arapahoepark
Puritan Board Professor
Whose theological writings have the best prose to read if you want to be a better writer?
Best theological prose?
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Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
W. G. T. Shedd. Stylistic excellence is one of the good things that he gleaned from his interactions with Romanticism (indeed, it was one of the few good things about Romanticism).
Stole my thunder!
Regi Addictissimus
Completely sold out to the King
Shedd was my first inclination as well.
Puritan, Edward Reynolds called Rev. Bishop Hall the Christian Seneca. Hall's Contemplations is packed full of beautiful prose.
The sermons of Thomas Adams, Henry Smith, and Samuel Davies are fine specimens of literary beauty.
Thomas Watson and Matthew Henry are both somewhat undervalued masters of style, who write with literary as well as theological grace. Robert Hall and Robert Leighton also combine pleasure and instruction in a very high degree. George Swinnock is extremely vivid. John Newton has quite a natural and enjoyable writing voice, and other authors of the same period repay a look (e.g., James Hervey).
Moving forward in time, R.S. Candlish from Scotland is a natural master of considerable eloquence; J.W. Alexander and B.B. Warfield in America and C.H. Spurgeon in England likewise, and usually without the somewhat overwrought quality that can creep into Shedd.
Of course the obvious sources shouldn't be overlooked either, such as: Sir Thomas Browne, Robert Burton, C.S. Lewis. Naturally, reputation doesn't always prove reliable on examination. I have found that to be the case with Thomas Adams; sometimes what was admired was a particular skill in pulling off difficult feats cleverly (as in the metaphysical poets) and such enjoyment tends to fade with the fashion.
Moving forward in time, R.S. Candlish from Scotland is a natural master of considerable eloquence; J.W. Alexander and B.B. Warfield in America and C.H. Spurgeon in England likewise, and usually without the somewhat overwrought quality that can creep into Shedd.
Of course the obvious sources shouldn't be overlooked either, such as: Sir Thomas Browne, Robert Burton, C.S. Lewis. Naturally, reputation doesn't always prove reliable on examination. I have found that to be the case with Thomas Adams; sometimes what was admired was a particular skill in pulling off difficult feats cleverly (as in the metaphysical poets) and such enjoyment tends to fade with the fashion.
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RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Shedd. No comparison. He had lived and mastered classic English literature (uh-oh; that thread about reading fiction....)
Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
Generally speaking, the Disruption Worthies, such as William Cunningham, James Bannerman, et al, are a pleasure to read, as are other Scottish writers somewhat before that era such as Thomas McCrie. Again, I maintain it was one of the positives of Romanticism that its influence seemed to aid their literary style.
While I agreed with much else you said, I have to dissent from this recommendation. As I mentioned on another forum recently, you know that you have insomnia when you can read 70 pages of B. B. Warfield and still not get to sleep.
While I agreed with much else you said, I have to dissent from this recommendation. As I mentioned on another forum recently, you know that you have insomnia when you can read 70 pages of B. B. Warfield and still not get to sleep.
RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Generally speaking, the Disruption Worthies, such as William Cunningham, James Bannerman, et al, are a pleasure to read, as are other Scottish writers somewhat before that era such as Thomas McCrie. Again, I maintain it was one of the positives of Romanticism that its influence seemed to aid their literary style.
While I agreed with much else you said, I have to dissent from this recommendation. As I mentioned on another forum recently, you know that you have insomnia when you can read 70 pages of B. B. Warfield and still not get to sleep.
Same here. His short book on salvation is well-written. The rest put me to sleep. Hodge, by contrast, is quite warm.
There certainly are authors with whom every page is an uphill battle and you have to do your utmost to read quickly and without giving any time to notice the jarring sounds and incompatible rhythms of their writing. Warfield doesn't make many mistakes of that kind. There is likely more eloquence in his sermons, and more natural ease in his shorter writings, compared to the longer articles. It seems probable that he was master of more European literature than any of his colleagues. In any case, if you find him a little soporific I wonder if that's due to the equilibrium of his periods and the smoothness of his expressions and transitions. Like Fairbairn he tends to spell out what's in his mind lucidly, which leaves relatively little for the reader to do in terms of filling in the blanks or decompressing the involved.
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Polanus1561
Puritan Board Senior
James S. Stewart
Ed Walsh
Puritan Board Senior
Don't forget R L Dabney's Discussions. Down-to-earth southern style. Polite yet in your face presentation gospel truths. Arthur Pink has a pretty unique style as well. Lately, I've been enjoying D A Carson too.
RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
That's because Dabney had large sections of Milton memorized. Again, reminds me of a thread on reading fiction.....
Jacob is feeling saucy this morning. lol
RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
I am holding back. Trust me. Same thing could be said for Thornwell. When he was a teenager you could open randomly in Milton, read a line, and he would tell you what happened next.
EcclesiaDiscens.
Puritan Board Freshman
Dabney has already been mentioned so I’ll have to go with Richard Sibbes or either of the Cotton’s. Their prose is classic Puritan writing in terms of emotion and expression without being verbose or too lofty. Sibbes in The Bruised Reed is excellent at this and it seems as if he is directly exhorting you personally despite the generality of his topic.
RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
- Clarity
- Elegance
- Samuel Johnson
https://tentsofshem.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/the-ethics-of-rhetoric-weaver/
How to Write Well: Aspects of Grammatical Structure
This is the money of the book. Weaver demonstrates why some writers succeed where others fail.
The basic sentence: the mind is taking two or more classes and uniting them to the extent they share a formal unity (117). “The single subject-predicate frame has the broad sense of listing or itemizing” (119). Its brevity makes it a useful sentence to begin or end with.
The complex sentence: distinguishes classes according to hierarchy or cause and effect. Gibbon: “Rome fell because valor declined.” As Weaver notes, “It brings in the notion of dependence to supplement that of simple togetherness” (121).
The compound sentence: its structure conforms to a settled view of the world. It sees the world as an equilibrium of forces. This was the essence of the 18th century. We see the impulse for counterpoise. “One finds these compounds recurring: an abstract statement is balanced (in a second independent clause) by a more concrete expression of the same thing; a fact is balanced by its causal explanation” (125).
The noun: nouns connote substances (127). The noun/substance thus has a relationship in the sentence in which other words are “about” it.
The adjective: Weaver notes: “One of the common mistakes of the inexperienced writer, in prose as well as poetry, is to suppose that the adjective can set the key of discourse….nearly always the adjective has to have the way prepared for it. Otherwise, the adjective introduced before the noun collapses for want of support” (130). Of course, there are exceptions. There is nothing wrong with saying “The hot day.”
Take Henley’s poem:
Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole.
In this case the noun (night) has preceded the adjective (black). Had Henley said something like Black is the night or something like that, he would have lost his rhetorical force. “The adjective would have been presumptuous” (131).
In other words, the danger is that we are tempted to make the adjective bear more weight than the substantive.
Conjunctives: be careful here. Therefore doesn’t mean the same as thus. Therefore means “in consequence of” whereas thus means “in this manner,” and so indicates that some manner has already been described” (138).
“Also” simply denotes some mechanical sort of addition. “While” means at the same time. Whereas suggests some precise relationship.
Phrase: “the strength normally found in the preposition can be greatly diminished by connection with an abstract noun” (139).
Participial phrase: the participial phrase allows for sharp, succinct language and “the opportunities of subordination” (140). The “man who is carrying a spear” becomes “the spear-carrying man.” These auxiliary structures in the sentence allows for the central though to emerge more readily. Weaver notes that because English intonation places emphasis on the last word in the sentence, participial phrases should not be at the end of the sentence (140).
Lagniappe
The rhetorical syllogism is the enthymeme. The audience supplies the missing proposition.
Good prose can be identified by its ability to sustain rereading (out loud) with continued or increased delight. An important element is that the words were chosen and situated in a way that communicates the content clearly; but also that the sounds are in harmony with the sense and with one another.
Charles Johnson
Puritan Board Junior
I usually identify good prose as having a sort of discursive, conversational style where ideas are presented in a natural way. In terms of theological method, this tends to amount to an inductive method, not unlike Calvin's Institutes, where patterns are presented before generalizations, the opposite being the very didactic, bullet-pointed approach of the scholastics. I want things I'm reading to sound like a story in The Atlantic, not an AP correspondent's report. In terms of good authors, I don't object to anything said so far.
Can you provide some of his outstanding examples?
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RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
I'll have to get it down later. He was just a good prose writer. I'll look later if I remember.
Good prose - the kind that makes you see things in a clearer or brighter light, or things you'd never seen before - and makes you wish you could write like that.
For plainness and brevity - JC Ryle
For spiritual warmth - Thomas Boston
For precision and beautiful theological accuracy - Hugh Martin
For on-point charm - Carl Trueman
For plainness and brevity - JC Ryle
For spiritual warmth - Thomas Boston
For precision and beautiful theological accuracy - Hugh Martin
For on-point charm - Carl Trueman
bookslover
Puritan Board Doctor
One of the greatest prose writers of the 20th century was George Orwell (1903-1950). His essays, especially, as superb examples of clear, limpid, English style.
Nothing to do with theology, of course.
Nothing to do with theology, of course.
The Doctor would disagree with you on this one. He was a speaker, not a writer, and his daughter remembered him being disgusted with proposed edits to a volume of sermons and telling her to replace all the markers of speech. There are times when his eloquence comes through in his printed works, but I find it helps to have listened to him enough that you can hear his voice in your mind while you read along.
Here's some good Shedd (stylistically speaking), from The Doctrine of Endless Punishment, ch. 3:
One sin makes guilt, and guilt makes hell.
A single remark remains to be made respecting the extent and scope of hell. It is only a spot in the universe of God. Compared with heaven, hell is narrow and limited. The kingdom of Satan is insignificant in contrast with the kingdom of Christ. In the immense range of God’s dominion, good is the rule, and evil is the exception. Sin is a speck upon the infinite azure of eternity; a spot on the sun. Hell is only a corner of the universe. The Gothic etymon (Hohle, Holle) denotes a covered-up hole. In Scripture, hell is a “pit,” a “lake”; not an ocean. It is “bottomless,” but not boundless. The Gnostic and Dualistic theories, which make God, and Satan, or the Demiurge, nearly equal in power and dominion, find no support in Revelation. The Bible teaches that there will always be some sin, and some death, in the universe. Some angels and men will forever be the enemies of God. But their number, compared with that of unfallen angels and redeemed men, is small. They are not described in the glowing language and metaphors by which the immensity of the holy and blessed is delineated.
From his "Evils of Pulpit Notoriety" here is some less euphonious Shedd:
The declamatory and sensational preacher gathers around him only a particular class. It is a class marked by defects that require to be removed rather than strengthened. They are commonly the same defects which the preacher has himself. Like priest, like people. He abhors doctrine and they abhor it. He talks metaphors, relates anecdotes, and raises laughter, and they like metaphors, anecdotes, and laughter. He favors loose and easy-going ethics, and they enjoy the same. In this way the preacher speedily becomes the "great man" of his congregation and then
"Like Cato gives his little senate laws,
And sits attentive to his own applause."
One sin makes guilt, and guilt makes hell.
A single remark remains to be made respecting the extent and scope of hell. It is only a spot in the universe of God. Compared with heaven, hell is narrow and limited. The kingdom of Satan is insignificant in contrast with the kingdom of Christ. In the immense range of God’s dominion, good is the rule, and evil is the exception. Sin is a speck upon the infinite azure of eternity; a spot on the sun. Hell is only a corner of the universe. The Gothic etymon (Hohle, Holle) denotes a covered-up hole. In Scripture, hell is a “pit,” a “lake”; not an ocean. It is “bottomless,” but not boundless. The Gnostic and Dualistic theories, which make God, and Satan, or the Demiurge, nearly equal in power and dominion, find no support in Revelation. The Bible teaches that there will always be some sin, and some death, in the universe. Some angels and men will forever be the enemies of God. But their number, compared with that of unfallen angels and redeemed men, is small. They are not described in the glowing language and metaphors by which the immensity of the holy and blessed is delineated.
From his "Evils of Pulpit Notoriety" here is some less euphonious Shedd:
The declamatory and sensational preacher gathers around him only a particular class. It is a class marked by defects that require to be removed rather than strengthened. They are commonly the same defects which the preacher has himself. Like priest, like people. He abhors doctrine and they abhor it. He talks metaphors, relates anecdotes, and raises laughter, and they like metaphors, anecdotes, and laughter. He favors loose and easy-going ethics, and they enjoy the same. In this way the preacher speedily becomes the "great man" of his congregation and then
"Like Cato gives his little senate laws,
And sits attentive to his own applause."
Logan
Puritan Board Graduate
I was going to mention Adams as someone whose style was very unique and well-crafted, although my wife thinks he's too flowery.
Wasn't he referred to by some as the Shakespeare of the Puritans?
Indeed I have become quite a fan of 19th century Scottish preaching for the beauty of its theological prose. In another thread I recently highly recommended James Hamilton for just this reason. Here's a short paragraph that illustrates this: http://www.kerux.com/doc/2301A2.asp
I have also become a big fan recently of John Ker. His sermons (found here https://books.google.com/books?id=A...K0KHe_ODx4Q6AEwCnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false) are quite stimulating for communicating truth in a very beautiful and picturesque form too.
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