He recognizes that the vital question for preaching in his context is the question of authority. He asserted, in his day, that criticism no longer allowed the Bible to hold that place. "Yet," he says, "the gospel of the future must come with the note of authority."24 The Gospel itself carries this needed authority. After denying that authority comes through creeds or theology, he states, "The preacher does not call one to believe statements, but the Gospel of an urgent God."25 Forsyth maintained that the "one great preacher in history is the church,... And the first business of the individual preacher is to enable the church to preach."26 Indeed, Forsyth provides a model of one who, by focusing upon the centrality of Christ and the cross preached to his times without preaching his times.

This article has been adapted from Mark A. Johnson. "Christological Preaching for the Post-Modern Era." Ph.D. Dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1994.

1While most scholars writing about Forsyth note the influence of F. D. Maurice, W. L. Bradley indicates that the influence of Maurice upon Forsyth is probably overestimated. See William L. Bradley, P. T. Forsyth: The Man and His Work (London: Independent Press, 1952).

2Samuel J. Mikolaski, "The Theology of P. T. Forsyth," The Evangelical Quarterly, 36 (1964), 27. The use of the term "liberal" in this article is not done pejoratively but as an attempt to define a historic theological position.

3John H. Rodgers, The Theology of P. T. Forsyth (London: Independent Press, 1965), p. 77; see also Gwilym O. Griffith, The Theology of P. T. Forsyth (London: Lutterworth, 1948), pp. 36-60.

4See William Lee Bradley, The Man and His Work (London: Independent Press, 1952), p. 82. Such a shift is evidenced by such titles as "The Cross as the Final Seat of Authority" and "The Cruciality of the Cross."

5John E. Steely, "Introduction," in P. T. Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross (Wake Forest, North Carolina: Chanticleer Press, 1983), p. 5. Forsyth first published these lectures in 1909.

6P. T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907), pp. 282, 283.

7P. T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1909); The Work of Christ, (London: Independent Press), 1st edition 1910; The Cruciality of the Cross (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910); Christ on Parnassus (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911); The Holy Father and the Living Christ (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1898).

8See Bradley, The Man and His Work, p. 66.

9Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 5.

10See P. T. Forsyth, The Church and the Sacraments (London: Independent Press, 1949).

11The liberals based their belief on their perception that the Jesus painted in the Synoptic gospels did not give much explanation to the meaning of the cross. Forsyth argued that this was because the risen Christ explained it to his apostles after the fact.

12Rodgers, The Theology of P. T. Forsyth, pp. 103-131.

13Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 37.

14Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 13.

15Robert McAfee Brown, P. T. Forsyth: Prophet for Today (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1952), p. 71.

16P. T. Forsyth, "The Soul of Christ and the Cross of Christ," London Quarterly Review, 116 (1911), 195-196.

17See William Ray Rosser, "The Cross as the Hermeneutical Norm for Scriptural Interpretation in the Theology of Peter Taylor Forsyth" (Ph.D. Dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1990).

18Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 200.

19Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 178.

20Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 184.

21Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 15.

22Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 146.

23Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 166.

24Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 41.

25Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 44.

26Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 79.