December 15 Today in OPC History

Meredith G. Kline was born one hundred years ago today in Copley, Pennsylvania. Raised in Boston, Kline studied at Gordon College and Westminster Seminary. He was ordained by the Presbytery of New Jersey and installed as pastor of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ringoes, New Jersey in 1948, with John Murray preaching at his ordination service. Two years later Kline resigned his pastorate when he was appointed instructor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary. In 1956 he earned a Ph.D. from Dropsie University in Philadelphia. His professorial career spanned over half a century, including long tenures at Westminster (Philadelphia) and Gordon-Conwell Seminaries. Concurrent with the latter appointment he also taught for twenty years at Westminster Seminary California.

A staple in Kline’s instruction—wherever he taught—was a course in Old Testament Biblical Theology. Typically he would alert students on the first day that the class would spend the entire semester exegeting Genesis 1–3. Those three chapters, however, were windows through which he would survey the entire Old and New Testaments in a panoramic presentation of redemptive history. In seven books and a host of articles, Kline explored the coming of the kingdom of God in the unfolding covenants of Scripture, building on the legacy of Geerhardus Vos. His exegetical creativity always served to defend confessional Reformed orthodoxy on the doctrines of Scripture, covenant, justification, and ethics. Above all, he stressed that Christology and eschatology pervaded the whole of special revelation.

Although Kline attended six general assemblies of the OPC and served briefly on the home and foreign missions committees, his active and devoted churchmanship was more evident on the local level. He often taught Sunday school at First OPC in Hamilton (later Ipswich) Massachusetts, and generations of young people attending Deerwander Bible Conference in Maine remember Meredith and Grace Kline rising early to serve campers breakfast.

On April 14, 2007, Kline passed away after a lengthy illness at the age of 84.