Preaching and Preachers

Preaching and Preachersthem that the Bible only deals with matters of salvation and religiousexperience and living. Ifwe fail to show that the Bible and Nature (asexpounded by scientists) are complementary and equally authoritativeforms of revelation we shall offend this modern intellectualist and hewill not even listen to the Gospel. So we must stop talking, as we havedone in the past, about the origin of the world and of man, about theFall, and about miracles and supernatural interventions in history,and we must concentrate only on this religious message. Of coursethere is nothing new about this; Ritschl said it all a hundred years ago.But it has now returned in a new form.Another point which is being increasingly stressed is thatwehave torealise that the modern man, this intellectual type, is sophisticated,that he thinks in terms of modern literature and modern art' andmodern dress, novels and so on, and that unless we can address' himin this idiom, with which he is so familiar, we are not likely to makeany impact at all on him. We must understand that this is what controlshis thinking, We had an extraordinary illustration of this attitudenot many months ago in a review of a book in a religious periodical in 'Britain. The writer ended his review by saying that he believed thatif all preachers were to read this book there would be a new hope forpreaching, because this book would induce preachers to realise thattheir Saturday nights would be most profitably spent in watching whatis called 'Saturday Night Theatre' on the television. By watching'Saturday Night Theatre' they would come to know and understandthe mentality and the outlook and the jargon of the modern man; andtherefore they would be more qualified to preach to him on the Sunday!So this is the way in which the preacher is to prepare himself forSunday-no longer prayer and meditation, but 'Saturday NightTheatre' and understanding 'the modern mentality'.Another form which this thinking takes is to emphasise thatmodern sophisticated man has a particular dislike of dogmatic assertions,and that he will not tolerate the old dogmatic pulpit pronouncements.He is a learned man and is not to be 'talked down to' ; he is theequal of the man in the pulpit, possibly his superior. He believes in124