Biography
James Montgomery Boice was born on July 7, 1938, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer, and the family was Presbyterian. As a boy, he was a serious student with a love of reading. He was converted at an early age and felt a call to ministry. He studied at Harvard University, where he majored in religion and then studied at Princeton Theological Seminary. He later received a doctorate in New Testament from the University of Basel, in Switzerland, where he studied under leading scholars.
He began his career as an editor with the magazine Christianity Today, working under Carl Henry and gaining valuable experience. In 1968, at the age of thirty, he was called to be pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, a historic church that had been led by Donald Grey Barnhouse. He served there for thirty-two years until his death. He was a strong expository preacher who took his congregation through whole books of the Bible, verse by verse. He believed that the Bible should be at the center of the life of the church.
He took over the radio program, The Bible Study Hour, begun by Barnhouse, and he made it his own. He spoke on the program for many years, and it reached a large audience. He also wrote a large number of books. They include commentaries on the Gospel of John, on Genesis, on Romans and on the Psalms, as well as books on doctrine, such as Foundations of the Christian Faith. His books were marked by clear and straightforward style. He had a gift for taking the deep matters of the faith and putting them in a way that ordinary people could understand.
He was a leader of the movement in the church for a return to the Bible and to the Reformed faith. In 1978, he helped to found the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, which produced the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. He served as the council's president. In 1994, he helped to form the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, a group that sought to hold the church to the doctrines of the Reformation. He also took part in the 1990s in the debate about the direction of evangelicalism and wrote against what he saw as the growth of shallow and man-centered teaching.
He was a man of conviction who did not shrink from controversy. He spoke strongly against the loss of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in the church. Some thought that he was too rigid or too ready to condemn. He was also a man of deep warmth who loved his family and his people. He was devoted to his wife, Linda, and their three daughters. He worked at a tremendous pace and often traveled to speak at conferences.
In June 2000, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He lived only a few weeks after the diagnosis. In his last days, he spoke publicly in his church of his illness and said that he wished to show that he could trust God in the face of death. He died on June 15, 2000, in Philadelphia, at the age of sixty-one. His life shows the impact of a man who gave his strength to the teaching of the Word, and his books continue to be used by pastors and students.