Schleiermacher and preaching

But what of the ministry of the Word?  Here we come to the heart of Schleiermacher’s theology of preaching.  Preachers, like Christ, exercise an efficacious influence on their hearers.  Their speech arises, as did the Redeemer’s, from the disparity in the strength of God-consciousness in themselves and others.  They are active in communicating, and others are receptive in being influenced by, their self-presentation.  While preachers truly speak of themselves – their own inner experience – they do no preach themselves or attribute the gifts that they communicate to themselves.  Rather, their communication is the transparent medium through which their hearers encounter the living Christ…  Christ, through his servants, communicates himself – the Word made flesh – through the efficacious influence of their self-presentation.

This is how Dawn DeVries characterises the theology of preaching held by the great 19th century liberal theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, in a fascinating study of Jesus Christ in the Preaching of Calvin and Schleiermacher.

It is terrifying.

Why, according to Schleiermacher, does the preacher preach?  Because the preacher has a stronger consciousness of God than the other members of the congregation.  This is what qualifies, and presumably motivates, the Christian preacher - the awareness that his own God-consciousness (note that this has a technical meaning for Schleiermacher, but basically is the awareness of dependence) outstrips that of his congregants, and that he is therefore able to help them my mediating God-consciousness to them.  Note that the preacher and the congregants all stand on a continuum with Christ here!  The preacher with his greater God-consciousness is just a bit closer to Christ as the ideal of total God-consciousness than are the congregants.

What, according to Schleiermacher, does the preacher preach?  His own inner experience.  This doesn't mean he shouldn't preach from the Bible; in fact Schleiermacher thought he certainly should.  But he must not preach anything from Scripture that does not resonate with his own God-consciousness.  It is not the Christ recorded in the Bible who really matters; it is the Christ present in the preacher's own heart (and therefore potentially in his hearers' hearts) that is important.  What this means in practice is that really the Bible illustrates Christian faith, rather than the latter resting on and deriving from Scripture.

This is terrifying to me as a preacher because it is both so possible and (therefore) so impossible.

It is, of course, possible that I have a deeper knowledge and experience of God than the people to whom I'm preaching.  It is possible that in my experience and understanding of faith there is something worth saying, something that will impart something of Christ.  It is possible that I might stand in such a position vis-a-vis the congregation that I can preach.

But then again - on any given Sunday, can I be sure that I stand in this position?  Am I definitely further up the continuum than all these people?  Aren't there weeks when I'm just empty?  Aren't there times when I have nothing useful to drawn on in my own experience of faith?

Far better to realise that the job of the preacher is quite impossible and therefore possible.

I don't stand in any different position than the congregation in front of me.  There is no continuum; there is just Jesus on the one side and all the rest of us on the other.  Whether I have greater spiritual experience or not is irrelevant, because what I am called to bring forth is not my own faith but Christ himself, with all his benefits offered in the gospel.  I am to deliver to the people the Word of God, which is to say the Lord Jesus.  And I cannot do it.  The congregation stands in front of me in need of Christ, and I am just the same.  I have nothing to offer.  It is impossible to preach.

And because it is impossible, I must rely on God, and in so doing I find that it is perfectly possible - in faith.  Christ must communicate Christ, and my preaching can only be the vehicle of this if and as he so wills.  But because he has promised, I can confidently attempt the impossible...

A final alarming thought: how often do we veer towards Schleiermacher, when we say things like 'the preacher can only truly proclaim what he has experienced?'  I mean, I get what this is trying to do, but it is so crucial that our confidence not lie in ourselves as preachers but in the Word who wills to be preached...

How to do liberal theology

I recently read Walter Brueggemann's book Sabbath as Resistance, which is really helpful in many ways and has challenged me to re-think my own position on Sabbath keeping.  However, at heart this book is a work of liberal theology, and I've found it interesting to think through what that means and how it shows itself.

To start with, for those brought up in a conservative evangelical tradition, it may be surprising that liberal theology is very interested in the Bible.  This book is all about engagement with Scripture.  Liberal theology at its best - and much of it is really rather good - is a genuine attempt to be Christian, and that translates into a real desire to hear the voice of Scripture and take it seriously.  If we imagine that liberal theology is not very seriously oriented toward the Bible, we will get it wrong.  If you want to do liberal theology, Scripture is the best place to start.

Moreover, liberal theology can lead to real and valuable insight into the Biblical text.  Sometimes those of us coming from a more conservative position can fail to really grapple with the text as it confronts us.  Sometimes we think we already know what the Bible is about, and that prevents us from asking the important questions.  Other times we look carefully to the text, but do not understand our contemporary world, so that we fail to arrive at an authentic interpretation and application of Scripture for today.  Liberal theology, which often comes from a place less bound by traditional interpretation, less tied to systematic theology, and more grounded in contemporary thought, can often be helpful.

But there is a problem.  Take an example from Brueggemann as illustrative.  In a generally helpful chapter which describes Sabbath as resistance to anxiety, we come across this summary of the activity of Pharaoh:

"...Pharaoh, even though he was absolute in authority and he occupied the pinnacle of power, was an endlessly anxious presence..."

"..Pharaoh, who controlled the Nile, nevertheless had nightmares of anxiety, as he dreamed of famine and as he imagined that the creation would not provide sufficient food (Gen. 41:15-32)."

"...that nightmare of scarcity, which contradicted the wealth and power of read Pharaoh, led to rapacious state policies of monopoly that caused the crown to usurp the money, cattle, the land, and finally the bodies of vulnerable peasasnts..."

See what's happened there?  If you're at all familiar with the book of Genesis, you will remember that Pharaoh is sent dreams from God warning him of famine to come.  The divine origin of these warnings is stressed in the narrative - read through Genesis 41:25-36, and count the mentions of God.  "God has revealed...  God has shown...  the thing is fixed by God and God will shortly bring it about".  Of course, all this is said by Joseph, but the text gives every reason to see this as also the narrator's point of view.  Pharaoh's anxiety in this instance is caused by God, and moreover is well justified!

What about the rapacious state policies?  The reader will recall that it was Joseph, not Pharaoh, who reduced the people of Egypt to serfdom.  But in the text, the stress is not on this but on the fact that the people were saved alive.  The alternative to serfdom was starvation.  Now, if any character in Genesis is portrayed by the narrator as a hero, it is Joseph.  To read this episode as Brueggemann does is to go completely against the grain of the Scriptural text.

And fundamentally, that is how to do liberal theology.  Use the Scriptural narrative and instruction as material, engage with it very seriously and creatively, but do not feel constrained to follow where Scripture points.  Do not feel obliged to let Scripture set the agenda.  In short, make the Bible your servant and not your master.  Then you're well on your way.

Sterile Ideas

I have been forced over the last week or so to become very familiar with the documentary hypothesis. For those who are blessed with ignorance of this matter, and who can't be bothered to look at the Wikipedia article (you should, it has a diagram which illustrates the idiocy of the idea right there), the documentary hypothesis (henceforth DH) is a theory that says it is possible to trace within the Pentateuch (i.e. Genesis through Deuteronomy) four distinct literary sources which have been patched together by redactors to form a whole. The four sources are labelled J (the Yahwist), E (the Elohist), P (the Priestly source), and D (the Deuteronomist). Many theorists hold that it is also possible to discern some elements added by redactors; some think it is possible to discern distinct layers within the sources, such that you end up with E1, E2 etc.

As far as I can see, and I may be wrong, this idea is utterly sterile.

By this I mean, the DH doesn't lead to anything. It bears no fruit. If you begin to think seriously about it, it will not lead you to think seriously about other things. Books on the DH all seem to start and finish with the DH. Those who take the DH seriously make claims like 'it is no longer possible to read the Pentateuch as a unity' - something which is manifestly untrue, since these books have been and still are the subjects of expository preaching and teaching all over the world. The DH doesn't help you to understand, but in fact makes the Pentateuch impossible to comprehend at all.

It got me thinking: what makes an idea sterile? How can we spot the ideas which are likely to become hopelessly self-referential and curved in on themselves, like the DH? Ideally, how do we spot them before we invest too much time and effort in them? I had a few thoughts.

1. Is it possible for this idea to be firmly established? The DH cannot be firmly established, dealing as it does with subjectivities and the attempt to get behind the text into unseen precursors. The result is that arguments go back and forth over its validity, or the precise form it ought to take, without any real conclusions being possible. It can be talked about forever, and we will never be able to view it as settled and move on. So it is sterile. What other ideas might be like that?

2. How many layers of hypothesis are there between the acknowledged facts and the conclusion? The DH has all the features of a cloud-castle. Layer after layer of supposition, sprinkled with interim conclusions that make good sense if and only if you accept the previous hypothesis. This gives lots to talk about that isn't really the substance, and keeps the idea in the conversation without it really having anything to say. Sterility. How much theological and philosophical construction works in the same way?

3. Can the idea be rephrased or summarised in a way which would be useful to the average chap on the street (or in this case, the average church-goer)? This isn't totally foolproof, but I think it is a warning sign to us if our ideas are useless for living. It's a potential sign that they are sterile ideas. I'm guessing quite a lot of thought falls under this heading.

Any other ideas?