The Recovery of Christian Morale

The Recovery of Christian Morale

The prophets of doom in today’s church are confidently predicting that the day of preaching is over. It is a dying art, they say, an outmoded form of communication, “an echo from an abandoned past.” Not only have modern media superseded it, but it is incompatible with the modern mood. Consequently, the sermon no longer enjoys the honor which used to be accorded to it and which was expressed in the quotations collected in Chapter One. Even “sermon-tasting,” a reprehensible kind of ecclesiastical pub-crawling, which involves erratic churchgoing merely with a view to sampling and subsequently comparing the eminent preachers of the day, has gone out of vogue. Books of sermons, once popular, have become a risky publishing venture. In some churches the sermon is reduced to an apologetic five minutes; in others it has been replaced by either a “dialogue” or a “happening.” According to Dr. Howard Williams’ outspoken verdict, “the sermon is out.”

Equally outspoken is Dr. Donald Coggan’s opposing statement that this view of preaching is “a specious lie,” perpetrated by “Our Father Below” (as C. S. Lewis called the devil), as a result of which he has won a strategic victory. Not only has he effectively silenced some preachers, but he has also demoralized those who continue to preach. They go to their pulpits “as men who have lost their battle before they start; the ground of conviction has slipped from under their feet.”

My purpose in this chapter is to try to uncover the roots of the contemporary disenchantment with preaching. I want to look at the three main arguments which are being advanced against preaching—the anti-authority mood, the cybernetics revolution, and the loss of confidence in the gospel—and at the same time make a preliminary response to them.

Seldom if ever in its long history has the world witnessed such a self-conscious revolt against authority. Not that the phenomenon of protest and rebellion is new. Ever since the fall of man human nature has been rebellious, “hostile to God” and unwilling, even unable, to “submit to God’s law” (Rom. 8:7). And this basic fact about the human condition has had a thousand ugly manifestations. What seems new today, however, is both the world-wide scale of the revolt and the philosophical arguments with which it is sometimes buttressed. There can be no doubt that the twentieth century has been caught up in a global revolution, epitomized in the two world wars. The old order is giving place to a new. All the accepted authorities (family, school, university, state, church, Bible, pope, God) are being challenged. Anything which savors of “establishment,” that is, of entrenched privilege or unassailable power, is being scrutinized and opposed. A “radical” is precisely somebody who asks awkward and irreverent questions of some “establishment” which previously regarded itself as immune to criticism.

It would be very insensitive to react to the whole current rebellion negatively or to give it a blanket condemnation as devilish. For some of it is responsible, mature, and in the fullest sense Christian. It arises from the Christian doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression, and longs to liberate them into the enjoyment of their God-intended freedom. In politics it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions, or imprisons people for their views alone. In economics it protests against the exploitation of the poor and against the new social servitude, slavery to the consumer market and to the machine. In industry it protests against the class confrontation between management and unions and calls for a greater measure of responsible participation for the workers. In education it protests against indoctrination, the misuse of the classroom to bend the malleable minds of the young into predetermined shapes, and calls instead for an educational process which stimulates children and young people to develop their own personal potential.

When the rebellion is expressed in such terms as these, far from opposing it, Christians should be in the vanguard of those who promote it. For its inspiration is the glory of God in the humanization of Godlike human beings. It is when the advocates of change go beyond this and announce their determination to abolish the democratic process itself, and with it all forms of censorship by consent, and proclaim that there are no longer any objective standards of truth or goodness that we are obliged to part company with them. For Christians distinguish between true and false authority, that is, between the tyranny which crushes our humanity and the rational, benevolent authority under which we find our authentic human freedom.

While the current mood prevails, both those making a reckless bid for anarchy and those seeking true freedom tend to view the pulpit as a symbol of authority against which they are rebelling. Equality of educational opportunity, at least in the west, has sharpened people’s critical faculties. Now everybody has his own opinions and his own convictions, and considers them just as good as the preacher’s. “Who does he think he is,” people ask—silently if not aloud—“that he should presume to lay down the law to me?” Common usage of pulpit words reflects this distortion. “To preach” has come to mean “to give advice in an offensive, tedious or obtrusive manner,” while to be “sermonic” is to inflict on someone a patronizing harangue.

Although this resistance to authoritative pulpit pronouncements has become widespread in our century, it began at least with the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and grew more vocal in the nineteenth. No more vigorous (or humorous) expression of it has been given than by Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers, which was first published in 1857. The novel’s main character is the Rev. Obadiah Slope, domestic chaplain to the hen-pecked Bishop Proudie of Barchester. Trollope makes no secret of his active dislike for him. He describes him in the most unflattering terms:

His hair is lank, and of a dull pale reddish hue. It is always formed into three straight lumpy masses. . . . His face is nearly of the same colour as his hair, though perhaps a little redder: it is not unlike beef—beef, however, one would say, of a bad quality. . . . His nose, however, is his redeeming feature: it is pronounced straight and well formed; though I myself should have liked it better did it not possess a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out of a red coloured cork.

Having thus aroused his readers’ distaste for Mr. Slope’s appearance (“the damp, sandy-haired, saucer-eyed, red-fisted Mr. Slope”), Trollope is ready to arouse their hostility to his preaching. Although the Barchester clergy belonged to “the high and dry church,” Obadiah Slope (a low churchman) had no respect for their sensitivities and proceeded in his first sermon in the cathedral to anathematize all those opinions and habits which they held most dear. This gives Trollope the excuse he wants to inveigh against preaching and preachers:

There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No-one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented. No-one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. Let a professor of law or physic find his place in a lecture room, and there pour forth jejune words and useless empty phrases, and he will pour them forth to empty benches. Let a barrister attempt to talk without talking well, and he will talk but seldom. A judge’s charge need be listened to perforce by none but the jury, prisoner or gaoler. A member of Parliament can be coughed down or counted out. Town councillors can be tabooed. But no-one can rid himself of the preaching clergyman. He is the bore of the age,. . . the nightmare that disturbs our Sunday’s rest, the incubus that overloads our religion and makes God’s service distasteful. We are not forced into church! No: but we desire more than that. We desire not to be forced to stay away. We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God, without that anxious longing for escape, which is the common consequence of common sermons.

Trollope’s antipathy to sermons was not just that they induced boredom, but that they seemed to him an improper exercise of authority, especially when the preacher was young. When the Rev. Francis Arabin, formerly professor of poetry at Oxford University, had been installed as vicar of St. Ewold’s Church, Ullathorne, he was extremely nervous while preaching his first sermon. Trollope expressed his astonishment that “even very young men” who are “little more than boys” can muster courage to preach and “ascend a rostrum high above the heads of the submissive crowd.” “It seems strange to us,” he adds, “that they are not stricken dumb by the new and awful solemnity of their position. . . . Clergymen who could not preach would be such blessings that they would be bribed to adhere to their incompetence.”

Today, more than a century later, we are conscious of the same hatred of authority figures. What has changed is that the resistance is much more widespread, open, and strident. As for the churches, many have a preponderance of the middle-aged and elderly, who have grown out of the protest phase and can be relied on to be comparatively docile. In many cases, however, the young vote with their feet and steer clear of such archaic institutions. The anti-authority mood reached maximum heat and exploded in the 1960s. The Berkeley campus of the University of California became the battleground of the Free Speech Movement, and in Paris the students joined the workers in taking to the streets and the barricades. Now, after a lapse of a decade and more, at least some governments and some universities have learned some lessons. There is less censorship and more freedom. So the target for the hostility of the young has shifted from institutions (since that battle has been partly won) to ideas, and specially the ideas which old, discredited institutions persist in trying to impose on others. Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones expresses this attitude perfectly, “I’m against any form of organized thought. I’m against. . . organized religion like the church. I don’t see how you can organize ten million minds to believe one thing.” Others went further and opposed thought altogether; the 70s were the decade of the non-rational.

Thus, minds cannot be organized and thoughts cannot be forced on people. No institution, however venerable, has the right to impose an idea upon us by the weight of its own authority. Nor even can any idea impose itself upon us all. For there is no such thing as a truth which is absolute and therefore universal. On the contrary, everything is relative and subjective. Before I can believe any idea, it has to authenticate itself to me personally; and before you can be expected to believe it, it must become self-authenticating to you. Until this happens, we neither should nor can believe.

How, then, should preachers react to the anti-authority spirit of today? What distinctively Christian critique and response may be made? We should not allow ourselves to be stampeded into abandoning preaching. Nor should we make the opposite mistake of a greater dogmatism so that, whenever our beliefs and statements are challenged, we merely repeat them in a louder voice. Is it possible, in place of these extremes, to maintain our loyalty to the historic Christian faith, while at the same time recognizing and respecting the modern mood of doubt and denial? I think it is. Let me suggest certain truths we shall be wise to remember and certain attitudes we shall be wise to cultivate.

First, we need to remember the nature of human beings in Christian understanding. According to the first two chapters of Genesis, God created mankind male and female to be both morally responsible (receiving commandments) and free (invited but not coerced into loving obedience). We cannot therefore acquiesce either in license (which denies responsibility) or in slavery (which denies freedom). Christians know from both Scripture and experience that human fulfillment is impossible outside some context of authority. Freedom unlimited is an illusion. The mind is free only under the authority of truth, and the will under the authority of righteousness. It is under Christ’s yoke that we find the rest he promises, not in discarding it (Matt. 11:29, 30). Similarly, citizens can enjoy freedom only within an ordered society. Parents with teenaged children also know the truth of this principle. For adolescents who are rebelling against parental authority are wanting not only to experience greater freedom but also to discover the limits of their freedom. As they push against the fence, they devoutly hope it will not collapse. As with adolescents so with adults; we need what P. T. Forsyth called “that authority which men at once resent and crave.”

Secondly, we need to remember the doctrine of revelation. It is a basic tenet of the Christian religion that we believe what we believe not because human beings have invented it but because God has revealed it. In consequence, there is an authority inherent in Christianity which can never be destroyed. Preachers who share this assurance see themselves as trustees of divine revelation, or, as the apostle Paul expressed it, “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1), that is, of the secrets which he has disclosed. This conviction need not lead us into an obnoxious kind of dogmatism—cocksure, inflexible, and arrogant—but it will enable us to proclaim the gospel with quiet confidence as good news from God.

Theodore Parker Ferris, who lectured in homiletics at the Episcopal Theological School and later became rector of Trinity Church, Boston, made this one of the major emphases of his 1950 inaugural series of the George Craig Stewart Lectures on Preaching, which were subsequently published with the title Go Tell the People. The purpose of a sermon, he urged, is to declare, to disclose, to reveal something. Too many sermons are written “in the imperative mode,” whereas the religion of the Bible “is written largely in the revealing language of the indicative mode.” “Listen to some of the great declarations of the Bible,” he went on, and quoted Old Testament verses like “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” “The Lord is my light and my salvation,” and “they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength” (Gen. 1:1; Ps. 27:1; Isa. 40:31). “These are not arguments or exhortations or speculations. They are simple, forthright statements about the nature of things which have been revealed to men. . . . The power of the religion of the Bible is to be found in its affirmations.” The same is true, he continued, of the great proclamations of the New Testament like “I am the way, the truth and the life” or “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (John 14:6; 2 Cor. 5:19). “This book on preaching,” Dr. Ferris summed up, “has but a single theme. The theme is this. A sermon is by its very nature a revelation, not an exhortation.”

Thirdly, we need to remember the locus of authority. Consider again the affirmations T. P. Ferris quoted, and many others in the Bible like them. Wherein lies their authority? It resides only in the God who made them, and not at all in us who quote them today. There is something inherently horrid about human beings who claim and attempt to wield a personal authority they do not possess. It is particularly inappropriate in the pulpit. When a preacher pontificates like a tinpot demagogue, or boasts of his power and glory as Nebuchadnezzar did on the roof of his royal palace in Babylon (Dan. 4:28–29), he deserves the judgment which fell on that dictator: he was driven from his palace mad, “ate grass like an ox, . . . till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.” For “those who walk in pride God is able to abase” (Dan. 4:33, 37).

But suppose in our preaching we are careful to demonstrate that the authority with which we preach inheres neither in us as individuals, nor primarily in our office as clergy or preachers, nor even in the church whose members and accredited pastors we may be, but supremely in the Word of God which we expound? Then the people should be willing to hear, particularly if we put the matter beyond doubt by showing that we desire to live under this authority ourselves. As Donald Coggan has put it, in order “to preach, a man must know the authority of being under Authority.” It is for this reason that we shall be wise neither to say “Thus says the Lord” (since we do not have the authority of an inspired Old Testament prophet) nor to declare “I say to you” (since we do not have the authority of Jesus Christ and his apostles), but rather, at least most of the time, to use the “we” form of address. For then it will be clear that we preach nothing to others which we do not also and first preach to ourselves, and that authority and humility are not mutually exclusive. “It is authority that the world chiefly needs and the preaching of the hour lacks,” wrote P. T. Forsyth in 1907, “an authoritative Gospel in a humble personality.”

Fourthly, we need to remember the relevance of the gospel. A major reason for the contemptuous dismissal of some sermons is that people perceive them to be unrelated to real life as they know it. The fact that they are preached with authority makes them all the more distasteful. But when the preached message rings true and is seen to relate to human reality, it carries its own authority and authenticates itself. So then, it is not enough for us to make pronouncements of authority; we have to argue the reasonableness and demonstrate the relevance of what we declare. Then people will listen respectively.

This is the point which Dr. Clement Welsh, since 1963 Director of Studies and Warden of the American College of Preachers in Washington D.C., is at pains to make in his book Preaching in a New Key (1974). He says he cannot accept Karl Barth’s statement that “preaching is the Word of God which he himself has spoken” because this “high” doctrine “is haunted by the ghosts of many unanswered questions concerning the authority of scriptures” and “raises worrisome questions about mistaking man’s voice for God’s voice.” So he suggests that we begin at the other end, with the listener not the preacher, with creation not redemption. For the listener lives in the created world and, being “the most fantastic processor of information the world has ever seen,” wants to make sense of the complexity of his human experiences. In order to help him do so, the preacher “must give to the creation (i.e. to the phenomena of human life) the same exegetical care that he would give a passage of scripture.” In fact, Dr. Welsh urges “a combination of these two homiletical doctrines, the one stressing revelation and scripture, and the other stressing apologetics and reason.” I do not think he is denying the place of any “word of authority,” although sometimes he seems to come perilously close to this; rather is he rejecting that kind of ex cathedra preaching which is divorced from worldly reality, answers the wrong questions, and discourages responsible thinking in the congregation. Even authoritative sermons will commend themselves if they are preached “in a new key” by addressing the ultimate questions of human life meaningfully.

Fifthly, we need to remember the dialogical character of preaching. That is, a true sermon is not the monologue which it appears to be. “Monotonous ministerial monologue” is the expression sometimes used. The Rev. R. E. O. White, principal of the Baptist Theological College of Scotland, quotes an even ruder definition, “a monstrous monologue by a moron to mutes.” But I want to argue that true preaching is always dialogical. Not in the sense of “dialogue sermons,” in which two preachers debate an issue, or one interviews and quizzes the other (an excellent arrangement for an after-church or mid-week meeting but, it seems to me, out of place in the context of public worship). Nor am I suggesting that we encourage hecklers, although, to be sure, some unscripted interruptions would enliven the proceedings in most western churches and put us preachers on our mettle.

Vocal dialogue between preacher and congregation is, however, commonplace in the Black worship of North America. It is vividly described by Dr. Henry H. Mitchell, founding director of the Ecumenical Center for Black Church Studies, Los Angeles, in his books Black Preaching (1970) and The Recovery of Preaching (1977). The latter has a chapter entitled “Preaching as Dialogue.” “Unhampered by the Teutonic captivity of white theology,” as he puts it, and “unscathed by the proud abstractions of the Western world,” American Blacks have been free in their worship to express authentic Black selfhood. Black religion is “soul religion,” unafraid of emotion and ecstasy. “They have had call-and-response in Africa for centuries, and in Black Christian worship in America from the very start—three centuries ago.” In particular, “the Black worshipper does not merely acknowledge the Word delivered by the preacher; he talks back! Sometimes he may shout. The day is not far past, if indeed it has passed at all, when the Black worshipper would consider a worship service a failure if there were no shouting.” Dr. Mitchell concedes that this kind of audible talk-back or “raucous reverence of real people” (cries of “Amen!,” “Tell it!,” “That’s right!,” “Sho’ ’nough!,” “Yes sir!,” “So true!” etc.) is at times no more than a cultural habit or convention, and that at other times “so much noise is, in actuality, a substitute for action.” Yet, generally speaking, it is a genuine expression of audience participation and a great support and stimulation to the preacher. Indeed, when a Black congregation’s heart and mind are gripped by the sermon, “the ensuing dialogue between preacher and people is the epitome of creative worship.”

In other contexts, however, the kind of dialogical preaching I am recommending is different. It refers to the silent dialogue which should be developing between the preacher and his hearers. For what he says provokes questions in their minds which he then proceeds to answer. His answer raises further questions, to which again he replies. One of the greatest gifts a preacher needs is such a sensitive understanding of people and their problems that he can anticipate their reactions to each part of his sermon and respond to them. Preaching is rather like playing chess, in that the expert chess player keeps several moves ahead of his opponent and is always ready to respond, whatever piece he decides to move next.

I remember reading an amusing article in the Guardian Weekly by Peter Fiddick on “the difficult art of being an audience.” It was entitled “None shall sleep.” He confessed to the problem he had in keeping awake during concerts. His earliest recollection of falling asleep in public, he said, was at the Methodist Central Hall in Slough, when he was about seven years old. He nodded off during the sermon and “woke up, mortified, in the middle of the next hymn.” Later, however, he learned to beat “the sermon problem by having mental debates with the preacher,” a technique which failed in a Chopin recital “since waltzes are not susceptible to argument.” Peter Fiddick probably imagines that preachers would be furious if they thought their listeners were having “mental debates” with them. But surely, on the contrary, we should be delighted. We have no wish to encourage passivity in the congregation. We want to provoke people to think, to answer us and argue with us in their minds, and we should maintain such a lively (though silent) dialogue with them that they find it impossible to fall asleep.

It is particularly important to do this when our topic is at all controversial. Our tendency is naturally to express our own convictions, in which case we may overlook the problems which these raise in other people’s minds, whether the believers (or half-believers) in church or the unbelievers they will meet in their office or shop the following day. For example, we could not preach on “the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3) and ignore the fact that the earth is plagued with earthquake, predation, and famine as well as with order, plenty, and loveliness. Nor could we preach on the providence of God who “in everything . . . works for good with those who love him” (Rom. 8:28) without showing an awareness of evil and pain.

I could multiply examples. We should not preach on marriage and forget the single people in the congregation, or on Christian joy and forget the sorrows and tragedies which some will be experiencing. We cannot expound Christ’s promise to answer prayer without remembering that some prayers remain unanswered, or his command not to be anxious without acknowledging that people have good reasons for anxiety. To anticipate people’s objections is to cover our flanks against counter-attack.

A dialogue between speaker and listeners, or between writer and readers, often develops in Scripture. In the Old Testament we find it in the book of Malachi. “‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. But you say ‘How hast thou loved us?’” (1:12). Again, “You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say ‘How have we wearied him?’” (2:17). And again, “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say ‘How are we robbing thee?’ In your tithes and offerings”(3:8).

In the New Testament Jesus himself often used a similar method. Several of his parables ended with a question, and probably in this case he expected the people to reply audibly. He engaged them in a dialogue. For instance, “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” And “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (Luke 10:36; Matt. 21:40). Or after he had washed the apostles’ feet, he asked them, “Do you know what I have done to you?” (John 13:12).

The past master at this art, however, was the apostle Paul, and the best example is his letter to the Romans. Throughout its early chapters, as he dictates to Tertius, he is conscious of Jewish objections to his argument. Many times he voices their objection and answers it. Take this dialogue, for instance:

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?

Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews are entrusted with the oracles of God.

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?

By no means! Let God be true, though every man be false.

But if our wickedness serves to show the justice of God, what shall we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.)

By no means! For then how could God judge the world? (Rom. 3:1–6; cf. 27–31)

It may well be, as a number of scholars have pointed out, that Paul was deliberately copying the Stoic “diatribes,” whose “salient features,” in the words of Professor James Stewart, “were their rhetorical questions, their preference for short disconnected sentences, their use of the device of an imaginary objector, their flinging backwards and forwards of challenge and rejoinder.” It is a device of preachers rather than writers, but is found in authors who are preachers too. Thus Luther, whose commentaries were first given as lectures, not infrequently interjected, “Do I hear somebody saying . . .?” or “You do not imagine, do you, that. . .?,” while Billy Graham constantly says, “But, Billy, you may ask . . .” and expresses the problem which he imagines a non-Christian in his audience may have.

In his autobiographical sketch Crowded Canvas (1974) Canon Max Warren, formerly general secretary of the Church Missionary Society, defined communication as a special ability:

to out-do the Communist technique of “double-think” and do a Christian “quadruple-think.” “Quadruple-thinking” is thinking out what I have to say, then thinking out how the other man will understand what I say, and then re-thinking what I have to say, so that, when I say it, he will think what I am thinking! . . . “Quadruple-thinking” involves mental pain and great spiritual sensitivity.

Painful as it is, it is of the essence of dialogical preaching and lessens the offense which authoritative preaching would otherwise give.

“Cybernetics” (from kybernētēs, a steersman) is the study of the mechanisms of communication, both human and electronic, that is to say, in both brains and computers. And the “cybernetics revolution” refers to radical changes in communication as a result of the development of complex electronic equipment.

The high priest of the cybernetics revolution was that remarkable Canadian Roman Catholic, Professor Marshall McLuhan, founder of the Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto in 1963, and its director for fourteen years, who died on the last day of 1980. He was at the height of his influence in the sixties. The first of his books to attract widespread public attention, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, was published in 1962, and his best-known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in 1964. During the seventies his popularity waned, and his whole scheme has been subjected to severe, even hostile, criticism. He was certainly guilty of wild exaggeration. Nevertheless, one of his fiercest critics, Dr. Jonathan Miller, who does not hesitate to characterize his conclusions as “bizarre, “absurd,” “incoherent” and even “nonsensical,” yet acknowledges “the intense excitement” with which he first read him and the fact that “he has successfully convened a debate on a subject which has been neglected too long.”

When the dust of controversy has settled, it seems certain that Marshall McLuhan’s name will be included among the pioneers of communication theory. History is not likely to forget expressions like “the global village,” “the medium is the message” (as well as “the massage”), and “hot” and “cool” communication, which he has added to our vocabulary. It would be foolish, therefore, to regard his theories as passe; we need to come to grips with them.

We begin with his reading of history. He depicted primitive man as enjoying a harmonious existence through the balanced, simultaneous use of his five senses. As the tribal chieftains sat round the camp fire, they would communicate with one another in a “cool” or casual manner, absorbing information and impressions by sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. This idyllic situation was, however, shattered by two disastrous inventions. The first was the phonetic alphabet. Previously, ancient pictographic writing (in China) and hieroglyphic writing (in Babylonia), because they had a visual meaning, preserved a link between the ear and the eye. But in the phonetic alphabet “semantically meaningless letters are used to correspond to semantically meaningless sounds,” causing a “sudden breach between the auditory and the visual experience of man.” In consequence, the phonetic alphabet upset mankind’s sensory equilibrium by making the eye the dominant sense and in effect turning the reader’s ear into an eye.

The second disastrous occurrence (in the McLuhan scheme) was the invention of movable type in the fifteenth century by Johann Gutenberg (died 1468), the main villain of his story. Typography brought tribalism to an end. It broke up the collective unity of primitive human society. It turned each human being into an individualist and a specialist, for “literacy . . . takes him out of his collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation.” Now he is able to sit in a corner by himself, with his back to the world, reading a book. Moreover, as he reads and his eye follows each line of print, he finds himself locked into linear logic, thereby losing the magic of multi-sensual learning. He also becomes a literalist, for his imagination atrophies.

But in 1844 a third invention (that of the telegraph by Samuel Morse) heralded the dawn of a new age, namely the electronic age. Whereas alphabet and print had increasingly alienated human beings from one another, “the tendency of electric media is to create a kind of organic interdependence among all the institutions of society.” Human beings who had been detribalized by print are now through our increasingly sophisticated electronic gadgetry becoming retribalized. “The simultaneity of electric communication . . . makes each of us present and accessible to every other person in the world.” The whole world has thus become a “global village.”

In this social revolution, television has exercized a major role. McLuhan argued that it has reversed the harmful processes initiated by the phonetic alphabet and the printing press, for it has reintroduced to human life the benefits of “cool” communication. “A hot medium,” he wrote, “is one that extends one single sense in ‘high definition’” (i.e. in a state that is “well filled with data”). A “cool” medium, on the other hand, instead of bombarding one sense with much information, permits the gradual gleaning of information by several senses together. The crucial difference lies in the amount of information provided by the medium and the corresponding amount which needs to be provided by the listener or viewer. “Hot media are . . . low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience.” Now both television and the spoken word are “cool,” because both demand audience participation. In consequence, “TV will not work as background. It engages you. You have to be with it.”

Is television, then, a serious rival to preaching as a means of communication? Has the box in the lounge replaced the pulpit in the church? Marshall McLuhan did not answer this question, for he never asked it. But if asked, his answer would seem to me to have been necessarily ambivalent. For on the one hand he approved of the spoken word (his number-one enemy was “print”), since the spoken word is a cool medium and “involves all of the senses dramatically.” Thus, when two people are talking to one another, they are not only listening to each other, but watching each other’s facial expressions and gestures, perhaps touching or holding each other, and even smelling each other’s characteristic smell. These have their equivalents in the preacher-congregation relationship; most churches even have a recognizable smell! On the other hand, the future of language is imperiled by electronic technology, since the latter has no need of words. “Electricity points the way to an extension of the process of consciousness itself, on a world scale, and without any verbalization whatever.” McLuhan appeared to welcome such a development, hailing it as the destruction of the Tower of Babel, and even as “a Pentecostal condition of universal understanding and unity.” Languages would be bypassed altogether in favor of “a general cosmic consciousness” and “the condition of speechlessness that could confer a perpetuity of collective harmony and peace.”

Although Marshall McLuhan dreamed his dreams about the comparative blessings of speech and speechlessness, for myself I believe the faculty of speech to be a distinctively human gift, a marvelously versatile means of communication, and a reflection of the divine image we bear. For though doves can coo, donkeys bray, monkeys squeal, and pigs grunt, only human beings can speak. According to the Bible, the living God himself is a speaking God. He has communicated with us by speech, and he means us to communicate with one another in the same way. To decline to do so would immeasurably impoverish us and diminish our dignity to that of birds and beasts.

Since Marshall McLuhan’s heyday, the invention of the transistor, which uses silicone crystals as powerful electronic amplifiers, has further transformed computer science. Transistorized computers, or micro-processors, whose first models were marketed only in 1975, have already made their cumbersome ancestors of the 1950s look as archaic as dinosaurs. They are not only so small as to be readily portable, and much cheaper to produce and to operate, but will soon have such a vastly improved memory as to store a whole encyclopedia on a single chip, and reach such a speed as to have a switching potential of about a trillion a second.

Social seers are trying to assess the consequences of the chip revolution. They forecast that, in some respects at least, the world may be a safer place, since a universal credit-card system will render money-based crime obsolete, while danger-protecting devices will make cars collision-proof. At the same time, people may travel less. Commuting will diminish because industry will be operated by robots, hours of employment will decrease, and business will be decentralized; “office and home will be combined, the public transport system will give way to giant data communications networks, and the business motorcar will be traded in for the latest video conference system.”

The computer revolution relates chiefly to data processing, that is, its storage, retrieval, sorting, and communication. All current forms of communication are bound, therefore, to be affected by it. One chapter of Christopher Evans’ book The Mighty Micro (1980) is entitled “The Death of the Printed Word.” Having pointed out that both books and computers are essentially “devices for storing information,” he goes on to argue that computers are “vastly superior” to books, not only because they are becoming increasingly smaller and cheaper, but also because “electronic books” will be “dynamic,” able to collect, sift, and present material. Moreover, their powers of presentation will include both the visual (on the television screen) and the aural (by that strange synthetic speech called “computaspeak”).

It is difficult to imagine the world in the year AD 2000, by which time versatile micro-processors are likely to be as common as simple calculators are today. We should certainly welcome the fact that the silicon chip will transcend human brain-power, as the machine has transcended human muscle-power. Much less welcome will be the probable reduction of human contact as the new electronic network renders personal relationships ever less necessary. In such a dehumanized society, the fellowship of the local church will become increasingly important, whose members meet one another and talk and listen to one another in person rather than on screen. In this human context of mutual love, the speaking and hearing of the Word of God is also likely to become more necessary for the preservation of our humanness, not less.

I come back, then, to the rivalry between the box and the pulpit. Certainly television is a major factor in all our lives. In Britain 98 percent of homes have at least one TV set, and the average household has it switched on for between 30 and 35 hours a week. Actual viewing time for an adult is between 16 and 18 hours a week, which means that he spends the best part of 8 whole years of his life before a TV screen. American statistics are higher. According to surveys conducted in 1970 and 1971, the weekly average viewing time for adults was 23.3 hours.

It is extremely difficult to make a balanced estimate of the social effects of television. Without doubt the positive benefits have been enormous. TV enables people to share in events and experiences from which otherwise—through lack of time, privilege, money, or health—they would be excluded. They can take part in great occasions of national celebration or mourning (a wedding or funeral, a monarch’s coronation or president’s installation, or the visit of a head of state from another country). They can travel to outlandish places which they could never afford to visit personally, and be introduced to some of the wonders of nature. They can view films, plays, and sporting events. They can keep abreast of world news and be stimulated to grasp the political, social, and moral issues being debated at the time. All this is great gain.

Nevertheless, there is another side which particularly relates to the preaching and hearing of sermons. Television makes it harder for people to listen attentively and responsively, and therefore for preachers to hold a congregation’s attention, let alone secure an appropriate response. Why is this? I will try to summarize the five deleterious tendencies of television.

First, TV tends to make people physically lazy. It offers them home-based entertainment at the turn of a knob. So why not relax in a comfortable arm chair, and even do their “worshiping” before the screen? Why bother to turn out for church? Television-conditioned people are more reluctant to go out, and more resentful of intrusions, than others. Although the so-called “electronic church” of the United States, which has an enormous viewing audience, has brought great blessing to people confined to their homes through old age or sickness, it is very doubtful whether able-bodied people should ever regard it as a substitute for local church membership. The screen inhibits full personal participation in fellowship, sacrament, and congregational worship, let alone active service and witness.

Secondly, TV tends to make people intellectually uncritical. Of course it need not, and most channels include programs designed to provoke thought. Yet I think Marshall McLuhan exaggerated the “participation” element which TV demands. Many people flop down before the box precisely because after a hard day’s work they want to be entertained, not to be made to participate, least of all to think. So the disease known as “spectatoritis” spreads. People can no longer listen without looking. TV offers them more pictures than arguments.

Now of course McLuhan knew this. Believing in 1968 that Richard Nixon had lost the 1960 presidential election because of John F. Kennedy’s better television image, the preoccupation of Nixon’s Republican advisers in 1968 was how to get him to “project electronically,” that is, how to convert his screen image from that of a dry, humorless lawyer into a warm, animated human being. So they hired Marshall McLuhan as consultant and circulated to their entourage suitable extracts from his Understanding Media. He wrote to them, “Policies and issues are useless for election purposes. . . . The shaping of a candidate’s integral image has taken the place of discussing conflicting points of view.” William Gavin, one of Nixon’s chief aides, urged as a policy, “Break away from linear logic: present a barrage of impressions.” He then summed up his approach in the words, “get the voters to like the guy, and the battle’s two-thirds won.” There is no need for us to disagree that images are more powerful than issues, and pictures than arguments. But to substitute the one for the other is to surrender human dignity to human frailty. Christians should not acquiesce in anything which blunts people’s critical faculties.

Thirdly, TV tends to make people emotionally insensitive. In one way the opposite is the case. TV has had the welcome effect of bringing visually into our homes and on to our consciences scenes which otherwise we could never have witnessed. The horrors of war; the deprivations of famine and poverty; the devastations of earthquake, flood, and hurricane; and the plight of refugees—these things are forced upon our attention (as they should be) as never before. We cannot shut our eyes to them any longer. And yet we can and do. Indeed, understandably so. For there is a limit to the volume of pain and tragedy which our emotions can bear. After a while, when the burden becomes too heavy, we either cross the room in order to turn to another channel or switch off the set, or we continue to watch without feeling, having switched off our emotions inside. We become skilled in emotional self-defense. At this point appeals become counter-productive; we have no feeling left to respond to them. I sometimes wonder if we are breeding a new “gospel-hardened” generation because they have been subjected ad nauseam not to glib stereotypes of the good news but to television pictures which have permanently damaged their mechanisms of emotional reaction.

Fourthly, TV tends to make people psychologically confused. For television belongs to the realm of the artificial and the contrived. Most of the programs we see on the screen were not filmed in real life, but in a studio. To borrow one of those McLuhan puns which make his critics wince, they belong like movies not to the real world but to “the reel world.” Programmes filmed outside a studio also lack a measure of authenticity either because, since the filming, they have been edited (e.g. news and documentaries) or because, if relayed live, we are being given a vicarious experience and participating only at second hand. True, we can actually watch a football game (though on the screen) and hear the crowds yelling (though through a speaker), yet there is no way in which we can feel the wind of that tornado or smell the odors of that slum.

It was this element of unreality in television which Malcolm Muggeridge emphasized in his 1976 “London Lectures in Contemporary Christianity” entitled Christ and the Media. He was “contrasting the fantasy of the media with the reality of Christ.” He expressed his personal longing “to stay . . . with the reality of Christ” and to persuade others to do so, “to lash themselves to it, as in the old days of sail sailors would lash themselves to the mast when storms blew up and the seas were rough.” The questions which this contrast raises in my mind are these: how easily can people switch from the one world to the other? Do they recognize, when they hear God’s Word and worship him, that now at last they are in touch with ultimate reality? Or do they, as I fear, move from one unreal situation to another, somnambulating as in a dream, because television has introduced them to a world of fantasy from which they never entirely escape?

Fifthly, TV tends to make people morally disordered. I do not mean that viewers automatically imitate the sexual or violent behavior they see on the screen. The 1977 Home Office study Screen Violence and Film Censorship, while confessing that the social research had been inadequate, concluded that screen violence “is unlikely in itself to impel ordinary viewers to behave in ways they would otherwise not have done.”The Annan Report on The Future of Broadcasting (1977) reached a similar conclusion, although it added that there was real public concern about violence on television, and that the public have a case which the broadcasters must answer.

The morally “disordering” influence of television to which I am referring is more subtle and insidious than direct incitement. What happens to all of us, unless our powers of moral judgment are acute and alert, is that our understanding of what is “normal” begins to be modified. Under the impression that “everybody does it,” and that nobody nowadays believes much in God or in absolutes of truth and goodness, our defenses are lowered and our values imperceptibly altered. We begin to assume that physical violence (when we are provoked), sexual promiscuity (when we are aroused), and extravagant consumer expenditure (when we are tempted) are the accepted norms of western society at the end of the twentieth century. We have been conned.

The most vulnerable members of the population, of course, are children. Yet they are the greatest TV addicts. In Britain “two children in every three are watching television between 3 and 5 hours a day (21 to 35 hours a week).” In the United States, pre-school children constitute the largest television audience, and their weekly average viewing time is at least 30.4 hours. “By the age of seventeen the average American child has logged 15,000 hours watching TV—the equivalent of almost two years day and night.”

Marie Winn has documented the effects of television on American children in her disturbing book The Plug-In Drug (1977). Her thesis is that the damage children suffer is due not so much to the content of television programs as to the television-watching experience itself. It inhibits homework and outdoor play. It hinders the child’s development in language, imagination, perception, learning, self-direction, and relationships. It encourages passivity and diminishes creativity. And it disrupts natural family life. Worst of all, it induces what has been called “the television trance.” It “has not merely blurred the distinctions between the real and unreal for steady viewers, but . . . by doing so it has dulled their sensitivities to real events.”

To sum up, physical laziness, intellectual flabbiness, emotional exhaustion, psychological confusion, and moral disorientation: all these are increased by lengthy exposure to television. And children are the ones who suffer most harm.

How should we react to this negative critique of the effects of contemporary television? I am not advocating that we all sell or smash our sets, or that we try to put the clock back to the pre-television era. Such reactionary behavior is as unnecessary as it is impossible. Most of the damaging tendencies I have described are due more to the poor quality of some programs and to uncritical, obsessional viewing than to the medium itself. On balance, as a medium, television offers more blessings than curses. What is needed, then?

First, Christian parents need to exert greater discipline over their children’s access to the “box.” In Britain 79 percent of children “say their parents exercize no control over the number of hours they spend watching television per day or week.” Yet indiscriminate television viewing exposes the next generation to “consensus-propaganda,” to what Peter Abbs calls “mass-culture.” His thesis is that man is “the most imitative creature in the world and learns by imitation” (Aristotle), that children absorb accepted cultural value-symbols, and that in our society these are being created by the commercial elites.

Secondly, Christians should seek to penetrate the world of the mass media and equip themselves as television script writers, producers, and performers. We can hardly complain of the low standard of many current programs if we take no constructive initiatives to provide alternatives which are not only technically equal if not better, but more wholesome as well. In previous eras, as each new medium of communication has been developed (writing, painting, music, drama, print, film, radio), Christians have been among the first to discern its potential and to press it into the service of worship and evangelism. It must be the same with television. Indeed, in some parts of the world, it already is.

Thirdly, preachers have to reckon with a TV-conditioned congregation. We have a colossal task on our hands if we hope to counteract the baneful tendencies of much modern television. We can no longer assume that people either want to listen to sermons or indeed are able to listen. When they are accustomed to the swiftly moving images of the screen, how can we expect them to give their attention to one person talking, with no frills, no light relief, and nothing else to look at? Is it not beyond them? In consequence, when the sermon begins, they switch off. You can almost hear the click. I do not think this is reason enough to give up preaching, for (as I shall argue shortly) there is something unique and irreplaceable about it. But we shall certainly have to fight for people’s attention.

Whatever is dull, drab, dowdy, slow, or monotonous cannot compete in the television age. Television challenges preachers to make our presentation of the truth attractive through variety, color, illustration, humor, and fast-flowing movement. And in addition, although nothing can supplant preaching, it definitely needs to be supplemented.

There are four ways in which human beings learn: by listening, discussing, watching, and discovering. One might call these audition, conversation, observation, and participation. The first is the most direct, mouth to ear, speaker to hearer, and of course includes preaching. But it is not by any means always the most effective. “Most people find it difficult to understand purely verbal concepts. They suspect the ear; they don’t trust it. In general, we feel more secure when things are visible, when we can ‘see for ourselves.’” So the other three aspects of the learning process should find a place in each local church’s Christian education program.

Dialegesthai, to “reason” or “argue,” is a verb frequently used by Luke to describe the evangelistic preaching of Paul. “He argued with them out of the Scriptures,” particularly with Jewish people. Presumably it was a vocal dialogue in which he presented his case, some questioned it, others contradicted it, and he replied to their questions and criticisms. We need not doubt that he employed a similar method in catechesis, the instruction of converts. So today just as in a university the lecture is supplemented by seminars or tutorials (with close contact between tutor and students), so in the church the sermon should be supplemented by a variety of classes for study and groups for discussion.

A friend of mine, who is a university lecturer, has shared with me very frankly the frustrations he has felt in relation to the preaching in his own church. “I have squirmed for months, even years,” he told me, “and have longed for an opportunity to respond.” In his conviction, the lay leaders of the church should be involved with the pastor in deciding sermon themes and should sometimes preach themselves, if they have the gift and training. But his major concern was the contrast in teaching method between university and church. “In a university class there is an immediate opportunity to respond, to interrupt, to ask questions; and it is encouraged, since the class is a forum for discussion.” In his church, however, no similar opportunity was given; indeed any kind of come-back was discouraged.

We have tried in London to encourage various forms of response. In addition to “Beginners’ Groups” for new Christians and “Fellowship Groups” for more established Christians, “Agnostics Anonymous” encourages enquirers to raise their problems and voice their doubts, with no holds barred. “Talk-back” opportunities are sometimes provided after church. Following a morning sermon on a current issue, we have invited people to bring a sandwich lunch, stay behind, and join in discussion of the theme. More general question-times are held particularly after a series of sermons, and we have occasionally organized a longer “teach-in.”

One of our preachers recently gave the congregation three separate opportunities to respond to questions which he put to them on the basis of his text. This was Philippians 1:12–19 in which Paul refers both to the Christians who had become “much more bold” in their witness as a result of his example and to the varied motives for which they were preaching Christ. First, he asked us to write down specific ways in which we could either encourage others to be bolder in their witness or imitate their bold witness ourselves. Secondly, he invited us to discuss with people sitting near us in church the factors in our situation which either hindered or helped our witness. And thirdly, he used the overhead projector to screen a list of eight mixed motives in evangelism and urged us silently to confess whichever of these may have motivated us. Each session lasted three minutes. I thought it was a very worthwhile experiment; it involved people willy-nilly in the dialogue and obliged us in a very practical way to face the challenge of the text. In the more informal atmosphere of a smaller congregation I see no reason why—at least sometimes—questions relating to the sermon should not be encouraged immediately after it is over.

“Observation” introduces us to a wide range of visual aids. Of course the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are divinely provided visual aids, “visible words” dramatizing the grace of God in salvation through Christ. Some preachers use either blackboard or overhead projector to great effect, while others use film or slides, and soon video-cassettes will be readily available. Brief dramatic presentations, which illustrate some truth of lesson or sermon, can make a powerful impact. There is biblical precedent for them in the acted parables of Ezekiel. Some churches are also reintroducing liturgical “dance,” although I think “mime” would be a more accurate word, since the action is a silent expression of worship. It always needs a musical accompaniment. Better still, the “dance” should accompany and seek to interpret the words of a hymn or psalm. When drama, dance, and dialogue are combined, one might almost refer to “3-D worship.”

Then there are two other visual aids which God himself has designed. First, he means the pastor to be a visual aid to the congregation. Titus was told, “Show yourself in all respects a model of good deeds” (Titus 2:7). And Timothy similarly was to “set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12). In both texts the noun is tupos, a “type” or “pattern,” a word used also of Old Testament characters whose example can be either a warning or an encouragement to us. We preachers cannot expect to communicate verbally from the pulpit if visually out of it we contradict ourselves.

Secondly, God means the congregation to be a visual aid to the world. If we want our gospel to be credible, we must embody it. Unfortunately, as Gavin Reid has rightly written, “whether the church likes it or not, it is—in nonverbal modes—communicating all the time, and much of what it is ‘saying’ is inimical to its true message.”

The fourth way human beings learn is by discovering and doing. Of course people have always taught themselves this way. A child learns to swim by swimming and to ride a bicycle by riding it. Apprenticeships have from time immemorial been accepted as the best way to learn a trade. But today “participation”—in political decision-making and in the process of learning—is being stressed more than ever. School children are encouraged to undertake projects of their own, especially in maths and science, and to find things out by themselves. This is “child-centered” education or the “heuristic” method of learning.

For adults the best example is travel. Take the Holy Land. We can listen to lectures, read books, see films and slides, and talk to travelers. But nothing can compare with actually going there ourselves. Then we can absorb impressions by all five senses. We see the Lake of Galilee and the undulating hills of Samaria with our own eyes. We hear the noise of bargaining in the market-place and the bleating of a mixed flock of sheep and goats. We touch an old, gnarled olive tree, or let the waters of the River Jordan trickle through our fingers. We taste the juice of the grapes of Israel, or the sweetness of a fig or orange or pomegranate. We smell the scent of the flowers of the field. And the whole Bible comes alive! We have “discovered” the land for ourselves.

The same principle should operate in the local church. Biblical preaching and teaching on such topics as prayer and evangelism I take to be indispensable. But in such practical activities a grasp of the theory is not enough. We can learn to pray only by praying, especially in a prayer group. And we can learn to evangelize only by going out with a more experienced Christian either to witness on the street corner or to visit in some homes. Moreover, it is by active membership of the body of Christ that we learn the meaning of the church which is described in the New Testament. A fellowship meeting is a happening in which the individual is accepted, welcomed, and loved. Then abstract concepts of forgiveness, reconciliation, and fellowship take on a concrete form and preached truth comes to life.

So the way we learn is a rich and diverse process. We are assimilating knowledge and experience all the time, directly and indirectly, consciously and unconsciously, by words and images, by listening and looking, by discussing and discovering, by passive absorption and by participating in the action ourselves.

How, then, can a special case be made out for preaching? Let me try. The elements of the fairly new science of “communication theory” are now well known. As my example I will take David K. Berlo’s introduction The Process of Communication (1960). Building on the trio “speaker, audience and speech” which Aristotle gave in his Rhetoric, Dr. Berlo elaborates as follows. First, there is a “source” (the person desiring to communicate), together with the “message” he has to communicate. Secondly, he has to “encode” it in symbols (words or images), and, thirdly, select a “channel” or medium by which to convey it (if by words, they can be spoken, written, telephoned, or radioed; if by images, they can be drawn, painted, acted, or filmed). Finally, there is the “receiver” who is the target of the communication and must “decode” or interpret it. Dr. Berlo sums up: “Communication requires six basic ingredients: a source, an encoder, a message, a channel, a decoder, and a receiver. The source encodes a message. The encoded message is transmitted in some channel. The message is decoded, and interpreted by the receiver.”

Since the source and the encoder are usually the same person, and the receiver and the decoder, I prefer to simplify this model to four ingredients, namely the source (who communicates), the message (what he has to communicate), the code and channel (how he communicates), and the receiver (to whom the communication is addressed). My contention is that, although preaching as a means of communication conforms to all other means, it is nevertheless sui generis. There is no other form of communication which resembles it and therefore could replace it. All its four ingredients are special, and in combination they are unique. Let me explain.

The source, more often than not, is a pastor (though could be a lay preacher) who believes himself called by God to preach, and whose call has been recognized by the church, which therefore authorizes him by a solemn commissioning to exercize his ministry and prays that God will confirm his call by empowering him with the Holy Spirit. This, then, is no ordinary communication “source.” At least in the ideal this preaching person stands in the pulpit, divinely called, commissioned, and empowered, a servant of God, an ambassador of Christ, a Spirit-filled witness to Christ.

The “receivers” (or “receptors”) are a Christian congregation (for I am not now thinking of evangelistic preaching) who have gathered deliberately on the Lord’s Day “to set forth his most worthy praise” and “to hear his most holy word.” There is, therefore, a profound empathy between preacher and congregation arising from their common faith. The shepherd is commissioned to feed the flock, the steward to dispense to the household. Both sides know this. It is partly for this purpose that they have assembled. Expectation is in the air. So the pulpit prayer before the sermon begins is (or should be) no empty formality. It is rather a vital opportunity for preacher and people to pray for one another, put themselves into the hand of God, humble themselves before him, and pray that his voice may be heard and his glory seen.

The “message” is God’s own Word. For the people have not gathered to hear a human being, but to meet with God. They desire like Mary of Bethany to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to his teaching. They are spiritually hungry. The bread they desire is the Word of God.

What, then, are the code and channel of the communication? Obviously the code is words and the channel speech. Yet the communication is to be understood neither in physical terms (from pulpit to pew), nor even in human terms (one mouth speaking, many ears listening), but in divine terms (God speaking through his minister to his people).

It is this total context which makes preaching unique. For here are God’s people assembled in God’s presence to hear God’s Word from God’s minister.

That is what I mean when I claim that, even in this age that is saturated with the most elaborate media of communication, preaching remains sui generis. No film or play, no drama or dialogue, no seminar or lecture, no Sunday school or discussion group has all these elements in combination. What is unique is not an ideal or an atmosphere, but a reality. The living God is present, according to his covenant pledge, in the midst of his worshiping people, and has promised to make himself known to them through Word and sacrament. Nothing could ever replace this.

Although in the rather flowery language of a century ago, Matthew Simpson gave an admirable summary of the uniqueness of the sermon event. He wrote of the preacher:

His throne is the pulpit; he stands in Christ’s stead; his message is the word of God; around him are immortal souls; the Saviour, unseen, is beside him; the Holy Spirit broods over the congregation; angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations, and what vast responsibility!

Thus Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of his Name. Therefore acceptable worship is impossible without preaching. For preaching is making known the Name of the Lord, and worship is praising the Name of the Lord made known. Far from being an alien intrusion into worship, the reading and preaching of the Word are actually indispensable to it. The two cannot be divorced. Indeed, it is their unnatural divorce which accounts for the low level of so much contemporary worship. Our worship is poor because our knowledge of God is poor, and our knowledge of God is poor because our preaching is poor. But when the Word of God is expounded in its fulness, and the congregation begin to glimpse the glory of the living God, they bow down in solemn awe and joyful wonder before his throne. It is preaching which accomplishes this, the proclamation of the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God. That is why preaching is unique and irreplaceable.

The contemporary loss of confidence in the gospel is the most basic of all hindrances to preaching. For to “preach” (kērussein) is to assume the role of a herald or town crier and publicly to proclaim a message, while to “evangelize” (euangelizesthai) is to spread good news. Both metaphors presuppose that we have been given something to say: kērussein depends on the kērygma (the proclamation or announcement) and euangelizesthai on the euangelion (the evangel or gospel). Without a clear and confident message preaching is impossible. Yet it is precisely this that the church seems nowadays to lack.

Not that this phenomenon is altogether new. Throughout church history the pendulum has swung between eras of faith and eras of doubt. In 1882, for example, Macmillan published an essay by Sir John Pentland Mahaffy entitled The Decay of Modern Preaching. And at the beginning of this century, Canon J. G. Simpson of Manchester bemoaned the absence of authoritative preaching in England: “Not only does the race of great preachers seem for the time to be extinct, but the power of the pulpit has declined. . . . The pulpit of the present day has no clear, ringing and definite message.” Small wonder that a child, wearied by a preacher’s boring utterance, appealed “Mother, pay the man, and let us go home.”

Yet as we approach the end of the twentieth century, we are conscious that the erosion of Christian faith in the west has continued. Relativity has been applied to doctrine and ethics, and absolutes have disappeared. Darwin has convinced many that religion is an evolutionary phase, Marx that it is a sociological phenomenon, and Freud that it is a neurosis. Biblical authority has for many been undermined by biblical criticism. The comparative study of religions has tended to downgrade Christianity to one religion among many, and has encouraged the growth of syncretism. Existentialism severs our historical roots, insisting that nothing matters but the encounter and decision of the moment. Then there are the blatant denials of radical or secular theology, denials of the infinite, loving personality of God and of the essential deity of Jesus. These things have contributed to a loss of nerve among preachers. Some frankly confess that they see their function as sharing their doubts with their congregation.

Others are assuming a false modesty by insisting that the “Christian presence” in the world needs to be not only a serving but a silent presence. Or if they have an active role at all, they understand it in terms of dialogue rather than proclamation; they need, they say, to sit down humbly alongside secular man and let him teach them. I remember vividly how at the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Uppsala, Sweden, in 1968, one of the Geneva secretariat proposed to the section on “mission” that they include this sentence in their report, “In this dialogue Christ speaks through the brother, correcting our distorted image of the truth.” At first hearing it sounded innocuous until you realized that “the brother” meant the non-Christian partner in the dialogue. If this sentence had been accepted, it would have been the only reference in the section report to Christ speaking, and it would have upended evangelism into a proclamation of the gospel by the non-Christian to the Christian!

This may be an extreme case, but it exemplifies the vogue of false humility, which declines to claim any uniqueness or finality for our Lord Jesus Christ. The whole church seems to be caught in a crisis of identity, in which it is unsure of itself and confused about its message and mission. Michael Green sums it up with his customary forthrightness in his preface to The Truth of God Incarnate, the riposte he edited to The Myth of God Incarnate. His preface is entitled “Scepticism in the Church.” In it he writes, “During the past forty-five years . . . we have seen an increasing reluctance to accept traditional full-blooded Christianity, complete with an inspired Bible and an incarnate Christ, and a growing tendency to accommodate Christianity to the spirit of the age.”

Now there is no chance of a recovery of preaching without a prior recovery of conviction. We need to regain our confidence in the truth, relevance, and power of the gospel, and begin to get excited about it again. Is the gospel good news from God, or not? Campbell Morgan, the gifted expositor who for two separate periods earlier in this century was minister of Westminster Chapel in London, was quite clear about this:

Preaching is not the proclamation of a theory, or the discussion of a doubt. A man has a perfect right to proclaim a theory of any sort, or to discuss his doubts. But that is not preaching. “Give me the benefit of your convictions, if you have any. Keep your doubts to yourself; I have enough of my own,” said Goethe. We are never preaching when we are hazarding speculations. Of course we do so. We are bound to speculate sometimes. I sometimes say: “I am speculating; stop taking notes.” Speculation is not preaching. Neither is the declaration of negations preaching. Preaching is the proclamation of the Word, the truth as the truth has been revealed.

How, then, might we expect a recovery of Christian morale to take place? Will we ever be able to echo Paul’s affirmations as he contemplated, unabashed, his visit to imperial Rome? “I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greeks” (Rom. 1:14–16). At present the church’s attitude to evangelism might be summarized in exactly contrary terms: “no enthusiasm, little sense of obligation, and considerable embarrassment.” How could this be reversed into the apostolic “I am under obligation. . . I am eager. . . I am not ashamed”?

First, we need to distinguish between superficially similar words like assurance, conviction, presumption, and bigotry. Conviction is the state of being convinced, and assurance of being sure, by adequate evidence or argument, that something is true. Presumption is a premature assumption of its truth, a confidence resting on inadequate or unexamined premises. Bigotry is both blind and obstinate; the bigot closes his eyes to the data and clings to his opinions regardless. Presumption and bigotry are incompatible with any serious concern for truth and with worship of the God of truth. At least some degree of Christian conviction and assurance, however, is both compatible and reasonable, for it is grounded on good historical evidence or, as the New Testament writers call it, “witness.” The verbs to “know” and “believe” and “be persuaded” are liberally sprinkled throughout the New Testament. Faith and confidence are regarded as norms of Christian experience, not as exceptions. Indeed, the apostles and evangelists not infrequently tell their readers that the purpose of what they are writing (whether their personal testimony to Jesus or that of other eye-witnesses) is “that you may know” or “that you may believe” (e.g. Luke 1:1–4; John 20:31; 1 John 5:13). I feel the need to make this point because, in the present epoch of doubt, some Christians have a bad conscience about believing! But no, plerophoria, meaning “full assurance” and even “certainty,” is meant to characterize both our approach to God in prayer and our proclamation of Christ to the world (1 Thess. 1:5; Heb. 10:22). A Christian mind asks questions, probes problems, confesses ignorance, feels perplexity, but does these things within the context of a profound and growing confidence of the reality of God and of his Christ. We should not acquiesce in a condition of basic and chronic doubt, as if it were characteristic of Christian normality. It is not. It is rather a symptom of spiritual sickness in our spiritually sick age.

Secondly, we need to recognize that real and important questions are being asked by theologians today which cannot be shirked. How far does the cultural conditioning of Scripture affect the normative nature of its teaching? Do we have liberty to reclothe this teaching in modern cultural dress without being guilty of manipulation? Does the language in which doctrines have been formulated—both in Scripture and in tradition—bind the church for ever, or may we engage in a work of reformulation? What are the relations between history and faith, Jesus and Christ, Scripture and church traditions? How can we present the good news of Jesus Christ intelligibly to the secular west without distorting it? These are some of the urgent questions which are facing all of us today. If we cannot agree with all the answers which are being offered, we have no quarrel with the questions.

Thirdly, we need to encourage Christian scholars to go to the frontiers and engage in the debate, while at the same time retaining their active participation in the community of faith. I know this is a delicate issue, and it is not easy to define the right relations between free enquiry and settled faith. Yet I have often been disturbed by the loneliness of some Christian scholars. Whether it is they who have drifted away from the fellowship, or the fellowship which has allowed them to drift, in either case their isolation is an unhealthy and dangerous condition. As part of their own integrity Christian scholars need both to preserve the tension between openness and commitment, and to accept some measure of accountability to one another and responsibility for one another in the body of Christ. In such a caring fellowship I think we might witness fewer casualties on the one hand and more theological creativity on the other.

Fourthly, we need to pray more persistently and expectantly for grace from the Holy Spirit of truth. Christian understanding is not possible without his enlightenment, nor is Christian assurance possible without his witness. Vital as are both honest historical enquiry and membership of the believing community for growth in Christian understanding and certainty, yet ultimately only God can convince us about God. Our greatest need, as the Reformers kept insisting, is the testimonium internum Spiritus sancti. The witness of Christian experience down the ages is important, but we have to assign it a tertiary place. The testimony of the apostolic eye-witnesses is indispensable, but even this is only secondary. The primary witness is that of God the Father to God the Son through God the Holy Spirit (cf. John 15:26–27). Yet we have to put ourselves in the way of receiving it, his objective witness as we study the Scriptures and his subjective witness as, in our biblical studies, we humble ourselves before him and cry to him for mercy.

Christians believe that the living God is the Lord of history. Some of us also believe that it is time for him to push back the forces of unbelief and to set the pendulum swinging in the direction of faith again. Indeed, there are signs that he is already doing so. In support of this statement, I appeal to Peter Berger, the American sociologist and author, and in particular to his “Call for Authority in the Christian Community” in his book Facing Up to Modernity (1977). He contrasts the contemporary crisis in American society and American churches with the situation in 1961 when his earlier book The Noise of Solemn Assemblies was published. What has happened in the intervening sixteen years? “Then,” he writes, “the critic appeared to be banging against the locked gates of majestically self-confident institutional edifices. Today he is more like a man storming through doors torn wide open by an earthquake. The ground on which we are standing has been profoundly shaken, and most of us feel it in our bones.” Peter Berger goes on to argue that the church’s loss of nerve, with its “orgies of self-doubt and self-denigration,” is due to its capitulation to the prevailing secular culture. It is now necessary, however, “to affirm the transcendence and the authority of Christianity over and beyond any cultural constellation in history, present or future, ‘established’ or still striving for ‘establishment.’” Christian leaders should stop their “dance round the golden calves of modernity.” Instead of asking “what does modern man have to say to the Church?,” they should start asking “what does the Church have to say to modern man?” For there is now “a widespread and apparently deepening hunger for religious answers among people of many different sorts,” which may herald “a possibly powerful reversal of the secularization process.” So, in preparation for the dawning of another age of faith, let the church adopt a new “stance of authority,” in contrast to her present demoralization, and resume the bold proclamation of her unchanging message. It is a stirring summons.

* * *

We have tried to face the three chief obstacles to preaching today. The anti-authority mood makes people unwilling to listen, addiction of television makes them unable to do so, and the contemporary atmosphere of doubt makes many preachers both unwilling and unable to speak. Thus there is paralysis at both ends, in the speaking and in the hearing. A dumb preacher with a deaf congregation presents a fearsome barrier to communication. So completely have these problems undermined the morale of some preachers that they have given up altogether. Others struggle on, but have lost heart. Indeed, all of us have been affected by the negative arguments, even if there are counter-arguments which we have begun to deploy. The best form of defense, however, is attack. So in the next chapter I propose to go over to the offensive and to argue theologically for the indispensable and permanent place of preaching in the purpose of God for his church.

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