Scot McKnight On the Influence of George Ladd

New Testament scholar Scot McKnight shares the influence George Ladd has had on him. I, too, am among the influenced. My NT seminary professor, Manfred Brauch, assigned Ladd's A Theology of the New Testament to us. My hard cover copy is falling apart from reading and re-reading it. A few years ago I shared lunch with Manfred. I asked him if he would still use Ladd's text today. Yes, indeed, he would.

McKnight writes: "I was at Eerdmans the day they unloaded the freshly printed copies of his A Theology of the New Testament. I gobbled one up and by the time I graduated from college I had read and read and read that thing. Ladd’s argument was that salvation-history, the dynamic of now but not yet, was at the core of Jesus’ kingdom vision and the theology of the entire New Testament."

In Redeemer Ministry School we use Ladd's The Gospel of the Kingdom. This is the best single text on the Kingdom of God there is. How important is this? Remember that understanding "the kingdom of God/heaven" is the hermeneutical key to understanding the Real Jesus.

McKnight writes: "George Eldon Ladd was a Titan, his work irreplaceable, and his impact incalculable."

McKnight strongly recommends John D'Elia's biography of Ladd: A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America.