Listening to God in the world?

There is a renewed desire in evangelicalism to engage with contemporary culture. That is surely a good thing - we are called to proclaim the Gospel in a way which can be understood, and to love in a manner which is genuine. Mission and obedience to Christ do demand engagement with culture.

However - that does not mean that all theological programmes for such engagement are equally valid and Biblical.  One approach, to which I take exception, is the idea that the Church is called to engage with culture, by seeking to discern the voice of God in the world. Scholars such as Rowan Williams have called for this for some time - Christians are urged to listen to God's voice in the world - he may be saying surprising things.

The appeal of such an approach is obvious; it creates the excitement of possible change; overthrow of previous norms; building of new inclusive relationships.

Ben Myers takes the theme of listening to God in the world, in his recent paper about the nature of Christian scholarship:

"Scholars have no privileged access to Christ’s voice, but their job is to help the church to discern this voice so that the whole church can respond in obedient faith. The church will at times discover ‘its own nature and mission’ only as it listens carefully to the voice of Christ in contemporary thought or in wider social discourses and practices."
Ben Myers 'A theology of scholarship' 

I have not learned many truly new things in my doctoral study, but I have become more deeply convinced about a few foundational theological convictions. One of them is that the only place where the Church hears the voice of God today is the scriptures. I appreciate that there are diverse ways and settings for hearing that voice, and not all Christians will agree that God is saying the same thing to them on every matter. Nevertheless, I am of the view that encouraging people to seek to hear the voice of God in the world's culture is misguided.

If the intent is simply to encourage engagement, mission, love, sensitivity or what Stott called 'double listening' - then there are better ways to phrase it, which do not appear to undermine the clarion call of scripture itself, which places the emphasis upon proclamation to a lost world.

Proclamation to the world is where Karl Barth placed the weight of scripture's message:

The world, then, cannot evolve into agreement with God’s Word on its own initiative nor can the Church achieve this by its work in and on the world. The Church is the Church as it believes and proclaims that prior to all secular developments and prior to all its own work the decisive word has in fact been spoken already regarding both itself and also the world. The world no longer exists in isolation or neutrality vis-à-vis revelation, the Bible, and proclamation. Whether it believes or not, whether it develops in this way or that, whether the Church exerts greater influence or less, whether it consists of millions of confessors and proclaimers or whether only two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name—whatever becomes of the Church and the world the only thing that can matter is the event that follows the decisive word already spoken.

Sermo enim Dei venit mutaturus orbem, quoties venit ('For the word of God comes, insofar as it comes, to change the world.' Luther, De servo arb., 1525, W.A., 18, p. 626, l. 26).

Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume I The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1. 2d, S. 155.

Sadly, if Myer's intention is to encourage evangelicals to engage with contemporary culture (and that is a good intention) - the method of encouraging a listening for the surprising voice of God in that culture, will turn many away from that cultural engagement.

Augustine & Architecture of Preaching

People often ask me about the physical setting of Augustine's preaching. What would it actually have looked like to hear him preach?

Well, in all likelihood the preacher would be wearing the long robes of a monk. Beside his fellow ministers, he would have looked undistinctive as he would not have worn symbols of high ecclesiastical office. Shaved head, simple robes, dark African skin.

Before the service he would pray with his fellow ministers, while
the congregation stood around gossiping. Once he entered the church building, a certain anticipation would occur, though by all accounts that did not mean the people would be silent! They could be shouting out demands for their favourite readings, requests that the sermon deal with an issue they were concerned about, expressing frustrations about a legal ruling Augustine may have given against them.

After the readings and sung Psalm, Augustine would preach. The most striking thing, to my mind, about the visual experience would be his posture. Modern preachers stand to speak, while listeners sit. Jewish rabbis (such as Jesus) sat to teach, with listeners crowded round.

The model Augustine adopted was taken from his secular environment of the Roman empire. In Augustine's church, the listeners (about 300 of them) stood, packed into the small church building. Others milled around outside. While the crowd listened, and the stenographers scribbled down every word, Augustine sat to preach on his cathedra.

The cathedra was a large, imposing seat. It was made of either polished stone or possibly marble. Sitting on a raised platform, it may have been draped with a colourful cloth. The cathedra would have been an incredibly emotive and symbolic position from which to proclaim the Gospel. For from a similar cathedra, Pilate had sat to pass judgment on Jesus Christ (Matthew 27:19). The example I have pictured above is a marbel cathedra, used for the coronation of Roman Emperors from about 930 to 1530.

Thus Augustine's preaching, visually, represented the stunning advance the Gospel made in only a few generations since Jesus. Before Constantine, preaching could not be practiced in N Africa - at least not has it came to be done by Augustine. For prior to Constantine, persecution forced Christians to meet secretly in small groups. The church leaders wrote treatises and scholarly works, but they could not offer preached sermons as public discourse.

Augustine's cathedra represented the subversive victory of Christ over the Empire that executed him, and was emblematic of Augustine's remarkable ability to make use of secular tools in service of Christian preaching.

It can be interesting to analyse the visual setting of the place we hear sermons preached from...