Alive to the Word. Stephen I. Wright

[16] the entire enterprise of forming Christian minds and lives through the Church’s ministry of proclaiming and teaching the gospel. In the sixteenth-century attempts to reform the Church, the Fathers’ preaching and teaching was a vital guide.[17] And as, in the same period, both the Bible and other theological writings became available to vastly more people through the invention of printing and the growth in literacy, preaching no longer needed to be the gateway to theology that once it had been.

So it was that increasingly people did not need to listen to sermons to engage with what the theological thinkers were saying, nor did theological thought necessarily reflect the sorts of things that were being preached. A more radical step, however, came with the post-Enlightenment attempt to treat theology as a discipline that could, in principle, be subjected to the same standards of ‘objective’ rationality as any other, and thus be equally accessible to those beyond the Church as those within it. High academic standards had been nobly blended with theology in the mediaeval schools and above all in the faith-and-reason synthesis of Thomas Aquinas. But the overall framework remained an ecclesiastical one. The founding of the modern ‘secular’ university by Wilhelm von Humboldt in Berlin in 1810 signalled a fundamental questioning of why the study of theology should be confined to the one social grouping which had a deeply vested interest in it (even though that grouping, since the Reformation, had been internally divided).[18] This flew in the face of the Enlightenment ideals of detached reflection and the possibility, in principle, of any human being attaining growth in knowledge through the universal reason possessed by all. At the same time, there was a seminal attempt to divide up theology so that the descriptive, academic task of identifying ‘biblical theology’ was separated from the normative, constructive task of developing ‘dogmatic theology’.[19] The fact that a place was allowed for the constructive task shows that preaching, and other forms of Church-based theologizing, still had their place; but to carry credibility they had to be based on the biblical theology done in the academy.

One might argue that preachers have been on the back foot ever since. Distinguished theologian-preachers such as Schleiermacher and Barth (in very different ways) sought to reassert the Church’s authority in preaching: Schleiermacher by emphasizing the hearers’ actual experience, and the evocation of their innate sense of transcendence in preaching; Barth by emphasizing the power of God’s word to break into human experience in unpredictable and world-challenging ways. But they themselves produced works of academic theology which, arguably, have proved much more influential than their actual preaching. Can (and should) the preaching of the Church once again be an influence on the highest and most rigorous realms of study and exploration? If not – if the influence must inevitably be the other way round – does that mean that the Church is doomed to remain in the inappropriate-sounding role of handmaid of academic theology, even though such theology is not necessarily carried out within a Christian ethos? Given our contemporary awareness that the Enlightenment goal of ‘neutrality’ is a chimera, this must surely mean that the Church must open itself to being enslaved to presuppositions and modes of thought which, at least sometimes, fly in the face of ‘the mind of Christ’.[20]

      Large philosophical questions are raised here, but our concern is to pursue the implications for preaching. Two very practical matters can be identified: the way in which a preacher’s own theological thinking is formed, and the operative frameworks or ‘ordinary hermeneutics’ by which a congregation’s theological mind is shaped.

      The hope of ministerial training institutions is to enable those called to ministry to articulate the Christian gospel in a way that is faithful to orthodox Christian tradition, and both comprehensible and applicable to their contemporaries. This is a matter not only of imparting knowledge but also of inducting students into ways of thinking and practices of ongoing theological reflection which stimulate lifelong growth as preachers, as well as in all other dimensions of ministry.

      Reality, of course, is messy, and the processes of learning and development are as unpredictable and non-linear for ministers as they are for anyone else. It is appropriate, though, for any preacher reviewing their ministry at any stage to ask what theological sources and modes of thought are most influencing their preaching ministry. The question is bound to reveal the haphazard nature of the influences upon us. We will all (probably!) have read the Bible. But we are all children of particular traditions; even those who come later into church life find themselves caught up in one tradition or another (or indeed choose one for themselves). We will have been directed to particular books and authors; we have heard particular teachers and preachers. Other writings or speakers we have come across quite by accident. Any or all of these we may have warmed to, reacted against or remained fairly neutral towards. Moreover, we are formed deeply by our theological friendships. The fact that a particular person is (or is not) sympathetic to a particular view may have great influence on the extent of our own sympathy to it.

      Given the history of the academic ‘takeover’ of theology which I have outlined, preachers are bound to be influenced by such studies in many ways. Even if a preacher’s reading is restricted (say) to popular devotional Bible commentaries, only those from the narrowest ‘stables’ will have been uninfluenced by academic biblical study and theology – to the extent, very likely, of remaining unhelpfully naïve. Any more ‘mainstream’ commentary, or theological work, will have been written in dialogue with a range of others, including, normally, at least some – often many – holding different views and perspectives from those of the writer himself or herself. If God’s truth may potentially be found anywhere, it is not a matter of ‘popular Christian’ theology being ‘right’ and ‘academic theology’ being (at the very least) ‘dangerous’. It is rather that the simple awareness – at least in outline – of the ways in which our theological minds are being shaped is the crucial first step to learning, appropriate critique of ourselves and our ‘sources’ and more sensitive mediation of the gospel for congregations.

      In this light, the old jibe that you can tell when preachers have stopped thinking by the latest date of the books on their shelves needs revising – and not just because, these days, they probably haven’t been able to afford to buy many new ones! It is not the date of the books alone, but their provenance which is significant. Although many publishers now offer a wide theological spectrum, some are still known for the particular perspective they take. A preaching diet that is dependent on the preacher’s reading from the output of just one or two publishers (worse still, one or two authors) will be thin, narrow and very unlikely to contain the full sustenance of the gospel. ‘Old’ can be wonderfully refreshing – as those now rediscovering the riches of the Patristic tradition are learning. The question is whether our reading is enlarging our horizons in helpful ways, and whether we are learning to apply our critical faculties to everything, including that which we find most congenial.

      Reflecting on the theological influences upon us should disabuse us of any notion that we might ever aspire to being pure channels for pure doctrine. Our theological outlook is mediated through many streams, and we have had our own, mysterious ways of absorbing those into our system and rejecting elements that do not seem to us to fit. The fact that we have had some sort of systematic training should be an advantage to us, but it does not make us the ‘expert’ who ‘knows it all’ in comparison with hearers who are (in this way of thinking) empty vessels waiting for our ‘knowledge’ to be offloaded. We ‘know’ genuinely, yet we ‘know’ in part (1 Cor. 13.12), like everyone else.

Our other concern here is the way in which the congregation’s theological mind is shaped. Preachers need to reckon with the fact that preaching is only one element (maybe quite a small one) in this process. The fascinating study of ‘ordinary hermeneutics’ is starting to open up something of the picture for us.[21] Not only have people (sometimes) been influenced by a variety of preachers before the one they are listening to now. They may also (quite often) have read at least something of the Bible,