01 - Intro + Provisional Definition of 'Sermon'

History of Preaching: An Introduction

There is no activity more characteristic of the church than preaching. Along with the sacraments, most Christian bodies consider the proclamation of the Word of God to be the constitutive act of the church.

No other major religion gives preaching quite the central role that it has in Christianity. Most major religions authorize persons to ritualize and storify their integrating myths; to preserve, interpret, and teach the current relevance of their sacred writings; to connect the past with the present and the future; and, in most cases, to win converts to the faith. But in the Christian religion, “the preacher, by and large, plays a more central role.”Judaism and Islam are the two other great monotheistic faiths in which homiletical activity approximating that of Christianity is most common.

The material included within or excluded from this account of the history of preaching was shaped and/or determined by the following basic definition of a “sermon”:

Provisional Definition of 'Sermon'

A 'sermon' is a speech delivered in a Christian assembly for worship by an authorized person that applies some point of doctrine, usually drawn from a biblical passage, to the lives of the members of the congregation with the purpose of moving them by the use of narrative analogy and other rhetorical devices to accept that application and to act on the basis of it.

The overwhelming majority of Christian sermons have been delivered at regular worship services, especially those conducted on Sundays. Even most of the efforts to convert non-Christians through preaching have occurred at regular meetings of the Christian assembly. While there have been exceptions, such as open-air preaching, even that has often been accompanied by Scripture reading, prayer, and hymn singing, which turn the event into a service of worship. In addition to sermons in the ordered round of worship and those preached in missionary or evangelistic contexts, the other main category has aimed at instruction in the faith. Not all catechesis has been preaching within the definition given above, but at least the instructions in preparation for Christian initiation given by such early church fathers as Ambrose, Cyril of Jerusalem, and John Chrysostom fit within the genre of sermon. The subject of this investigation, then, is Christian preaching at the regular liturgy and in missionary/evangelistic and catechetical situations that falls within the definition of a sermon.

Many will undoubtedly wonder why anyone would wish to bother writing or reading a history of preaching. Certainly, the reputation of the activity in some quarters is such as to cause curiosity about it to appear perverse. Thus the third definition of preach in the first edition of the Oxford American Dictionary is “to give moral advice in an obtrusive way.” Nor is it a compliment to call any discourse “preachy.” The early-nineteenth-century wit Sydney Smith, himself a priest and even a canon of St. Paul’s, said that preaching has become a byword for long and dull conversation of any kind; and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing, the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a sermon.

Even the most committed Christian has to acknowledge that there is more justice to such complaints than one wishes were the case. In spite of all that may be said against preaching, however, its history has proved to be of enormous interest to many scholars who have no personal bias in favor of the church. Indeed, most of the monographs in the field, those that make up so much of the bibliography of the present study, are the work of scholars whose field is not church history or homiletics. Many have been historians in other fields, whether political, social, or literary. Folklorists have studied African American preaching, scholars of Middle English have searched manuscripts for sermon illustrations

The Earliest Christian Preaching that furnished the plot for early secular writings in the vernacular, and students of the American Revolution have read sermons to see how the decision to take up arms against the Crown was formed. Those interested in the evolution of public speaking have found secular rhetoric influencing homiletical theory, and styles in preaching shaping the work of those who engaged in other forms of public address. Nor has preaching been studied only for the light it could cast on something else; literary critics have found the styles of preachers in various periods to be worthy of attention in their own right. Thus many who have made no personal religious commitment have found some Christian preaching, at any rate, worthy of all the attention they could give it.

The attitudes toward preaching of “those who profess and call themselves Christians,” however, are of a wholly different order. The most extreme claims have been made for the value of the activity. Paul, for instance, said:

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Rom 10:13-15)

Thus he can say: “God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe” (1 Cor 1:21) and say of himself: “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16). The interpretation of the early church fathers that was collected into the most authoritative biblical commentary of the Middle Ages, the Glossa Ordinaria, found preaching represented allegorically on almost every page of the sacred text. The two greatest of the Reformers, Luther and Calvin, both assumed that the ordinary medium by which election to salvation is effected was preaching. Finally, the Decree on the Ministry of Priests of the Second Vatican Council says that “the primary duty of priests is the proclamation of the Gospel of God to all.” Thus there are many, believers and nonbelievers alike, for whom investigating the development over time of Christian preaching is a worthy effort.