Foreword
Leon Morris began to make his mark at a time when evangelical scholars could be counted on the fingers of one hand. When many conservative Christians were suspicious of academic study, he showed how one could combine a high view of Scripture and a living faith in God with rigorous academic research. He blazed a trail for a new generation of evangelical scholars. Over his lifetime, he produced more than fifty books and scores of scholarly articles as well as more popular contributions to Christian publications. All of these contributed immensely to the edification and encouragement of thousands of Christians around the world.
This most welcome biography written by Neil Bach documents Leon Morris’s life and ministry, including its early beginnings in Lithgow, NSW; his ministry in outback Australia; his work at Tyndale House, Cambridge; his time in North America; and serving as the principal of Ridley College. It also covers his productive years in retirement, and does not gloss over the tensions of his last years at Ridley nor the difficulties experienced towards the end of his life when he battled with dementia.
Neil Bach is well qualified to have undertaken the task of producing this biography. He knew Leon Morris as a teenager and studied under him at Ridley College in the 1970s. He currently chairs the Leon and Mildred Morris Foundation and was granted access to Leon Morris’s personal letters, diaries and financial records. In preparing this biography, he interviewed many people who had a significant association with Leon Morris in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
It is a privilege to have been asked to contribute a foreword for this biography. There were others who would have been better qualified to do so, but they have died and are now ‘with Christ’. My association with Leon Morris began in 1969 when he invited me to teach at Ridley College while I was preparing for missionary service in Indonesia at St Andrew’s Hall, Melbourne. I acted as his postgraduate assistant at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he taught as a visiting professor in 1976. He and Maurice Betteridge (who was to succeed him as principal of Ridley College) invited me to join the Ridley faculty in 1979, and as editor of the Tyndale New Testament Commentary series he invited me to contribute the volume on Second Corinthians.
Neil Bach has produced an engaging account of Leon Morris’s life and ministry. It is well written and easy to read, and it contains information hitherto unpublished. It will delight those who knew Leon Morris and whose lives were touched by his ministry.
Colin G. Kruse
Senior Lecturer in New Testament
Melbourne School of Theology