Plantinga To Give Princeton Lectures

Rev. Cornelius “Neal” Plantinga Jr., the retired president and a professor emeritus of theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, is busy preparing a series of six lectures for Princeton Theological Seminary about the life-enhancing value of extensive reading for preachers and others.

Plantinga is this year’s presenter for Princeton’s prestigious Warfield Lecture Series, which is named in honor of Annie Kinkead Warfield, wife of Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, a professor of theology at the seminary from 1887 to 1921.

Plantinga, who retired from CTS last year, will lecture for four days on the importance of being a keen observer of everyday interactions, a life-long learner and gaining wisdom by reading journalism, novels, and non-fiction books of all kinds.

During the Warfield Lectures, which run March 26-29, Plantinga will discuss such topics as “Sermon Illustrations from Attentive Reading,” “Tuning the Preacher’s Ear for Language,” and “Whatever You Get From Your Reading, Get Wisdom.”

Titled, “Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists,” the lectures will draw from what he has gained from extensive reading as well as from material he uses in a preaching seminar that he has held, along with other co-presenters, for several years during the summer.

“Preachers stand in the world with a book in their hand. For us Christians, the Bible is our community book. So, in a way, the preacher's job is only to say in other words what a text says — dressing it up or down, coloring and amplifying it in such a way that when people hear the preached text they hear God's word to them,” he says.

This is, however, a formidable task, requiring wisdom and experience.

With this in mind, Plantinga began to read imaginatively for preaching about 40 years ago when he pastored his first church. He was young and wanted to bring depth and authenticity to his sermons.

In discussions with fellow preachers, he concluded that he needed to develop a better sense of the hopes, dreams, tragedies, triumphs and other experiences that the people to whom he was preaching faced.

“As a preacher, you preach about sin, grace, longing, homecoming, undergoing trials, forgiveness, union with Christ, and hope for the kingdom of God,” he says.

With the leading of God, preachers also address broken marriages, abuse of children, and people struggling with unemployment or sickness.

“General reading can expand a person’s vision of God’s kingdom . . . It can also help you to better understand (in your heart) the powerful passages in the Bible,” he says.

Writers and other artists also help you see and feel the nature of the complexity of life and help you to speak to people about the Bible in ways that can touch, comfort and encourage them, he says.

Over the years, his mind and heart have been informed and changed by reading such novelists as John Steinbeck, Flannery O’Connor, and Marilyn Robinson, and journalists such as Sonia Nazariou, author Enrique’s Journey, the story of a Honduran boy’s journey to find his mother in the United States.

“A program of general reading gives you understanding, discernment, and a sense of trends and currents in life,” says Plantinga.

Reading also expands your ability to identify with others. Plantinga says a scene in John Steinbeck’s novel “Grapes of Wrath” helped give him insight into compassion. This is a scene in which a poor father on the road to California with his two sons stops at a diner and tries to buy a loaf of bread for 10 cents, all the money that he had.

Steinbeck’s deeply observant description of the interaction between the father, a wise-cracking waitress, a macho guy working the grill, and two truck drivers provides a valuable glimpse into how hard it can be for people to be compassionate — and yet they often are, and in the most astonishing ways.

Plantinga says reading informs his sermons and he only refers to books or articles sparingly, since his main role is to provide information and guidance he receives from the Bible.

But reading does awaken him to ambiguity and enduring truths in the world and the need to keep that in mind when standing in the pulpit.

“One of the reasons for reading is to discover life is way more complicated, merciful, horrible, messed up, decent and full of grace than you had imagined,” he says.

“You also are able to see how God’s grace keeps showing up in the most unpredictable people in the most unappealing circumstances.”