Preaching as the Word of God

Last year Sam Chan came to Canberra for a couple of events that I helped put on. While he was there this book had just come out and I was able to buy it directly from him at a cheaper rate than other retailers. Since I am a sucker for free or cheap stuff I couldn't pass on this. I wasn't even that interested in knowing the theory behind preaching (I already did a homiletic subject in my degree) I just thought that I liked Sam Chan and would be willing to hear what he says.

This book felt like a PhD dissertation. It was heavily footnoted, had loads of quotes from primary sources and used big technical words. I wasn't expecting that as Chan is a funny guy who is easy to listen to. I don't think he had a general audience for this book, I think it was primarily for his PhD markers.

The issue this book tries to solve is when you listen to a sermon can you say that you have heard from God? How can we say we hear from God when the preacher is a fallen sinful person - how can their words be deemed as God's words?

Chan gives a historical overview of Luther and Calvin's position on preaching and how it is a mark of the Church, and then there is a Biblical overview of the word of God. This is quite a slippy term as it is used in many different ways in the Bible. When God speaks, like in creation or from a burning bush, obviously those are God's word. Then there are prophets who speak on behalf of God to the people, they say what God had told them to say. Then we meet Jesus who is the Logos, or the Word who is God, the Apostles are witnesses to this Word event and tell people what happened and the Church is told to continue to teach what Jesus taught, proclaiming what He has done for them. This final nuance of God's word being the Gospel, ie the good news about salvation for all people, is the narrow focus Chan has when talking about the word of God (until the end of the book, but more on that later). When a preacher proclaims the Gospel he is speaking the Word of God.

Chan then turns to a modern linguistic theory call Speech Act. In this, the act of speaking is broken up into three actions, of which we learn about locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. These have to do with saying the actual words (locution), the intention or force of the words (illocution) and the effect it has on the listener (perlocution). Are you still with me? (At this point I should confess that I did dumb English at my public high school - you probably can tell already from my blog). Then leaning a bit on Kevin Vanhoozer, Chan applies this Speech Act Theory on the Bible and preaching.

In the end, Chan's conclusion is:

to preach the gospel as the word of God is to re-locute and re-illocute the divine speech act, the gospel, which itself was once locuted and llocuted by the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, and which now continues to be locuted and illocuted in the canonical Scriptures.

His logic is as follows:

1. God is a divine speech agent (locuter, illocuter, and perlocuter).
2. The human proclaimer performs God’s speech act on God’s behalf:
   a. this is an example of double agency discourse
   b. the proclaimer is authorized and deputized by God
   c. in God’s covenant with his creation, the conventional rules are such that God’s commissioned speech agent is ascribed the normative status of someone who speaks on behalf of God.
3. The word of God is a divine speech act:
   a. in the preached gospel, the locution is the gospel message
   b. there is a variety of illocutionary forces
   c. the desired perlocutionary effect is belief and obedience.
4. The proclaimer has access to the locution and illocution of the word of God from Scripture.
5. The proclaimer re-locutes and re-illocutes the gospel message on behalf of God.
6. The proclamation sits under the authority of the locution and illocution of Scripture.
7. The proclaimer is not responsible for the perlocutionary effects. However, the Holy Spirit is active in achieving the perlocutionary effects.

The criteria (not the necessary criteria, but the sufficient criteria) to work out if a proclamation is the word of God is:

1. There exists a divinely ordained convention: if a proclaimer has been commissioned by God, then this proclaimer has been ascribed the normative status of a speech agent who performs God’s speech acts on God’s behalf.
2. There exists a divinely ordained procedure: the proclaimer must receive his or her speech act from God and must re-proclaim this same speech act. Today, the proclaimer has access to God’s speech act from Scripture, which is the inscripturated speech act of God.
3. There exists a divinely revealed propositional content: in the case of the preached gospel, the propositional content of proclamation is the gospel.

Are you still with me now? Nevermind, I'll try and tie this all together now.

I have heard people refer to sermons as "talks" or "lectures". I think Chan and the reformers had a higher view of the act of speaking from the Bible. The Bible contains God's Word, and so anyone who is speaking from it, are acting like a diplomate for a head of state. They are saying words that have been entrusted to them, all the while saying it in their own voice. When we hear a sermon that is faithful to scripture we have heard from God.

While Chan was focusing on telling the Gospel for most of the book, I found it surprising that at the end he tentatively put forward another idea that preaching any part of scripture (in context and appropriately) is also saying the word of God. While I don't think it is a reach, I don't really understand why he set so narrow parameters at the beginning.

The book is thoroughly reformed and perhaps spent too long on the original reformers in the first third of the book. It is scripture that gives a preacher their authorization, not the Church or a committee or some other human institution. We should be in submission to the text and preachers should preach the text, for the text is the word of God.

I did appreciate the appendix at the back of this book where Chan deals with the relationships between prophecy and preaching. He disagreed with J. I. Packer who said that prophecy and preaching are the same and he spent a lot of time disagreeing with Wayne Grudem who says prophecy is different to preaching. Instead, Chan's position was that preaching is a subset of prophecy. What I found a little wanting was Chan skipping over the whole gender issue and the application of his position, of which I think Grudem had that exact issue in mind with his theory (he was a founder of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood). I would have liked to have seen how Chan deals with 1 Tim 2:12, 1 Cor 14:35 alongside verses like 1 Cor 11:5, Acts 2:17 (Joel 2:28) and Luke 2:36.

This was a technical book, and sometimes it was a hard slug, other times I thought we moved a little too slowly in the argument. This may not be for everyone, but for those who do preach it places the office very high and something that should be done seriously and humbly as when you preach and you are faithful to the Bible, you are speaking the Word of God. This should also help change our attitudes when we go to listen to a sermon on the Bible, we are not just hearing a talk, a lecture or some nice ideas on how to live, we are hearing from God, which should evoke a response.