Preaching beyond modernism

Preaching beyond modernism: problems with communication and proclamation in a modernist framework

A careful review of what in the modernist framework might hinder effective preaching. (part 1)

Gerhard van Wyk, Th.D., is pastor of the Thomasville Seventh-day Adventist Church, Thomasville, North Carolina.
Roelf Meyer, Ph.D., is a researcher for the Institute of Theology and Religion, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa.

To preach the gospel means to communicate with others. Present communication approaches, how ever, seriously challenge the preaching that exists today within the more traditional modernist framework.

Modernism needs to be differentiated from modernity. Modernity is a more innocent, everyday concept, denoting the practical physical structures of modern development in life. In contrast, as it is used here, modernism is a framework of dogmatic Biblical interpretation, characterized by the following presuppositions and convictions:

  • Empiricism: things are as they appear according to our common sense observations.
  • Reductionism: that things may be reduced from the diverse phenomena of life to a primary explainable belief.
  • That atomism and mechanism of Newtonian science is applicable to our quest for spiritual truth. Newtonian science indicated that life can be broken up into independent pieces or atoms, to be coordinated again so that they work like a clock with its coordinated mechanisms.
  • That Sir Isaac Newton's way of formulating laws that explain physical phenomena may be used in much the same way in deter mining everything, including spiritual truth. (Today many of his conclusions have been relativized, if not contradicted for example, by quantum physics.) 
  • That Descartes's rationalism, which has been basic to modernism, suggests the best way of arriving at spiritual truth. This is the understanding that life is to be understood only through rationalistic concepts. This rationalism was combined with Descartes's subject-object split of life, denoting that we can understand the world and find meaning only if matters are objectified and we become the controlling subjects.
  • That positivism, the conviction that knowledge is confined to the observable, is a viable way of observing the parameters of truth.

Many preachers, even those with a fundamentalist orientation, who have tended to maintain the Bible as the only norm and source for truth, have unconsciously and in an undifferentiated way accommodated some modernistic elements.

Many fundamentalists, whose presuppositions are based on the modernist outlook, are defending themselves against the new, relativistic developments they are encountering.

But let us look closely and thoughtfully at the dangers that modernistic preaching presents when it comes to the communication of truth in much of the contemporary world.

The subject-object dichotomy

As mentioned, modernistic preaching has tended to conform to Descartes's subject-object dualism. Preachers start with the conviction that the listeners are objects. Such preaching follows a positivist method, indicating that contact can be made with listeners only if they are handled like objects. If people are seen to be objects of a sort, the next logical step is to consider it necessary to manipulate them.

In all of this, an underlying problem is the Cartesian division between the "sender," the preacher, and the "receiver," the listener.

The preacher is the thinking and preaching subject who proclaims the message to the objects. This split of the subject, the preacher, and objects, the listeners, has led to a conduit, or hosepipe, method of communicating, a limiting way to transmit finally formed ideas to be accepted willy-nilly by the listeners.

Preaching "objectively"

Preachers with authoritarian as well as the "right" interpretational and hermeneutic tools, claiming a so-called biblical expository approach, believe that these things enable them to proclaim the Word of God in an "objective" and "absolute" way.

This proclamation model is embedded in these preachers' constructed metaphor of the prophets and the apostles. It is an eclectic method, a way of picking certain elements of the Bible, often at random, and proclaiming them as objective truth.

Such preachers tend to assume that confrontation as such is the most genuine biblical approach. They claim confrontational elements of the Nathan approach by exclaiming: "You are the man!" (2 Sam. 12:7). In doing this they ignore the context in which Nathan and David communicated and, thus, the other dynamics that were present in Nathan's confrontation of David.

Aside from this, they neglect Jesus' way of preaching and teaching, which is the ultimate model. The advocates of this approach agree with the following statement: "Frankly, we are never told in the Bible to preach like Jesus, and probably we shouldn't try."1 The way Jesus used the Scriptures, His methods of storytelling (for example, the rich man and Lazarus) as well as His view of people and the way He dealt with them do not complement confrontational preaching.

Under this model of communication, everything contradicting or impairing the message of the confrontational preacher is to be eliminated. The children's crying room is to be well-isolated and insulated from the sanctuary, and careful steps have been taken to abandon any "noises" during the sermon.

In this model, the Holy Spirit can speak through the preacher only dur ing the sermon. Everything depends upon the "success" of the sermon in reaching the understanding of the congregation. The sermon must be unimpeded by any kind of static. Any distraction must be eliminated.

By isolating his message from all other communication the authoritarian preacher is forcing his message away from life's natural way of communicating, coercing it to flow the conduit of his preaching alone. Thus the "objectivity" of his message is retained. No other understanding of the text is possible. Even awe and wonder tend to be seen as distracting "noises" that keep the objective mes sage from influencing the listener.

The biblical text and community context

Christian conservatism has constructed a particular view of the Scriptures. Many preachers, especially those who are more "fundamentalist" in their outlook, seem to believe by default that they and no one else are to re-interpret the Bible within new contexts.

The Bible is simply regarded as "timeless" and with its unlimited general scope it can be understood without any particular sense of a specific human context. Any attempt to meaningfully place the present human context in the setting of the text is likely to be viewed as seriously suspect.

This causes the adherents to this kind of approach to give little consideration to people's "texts," to their situations and perceptions. Under this philosophy preaching is not understood as communication but merely as an objective declaration, or at best, an objective proclamation. What's proclaimed is based largely just on "the facts."

The conservative goal is to "protect" biblical "truth," but, contradictorily, it separates people's circumstances from the Scripture's contexts. The idealistically constructed biblical world that is thus produced is presented as God's only world, leaving the listeners in a vacuum and struggling with a floating sense of frustration and meaninglessness.

Preachers have been regarded as wise and consider themselves so. After home visitations, after reading news papers and books on sociopolitical, cultural, and psychological issues, they assume to know the needs of people. They feel well equipped to address the questions of the congregation. After delving into the back ground information for a sermon, and after their study and writing of the sermon, their only task, they feel, is to deliver the message.

Under this approach, the function of the congregation is to "swallow and digest" the spiritual food, final ized for them.

This type of sermon is designed within a Newtonian mechanistic worldview (see above), where the sub stances and structures of the sermon are separated in an atomistic way into contents and form. Above all, priority is given to the contents, which functions as almost the only norm by which a sermon is determined to be effective or not.

Under this regime, it does not matter how the message is presented and whether there is meaningful communication or not; the content is important.

High modernists, who create an extreme form of modernism, on the other hand, regard the Bible as an ancient book originating from the myths of premodernism. They feel the need for a new "Bible" that should be constructed with a rigorous objective scientific approach. Then only will the "laity," the ordinary listeners, be able to understand it. While it appears to defend the veracity of Scripture, its dependence upon, and preoccupation with, the rational, as the means for authenticating the Bible, actually opens the way for the reducing of the Bible as it actually has been given to human beings.

Under this approach, preachers must learn the particular methods of construction (i.e., reconstruction) so that they can present the Bible "truthfully." Preachers are made to be experts who exist to inform others. The congregation remains the uninformed laity and, consequently, this approach fails to produce the priest hood of believers that Luther and Calvin sought to restore in the church.

Anthropology and preaching

Authoritarian preachers speak to people based upon their view of what might be called a low anthropology; a presupposition that concentrates on the spiritual limitations of people.

Because humanity in general is seen as lacking spiritual insight, even sincere lay people are regarded as unable to understand the Scriptures properly, and thus they are seen as needing an authority figure to interpret it for them. This outlook is a more subtle version of the one that predominated in the presuppositions of the clergy in Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, for example.

The subject-object dualism of authoritarian preachers prefers the shepherd-flock split model of communication. This becomes an objective mechanistic tool to enhance domineering preaching. The preachers feed the flock with food prepared as a package, believing that they do this under the guidance of the Spirit.

The preacher is the sender, and the congregation consists of the receivers; the preacher convinces them to receive the final pre-prepared mes sage.

This modernistic paradigm has created a gulf between preachers and congregations and, worse, between congregations and the Scriptures. If the sermon is seen as the only truly viable bridge between the Bible text and the context of the people,2 this can disastrously separate the congregation from the biblical world.

High modernist preachers, on the other hand, employ a covert subject-object dichotomy. Here people are not lifeless objects, for relationships are important and there is no rigor ous authoritarian approach. Thus these preachers employ persuasive techniques that accommodate cultural likes and dislikes.

People are seen as living human documents, and preaching originates within their needs. They maintain a high anthropology, with a positive view of people. Yet people are still not seen as spiritually and psychologically creative, nor as effectively thoughtful worshippers of God, but rather they are seen to be the products of political and cultural dynamics. They are in need of a kind of horizontal salvation. Again, this makes the congregation only a little more than mere listeners, in need of being led by the real experts.

In this context, preaching is seen not as confrontation but merely as an encounter. This encounter between people is supposed to show God's face, as His presence. But the preacher is still subtly the sender of information to the listeners, who are still objects. They are supposed to be persuaded by the smoothness, practicality, decency, and academic quality of the preacher's message. In terms of the conduit metaphor, this leads to an unreflexive approach, indicating no reciprocal communication.

Consequently, technical effectiveness rather than real interactive and creative participation becomes the important criterion for preaching.

Further, lay people may be motivated to read the Scriptures and may even interpret them, but without the authority of the minister, this remains a subjective understanding. If they really wish to hear the so called objective meaning of God's message, the pressure is for them to simply listen to a "man of God," with the proper spiritual and "expert" credentials, as well as a person with religiously informed qualifications.

Secondhand and thus second class

In all of this, it becomes obvious that both authoritarian and high modernistic preaching reach people in a second-class way. They are potent forms of hearsay. The pietistic preacher, or the academic expert, assumedly explains the Scriptures correctly, and no other interpretation is possible.

The congregation is allowed to read the subjective message of the Bible in private, at home; however, they need to listen to the preaching of the "priest of the spiritual world" to find the real so-called objective truths in the Bible. Thus they become spectators, watching the "scientist" preacher perform his arts through his interpretational tools, while they wait passively to receive and apply the sermon package delivered to them.

To experience God's presence and to hear His own voice in worship, beyond modem objectivism, remains a great need.

Language

The traditional understanding of language conveys the assumption that it is an absolute system of signs with common meanings. For instance, to understand what is said as certain words are used, we need to follow the meaning of words as they are presented in a good dictionary.

Similarly, when it comes to authoritarian and high modernist preaching, the assumption is that the preachers' words carry clear, definable meaning and the congregations understand the preachers, as long as they stay within the rules of the dic tionary.

This, however, does not take into consideration that words may not have clear meanings. Words are a sys tem of signs not necessarily reducible to a fixed frame of reference. We create the meaning of words within our own context. What's important is not so much what words mean but what they do as they reach people.

Rationalism

Modernistic, informative preaching is based on Descartes's rationalism, understanding life within absolute rationalistic concepts. This French philosopher and mathematician obsessively asked how we could obtain absolutely certain and objective knowledge. He concluded that only the certainty of thinking, "I think, therefore I am," was unquestionable.

He believed that by way of rational thinking we could know absolutely. Consequently, knowledge became even more separated from the experiences and emotions of life. This approach demeans intuition and imagination as well as our emotional and relational dimensions.

Rationality, as well as irrationality, become grand narratives, that over arch thought while they determine structures that are supposedly able to explain everything in this world, thus giving them a priority over faith and wonder.3

Many preachers have come to believe that their rational powers, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, can extract God's message from the Bible. Thus they conclude that if they present the product of this process of sermon construction in an absolute logical and rationalistic way, all will be well.

Modernistic preachers often ignore biblical wisdom literature that espouses uncertainty and skepticism regarding our ability to know absolute truths (Prov. 21:30). This happens, of course, because such preachers fear that this biblical skepticism may impair their authority to say definitively "Thus says the Lord," making everything too relative.

Consequently, spiritual knowledge and insight are not the main issues for the authoritarian, modernist preacher, but instead the pursuit of power to determine "the truth" and dominate the congregation with their under standing of it. While it is very important for the pastor to be authoritative in his or her proclamation and to speak with authority, it is destructive to the basic principles of communication for a pastor to be authoritarian.

Truth

Following Descartes, such preachers regard their knowledge as "the truth." Truth is regarded as an abstract pietistic ideal, an academically oriented concept, rather than a pointer or guideline to truthfulness and to God.

In this way of thinking, preaching is regarded as remembering, rather than as experience. Preachers claim that God spoke to Abraham and Jacob, but now He speaks differently to us, and the primary way by which he does this is simply through preaching.

The aim of this approach is to reduce "present" truth to "historical and dogmatic" truths. In modernistic preaching, truth is not truth as a relationship with God, but truth only as knowledge. This truth does not really set people free.

Future challenges

We urgently need a comprehensive theology of preaching that goes beyond modernism. Such a theology, however, cannot be simply conceived in the same way modernist preachers and theologians might do it... by a rationalistic approach to the Bible!

Far reaching challenges and questions remain for preaching. Can preaching transcend modernistic captivity and become communal? How is the conduit method replaced with truly effective networking? In all of this, how does preaching escape subjectivity? Can God's message and people's contexts meet in truthfulness?

This is clearly material for another article dealing positively with how ministers may preach beyond modernism. In Ministry's September issue, an attempt to describe the contours of such preaching will appear as a sequel to this article

1 Hershael W. York and Bert Decker, Preaching With Bold Assurance (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Pub., 2003), 16.

2 York and Decker.

3 For the rational/irrational debate see P. J. Visagie, "Enkele Opmerkings Oor die Spanning: Rasionalisme Irassionalisme (Tydskrifvir Christelike Wetmskap, volume 15, 1979).


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Gerhard van Wyk, Th.D., is pastor of the Thomasville Seventh-day Adventist Church, Thomasville, North Carolina.
Roelf Meyer, Ph.D., is a researcher for the Institute of Theology and Religion, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa.

July 2004

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