Clarifying a few items may advance the discussion. When I first encountered Brooks during my years as an MDiv student, I was enamored. His pastoral wisdom impressed me and his preaching theory compelled me. In fact, I expected to write supportively of Brooks but, as I peered below the surface—poring over volumes of sermons, essays, and biographical material—I was troubled. I eventually realized that evangelicals have simply assumed that Brooks intended with his words what they want them to mean. This is unfortunate. If we apply authorial intent—the sine qua non of communication—to Brooks, then we must interpret his work as it stands without inserting our own convictions to support it.

Evidently, you believe that my denominational and educational affiliations skew my assessment, but the book does not test Brooks according to systematic Calvinism, but against Bebbington’s evangelical quadrilateral—a well-established framework for understanding what evangelicals have believed for centuries, including Calvinists, Arminians, and all points between. In the volume, Brooks is contrasted to Calvinism only as it applies to his setting in history, his own doctrinal milieu. Indeed, Brooks was challenged by his contemporaries, including his own pastor, some of his parishioners, the Evangelical Education Society, and his own mother! Even his appointment as bishop was not without some hesitation. Fame tends either to soften or intensify analysis and, in Brooks’s case, the softening effect is tangible. These concerns, considered in tandem with a careful reading of his own sermons, his informal position as spokesperson for the liberal Broad Church Movement, and the shockingly humanist content of his academic essays, bring a conclusion most uncomfortable: Brooks did not believe as we wish he did, and his definition of preaching must be interpreted in light of his beliefs.

While much of the problem can be attributed to Brooks’s vagueness of expression, vagueness is no escape, for when has vagueness been a friend to preaching the gospel? Brooks’s imprecision has made “truth through personality” the Rorschach test of homiletics—one makes it mean whatever one wants it to mean. The very point of the book is to clear the fog and reconstruct “truth through personality” in way that is thoroughly evangelical, so that we can be sure what we mean when we use the phrase.

Clarifying a few items may advance the discussion. When I first encountered Brooks during my years as an MDiv student, I was enamored. His pastoral wisdom impressed me and his preaching theory compelled me. In fact, I expected to write supportively of Brooks but, as I peered below the surface—poring over volumes of sermons, essays, and biographical material—I was troubled. I eventually realized that evangelicals have simply assumed that Brooks intended with his words what we want them to mean. This is unfortunate. If we apply authorial intent—the sine qua non of reading texts honestly—to Brooks, then we must interpret his work as it stands without inserting our own convictions to support it.

Evidently, you believe that my denominational and educational affiliations skew my assessment, but the book does not test Brooks according to systematic Calvinism, but against Bebbington’s evangelical quadrilateral—a well-established framework for understanding what evangelicals have believed for centuries, including Calvinists, Arminians, and all points between. In the volume, Brooks is contrasted to Calvinism only as it applies to his setting in history, his own doctrinal milieu. Indeed, Brooks was challenged by his contemporaries, including his own pastor, some of his parishioners, the Evangelical Education Society, and his own mother! Even his appointment as bishop was not without some hesitation. Fame tends either to soften or intensify analysis and, in Brooks's case, the softening effect is tangible. These concerns, considered in tandem with a careful reading of his own sermons, his informal position as spokesperson for the liberal Broad Church Movement, and the shockingly humanist content of his academic essays, bring a conclusion most uncomfortable: Brooks did not believe as we wish he did, and his definition of preaching must be interpreted in light of his beliefs.

While much of the problem can be attributed to Brooks’s vagueness of expression, vagueness is no escape, for when has vagueness been a friend to preaching the gospel? Brooks’s imprecision has made “truth through personality” the Rorschach test of homiletics—one makes it mean whatever one wants it to mean. The very point of the book is to clear the fog and reconstruct “truth through personality” in way that is thoroughly evangelical, so that we can be sure what we mean when we use the phrase.