The Expository Times

Thomas Münzter, who died in the Peasants’ Revolt in 1525, was remembered as the revolutionary firebrand of the Reformation. His theology is an important component of early modern theology, with its mix of the mystical and the apocalyptic, prioritising experience of God, and its subordination of Scripture and tradition to that experience. His legacy in terms of intellectual history has been more far-reaching than appears, evincing a pattern of religion which was to have a significant impact, albeit indirectly, on revolutionary theology in England in the seventeenth century and later.

Preachers are called to take seriously the theological tensions within Scripture alongside the contingent sense of ‘certainty’ that ought to accompany the preaching moment. Addressing this paradox often invokes a call to ‘balance’, which sometimes proves to be as equally unbiblical as outright extremism. Drawing upon Barth’s notion of dialectical ‘one-sidedness’ and Chesterton’s expression of the ‘furious opposites’ of theological paradox, this article sketches the possibility of dialectically dogmatic preaching. This concept will be partially illustrated via an unexpected source, the influential British preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who exemplified a dialectical awareness which chaperoned his famously ‘dogmatic’ emphases. Such an approach highlights the vital importance of retaining the particularity of a theological truth in its radical fullness without ignoring its dialectical opposite, nor swamping the pulpit in perpetual ambiguity.