Johannis Trisfant
Abstract
Preachers are expected to speak with conviction, yet not to claim more certainty than their text will bear. Using Stephen Toulmin’s model of argument, this article asks whether the two can be told apart. Toulmin’s modal qualifier is normally a limiting device, weakening a claim according to how far its warrant carries. In the expository preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones the qualifier does the opposite—exclusivity, impossibility, universality, categorial certainty—yet the same preacher hedges accurately when his warrant is an inference about human behavior. The reversal traces to a tension, in The Uses of Argument, between two accounts of what the qualifier measures. Four tests distinguish such qualifiers from mere emphasis; three conditions determine when preaching with certainty remains answerable to its hearers.
Keywords: Toulmin model; modal qualifier; field-dependence; backing; rebuttal; religious argumentation; homiletics; Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Author: Johannis Trisfant
Year: 2026
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22844129
ORCID: 0009-0005-9759-5972