Sessional Papers Volume 4, No. 5 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PLACE OF THEOLOGY IN PREACHING. In departing from your usual custom of assigning the address of this evening to distinguished scholars or ecclesiastical leaders, -and designating instead a speaker from a busy pastorate quite apart from the atmosphere of the scholastic centers, the aim is, I assume, to get the look of the minister's work from the standpoint of a toiler on the actual field. And there is inevitably a difference of viewpoint between the vantage ground of the biblical scholar and that of the preacher. The work of the minister has not quite the same look when viewed from the academic watch tower as from the beaten highway where it is geared and put on the road. The theory and the concrete reality do not exactly match as the face in the glass. Theological training is far more sane and practical now than in some of the decades of the old century, but in those rather- distant sixties our theological armor needed some careful readjustment, and when put to the test brought us some mortifying disillusionments. But since then many things have happened. Much water has been running under the theological bridge; and some of it never to return. It has not been an easy thing to teach theology, or to preach the gospel for the past third of a century. It has not been a favorable time for dogmatism or for ex cathedra dialectics. All our beliefs have been in the melting pot. Many ecclesiastical heirlooms have been rather roughly handled and some of them have been sent to the lumber lofts. We have been revising our creeds at a great rate. We have been fighting shy of the theological zone. We have been releasing our fury upon dogma. We have been actually trying to get on with a creedless Christianity. We have been smitten with the love of indefiniteness and have more than half ...