Augustine's Theology of Preaching

Introduction

Introduction Resourcing Augustinian Preaching Today Preachers often ponder the state of preaching. The influence, methods and reception of mentors are weighed. When this is done, there is frequently fearfulness about the future of preaching. So Tim Keller spoke at the American memorial to John Stott, saying, “John Stott reinvented expository preaching. I’m still worried that younger evangelical leaders are increasingly thinking that they need to get beyond expository preaching.”1 Since preaching has been central to the Church from its inception, it is surprising that what revival of the expository ministry there has been in the modern church has been nurtured with a notable lack of historical awareness. Hughes Oliphant Old commented on this: “Some of these contemporary preachers may have been aware that Augustine or Origen or Calvin [practiced expository preaching], as indeed they did, but they did not argue for it for that reason. It was mostly because it seemed to be a good way of preaching. It seemed appropriate.”2 A form of preaching embraced on the basis of pragmatism will, of course, be neglected when it is ‘out of season’ (2 Tim 4:2). The same goes for a model of ministry followed due to the influence of a charismatic leader. Even the claim that one’s approach to preaching is biblical will, in time, be eroded by the apparently equal weight of claims made by other methods upon that title. Learning through and from preachers in church history develops a deeper self-awareness about the practice and possibilities of preaching. Getting beyond a superficial imitation of past preachers to the timeless convictions and debates bequeaths tools and confidence for the task today. In that spirit, we consider the possibilities Augustine’s preaching opens for the contemporary preacher. Augustine’s ministry resources contemporary preachers as they reflect upon at least five important areas of homiletics. 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3WkR0LPCxM (Accessed 19.12.13) 2. Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church: The Patristic Age, vol. 7 (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2010), 172. xxv The Role of Secular Insights to Communication Augustine was the first figure in church history to write a guide on preaching. Since he had been a tutor of pagan rhetoric, he was able to reflect in a selfaware manner upon both the value and danger of secular insights. Augustine’s book De Doctrina Christiana was “really the first Manual for Preachers that was written in the Christian Church. As such it deserves careful reading.”3 Cicero had, in Augustine’s view, much to teach Christian preachers. The idea of fitting one’s manner of speech to the setting was one of several areas in which Augustine’s advice was dependent upon the ancient world’s most famous pagan orator. Augustine gave considerable time to encouraging preachers in the task of learning how language functions—the study of what we would today know as hermeneutics. Secular knowledge about science, mathematics and history all aid the faithful interpreter of Scripture.4 However, in seeking to assess Augustine’s views on the value of secular studies for preaching, we must take care not to accept—and then impose upon Augustine—the assumptions of contemporary secularity. While most would today assume that a subject such as mathematics is a secular discipline, it was not straightforwardly so for Augustine. The church father recognized that mathematics stood at some remove from strictly biblical disciplines; nevertheless, he did not perceive as neat a division between pagan and divine endeavors as many today do. Augustine wrote, “It must be clear to the dullest of wits that the discipline of arithmetic has not been instituted by human beings, but rather discovered and explored.”5 Regardless of what the pagan scholars themselves believed, the useful insights of secular culture were in the final analysis not established apart from God: Their teachings contain liberal disciplines which are more suited to the service of the truth, as well as a number of most useful ethical principles, and some true things are to be found among them about worshiping only the one God. All this is like their gold and silver, and not something they instituted themselves, but something which they mined, so to say, from the ore of divine providence, veins of which are everywhere to be found. As they for their part make perverse and unjust misuse of it in the service of demons, so Christians ought, when they...