By David L. Larsen
Still, to read after Forsyth — even in his greatest work The Person and Place of Jesus Christ or The Soul of Prayer — is to encounter some obscurity, some “dark sayings.” J.H. Jowett, the craftsman of pristine clarity (and a fellow Congregationalist), asked him about his preaching on the Cross: “I do not understand what you mean.” He was more the prophet than the architect, more incisive than persuasive, more corrective than attractive. He spoke of pulpit poets but he was not one.
There was a treacherous fault line in Forsyth. Karl Barth praised him and stated that in England they do not need Barth because they have Forsyth. He is sometimes called “Barth before Barth.” In other words in fleeing the house of liberalism he did not come all the way home to orthodoxy. Some of the leaves of higher critical and evolutionary thought were still clinging to the branches in the spring thaw. The Bible contains the Word of God but is not to be identified with it. Like the Barth of Romerbrief (1918) he has no truck with verbal inspiration, shrinking back from propositional revelation (showing his retention of the Kantian epistemology of neo-orthodoxy). Like Barth he does not believe in general revelation. Like Barth he was exceptionally pastoral (remember Barth’s prison preaching).
Advertisement
At a time when we see the continuing influence of Barth on evangelical thinking, it is imperative to mark the fault-line in Forsyth and — in his compromised condition — his inability to ward off theological disaster for the Congregationalists of Britain. His denigration of sound doctrine was lethal.
Yet in his insistence that the Cross of Christ is our final authority and that redemption is the highest reality, he needs to be heard in our hearts and echoed in our proclamation. “He found his center and stayed there” needs to be said of us. He knew his new stand made him something of a museum piece but that did not faze him. His verbal thrusts were not always chivalrous and he was the classic hypchondriac. He loved Kierkegaard and Germany and World War I greatly depressed him when he thought of his old German friends. His library was one third in German.
He was both praised and scolded for his style. He was, as are we all, a human preacher with the treasure in the clay pot. But we love him because he championed the Cross of Christ as central and penal. He preached, “The Cross must carry us before we can carry the Cross.”
His fully realized eschatology leaves us on empty but he so well protested against vagueness in theology which is like “Thomas Hardy’s moorland in a dark winter” as he put it. He disliked pietism (like Ritschl) but adored Bernard of Clairveaux. This epigrammatic genius in the pulpit has much to offer those who search out his still very relevant books.
______________
David L. Larsen is Professor Emeritus of Preaching of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
______________
Resources:
Marvin W. Anderson,ed. The Gospel and Authority: A P.T. Forsyth Reader (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971)
Robert McAfee Brown, P.T. Forsyth: Prophet for Today (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962)
Peter Taylor Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907). His Beecher Lectures at Yale., The Cruciality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1909 rep.), The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1909), The Soul of Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1916), Revelation Old and New: Sermons and Addresses (London: Independent Press, 1962)
Gwilym O. Griffith, The Theology of P.T. Forsyth (London:Lutterworth,1948)
A.M.Hunter, P.T. Forsyth (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974)
Donald G. Miller, Browne Barr, Robert S. Paul, P.T. Forsyth: The Man, The Preacher’s Theologian, Prophet for the Twentieth Century(Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1981)
John H. Rodgers, The Theology of P.T. Forsyth: The Cross of Christ and the Revelation of God (London: Independent Press, 1965)
B.B. Warfield, “The Purpose of the Seminary” in Selected Shorter Writings, I (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1970) 374-378
