Mohler proceeds to discuss the preacher’s authority and purpose. He then moves to counter the postmodern rejection of meta-narrative, arguing that the Christian story itself is a meta-narrative—“a grand story that explains all other stories, and to which all other stories must answer.” As preachers, he insists that even as we preach from individual texts, we must do so in the context of the “grand story” of Scripture and its “four great movements”: creation, fall, redemption and consummation.
Mohler believes that “every pastor is called to be a theologian,” which involves “teaching, preaching, defending, and applying the great doctrines of the faith.” He also reminds us that it is not enough to set out an array of “theological options” before a congregation; rather, the pastor-preacher must speak out of his own set of deep convictions, “drawn from his careful study of God’s Word and his knowledge of the faithful teaching of the church.”
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There is a helpful chapter on the challenge postmodern thought poses to the church and the role of the preacher in responding to it. He closes the volume with an exhortation on the urgency of preaching, an encouragement to preachers and a portrait of Charles Haddon Spurgeon as a model of one who had a passion for preaching. The irony of Mohler’s use of Spurgeon as a model is that the preaching ministry of that great Victorian pulpiteer differed significantly from the expository model Mohler argues as the only valid approach.
There is much of value in this book, which is clearly written out of a sense of urgency for the church and a love for the preaching of God’s Word. Legitimate objections may be made to Mohler’s more strident arguments for his own approach to exposition as the only valid one—indeed, we will have to eliminate most of Jesus’ teaching from the category of “preaching” if we discount narrative as a non-authentic approach.
Despite these concerns,
He Is Not Silent is a powerful argument for the importance of biblical exposition in today’s pulpits. It will provide a nourishing and encouraging reminder of the glory of our call and the urgency of our task.
