In the introduction to his biography of John Bunyan, Gordon Wakefield describes the preaching of Alexander Whyte who often used Bunyan’s characters for his sermons. Wakefield says of Whyte, “the discourses in Bunyan were no desiccated scholasticism, the arid logic-chopping of predestinarians wrestling with their election. Often conducted with tears, they spoke of the eternal verities and consolations of faith.”

Not so long ago Trevin Wax reviewed Erasing Hell by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle, a response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins. In his comments Wax complains that, ‘No one is discarding hell because of the convincing nature of Bell’s eisegesis. No… people are following Bell because of the compelling way he has made his case…The power of Love Wins is not in Bell’s exegesis or in his thoughtfulness. The power of Bell’s book is in its aesthetic qualities. Bell is appealing to the sentiments and emotions in a way that proves effective for many disaffected evangelicals today…We grasp the issues, but others grasp the medium.’

Liam Thatcher picked up on this and pleaded for some truthful beauty and beautiful truth saying, “Ultimately, whilst I may favour the Reformed perspective, I am drawn to beauty. And I wish beyond wish that there were more people from the orthodox perspective writing with the same level of creative engagement as some of the emergent guys. Because frankly, some of the Reformed guys make me want to switch sides… Call it petulance, but I have artistic tendencies that are often unfulfilled by many of the guys I read or listen to.”

So it seems that ‘arid logic-chopping’ remains a weaknesses in the Calvinist armour some several centuries later.

Let me give you two examples in videos. First up The Gospel Coalition and Erwin Lutzer on the resurrection.

Now Rob Bell.

Can you spot the difference? Now I’m probably not being entirely fair to Mr Lutzer. But frankly nothing on The Gospel Coalition is as compelling as what Rob Bell offers here. Not even close. It isn’t simply about the facts, it’s about how the facts are told. Bell is a story-teller and a superb one at that.

By comparison he makes most people sound like this:

Those who would complain at the content must realise that the medium is the message and the new reformed haven’t quite got that yet.

We need the ‘eternal verities and consolations’ of the faith told in ways that draw the heart, capture the imagination, set the mind racing with ideas and most importantly catch our gaze at the beauty, mystery and majesty of God. We need words and we need to use them better, but we need to realise we live in a visual age, we must capture the eye as well as the ear.

I’m guilty of that and most preachers will shrink at the thought of more visual props, but if we’re communicating via the internet what I see can matter as much if not more than what I hear. But we need words, wonderful words, beautiful sentences and masters of the language that know how to tell a better story and not just the sound of an axe or even scalpel being brought to logic.