My first introduction to Dr. George W. Knight III was courtesy of my college professor, Dr. Henry Krabbendam. Dr. Knight was making a trip to Covenant College to promote a new seminary being founded in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and my esteemed professor invited me to a meal hosted by Dr. Knight. My first impressions of this southern gentleman and scholar were good, I recall, though they did not dissuade me from my original plans to attend another relatively new seminary in the fall of 1991: Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. A year and a half later, however, after a rewarding experience at Greenville, I found myself reaching out to Dr. Knight about a transfer to Knox Theological Seminary, where he served as Professor of Greek and New Testament Studies. He was very gracious in welcoming me into what would become the second graduating class of that institution.

Professor and Student

Dr. Knight and his wife, Virginia, were, in fact, gracious to welcome me into their very lives. For the first few weeks of my sojourn in South Florida, they fed and housed me, and I remained a frequent guest in their house for the duration of my time at Knox, often trading my lawn-mowing service for Mrs. Knight’s laundry service. As a typical seminarian, I plied Dr. Knight with endless exegetical and theological questions; with a smile on his face, and with eyes often closed for thought, he would unfold his perspective and convictions with humility and grace. I learned from Dr. Knight that a man who was willing to confess to an occasional uncertainty on a matter was a man you tended to listen to all the more closely when he was expressing deep conviction.

I also learned from Dr. Knight how to rightly handle the Word of God. In many a class in New Testament exegesis, I found myself spellbound at my professor’s skillful handling of various key texts: first making various interpretations seem plausible to us all, then leading us inexorably to the only interpretation that accounted for all the nuances of the text. During my high school years, my father had introduced me to the writings of John Murray, and I had acquired a love for his method of humble but relentlessly biblical exegesis. Dr. Knight was a living model of what I had come to think of as the “Murray method” of exegesis, and, of course, he came by that naturally. Dr. and Mrs. Knight told me more than one story (some quite amusing) of their own friendship with Professor Murray during their seminary years at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. I think Dr. Knight would be honored by the comparison I have made here between him and Professor Murray, and I think it is a fair one.

Regarding his theological contributions to the church, I join many in testifying to a deep debt to Dr. Knight for his helpful writings on the subject of the biblical roles of men and women (he served as president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood during the first years of our friendship), his careful but compelling argument for cessationism, his defense of what he called a “two-and-a-half office” view of church polity, his contribution to the church’s biblical stance on the ethics of abortion and divorce, and his long-standing special interest in the pastoral epistles (eventually publishing a volume in the New International Greek Testament Commentary series on 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus). I also remember as a student being very glad that I was introduced to the whole field of textual criticism under his scholarly and pastorally reassuring hand.

Colleagues

Dr. Knight and I left Fort Lauderdale the same year: I with the intent to pursue further studies at Westminster Theological Seminary, and he with the intent to retire near his native Charlotte, North Carolina. A year and a half later, though, we would be again reunited: this time as colleagues in ministry. The Knights in their retirement joined the OPC congregation in Matthews, now called Resurrection Presbyterian, whose pulpit had just been vacated, and Dr. Knight was soon prevailed upon to become the stated supply of the congregation. Eventually the pastoral search committee began to look in the direction of a twenty-five-year-old bachelor, enrolled in the ThM program at Westminster Seminary. My eventual call as pastor to the church, despite my youth and inexperience, could not have taken place, I am sure, without a show of support for my candidacy from my old friend and mentor. He and I would become colleagues on the session of that congregation, which I still serve: I with a call as pastor, and he eventually with a call as teacher in the congregation.

Serving with Dr. Knight in the local church was as great a privilege as sitting under him as a student. I was sometimes asked what it was like having a theologian like George Knight listening to my first attempts at preaching, but I was always able to say that “the good doctor,” as we called him at the time, made it easy. There could not have been greater deference shown to his pastor, though many years his junior, and Dr. Knight’s wise contribution to sessional business was always with care for my leadership, symbolized by his consistent, respectful references to me as “Mr. Moderator.” I did come to have some differences of perspective from my mentor—for example, in the way we articulated covenant theology. But I eventually realized that Dr. Knight was ably articulating the Southern Presbyterian tradition with which he had a lifelong identification, while I was reflecting perspectives gleaned from my time at Westminster Seminary. The graciousness with which Dr. Knight articulated his views, however, and the humility with which he engaged in disagreement, even with me, has profoundly shaped my own ambitions as a churchman.

With our congregation’s planting of a daughter church closer to the Knights’ home in South Carolina, the Knights eventually moved their membership and ministry to Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, under the ministry of my friend Cliff Blair. Dr. Knight’s “true retirement” years, therefore, were spent somewhat removed from the fellowship that he and I had shared in former years. A few years ago, upon coming across something written by my mentor, I felt an awakening of fresh gratitude to him and resolved to express that to him once again. Those sentiments included the following:

I remember sitting with you in your home in Florida, hearing about the paper you intended then to present to the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “The Scriptures Were Written for Our Instruction.” I believe it was then published in JETS [Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society] shortly after I had taken up my duties as pastor at Matthews OPC in 1996. You should know that your good work is still bearing fruit! I have read it with great profit once more, with an even deeper sense of the importance of the issues you were contending for. And it has put me in remembrance of the many other ways you were such a formative influence on me in my training for ministry. I am so grateful, Dr. Knight, for your mentoring of me in those years.

George Knight’s passage into glory came on October 11, 2021, at the age of eighty-nine. Others have ably paid tribute to his larger life accomplishments as a theologian and churchman; it is an honor for me to have this opportunity to pay a more personal tribute to a dear mentor and friend.

The author is pastor of Resurrection Presbyterian in Matthews, North Carolina. New Horizons, October 2024.