Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of an earlier essay from Jon Jordan.
“No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.”
I have yet to hear these words — attributed to Scottish theologian and preacher James Denny — quoted as frequently in the Anglican preaching world as I have among our ecumenical friends. From my personal experience it is especially common in evangelical contexts in which a long sermon is expected and celebrated, or at least by the preacher. Taken at face value, this is an important reminder that Christ is the one we proclaim, and to draw attention to our intelligence is to draw that same attention away from Christ. But this remark is often used in defense of avoiding excellence of speech in occasions to proclaim Christ, most notably the Sunday sermon.
A similar notion can be heard among those in the more liturgical world, though it comes from a slightly different angle. In our world, it can often sound more like “I like to let the liturgy do the preaching” or “My real sermon is preached Monday through Saturday.”
It is worth pausing to recognize the ways in which those sentiments are good and true: the liturgy does a great deal of proclamation, and one of the gifts of our tradition is the way in which priests are expected to be present, almost in a sacramental sense, in the warp and woof of our lives. But that is not always what is meant by those who share these sentiments. It is often the case that they are given as reasons for underpreparing a Sunday sermon. It becomes an excuse.
St. Paul is often cited in the same vein, too. Depending on your preferred translation’s rendering of hyperoche and peitho in 1 Corinthians 2, the Apostle is often understood in that passage to be commending an abandonment of the art of rhetoric in the proclamation of the good news, perhaps in favor of a purposely unimpressive style and word choice.
When I came to you, I did not come proclaiming the testimony of God with lofty words (RSV), or excellency of speech (KJV), or eloquence (NIV). … my speech and my message were not in plausible (RSV), or enticing (KJV), or persuasive (NIV) words.
But before you allow these various translations to reinforce a sentiment that the best sermons will abandon the art of rhetoric, consider that St. Paul also wrote and dictated passages like this:
For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39)
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1. Cor. 13:1)
These passages — and countless others like them in the Pauline corpus — masterfully employ common elements of classical rhetoric. Contrary to some interpretations of 1 Corinthians 2, it seems that Paul does write with “excellence of speech,” and his commentators throughout the ages have been quick to note his mastery and use of the art of rhetoric. It is a misrepresentation of his body of work to understand St. Paul as being against the art of rhetoric, as eschewing the task of carefully crafting a sermon.
So what is he against? What is the hyperoche and peitho he avoided when proclaiming Christ to the Corinthian Church? I propose it is the same thing Aristotle is against in the opening of his master work, Rhetoric. Paul and Aristotle are writing against the Sophists and against those who follow in their steps. In his introduction to Plato’s Protagoras, Denyer summarizes the worst part of the Sophists well: “whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience.”
Aristotle’s portrayal of the spirit of the sophists is more pointed: the difference between a sophist and a wise speaker employing the art of rhetoric is “not the faculty (dynamis) but the moral purpose (prohairesis).” A sophist—ancient or modern — seeks to harness the power of the art of rhetoric for less noble means than the proclamation of life and truth.
If you are preaching to give the impression that you are clever, you have missed the mark. If you are seeking to craft an excellent message — in shape, word choice, and delivery — you are simply following the Apostle Paul in his work of making Christ known through the written and spoken word as excellently as our Lord deserves.