PULPITS AND PERIPATETICS

The Greek Origin of the "Sermon"

It is our purpose in this paper to expand on some suggested Reform laid down in the workbook entitled "The Elder's Checklist." There we made some applications of the Biblical concept of the "Priesthood of All Believers." We have suggested, in many different publications, that the emphasis in the Bible is not on a limited or elite group of priests doing God's will, but in the entire nation of God's people becoming priests and doing God's will. Decentralized responsibili- ty is a central theme in the Bible. In "The Elder's Checklist" we discussed Biblical evidence which suggests that all Christians -- not just a few -- should be stretching them- selves out to become mature and able to "pastor" or "shepherd" younger, less mature Christians.

One area that has raised some questions in the minds of a few readers is the format of the Christian assembly, particularly as it is pre- sently focused around the event called the "Sermon," or in Reformed jargon, "The Preaching of the Word."

In "The Elder's Checklist" we suggested that "preaching" is a Biblical term more akin to "evangelism," or the announcement of the extension of Kingdom Blessings. Admittance to the Kingdom is the goal of evangelism, or "preaching"TY[_,g." All we were able to do in "The Elder's Checklist" was to show that the duty to teach was a duty we all had. But we did show that this duty was a broad one:

We suggested that the verbal application of the Word of God to the specific problems of believers, the exhortation to stand against the pressures of the world, and other duties we presently relegate to a lecture, are in fact the duties of All Believer-Pri- ests. The same Bible that describes such duties as preaching, teaching, convicting, exhorting, comfort- ing, and catechising, says that such duties are the duties of all Christians.

Tragically, most believers do not feel they are capable of counseling other believers, since these are duties only "educated professionals" can undertake. "I can't shepherd younger Christians," they say. "I don't know how to get up in front of a crowd, stand behind a pulpit and give an oration following the standard rules of rhetoric." The biggest roadblock to a functioning priesthood of all believers is the "sermon;" a polished, "educated" display of learning and professionalism.

But the "sermon" is not at all what is required of the mature Christian man. The "sermon" cannot be found in the New Testament. Its origin is the world of Greek and Roman philosophy.

What we attempt in this paper is strictly nega- tive. In this paper we focus on the "sermon." Our thesis is that the "sermon" is a Greek invention of little value to the Christian, and that it cannot be used as an excuse for Christian fathers to sit back and watch, rather than to become Biblical "elders." There is no such thing as a "professional Christian."

Greek-Christian Syncretism

That Biblical Christianity has been in large degree smothered by Greco- Roman Humanism cannot be doubted by any student of the Scriptures or Church History. Those influenced by the thought of the Protestant Reformation, in particular John Calvin, and those who have followed their footsteps, notably Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Seminary, have tried to be especially sensitive to the presence of non- Biblical thinking in what passes as "Christianity." The Reformation of the Church must surely be an on- going commitment.

The word "syncretism" is used by some writers to describe the formation of a religious perspective by picking and choosing from various existing religious beliefs. Greek- Christian syncretism describes, usually, a Christian who looks at the Bible and says, "I like that," then turns to the Humanism of the Greco-Roman world and says, "Oh that looks nice too; I'll take some of that." This smorgasbord approach ends up with a very inedible religious diet: It won't find favor with the Humanists and it is decidedly non- Biblical.

In his book A Christian Theory of Knowledge, Van Til describes the departure of the theologians from the Bible as they pick and choose from the various man-centered systems of thought. Other writers have done the same (e.g., Edwin Bevan, Hellenism and Christianity (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, Inc., 1967 819219)), although where Van Til abhors the practice, some applaud it.

Of particular interest to us here is the book, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, by Edwin Hatch (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1970). Hatch is one of those Humanists who has a love-hate relationship with Christianity, outwardly very sympha- thetic to parts, plainly hostile to other parts. It is the kind of Christianity J. Gresham Machen found so abominable in the Presbyterian Church. But while we must maintain a keen eye for his biases, we can still find much truth in his book.

For example, in his introductory lecture he notic- es the decided shift in Christianity from theonomic dominion to Greek intellectualism:

It is impossible for any one, whether he be a student of history or no, to fail to notice a dif- ference of both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a . . . law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the speculative side of theol- ogy; metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples; ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers.

There is plainly exaggeration here; metaphysics, e.g., the presupposition of an Infinite Creator-God (necessary for ethical sovereignty), is surely not "wholly absent." As a knee-jerk reconstructionist, my first reaction was simply to dismiss the author as anti-Trinitarian. But this was hasty. As we heard Calvin say (in our study on Logic), doctrinal issues should not be made the basis for endless disputation and speculation. What matters far more is Godliness and Christian growth in Dominion; the ethical con- sideration of obedience to the Law of God.

Intellectualism vs. Whole-Man/Whole-Bible Christianity

There can be no doubt that much of the early church disputes over the deity of Christ were shrouded in Greek Philosophy, and the question of Dominion and the application of Biblical Law to the collapsing Roman Empire was ignored. Thus we can find truth in Hatch's remarks: There probably was too great an emphasis on a philosophical-intellectual comprehension of the Trinitarian nature of God and too little on His Law.

We should apply this test to all theological questions: Is this inquiry going to produce Godli- ness? Is it going to help me understand God's Law? Much of the disupation over the Trintity exceeded the plain statements of Scripture on the Diety of the Son or the Spirit. Questions pertaining to the inner workings of the Trinity which are not explicitly answered in Scripture occupied many hours and many pages. If a man denies the plain teachings of Scrip- ture, we have a heretic. If he disobeys the plain commands of the Law, we have an antinomian. Beyond this, we enter a dangerous field. Calvin rightly comments (on I Timothy 1:4-6):

If this test had been applied over several centu- ries, then, although religion might have been corrupt- ed by many errors, at least there would have been less of that devilish art of disputation which goes by the name of scholastic theology. For that theology is nothing but contentions and idle speculations with nothing of value in them. The more learned in them a man is, the more wretched he should be thought to be. I am aware of the plausible arguments with which it is defended, but they will never succeed in proving false what Paul says here by way of condemnation of this sort of thing. Subtleties of this kind build up men in pride and vanity but not in God. So today, when we define true theology, it is quite clear that it is we who desire to restore something which has been wretch- edly mangled and disfigured by those triflers who are puffed up by the empty title of theologian, but offer nothing but emasculated and meaningless trifles.

This is a truly "theonomic" way of looking at theology and apologetics: it gives a proper priority to obedience to God's Law. The post Greco-Roman church has erroneously given "doctrine" or "theology" (so-called) a higher priority than practical obedience to God's Law.

We have often seen ourselves in endless arguments with cults over the doctrine of the Trintity. Nothing upsets us more than to hear the line "The word 'Trint- ity' is not in the Bible." And yet, as with all arguments against the Faith of the Church Invisible, there is always an attack against the visible church with an element of truth in it, for the visible church is always in need of theonomic reformation.

Often, the cultists are reacting to what they perceive are Greek or Pagan constructions of the Bible, and are open to someone who is not trying to get the cultist to accept "the whole Trinitarian package," but merely wants to become more obedient to the plain truths of Scripture.

I know my own tendency is to haggle over terms and philosophical notions that exalt my own knowledge, rather than over the clear texts of Scripture, which exalt the Word.

It may be wondered if Calvin would have argued for hours with a lay cultist over the "Trintity" or wheth- er he would take a step-by-step approach, showing him first the Bible's teaching on the Diety of Christ, adding to that a further understanding of our duties under God's Covenantal Law (John 14:20). On a future visit, he might speak of the Personality of the Holy Spirit, adding more on the requirements of Biblical holiness under the Law of the Spirit (Romans 8:4-5).

Do not misunderstand this line of thought to be a denial of the Trinity. The Bible clearly teaches the Diety of Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. But to construct a standard of church membership on a theory of the interrelationship of the Three within the Godhead, which is not plainly set forth in specif- ic passages of Scripture, is to make the philosophical systems of man the standard, and to diminish the centrality of God's Law. We need not defend wild speculations of philosophical theology in order to defend the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity. Philo- sophical theology dangerously underestimates the clarity and importance of Theonomic service (obedience to God's Law).

What, I ask, do they teach about faith or repentance, or calling on God, or human incapacity, the help of the Holy Spirit or the free remission of sins, or about the work of Christ, that can have any value in building up men solidly in Godliness? (Calvin at I Timothy 6:20)

And we might well remind even Calvin that the Scriptural emphasis on each of these docrines is ethical, not just philosophical. Concerning the contrast between the ethical emphases of the Bible and the philosophic emphases of the Hellenized church fathers, we must agree with Hatch:

The contrast is patent. If any one thinks that it is sufficiently explained by saying that the one is a sermon and the other a creed, it must be pointed out in reply that the question why an ethical sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Chris- tianity of the fourth century, is a problem which claims investigation.

It claims investigation, but it has not yet been investigated. There have been inquiries, which in some cases have arrived at positive results, as to the causes of particular changes or developments in Chris- tianity -- the development, for example, of the doc- trine of the Trinity. . . . But the main question to which I invite your attention is antecedent to all such inquiries. It asks, not how did the Christian societies come to believe one proposition rather than another, but how did they come to the frame of mind which attached importance to either the one or the other, and made the assent to the one rather than the other a condition of membership.

In investigating this problem, the first point that is obvious to an inquirer is, that the change in the centre of gravity from conduct to belief is coin- cident with the transference of Christianity from a Semitic to a Greek soil. The presumption is that is was the result of Greek influence. It will appear from the Lectures that this presumption is true.

All of this emphasizes the ethical, and minimizes the philosophpical. There is a place for "philosophi- cal" theology, but compared to the practical applica- tions of Biblical Law, its place has been greatly exaggerated throughout the history of the Helleniza- tion of the Church.

The Philosophers and "The Sermon"

Not only did the "doctrines" (that is, intellectual or philosophical tenets) of Biblical Christianity become adulterated by Greek philosophy, but the practices of the Christian life and the worship of the Church became paganized. This was not only because, as our language suggests, a dichotomy arose between "doctrine" and "practice," (which under- rated the role of Biblical Law in what the Bible calls "sound doctrine"), but because even "practice" itself became detached from God's Law.

This is most notable in the development of formal "worship" which defines "worship" not as "service" (which would entail full-orbed obedience to God's Law in every area of life, by every believer, seven days a week), but as an infrequent and ritualized program of religious acts centering around a philosophical dis- course called a "sermon." The original act of commem- orating the Lord's Death and Resurrection on the "Lord's Day" (the day of the week on which the Lord rose from the dead) and of multi-lateral exhortation and edification (cf. Hebrews 10:24-25) came to be replaced by unilateral "sermons." These "sermons" were not just a setting forth of Greek-influenced theology. They were in fact external copies of the rhetorical manner of the most popular Greek philoso- phers of the day. It's not just what they said, it's the entire presentation and format that was carried over from paganism. The "sermon" has been one of the practices most destructive of the full functioning of the Priesthood of All Believers, and it would have been so even if the content of the sermons had not been syncretistic.

Bible students know the great conflict between pride and Christian service. The Apostle Paul spoke often of his own resistance against the words and systems of men, which exalt the speaker and not the Word; which purportedly have a form of Godliness, but by relying on the wisdom of men, denies the power of the Holy Spirit's testimony to the Word.

The Bible speaks quite seriously to those academes who are ever learning and yet never coming to a knowl- edge of the Truth. "Education" has meanings quite different for the Christian than for the Humanist. Yet Christians still look up to the University for its standard. We want to know what the Humanists are doing so we can align our activities with theirs. We want to be "respected" by the Univeristy.

Early Church fathers, many of whom were converted from Greek Humanism, found it difficult to shed the "respect" they had gained from fellow Humanists. The Humanists had power. They had influence. They were as gods (Genesis 3:5). And Christians often fell prey to the Tempter's seductive invitations to academic godhead. This is the origin of the "sermon."

Education: Rome and the West

To help us understand the origin of the "sermon," Hatch gives us in some detail the features of the post-apostolic age:

The most general summary of those features is, that the Greek world of the second and third centuries was, in a sense which . . . has tended to prevail since then, an educated world. (p. 25)

But as we demonstrated in our Home School Curricu- lum booklet on Geometry, the Greek notion of education was terribly abstract and irrelevant. The philosophi- cal trends toward intellectualism which had begun five centuries before were quite evident in the post-apos- tolic Greco-Roman world:

It had become no longer enough for men to till the ground, or to pursue their several handicrafts, (etc.). The word 0sodo2.c (as in philo- sophy), which in earlier times had been ap- plied to one who was skilled in any of the arts of life, who could string a bow or tune a lyre or even trim a hedge, had come to be applied, if not exclu- sively, yet at least chiefly, to one who was shrewd . . . or knew the thoughts and sayings of the ancients.

The great volume of the writings of the Greek philosophers of centuries past had combined with the fact that the Greeks were under the political domina- tion of the fourth beast of Daniel, the Roman Empire. Freedom was gone, but the books remained. Abstraction resulted:

She could acquiesce with the greater equanimity in political subjection, because in the domain of letters (i.e., the writings of the philosophers) she was still supreme with an indisputable supremacy. It was natu- ral that she should turn to letters. It was natural also that the study of letters should be reflected upon speech. For the love of speech had become to a large proportion of Greeks a second nature. They were a nation of talkers. They were almost the slaves of cultivated expression. Though the public life out of which orators had grown had passed away with political freedom, it had left behind it a habit which in the second century of our era was blossoming into a new spring. Like children playing at "makebelieve," when real speeches in real assemblies became impossible, the Greeks revived the old practice of public speaking by addressing fictitious assemblies and arguing in fictitious courts. In the absence of the distractions of . . . keen political struggles . . . these tenden- cies had spread themselves over the large surface of general Greek society. The mass of men in the Greek world tended to lay stress on that acquaintance with the literature of bygone generations, and that habit of cultivated speech, which has ever since been com- monly spoken of as education. (pp. 26-27)

"Education." Ha. As we have pointed out in our Home Schooling newsletter, pagan "education" is rooted and grounded in irrelevance and abstraction; it is the antithesis of practical Christian Dominion.

And if you like "cultivated speech" you'll love the sermons of Harry Emerson Fosdick, and the other great liberal preachers who have mastered the liberal arts of the Pagan University. But don't expect to gain from them True Wisdom, that is, knowledge in practical application of Biblical Law in every area of life.

Greek education has some terribly striking paral- lels to modern education.

It was, indeed, not so much analogous to our own as the cause of it. Our own comes by direct tradition from it. It set a fashion which until recently (?) has uniformly prevailed over the whole civilized world. We study literature rather than nature because the Greeks did so, and because when the Romans and the Roman provincials resolved to educate their sons, they employed Greek teachers and followed in Greek paths. (pp. 27-28)

For our purposes, the most notable parallel bet- ween Greek education and modern education is in the Seminary. There we find the study of the theologians (and sometimes the Bible) and the arts of the prepara- tion of "sermons." This parallels the two main ele- ments of Greek education: Grammar and Rhetoric.

"We are given over to Grammar," says Sextus-Empir- icus, "from childhood, and almost from our baby- clothes." (p. 28; compare 2 Timothy 3:15, where the word is best translated "infant.")

The main subject-matter of this literary education was the poets. They were read, not only for their literary, but also for their moral value. They were read as we read the Bible. They were committed to memory. The minds of men were saturated with them. A quotation from Homer or from a tragic poet was ap- posite on all occasions and in every kind of society. (p. 30)

Grammar was succeeded by Rhetoric -- the study of literature by the study of literary expression and quasi-forensic argument. (p. 30)

A student's education in Rhetoric was finished when he had the power to talk off-hand on any subject that might be proposed. But whether he recited a prepared speech or spoke off-hand, he was expected to show the same artificiality of structure and the same pedantry of diction. (p. 32)

As far as Logic was concerned, it was almost natural to a Greek mind: Dialectic was but the con- versation of a sharp-witted people conducted under recognized rules. (p. 33)

Logic, in the form of Dialectic, was common to Philosophy and Rhetoric. Every one learnt to argue: a large number learnt, in addition, the technical terms of Philosophy and the outlines of its history. Lucian tells a tale of a country gentleman of the old school, whose nephew went home from lecture night after night, and regaled his mother and himself with fallacies and dilemmas, talking about "relations" and "comprehen- sions" and "mental presentations," and jargon of that sort. . . .(p. 32)

Can you imagine a more hideous existence than this? Here is a society of slaves, who themselves are fed by slaves, who spend their day pretending to be free and responsible, endlessly babbling in the lan- guage of pagan philosophy! Yuk! Somebody send me to Patmos!

Those who didn't feel competent to engage in it, paid to watch it. Yet the philosophies of the pro's were no better than the hearts of the masses.

It had shared in the common degeneracy. It was not the evolution of a man's own thoughts, but an acquaintance with the recorded thoughts of others. It was divorced from practice. It was degraded to a system of lectures and disputations. (p. 33)

And just as in our day, the Universities, although they really only copy what is done by others, are held forth as the pinnacle of greatness.

It was taught in the same general way as the studies which preceded it. But lectures had a more important place. Sometimes the professor read a passage from a philosopher, and gave his interpreta- tion of it; sometimes he gave a discourse of his own. (p. 33)

It may be inferred from the extant evidence that there were grammar-schools in almost every town. At these all youths received the first part of their education. But it became common practice for youths to supplement this by attending the lectures of an eminent professor elsewhere. They went, as we might say, from school to a University. (p. 35)

Then, as now, some students went, not for the sake of learning, but in order to be able to show off. Epictetus draws a picture of one who looked forward to airing his logic at a city dinner, astonishing the "aldermen" who sat next to him with the puzzles of hypothetical syllogisms. (p. 37)

The State University was a concept not unknown to the Greco-Roman world:

(T)eaching had come to be a recognized and lucra- tive profession. This is shown not so much by the instances of individual teachers, who might be regard- ed as exceptional, as by the fact of the recognition of teachers by the State and by municipalities. (p. 37-38)

A "sermonette" from one of these professional philosophers after dinner was . . . much in fashion. . . . They were petted by great ladies. They became "domestic chaplains." (p. 40; cf. 2 Ti- mothy 3:5-7)

Reformed "preachers" will obviously take exception to being compared to these philosophers or to their twentieth-century Fosdickian counterparts. To be sure, Reformed preachers who emphasize Biblical doc- trines are less involved with the Rhetoric than with the truth. But if Greek forms tend to vanish with a resurgence of Biblical truths, we may be sure that with a radical application of Biblical Law the "ser- mon" would vanish altogether. The defenses of the kind of Berean Bible study (Acts 17:11) which pur- veyors of Reformed monologues would call "group grope" are plentiful, but because the authors of these works are not part of "our camp" we tend to overlook them. But they are there, and the Biblical case for the involvement of all the Priests in the study of the Word is irrefutable. Some of the relevant Bible passages are found in "the Elder's Checklist."

Sermons and Sophists

As the church was institutionalized and "Constan- tinized" under Roman Emperors following Constantine and the syncretistic church fathers who preceeded him, such practices as household communion and household churches vanished. They were replaced by the dispens- ing of Christian truth and graces by the real priests. These same Greek-influenced officials re- placed Berean Bible Study by lectures, known as ser- mons. They copied the sermonic style of the Greek philosopher-lecturers.

Literary education was not an end in itself, but a means. The end was moral training. It was imagined that virtue, no less than literature, could be taught, and Homer was the basis of the one kind of education no less than of the other. All imaginative literature is plastic when it is used to enforce a moral; and the sophists could easily preach sermons of their own upon Homeric texts. It was from Homer that moralists drew their ideal: it was his verses that were quoted, like verses of the Bible with us, to enforce moral truths. (pp. 53-54)

Hatch gives several examples of Christian writers who followed "not a Hebrew but a Greek method," (p. 69) and the parallels in Van Til's A Christian Theory of Knowledge (chap. 4) are striking:

The earliest methods of Christian exegesis were continuations of the methods which were common at the time to both Greek and Graeco-Judean writers. They were employed on the same subject matter. Just as the Greek philosophers had found their philosophy in Homer, so Christian writers found in him Christian philosophy. (Id.)

The rubber exegesis the Greek sophists used on Homer was likewise used by syncretistic Christians on the Bible. "Philo virtually makes the Old Testament teach that which Greek philosophy, based on autonomous human experience, had taught" (Van Til, CTK p. 73).

But of special note to us is the manner in which these sermons were delivered. The modern sermon surely has its origin in the Greek lecturers.

Of the manner of the ordinary discourse there are many indications. It was given sometimes in a private house, sometimes in a theatre, sometimes in a regular lecture-room. The professor sometimes entered already robed in his "pulpit-gown," and sometimes put it on in the presence of his audience. He mounted the steps to his professorial chair, and took his seat upon its ample cushion. He sometimes began with a preface, sometimes he proceeded at once to his discourse. (p. 94)

It was a disappointment if he was not interrupted by applause. . . . These were the common cries; others were not infrequent -- "Divine!" "Inspired!" "Unapproachable!" They were accompanied by clapping of the hands and stamping of the feet and waving of the arms. (p. 96)

They made both money and reputation. The more eminent of them were among the most distinguished men of the time. They were the pets of society, and sometimes its masters. They were employed on affairs of state at home and on embassies abroad. There were sometimes placed on the free list of the city, and lived at the public expense. (p. 97-98)