Preaching or Mutual Exhortation?

Is the "Sermon" Concept Biblical? A Study In Its Greek Origins

Originally posted at 2 or 3 Gathered

The "sermon" is one of the most fixed and expected elements in modern church services. Most people would not feel that they had experienced "church" unless they heard a sermon. Is it wrong to ask some basic questions? Is the "sermon" concept, as it is fixed in tradition, found in the New Testament? Just where did the idea of having a "sermon" in Christian gatherings originate? My study leads me to conclude that the "sermon" concept comes, not from the N.T., but from Greek culture. If this be so, then there are a number of implications that we must think through.

"Preaching" is a Biblical term more akin to "evangelism," or the announcement of the Good News in Christ. Entrance into the Kingdom by people is the goal of evangelism or "preaching," while the building up of those in the kingdom is better called "teaching" (although in a few N.T. passages this distinction is not hard and fast; cf. Hans-Joachim Wiehler. "Preaching in the Church?" Searching Together, Autumn 1982, pp 35-38).

While the N.T. refers to those specifically gifted as "teachers," the duty to teach/exhort falls upon all believers (Rom. 15:14; Heb. 5:12). Teaching is a very broad term in the N.T. It is connected to singing, to the verbal application of the Word to the specific problems of believers, to exhortation to stand against the pressures of the world, and to rebuking wrong doing.

The ministry of the Word, therefore, is given to the entire congregation, while it is recognized at the same time that Christ gives "teachers" to the body of Christ. It must be underscored that to question the "sermon" concept must not be equated with questioning the need for teaching in the church. The N.T. nowhere equates teaching in the church with one man's sermon and neither should we. The issue at stake is this: is the "sermon" concept tradition or truth?

Our contention is that the "sermon" concept has contributed to the malfunction of the church in a number of ways. Believers feel incapable of handling the Word because the impression is given that only "educated professionals" can undertake such things as counseling. In many ways, the biggest roadblock to a functioning priesthood of believers is the sermon. If its origin is to be found in the world of Greek and Roman philosophy, then it should not surprise us that certain problems surround its practice in the church.

By interacting with some material by Edwin Hatch, we will establish three central points: (1) that Christianity has been adversely influenced by Greco-Roman humanism; (2) that the Greek concept of education placed a heavy emphasis on Rhetoric, the cultivation of literary expression; and (3) that the adaptation of Greek Rhetoric into Christian services resulted in the centrality of the "sermon."

Greek-Christian Syncretism

That Christianity has been in large degree smothered by Greco-Roman humanism cannot be doubted by any student of the Scriptures or church history (cf. George T. Purves, "The Influence of Paganism on Post-Apostolic Christianity," The Presbyterian Review, #36, Oct. 1888, pp. 529-554). We must therefore, be especially sensitive to the presence of non-Biblical thinking in what passes as Christianity. The reformation of the church must be an ongoing commitment.

The word "syncretism" is used by some writers to describe the formation of a religious perspective by picking and choosing from various existing religious beliefs. Greek-Christian syncretism usually describes a Christian who looks at the Bible and says, "This looks nice, too; I'll take some of that." This smorgasbord approach ends up with a very inedible religious diet: the humanists do not like it, and it is non-Biblical.

Of particular interest to us here is the book, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, by Edwin Hatch (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1970). Hatch is one of those humanists who has a love-hate relationship with Christianity, outwardly very sympathetic to some parts, plainly hostile to other parts. It is the kind of Christianity J. Gresham Machen found so abominable in the Presbyterian church [circa 1950, northern Presbyterian denomination]. But while we must maintain a keen eye for Hatch's biases, we can still find much historical truth in his book.

For example, in his introductory lecture he notices the decided shift in Christianity from practical ethics to Greek intellectualism: "It is impossible for any one... to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a...law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples; ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers (p.1)."

There can be no doubt that much of the early church disputes over the deity of Jesus Christ were shrouded in Greek philosophy, and the question of the reign of Christ and the application of His law to the collapsing Roman Empire was ignored. Questions pertaining to the inner workings of the Trinity, which are not explicitly answered in Scripture, occupied many hours and many pages (cf. Jon Zens, "The Covenant of Grace & the Trinity," Studies in Theology & Ethics, 1981, pp. 28-31; and "The Influence of Alien Philosophies, Essays on the Work of the Spirit in the Gospel Age," 1982, pp. 2-5). Thus we can find truth in Hatch's remarks: there was too great an emphasis on a philosophical-intellectual comprehension of the Trinity and too little emphasis on His Word.

This shift can also be discerned when one compares the N.T. statements about Christ to the later formulations regarding His human and divine "natures." The N.T. focuses on the Messiah's function in history, not on more abstract, speculative comments about the metaphysical nature of Christ. Oscar Cullmann observes: "When it is asked in the N.T. "Who is Christ?," the question never means exclusively, or even primarily, "What is His nature?," but first of all, "What is his function?"...Thus there is a difference between the way in which the first Christians and the later Church understood the Christological problem....the discussion of "natures" is none the less ultimately a Greek, not a Jewish or biblical problem (The Christology of the N.T., SCM Press, 1963, pp. 3-4)."

We must not, therefore, be naive. Alien Greek thought-forms and practices were at work in the post-apostolic age. Concerning the contrast between the ethical emphases of the Bible with the philosophic emphases of the Hellenized church fathers, we must agree with Hatch: "It must be pointed out...that the question why an ethical sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth century, is a problem which claims investigation. It claims investigation, but it has not yet been investigated....In investigating this problem, the first point that is obvious to an inquirer is, that the change in the center of gravity from conduct to belief is coincident with the transference of Christianity from a Semitic to a Greek soil. The presumption is that it was the result of Greek influence (p2)."

The Philosophers & "The Sermon"

Not only were Christian "doctrines" adulterated by Greek philosophy, as we have seen, but the practices of the Christian life and the worship of the church became paganized. This was not only because, as our language suggests, a dichotomy arose between "doctrine" and practice," but because even "practice" itself became detached from Christ's law.

This is most noticeable in the development of formal "worship" which is defined not as "service" (which involves every believer's life being a "liturgy" seven days a week; Rom.12:2), but as an infrequent and ritualized program of religious acts centering around a philosophical discourse called a "sermon."

The original Christian gatherings which celebrated the Lord's death and resurrection and focused on multilateral exhortation and edification (cf. Heb. 10:24-25), came to be replaced by meetings which focused on the bishop and a unilateral "sermon."

These sermons were not just a setting forth of Greek-influenced theology. They were in fact external copies of the rhetorical manner of the most popular Greek philosophers of the day. It is not just what was said in the sermon, it is that the entire presentation and format was carried over from paganism. The "sermon," unfortunately, became one of the practices most destructive to the priesthood of all believers. It would have been so even if the content of the sermons had not been syncretistic &endash; a combination of Biblical and Greek notions.

As we know, Paul was not interested in Greek "wisdom" or Greek Rhetoric, which emphasized persuasive words (1 Cor.1:22; 2:1-5). Paul resisted any use of words that would exalt the speaker and not the Lord. But this perspective was lost in the later church fathers. They were immersed in Greek patterns of speech, and it was in this context that the "sermon" emerged in Christian services.

Education: Rome & The West

To help us further understand the Greek origin of the sermon, Hatch gives some detail about the features of the post-apostolic age: "The most general summary of those features is, that the Greek world of the second and third centuries was, in a sense which...has tended to prevail since then, an educated world (p.25)."

But the Greek notion of education was terribly abstract and irrelevant. The philosophical trends toward intellectualism that had begun five centuries earlier were quite evident in the post-apostolic Greco-Roman world: "It had become no longer enough for men to till the ground, or to pursue their several handicrafts....The word sophos (wisdom), which in earlier times had been applied to one who was skilled in any of the arts of life, who could string a bow or tune a lyre or even trim a hedge, had come to be applied, if not exclusively, yet at least chiefly, to one who was shrewd or knew the thoughts and sayings of the ancients (p.26)."

The great volume of Greek philosophic writing was bathed in abstraction: "It was natural also that the study of letters should be reflected upon speech. For the love of speech had become to a large proportion of Greeks a second nature. They were a nation of talkers. They were almost the slaves of cultivated expression....Like children playing at "make-believe," when real speeches in real assemblies became impossible, the Greeks revived the old practice of public speaking by addressing fictitious assemblies and arguing in fictitious courts....The mass of men in the Greek world tended to lay stress on that acquaintance with the literature of bygone generations, and that habit of cultivated speech, which has ever since been commonly spoken of as education (pp. 26-27)."

For our purposes here, the most notable parallel between Greek education and modern education is in the seminary. There we find the study of the theologians (and sometimes the Bible) and the art of "sermon" preparation. This parallels the two main elements of Greek education: Grammar and Rhetoric.

"The main subject-matter of this literary education was the poets. They were read, not only for their literary, but also for their moral value. They were read as we read the Bible. They were committed to memory. The minds of men were saturated with them. A quotation from Homer or from a tragic poet was apposite on all occasions and in every kind of society....Grammar was succeeded by Rhetoric &endash; the study of literature by the study of literary expression and quasi-forensic argument....

...A student's education in Rhetoric was finished when he had the power to talk offhand on any subject that might be proposed. But whether he recited a prepared speech or spoke offhand, he was expected to show the same artificiality of structure and the same pedantry of diction (pp. 30-32)."

Hence, there was in Greek education a heavy emphasis on "speaking.": "Teaching had come to be a recognized and lucrative profession. This is shown not so much by the instances of individual teachers, who might be regarded as exceptional, as by the fact of the recognition of teachers by the State and by municipalities....A "sermonette" from one of these professional philosophers after dinner was...much in fashion....They were petted by great ladies. They became "domestic chaplains" (pp. 37,38,40).

Contemporary preachers will obviously take exception to being compared to these philosophers. To be sure, preachers who emphasize Biblical doctrines are less involved with the Rhetoric and more interested in the truth. But if what has come to be the central aspect of Christian meetings &endash; the sermon &endash; has Greek, not Biblical, origins, must we not seriously evaluate the possibility that there might be a better way of teaching in the church? Contemporary articulations of Berean Bible Study (which anti-group Bible study folk would call "group grope") are plentiful, but because the authors of such works are not part of "our camp" we tend to overlook them. But they are there, and the case for the involvement of all the saints in the study of the Word is irrefutable.

Sermons & Sophists

As the church was institutionalized under Roman emperors following Constantine and the syncretistic church fathers who preceded him, such practices as household communion and household churches vanished. They were replaced by institutional bishops &endash; a separate caste of "priests" &endash; who dispensed Christian truth and grace. These same Greek-influenced officials replaced Berean Bible Study with their lectures, known as sermons. They copied the sermonic style of the Greek philosopher-lecturers: "The (Greek) sophists could easily preach sermons of their own upon Homeric texts. It was from Homer that moralists drew their ideal: it was his verses that were quoted, like verses of the Bible with us, to enforce moral truths (p.54)."

Hatch gives several examples of Christian writers who followed "not a Hebrew but a Greek method" (p.69): "The earliest methods of Christian exegesis were continuations of the methods which were common at the time to both Greek and Graeco-Judean writers. They were employed on the same subject matter. Just as the Greek philosophers had found their philosophy in Homer, so Christian writers found in him Christian philosophy (p.69)."

The rubber exegesis the Greek sophists used on Homer was likewise used by syncretistic Christians on the Bible. "Philo virtually makes the Old Testament teach that which Greek philosophy, based on autonomous human experience, had taught" (C. Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge, p. 73).

But of special note to us is the manner in which these sermons were delivered. The modern sermon surely has its origin in the Greek lecturers. Of the manner of the ordinary discourse there are many indications. It was given sometimes in a private house, sometimes in a theater, sometimes in a regular lecture-room. The professor sometimes entered already robed in his "pulpit-gown" and sometimes put it on in the presence of his audience. He mounted the steps to his professional chair, and took his seat upon its ample cushion. He sometimes began with a preface, sometimes he proceeded at once to his discourse (p.94). They made both money and reputation. The more eminent of them were among the most distinguished men of the time. They were the pets of society, and sometimes its masters. They were employed on affairs of state at home and on embassies abroad. They were sometimes placed on the free list of the city, and lived at the public expense (pp. 97-98).

The environment of the Greek "sermon" has no parallels with the Biblical record. In the O.T., the Hebrew prophets acted as the messengers of the covenant, bringing a covenant lawsuit against people who had broken the covenant stipulations. Here, to "prophesy" is to set forth the requirements of God's law and to apply them to the specific disobedience of the covenant servants: "In passing from Greek life to Christianity, I will ask you, in the first instance, to note the broad distinction which exists between what in the primitive churches was known as "prophesying," and that which in subsequent times came to be known as "prophesying," and that which in subsequent times came to be known as "preaching." (Prophets) were not church officers appointed to discharge certain functions. They did not practice beforehand how or what they should say....Their language was often, from the point of view of the rhetorical schools, a barbarous patois (illiterate or local speech). They were ignorant of the rules both of style and dialectic. They paid no heed to refinements of expression. The greatest "preacher" of them all (Paul) claimed to have come among his converts, in a city in which Rhetoric flourished, not with the persuasiveness of human logic, but with the demonstration which was afforded by spiritual power."

"In the course of the second century, this original spontaneity of utterance died almost entirely away. It may almost be said to have died a violent death. The dominant parties in the Church set their faces against it. In the place of prophesying came preaching. And preaching is the result of the gradual combination of different elements....We consequently find that with the growth of organization there grew up also, not only a fusion of (these elements), but also the gradual restriction of the liberty of addressing the community to the official class (pp. 105- 108). This constituted the essence of the homily: its form came from the sophists. For it was natural that when addresses, whether expository or hortatory, came to prevail in the Christian communities, they should be affected by the similar addresses which filled a large place in contemporary Greek life....The form of the (Christian and Greek) discourses intended to be the same: if you examine side by side a discourse of Himerius or Themistius of Libanius, and one of Basil, Chrysostom or Ambrose, you will find a similar artificiality of structure, and a similar elaboration of phraseology. They were delivered under analogous circumstances. The preacher sat in his official chair...the audience crowded in front of him, and frequently interrupted him with shouts of acclamation (pp. 108-109)."

"I will add only one more instance of the way in which the habits of the sophists flowed into the Christian churches. Christian preachers, like the sophists, were sometimes peripatetic (itinerant); they went from place to place, delivering their orations and making money by delivering them (p.112)."

One tragic side-effect of the presence of Rhetoric in the church was to put the bishop in a different class than the "ordinary" Christian. George Dennison points out in his admirable book, The Lives of Children (1969): "What is the social action of jargon? I have said that true communication is communion and change. Jargon is not innocent. The man who speaks it, who prates in front of us...means to hold us at a distance; he means to preserve his specialty - his little piece of an essentially indivisible whole &endash; precisely as a specialty. He does not mean to draw near to us, or to empower us, but to stand over us and manipulate us. He wished, in short, to remain an Expert. The philosopher, by contrast, wishes all men to be philosophers. His speech creates equality. He means to draw near to us and to empower us to think and do for ourselves." (pp. 278-279)

Most believers do not feel that they are "competent to counsel" (Rom. 15:14), or (to use Dennison's words) competent to communicate, commune with, and change. But true communication is not polished rhetoric following the forms of the Greek orators. True communication does not seek to maintain distance and position; it is the product of what we might call "Christian egalitarianism." Not a lowering of people to the lowest common denominator, but the raising of all believers to the stature of the fulness of Christ (Eph. 4:13). The true communicator is not afraid to have his student equal &endash; or even surpass &endash; his teacher. Christians should not feel that the Bible requires them to imitate the sophist philosophers. They can fulfill the Biblical requirements to "teach" and to "preach" by empowering others to godly obedience through Biblical communication.

Summary and Conclusions

1. The Greek sophists were abstract in their moralizing. The stronger ground of objection to them was their unreality. They had lost touch with life. They had made philosophy itself seem unreal.... It is not necessary to suppose that they were all charlatans. There was then, as now, the irrepressible young man of good morals who wished to air his opinions. But the tendency to moralize had become divorced from practice. They preached, not because they were in grim earnest about the reformation of the world, but because preaching was a respectable profession, and the listening to sermons a fashionable diversion (pp 100-101).

2. The Greek approach to education affected Christianity. This is the feature of Greek life into which Christianity came to which I first invite your attention. There was a complex system of education, the main elements in which were the knowledge of literature, the cultivation of literary expression, and a general acquaintance with the rules of argument. This education was widely diffused, and had a great hold upon society....Its effect in the second century of our era had been to create a certain habit of mind. When Christianity came into contact with the society in which that habit of mind existed....it was itself profoundly modified by the habit of mind of those who accepted it. It was impossible for Greeks, educated as they were with an education which penetrated their whole nature, to receive or to retain Christianity in its primitive simplicity. Their own life had become complex and artificial: it had its fixed ideas and its permanent categories. It necessarily gave to Christianity something of its own form....The world of the time was a world ...whose schools, instead of being the laboratories of the knowledge of the future, were forges in which the chains of the present were fashioned from the knowledge of the past. And if, on the one hand, it incorporated Christianity with the larger humanity from which it had at first been isolated, yet, on the other hand, by crushing uncultivated earnestness, and by laying more stress on the expression of ideas than upon the ideas themselves, it tended to stem the very forces which had given to Christianity its place, and to change the rushing torrent of the river of God into a broad but feeble stream (pp. 98-99).

3. The "sermon" was the result of syncretism &endash; the fusion of the Biblical necessity of teaching with the unbiblical Greek notion of Rhetoric: "Such are some of the indications of the influence of Greek Rhetoric upon the early churches. It created the Christian sermon. It added to the functions of church officers a function which is neither that of the exercise of discipline, nor of administration of the funds, nor of taking the lead in public worship, nor of the simple tradition of received truths, but that of either such an exegesis of the sacred books as the Sophists gave of Homer, or such elaborated discourses as they also gave upon the speculative and ethical aspects of religion. The result was more far-reaching than the creation of either an institution or a function....No sooner is any new impulse given either to philosophy or to religion than there arises a class of men who copy the form without the substance, and try to make the echo of the past sound like the voice of the present. So it has been with Christianity. It came into the educated world in the simple dress of a Prophet of Righteousness. It won that world by the stern reality of its life, by the subtle bonds of its brotherhood, by its divine message of consolation and of hope. Around it thronged the race of eloquent talkers who persuaded it to change its dress and to assimilate its language to their own. It seemed thereby to win a speedier and completer victory. But it purchased conquest at the price of reality. With that its progress stopped. There has been an element of sophistry in it ever since; and so far as in any age that element has been dominant, so far has the progress of Christianity been arrested. Its progress is arrested now, because many of its preachers live in an unreal world. The truths they set forth are truths of utterance rather than truths of their lives. But if Christianity is to be again the power that it was in its earliest ages, it must renounce its costly purchase. A class of rhetorical chemists would be thought of only to be ridiculed: a class rhetorical religionists is only less anomalous because we are accustomed to it. The hope of Christianity is, that the class which was artificially created may ultimately disappear, and that the sophistical element in Christian preaching will melt, as a transient mist, before the preaching of the prophets of the ages to come, who, like the prophets of the ages that are long gone by, will speak only "as the Spirit gives them utterance" (pp. 113- 115).

The "sermon" as it has come down to us via tradition, has roots that are very suspect. The N.T. knows nothing of the necessity of a "sermon" as we conceive of it. And yet most of us feel uneasy about dismissing it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it is ingrained in our practice.

Are we selective in our agenda for reformation? We are often ready to disown the effects of "paganism" in some of our practices. But what will we do when we see clearly the influence of alien forces upon something we have valued dearly for years?

What about our confession, sola scriptura? We want to "go by the Bible." But the Bible will not sustain the "sermon" concept. Just think of all the practices that rest upon the centrality of the sermon. If the sermon is not the necessity that tradition has dictated, then we face the reevaluation of a whole lot of what we do.

We need teaching in the church. Some, not all, are going to be recognized as "teachers" in the assembly. Teaching gifts are given by Christ to the church so that the parts may mature (Eph. 4:11-12). But there can be no justification for dependence upon a class of professional orators. All are to study, to exhort, and to teach. Bible study should be more of a congregational undertaking.

Most people probably feel as though a tremendous void results if teaching in the church does not focus on a sermon. Perhaps this helps us to see how entrapped we are in tradition. We have become almost helplessly dependent upon it. But if teaching in the church is not dependent upon the traditional sermonic form, we can be assured that the Spirit will guide us into forms that will fulfill the mind of Christ for the building up of the body. (Eph. 4:11-16).