 On the
Shelves...
On the Shelves features book recommendations from
Princeton Seminary faculty and staff to help alumni/ae choose books that contribute to
their personal and professional growth.
From James F. Kay, the Joe R. Engle Associate Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics,
and editor, Princeton Seminary Bulletin
The Foolishness of Preaching: Proclaiming the Gospel against the Wisdom of the World by
Robert Farrar Capon. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998
There is a genre that falls into the category of "there are a few things I want to
say." Robert Capon, author of twenty-four books, culinary artist, and Episcopal
priest, has a few things he wants to say to other preachers. But just as he lets us have
it, he trains his sights on his own prejudices, so that we can all have a good laugh at
ourselves. Capon, raised an Anglo-Catholic, rails against the spirituality industry. A
self-identified "liberal," he decries a persecuting political correctness
focusing on the sexual sins of pastors, and he laments the "liturgical jihad"
that chops displeasing passages out of the lectionary.
To his credit, Capon begins with the question of what is the Gospel. (How many
preaching books do that?) He urges his preachers to have a "passion for the
Passion," and to see in the cross of Christ the place where God "has torn up his
membership card in the God Union" and where saving ourselves by "religion pills,
spirituality pills, and morality pills" ends. Grace meets us in our sins, not after
them. The scandal of the church is not that she and her ministry have a "fair share
of the world’s liars, louts, and closet letches—not to mention our cadres of
boozers, backbiters, and bores," but that in the face of this situation the church
continually exchanges the Gospel of grace for the self-appointed role of "God’s
moral cop on the beat." As Capon writes, "If a sinner can’t proclaim
forgiveness, who’s left to preach?" Who, indeed?
The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the
Christian Church, Vol 2: The Patristic Period by Hughes Oliphant Old, Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998
At the turn of the last century, Southern Baptist Edwin A. Dargan of
Louisville authored an encyclopedic two-volume History of Preaching. Reprinted and
enlarged in 1954, Dargan’s magisterial monument has remained definitive.
Now, Hughes Oliphant Old has emerged from his years of European study (a
doctorate under J. J. von Allmen), of preaching to his Indiana congregation, and of
writing wide-ranging books on worship to project a seven-volume successor to Dargan for
the twenty-first century: The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of
the Christian Church. Notice the title. Preaching is anchored to the reading of the
Scriptures in the context of worship. Two volumes are now out. Two more are announced for
this year.
Preachers who delve into these volumes are in for a treat. They read
beautifully. They read irenically. But they are written without apology by a Presbyterian
preacher-scholar who claims the treasures of the ancient church. In volume two, he
introduces us to the two Cyrils, the Cappadocian Fathers, Chrysostom, and Augustine, among
many others. Old has the enthusiasm of a tour guide in the Holy Land. "Take a look at
this!" we hear him say. And as we do, we are handed a wide-angle lens to see that, as
hard as preaching is and has to be, we are not alone. We stand in a sweeping, often
surprising, landscape peopled by fellow-pilgrims who have announced the Gospel in every
age. Old navigates our terrain well, showing the paths, often overlooked, by which
scriptural preaching still proceeds.
© Copyright 1999 Princeton Theological Seminary
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