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1. Introduction
In recent debates in homiletics, it has been common to evoke Jesus and/or Paul as supposed models for the task of the preacher today. Such invocation raises many questions which it is far beyond the scope of a single paper to address thoroughly. My aim in what follows is to outline three broad angles from which this practice may be critiqued, and then suggest how the use of Jesus and Paul as models might nonetheless be incorporated within a more satisfactory overall framework for preachers’ formation.
First, though let me briefly outline some of the ways in which Jesus and Paul have been used as preaching models over the last few decades.
(a) Jesus as model for the preacher
We may start with the so-called ‘new hermeneutic’ of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, associated primarily with the names of the German scholars Gerhard Ebeling, Ernst Fuchs and Eberhard Jüngel. They laid emphasis on the creative power of language and the way in which the language of Scripture acts powerfully to shape its hearers. In particular, they emphasised that Jesus’ own words were instrumental in bringing about the kingdom of which they spoke; and that the task of the contemporary preacher is similar. In all this they were differing from Rudolf Bultmann, whose idea of the task of preaching entailed not so much a reproduction of biblical language patterns as their recasting in modern form.
These German writers were influential upon a generation of American scholars including Amos Wilder and Robert Funk who both produced important works on the language of the New Testament, highlighting that it had not merely a referential but a dynamic, rhetorical quality, breaking open existing patterns of thought. Such writers were clearly aware of the implications of this for Christian preaching. But it was in the so-called ‘new homiletic’ movement associated particularly in its early days with the name of Fred Craddock that such insights came to most widespread and practical fruition.
In Craddock’s seminal book As One Without Authority there were two passages in particular which are germane to our theme. First, in defence of an inductive approach to preaching which provokes thought rather than simply laying out all the answers, he cited C.H. Dodd’s famous definition of a parable, which according to Dodd leaves the mind ‘in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought’. The assumption is clear: Jesus models a way of speaking which it is appropriate for us to follow. Second, Craddock begins his discussion of the dynamics of exegesis with the example of Jesus’ own interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures. Our process of interpretation of our Scriptures is understood as taking its natural cue from that of Jesus in relation to his.
Subsequently, in his Overhearing the Gospel: Preaching and Teaching the Faith to Those who have already Heard, Craddock suggested that Jesus’ preaching to his contemporaries was particularly fitting as a model for preaching in the context of Christendom, for in each case the challenge is to get ‘under the skin’ of those who deep down know God’s ways, but have become dulled to their implications.
Other writers have picked up the idea of Jesus as model preacher in various ways. Clearly the interest in narrative as a mode of preaching finds a natural focus in Jesus himself as a teller of stories. Preaching is seen to be not just about reporting the content of Jesus’ teaching, but imitating (in some way) its mode. In Britain, recent writers have emphasised not only Jesus’ use of stories, but also the richness of imagery he used, his attention to his listeners’ context, and his dialogical style. Not infrequently, the point is made that Jesus’ approach is especially suited for the era of postmodernity, or post-Christendom – an interesting contrast to Craddock’s view.
(b) Paul as model for the preacher
Other writers have underlined the example of Paul as a preacher. Sometimes this has had a strongly practical and devotional thrust, as for example in some of Donald Coggan’s writing. However, a more substantial treatment was offered in James W. Thompson’s 2001 book Preaching Like Paul: Homiletical Wisdom for Today.
Thompson’s book aims to be a corrective to some of the ‘new homiletic’ thinking set in train by Craddock. In particular, Thompson argues (as Craddock himself had implied) that Craddock’s ‘inductive preaching’ and the ‘narrative preaching’ which developed from it function best in a culture where the texts and memories of the Church are still familiar and alive. This, even in the U.S.A. and especially of course in Europe, is no longer the case. There is a need, says Thompson, for a more thoroughgoing reflective conceptual quality to preaching, which the indirections and teasing nature of inductive and narrative preaching cannot provide. While acknowledging the central place of narrative in biblical revelation, Thompson points to the fact that rational persuasion plays a big part in it too, not least in Paul’s letters. Further, while the ‘new homiletic’ focused on the experience of the individual hearer in receiving the sermon, Thompson wants to argue that Paul can help us lift our eyes again to the long-term effect of preaching in building communities of faith. More fundamentally still, he suggests that the new homiletic has focused on questions of technique to the exclusion of the aim of preaching. His book therefore not only sets out to offer a corrective to the techniques of inductive or narrative preaching, but also to question the very focus of recent trends on technique itself. Paul does not offer us handy tips, but he is certainly, in Thompson’s hands, a powerful model of aims and ethos in preaching.
© Comments
It is worth noting at this stage two points about these recent impulses to seek models for preaching today in Jesus and Paul.
(i) Both impulses arise by way of reaction, both to contemporary culture and to previously dominant thinking in homiletics. The impulse to return to Jesus as model is a reaction in part to recognition of the loss of respect for authority in contemporary culture, which is taken to suggest that more indirect means of Christian communication are appropriate. It is also a reaction to a typically modernist separation of content and form, which assumed that the conceptual content of biblical truth could be satisfactorily transmitted without bothering to pay attention to the form in which that truth has been received. Of this separation, more will be said later.
The impulse to turn to Paul, as seen in Thompson’s work, is a reaction in part to recognition of the huge shift in western culture since 1970, which is taken to suggest that Christian proclamation now calls for something more assertive than the new homiletic has offered. It is also a reaction to the new homiletic’s perceived over-emphasis on narrative as the quintessential form of biblical literature. Although Thompson does not specifically state that in advocating a turn to Paul as model he is thereby advocating a turn away from Jesus as model, that seems to be the implication.
(ii) Thompson is emphatically not advocating a return to the modernist assumptions and forms of preaching which Craddock and others have critiqued. He too is concerned with echoing and reproducing the dynamism of biblical language in preaching. He simply argues that in this respect, Paul is an overlooked source of inspiration, as well as in the wider respects of the entire theological and pastoral agenda he models.
This leads me to underline the danger of overstating the contrast between the two models. Putting it simply, Paul seems just as far from three alliterative points as Jesus is. Paul, like Jesus, uses strong images. His language is lively, immediate, sometimes chaotic. There is also a strong narrative substructure to his thought, though scholars differ about the ways in which that is to be discerned. The story of Jesus, the story of Israel, his own autobiography, indeed the story of God himself all give shape to his arguments (as Thompson himself shows). Conversely, it is on the face of it one-sided to argue that all Jesus’ preaching was indirect and teasing. ‘The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand: repent, and believe the good news’ sounds pretty direct to me (even if it is understood as a summary rather than a literal transcript). There is also, I think, much work still to be done on the ‘wisdom’ character of Jesus’ sayings. This proverbial quality is perhaps as hard to fit into ‘preaching as narrative’ as into ‘preaching as rational persuasion’.
The outcome, therefore, of taking seriously either Jesus or Paul as a model for preaching is not a straightforwardly predictable matter. My main concern now, however, is not to go into the details of such outcomes, but to subject the whole notion of using either figure for this purpose to some critique, under three headings.
2. Difficulties with the idea of taking Jesus and/or Paul as models for preaching
(a) The hermeneutical level
First, there is the problem that our most direct access to the preaching of Jesus and Paul is through the written texts of the Gospels and Epistles. Any reconstruction, therefore, of their preaching of either is bound to be just that: a reconstruction. The historical problems, questions and methods associated with this task will be familiar to most. The preaching of these men has come down to us mediated by others. In the case of Jesus, it comes in the form of Gospels woven together skilfully by Christian apologists and teachers, for the purposes of handing on tradition but also of addressing particular needs in the churches of their own day. In the case of Paul, it comes in the form of letters, many of which may indeed have been dictated directly by him, but which are nonetheless letters and not ‘sermons’ as we commonly use the word; as well as in some summaries recorded by Luke in Acts.
It is important to face these fairly obvious facts before we get over-enthusiastic about the use of either Jesus or Paul as models for preaching. Written texts are quite different from oral speech. Moreover, in the case of Jesus particularly, the writing is not even from his own hand.
This should serve as a corrective to incautious statements. For example, from time to time I have heard people argue that preaching should or could take a certain form ‘because that’s how Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount’. The fact that the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ and the ‘Sermon on the Plain’ are patently literary constructions in both Matthew and Luke is simply ignored. Both Evangelists, here and elsewhere in their Gospels, have obviously gathered material that has come down to them, on semi-thematic lines. It is on the face of it unlikely that we get very close to the form of Jesus’ preaching in either of these so-called ‘sermons’, which collect a range of sayings that may well have been uttered on many separate occasions, some of them perhaps repeated, maybe in similar combinations, maybe in different ones. On any particular occasion there might well have been linking passages, interruptions, dialogue, heckling; indeed the saying might well not have come from anything recognizable as a ‘sermon’ at all – a private conversation with a disciple or Pharisee, perhaps. ‘Sermon’ is our word, not the Gospels’.
With Paul, we are perhaps on surer ground. Thompson rightly emphasises the fact that the letters would have been orally dictated and read aloud to the churches; and that they certainly reflect rhetorical patterns from oral speech. Nonetheless, we are still at one or two removes from Paul’s ‘preaching’ in the flesh; and of course, there is doubt about the Pauline authorship of some of the letters traditionally ascribed to him.
This hermeneutical problem of trying to ‘read between the lines’ of the Gospels and Epistles to get at the preaching of Jesus and Paul does not, I suggest, present an insurmountable obstacle to using either Jesus or Paul as models for preaching. I believe that an attunement to these literary texts can indeed lead to the genuine hearing of voices that are highly suggestive for our preaching in various ways. At the moment, however, this hermeneutical difficulty should simply be taken as a caution. It is irresponsible to think we can just read off a model, still less a blueprint, from the face of the texts. In this, as in many other matters, the atmosphere of our times teaches us that ‘our knowledge is imperfect’ – an appropriately Pauline thought.
(b) The theological level
A second level, however, at which the idea of taking Jesus and/or Paul as models for preaching may be problematic is the theological level. Why, theologically, should either of them function in this way?
At this point it will be helpful to identify more precisely the different possible meanings of the word ‘model’ in this context. I suggest that we might mean the ‘message’ of Jesus or Paul, i.e. that the content of their teaching functions as a model for us; or their ‘methods’, i.e. that the form of their teaching functions as a model for us; or their ‘character’ (in Greek rhetorical terms, their ēthos), i.e. that their whole attitude or demeanour as preachers is exemplary.
(i) The model as the message
In traditional Protestantism, the emphasis has been on Paul as a model, and specifically on Paul’s message. The gospel proclaimed has not been, at least primarily, the message preached by Jesus but the message preached about him. And Paul is our great biblical exemplar of a preacher of the gospel of Jesus the Christ. Indeed, sometimes this fact has led to a kind of dispensationalist approach to the New Testament – even among those who would disown that label. The preaching of Jesus is seen as something immediate, a prophetic word for his own time (thus allowing, for instance, his teaching about non-violence to be relegated as inapplicable to later generations). The preaching of Paul, however, is seen as the authentic and abiding testimony to the meaning of Jesus, in his life and above all in his death and resurrection. Something akin to this kind of ‘dispensational’ approach is found very recently in Howard Marshall’s helpful book Beyond the Bible , in which he argues that in applying biblical teaching to our own time, we should recognize the ‘trajectory’ within the Bible itself: in other words, that we should not read the Old Testament apart from the filter of Jesus, and we should not read Jesus apart from the filter of Paul. In a recent postliberal twist to this Protestant tale, Charles L. Campbell argues that we should be less concerned with ‘preaching like Jesus’ (i.e. imitating his methods, as advocated in the ‘new homiletic’) and more concerned with ‘preaching about Jesus’ – in other words, proclaiming the message as Paul did.
What of the message of Jesus? The preaching of the Church has indeed been understood classically, both pre- and post-Reformation, as the living continuation of the word of God in Christ; but the emphasis has often been on the speaking of the pre-existent and now ascended Christ, rather than on the reported words of the earthly Jesus. However, Catholic tradition has often placed strong emphasis on Jesus’ summary of the law, the double love command, as the heart of the Christian message. In Protestantism we owe especially to a minority tradition, the Anabaptists, the keeping-alive of the idea that the teaching of Jesus must be taken as seriously as the teaching about him.
(ii) The model as the character
The idea of the ‘imitation of Christ’ has been a recurring theme in Christian history, beginning indeed with Paul himself. Whether it is seen in literal terms, as by Francis of Assissi, or in more mystical terms, as in much medieval theology, the notion of Jesus as the ideal human – including, of course, the attitude imbued in his speech – seems uncontroversial. Luther thought that in his day the idea of the ‘imitation of Christ’ had come to obscure the grace by which alone we are conformed to Christ; but the idea of ‘following Jesus’ never seems to be far away from Christian piety and rightly keeps rejoining the intellectual belief from which it should surely never be separated.
In the case of Paul, the fact that he is not Jesus opens the way for some commentators, at least, to be chary of taking him as a morally exemplary speaker. Indeed, some argue the reverse! We may cite two contrasting modern readings. Graham Shaw in his book The Cost of Authority accused Paul of being a manipulator. André Resner, however, discusses what he calls Paul’s ‘reverse- ēthos’. That is, Paul presents his character as a vital element of his message, but asks for it to be judged by a standard directly opposed to those of the day, that is, the cross.
(ii) The model as the methods
When we come to considering the methods of Jesus or Paul as exemplary, there seems to be much less in the tradition with which to engage. Why should this be?
We might approach this question from the point of view of the classic Christian understanding of Scripture as divine Word. As William Abraham has shown, Scripture was early on understood as a means of grace, part of a delicate network of canonical materials which functioned to build up the Church in the life of God mediated to us through Jesus Christ. The precise means by which Scripture was thus to function was not prescribed in advance, as if God had provided helpful notes on how to handle it in a preface somewhere. The task of interpretation was to be a constant journey of discovery, carried out in humility, charity, in light of the rule of faith, with the aim of building up the Church, and above all with openness to the Spirit of God.
The implication of this for our question seems to be that while all kinds of insight and inspiration for the Church in all its tasks, including preaching, could and can indeed be anticipated as coming to us through Scripture, there is no foreordained necessity that one figure from Scripture rather than another should be a model for preaching. Indeed, the stress on Scripture as divine gift puts the emphasis on God’s use of the whole web of texts that make up the canon in order to guide us, rather than individual human exemplars to whom the texts point – even in the unique case of Jesus of Nazareth.
Moreover, there has been dispute in the Church about the way in which Scripture ought to function, and especially the extent to which it ought to be taken as prescriptive in detail for contemporary Church life. Again, such disputes are not, as it were, settled in advance by some preliminary ruling on how Scripture ought to be taken. For instance in the English Reformation, Richard Hooker allowed for development in Christian practices, especially in worship, beyond those specifically mentioned or authorized in Scripture, as long as they were not contrary to Scripture. The Puritans, meanwhile, wished to tie current practice much more tightly to that which was found in Scripture. From our point of view, the interesting fact is that even the Puritans did not take this to the extent of adopting Jesus, or Paul, or any other biblical figure as a detailed model for the rhetoric of their preaching. Indeed, they developed their own distinctive rhetorical style, which though entitled ‘plain’, was nonetheless a form of rhetoric far more indebted to current trends and needs than to Scripture itself.
Thus even the stricter tradition of the Reformation, and still more the mainstream view represented by Hooker, might be taken as warning us off a ‘fundamentalism of form’, as we could call it: the idea that we are supposed to imitate any biblical preacher in slavish detail. However, let us look at the question from another angle. What happens when we separate form and method from content and message, character and messenger?
Such a separation is exactly what has happened since the Puritans and subsequently the Enlightenment. The notion that a message could be detached and abstracted from the language and rhetorical form in which it is couched is a distinctly modern notion which sits uneasily with a biblical view of embodied truth. It has been progressively challenged by forerunners of postmodernity in the philosophy of language. One does not need to go the whole hog with the more radical postmodernists and say that reality is purely a linguistic construct to recognize that form and content, language and truth, message and medium cannot be extricated from each other in any straightforward way.
But the problem with some attempts to reclaim Jesus, in particular, as a model for preaching is precisely that they do seem want to reclaim a style without the substance. This tendency is wittily highlighted by Thomas Long in a sermon on Mark 4:10-12, in which the twelve ask Jesus about the parables. Long says that what we tend to expect Jesus to say in answer to them is something like ‘Don’t you know how people love stories? Something to get them hooked and interested? A few nice pictures, illustrations, windows on to the truth?’ Of course what he says in fact, according to Mark, is that everything comes in parables ‘in order that “they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven’. Whatever one makes of Mark’s citation of Isaiah on the lips of Jesus at this point, highlighting the mysterious divine purpose in his prophetic ministry, it surely warns us off a superficial use of the style of Jesus as exemplary, without wrestling with the deeper thrust, content and purpose of his message. Craddock himself, it should be said, is too careful a writer to fall into this trap; and we should equally recognize the incongruity against which the ‘new homiletic’ has rightly reacted, that of turning interesting, teasing, provocative sayings such as those of Jesus into abstract and sometimes platitudinous statements of doctrine or ethics.
All this suggests that theologically we must tread a line between two dangers: on the one hand that of turning the rich tapestry of Scripture, given as a means of grace, into narrowly prescriptive models for methods of conducting every aspect of Church life, including preaching; on the other hand that of separating form from content and messenger, ending up with a message that has either biblical style or biblical substance but not both.
© The methodological level
The final set of problems with taking Jesus or Paul as models for preaching occurs at the methodological level.
Put simply, the tendency to look for biblical models can seem driven by pragmatism rather than principle. We have already noted the strong reactive element in both the ‘new homiletic’ and Thompson’s Preaching Like Paul, and this to some extent is the way developments in practical theology are bound to happen. It is interesting to note that though Thompson wants to shift the discussion away from the pragmatics of preaching individual sermons to the deeper rationale for the preaching ministry, as found (in his view) in Paul, his use of Paul as a model remains essentially a pragmatic one. He seizes on Paul, at least in part, because in his view ‘preaching in a post-Christian culture [i.e. our own] has much to learn from the preaching of a pre-Christian culture’.
In one sense, there will always be an element of the pragmatic about our drawing on Scriptural models. Indeed, if we accept William Abraham’s understanding of the nature of Scripture, we will resist any tendency to treat the Bible into a handbook to which we can turn for ready answers on any matter of Church order, practice, ethics etc. that may concern us: in other words, we will not treat it as a book of ‘principles’ the application of which must conform to some preordained pattern. There will be a sense of immediacy, life, imagination, prophetic surprise and therefore, perhaps, pragmatism about the ways in which Scripture is seen to address different matters at different times and places. But this kind of prophetic pragmatism, if we may call it that, is surely to be distinguished from the more full-blown pragmatism implicit in some discourse about preaching, which is rooted in modern concerns about ‘what works’ rather than in Christian tradition.
I will therefore move to a final section in which I outline tentatively the basis on which we might indeed take Jesus and Paul as models for preaching today, avoiding the various problems I have discussed.
3. A way forward? The tradition of sacred rhetoric
A way forward may be suggested, indirectly, by a recent book by Michael Pasquarello III, Sacred Rhetoric: Preaching as a Theological and Pastoral Practice of the Church. For our puposes, one of the immediately interesting features of this book is that Pasquarello sets out quite deliberately (even polemically) not to write another ‘how-to’ book on preaching. Here are the opening lines of his last chapter:
Contrary to late modern sensibilities, there are no answers in the back of this book. No new communication theory or method is proposed; no rules or principles for sermon design are provided; no “ practical” tips or advice for particular strategies, programs, or steps to follow are listed.
The other immediately interesting feature is that the book is an account of a series of exemplars of preaching in the Christian tradition, including Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and others. Their preaching is described as an expression of their overall vision for the theological and pastoral nurture of the Church. Rather than narrowly-defined models for technique, Pasquarello wishes us to find in this procession of preachers nurture for our own ministry on a much deeper level. It is, indeed, as part of a new sense of immersion in the Christian tradition, a new awareness of our story as the Church, that according to Pasquarello we shall discover a new vision for preaching as ‘sacred rhetoric’.
Pasquarello thus reclaims the time-honoured practice of recalling great exemplars from our Christian past. Moreover, it is the people (in all their fallibility) who are recalled, not merely texts they produced, or texts produced about them – even though much of our access to them now is through texts, rather than oral tradition. Looking back to texts alone can, if we are not careful, lead to arid, rule-based Christian praxis. Looking back to our predecessors in the faith, by contrast, can give inspiration and encouragement: it may not tell us directly how to do things in our own age, nor indeed will it prescribe in detail what we are to say, but it reminds us why we do what we do. Within that, there may indeed be practical help; but without that, any practical help we glean from such exemplars is bound to be merely pragmatic snatchings.
Crucially, Pasquarello presents these figures as Christians conscious that their very language was shaped by the word of God to which they gave voice. They did not think they could communicate a supposedly extra-linguistic ‘truth’ and that the language or form used in this communication was a matter of indifference. They spoke in ways that their contemporaries could hear, but prayed and believed that their words would be truly ‘sacred rhetoric’, human words of which God in his grace was taking possession. Thus they were exemplars of proclamatory speech in its unity: not to be imitated only in content, nor only in the character of the speaker, nor only in form; not slavishly in any sense; but rather as part of the grand tradition of saints whose lips God has touched to speak his word in their time.
I suggest that we should indeed take Jesus and Paul as models for preaching, but do so as a part of this grand tradition. We can look to them – and not only to the texts which bear witness to them – as true exemplars of ‘sacred rhetoric’ in which matter joins with method under the inspiration of God’s Spirit. Clearly both Jesus and Paul occupy unique and distinct positions in the narrative of God’s purposes. But clearly too there is a continuity between them and those who came after. By viewing them in their place in this great procession, we allow insight and inspiration to emerge from each figure of the procession, and are saved from the jumpy pragmatism which darts now to one figure from the past, now another, as the latest fashion seems to suggest.
Moreover, I suggest that we will only see this great procession in proper perspective if we recognize that it does not begin with Jesus. Jesus continues the authentic tradition of Old Testament prophetic speech in its dynamic immediacy. This tradition itself does not begin with those we commonly label ‘the prophets’ but goes back to Moses. The Pentateuch bears witness to the ‘Torah’ or ‘teaching’ of God as words orally received and passed on. Of course it assumed written form, but the important point to note is that the living, oral word for a particular situation did not cease because of the existence of written collections.
Jesus then becomes – like the prophets, but still more clearly than they – a model not just for sacred rhetoric, but for also negotiating the relationship between sacred rhetoric and sacred text. He was recognized ‘as one having authority, and not as the scribes’ (Mark 1:22). He was not a simple exegete of written texts, as even a cursory glance at his reported preaching reveals. Yet he claimed to be uncovering the true and forgotten heart of Torah, the real impulse and purpose behind those texts (Matthew 5:17-48). In contrast to the Sadducees, who stuck safely and conservatively to the Pentateuch, he allowed for new insights, such as the possibility of resurrection (Mark 11:18-27). In contrast to the Pharisees, who had built up a tradition of new insights to deal with contemporary situations, he refused to allow such prescriptions to overturn and evacuate the fundamental and gracious purpose of Torah and turn it into a tool of oppression (Mark 7:1-13).
It is surely this same prophetic tradition of sacred rhetoric into which Paul enters, as under the inspiration of the Spirit he interprets both the story of Jesus and the story of Israel in terms of each other, raising modern eyebrows in the process with his handling of the Hebrew Scriptures. But we note that Paul, like Jesus, is precisely not concerned with novelty. He is concerned to show that the God who spoke to Moses is the same God who now tears aside the veil and gives us the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
Given our belief in Christ as God’s most complete self-revelation, there is a unique freshness in the preaching of both Jesus, and Paul as his apostolic witness, which it would be quite inappropriate to seek to recapture. The danger, though, is that if we do not see them as models for us, as a part of this great tradition of sacred rhetoric, in which the living word of God captures the speech of individuals in each generation, from Moses to Martin Luther King and beyond, we may not only cease to speak with any true authority ourselves. We may also relapse into speaking like the Sadducees, Pharisees and scribes.