Beeson podcast, Episode 386
Dr. Michael Pasquarello
April 3, 2018
 

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, your host, Timothy George.

Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. I have the privilege today of speaking with Dr. Michael Pasquarello, who is a professor of preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary, the Lloyd John Ogilvie Professor of Preaching. We knew Dr. Ogilvie. He visited Beeson Divinity School. You hold that chair there. A distinguished scholar, degrees from Duke Divinity School, Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, former professor at one of our sister institutions, Asbury Theological Seminary. It's a great privilege to welcome you to Beeson and to this podcast.

M. Pasquarello:	Well, thank you, Dr. George. I'm just delighted to be here.

Timothy George:	Let's just begin by saying a little bit about how you got into this work and your background, then we want to move directly into the work of your academic theological trajectory.

M. Pasquarello:	Sure. I was raised in the church and the congregation in which I was raised had a very high view of Scripture and preaching was very important. The pastor of that church, I have a mental image of him holding his Bible when he preached and how seriously he took Scripture and how formative the proclaimed Word was for us. 
	We were a small congregation, but it was just extremely significant. I heard sermons on Sunday morning and Sunday evening, on Wednesday evening. And so when I sensed God was calling me into pastoral ministry and I left the career as an officer in the United States Marine Corps to go back to school and attend seminary, to be pastor, for me, meant to be preacher.
	I'm a Wesleyan and as you know, John Wesley referred to his ministers as preachers. And so to be a pastor and to be a preacher go together, you need to be, as you say here at Beeson Divinity School, a pastor who can preach. And so preaching was very, very important for me as a student and then in the 18 years that I was a pastor and now, of course, I work as a professor of preaching.

Timothy George:	Yes, and a lot of your scholarship has focused on the intersection of theology and preaching. That's not just always the case. I think some preaching is not very theologically informed and you can do theology without ever thinking about how it is proclaimed. You've seen the important connection there. Talk about that.

M. Pasquarello:	Yes. That's really been the heart of my work, is to reunite what was once joined in the Christian tradition. For the majority of Christian tradition, if we think about some of the great preachers--you have them in your chapel--these are people who were known as leading theological voices as well as significant preachers. And it seems that in the modern time, we've divided theology and preaching. And so a person can excel in preaching and doesn't have to pay a whole lot of attention to theology. 
	Now, that's not an academic thing. For me, it goes much deeper than that and the reason I pursued this way of working as a teacher and a scholar is that because preaching is of God. It's not just communication or skill or technique or personality. But it is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the church and the primary actor in preaching is God. That's a theological matter, and that's really what my work has been about.

Timothy George:	One more question before I want to jump into your most recent book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm fascinated by your interest in Bonhoeffer. He's one of our great heroes here at Beeson, as you know. 
Media. Talk about media. Because it seems one of the things that's changed from the great tradition you've just described is the fact that we now have new and different and sometimes challenging forms of media. How does that relate to preaching? Drama is one, but also all the social media that we live with.

M. Pasquarello:	Yes. I think this is why understanding preaching theologically is so important. The use of media in ministry is often assessed pragmatically. The question that's asked is, "Does it work and do people like it?" Of course, media is always intrinsic to preaching, even if the only media that's used is the person and the voice of the preacher. So the question needs to be one that's much more theological and aligned with the Gospel. Is it faithful and does it communicate faithfully and well the message of Jesus Christ?
	Often, those who are strong and enthusiastic advocates for media in ministry tend to not ask those kinds of questions. And so I'm not against the use of media. Here we are on a podcast. 

Timothy George:	Yeah, right.

M. Pasquarello:	We're utilizing media. But the question is, to what end is it being used? And is the manner in which it's used congruent with what's being said?

Timothy George:	Now last year you published a book from Baylor University Press titled "Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Theology of a Preaching Life." How did you get interested in Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

M. Pasquarello:	Well, I was required to read "The Cost of Discipleship" as an undergraduate. To that point, I knew nothing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But in that course, we read C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity" and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Cost of Discipleship." I really wasn't mature enough to grasp the depth of what Bonhoeffer was saying but I had a sense it was very important. I continued to read him over the years. My love for him just grew more and more. I read him often when I was a pastor and then in my work now.  In academic life, I've seen how significant Bonhoeffer was for 20th-century theology.
	But it's been in recent years with the publication of “Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works” in English that we have over 100 sermons that have survived and that are available. And I just found those to be so inspiring and encouraging to me as a preacher and a teacher of preaching. And so that’s what led me to want to write the book and to write in the way that I did.

Timothy George:	You know, we think of Bonhoeffer as a theologian, as you say, as an activist. We all remember the drama of his life in the time of the Nazi period of history, his courage, his camaraderie with so many of the fellow people who were being suffered, including Jewish people. He was actually in prison not for trying to assassinate Hitler, but for helping Jews escape from Germany. Later on, his role in the conspiracy came to light. But you focused on Bonhoeffer as a preacher and as a teacher of preachers. Say a little bit about that focus for you.

M. Pasquarello:	Well, I found in reading a large amount of work on Bonhoeffer that Bonhoeffer scholars who provide us with a wealth of knowledge and understanding tend to simply overlook his work as a preacher and a teacher of preaching. And when they talk about his theology and how his theology was lived in his context in Germany, they tend to not say much about how that was embodied and given voice in his preaching, and then how he intentionally taught preachers and tried to shape them in that manner, especially at Finkenwalde and the underground seminary of the Confessing Church. 
	There seemed to be a void in Bonhoeffer scholarship. There seemed to be something missing in the story. My goal was to try to offer something that might help fill that. 

Timothy George:	He was a pastor, wasn't he?

M. Pasquarello:	He was a pastor.  And in Germany, of course, the title "pastor" in the Lutheran church carries with it great honor and authority. He was just referred to by many, many people as "Pastor Bonhoeffer." He had a doctorate in systematic theology from the University of Berlin. But they didn't refer to him as Dr. Bonhoeffer. They referred to him as Pastor Bonhoeffer. Of course, Pastor Bonhoeffer meant Bonhoeffer the preacher.

Timothy George: 	Some of his students wanted even to call him "Bruder," Brother Bonhoeffer, which shows, I think, a sense of fellowship that they shared, a koinonia, in that community at Finkenwalde.

Timothy George:	You know, we have a Finkenwalde Day here at Beeson. Every fall, we take a day off, no classes, offices are closed, and we come together as a community to live through the experience of Finkenwalde, understanding we're in a very different context. We're not trying to imitate in some artificial way, but we have a time of silence. We have a time of Scripture reading. We have a time of corporate worship and singing. We share the Lord's Supper together, Communion. We play together because they did that, too, in Finkenwalde. That, I think, had a formative influence on Beeson Divinity School in recent years.

M. Pasquarello:	I think that's wonderful. My own hope is that theological education in North America, as we move forward in the 21st century, will recover that kind of community discipline that will not only educate us well, but will shape and form us accordingly. There, Bonhoeffer, drawing from a number of sources, the Monastic tradition and others in the Pietist tradition, recognized that what we do in ministry is not something we can do alone. But it is a communion, and one in which the Holy Spirit forms us and encourages us and prepares us for what we do. I will talk about this in my lecture on Thursday, on Finkenwalde.

Timothy George:	Wonderful.

M. Pasquarello:	And some of their habits of their life together that was intended to form them in a way that they could remain faithful to the Gospel in a time where that kind of faithfulness was just a formidable challenge.

Timothy George:	You use that word "form." And I think "formation" is what theological education ought to be about. We sometimes get away from that into techniques and all other kinds of things. And we lose the fact that we are really trying under God's leadership to form men and women for the service of the church of Jesus Christ. That's exactly what Bonhoeffer was about at Finkenwalde. Maybe you can give us a little preview of that lecture. Not everybody listening to the podcast will have heard it in person. What are you going say to us?

M. Pasquarello:	Well, some of the things I'm going to talk about is what he had in mind, the vision that he had, when he established the seminary. One of the things he said that caught my eye when I read his letters, he wrote a letter to Karl Barth and he was deeply concerned that young people who were being called into ministry were not being heard. The German church seemed to be very much out of touch with people. He had written about that as a graduate student. He wrote about it in his dissertation. Yet he was very concerned that they were not provided an opportunity to voice their concerns and their questions about the faith, about ministry, about theology, in a deeply, deeply conflicted, troubled time.
	Finkenwalde provided that kind of setting where students not only were taught and listened, but they had opportunity to speak and to share, and Bonhoeffer was always at the center of those conversations. Often they were informal over dinner, after meals, where they would just sit together and talk for long, long periods of time about matters of faith and matters of living the Christian life and the kinds of things that students had on their mind. I thought that was extremely important.
	The other was that he participated with them in what he asked them to do. They had to do exegetical work to prepare sermons, and then they had to do sermon outlines, and then they would preach for each other. Then they would respond to each other with great respect because it was the ministry of the Word. Then Bonhoeffer would offer his exegesis and his sermon outline, and sometimes he would preach for them, as well. There wasn't anything that he asked them to do that he did not do himself.

Timothy George:	You mentioned the Bible. What role does the Bible have in preaching? What role did it have for Bonhoeffer and those students?

M. Pasquarello:	Oh, my. Well, it was the heart of the matter. In fact, he said when he planned the shape of the seminary that the aim of what they were about would be that- He put it this way, that the aim of a Protestant pastor is to come of age in the handling of Holy Scripture. Now, that's a tall order. That's a high standard. With it comes a high view of the word and preaching, and that the role of the church in the world is to be a living witness to Jesus Christ.

Timothy George:	You know, you mentioned the name Karl Barth a few minutes ago. Barth, of course, was a friend Bonhoeffer, a mentor, in some ways, of Bonhoeffer. I remember a book on homiletic that Barth himself wrote in which he makes this statement. It always grabbed me when I read it. He said that, "Preachers are not simply to preach about the Bible but from the Bible," indicating that the Bible is not just a fetish that we hold up and somehow idolize in an inappropriate way, but it is the source, the life, of preaching itself. It's from the Bible that we preach. That was Bonhoeffer, too, wasn't it?

M. Pasquarello:	It was. It's so true. In my preaching classes, I have students read Bonhoeffer's sermons. One of the things that they consistently comment on is that he doesn't talk about the text, he talks out of it. He talks from it. He does it in a way that invites us into it. That he shared with Barth, there's no doubt about it. The Bible is not just a resource we go to to find things to talk about, but it is the source of preaching itself. 

Timothy George:	Now, in your book you have a chapter titled "Discovery of a Black Jesus." You know, Bonhoeffer came to America twice and in that first time, when he was a student at Union Theological Seminary, took a long road trip which brought him way down into Texas. He went to Mexico. Coming back, he actually drove right through Birmingham, Alabama, where one of his close friends, an African-American's father was the pastor of 16th Street Baptist Church, the church that would later be known because of the horrible bombing that took place there in 1963. Say a little bit about this Black Jesus that Bonhoeffer discovered when he was in America in Harlem and experiencing the whole issue of race in our culture.

M. Pasquarello:	I think it would be fair to say that Bonhoeffer's encounter with the racial situation in America was simply shocking to him and eye-opening. He referred to African-Americans as the outcasts of America. Yet, his friend, Frank Fisher, who was from Birmingham, invited him to Abyssinian Baptist Church in East Harlem where Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., was the pastor. It was a strong, strong congregation in that part of the city. Bonhoeffer writes to friends home in Germany and he says that he was there every Sunday. They invited him to teach a Sunday School class. There he was introduced to what was then called the Black Renaissance, Harlem Renaissance, where many black folks gravitated to New York and Christianity in the black church.
	He writes that it's where he saw the Gospel most powerfully proclaimed and lived in America. He was deeply disappointed with what he saw in white churches, particularly some of the most prominent white churches in New York, because they accommodated what they did to what people wanted and expected. But the Black Jesus, which comes from a poem written by a black poet, it tells the story of a black man who was brutally beaten and then hung. He serves as an image of Jesus hanging on the cross who enters fully into the suffering of all humanity. 
	What Bonhoeffer was exposed to and that opened his eyes at Abyssinian Baptist Church is how black folk drew such deep hope in Christ as the Savior and Lord who is with them, those who had been oppressed and rejected and just pushed aside and outcast. That was very, very influential for Bonhoeffer and, I believe, shaped much of how he thought when he returned to Germany, and especially what he encountered with the way that Jews and others were treated in Germany.

Timothy George:	One of the things he took back with him from that experience were the spirituals. They had these long-playing albums, records he would play to his students in Finkenwalde, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and all those wonderful spirituals that come out of the African-American tradition. Say a little bit about the theology of those spirituals and how that related to Bonhoeffer and, as you were saying, what he saw happening in America with race, but also back in Germany with the horrible campaign of anti-Semitism leading finally to the Holocaust.

M. Pasquarello:	Yeah, it's so interesting. He loved Bach and yet he loved spirituals. Both of them were a source of hope. Both of them focus on a God who comes and gives Himself for us, a God who is with us. Of course, that was very, very congruent with Bonhoeffer's Lutheran theology and a theology of the cross. Weak, suffering, crucified Lord who comes near to us to be with us and embrace us to Himself. I think that playing the spirituals and also singing Bach at Finkenwalde, which they did, was to inspire hope in God at an incredibly hopeless time.

Timothy George:	Yeah. Well, if you were to encourage some of our listeners who may not know Bonhoeffer so well, I know a lot of our listeners will have read Bonhoeffer, but maybe some not, where should they begin? What books of Bonhoeffer himself would you recommend that they dive into?

M. Pasquarello:	To get an overall view of his life and his ministry, the classic biography is Eberhard Bethge, who was a close friend, very, very close friend. I think that he provides firsthand perspective on much of Bonhoeffer's life and all that they experienced together. It's still the standard biography in the field. My introduction was "Cost of Discipleship." I think it's a good place to begin.

Timothy George:	It's also the first Bonhoeffer book I read.

M. Pasquarello:	I think "Life Together" is very, very helpful because it provides a related look on the Christian life that is more communal in nature and it helps understand the ways that the Holy Spirit works in our life and draws us together and the kind of disciplines that Christians practice in order to be faithful and to grow and to become, well, Bonhoeffer was not ashamed at all to talk about being sanctified and being made holy. It was very important to him. I think those are the two places that I would recommend to begin along with the Bethge biography. 
	There are books that Bonhoeffer wrote that are more technical in theology. If someone would be interested in that, he wrote two dissertations, "Communio Sanctorum," the "Communion of Saints," which is his first dissertation. The second dissertation is "Act and Being," which is more philosophically oriented. They're both significant works. They provide good insight into how he thought theologically. 
	Another work that's been very influential and continues to be today is his book "Ethics," which provides a wide range of perspectives on a whole matter of issues related to the church, its life in the world, and the Christian life, and the particular kind of challenges that we face. I found "Ethics" to be very, very helpful in my own reading and my own understanding.

Timothy George:	Yeah. Then his letters and papers from prison, which were extracted from some of his papers as he was facing death and not finished, as "Ethics" was not finished either as a complete work, is still very important for understanding how he was facing that crisis moment in his life. You know, this semester at Beeson we're doing the Psalms in chapel. It's our theme. He has a wonderful little commentary on the Psalms, "The Prayer Book of the Bible." Those are wonderful places to dive into the richness of Bonhoeffer. I'm so glad you mentioned the Dietrich Bonhoeffer works in English. This is the English translation of the critical edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's works, which of course are in German. It gives us an enormous resource, doesn't it, for delving into this great figure in our life?

M. Pasquarello:	It does. It's 16 volumes. I spent much time with it as I worked on the book. Critical edition, wonderful introductions, afterwords, extensive footnotes, cross-references. Very, very helpful.

Timothy George:	Just one more question. We're almost out of time. But we've just celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. We've had big celebrations here at Beeson. Many other places around the world, we've remembered Martin Luther and the great heritage of the Protestant Reformation. Bonhoeffer, of course, was a Lutheran. I think he quotes Luther more than anybody else except the Bible in his own work. Could you say how Bonhoeffer's preaching in particular might have been influenced by Martin Luther and that aspect of the Reformation?

M. Pasquarello:	Yes. It was deeply influenced by Luther and he cites Luther often in his lectures on homiletics with his students. I would say central to it is that in the proclaimed Word, Christ Himself is present, speaking, acting, calling, summoning, judging, forgiving, blessing, inspiring. That was Martin Luther. Luther said, "When you look at Jesus Christ, you point to Him and you say, 'There is God.'" Bonhoeffer said that's what happens in the proclaimed Word. When the church assembles to worship God, Christ is present. God comes to us in Him. We, through the work of the Holy Spirit, hear his voice addressing us today through the witness of Scripture and the words of the preacher. It's a rich and deep theology of preaching, one I believe we need to recover in our time.

Timothy George:	The real presence of Jesus Christ and the preaching of the Word of God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Well, I've been talking today to Dr. Michael Pasquarello. He is the Lloyd John OgilviePprofessor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary, a wonderful scholar, a person of faith, a minister of the Gospel in the Methodist tradition. We're so honored to have you with us, and thank you for this conversation today. 

M. Pasquarello:	Thank you, Dean George. It's my pleasure to be with you.

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