John A. D’Elia is the senior minister of the American Church in London and a graduate of the University of Stirling. David Bebbington supervised D’Elia’s PhD dissertation on Ladd.

A Place at the Table concentrates on the life and work of George Eldon Ladd, longtime professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. The monograph “traces the development of Ladd’s thought over the course of his life and pays special attention to the forces that animated that evolution and inspired his contribution to evangelical scholarship.” The study, critical but generally appreciative, mixes personal biography, social history, and intellectual history to tell the inspiring if troubling story of Ladd and the scholarly movement he helped to fuel. It thus builds on texts like George Marsden’s Reforming Fundamentalism (Eerdmans, 1987) and Rudolph Nelson’s The Making and Unmaking of an Evangelical Mind(Cambridge, 1987).

The text unfolds along chronological lines. Chapter one, “Early Life and Academic Preparation (1911–1950),” covers the early years of Ladd and roots his life in a struggle for authentic manhood. Apparently, Ladd grew up in an unhappy home that caused him to seek solace in Zane Grey novels. Whether or not this psychological cast fits the scholar, Ladd had an unhappy childhood. Converted in his teenage years, he matriculated at Gordon College before earning a BD at Gordon Divinity School. He married Winifred Webber in 1933, and he commenced a period of academic struggle in which he sought to earn higher credentials. He eventually earned a doctorate at Harvard University and became a full professor of New Testament at Gordon in 1949.

In chapter two, “The Emergence of a Strategy (1950–1954),” D’Elia covers the beginning of Ladd’s teaching career at Fuller even as he outlines how Ladd distanced himself from dispensational premillennialism early in his ministry. D’Elia notes that it was in this period that Ladd began to see himself as a scholar “who could lift conservative scholarship out of its lowly place” (p. 59). This quest consumed the rest of his days.

“Old Battles and Partial Victories (1954–1959),” chapter three, works through further battles surrounding Ladd’s “already-not yet” position on the return of Christ. The publication of The Blessed Hope (1956) cemented Ladd’s reputation as a careful if controversial thinker, even if its publishing came at great cost to Ladd’s family.

D’Elia traces Ladd’s attempt to push outside of the evangelical academy in chapter four, “Beyond the Borders (1959–1963).” The author deftly analyzes how Ladd studied and critiqued the thought of German NT scholar Rudolf Bultmann, observing that this very effort represented a step forward for evangelicals. In tackling, for example, Bultmann’s problematic conception of history, Ladd employed “serious reflection and attention to detail,” traits that “modeled a new style of evangelical engagement with divergent theological views” (pp. 101, 105). Some readers will differ with D’Elia’s interpretation of Fuller’s inerrancy controversy and agree with the critique and understandable concern of faculty members like Harold Ockenga and Harold Lindsell.

A Place at the Table examines Ladd’s most strenuous attempt to establish himself as a presence in the extra-evangelical world in chapter five, “The Costs of Engagement (1963–1966).” Based on his previous publishing successes, Ladd secured a contract for his monumental work Jesus and the Kingdom (1964) from the secular publishing house Harper and Row. Everything came crashing down, however, when British scholar Norman Perrin authored a scathing review of the book in Interpretation. So crushing was the review that Ladd experienced bodily shock when he received it. He wrote to his friend Calvin Schonhoven, “I’m going back to Eerdmans and fundamentalist consumption, and I can no longer in good conscience be the faculty agent trying to promote sympathetic interaction. The other crowd doesn’t want it” (p. 143).

Chapter six, “Surrendering the Quest (1966–1982),” closes the story of Ladd’s life and ministry. Based on interviews with friends and family, D’Elia argues, “The last fifteen years of Ladd’s life, while giving the appearance of being productive, saw the man tumble through a process of emotional, physical, and spiritual disintegration” (p. 149). It is difficult to sort out just how damaged Ladd was because he managed to publish a number of notable texts in this time, including the widely esteemed Theology of the New Testament (1974). Ladd suffered various health setbacks in the 1970s before passing away in October 1982.

D’Elia concludes the book with this reflection about Ladd: “He set a standard that later evangelical scholars would have to reach or exceed if their work was to find acceptance in the broader academy. Generations of highly regarded evangelical scholars owe an unpaid debt to George Ladd for opening doors to them at the highest levels of academic discourse, and making possible their place at the table” (p. 182).

A Place at the Table is a rewarding study of an essential but overlooked figure, George Eldon Ladd. The text is elegantly written, insightful, and an authoritative source on Ladd and the movement to which he devoted his career. Ranging over the turbulent life and ministry of one of evangelicalism’s greatest scholars, A Place at the Table simultaneously enlightens, informs, and involves the reader.

There are many topics that present themselves for further consideration in D’Elia’s engrossing study. We have space for comment on just one feature of A Place at the Table. Among inquiry into multiple collections, D’Elia relies heavily on oral interviews for his book, which allows the testimony of Ladd’s family and peers to shape his conception of the scholar. This relates to D’Elia’s portrayal of Ladd as a broken man at the end of his career. It seems that Ladd was quite affected by his perceived scholarly failures, and he seems to have plunged into alcoholism and familial neglect. But the critical reader is left unsure of the accuracy of D’Elia’s portrayal of Ladd due to the lack of traditional data to reinforce it. The rewarding text suffers from an overly psychological tint, a problem endemic to the aforementioned study of E. J. Carnell by Rudolph Nelson, The Making and Unmaking of an Evangelical Mind.

With these concerns noted, A Place at the Table offers much food for thought, particularly on the matter of the scholarly evangelical mind. Contemporary evangelicals connected to the academy are left deeply appreciative of the pioneering work of Ladd, among others. The “place at the table” that many evangelical scholars enjoy today clearly came at a price. This is true in the case of Ladd, Carnell, Henry, Ockenga, and many others of the neo-evangelical movement. The evangelical reader of D’Elia’s engrossing monograph cannot help but give thanks for the hard-won victories of Ladd and his peers, which demonstrated, contrary to the belief of some in the ambient culture, that acceptance of the gospel of Christ did not paralyze intellectual faculties and render them mute in the face of secular argument, but rather enlivened and inspired them to take intellectual dominion of every inch of the academic world.

In the final analysis, the reader—particularly the scholarly Christian reader—finds in the life of Ladd a needed warning. What will it profit a scholar, we might ask, to gain eminence and acclaim but to lose his family? Ladd’s example encourages scholars to avoid insipid Christian scholarship on the one hand and on the other to treasure our families and churches and to find our identity not in our CV or credibility in the wider academy, but in the finished work of Christ applied to our hearts. That, beyond anything else, is the place at the table that we, with all people, must have.

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