There is little question that much of the institution’s (Grace Seminary) burgeoning momentum was due to the growing reputation of John (“Jack”) C. Whitcomb, Jr., one of the seminary’s most legendary professors and an individual who, even more than Herman Hoyt, represented the fundamentalist mentality. Born in 1924, Whitcomb was raised in a family with military ties that went back to the Civil War. Whitcomb’s father fought in both World Wars and even served as an officer under George C. Patton. Whitcomb himself had hopes of following in the military tradition but his poor eyesight kept him out of West Point and he enrolled in Princeton University to study International Affairs instead. His chance to serve came in 1944, however, when he was drafted and sent to Europe, where his service included time in an artillery unit during the Battle of the Bulge.
Whitcomb’s conversion took place through the ministry of Princeton Evangelical Fellowship (PEF), a campus club organized around 1931 by Donald G. Fullerton, a Princeton alumna who had recently returned from missionary service in India and Afghanistan. Fullerton held Sunday afternoon Bible classes for over 50 years and frequently met with members individually for Bible study and prayer. Fullerton had a fundamentalist orientation and PEF remained aloof from other evangelical campus ministries. He routinely challenged the men in PEF to enter full-time Christian service and a strong dispensationalist, Fullerton channeled graduates toward dispensationalist seminaries such as Grace.
Feeling called to the ministry, Whitcomb enrolled at Grace Seminary on Fullerton’s recommendation and excelled in his studies under Alva J. McClain, Homer Kent Sr., and Hoyt. Graduating with a B.D. in 1951, Whitcomb began teaching Old Testament and Hebrew while pursuing further studies in the seminary. By 1957 he had earned both a Th.M. and a Th.D. In the years that followed, Whitcomb served the seminary in various capacities, both in his teaching ministry and duties as editor of the Grace Journal.
More than service to the seminary, however, Whitcomb’s legendary status in fundamentalist circles stemmed directly from his first book, The Genesis Flood, a revised version of his Grace Seminary dissertation co-authored with Henry Morris. The book argued for a universal deluge, rather than a localized flood as other evangelicals were theorizing, and sought to demonstrate that Noah’s flood was the best scientific as well as biblical accounting for the geological record. More significant than debates over the extent of the flood, however, was the fact that Whitcomb and Morris advocated an alternative interpretation of the observable geological record. The earth only appeared millions of years old because the Noahamic flood had so catastrophically altered the earth’s crust. In essence, the book was as much an apologetic for a young earth based on literal 24-hour days of creation as it was a book about the Noahamic flood...
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