Category Archives: Quotes

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

In 1994, the historian Mark Noll published his now famous work, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.  In the very first sentence of the opening chapter, Noll goes right for the jugular: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”1  Noll’s thesis seems to have been anticipated in some ways by the Anglican cleric and evangelical leader John Stott, who wrote the following in his 1982 book on preaching (although it should be noted that Stott’s purview seems to be much broader than evangelicalism, extending to Western Christendom as a whole): Continue reading The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

  1. Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 1.

Robert Jenson: Servant of the Church, Evangelical and Catholic

September 5 marked the passing of the Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson.  Widely regarded as the leading American theologian of his generation, and perhaps, as some maintain, the greatest American theologian since Jonathan Edwards, Jenson was  a leading influence in advocating for a theological renewal of the church that was, at one and the same time, profoundly evangelical and catholic. Continue reading Robert Jenson: Servant of the Church, Evangelical and Catholic

Newbigin on the Challenge of Preaching Christ Today

In the 18th Joseph Smith Memorial Lecture delivered at Overdale College in Birmingham, England in 1979, published as a pamphlet under the title “Preaching Christ Today”, Lesslie Newbigin suggested that the crucial issue facing preachers today is discerning the proper relationship between Law and Gospel.  (Interestingly, this was also a pressing concern for Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his seminarians in the mid-30s.) Continue reading Newbigin on the Challenge of Preaching Christ Today

Some Delectable Morsels on Preaching from Robert Farrar Capon

In addition to teaching two theology courses at Tyndale Seminary in the upcoming fall semester, I am also going to be teaching the “Basics of Preaching” course at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto.  In preparation for my foray into the homiletics classroom, I’ve been revisiting many of the preaching books I’ve read over the years.  One such book is The Foolishness of Preaching: Proclaiming the Gospel against the Wisdom of the World by the late Episcopalian priest Robert Farrar Capon. Continue reading Some Delectable Morsels on Preaching from Robert Farrar Capon