirable. Moreover, people may
find Torrey’s essay on how to compose a sermon to be helpful. It is
practical, but it also presents preparing a sermon as something to be
done in a state of dependence on God, and for the glory of God.
I would have liked to have seen more of Torrey’s more academic
interactions with the religious liberalism of his day. The book
includes a statement by Torrey that appeared to be open to the theory of
evolution, and that prompted me to do a google search on Torrey’s view
on evolution. It turns out that he came to oppose it on scientific
grounds, but my impression is that some Christian anti-evolutionists
were unhappy with the nature of his stance. I would have liked to have
seen more about Torrey’s engagement with religious liberalism, not just
his homiletical dismissals of it. At the same time, the book did well
to highlight the effect of religion on a person’s life, particularly the
question of what it does to one’s moral character.
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from Moody Publishers, in exchange for an honest review.