The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church
Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church: Volume 6, The Modern Age.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. Paper. 997 pages, $50.00. ISBN 978‑0‑8028‑ 3139‑2.
When Hughes Oliphant Old launched his monumental, multi‑volume history of preaching and worship, he set the bar of quality high. I must say that Volume Six is my favorite in the series of which Old promises one more.
Because of the massive size and scope of the enterprise, few preachers will buy it or few courses will use it as a text. Volume Six seems especially expansive, running to almost 1,000 pages. Certainly no history of preaching shares more of the actual preaching of the Christian communicators covered (though 17 pages on the great Edinburgh preacher Thomas Guthrie seems overdone).
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Old is now in his 70th year and presently Dean of the Institute for the Study of Reformed Worship at Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, South Carolina. As a liturgist and specialist in worship, he constantly makes a good case for preaching as worship, but in some cases goes too far. For example, he debates whether G. Campbell Morgan really preached or was just a teacher because his Bible teaching didn't seem to be worship (887).
The copious and compendious wealth of data in this study is dizzying. One can learn new things on every page. The long French and German footnotes could be excised to reduce bulk, but I must say I never knew before that Charles Haddon Spurgeon took communion every day either at the Tabernacle or in his home. His basic instincts on Scripture are sound (581), and his briefer chapters on Black preaching and Southern Baptist preaching are positive.
His outstanding treatment of Timothy Dwight's vision of a Christian commonwealth and evangelical confrontation with the Enlightenment have significant contemporary relevance. The historical seams are, on the whole, informative and incisive. Having loved F.W. Krummacher for his great preaching on the Cross of Christ, I was elated to discover from Old that he also published a volume of sermons entitled The Risen Redeemer. Such discoveries are invaluable as we seek freshness and forcefulness in preaching the great special days in the Christian calendar, in my view some of the hardest sermons to prepare.
Some earlier identified sub‑texts and undercurrents continue to occasion concern as we canvas this high‑quality work and readers should be aware of them, for whatever they are worth:
1) The tendency to make systematic Calvinism the standard of orthodoxy is troubling. Every historian has a bias, but is failure to preach TULIP really the mother of all apostasy? Old loves the Wesleys and William Sangster but "frontier Arminianism" is naughty, and what condemns Norman Vincent Peale is that he was an Arminian (572). (The truth is, many Arminians don't want him either, as William Sangster and A.W. Tozer would be quick to say). When Old is so generous and gracious to Schleiermacher and Harry Emerson Fosdick—who denied supernaturalism entirely—how about a little brotherliness to those for whom Dort is not the New Jerusalem?