The Life of Arthur W. Pink: A Review

From schismatic Hyper-Calvinist to faithful defender and teacher of the Reformed Faith, Arthur W. Pink has proved to be a polarizing figure whose writings have garnered a variety of responses.

But as most men’s lives are too complex to be summarized by so sweeping a statement, so it is with A.W. Pink. Iain H. Murray’s revised and enlarged, The Life of Arthur W. Pink, makes this abundantly clear.

Converted out of the occult, Pink’s life can be described as a theological quest for truth as he moved from a fundamentalist dispensationalism into an ever increasing clarity of Reformed doctrine.

Pink enjoyed some fruitful years of preaching early on, but his greatest contribution came not from the pulpit, but from his pen. And it is here that we find the great irony of Pink’s life unfold under the providence of God. During his own life, Pink was often shunned and his writings went largely unnoticed. Yet Pink continued to labor tirelessly to commit a body of biblical doctrine to writing. He never saw it come to much fruition in his own life, but it became a great blessing to many after his death.

As Murray summarizes:

“It was only as a new era dawned, as a deeper hunger for the Word of God reappeared in the English-speaking world, and as the Puritans and other older writers were rediscovered and reopened, that Arthur Pink became one of the leading teachers of a new generation…By the gracious providence of God, Pink’s books are now vastly more influential than was his ministry in the days when the cold shoulder of an unsympathetic generation reduced him to silence in conventions and in churches” (312-313).

That last line is important. Notice that Murray sees Pink as a man living in the midst of an “unsympathetic generation” that “reduced him to silence in conventions and churches.” Pink is often accused of being too much of a separatist, frequently breaking fellowship and refusing to associate with the corporate church much of his life. Even Lloyd-Jones, who greatly benefited from his writings, said of Pink:

“If I had behaved as Pink did, I would have achieved nothing. Nothing at all. I could see that the only hope was to let the weight of truth convince the people. So I had to be very patient and take a very long-term look at things. Otherwise I would have been dismissed and the whole thing would have been finished” (167).

This is in many ways a valid criticism, and there will be moments throughout this book when the reader may scratch his head at how quickly Pink seems to be willing to cease fellowship. However, there may be warrant to hold a slightly more tender view of Pink than is sometimes the case.

We must remember that we are living in a day when the reformed doctrines of the faith are in many circles being recovered and promoted, and with that has come a desire for a unity and brotherhood in those things across denominational lines (witness T4G and the Gospel Coalition). This simply was not the case in Pink’s day. It seemed everywhere he turned he was encountering either “decisionism” on the one side, or Hyper-Calvinism on the other. He squarely rejected both (more on that in a moment), and often found himself rejected and shut out by much of the church. As a result, Murray is at times sympathetic, attributing Pink’s exile from the church to more than just his own temperament. The reader will have to weigh the evidence and come to his own conclusions.

Perhaps the most important section of the book is the last chapter, which chronicles Pink’s move away from Hyper-Calvinistic tendencies to a soteriology more in line with the reformers and puritans. Murray contends that Pink’s The Sovereignty of God, for which he is probably most famous, is no doubt open to the charge of containing a logic that leads toward Hyper-Calvinism, denying the free offer of the gospel.

This is not the place where Pink ended up theologically. Indeed, he came to very different conclusions that allowed him to remain fully convinced of Calvinism and God’s sovereignty in grace, while interpreting passages like Jesus’ mourning over Jerusalem or God’s taking no pleasure in the death of the wicked without forcing them through a theological grid that makes them come out saying something very different than what appears at face value.

In Pink’s own words:

“The decree of God in no wise infringes upon man’s moral agency, for it neither forces nor hinders man’s will.” “In all God’s dealings with mankind…He exercises His high sovereignty but in no way destroying their moral free agency. These may present deep and insoluble mysteries to the finite mind, nevertheless they are actual facts” (319).

And again:

“The ground on which any sinner is invited and commanded to believe is neither God’s election, nor Christ’s substitution, but his particular need of responding to the free offer of the gospel. The gospel is that Christ died for sinners as sinners (not ‘elect sinners’) and is addressed to their responsibility” (322).

Pink’s last revision to The Sovereignty of God occurred in 1929, but Murray is confident that if he had revised it again it would have contained a very different tone in some of these matters.

Who should read this book? I think it could be especially helpful for three types of people. First, if Pink is “your man,” you should read this book. If he has been your only or primary tutor in God’s sovereignty, and has led you to an adamant stance that the gospel is no way an offer of salvation to any and all sinners, then taking note of Pink’s progress of thought might be helpful.

Secondly, if Pink is your whipping post, you should read this book. If he is the one you hold up as the poster child for everything that’s wrong with Calvinism and the divisive spirit it can engender, then you may benefit from this more balanced treatment of his life and teaching.

Finally, I think this book would be helpful for young pastors. Pink’s life is a reminder that we are all on a journey (and hopefully maturing) theologically. While we should never compromise or waver from essential Christian doctrine, where we are now in our views may not be exactly where we end up in another twenty or thirty years. As Pink himself said reflecting on his own movement:

“Each preacher who experiences any real spiritual growth views most of his first sermons as those of a novice, and he will have cause for shame as he perceives their crudity and the relative ignorance which marked the production of them; for even if he was mercifully preserved from serious error, yet he will probably find many mistakes in his expositions of Scripture, various inconsistencies and contradictions in the views he then held, and which a fuller knowledge and maturer experience now enables him to rectify” (288).

There should be a certain humility that marks our ministry, and a willingness to continue learning as we concede that may not have “arrived” yet in every aspect of our theology.

Perhaps the most poignant section of the book is Pink’s death. I will not recount it here, except to note the last words that ever came from Pink’s lips: “The Scriptures explain themselves” (275). What an appropriate final statement from a man who gave his life to understanding and explaining the Word of God.