Our aim as faculty of the College in these addresses is to tell you something about the subjects we teach. This address focuses on the preaching – the subject of the discipline called homiletics at the College. A short discourse on a passage of Scripture used to be called a homily. Today we call this the sermon. Homiletics then has to do with the nature and production of homilies, sermons for the church. Sermons for the unchurched also have a certain homiletical shape and form, but they are not sermons in our traditional sense. Hence we leave that part of the subject to missiology, the study of the church’s task to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth.

I would like to introduce you to some aspects of what is currently called the “new homiletics.” It is very much in vogue in the mainline churches around us, and is popular on the continent as well. So we are dealing with pervasive movements in the liberal churches which also impact upon us. We need to keep abreast of these developments, if only to correct the dangers of one-sidedness and to be sure that we avoid the many pitfalls that the task of preaching presents. First we will look at the older view, then give a brief survey of the new approach, and then consider for ourselves whether in view of the new approach we need any new repositioning in the Reformed approach to preaching.

The Older View⤒🔗

Let me begin with a brief survey of the older view with regard to preaching. In the older or standard homiletics in the Reformed world, preaching was seen as the explanation and application of the Word of God. So too the sermon was defined as a public declaration in the midst of God’s people of the good news of Jesus Christ, thus, the explication and application of a text of Scripture. The important element in the definition is the tie to the Word of God. The preacher must work with the original languages and the cultural context in which the texts of the Bible were written so that the message of the text is passed on to God’s people today. Therefore one needed to know the original languages and study biblical archaeology, the world of the Old Testament, the ancient near east and the world of the New Testament with the surrounding political and cultural circumstances.

In all of this there was only slight attention given to the hearer in the pew. Indeed, the word had to be properly applied. Yet it was also stressed that people had to apply the word to themselves. So the emphasis fell primarily on exegesis and explication. Even the style of preaching known as the redemptive-historical method focussed specifically on ensuring that one does not remove the text from its historical setting, and that he thoroughly expounds that historical setting before making the transition to the congregation. For example, if one preaches on Ahab’s and Jezebel’s coveting of Naboth’s vineyard, one cannot jump to someone’s real estate in the twentieth century. You need to locate the text in its context, and unlock the messianic import of the text before making transitions to life with our possessions today. With regard to Old Testament passages, you can imagine that remains a difficult task, since the minister sometimes has the sense that the people in the pew are only really ready to listen once the application starts, and once it really concerns them and their place and task in the world.

Sermons of this type always have a theme and two or three points, and it is usually not until the last point that the listener hears what the text really means for him in his own life circumstances. Often the focus falls strictly on doctrinal content. Cornelius Plantinga Jr., dean of the chapel at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids, gives a slightly more exaggerated, but for us no less familiar picture of the older style and view. He says: “As a boy in the early 1950s I belonged to a church whose minister wore a tailcoat when he preached. Dressed in a cutaway coat and striped trousers, our minister would stand in the pulpit and deliver sermons as stiff as his collar.” The point of the sermon, Plantinga goes on to say, was strictly to pass on church doctrine. For example, a story, say, a narrative or parable, would be used “to illustrate some doctrinal truth he (the minister JDJ) had brought to it from the Canons of Dort or from the Systematic Theology of Louis Berkhof...”¹

Here the pattern is the same. Texts, no matter what kind they were or of what part of Scripture they came from, were all pressed into the mould of strict and rigorous doctrinal preaching. Application always remained an issue of secondary importance.

The New Hermeneutic←⤒🔗

The new approach to preaching is based on what has been called the new hermeneutic. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. The expression “new hermeneutic” refers to a new way of interpreting the Bible. What is the new hermeneutic? How does it differ from the traditional view? The new hermeneutic is the term that is used to describe the new approach to Scripture which dominated the theological world especially in the sixties and seventies, and in modified forms still continues today. The new hermeneutic took the opinion that the Scriptures are really time bound documents, reflecting the faith experiences of the early church, the first hearers of the divine messages, and the first people to be affected by divine actions. In the texts of the Bible one finds descriptions put into words of things that happened to people in their contact with God. Whether all things actually happened as described is a moot point for the new hermeneutic – in fact, for these authors that’s not a concern at all. The point is that something happened which was truly overwhelming and affected human thought and behaviour in heretofore unknown and unheard of ways. What’s more, it happened in such a way that people found new avenues and expressions to put all these things into words.

What then is the chief perspective of the new hermeneutic? Events that have happened in the past and that have been recorded in Scripture can and do happen again and again, every time God makes his presence known. Of course, so they say, we cannot control that presence. He comes as He wills in his own time and way. Yet we need to be in line and in tune with the people who have shared these experiences in the past. Hence we need to work carefully with the ancient texts, the texts of the Bible, and in working with them make room for God to continue to act in his wonderful way even to this very day. In other words, divine actions of the past need to happen again. They need to reoccur, but then of course in ways far transcending the way they happened in the past. The ground rule is this: you do not interpret the text; in effect, the text interprets you! The text makes you aware of who you are and what your place is in the context of God’s unfolding work.

The New Homiletic←⤒🔗

How then can we describe the new homiletic? ²  What is the role of the preacher in the process of interpretation? He becomes an important link in the chain of getting the Word of God to people today! He is the vehicle by which texts continue to speak to people today, that is, interpret people and bring transformation in people’s lives. He sits in his study, working with the text, but as he works with it, the ground is cleared for the event described in the text to happen again. And once this has affected him deeply he needs to pass this on in the sermon. The result must be that the sermon will also end up being an encounter of people with God so that they go away as people who have been reformed and transformed, so that they look at the world in a totally new and different way.

D.J. Randolph←↰⤒🔗

In order to highlight this approach let me briefly (perhaps too briefly) review with you three of the more well known representatives of the new method in order of their “appearance,” that is, the order in which their material first appeared in print. First D.J. Randolph. ³ Let me give you his definition of preaching.

Preaching is the event in which the biblical text is interpreted in order that its meaning will come to expression in the concrete situation of the hearer.

Notice that the emphasis here falls on two things: first, preaching is an event, a happening or an encounter. Secondly, this event brings to expression the word of God in the concrete situation of the hearer. For a lot of people involved in preaching in America at the time, this book was the signal of a new approach.

F.B. Craddock←↰⤒🔗

The next figure to carry forward on Randolph’s new approach is F. B. Craddock, the author of the so-called inductive approach to preaching. He published a little book called As One without Authority that went through many printings.⁴ The title already tells you the approach that Prof. Craddock wants to take. In the old view the minister was one who had authority. He spoke, and everyone listened. His word was really the Word of God. His role in the congregation was authoritative, and he carried the signs of his authority with him. Think of Plantinga’s minister in the 1950s! Craddock says that this relation must change. The preacher must be as one without authority. He must not be deductive, going to Scripture and deducing a message and bringing that to the congregation, but he must be inductive, that is, he needs to let things happen to himself, and on that basis he can become a vehicle for the message to the congregation.

Of course, Craddock does not want to eliminate the Bible or throw out the texts. The texts, however, are dead in themselves, only letters on a page. Through your study of the text, the text needs to be awakened, it has to happen to you and you must let it happen to you. But then he takes a step further than Randolph. He says that the experiences and viewpoints of the listeners constitute a part of the experience of the Word of God in the sermon. A word is never something that you can pick up and drop off somewhere. A word involves a connection, and it is precisely in the connection between two communicators that truth happens. The happening changes both the speaker and the listener. A message, as it were, comes from the outside, it affects you and it affects the hearer. You are both affected at the same time, and one cannot be affected without the other.

To describe his approach, Craddock uses the term to “overhear” the message. ⁵ The minister must learn to overhear the text. He cannot just approach the text with his prejudices, but must learn to let these go. He must rid himself of his blinders, and so be in a position that he is free to listen and overhear. You need to capture some of the movement of the text, its goal, its aim, its energy or thrust. Then you can make your sermon. Your sermon is not one with a theme and points, but one with an energy and flow which is, as it were, dictated by the movement of the text, and flows out of the text. Here, sermon structure is subordinate to the movement in the text. The preferred text here is, of course, a narrative, say a parable or an Old Testament account. Just as these passages follow a story pattern, have a certain plot line, go through a build-up and come to a climax, so the sermon must follow a storyline with similar features.

D. Buttrick←↰⤒🔗

Then one final figure to whom we may refer is David Buttrick.⁶ He may be termed the leading representative of the new homiletics today. He has taken this approach one step further again. From Craddock he inherited the ideas of movement and flow. But he is less concerned to let the flow be dictated by the flow of the text. He agrees that the text has a certain movement or flow, a certain drive or energy pointing in a specific intentional direction. But he says, in the meeting between the person and the text, flows and movements can go differently. Something quite new can take shape.

In Buttrick’s approach the minister is a facilitator. He is an agent to make something happen. He lives with his consciousness in our present world. He finds a certain world of consciousness in the text. But then in the mixing of these two worlds, he resets the ancient text into a field of meaning which is assessable for the hearer. Then he puts all this into words, and so comes up with a sermon. Is the sermon just the message of the text? No. The sermon is the message of the text crafted into language and thought forms that people understand today. So, for example, you are preaching on the parable of the talents, you will talk about people who put their money in the bank at a very low interest savings account versus people who really make great leaps with their money and learn to use it well. You will not talk about taking some silver and burying it in the ground since people don’t do that today. You will end up rewriting the story in today’s language, but only after being taken up into it yourself.

Summing Up←⤒🔗

If we then summarize the line charted by these selected representatives of this approach, you can say that step by step the place of the hearer has been isolated, and the importance of reaching the hearers has been emphasized more and more. They must be involved. They must be affected. In fact, it has gone so far that the experiences, anxieties and struggles of the hearers end up being a part of the message of the word of God in the sermon. The Word of God occurs in the encounter between the ancient text and the modern hearer as facilitated by the preacher. That began with Craddock, but it comes to full view in Buttrick’s approach. In Buttrick you find a very wide margin as well. The preacher does not need to get his text from the Bible. In his approach, other ideas or topics can also generate a sermon.

Other Authors←⤒🔗

Many more authors writing about the new approach to preaching could be mentioned. ⁷ However, I think that the basic idea is clear. Sermons of the new type may no longer have themes or points. They are no longer deductive, logical treatises. Rather, they must have “moves,” and they should, as Plantinga describes it, “sound less like essays and more like odysseys.” They are to sound like “stories, poems, ‘plotted narratives’ or even conversations, and thus follow the shape of the non-discursive genres of Scripture.” Sermons must not set out to defend a thesis but “zig and zag as human consciousness does when reacting to a significant event.” Sermons “need to tell what happened, what made things happen, and what it felt like to experience the things that happened.” We then get a “dynamic sequence of linked pictures or scenes,” like a film, that invites the hearer to toggle his own consciousness into the flow of events. ⁸

One writer, Thomas Long, uses an interesting example to describe the process.⁹ He refers to the art style known as impressionism. When these painters such as Monet and Renoir began to show their work in Paris in the 1870s, people were very upset. These painters were not painting real pictures, but making up their own pictures with all kinds of shifts in colour, exaggerated colours, and fine details entirely blurred. People said it was terrible and ought to be banned! Why? Long says it was because the painter was inviting the viewer to enter into the inner sanctuary of creativity, to participate in one way or another in the painting of the picture. Indeed, that is what happened! The impressionist painters would leave their studios, go outside into fields and streams of natural beauty, start the painting, and then they would go home and finish the painting from memory. But was it really memory? Not quite! They decided to put into their pictures a few things they liked, adding colours here, brightening up images there, and so on. They did not make a whole new picture, and did not discount the important role of the first impression. But they did embellish the real picture as they saw fit. Rather than depict God’s creation, they made their own on its basis.

Nowadays in the world of advertising you have television ads that work the same way: you see a road, marvellous vistas, beautiful scenery. Then you are inside a vehicle for a moment, but then again all the attention falls on the outdoors, the amazing world of natural beauty around you. You hardly see the vehicle at all. Then at the end of the commercial, there is a phrase: the heartbeat of America. So you are left to fill in the picture of the vehicle yourself. And in fact, you can choose your own, whether a “four by four” or a pickup or a sports utility or a sleek sports car: it doesn’t matter, as long as you get the impression that you are involved, and that in this way you can make your world, and enjoy experiences that you have never had before.

So it is with the new approach called the new homiletic. Essentially the hearer is involved with the minister in the production of the sermon. The hearers have a very important role here. After all, all the attention falls on them. They are the persons the preacher is trying to reach! But the minister acquires quite an important role here as well. He is a facilitator, and it’s through the mixing that goes on in his life that new faith experiences can be transmitted to his congregation.

A Brief Response←⤒🔗

Now the question arises in all this whether in some way as Reformed churches we need to consider changing our approach to preaching. Recall what I said about the older approach. All the stress was placed on the exegesis, the explaining and expounding of the Word as it was given in the Scriptures. The sermon was to be a deductive treatise, setting forth a proposition, and arguing it from out of the text. The style required a theme with two, three or four points, all contributing to the setting forth of a lucid, logical and rigorous development. Do we now need to modify our stand as a result of the newer approach?

For a global point of view, we must say: we cannot modify our stand and we cannot adopt the approach of the new homiletic. To begin with, first and foremost, it has a faulty view of the Scriptures. Even though some authority is attributed to them by these authors, in the view of these people they do not have the authority that we confess in the doctrine of inspiration of the Word (2 Timothy 3:16). We believe that the testimony given there does not just represent the various (personal) experiences of people affected by the Word in the days of God’s living actions, but that these are the sacred texts which are normative for all times, the very words of God himself (2 Peter 1:20,21).

That premise conditions our approach. It means that indeed the minister must be very busy with the Word of God and that he must endeavour in every way to let the Word of God speak from the text. We can agree that he may not be prejudiced in his approach, and colour the text with his own opinions or ideas. He must let go of his opinions or ideas, and let the text speak for itself. Of course, he would be wise to do this within the tradition of the church, and on the basis of the church’s confession. He can never let go of his confession, and he does not need to reinvent the wheel with every sermon, ignoring what past authors have done with a text. But even here, he will need to take proper distance so that strictly the language of the confession or the “standard exegesis” does not predetermine his view of the text. For it was the text that gave birth to the confession, not the other way around!

There is and remains the need for the minister to be thoroughly trained in the original languages so he can become immersed in the world of the text. Scripture and its unity forms for him the abiding premise of his work, and this premise is a prerequisite for all faithful study of the Scripture. Furthermore, as far as the formal elements are concerned, the sermon must not be set up from the perspective of human consciousness reliving an event, in “moves” and “structures” that emulate a film, but from the perspective of a systematic and logically ordered exposition of the text. Besides all this, the preacher must continue to follow what can best be termed the historical approach. He needs to approach his text as sacred history and locate it in the context of the unfolding pattern of God’s salvation work. The historical dimension may never be discounted from a text; in fact, it is through the historical dimension that the text is properly applied to the church in its contemporary situation. For the church today is the contemporary extension of the magnalia Dei, the salvation deeds of God in past generations.

Where is the Hearer?←⤒🔗

However, what about the hearer in the pew? Many Reformed homileticians have tried to give some more detailed expression concerning the role of the hearer in the production of the sermon. Of course he has a role! For as the minister sits in his study he must think of the congregation and the needs of the congregation for whom he preaches. So he must indeed hear the text and its message, but then also be aware of what the congregation needs. To be sure, he cannot turn around and say: well, the needs of my congregation are not quite properly addressed in this text, and therefore I am going to change its message to suit the needs of the congregation. The minister may never ignore aspects of the text, or change the message of the text. He needs to study the text in an unprejudiced way and so come to the formulation of the message of the text for the congregation.

Still, the text must address the needs of the congregation. And he must always begin by taking the congregation as a whole, and as a unity rather than a conglomerate of various categories of people. Therefore, although he may not change the message of his text, we can say that he may do some filtering. He may not deliberately ignore aspects of the text. But he may for the sake of the circumstances emphasize some aspects of the text, placing more stress on them, and correspondingly less stress on other aspects, as long as in the total picture he presents, he is not distorting the text. A text is like a prism through which light shines. You can hold it up, and you can turn it many ways. No one sermon can exhaust all the aspects that are found in a text. Doing justice to some texts would require sermons of three to four hours, if not more. So there is a certain freedom for the minister: the freedom to select and highlight important aspects, while keeping other aspects at bay – all in the light of his own existing situation, and that of his flock.

This is not an easy position, as you can well imagine. The minister may not twist the text; yet he may tilt the text. He cannot bend the text to suit his own wishes, but he may highlight aspects of the text to answer to the need of the moment. It’s a very fine line! And ultimately, no one rule can be given to adequately safeguard the minister from error, either the error of personal prejudice, or the error of catering to the whole congregation, or even one or other part of the congregation. No one can always be totally objective, especially in stressful situations. Therefore the minister must always prepare his sermons prayerfully and carefully!

The one rule that we in Hamilton teach is this: the minister must always make it his aim to truly listen to the message of the text. The emphasis does not fall on the hearer first of all, but on the text. Only when he has grasped an initial statement or concrete idea concerning the message of the text, only then can he factor in the needs of the congregation, and begin to determine in what way this particular text with its message should be passed on to the congregation in its current needs. He must ask himself what the intention of the Holy Spirit is with his text, but also, what that intention is here and now. He must ask: What does the Holy Spirit wish to say to the congregation today with the text before me?

The minister seeks to do two things while remaining in the line of the church and its confessions. In order of importance, the first thing the minister must seek is that he wants the text to speak. Let the text speak, and not his word or his ideas! Secondly, he truly wants the text to speak to the congregation here and now. For the character of Scripture is that it is meant to evoke sermons that help congregations in their concrete situations. In all this he is bound by the confessions as every preacher should be. But he does not always need to follow a conventional or traditional exegesis. He may come up with his own view, based on his study of the text, and geared to the needs of his congregation. In this very process, new vistas may appear which may not only challenge people’s traditional understanding of a text, but even lead one to review the Scriptural backing for one’s confessional statements, and cause a re-examination of the way the statements were formulated in the first place.

Through this process the idea is not that the minister stands in the centre and highlights his own abilities. Quite the contrary! The minister should make himself transparent and let the text be seen in such a way that it sends forth a manifold projection of rays right down into the hearts of everyone in the congregation. Therefore the primary goal in all this work remains that which best serves the glory of God and the building of his church in the concrete moment of the minister’s service to God.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

It will be clear that we have principal objections to the method of preaching called the “new homiletics.” It represents another version of an older weakness: subjectivism, and man-centred religion. Here we need to hold to the Reformed heritage, and promote and practice God-centred preaching.

At the same time, the preacher must not lose sight of the needs of the flock. He needs to work in the circumstances of his congregation, in prayer, meditation, and in the cultivation of an active pastoral ministry. Without those components, sermons that may be delivered with the greatest skills will still fall on ears that can hardly hear. If the minister is only seen on Sundays, over time he will not be heard any day.

On the other hand, where the minister seeks to integrate the needs of the flock into his preaching, he will meet with a congregation that becomes more and more involved in his preaching! The congregation will feed the minister with hints, questions, ideas, and above all, will accompany the efforts of the minister with prayer and a listening ear. Then the minister will experience effective communication, that is, a link between pulpit and pew that is forged by the Holy Spirit, and which works for the up building of all. Then even though the minister writes and delivers the sermon, he remains only an instrument. The Holy Spirit “makes the sermon happen” and accomplishes his purposes with it that through the ministry of the Spirit, every person may be presented as a mature member of Christ’s body, Colossians 1:28.