witness. It is focused on those who identify themselves as part of the covenant people of God as he is known in Jesus Christ.
The distinguishing mark of this setting for preaching, which I argue gives it unity despite the diversity of its representatives, is this essential focus on a gathered community of believers. The early examples are the preaching which took place within the worship of the pre-Constantinian Church, when the distinction between ‘Church’ and ‘State’ remained sharp. Congregations might have been small or large, but they were recognizably set apart from the population as a whole. Their need was for teaching which strengthened this sense of a shared story and a distinct calling. Surviving homilies from this period include the striking Passover sermon of Melito of Sardis, underlining (to the extent of some unfortunate anti-Judaism) the separation of Christian identity from Jewish,[2] and the learned exegeses of Origen.[3]
The dawn of ‘Christendom’ with Constantine’s establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire produced an inevitable change in the focus of preaching. The words spoken in the Christian gathering were immediately more ‘public’ in the sense that their challenge and implications applied not only to a gathered community, but also to the wider polity now being oriented (in theory at least) on Christian lines. Not everyone might in fact be gathered in the basilicas to hear them, but everyone lived under a regime in which these words now represented reigning orthodoxy rather than minority testimony. We will consider the dynamics of such preaching in the next section. I mention the shift here because it explains the interesting differences in time, place and style among the other examples of the ‘community interpretation’ model which I will mention.
First we might cite preaching in a monastic community, such as that which has survived from Bede.[4] Speaking broadly, one might say that as the Church in ‘Christendom’ became more ‘public’, and as its borders became more fuzzy, the option of a monastic life in which one could, while remaining part of this Church, lead a life of serious holy separation to God became more attractive for the committed believer. This was not self-indulgent reclusiveness, but a genuine quest for God. That quest is reflected in the devotional emphasis of medieval monastic sermons such as those of Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs.[5] In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there is a parallel to monastic preaching in Pietist preaching, especially in that, like the monks, Pietists ‘often functioned as an order within the church’.[6]
A more radical manifestation of a strong community orientation to preaching is found in the groups of the radical reformation such as the Anabaptists. Here again is the key mark of a desire for separation and holiness, not for its own sake but as an authentic expression of the way of Christ in the world. If monastic preaching could be seen as an expression of the desire to gather a community for serious teaching out of the widening number of the baptized, some of the radical reformers seem to have practised a ‘congregational hermeneutic’ in which the role of the appointed leader or preacher was itself considerably diminished in favour of discussion, discernment and mutual correction by the congregation.[7] This may be seen as a rejection of the autonomous individualism of the so-called ‘Spiritualist’ groups, of submission to ecclesiastical tradition in Catholicism, and also of the mainstream Reformers’ continued dependence on doctrinal formulae and theological scholarship.[8] Stuart Murray comments interestingly on the absence of pulpits in places of Anabaptist worship:
Church architecture plays a large role in how congregations operate. Typical state churches were designed to allow the speaker to be seen and heard clearly. Anabaptist meetings, in woods, caves, boats, homes, and open fields, lacked such influential symbolic restrictions. Multiple participation is much more likely in such settings, especially when ecclesiological perspectives support it. Indeed, these widely held convictions make it hard to imagine communal hermeneutics being marginal.[9]
Heirs to this tradition of ‘preaching’ (better, perhaps, ‘non-preaching’) remain to this day and have an important testimony in an age suspicious of authority.[10]
This ‘community interpretation’ approach of the early Christians, monks, Pietists and radical reformers also joins hands with some more familiar and ‘mainstream’ settings of preaching today. While monasticism, notwithstanding its ‘separated’ character, had often been a pillar of Christendom, more contemporary ‘community interpretation’ approaches are marked by a sense that to some degree Christendom is to be resisted.[11] Thus the preaching of many Free Churches is clearly focused on the needs of that particular gathered community. It may take a range of forms – from detailed exegesis of Scripture, to inspiring exhortation and encouragement, to the exercise of strategic pastoral leadership – but it has this in common, that it is addressed to the needs and calling of the Church as a specific called-out group of God’s people in the world.[12] Strikingly, however, the Roman Catholic Church in Britain (as well as the smaller Orthodox Churches) can also be included under this model, as groups seeking to maintain their identity over against the reigning establishment. An important historical antecedent here is the loss of temporal power by the Roman Catholic Church in the nineteenth century, leading to the centralization of authority in the Papacy and the conception of the Church as an alternative society.[13] No less than in Baptist churches or Brethren assemblies, Roman Catholic preaching seeks to nurture the faithful in their particular calling as members of the Church, whether through liturgical preaching linked to the regular celebration of the sacrament, or the catechetical preaching which prepares and instructs new communicants or converts.[14]
Speaking to the nations
The dawn, dominance and decline of ‘Christendom’ remain controversial subjects, and analysis of this phenomenon remains (fortunately!) outside the scope of this book. It is vital, however, to underline its crucial importance for understanding the function and setting of preaching through many of the centuries and locations of Christian history. For the central impulse of Christian preaching has always been to communicate the faith now, in the social contexts of the particular time and place, for the people who participate in them. Thus whatever we think of Christendom, this has been the social setting in which many Christian preachers have been called to work.
When Christianity is seen as a publicly acceptable faith, those who preach it have both wider scope and a more delicate and dangerous responsibility than those who operate within the walls of a settled, gathered community. On the one hand, there is the opportunity to address not only individuals and Christian communities, but also the societies of which they are a part and whose structures deeply shape those individuals’ and communities’ lives. There is the opportunity to work towards the transformation of those societies.[15] There is the opportunity to speak to rulers as well as the ruled, indeed to call those rulers to account. Testimony to all this is borne by the sheer size of the basilicas built to accommodate the newly enlarged congregations. Even those who were not present would have felt the influence of what was taught there as it shaped, in various ways, the ideology and practice of the empire. The preaching giants of the early Christendom era, Chrysostom and Augustine, exemplify the enormous influence such preaching may exercise.[16]
Edwards
