The Ministry Of The Word
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THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD
OUR PRESENT inquiry is not about dealings in wheat and barley, or oxen and sheep, or anything else of the kind. It concerns the very Body of Jesus. For the Church of Christ is
Christ's own Body, according to St Paul? and the man who is entrusted with it must train it to perfect health and incredible beauty, by unremitting vigilance to prevent the slightest spot or wrinkle or other blemish of that sort from marring its grace and loveliness. In short, he must make it worthy, as far as lies within human power, of that pure and blessed Head to which it is subjected.
People who are keen for athletic fitness need doctors and trainers and a careful diet and continual exercise and any amount of other precautions. For the neglect of a small detail in these matters upsets and spoils the whole scheme. Then what about those whose vocation is to look after this Body which has to contend, not against flesh and blood, but against the unseen powers? How can they keep it spotless and sound, unless they possess superhuman wisdom and fully understand the treatment suitable for the soul? Or do you not realize that that Body is liable to more diseases and attacks than this flesh of ours, and is infected more quickly and cured more slowly?
Doctors who treat the human body have discovered a multiplicity of drugs and various designs of instruments and appropriate forms of diet for the sick. And the character of the climate is often sufficient by itself to restore the patient's
1 Col. 1.24.
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health. And sometimes a timely bout of sleep relieves the doctor of all trouble. But in the present case there is nothing like this to rely on. When all is said and done, there is only one means and only one method of treatment available, and that is teaching by word of mouth. That is the best instrument, the best diet, and the best climate. It takes the place of medicine and cautery and surgery. When we need to cauterize or cut, we must use this. Without it all else is useless. By it we rouse the soul's lethargy or reduce its inflammation, we remove excrescences and supply defects, and, in short, do everything which contributes to its health.
In adopting the best possible way of life, you may be spurred on to emulation by someone else's example; but when it is false doctrine that the soul is suffering from, words are urgently needed, not only for the safety of the Church's members, but to meet the attacks of outsiders as well. If you held the sword of the Spirit and the shield of faith so firmly that you could work miracles and stop the mouths of the impudent by portents, you would have no need of the help of the word; or rather, I should say that even then the word would not be useless, but very necessary.
For St Paul used it, although he aroused wonder everywhere by the signs he performed. And another of the apostolic company urges us to pay attention to this power, saying,
"Be ready to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you." 2 Moreover, they all agreed to entrust Stephen and his fellows with the care of the widows for no other reason than that they might devote themselves to the ministry of the word. Of course, we should not be so eager for it, if we had the resource of miracles. But as there is not so much as a trace of that power left, and still many persistent enemies attack us all round, it remains
2 I Pet. 3. 15.
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[IV.3 necessary for us to arm ourselves with this defence, to avoid being struck by our enemies' missiles and to strike them with ours.
We must take great care, therefore, that the word of Christ may dwell in us richly. For our preparation is not against a single kind of attack. This warfare of ours assumes complex forms and is waged by various enemies. They do not all use the same weapons and they have not all trained to attack us in the same manner. Anyone who undertakes to fight them all must know the arts of all. He must be at the same time archer and slinger, cavalry officer and infantry officer, private soldier and general, foot-soldier and hussar, marine and engineer. In military warfare each man is given a particular task and repulses the attacker in that particular way. But in our warfare this is not so. Unless the man who means to win understands every aspect of the art, the devil knows how to introduce his agents at a single neglected spot and so to plunder the flock. But he is baffled when he sees that the shepherd has mastered his whole repertoire and thoroughly understands his tricks.
So we must arm ourselves well at every point. As long as a city is encircled with walls all round, it mocks its besiegers and remains in perfect safety. But once a breach is made in the wall, no larger than a gate, the circuit is no more use to it, though all the rest stands safe. So it is with the City of God. As long as the nimble wits and the wisdom of the shepherd encompass it like a wall all round, all the enemy's devices end in his own shame and ridicule and the inhabitants remain unharmed; but when someone manages to break down a part of this defence, even though he fails to destroy it all, from that moment practically the whole city is ruined through that one part. What if the Jews pillage the Church while it is contending successfully against the
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Greeks? or if it masters both of these, but is plundered by the Manichaeans? or if, after it has overcome these too, the exponents of "Destiny" 3 slaughter the sheep standing inside the fold? Do I need to enumerate all the devil's heresies?
But unless the shepherd knows how to refuse everyone of them effectively, the wolf can enter by a single one and devour most of the sheep.
In the case of soldiers, we must always expect that victory or defeat will depend on those who stand and fight. But in our case it is far different. Often the battle against others secures victory for men who did not enter the fight or endure its toil at all, but were sitting still and doing nothing. And if someone falls on his own sword through lack of wide experience in these conflicts, he becomes an object of ridicule to friend and foe alike.
I shall try to explain my meaning to you by an example.
Those who accept the nonsense taught by Valentinus and Marcion, and all who are infected with their disease, reject the Law given by God to Moses from the canon of Holy
Scripture. The Jews, on the other hand, hold it in such reverence that they obstinately try to observe it all, contrary to God's will, though circumstances prevent them. But the Church of God, avoiding both extremes, steers a middle course, and neither lets herself be subjected to its yoke nor permits men to disparage it, but commends it, although it is abrogated, because it was serviceable in its time. So anyone who means to oppose both these parties must understand this balance. If he wants to teach the Jews that they are out of date in clinging to their ancient legislation, and begins to disparage it unsparingly, he gives an easy handle to those heretics who want to tear it in pieces. But if, in his determination to silence this group, he extols the Law immoder3 The Stoics, against whom John Chrysostom wrote six homilies.
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ately and admires it as though it were necessary in our present age, he opens the mouths of the Jews.
Again, those who are afflicted with the madness of Sabellius or the ravings of Arius have in both cases fallen away from the sound faith by going to extremes. Each of these parties bears the name of Christian, but if you examine their doctrines you will find the first group no better than
Jews except for a difference of name, while the others have a great affinity with the heresy of Paul of Samosata; and both are beyond the pale of truth. There is, then, great danger in such cases, and strait and narrow is the way, with abrupt precipices on both sides. There is every reason to fear that, while trying to aim a blow at one enemy, you will be struck by the other. If someone says that the Godhead is one, Sabellius distorts the expression at once, to favour his own madness. If, on the other hand, someone makes a distinction and says that the Father is one, the Son another, and the Holy Ghost another, up gets Arius, twisting the distinction of Persons into a difference of Substance. We must shun and avoid the impious confusion of the one party and the mad division of the other by confessing that the Godhead of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost is one, but adding that there are three Persons. For by this means we shall be able to defend ourselves from the attacks of both.
I could tell you of many other struggles from which it will cost you a great many scars to extricate yourself, unless you fight with courage and with care. Need I mention the idle speculations of our own people? They are quite as many as the attacks from outside, and they cause the teacher even more trouble. Some people, out of restless curiosity, want to elaborate idly and irresponsibly doctrines which are of no benefit to those who understand them, or else are actually
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incomprehensible. Others call God to account for his judgements and struggle to measure the great deep. For the Psalmist says: "Thy judgements are a great deep."4 You will find that few are deeply concerned about faith and conduct, but the majority go in for these elaborate theories and investigate questions to which there is no answer and whose very investigation rouses God's anger. For when we struggle to learn things which God himself did not will us to know, we shall never succeed-how can we, against God's will?and we shall gain nothing but our own peril from the investigation.
But, for all that, when anyone uses authority to silence people who pursue these enigmas, he gets a reputation for arrogance and ignorance. So here, too, the president needs great tact to dissuade men from inappropriate speculations and to escape the criticisms 1 have mentioned. For all these matters no other help has been vouchsafed but that of the word. And if anyone is deprived of this power, the souls of those under him (I mean the weaker and more speculative of them) will be not better off than ships storm-tossed at sea. So the priest should do all he can to gain this power.
Basil: Why then was not Paul eager to attain perfection in this quality? He is not ashamed of his poverty of speech, but expressly confesses that he is inexpert at it.s And he says this when writing to the Corinthians who were admired for their eloquence and prided themselves on it.
John: This is the very excuse that has ruined most men and made them more casual about true doctrine. Being unable to examine with care the profundity of the Apostle's mind or to understand the meaning of his words, they have spent all their time nodding and yawning, and prizing, not 4 Ps. 36.6.
5 II Cor. 11.6.
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[Iv.6 the form of ignorance which Paul admitted, but a form from which no man under heaven was ever as free.
But let the statement stand for the moment. In the meantime I say this: let us assume that he was inexpert in this faculty, as they maintain; what has that to do with the present argument? He had a greater power than speech, a pow'!r which was able to effect greater results. By his mere presence, and without a word, he terrified the devils. If the men of to-day were all to join forces, they could not with any quantity of prayers and tears do as much as the handkerchiefs of Paul once did. Paul by his prayers used to raise the dead and work miracles so wonderful that he was regarded as a god by the heathen. And before he departed this life he was thought worthy to be caught up to the third heaven and to listen to words which are not lawful for human kind to hear. But as for the men of to-day-and I do not want to say anything unkind or severe; no indeed, for I am not speaking to reproach them, but only in amazement-how can they avoid shuddering when they compare themselves with so great a man? For if we pass over his miracles and come to the saint's life and examine his angelic behaviour, we shall see the Christian athlete a conqueror here even more than in his miracles. Need I mention his earnestness, his forbearance, his continual perils, his constant cares, his unceasing anxieties for the churches, his sympathy with the weak, his many tribulations, his unexampled persecutions, his daily deaths? What place in the world, what continent or sea remained ignorant of the struggles of that just man? Even the desert knew him and sheltered him often when he was in peril. He endured every form of intrigue. He won every kind of victory. His efforts never ceased, nor ceased being crowned.
But I do not know how I let myself insult him. For his
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achievements surpass all description; they certainly surpass my description as much as practised orators surpass me. Yet since the saint will not judge me by results but by intentions,
I will not stop until I have stated one fact which is as much above what I have said as he is above all other men. And what is that? After all these achievements, after winning laurels past number, he prayed that he might go to hell and be delivered to eternal punishment, to bring it about that the Jews, who had often stoned him and done what they could to murder him, might be saved and come to Christ.
Who longed for Christ as he did ?-if indeed we may call it longing and not by some stronger name. Shall we, then, continue to compare ourselves with him, when we recall the great grace which he received from above and the great virtue which he displayed in himself? What could be more presumptuous than that!
And now I will try to prove also that, despite all this, he was not inexpert at speaking, in the way that these men think. For they do not apply the title merely to one who is unversed in the pedantry of heathen rhetoric, but also to one who does not understand how to contend for the doctrines of the Truth. And they are right. But Paul did not say he was inexpert at both these qualities; only the former.
To establish this fact he carefully made the distinction by saying that he was "inexpert in speech, but not in knowledge". Now if I were demanding the polish of Isocrates and the grandeur of Demosthenes and the dignity of Thucydides and the sublimity of Plato, it would be right to confront me with the testimony of Paul. But in fact I pass over all those qualities and the superfluous embellishments of pagan writers. I take no account of diction or style. Let a man's diction be beggarly and his verbal composition simple and artless, but do not let him be inexpert in the knowledge and
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[Iv.6 careful statement of doctrine. And do not let him deprive the saint, to cloak his own idleness, of the greatest of his qualities and the chief of his claims of eulogy.
Tell me, how did he confound the Jews dwelling in Damascus, when he had not yet begun his miracles? How did he confute the Grecians? Why was he sent to Tarsus?
Was it not because he powerfully prevailed by his words and so far routed them that they were provoked to murder him, not being able to bear their defeat? Then he had not yet begun to work wonders and no one could say that the crowds thought him wonderful because of the fame of his miracles or that the people who opposed him were overthrown by his reputation. For at that time his only power was the power of speech. How did he contend and dispute with those who tried to live like Jews at Antioch?6 Did not the Areopagite, who belonged to that very superstitious city,' follow him with his wife because of his speech alone? How did Eutychus come to fall from the window? Was it not because he was engrossed until midnight in the word of his teaching? What happened at Thessalonica and Corinth?
What at Ephesus and Rome itself? Did he not spend whole days and nights continuously in expounding the Scriptures?
Need we mention his disputes with the Epicureans and Stoics? If I wanted to tell all, my account would stretch to an excessive length. But when he obviously made much use of argument, both before he began his miracles and after he had begun them, how can anyone dare to call him inexpert at speaking-the man who won everyone's admiration above all by his disputations and public speeches? Why did the Lycaonians believe him to be Hermes? The idea that he and Barnabas were gods was due to their miracles i but the idea
6 Gal. 2.11 fr.
7 Acts 17.34.
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that he was Hermes was due not to his miracles but to his eloquence.
J n what did St Paul surpass the rest of the Apostles? And how does it come about that throughout the whole world he is much on everyone's lips? How is it that, not merely among ourselves, but among Jews and Greeks too, he is admired beyond all men? Is it not because of the excellence of his
Epistles? By this he has helped and will help and, as long as the human race remains, will never stop helping the faithful, not only of his own time but from that day to this and those who shall believe until the corning of Christ. For his writings fortify the churches all over the world like a wall of steel.
Even now he stands among us like some noble champion, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and casting down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God. All this he does by means of those wonderful Epistles he has left us, so full of divine wisdom.
His writings are not only useful to us for the refutation of false doctrine and the establishment of the true, but they help us very greatly, too, in living a good life. For by the use of them even to-day the presidents educate and train the pure Virgin whom Paul himself espoused to Christ, and lead her on to spiritual beauty. By them they also ward off the diseases which attack her, and preserve the good health she enjoys. Such is the quality and such the strength of the medicines left us by this man who was inexpert at speaking!
Those who use them constantly know their worth.
These facts are enough to show that he took great pains over this part of his work. But listen also to what he says to his disciple in a letter: "Give heed to reading, to exhortation, to teaching." 8 And he adds the fruit which develops
8 I Tim. 4.13.
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[lv.8 from this: "For in doing this," he says, "thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear thee"; and again, "And the Lord's servant must not strive, but be gentle towards all, apt to teach, forbearing."!iI And further on he says, "But abide thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou has learned them; and that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise" ;10 and again, "Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete." 11 And listen to what he adds in his charge to Titus about the appointment of bishops: "For the bishop," he says, "must hold to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able to convict even the gainsayers." 12 How, then, if he is inexpert at speaking, as they say, will he be able to conVIct the gamsayers and to stop their mouths·~ And why need anyone give heed to reading and to the scriptures, if it is right to welcome such inexpertness? This is all just a pretence and excuse and a pretext for carelessness and indolence.
Basil: But this charge is given to the priests.
John: Well, our argument just now is about priests. But to learn that he gives it also to those who are under authority, listen to some advice he gives to others in another epistle:
"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom" ;13 and again, "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer each one".14 And the command to be ready to give an answer 15 was given to all alike. Writing to the Thessalonians, Paul
9 2 Tim. 2.24.
12 Titus 1.7-9.
10 2 Tim. 3.14-15.
112 Tim. 3.16-17.
14 Col. 4.6.
13 Col. 3.16.
15 1 Pet. 3.15.
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says, "Build each other up, even as also ye do." 16 But when he speaks of priests, he says, "Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially those who labour in the word and in teaching."I? For this is the ultimate aim of their teaching: to lead their disciples, both by what they do and what they say, into the way of that blessed life which Christ commanded. Example alone is not sufficient instruction. And this statement is not mine, but the Saviour's own. For he says, 'Whosoever shall do and teach, he shall be called great." 18 Now if to do were the same as to teach, the second word would be superfluous. It would have been enough to say "Whosoever shall do." But in fact by distinguishing the two he shows that example is one thing and instruction another, and that each requires the other for perfect edification.
Do you recall what the chosen vessel 19 of Christ said to the elders of Ephesus? "Wherefore, watch ye, remembering that by the space of three years I ceased not to admonish every one of you night and day with tears." 20 What need was there of tears or of verbal admonition, when the Apostle's life shone so bright? For the keeping of the commandments his holy life might be a great help to us-though even here
I should not say that example alone could achieve everything. But when conflict arises on matters of dQctrine and all the combatants rely on the same scriptures, what weight will his life carry then? What use are a man's many labours, when after all his exertions he falls into heresy through sheer inexperience and is cut off from the body of the Church, as I know many have done? What help is his perseverance?
None at all-no more, in fact, than a sound faith coupled with a corrupt life. That is the chief reason why anyone who 16 I Thess. 5.11.
I? I Tim. 5.17.
18 Matt. 5. 19.
)9 Cf. Acts 9.15.
20 Acts 20.3 I.
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[IV.g has the responsibility of teaching others must be experienced in these doctrinal conflicts. For though he himself stands secure and is not injured by his opponents; yet, when the multitude of simpler folk who are set under him see their leader worsted and unable to answer his opponents, they do not blame his incapacity for the defeat, but his unsound doctrine. So through the inexperience of one man the whole congregation is brought to ultimate disaster. Though they may not quite join the enemy, yet they cannot help doubting, where they used to be confident. Those whom they used to consult with unwavering faith they can no longer attend to with the same security. Such a storm invades their souls because of their teacher's defeat that the evil leads at last to shipwreck. What awful disaster, what burning fire is heaped on that wretched man's head for every one of these souls that perish, you do not need me to tell you, since you know it all perfectly well.
Is it, then, due to arrogance, is it due to vainglory, if I refused to be the cause of perdition to so many and to earn for myself a severer punishment than that which now awaits me in the world to come? Who could say so? Noone, unless he wanted to cast idle aspersions and speculate upon another's misfortunes.