The Jack Miller Archive

See letter dated June 8, 1964 to Harold Luhnow where Jack repays final payment of $500 loan and reminds Luhnow that Jack is enrolling at WTS in fall of 64.

See letter dated January-5, 1963 from Ivan R. Bierly, outlining payment of $9000 for this year beginning February 21.

Center for American Studies is formerly the Volker Fund. Location: Redwood City, CA

Interview Notes with William Edgar Below:

[00:40:01] Jack was a part of the practical theology department and he was the preaching coach. [5.4]
[00:40:08] He also, my recollection is he taught a class on Christian education because he'd been involved in a Christian school and he was you know he just knew a lot about everything. But as I suggested earlier his classes were much more story telling of what he had done the day before on the streets of Philadelphia than they were really helping us about Christian education. You know they were great stories, and they were very inspirational. [37.4]
[00:40:46] But we were not getting. Yeah. [3.4]
[00:40:50] What the catalogue said we were supposed to be getting. [2.2]
Mike: [00:40:54] Funny the sad story first preaching the video with Dr. Chappel grab the hose running late grab all that I could find and took it and come to find out later it was our marriage video. [24.0]
[00:41:19] Ok so I'm looking here at ... he mentioned, you mentioned that you knew about the think tank in his, you know I have this book that has never been published the great man in modern education which is probably why they had him supposedly teaching Christian Ed; it is you know almost a thousand pages. Did he talk to you? And you also talked about being over a lot at their house. What were some of those conversations like because you obviously knew about the think tank, and things like that. You probably knew that Rushdoony was there and Gary North was there. [38.3]
Bill Edgar: [00:41:57] He, the conversations were indeed about a wide range of subjects; intellectual history I think is probably the way I'd summarize most of them. You know he knew about the rise of the middle class in the 18th century and he knew about the secularization of the American novel in the 19th and he, he was very very conversant on politics. [26.2]
Bill Edgar: [00:42:24] He told us in a moment of candor that one of the reasons he left the think tank is that he thought that the theonomy people verged on on prejudice. The theme of the anti communism had been overdone and he just worried that it was a kind of a strange version of Christian America that he just couldn't entirely buy into. So obviously in our discussions we were seminary students; we didn't know much but he didn't go into great details about that, but it was clear that he was he had become critical of what became the theonomy movement. And I don't know whether, maybe in those early days he also just worried that they weren't as gospel driven as you would want Christians to be whatever their concerns. That's very possible. So I say intellectual history. [1:09.1]
Bill Edgar: [00:43:34] Theology, you know he'd read everything and he could comment on anything we could ask him about you know eschatology and we could ask him about his views of the church we could ask him about trends in the world trends in America, the arts. I mean he was just unstumpable. [23.4]
[00:44:00] And it was just so much fun because, I mean it was a little bit like L'Abri in that it was just a bunch of us sitting around and Rosemary prepared wonderful refreshments for us. And he would just expound on things and we could just pummel him with questions. [19.4]
Mike: [00:44:21] You know I've heard one one person say one of the callers there was say that you know sometimes they wouldn't take Jack seriously because he did not have the logical background his Ph.D. was in literature that would not be your take on that. [19.2]
[00:44:41] Not at all. No. [0.7]
[00:44:43] He knew his theology very very well. Now remember I was a brand question and in my first couple years of seminary. So I didn't have a critical apparatus to make such judgments. [15.7]
[00:45:00] But my, my impression was that he was just so widely read and he lived in the atmosphere of theologians that while perhaps he didn't train professionally, not only was that not a problem, but he brought something that classically trained theologians sometimes couldn't bring. And as you know he was criticized for a number of things. One of the oddest criticisms to me was a little book by Jay Adams that we can't. [43.9]
[5:43.0]