On Sunday I included the following quote in a post on Anthony Thiselton’s hermeneutics of the cross. The quote is so good I want to reproduce it here as a reminder of the importance of careful exegetical and theological work in the communicative task of Christian teaching and preaching.

The fact that a later age may find it hard to understand traditional ideas is not sufficient reason for replacing them. It simply shows how necessary it is to open up these ideas to later generations by interpretation, and thus keep their meaning alive. The problems that people have with ideas like expiation and representation (or substitution) in our secularized age rest less on any lack of forcefulness in the traditional terms than on the fact that those who are competent to interpret them do not explain their context with sufficient forcefulness or clarity (Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 2:422; cited (with emphasis) in Thiselton,  The Hermeneutics of Doctrine, 312).