Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #505286 in Books
• Published on: 1990-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

Forde Hits A Homerun Again!
Theology is not meant to glorify library-bound scholars--its purpose is to enable proclamation! Gerhard Forde hits this home in this easy to read and wonderfully insightful book. Frequently using down-to-earth illustrations, he states his case with elegant simplicity. Regardless of your religious tradition, this book will enrich your understanding of God--guaranteed. You'll love it!

A Helpful Book
The author is a professor at a Lutheran seminary in the USA. His great virtue is that he is a faithful expositor of Martin Luther's brilliant insights into Christian theology. His vice is that, like his mentor, he has a polemical disposition. Forde is quick to deride perceived opponents, to the point where he can be inconsistent in his judgments. I would rate this book as worthy of three and a half stars, but with the caveat that readers should look out for occasional inconsistencies. Forde provides an excellent explanation of Luther's doctrine of the Word. The Word is the divine Logos, second person of the Holy Trinity. The Word will reveal God, regardless of any scientific or historical discrepancies in the words written by humans about God that the church has assembled into the canon of books that comprise the Bible. This distinction between the Word of God, and the words of humans about God was made by Augustine in his Homilies on John's Gospel. Forde also gives a good presentation of Luther's teaching regarding the revealed and hidden God, and the lesser-known distinction between the preached and unpreached God. The omnipotent God controls the universe, therefore God is ultimately responsible for all evil. That is the God we cannot fathom, the "unpreached" God. But God also becomes a baby born in squalor in the first century, lives a humble life, and then dies a horrible death at our hands - for us. That is the "preached" God, the revealed God from whom we receive the gift of life. After explaining Luther's doctrine of the Word, however, Forde rejects John's Gospel as inconsistent with his theory of the mechanics of proclamation (which he largely borrows from Willi Marxen), because in John's Gospel Jesus claims divine titles for himself, and Forde finds this is unacceptable. That is a limited view. Surely the Word of God speaks through John as much as the Word speaks through Paul, and was not the compilation of the canon inspired by the Holy Spirit? Brevard Childs has reminded us that we must take each portion of the Bible as part of a collective witness to Christ, intended as such by the church when the canon was settled. And, when Forde vertures out of his area of immediate expertise, he can make some gauche remarks. For example, Forde makes a sarcastic reference to the Eastern tradition of having an icon of Christ seated on his throne of judgment (o Christos pantokrator) in their church buildings, but elsewhere Forde indicates that he favors the Alexandrian Christology that regards the Logos as having suffered while incarnate. Does Forde know that icons of Christos pantokrator always show Jesus with the stigmata? Far from being stupid, they portray an entirely biblical image (see Revelation) and are quite consistent with the Christology that Forde favors. Forde makes one significant reference to Karl Barth, but it is dismissive. Oddly, in his book Homiletics, a version of which first appeared in English in the 1960's, Barth says that all theology is a prelude to preaching, which is precisely the theme of Forde's book. Notwithstanding these occasional defects, this is a very helpful book that emphasizes important principles involved in the task of proclaiming the gospel. The most important of which is that we must remember what are human words and what is God's Word, and that preachers must humbly use their human words to set the stage for God's Word to enter the hearts of their hearers.

Excellent Book for Bridging Systematic and Practical Theology!
I recently finished reading "Theology Is for Proclamation" by Gerhard Forde, and it was quite good! When I picked up this book, I was expecting a straightforward book on evangelism, but this excellent book turned out to be a refreshing and pleasant surprise! Rev. Dr. Forde supplies solid theology from the Word of God, and then applies it to the proclamation; emphasizing that systematic theology should lead to proclamation. (Christ should not be buried by systematic theology!) This book also draws on Martin Luther's "Bondage of the Will" to round out an excellent book on practical theology! If you're looking for an in-depth, outstanding book on Lutheran theology, be sure to pick this one up!
Also consider reading Gerhard Forde's "On Being a Theologian of the Cross," which is possibly his best work. It was written a few years after "Theology Is for Proclamation," and is much more clear and concise.