378 Why make the Gospel so difficult?

"Franklin Johnson was a professor at the University of Chicago. His book, The Quotations of the New Testament From The Old – Considered in the Light of General Literature, is a valuable resource in discerning the manner in which the New Testament writers employed texts from the Old Testament in the propagation and defense of the gospel.

While reading this volume recently, I ran across a rather unusual statement. Not unusual on its merit, but unusual from the vantage point of issuing from a distinguished professor in a prestigious institution such as the University of Chicago. More than a century ago, Professor Johnson wrote:

"The New Testament was not written for a limited number of learned men; but for the great world, and for the churches gathered out of it, and thus for people of ordinary intelligence" (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1895, p. 19).

I was struck by the dramatic contrast between this statement, and the rarified stratum in which many "scholars" currently operate, speaking in "unknown tongues" of technical jargon that virtually none, outside the cult of sacred intelligentsia, can decipher."

Full article here.