In 1986, Stott was invited to lunch by David Edwards, then the provost of Southwark Cathedral and a liberal church historian. Edwards pitched the idea of a book in which Edwards assessed Stott’s theology and Stott wrote a response. Despite the prospect of intense scrutiny of his work, Stott agreed. What developed was subtitled A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue. At the heart, Essentials, the book’s main title, was a critique of Stott’s evangelical theology of Scripture and the cross by Edwards,