Rev. Dr. Trygve Johnson, Dean of the Chapel at Hope College, presented the second lecture of the month-long Manifold Greatness exhibit and programing series on March 6. The lecture, entitled “Preaching the Manifold Greatness: Lessons from the Authorized Version” both provided a brief history of the climate that led to the creation of the King James Version of the Bible and offered five lessons that modern preachers can draw from the King James Bible. These lessons were as follows: to consider tradition as a servant to aid continued scholarship rather than as a master, to acknowledge the missional instinct in the King James Bible in order to preach in a way that is both understandable and challenging, to recognize that eloquence in preaching should comes as a byproduct of the aim for truth and accuracy rather than as the goal, to use the substance of style in the King James Bible to help discern the appropriate language to use for a situation, and to ultimately be committed to the Word as revealed through Christ rather than a particular version of the Bible.
Programing will continue on Thursday with a lecture on the printing of the King James Bible by Dr. Pablo Alvarez from the University of Michigan. The lecture will take place at 11 a.m. in the Granberg Room on the second floor of Van Wylen Library.
— Bethany Stripp, Library Student Blogger