Editorial

Eloquence and authority

Every preacher covets it. It is what people in the pew look for in their pastor when he or she preaches.

Willmore D. Eva is the former editor of Ministry Magazine.

Every preacher covets it. It is what people in the pew look for in their pastor when he or she preaches. It is one of those few characteristics indispensable to great preaching. When you hear it you immediately recognize it, but find it difficult to define or even describe. It is eloquence: "the practice or art of using language with fluency and aptness." 1

But there's something more mysterious and less explicit in it than this definition implies. Eloquence is certainly more of an "art" than it is a "practice." I think Lord Clarendon grasped its subjective essence when he said that eloquent speakers have the "strange power of making themselves believed."2 There is no question that eloquence has to do with the unique blending of personal, human characteristics in a speaker their voice, actions, mannerisms, fluency of language and that equally indefinable attribute of "presence" or "charisma." Indeed, many might say that presence and charisma are almost synonymous with eloquence. But there is more to eloquence than these things.

There is no question that as it is popularly understood, eloquence can be palpably present in a speaker even when the life and personal character of the speaker is not up to par. Yet there is also no question that the highest forms of eloquence involve the integration of unfeigned integrity with the personal, human characteristics mentioned above.

The quest for eloquence, however, lies beyond the matter of the hearer simply needing to perceive the speaker as a person of charisma or integrity. Instead, it reaches out to plant itself squarely in the conscience of the speaker. For the speaker himself or herself must know deep within themselves that they passionately believe in, and are consistently true to the essential thrust of what they are proclaiming. If this hidden fundamental is not a reality, life altering eloquence will be wanting.

One of the most striking aspects of eloquent public speech or writing is the authority it gives the speaker or writer. Eloquence is insightfully identified as one of the criteria which "served to identify the New Testament as taking priority [authority] over medieval interpretations without any difficulty."3 In other words, something proclaimed with eloquence is destined to be believed and thus to possess an authority over and above similar communications that have lesser eloquence.

All of us would agree that what made the New Testament writers and proclaimers eloquent and thus authoritative was the presence of the Holy Spirit in their life and proclamation. There is the phenomenal contrast between Jesus' twelve before the wind and fire of the Upper Room versus after it. There is no feature more clearly illuminated in the book of Acts than this comparison and it must remain primary and definitive for those of us charged with authoritatively proclaiming the message of Christ in our time.

Along with this there are other factors that profoundly contribute to the degree of eloquence and thus legitimate authoritativeness that we demonstrate in our preaching. It should go without saying that we are called to be students of the Bible, or more specifically, students of the Christ of the Bible. It should also be a given that we clergy be widely and purposefully well read.

A simplistic, anti intellectual mentality is not one that measures with the decisive call for us to develop every faculty with which God has gifted us, challenging us to stretch for excellence.4 There is a significant false movement among us that champions a brand of "down-home" faith and pastoring that actually promotes ignorance and thus mediocrity. I am all for what is genuinely simple and down-home in our cultures and therefore in our preaching. But I am not for the practice of purposely promoting a false intellectual modesty which glories in a contrived, antiliterate coarseness masquerading as superior spirituality, but which in effect keeps people blind and backward. This mentality devastates the beauty and eloquence that should be in our proclamation of truth.

Another cultural pressure that tends to militate against eloquence in preaching is the one that has caused some pastors to script a role for themselves that tends to make "pastorettes," or more to the point, "preacherettes" out of us. The pressure begins with the genuine need to be relevant and in touch. However, taken to a rather commonly manifested extreme, this pressure can end in reducing pastoring to a kind of glitzy, social operation that limits itself to horizontal realities while neglecting the vertical verities of our calling. This kind of ministry, though engaging, produces a witty or catchy pop preaching style that lacks depth, long term effect and of course, genuine eloquence and authority.

One other eloquence-squelching outlook is perhaps the most pervasive among us and is as old as the church itself. Mark succinctly describes the effect of Jesus teaching and the causes for it when he says, "And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes" (Mark 1:22 RSV). Jesus had what the scribes did not. I want what Jesus had. But I must confess that I have allowed too much of a stifling, legislative, religionism to dry me out. I have tended to rest on a constricting "I-have-the-truth" mentality that cuts off the felt need to know, grow and become. Controlled by a restrictive traditionalism and the inhibiting constraint to be merely doctrinaire I have too often allowed my God-given creativity and imagination to be dammed up behind the ancient wall of "scribal" religious formulations. If it does nothing else, this mentality almost visibly destroys eloquence and authority in our preaching. God break us free of it!

But which way is freedom? I believe it is in a freshly quarried encounter with the foundational Christ and the Holy Spirit He has liberally given His ministers. With this comes the courage to break free, to be wise, insightful, and creative. I also believe freedom comes in immersing myself in the life of my fellow humans, that is in the lives of people. It lies in judicious, but broad-based, purposeful reading and exposure to the best resources available to me where I am.

A quiet yet determined concentration in these realms will bring to our lives and our preaching an unselfconscious, authentic eloquence and the authority we so profoundly need now in our churches. This edition of Ministry is dedicated to these principles.

1. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, 1987.

2. Clarendon, quoted by J.C. Ryle in Select Sermons of George Whitefield (The Banner of Truth Trust, 1964), 39.

3. Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine. A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism (Grand Rapids, Midi.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1990), 114.

4. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church (Mountain View Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1948), vol. 5:528, 529.


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Willmore D. Eva is the former editor of Ministry Magazine.

July 1998

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