PREACHERS TAUGHT OF MEN...

When we compare what you are about to read, with the way that Paul and the other apostles' "preached", the differences will be startling - ed.

In previous articles, we have discussed the views among Baptists in England on the preparation and reading of sermons.  Sadly, this practice of preparation still continues.  Men such as William Kiffin, Samuel How and others, however, believed that the Spirit of God ought to be all preparation a man needs.  The idea that a man needs hours, or even weeks of preparation to deliver a sermon is a pagan idea.  It originated with the Greek Rhetoricians from the time of Socrates to the Roman Republic and Empire.  These men were judged on their emotional and intellectual impact on their hearers. Most ministers, from the Reformation and the Catholic church were influenced by earlier Church Fathers, which in turn were raised in an ambiance of Greek philosophy, which emphasized persuasive writing and speaking.  These Greek Sophists either memorized their orations or wrote them down for reading.  How does this practice of extensive "preparation" compare with the practice of Paul and the apostles?  

Many will point to the passage in Acts where Paul was "preaching" all night and a boy fell from the balcony and was revived by Paul.  In this preaching, if one looks at the Greek word, it is revealed that this "preaching" was actually a dialog, a conversation between Paul and the congregation there.  It was not a sermon as we think of it today.  And what about preachers who wrote their sermons out and read them to the congregation? Mary Morrissey made a study of the sermons of the 16-17th centuries (Morrissey, M. (2017) Sermon-notes and seventeenth-century manuscript communities. Huntington Library Quarterly, 80 (2). pp. 293-307. ISSN 1544-399X).  She writes speaking of John Donne

...Donne’s handling of a quotation from the Bible central to his method of preparing a sermon, and this accords with the advice given in most contemporary preaching manuals, where the preacher’s task is described as threefold.  

The first element was to “explicate” the scriptural extract that he had chosen. “Explicating” retained much of its original meaning in this sense; it was an “unfolding,” an opening out to reveal, hidden in the multiple layers of meanings that the words of the Bible contained, some advice, warning, or comfort that would address the concerns of those listening.

 Then the preacher needed to impress upon his hearers that this message was addressed to them: he “applied” the lessons of Scripture to his hearers and the occasion of his sermon. Hearers were advised to pay particular attention to this “application.” 

“Exhortation” was the third (and often final) task undertaken in a sermon. The preacher encouraged and admonished his hearers to follow the lessons he had just delivered. Exhortation was effected partly by the preacher communicating his own belief in what he had said, and partly by his rhetorical skill. Knowing about these three tasks (explication, application, exhortation) allows us to interpret surviving sermon notes because it explains the relationship between the textual witnesses to the preacher’s activities in writing, delivering, and recording a sermon.

The need to explicate the text, for example, means that sermon notes prepared by preachers are often rich in scriptural (and patristic) references, as the preacher “opened out” his text with reference to the interpretative traditions that he inherited. In the Arte of Prophecying (1607), William Perkins tells his readers that the preacher’s preparation for a sermon has “two parts: Interpretation and right division, or cutting.” Interpretation is defined as “opening of the words and sentences of the Scripture, that one entire and naturall sense may appeare.” To do this, preachers compared biblical “places” (verses or short passages treated as distinct propositions) in order to identify “one entire and naturall sense” for the passage that was consistent with the rules of grammar, the biblical context of the passage, and the traditional formularies of the Christian faith (the Creeds, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer). Preachers studied the Bible in the light of their prior knowledge of Christian doctrine, and they developed habits of mind that encouraged cross-referencing one scriptural text with other analogous and supporting “places” of Scripture.

She goes on to speak of William Perkins: 

William Perkins tells his readers that the preacher’s preparation for a sermon has “two parts: Interpretation and right division, or cutting.” Interpretation is defined as “opening of the words and sentences of the Scripture, that one entire and naturall sense may appeare.” To do this, preachers compared biblical “places” (verses or short passages treated as distinct propositions) in order to identify “one entire and naturall sense” for the passage that was consistent with the rules of grammar, the biblical context of the passage, and the traditional formularies of the Christian faith (the Creeds, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer). Preachers studied the Bible in the light of their prior knowledge of Christian doctrine, and they developed habits of mind that encouraged cross-referencing one scriptural text with other analogous and supporting “places” of Scripture. “Cutting” the text is what one might call the composition of the sermon itself, or dispositio in classical rhetoric, where the sequence of topics and arguments is arranged. The term cutting makes reference to 2 Timothy 2:15, in which Timothy is encouraged in the “straight cutting” of the word. It is usually rendered in English as “right handling” or “right dividing” of the word. Perkins describes this as the process “whereby the word is made fit to edify the people.” So the biblical extract on which the preacher spoke was divided into sections, and each section helped to explain the doctrinal messages of the passage under discussion. The preacher would explicate those doctrines and apply them to his hearers’ circumstances. A summary of the sermon’s argument was usually given near the beginning of the oration (the “division,” or divisio); this gave the hearers an abstract of the oration to follow, and it demonstrated the close relationship between the sermon as a whole and the biblical text that it explained.

There is no doubt about the Greek pagan influence on Christian preaching for thousands of years.  Peter Selnon, in an article on the 9Marks website titled, Has Preaching Changed Since the Early Church?" we read:

Expository preaching is a craft, art, and pastoral discipline which interacts with pagan culture in general, and pagan oratory in particular.

Patristic preachers (and contemporary preachers) committed to expository preaching take radically divergent views of pagan scholarship. Some preachers wove quotations from pagan authors into the fabric of their expositions. For example, Ambrose has over a hundred quotes from Virgil in his extant sermons, and used the medical writer Galen to help him explain Genesis. Tertullian decried pagan learning as inimical to theology. That his style of speaking utilised rhetorical techniques forged in pagan schools reminds us that nobody can entirely escape their context.

The frequency of citations from pagan authors is only the most obvious way pagan learning influenced patristic sermons. At a deeper level, the pagan culture of the ancient world was one fascinated by words—their meaning, formation, and significance. The sermonic piling of Bible quotation upon quotation, and the use of clear Bible passages to interpret more obscure passages, were techniques preachers learned from pagan schools’ handling of Homer.

Selnon then turns to the Reformation:

As at the Reformation, the educational background of patristic preachers shaped their ministries in deep ways. The first manual on learning to preach was written by Augustine. It contained extensive sections reflecting on how best to appropriate lessons of oratory from Cicero. Augustine saw value in pagan insights into speaking well: “Why should those who speak truth do so as if they are stupid, dull, and half-asleep?”[4] Despite commending some lessons from Cicero, in the end, Augustine thought prayer and listening to good preachers were more important.[5]

Much of that which makes patristic sermons seem different from modern sermons arises from the fact that, in our ministries of expository preaching, we and our forebears are (wittingly or unwittingly) using the best of our available pagan insights to hermeneutics and communication. Ancient preachers believed the Bible to be a divine word of rich truth for listeners. They sought meaning in patterns of numbers because the pagan culture was one which saw beauty, truth, and meaning residing in hidden depths of numbers. If it was so for mathematics, persuasive speeches, and philosophy, they thought, surely it must be all the more so for a text inspired by God himself. The context of secular learning shaped ancient preachers’ approaches to their craft.

The same is true when it came to practical matters of preaching. Some preachers wrote their sermons out in full and read them. Others, such as Augustine, meditated on the passage during the week and then spoke extemporaneously. Many schools of rhetoric taught students to speak in public by making them read and memorize speeches. Quintilian, a pagan orator, argued that this was a facile and immature way to speak in public. Whether a preacher agreed with Quintilian or not shaped his practice as regards speaking from a script.

It would be a grave error to assume that our modern approaches to understanding and preaching the Bible are automatically superior to those of ancient preachers. It would also be incorrect to miss the fact that modern expository preaching is a descendant of patristic homiletics and shares its fundamental convictions.

Expository preaching is looked at today as a sacred cow.  Many speak of the epitome of preaching as expository preaching.  But this kind of preaching was pagan as well.  Selnon writes:

Another reason that patristic sermons appear so unique is that they were preached by people from within the context of church history they inhabited. In the ancient world, some preachers benefited from the cross-referencing of translations begun by Origen in his Hexapla. Augustine wrestled with whether he should adopt Jerome’s more scholarly Bible translation, or stick with the version his congregation was more familiar with. He opted to keep the less accurate translation for his congregation out of pastoral sensitivity, while slowly integrating Jerome’s translation into his academic writings.

As church history progressed, so the tools and form of expository preaching developed. One of the most obvious areas where this applied was that of salvation history. In the early church, preachers were very aware that there was development within the Bible story. Irenaeus developed a theology of “recapitulation” based on perceived repetitions within salvation history such as the tree in Genesis 2 and the tree Christ hung on. Marcion’s heretical rejection of the OId Testament and interactions with Jewish scholars led many preachers to preach about the similarity and unity between the Testaments. Augustine’s emphasis upon grace in the Pelagian controversy led him to emphasize the difference between law and gospel. All of these—and the seemingly ubiquitous practice of allegory—were early attempts by preachers to engage with scriptural passages in a way that did justice to the entirety of salvation history.

Given the many developments in church history that offer us fresh ways to nuance and articulate salvation history, it is understandable that patristic sermons can appear quite alien in their theological interpretations. In reality, the great preachers of the early centuries were charting the possibilities for configuring unity and diversity within the canon—something we today still wrestle with and differ over.

Brethren, we must reconsider the entire concept of preaching!