Robert Henry Boll

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Robert Henry Boll (June 7, 1875–1956) was a German-born American preacher in the Church of Christ. Boll advanced a premillennialist eschatology within the Churches of Christ, in articles written during his editorship of the front page of the Gospel Advocate from 1909 to 1915, leading to a dispute which resulted in a formal schism of the Churches of Christ in the 1930s.

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[edit] Early life in Germany and Switzerland

Boll was born in Badenweiler, Germany to "ardently" Catholic parents, Max Boll and the former Magdalena Ulman. His father moved the family to Basel, Switzerland when Boll was three years old for a short period before returning to Germany, where they lived in Karlsruhe before hardship reportedly led them to move to Mühlhausen and, later, Freiburg. The younger of Boll's sisters as well as his father died when Boll was 10 years old, and he entered the Lyceum at age 11. His mother remarried when he was 14, prompting Boll to emigrate with a maternal aunt and friends to the United States, settling briefly in Zanesville, Ohio in 1890. He migrated to Tennessee as a farm laborer: it was there that Boll was baptised into the Church of Christ by Sam Harris near Nashville, on Sunday, April 14, 1895.

[edit] Career in the Church of Christ

Boll entered the Nashville Bible School (later David Lipscomb College, now Lipscomb University) under the presidency of James A. Harding. Harding reportedly took pity on Boll, as Boll had walked 20 miles to the school in the rain, and accepted him even though all positions at the school had been filled. He preached his first sermon at a mission meeting at the Nashville jail.

[edit] Protracted meeting at "Accident"

Encouraged by friend and fellow student Bob McMahon, he planned a "protracted meeting" of three weeks duration which would begin on June 15, 1896 at a small log schoolhouse named "Accident" near Nashville. A few days before giving the meeting he spoke to a smaller assembly at the chapel of the Nashville Bible School which included David Lipscomb, E. G. Sewell, T. W. Brents, James A. Harding, J. W. Grant and J. W. Shepherd: Boll remembered Shepherd slapping him on the back and saying, "Go right ahead; you will come out all right." In Boll's recollection the meeting began well, but in a few days interest had dwindled and Boll felt the energy ebbing from his own presentation: his friend McMahon concurred that the meeting should be wrapped up within a week. One more attempt at rallying the intensity of the meeting met with apparent failure as Boll finished a sermon he had considered to contain an hour of his strongest material in only 20 minutes. The next day, however, attendance was up: the meeting stayed open for two weeks, and "about seven" baptisms took place as a result.

Boll left Nashville Bible College in 1900 to further pursue his preaching career, delivering sermons in Texas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. In 1903 he visited Portland Avenue Church of Christ in Louisville where the congregation had been led for seven years by George A. Klingman, who would later write of the fractious nature of the Churches of Christ. [1]

[edit] Portland Avenue Church of Christ

Portland Avenue Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky
Portland Avenue Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky

In 1904, Boll became a located minister at Portland Avenue Church of Christ in Louisville, staying until his death in 1956, with the exception of a one year period from 1910 to 1911 during which he was the Bible teacher at the high school in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee "on behalf of" (likely underwritten by) J. H. Stribling. He continued his education locally, learning Latin and Greek at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

In Louisville he married Villette Schang. They had three children, one of whom, a daughter, died at the age of two.

[edit] Popular writer and editor

Boll's tenure in Louisville saw him become increasingly popular as a published writer. In quick succession he became a regular contributor to Harding's The Way, then editor of the Gospel Guide published by Joe Warlick. Boll became a contributing editor to the Christian Leader in 1904.

In 1909, Boll became the front page editor of the Gospel Advocate, the de facto flagship publication for the Churches of Christ.

[edit] Premillennialism controversy and the Gospel Advocate (1909-1915)

A account of Boll's earlier exposure to Jehovah's Witnesses theology was described by one detractor: [2]

"F. L. Rowe, editor of the Christian Leader, was seeking to arrange a debate between one of our preachers and the notorious Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Millennial Dawn/Jehovah's Witness cult. Upon the recommendation of Bro. Boll and M. C. Kurfees, Bro. L. S. White of Denton, Texas was chosen to meet Russell. The debate was conducted in Cincinnati in 1908. Rowe wrote of Russell, he 'is a man of pleasing manner, and his mild, soft tones were admired by many.' Kurfees judged that White did an excellent job of upholding the truth and refuting Russell. But Boll was enamored with Russell's style and embraced his millennial heresy. Bro. G. W. Riggs, recalled that while visiting the Boll, he found him eagerly reading one of Russell's books. Like most other premillennialists, Boll developed his own version."

However, supporters of Boll dismiss this influence as apocryphal, pointing out that Boll published more articles in the Gospel Advocate critical of Russell's theology than any other writer.

Boll's initial articles with eschatological themes in the Gospel Advocate aroused little opposition, as even his later detractors would admit that Restoration Movement giants Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott, Robert Milligan, B. W. Johnson, and T. W Brents had held premillenialist views, though Boll's detractors would point out that they did not make special efforts to spread those views. A mild term used by those who disagreed with him during this period seems to have been that his writings were considered "speculative" at best.

However, by 1915 a more ambitious series of articles led to Boll's forced resignation from the Gospel Advocate by a board consisting of J. C. McQuiddy, F. W. Smith, H. Leo Boles, A. B. Lipscomb, M. C. Kurfees and G. Dallas Smith:

"All understood Boll to promise to hold his views on that subject as a personal opinion which he would not publish or promote. Thus he was reinstated, but almost immediately renewed his hobby. His resignation was called for and accepted." [3]

In 1916, after Boll's resignation of the front page editorship of the Gospel Advocate, he purchased an existing publication, Word and Work, from its publisher in New Orleans, Louisiana, and moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to continue advancing his theology both in print and from the pulpit.

It is not an easy task to read all that was written about the debate. The strength of emotion that was felt on both sides permeates the literature, and it seems no less raw nearly a century after it was written. Much of the material from the anti-Boll side is written in the fire and brimstone style of the times, with repeated bitter and personal attacks upon Boll and his followers. The converse is true from the other side to some extent, though the pleas for continued fellowship in the face of what could be seen as a non-essential disagreement are especially pathetic and depressing to read in light of their historical failure to prevent a division. Part polemic, part legal brief, the arguments and exhortations on either side run to many pages in length. Church of Christ preachers had long been trained in parsing Greek and Latin grammar, and were regularly praised or condemned on the strengths of their ability to parse key New Testament proof texts to the greatest analytical precision possible within their hermeneutic.

Following the publication of a sharp critique by R. L. Whiteside and C. R. Nichol, of Clifton, Texas, Boll was strongly defended by others in print during the 1940s[4]

[edit] Legacy

The Portland Christian School system, founded in 1924, is the most visible sign of Boll's influence among Churches of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky. Congregations which bear Boll's premillennialist influences can be found in Louisville, southern Indiana, and Louisiana.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Changed Viewpoint by George A. Klingman at the Restoration Movement pages at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.
  2. ^ Robert Henry Boll: Champion of Premillennialism at Christianity Then and Now. Posthumous critical sketch.
  3. ^ ibid.
  4. ^ "An Appeal to the Candid." Eugene V. Wood. Dallas. Response to Whiteside and Nichol's review.

[edit] External links