This dissertation assesses--from an evangelical perspective--Phillips Brooks's classic definition of preaching as "truth through personality" and, after pinpointing its substantial deficiencies, reconstructs it with evangelical doctrines. Chapter 1 describes the legacy of Brooks's definition among evangelicals. Chapter 2 provides the contextual information necessary for evaluating Brooks's thought, with attention given to the way that he responded to the influences of romanticism in the late nineteenth century. Chapter 3 unveils Christ's incarnation as the foundation for Brooks's preaching definition, and observes the way that his formulation and anthropocentric application of the doctrine shapes his "truth through personality" concept. Chapter 4 evaluates Brooks's definition in light of evangelical foundations for preaching, and identifies its three significant dangers. First, "truth through personality" promotes a nonpropositional form of revelation in which the preacher's thoughts on truth trump the truthfulness of Scripture. Second, the definition forces too close an association between God's Word and the preacher by conceiving preaching as a replica of the incarnation--an ontological impossibility and an unbiblical notion. Third, "truth through personality" embraces a classical form of rhetorical ethos that is consistent with Quintillian, but inadmissible in Christian preaching. Tested against Pauline literature, Brooks's approach to ethos appears biblically deficient and adverse to the gospel. Chapter 5 proposes that the phrase, "truth through personality," best serves preaching when conceived as an axiom and not as a definition, and asserts that an evangelical construction of the phrase emerges only from biblical anthropological and soteriological doctrines. Constructing the phrase in an evangelical manner, though, requires three clarifications. First, preaching extends God's mode of special revelation-- through human personality--not ontologically or phenomenologically, but functionally as a means of accommodating human weakness. Second, preaching--as a person-to-person encounter--forms a means by which God accomplishes his saving work. Third, when informed by evangelical anthropology and soteriology, "truth through personality" maintains the notion of the preacher as a personal witness to a divine message, not as another incarnation. Finally, the chapter discusses the practical implications of an evangelical construction of "truth through personality," including personal presentation and sermon application. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The purpose of this dissertation is to expound the theology of Phillips Brooks as it is set forth in his writings, published and unpublished, for the contri bution which his thought may make, not to the field of technical theology, but to the use of doctrine in the nurture of souls. The problem in such a study is that of drawing from his non-technical language, more illustrative than definitive, the specific meanings which differentiate one school of theology from another. Part I is a survey of Brooks's theology as a whole. He chose, as the expression of his peculiar genius, to devote himself to the translation of doctrine in terms of life. Identified with the broad, evangelical elements in the Episcopal Church, he held generally to the words of creedal orthodoxy while giving them such a breadth of interpretation as to bring him to a position in harmony with the "New Theology" of the last half of the nineteenth century. Running through all his writings are certain conceptual principles which stand as presuppositions and ruling factors in his thought: the immediateness of the divine influence, the sanctity of the common life, the naturalness of the ideal, the dignity and worth of t he human soul, and the supremacy of the spiritual over the formal. On the basis of these principles, Brooks reduced the essentials of Christian doctrine to these four ideas: (1) the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man: (2) the redemption of man by Christ; (3) the perfectibility of the soul; and (4) the immortality of hunan life [TRUNCATED]