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What the Reformation did for preaching

What the Reformation did for preaching

Last updated on: February 21, 2017 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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What the Reformation did for preaching 2017-02-20T20:06:56-05:00 Gene Veith

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Evangelical theologian Timothy George has written a fascinating and illuminating post entitled “How the Reformation Recovered Preaching.”

Prof. George shows not only historical facts about how the Reformation put the sermon back into the worship service. (Before, sermons were only given on special occasions, and often outdoors instead of in the sanctuary.) Drawing deeply on Luther, He also explores the theology of the sermon, which is a “sacramental event.”

Read highlights after the jump.

(Painting by Lucas Cranach, Altarpiece at St. Mary’s Church, Wittenberg. Reproduction by Torsten Schleese (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.)

From TImothy George, How the Reformation Recovered Preaching, The Gospel Coalition:

The preaching of the gospel as a sacramental event is at the heart of Reformation theology. Preaching is also at the heart of Reformation faith—preaching as an indispensable means of grace and a sure sign of the true church. Where is the church? According to Article VII of the Augsburg Confession (1530), the church is that place where the Word is purely preached and the sacraments are duly administered. The Second Helvetic Confession (1566) went even further when it declared that “the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.”

Of course, preaching—unlike the printing press—was not a new invention of the Reformation era. Far from it. Think of Augustine and Chrysostom in the early church, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Hus, and the many mendicant friars who fanned out across Europe in the Middle Ages.

St. Francis preached the gospel to a Muslim sultan, and Savonarola declared God’s judgment on the sinful leaders of Florence. Bernardino of Siena, the great Franciscan herald, preached to throngs in the 15th century, calling on his listeners to repent, confess their sins, and go to Mass. The Protestant reformers knew this tradition and built on it, but they also transformed it in two important respects.

Central Act of Worship

First, they made the sermon the centerpiece of the church’s regular worship. Prior to the Reformation, the sermon was mostly an ad hoc event reserved for special occasions or seasons of the liturgical cycle, especially Christmas and Eastertide. Most sermons were preached in town squares or open fields. The reformers brought the sermon back inside the church and gave it an honored place in the public worship of the gathered community. The central role of preaching in Protestant worship can be seen in the way pulpits were raised to a higher elevation as families gathered with their children to hear the Word proclaimed.

Second, the reformers introduced a new theology of preaching. They were concerned that the Bible take deep root in the lives of the people. The Word of God was meant not only to be read, studied, translated, memorized, and meditated on; it was also to be embodied in the life and worship of the church. What might be called the practicing of the Bible—its embodiment—was most clearly expressed in the ministry of preaching. Martin Luther believed that a call to the preaching office was a sacred trust and shouldn’t be used for selfish purposes. “Christ did not establish the ministry of proclamation to provide us with money, property, popularity, honor, or friendship,” he said. . . .

Three Marks of Reformation Preaching

In an important essay published in Theology Today in 1961, Heiko A. Oberman set forth the distinctive marks of Reformation preaching in terms of three interrelated aspects.

1. The sermon is an apocalyptic event.

Not quite in the sense of Savonarola’s preaching of impending doom to the people of Florence, but in the sense that the sermon unveils and makes present the last judgment here and now. Without demythologizing Christ’s future coming, gospel preaching existentializes the final will of God for every hearer by calling for a decisive response here and now. “In the sermon,” Oberman observed, “Christ and the Devil are revealed, Creator and creature, love and wrath, essence and existence, ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’”

2. The sermon is not an isolated speaking part in an otherwise sterile liturgy.

The sermon is a vital and integral part of corporate worship. Praying, singing, confessing sins, declaring forgiveness, baptizing, gathering around the Lord’s Table to receive in faith Christ’s body and blood “in, with, and under” (Luther) and “exhibited by” (Calvin) the earthly elements of bread and wine—all of these activities presuppose, and are supported by, the lively preaching of God’s Word. Woven into the texture of the whole worship event by the dynamic operation of the Spirit, the Reformation sermon, Oberman noted, is “not legalistic but redemptive; not only directed to individual souls but especially to the corporate existence of the congregation; not elevating but mobilizing; not a refuge but a starting point; and, finally, not holy and vertical, but secular and horizontal: time, space, and dust.”

3. The sermon is similar in one respect to the role of the eucharist in medieval Catholic theology.

The preaching event has an utterly objective character that transcends the weak and sinful status of the preacher himself. Whenever God’s Word is proclaimed, the Lord truly speaks and is truly present in judgment and in grace. There is, to say it boldly, an ex opere operato presence of God’s Word in the preached Word. For this reason, God has chosen what Paul called “the folly of preaching” to bring sinful men and women to new life in Christ, to nourish the flock of God, and to sustain the pilgrim church on its way to the heavenly city.

In the final analysis, the Reformation was a recovery of biblical preaching.

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