I am teaching a class in New Testament Theology this fall. Although it is getting a bit dated, I am going to use George Eldon Ladd’s A Theology of the New Testament as the main text. So much could be said about Ladd's impact on Evangelical theology, not only during his lifetime, but also the legacy he left for those who came after him. Ladd’s Theology and his work The Presence of the Future had a profound impact on my understanding of the entire Bible. It was Ladd who once and for all rid my theology of any vestiges of Dispensationalism. Although Ladd was not a Pentecostal by any stretch, his work on the kingdom of God, especially in The Presence of the Future, provided Pentecostals with a badly needed approach, structure and system to their own theology. For a long time Pentecostals tried to mix their Pentecostalism with Dispensationalism, resulting in a hodge-podge of contradiction. Ladd’s emphasis on the presence of the Kingdom provided a theological foundation for a Pentecostal understanding of spiritual gifts. His did this all the while interacting with critical historical methods, showing how they can serve to benefit the Evangelical rather than work against them. Ladd did not dismiss the “liberal” theologian but rather did his theology in conversation with them, taking what was good because there was good to take. He was a theologian a generation ahead of the rest of Evangelicals, and for that he was criticized from both the right and left. He was the embodiment of much of what Fuller Theological Seminary has been during its history. I only regret that I am too young to have ever sat in his classroom. In a PhD seminar at Fuller Robert Guelich spoke so highly of Ladd that we all saw devouring his Theology as sort of a rite of passage. The little part that I had with a few other PhD students updating the bibliographies while my mentor Donald Hagner edited the revised edition of Ladd’s Theology made me feel like I had a small (tiny) connection to his legacy.

A biography has recently been published on the life of George Ladd by John A. D'Elia entitled A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America (Oxford, 2008). I have the book on order and will comment more on it after I read it. For now I will only refer to Michael Bird’s Blog where he has reviewed the book (http://euangelizomai.blogspot.com/2008/06/book-review-place-at-table-by-john.html). I had heard of some of Ladd’s struggles, but this book apparently reveals a side of Ladd that was not the subject of public conversation, at least not when I was at Fuller. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the book and yet, even if all of Ladd’s shortcomings are true, it only confirms to me something I see all the time. I never cease to be amazed at how able God is to use those who some would wish to deem “disqualified”. I am thinking about reading excerpts from the biography to my class this fall in hope of clarifying this point to my students.