Pastor of the Reformed Church of France, founder and honorary dean of the Reformed Seminary in Aix-en-Provence, Pierre Courthial passed into the presence of the Lord in Paris in April.
A memorial service was held in the Eglise de l’Annonciation, Passy, Paris, where Courthial was pastor for many years, on May 2. A disciple of Auguste Lecerf, known for his confessional Calvinism, Courthial was a remarkable preacher and teacher, the author of many articles and several books, two of which are presently being translated into English.
Pierre Courthial received an honorary doctorate from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1979. He was a member of the constituting Synod of the Reformed church at Lyon in 1938 and continued an often lone struggle for confessional orthodoxy against the developing pluralism in the church.