The Sermon without End: A Conversational Approach to Preaching

by Ronald J. Allen, O. Wesley Allen JR.

Overview

A New Model for Post-Apologetic Preaching in a Pluralistic World.



The relationship between preaching and the public sphere has long been
debated. Three different theological approaches tend to dominate the
discussion. In different ways, these approaches take into account the
movement from the modern mindset of the mid-to-late 20th century to the
emerging postmodern worldview.

In The Sermon without End, authors Allen & Allen thoughtfully
offer a fourth option, one that in their view has not received much
attention, but which offers a distinct and especially helpful
perspective. It is a new and dynamic conversational model, reaching
beyond the earlier work of Tillich and Tracy. In this homiletical
framework, conversation takes place in multiple directions between the
text or tradition and the world today. It is preaching in conversation,
not just toward but with voices from the public sphere.

The book provides a solid foundation for understanding this
post-apologetic approach, but it importantly goes on to offer practical,
real-pulpit guidance for implementation in a preaching ministry. It is a
book for both scholars and practicing preachers who wish to reach
people in meaningful and significant ways, and in ways that make sense
for today.

"This book deserves to be widely applauded. It provides a post-apologetic lens to illuminate the history of various modern homiletical discourses even as it envisions a postmodern one. ... I strongly recommend this book for homileticians, preachers, and lay people alike." - Duse Lee, Boston University School of Theology - Reviewed in Homiletic

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781630883225
Publisher:	Abingdon Press
Publication date:	10/20/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Ronald J. Allen is Professor of Preaching and Gospels and Letters at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the author of several books on preaching including Sermon Treks: Trailways for Creative Preaching from Abingdon Press.  

O. Wesley Allen, Jr., is Lois Craddock Perkins Professor of Preaching at Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, Texas. He is the author of A Homiletic of All Believers, Preaching and Reading the Lectionary, Matthew: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries and several other books. For many years he was Professor of Preaching at Lexington Theological Seminary, Lexington, Kentucky.

Read an Excerpt

The Sermon Without End

A Conversational Approach to Preaching

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By Ronald J. Allen, O. Wesley Allen Jr.

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2015 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63088-322-5

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CHAPTER 1

Apologetic Neighborhoods

If we conducted a survey of contemporary preachers and congregations to measure the frequency of the use of the language of "apologetics," we would find that such language appears often in some neighborhoods of the church and not at all in others. For example, evangelicals tend to use the language of apologetics more than progressives. However, regardless of whether today's preacher or congregation regularly uses the language of apologetics, the concern at the heart of apologetics is a concern at the heart of Christian community in every generation: the search for real confidence in God, the Christian message, and the values and practices of Christian life, particularly in the face of challenges to that confidence. Such challenges may be direct, as when a group outside (or inside) the church claims that aspects of the church's beliefs and behavior are not tenable. Or they may be indirect, as when a dimension of a contemporary worldview seems to contradict something assumed in a prior era of history.

What can we truly believe in the way of theological claims and ethical perspectives? And what reasons give us the deep sense we can believe and act in those ways, especially when questions and uncertainties come into view? How do we answer critics from outside the church who charge that Christian faith is no longer believable? How do we respond to voices within the church (and sometimes within the preacher) that question our interpretation of Christian faith and practice and who may even challenge the validity of faith?

Preachers and theologians sometimes discuss such matters under the rubric of the relationship between faith and reason. To what degree is a congregation's faith reasonable, that is, believable in the sociohistorical period in which the congregation lives? To be sure, the specific issues of faith and reason change from period to period. Preachers and congregations deal with these matters in different ways according to the pre-suppositions and resources of their different moments in history. Yet while criteria for a faith in which a congregation can have confidence vary from theological neighborhood to theological neighborhood, the search for such a faith persists.

This chapter sketches the broad landscape over which we will set our homiletical proposal. We first offer a standard definition of apologetics and then look briefly at how different specific issues in apologetics surface in different seasons of the history of the church, even as the apologetic task extends from generation to generation. The heart of the chapter describes three of the main approaches to apologetics from the twentieth century that are still making claims on the church of the twenty-first century (evangelical, liberal, and postliberal). These approaches were developed to deal with various challenges to the faith posed by modernism.

Defining Apologetics

To begin considering the question of the appropriateness of preaching being apologetic in character, we return to the traditional definition of apologetics offered in the introduction and examined here in detail:

Apologetics is a theological/homiletical approach that uses the categories of knowledge, thinking, and values of the contemporary culture to explain and defend Christian faith in response to explicit or implicit misunderstanding, challenges, and attacks in order to commend that very faith.

Apologetics, as defined here, commends the faith to two audiences simultaneously. At one level, an apology attempts to defend the faith to those outside the church by showing that Christian faith is credible. At another level, an apology reassures those inside the community that they can have confidence in their faith in a way that makes sense from the perspective of competing and compelling worldviews of their time. In this latter role, the apology does not seek so much to persuade or convert as to reinforce the trust of insiders in the ideas and practices of their faith.

The starting point of apologetics for both audiences is the explicit or implicit misunderstanding of, challenges to, and attacks against the Christian beliefs and practices. As one author puts it,

In countering objections brought against Christian belief, apologetics does not itself determine the doctrines requiring defense. These are imposed by the criticisms, explicit or implicit, advanced by the unbeliever or critic. Therefore, because of fresh challenges brought by rival religions or by changes in secular knowledge, the apologetic task must be undertaken anew in every age.

Apologetics assumes the church is in conversation (or debate) with the world. Voices from the world set the beginning point of the conversation (for both insider and outsider audiences) by raising issues that call into question aspects of the Christian faith and life. The apologist responds to those issues in ways that refute criticisms and offer reasons for believing that the apologist's vision of God, church, and world is convincing.

Apologetics approaches misunderstandings, challenges, and attacks using the categories of knowledge, thinking and values of the contemporary culture. In other words, not only does the sociohistorical situation determine the scope of the conversation or debate between the church and that situation, the church uses the "language" of that situation not only to be understood but also in the hope that outsiders and insiders can and will accept Christian faith. Apologetics, therefore, is a "cultural theology" in the sense that the way it expresses interpretations of the Christian faith is dependent upon the worldview(s) it is addressing, even as an apology seeks to help its receivers interpret those worldviews theologically.

As the church's scriptures and traditions were not shaped in a vacuum without being culturally and historically conditioned, we cannot speak today, or any day, in a manner not shaped by the very day in which we speak. Theology is always and only spoken in a particular socio-historical context to that particular context using the language of that particular context. Use of contemporary knowledge, thinking, and values in theology and preaching, then, is simply the fulfillment of the dictum that is a part of every introductory public speaking class: know your audience and craft your message in such a way that they can grasp it and be grasped by it.

Apologetics deals with contemporary challenges and draws on contemporary categories of thought to address them not as abstract theological ends unto themselves but specifically to explain and defend the faith in order to commend that very faith. Apologetics is not a self-serving exercise any more than the church is called to be a self-serving institution. As one author puts it, "Apologetic theology can be thought of as a specific theological method that interacts with the surrounding culture in the service of mission and evangelism. It is theology that seeks to express itself in contextual terms so that the gospel will be heard and understood."

The Changing, Unchanging Apologetic Task

As we noted above, the specific issues faced by apologetics change from generation to generation. The church continually focuses and refocuses its apologetic task according to the questions and challenges of its age. This book is not concerned directly with analyzing the history of the church's apologetic endeavors, but it is worth noting briefly that the apologetical approaches of modernity did not develop ex nihilo.

Scholars generally agree that the earliest Christian apologetic practices in the first century CE are rooted in Judaism. Jewish writers explained their distinctive faith and practice to their own communities, as in many of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. However, the Jewish apologetic task became more widespread and formal as Jewish people came into more and more contact with Greek culture in the wake of Alexander the Great (366–333 BCE) who brought much of the Mediterranean basin under Hellenistic influence. Some Gentile writers had caricatured Jews and made derogatory comments about Jewish ways of life (e.g., the dietary practices) and Jewish history. Jewish authors such as Josephus, Philo, and the author of the Letter to Aristeas shaped parts of their writings ostensibly to respond to outsider Gentile criticism while not only debunking such criticism for Jewish insiders but buttressing the confidence of Jewish readers in their own religion.

The New Testament does not include any writing that is primarily apologetic in nature. Biblical scholars do, however, recognize apologetic themes and scenes in various texts. Some of the more obvious types are

• narratives defending some claim of the church's faith (e.g., Jesus being declared innocent by Roman authorities in Matt 27:15-23 and Luke 23:4, 13-16; the guards at the tomb in Matt 27:62-66; 28:4, 11-15);

• models of preaching apologetically by drawing on contemporary philosophy (e.g., Paul's Areopagus speech in Acts 17);

• using natural theology to build a case for a Christian perspective (e.g., Rom 1:18–2:16); and

• instructions for giving a defense of the faith (e.g., Mark 13:11 par., Col 4:5-6; 1 Pet 3:15-16).

While these hints at apologetics in the New Testament show the authors' awareness of claims outside the church that must be countered, the New Testament documents were all written with an insider audience in mind. By making a defense concerning claims coming from outside the church, the authors give members of the community reason to remain steadfast in their own faith.

In the postbiblical period of early Christianity, the church's faith was misrepresented and attacked by some beyond the Christian community in more vigorous and sustained ways. A number of thinkers, called Apologists, emerged in the church in the second and third centuries to answer assaults on Christian faith and community. One of the most important was Justin Martyr (ca. 100–65), whose three extant works are all apologies. The First Apology and Second Apology address a Roman audience responsible for political persecution of Christians and The Dialogue with Trypho addresses a Jewish audience. To offer an example, in his First Apology, Justin begins by identifying criticisms made against the church by outsiders — atheism, immoral behavior, and not being loyal to the emperor. After addressing these particular accusations, Justin launches into an extensive defense of Christian faith as a rational philosophy, exploring parallel themes in Christian and non-Christian mythology and thought. While defending the faith against criticisms, Justin explains to Christians how their faith makes sense in terms adapted from the prevailing Greek philosophical worldview which they would have taken for granted.

Once Constantine legalized Christianity (313), apologetics shifted from defending the minority faith against misunderstanding and accusations to arguing for the Christian faith as the best worldview over other alternatives. Augustine (354–430) is perhaps the best example of this approach. Having converted to Christianity from Manicheism, his early written works focused on refuting Manicheism (On the Catholic and Manichean Ways of Life, Of True Religion, On the Usefulness of Belief). While Augustine's writings over the course of his career covered a wide range of theological and ecclesial topics, across many of them he drew on Platonism to interpret the faith in ways that made sense in light of contemporaneous epistemology. And one of his greatest works, The City of God against the Pagans, defended a spiritual view of the faith (the city of God over the city of humanity) in light of accusations that Rome had been sacked by the Visigoths in 410 because of the Empire rejecting traditional Roman religion for Christianity.

In the medieval period, apologetic theology began less by responding to direct attack from outsiders and more by thinkers perceiving threats to Christian faith posed by the two other Abrahamic movements — Judaism and Islam. In each case, Christian theologians seek both to discredit aspects of Judaism and Islam and to establish the reliability and superiority of Christianity. The title of a work by Peter the Venerable (ca. 1092–1156) reveals this approach: Against the Inveterate Obstinacy of the Jews. Unfortunately, such works contributed forcefully to anti-Semitism. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) devoted extensive space to refuting his approximate Islamic contemporary, the learned Averroes. Averroes's interpretation of the rediscovered works of Aristotle had significant influence in European universities and was seen as a serious challenge to Christian theology. In Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas countered this influence by developing a Christian philosophy rooted in the very Aristotelian thought that had challenged the faith.

The Reformation and early Protestant movements were not greatly concerned with apologetic endeavors. This was for two main reasons. First, because Europe was overwhelmingly Christian, there were few outsiders against whom the church had to defend itself or to try to persuade. Second, and related to the first, the debates raging in Protestantism involved defining their stances over against Catholics or other Protestant movements instead of in relation to non-Christian worldviews.

Modernism

Protestant engagement in apologetics, then, really began with the rise of the modern worldview, which began to come to expression in the late seventeenth century and challenged the Christian faith in radically different ways than it had been challenged in the past. The bulk of this chapter will describe three of the major apologetic responses to these developments. For now, then, let us examine only the challenges.

The Age of the Enlightenment brought with it a devotion to reason over against the church's emphasis on revelation passed on by communal tradition. While it inherited from the previous eras described above a view of truth and values as universal, modernity assumed truth could only be discovered and confirmed by human intellect. While a marked individuality was paired with this valuation of reason, reason was believed to have the ability to describe and prescribe universals that would lead to a homogenization in all aspects of life. Intellectuals, therefore, sought a reasonable foundation on which all knowledge could be built. Religious teachings, whether they be drawn from scripture or the Magisterium, could only be considered true if they corresponded to truth established by reason and founded on the same reasonable foundation as all knowledge.

Modernity's confidence in reason led to the expectation that humanity could finally make real, if not quite ultimate, progress in overcoming human hardship and suffering. Human ingenuity could raise the standard of living in ways never before imagined. Thus was born the industrial revolution followed by the information, technological, and digital revolutions.

Perhaps most significant to the coup d'état in which reason dethroned revelation, however, was the scientific revolution (which was both a precursor of and partner to the revolutions just mentioned). All types of thinking — economic, political, philosophical, theological, exegetical — aimed to be scientific in their methodologies. Make a hypothesis, gather evidence, and test the claim in order to try to verify it. One could recognize as true those things that could be demonstrated by empirical, objective observation. Historical reasoning is a prime example. The Enlightenment approach to historical research was to reconstruct a facts-only version of the past and reject as mythological any claims about the past that could not be reconciled with a scientific, rationalistic explanation.

The reason that empirical observation and scientific verification were so highly valued in modernity was that the world was considered to be reasonable in the sense that it operates in ways that can be scientifically observed, studied, and interpreted. Those who accepted the modern perspective thought that the world operates according to natural laws and that all things that happen in the natural world could be explained according to these laws. Sir Isaac Newton established this worldview so firmly in the late 1600s that there seemed to be little need for a providential God. God might have created the world, but God did not act in supernatural ways to keep it running. Science is always hungry to devour the next gap in knowledge, however, and eventually would even challenge the need for a creator. With Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection in the mid-nineteenth century and the development of the Big Bang theory in the early twentieth century, the need for a divine creator got smaller and smaller.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Contents

"Introduction",
"Chapter 1" Apologetic Neighborhoods,
"Chapter 2" A Postapologetic Neighborhood,
"Chapter 3" Postapologetic Preaching as Conversation,
"Chapter 4" The Conversational Sermon as Postapologetics,