His 1907 Beecher lectures at Yale University have been preserved in book form as Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind. He speaks of finding his true and magnetic north in Christ and dedicates the book, "Unto him who loved me and gave himself for me." Like most of his other works, Positive Preaching was a series of lectures which were compiled into book form. Subsequently, Forsyth lays out no major systematization of his thought. Part of this lacking is attributed to Forsyth's reluctance to over-simplify the complex. Similarly, his writing is often difficult to understand. This is perhaps by design so as not to state the complex too simply.8

On Preaching

Forsyth's most significant contribution to the field of homiletics came in 1907 with his Beecher lectures at Yale. In them, he coined many phrases which are still quoted in homiletics classrooms and in preaching conferences today. He defined preaching as the "organized hallelujah of the believing community," and he maintained, "With preaching Christianity stands or falls because it is the declaration of a gospel.... It is the Gospel prolonging and declaring itself."9 Maintaining that the Bible is the "greatest sermon in the world," he urged preachers to preach expository sermons using long passages of Scripture.

Forsyth's theological understanding of the preaching event centers in his understanding of kerygma as the Spirit of the risen Christ revealing the meaning of His death and resurrection to the apostles whose writings are then understood as revelation.10 Such an understanding runs counter to the liberal schools of thought of his day which maintained that the apostles perverted the simple message of Jesus into a system of doctrines which he never intended.11 According to Forsyth, the Bible should not be reduced to a casebook of sterile doctrines and regulations. Instead, one should listen for the voice of Christ Himself preaching through scripture.

As Christ's work of redemption is the center of faith, the center of the kerygma is the cross. Such an understanding of revelation means that the preacher stands more in the tradition of the Hebrew prophet bringing a revelation from God, than that of the Greek orator bringing inspiration. If one hears the voice of Christ speaking through scripture, it stands to reason that in the preaching act, it is Christ's voice which should ultimately be heard as well.12

The point of Forsyth's kerygmatic emphasis on biblical preaching is that a distinction should be made between the gospel and the Bible. He asserts "Biblical preaching preaches the gospel and uses the Bible, it does not preach the Bible and use the Gospel."13 He argues that the Bible itself is the preaching of Christ. He says:

The New Testament (the Gospels even), is a direct transcript, not of Christ, but of the preaching about Christ, or the effect produced by Christ on the first generation, a transcript of the faith that worshipped Him. It is a direct record not of Christ's biography but of Christ's Gospel, that is to say of Christ neither as delineated, nor as reconstructed, nor as analyzed but as preached.... The stories told are but a trifling selection, not chosen to cast light on the motives of a deep and complex character, but selected entirely from a single point of view-- that of the crucified, risen, exalted, preached Saviour.14