Paideia for Preachers: An Introduction

Peter Kreeft’s brilliant book The Best Things in Life imagines what would happen if Socrates were to visit a modern university campus. This short book is well worth your time, if only to skim through the sections in which Socrates discusses the nature of addiction with a student who “just needs to relax” with the aid of some cannabis, capitalism with a 19-year-old who only recently learned how to spell Marx, and Santa Claus as an icon of superstition surviving past the premodern era.

Seniors in our school read this text, and it is well received year after year.

In one of his dialogues with a student and a College President about Artificial Intelligence, a frustrated student asks Socrates a pointed question:

Are you against computers, Socrates?

“Of course not. Am I against brains? I am against confusion — against personalizing instruments and instrumentalizing persons — which is what is at stake in this philosophical question about human and computer intelligence.”

What makes this conversation all the more poignant is that this book was written in 1984!

Peter Kreeft, in the voice of Socrates, makes an important distinction: there are persons, and there are instruments. We do a disservice to both when we confuse the two.

I think this gets at the primary question we ought to consider when thinking about our use of technology: Are we becoming more or less human by using a specific device, software, or online service?

This is especially true when it comes to our approach to teaching and preaching, or more specifically, when it comes to our work of preparing to teach or preach. Our methods of preparation and teaching — the work we do in planning and in proclaiming — has a direct effect on human persons we are called to serve.

There are not yet, to my knowledge, many preachers seeking to use artificial intelligence to deliver their sermons. But there are, perhaps even among those reading these words, plenty who have or are considering using large language models to help jump-start their preparation process.

I believe this is a disservice to both the preacher and the congregation. We do well to be as human in our preparation as we know we ought to be in our proclamation.

It is the ability to think clearly about right and wrong, and to prepare and deliver the spoken word, after all, that distinguishes humans from other animals. Or so says Aristotle:

Man alone of the animals possesses speech. The mere voice, it is true, can indicate pain and pleasure, and therefore is possessed by the other animals as well (for their nature has been developed so far as to have sensations of what is painful and pleasant and to indicate those sensations to one another), but speech is designed to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and therefore also the right and the wrong; for it is the special property of man in distinction from the other animals that he alone has perception of good and bad and right and wrong and the other moral qualities, and it is partnership in these things that makes a household and a city-state. (Politics 1253a)

Why then do we seek to outsource this gift of speech, one that distinguishes us from beasts? And why, especially, would we outsource that gift to a machine?

I have had conversations with fellow teachers and preachers who are surprised to find themselves tempted to outsource their preparation to ChatGPT. Three years ago, they would have never dreamed of a computer doing this type of work for them. In many cases, their younger selves — who were eager to be in the pulpit week after week — would never dream of even wanting a computer to do so.

So why are so many toying with the idea, implementing it with boundaries whose borders are dangerously fluid — I will only use it during my busiest of pastoral weeks — or using it outright to complete an entire sermon?

After 15 years as a teacher and administrator in a K-12 context, I have found that the reasons adult teachers and preachers are tempted toward relying on artificial intelligence to do their work are identical to the reasons students do the same. Most of the cases of plagiarism over the years can be boiled down to one of the two reasons I will describe. (Pure laziness only exists on the surface; it is rarely the actual reason for plagiarism.)

A known deficiency. Students who plagiarize or preachers who cut corners often do so because they consider themselves deficient in the skills necessary for their craft. They believe it is easier to use a crutch forever than to correct a skill in which they know themselves to be weak.

A full and unexamined schedule. Both students and preachers also often rely on crutches because they are — or they believe themselves to be — too busy to prepare the right way. This may be due to a truly overfilled schedule, or the result of a merely unexamined schedule. “Homework took me four hours last night” may not quite capture the many 30-second interruptions every five minutes because of a deluge of push notifications on a smartphone, or the quick break that became a long nap. Regardless of the reason, we often seek shortcuts because we sense a time crunch.

I share these reasons simply to highlight that those who are seeking to outsource their teaching and preaching preparation are doing so for real reasons that each of us can understand. Without an intervention of some sort, they will likely continue to do so.

There are real questions about the ethical nature of relying on AI to kickstart, outline, or craft your entire sermon; those questions, while important, are not necessarily my concern here.

My concern is rooted in what using these tools as a crutch does, long term, to our ability to be a church capable of thinking clearly and speaking persuasively.There are important questions that the church of today and tomorrow needs to be able to answer clearly.

We use artificial intelligence in part because we are deficient in the art of rhetoric. And relying on these tools because we are already deficient only makes us increasingly deficient.

A vision of a church that is served by teachers and preachers who are weak, and growing weaker, in the art of rhetoric is not compelling. A generation from now, what does the church look like if her leaders are unable to reason well and speak in a convincing way, simply because they have fallen out of practice? I am afraid we have a real-world icon of this in our modern American political life, and it is not happy.

So what can be done about these things?

Here is my small attempt at helping to prevent this vision from becoming a reality: Paideia for Preachers, to be published here on Covenant, is a regular column dedicated to discovering and analyzing nuggets of rhetorical wisdom from the classical, patristic, and medieval world. Consider these glimpses into rhetorical wisdom throughout the ages an opportunity for all of us to strengthen a skill needed greatly in our churches and in the world.

This column does not exist because you need to be trained in classical rhetoric in order to be an effective teacher and preacher. We all know excellent teachers and preachers, from both contemporary life and those recorded in history. There is a very real chance that many of them have never taken a formal rhetoric course or would not consider themselves well-trained in the art of rhetoric.

But if you were to take a moment to analyze these speakers, to understand why they are so effective, you would notice myriad commonalities between them, regardless of their cultural, linguistic, and stylistic differences.

These common elements are what humans have called the art of rhetoric, since at least the century leading up to Aristotle.

Aristotle’s Rhetoric — and the countless works that have embraced, challenged, expanded upon, and reexplained his monumental tome since — exist because while some people appear to be naturally gifted in the art of rhetoric, it is in reality a skill — acquired through practice — that can be developed by the rest of us, too.

This column exists, not because I have mastered this art myself, but because I have benefited greatly by seeking wisdom from the past in countless areas of my life.

Developing one’s rhetorical skills is a noble — and essential — aim for those who are called to teach and preach. And looking beyond our era for help in doing so is a great place to start.