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PREACHING .
In the NT, preaching is ‘the public proclamation of
Christianity to the non-Christian world’ (C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic
Preaching and its Development, 1944, p. 7). It is not religious
discourse to a closed group of initiates, but open and public proclamation
of God’s redemptive activity in and through Jesus Christ. The current
popular understanding of preaching as biblical exposition and exhortation
has tended to obscure its basic meaning.
I. The biblical terms
The choice of verbs in the Gk. NT for the activity of
preaching points us back to its original meaning. The most characteristic
(occurring over 60 times) is keµryssoµ, ‘to
proclaim as a herald’. In the ancient world the herald was a figure of
considerable importance (cf. G. Friedrich, TDNT 3, pp.
697-714). A man of integrity and character, he was employed by the king or
State to make all public proclamations. Preaching is heralding; the message
proclaimed is the glad tidings of salvation. While
keµryssoµ tells us something about the activity of preaching, euangelizomai, ‘to bring good news’ (from
the primitive eus, ‘good’, and the verb angelloµ, ‘to announce’), a common verb,
used over 50 times in the NT, emphasizes the quality of the message itself.
It is worthy of note that the rsv has not followed the av in those places
where it translates the verbs diangelloµ, laleoµ,
katangelloµ and dialegomai by ‘to
preach’. This helps to bring into sharper focus the basic meaning of
preaching.
It is not unusual to distinguish between preaching and
teaching—between keµrygma (public
proclamation) and didacheµ (ethical
instruction). An appeal is made to such verses as Matthew’s summary of
Jesus’ Galilean ministry, ‘He went about all Galilee, teaching . . .
preaching . . . and healing’ (Mt. 4:23), and Paul’s words in Rom.
12:6-8 and 1 Cor. 12:28 on the gifts of the Spirit. While the two activities
ideally conceived are distinct, both are based upon the same foundation. The keµrygma proclaims what God has done: the didacheµ teaches the implications of this
for Christian conduct.
While we have defined preaching within narrow limits in
order to emphasize its essential NT meaning, this is not to suggest that it
is without precedent in the OT. Certainly the Heb. prophets as they
proclaimed the message of God under divine impulse were forerunners of the
apostolic herald. Jonah was told to ‘preach’ (lxx
keµryssoµ; Heb. qaÆraµÕ, ‘to call
out’), and even Noah is designated a ‘preacher (keµryx)
of righteousness’ (2 Pet. 2:5). The lxx uses
keµryssoµ more than 30 times, both in the secular sense of official
proclamation for the king and the more religious sense of prophetic
utterance (cf. Joel 1:14; Zc. 9:9; Is. 61:1).
II. New Testament features
Perhaps the most prominent feature in NT preaching is the
sense of divine compulsion. In Mk. 1:38 it is reported that Jesus did not
return to those who sought his healing power but pressed on to other towns
in order that he might preach there also—‘for that is why I came
out’. Peter and John reply to the restrictions of the Sanhedrin with the
declaration, ‘We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard’
(Acts 4:20). ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel’, cries the apostle
Paul (1 Cor. 9:16). This sense of compulsion is the sine qua non of
true preaching. Preaching is not the relaxed recital of morally neutral
truths: it is God himself breaking in and confronting man with a demand for
decision. This sort of preaching meets with opposition. In 2 Cor. 11:23-28
Paul lists his sufferings for the sake of the gospel.
Another feature of apostolic preaching was its transparency
of message and motive. Since preaching calls for faith, it is vitally
important that its issues not be obscured with eloquent wisdom and lofty
words (1 Cor. 1:17; 2:1-4). Paul refused to practise cunning or to tamper
with God’s Word, but sought to commend himself to every man’s conscience by
the open statement of the truth (2 Cor. 4:2). The radical upheaval within
the heart and consciousness of man which is the new birth does not come
about by the persuasive influence of rhetoric but by the straightforward
presentation of the gospel in all its simplicity and power.
III. The essential nature of preaching
In the Gospels Jesus is characteristically portrayed as One
who came ‘heralding the kingdom of God’. In Lk. 4:16-21 Jesus interprets his
ministry as the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy of a coming Servant-Messiah
through whom the kingdom of God would at last be realized. This kingdom is
best understood as God’s ‘kingly rule’ or ‘sovereign action’. Only
secondarily does it refer to a realm or people within that realm. That God’s
eternal sovereignty was now invading the realm of evil powers and winning
the decisive victory was the basic content of Jesus’ keµrygma.
When we move from the Synoptics into the rest of the NT we
note a significant change in terminology. Instead of the ‘kingdom of God’ we
find ‘Christ’ as the content of the preached message. This is variously
expressed as ‘Christ crucified’ (1 Cor. 1:23), ‘Christ . . . raised’ (1 Cor.
15:12), ‘the Son of God, Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 1:19), or ‘Christ Jesus as
Lord’ (2 Cor. 4:5). This change of emphasis is accounted for by the fact
that Christ is the kingdom. The Jews anticipated the universal
establishment of the sovereign reign of God, viz. his kingdom: the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was the decisive act of God whereby
his eternal sovereignty was realized in human history. With the advance of
redemptive history the apostolic church could proclaim the kingdom in the
more clear-cut terms of decision concerning the King. To preach Christ is
to preach the kingdom.
One of the most important advances of NT scholarship in
recent years has been C. H. Dodd’s crystallization of the primitive keµrygma. Following his approach (comparing
the early speeches in Acts with the pre-Pauline credal fragments in Paul’s
Epistles) but interpreting the data with a slightly different emphasis, we
find that the apostolic message was ‘a proclamation of the death,
resurrection and exaltation of Jesus that led to an evaluation of His person
as both Lord and Christ, confronted man with the necessity of repentance,
and promised the forgiveness of sins’ (R. H. Mounce, The Essential Nature
of New Testament Preaching, 1960, p. 84).
True preaching is best understood in terms of its relation
to the wider theme of revelation. Revelation is essentially God’s
self-disclosure apprehended by the response of faith. Since Calvary is God’s
supreme self-revelation, the problem is, How can God reveal himself in the
present through an act of the past? The answer is, through preaching—for
preaching is the timeless link between God’s redemptive act and man’s
apprehension of it. It is the medium through which God contemporizes his
historic self-disclosure in Christ and offers man the opportunity to respond
in faith.
Bibliography. In addition to the books mentioned above, cf. C. K.
Barrett, Biblical Problems and Biblical Preaching, 1964; E. P.
Clowney, Preaching and Biblical Theology, 1961; H. H. Farmer, The
Servant of the Word, 1950; P. T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the
Modern Mind, 1949; J. Knox, The Integrity of Preaching, 1957; J.
S. Stewart, Heralds of God, 1946; J. R. W. Stott, The Preacher’s
Portrait, 1961. r.h.m. |
