Via Media Podcast, Episode 15 Preaching in the Anglican Tradition Michael Pasquarello III July 11, 2019 https://www.beesondivinity.com/the-institute-of-anglican-studies/podcast/2019/preaching-in-the-anglican-tradition Announcer: The Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School welcomes you to Via Media, a podcast exploring the religious and theological worlds from an Anglican perspective. Here is your host Gerald McDermott. McDermott: Before we begin today’s discussion, I want to remind all of our listeners that the Second Annual Anglican Theology Conference is coming in September to Beeson Divinity School here and Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The focus of this year’s conference, and the title of this year’s conference, is The Jewish Roots of Christianity. Diverse scholars from three different countries will present cutting-edge research on questions such as, “Did Jesus start a new religion with Christianity?” “Did Paul follow the Jewish Law?” “How did the Church split from the synagogue?” There will also be a discussion of the largely untold story of Anglicans and modern Israel. And finally, I will suggest in my talk what difference the Jewish roots of Christianity make for Anglicans. The conference is going to be September 24th and 25th. Reserve your spot today so that it doesn’t get taken by someone else by registering at beesondivinity.com/events. Beesondivinity.com/events. Welcome to Via Media. Our guest today is Dr. Michael Pasquarello, the Beeson Divinity School’s professor of Methodist Divinity and Director of the Robert Smith Jr. Preaching Institute. Dr. Pasquarello came to Beeson in July of 2018. Before that, he was the Lloyd J. Ogilvie Professor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary. And before that, he was the Granger E. Fisher Professor of Preaching at Asbury Theological Seminary. He’s been a Methodist full-time pastor in North Carolina – he was for many years. He did his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. And I’m talking to Dr. Pasquarello today because his dissertation was on preaching in the Reformation as you can see from the title of his first book, God’s Ploughman: Hugh Latimer, a “Preaching Life.” He went on the write, John Wesley: A Preaching Life, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Theology of the Preaching Life, and Christian Preaching: A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation. Mike, it’s good to have you here today. Pasquarello: Thank you. I’m happy to be with you. McDermott: Mike, you’re an expert. Even though you’re a Methodist (laughing) in Anglican preaching. And I laugh but there’s actually a lot of truth there and I really shouldn’t say “even though” because it is right, isn’t it Mike, that John Wesley said to his death bed that he was a priest in the Church of England? Pasquarello: He indeed did, Gerry, and when often questioned about his loyalty to the Church of England, he would always cite the Book of Homilies, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Articles of Religion as being primary informing him in what he called the scriptural way of salvation or scriptural holiness. McDermott: Right. Well that’s what I thought and I’m glad to hear you confirm it. Now getting back to what we typically think of as Anglican preaching and Anglican preachers, let’s go to two of the most famous in the first generation – Cranmer and Latimer. How would you characterize their preaching in this first generation? Pasquarello: Yeah, that’s a great question and I spent a lot of time with Cranmer and Latimer over the years. One of the things I’ve discovered is that what we now call the Anglican preaching tradition that emerges in a Protestant church in England has deep, deep roots – first in the preaching of the Fathers as well as medieval preaching. And both Cranmer and Latimer were graduates of Cambridge. And at Cambridge they were deeply influenced by that tradition. John Fisher, who was the Bishop of Rochester, was the Chancellor when they were there. He was probably the most prominent Catholic preacher there in the early 16th century. Erasmus of Rotterdam was a teacher on several occasions at Cambridge and he was very instrumental in the promotion and promoting a renewal of preaching in England. So Cranmer and Latimer as well as a number of the well-known names in the first generation of reformers in England emerge from Cambridge primarily, but also from Oxford, where they draw deeply from the Church of England’s roots. As you know and we know in the Anglican tradition, there is a strong commitment to learning from the theology and the wisdom, the pastoral wisdom of the Fathers. And that’s very prominent for Cranmer and for Latimer and it shows in the way they thought about preaching as well as the way that they preached. For example, Latimer, after the Bible in his sermons, cites Augustine more than any other figure. Cranmer had a very large source book of patristic writings that he compiled and that he utilized as the Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII as well as Edward VI. And so it was during that time in the 1530’s and 40’s that Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury was an important figure, not so much as a preacher, but one who strategically deployed preaching to extend reform throughout the whole realm. And that’s where Hugh Latimer comes into play because Latimer was the primary voice in that strategy. So Latimer preached in many ways like a medieval preacher. He preached for reform; he preached for repentance; he called people to be more faithful and obedient to God’s commandments and the way that they lived. I would say if there’s something new that he introduces, it’s the reformation-renewed emphasis on grace and justification. Not that that had been completely forgotten in the history of the Church. It had not. And in fact the late medieval church was characterized by a strong Augustinian renaissance in various ways and interpretations of the rich theology of grace that Augustine had set forth. Well that works itself out in preaching in England. So Latimer was a very popular preacher. He did preach at court a number of times. Cranmer appointed him to be the preacher at St. Paul’s Cross, which was a large prominent outdoor preaching site that was established in the Middle Ages in the 14th century at St. Paul’s Cathedral. And Latimer was the most popular person who preached at St. Paul’s. And that was called the broadcast house of the nation. And it was a way in which Cranmer used Latimer to preach reformation doctrine and life and to see it carried forward from London throughout the realm, especially through the clergy who would be there to hear the preaching. Latimer also preached to convocations of clergy and that was again, Cranmer appointing him to do so to try to influence in reformist ways. But then he was deployed under Edward VI out in the Commons where he preached to common laborers, yeomen, and small towns and very small parish churches. And he became essentially an evangelist for the English Reformation. The other thing I want to say though is that while the reformers’ strong emphasis on preaching is going on, it’s also happening among those traditionalists who we now would call Catholics – that those who became Protestants were not the only ones who wanted to see an increase and a renewal of preaching. But there were pre-reformation bishops who were, through their episcopal injunctions and instruction to clergy, were working very hard to increase priests’ competence and capability in preaching as well as their commitment to preaching. So in summary, I would say the English Reformation and preaching being extremely important in the way that it effected reform and was affected by reform emerges in what was really a groundswell of desire for more preaching that began in the 15th century and is really a carry over from the deep influence of the preaching friars – the Franciscans and the Dominicans, Augustinians and other orders in the late medieval period. And so Anglicans should be thankful and proud of their preaching tradition because it has very, very deep roots. McDermott: Well we don’t want to belabor the point, but I do take note, Mike, from what you just said that contrary to the narrative that is often told about the English Reformation, namely that there was little to no preaching prior to the 16th century and little to no mention or emphasis upon grace and justification, you say there was both, but 16th century saw a new intensity and a new proliferation of those. Pasquarello: Yes, that’s what I would say. I found in my research one of the things that interested me was the continuity with the late medieval church as well as always a reaching back to the Patristic Period – the return to the sources, which was very much influenced by Erasmus in England. He who edited all the extent works by the Fathers and they were printed with the rise of the printing press. They were distributed widely. Erasmus’ paraphrases of the New Testament were influential in promoting and helping preachers. There’s a continuity there that as you say well, reaches a new intensity under Edward VI after Henry’s death and the emergence of a Protestant church. But it’s not a complete break. It builds on the deep foundations it has been laid across the centuries. McDermott: So in some sense, Anglicanism did not start in the 16th century? Pasquarello: I would say it did not. No. The Ecclesia Anglicana saw itself and its integrity and its authenticity as being in continuity with the Great Tradition. And so the English Reformers argued with their traditionalists, soon to be called Catholic friends, family members, loved ones, and opponents, that they were truly reforming the Church to be truly Catholic and restoring what they would see as the evangelical heart and soul of the Gospel at the center of it. McDermott: Now as we move into the 17th century in Anglican preaching, we’ve come to the Caroline Divines – the Caroline Period as it’s called. Are there differences now, Mike, in Anglican preaching in the 17th century? Pasquarello: Yeah. There’s continuity but there are differences. And I think the context of the 17th century accounts for that given what was happening in England – the English Civil War, the rise of Puritanism, response to the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reformation that takes place in the second half of the 16th century. But I would say let me talk about continuity first. I think that the Caroline Divines – John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes, others like them are still living in the aftermath, not just of a Protestant Reformation, but of a recovery and a return to the deep sources of the Church of England. So for the Caroline Divines, next to scripture, the place where they always went was to the Fathers. But they also had a deep appreciation for that devotional and mystical and liturgical and sacramental theology of the medieval church. And they saw themselves as representing a Catholic renewal of the Church of England and wanted to recover or wanted to maybe you could say fill in the gaps of some of the things that were overlooked or left behind in the zeal for reform in the 16th century. They didn’t in any way repudiate the Reformation, but they wanted to deepen it, they wanted to broaden it, they wanted to widen its breadth, and they wanted to recover the very best of an English church history for their times. And it was a very complicated time and a tremendous amount of ecclesiastical turmoil and upheaval. I think one of the characteristics of the Caroline Divines that still make them so appealing is that their preaching emphasizes the major points of the Christian faith. They’re true to the creed – the creeds of the early church. They stay very close to the language of the Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of Religion. They don’t want to get bogged down in small arguments over details, but they want to really major on the things that major. I think what’s most important in the way they do that is the strong emphasis on the Incarnation and its fullness and how the Incarnation is God’s stooping down and humbling himself to come to be with us. One of the ways the Caroline Divines I think are unique in Protestant preaching in the 17th century is that rather than focusing on the atonement alone, they see the atonement situated within the Incarnation in its fullness that finds its climax in the Ascension and in Pentecost in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So their preaching has this breadth and depth to it that really gathers up the fullness of a Trinitarian doctrine as it is applied to life. Now of course the Christian humanists – Erasmus perhaps being the best known representative, were very important in the 16th century in the recovery of classical rhetoric and the beauty of language and its significance. And the Caroline Divines are masters in their love for language and their capacity to use it. But they don’t use it in a way that’s simply embellishment or a way in which rhetorical tropes and different uses are simply added. But they use it in a theological way that serves preaching to turn both the hearts and the minds of listeners in adoring praise to God. Lancelot Andrewes does this in a most beautiful way in his sermons. I would recommend your listeners to look at Andrewes’ sermons. I think he’s just a classic example. Their moral theology joins doctrine and life so that preaching is not limited to trying to reach the intellect by offering not more knowledge or information. But the whole person is engaged because the intellect and the will work together. And the intellect and the will are drawn towards what is true and what is good and what is beautiful. They wanted to cultivate a life in which God was loved with a whole person in the beauty of holiness. And there’s a beauty about the Caroline Divines’ preaching that I think still deserves our attention. McDermott: Now Mike, you talked about the Caroline Divines filling in gaps that were open from the 16th century where there was tremendous focus on justification. Were liturgy and sacraments two of those gaps that perhaps needed more attention in the 17th century? Pasquarello: Yes. I think there’s a balancing there. You know England was affected by what happened on the continent. That comes through in the Reformers’ language in the 1540’s when the Church became Protestant. There wasn’t a denial of the significance of the liturgy and the sacraments, but there was more of a balancing in which the value and the role of preaching was elevated. What happened I think over time, though, is that there was an imbalance and I think the Caroline Divines saw the need again to restore an integrity in which word and sacrament, in which scripture within the liturgy was read and heard and meditated upon and taken into the lives of people. Because more than anything, I think they saw the Christian life as one in which by divine grace, we are elevated and conformed to Christ and that salvation is the knowledge and love of God. And that it’s a growth; it’s a sanctifying work of God in which holiness is a truly beautiful thing. So there’s a liturgical piety I think that they want to recover from the ancient church and the medieval church, an emphasis on devotion of the whole person to God, and that scripture is interpreted within the context of the liturgy which itself is an act of ongoing interpretation as God is worshiped throughout the Christian year on the holy days, on the festal days, and the significant times of the year through the use of a lectionary. McDermott: Now the 18th century, you have the English Awakening – the Wesley brothers. How does preaching change then? Pasquarello: Yes. That’s a great question and of course as you said in your introduction, I’m a Methodist and a Wesleyan. There’s continuity. John Wesley and Charles were good Anglicans, educated at Oxford, and were very loyal to the Church. But there’s a religion of the heart that emerges both in Europe and in England. It comes out of pietism and I think it’s a natural reaction to the wars of religion, to an excessive emphasis on doctrine and doctrinal wars that were fought between various churches on the continent. And there’s this growing desire among people and a yearning to know God more deeply and more truly. And it’s interesting how preaching becomes the primary medium by which theology is communicated. And I think that characterizes the preaching in the 18th century and especially of John Wesley. John Wesley is what I would call a homiletical theologian. His preaching communicates theology, not in a systematic way, but in a pastoral and practical way that aims to form the lives of people in what he called holiness of heart and life. And what characterized I think both Reformed and Arminian preaching in the 19th century was a commitment to what they called an Ordo salutis – an order of salvation, that in both traditions, they’re very common to each other. And you can see how sermons unfold in this way. Wesley, following George Whitfield, took up what then was called field preaching or outdoor preaching. The 18th century was a time of rather significant and radical even cultural change with the rise of industrialization. It was a tremendous increase in the number of people who were displaced, who were unemployed, who were poor. And the Wesley brothers at Oxford determined in a way that was very much like a monastic order – they called themselves the Holy Club, to live the evangelical life, to pursue holiness, the perfection of love by God’s grace, which required ministry to the poor. And so the evangelical revival in the 18th century was in many ways aimed towards the poor and people who either could not or would not be a part of the established Church or were not welcome by the established Church. And so Whitfield took up outdoor preaching in the 1730’s and then Wesley followed him. And in no time at all, they were drawing crowds of 20 and 30 and 40 and 50,000 people. And it was an amazing awakening and revival of evangelical preaching that moved through this order of salvation that the long-term consequences are still with us even in American religious history. McDermott: And as turn to the 19th century, we have the rise of the Oxford movement, which many, I think, Anglicans immediately associate that with the Roman Catholic church because Newman eventually in 1845 swims the Tiber and becomes a Roman Catholic as opposed to an Anglican Catholic or catholic Anglican – small C. But Newman preached many, many important sermons and moving sermons as an Anglican at St. Mary’s. I understand, Mike, that his sermons at St. Mary’s were enormously popular and people flocked to them. And they’re in print now and in a giant volume from Ignatius called Plain and Parochial Sermons or Parochial and Plain Sermons. And they’re all his Anglican sermons. Can you tell us about these sermons and what makes them distinctive? Pasquarello: Yes. Again I would say with the Oxford movement, there is continuity with the past and in fact I think those who became members of the movement, Newman of course being the most well known, would say that the Oxford movement was an organic kind of movement to restore the full catholicity of the Church of England. And Newman read widely and deeply in the Church Fathers. One of his first books was on the Arians in the 4th century. He especially read deeply in the Eastern Fathers and so the fullness of an Eastern doctrine of salvation and our humanity restored to the divine image certainly comes through in his sermons. But the Oxford Reformers saw themselves in continuity. Tradition was extremely important to them after the primacy of scripture. But Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons are classic, I think, examples of Anglican preaching. And again, I would encourage your listeners to look at them because while they certainly are preached in a style that sounds like it comes from a time in the past, it’s not a use of English language that sounds like ours. There are patterns of speech that are deeply rooted in a rich doctrinal and spiritual ethos that are worth the time of just spending our time with them. Newman said that he preached to have spiritual benefit for his listeners. He was aiming at their spiritual good. And by that, he meant their relation with God, their devotion to God, and the elevation of their life by divine grace through the indwelling Holy Spirit to be more and more conformed to Jesus Christ in faithful obedience. As you know, Newman’s sermons at St. Mary’s have a certain kind of severity to them. He doesn’t in any way fudge on the reality of sin in the lives of unbelievers and believers. But he has a marvelous, marvelous doctrine of grace by which God enters into our lives and in justifying grace, renews us and dwells in us and elevates our humanity in a marvelous way through the ongoing work of the sacraments especially in the life of the Church, the sacramental life of the Church. Newman’s sermons were parochial and plain. He doesn’t preach ... many of the members of his audience at St. Mary’s were students. And the Oxford students flocked to hear him. And I think that’s significant in our time when we worry so much about the young adults who don’t come to church and we wonder, “How do we reach them?” Newman didn’t try to be relevant. In fact he was very critical of evangelical preaching that tried to be appealing to large numbers of people and in the process, watered down the demands of the Gospel. Newman didn’t do that. He emphasized the demands of the Gospel. But at the same time, he emphasized all that God gives of himself in Christ through the Incarnation as mediated through the sacramental life of the Church to turn us back to himself and to elevate our life. And so his sermons often take one point in which he just zeroes in, almost with like a laser beam accuracy on an aspect of the life of faith, the Christian life. And he was a master at understanding and discerning the kind of spiritual movement in the lives of people and helping them to be more aware of the movement of the Spirit in their lives and the ways in which God was calling them to turn back to him in repentance and in obedience. Newman was very critical of putting too much emphasis on thoughts and feelings. That was one of the things he said about evangelicalism. One of the aftermaths of the Wesleyan revival and Whitfield in that Evangelicals were always thinking about their thoughts and always wondering about their feelings. And Newman said, “Look at Christ.” There’s an objective reality given to us in the life of the Church and the liturgy and in the sacraments, through the word of God – that we can reach out and grasp with the faith that’s given to us. And we don’t have to worry about if we have the right thoughts or the right feelings. He was this tremendously significant, significant person. The other thing I’ll say about him, Gerry, is he also saw how liberalism had taken root in England’s religious life and that people were minimally Christian. They were members of the Church of England. They had been baptized. They went on Holy Days. They especially went at Lent and Easter or Christmas. But they did not live a life of faithful obedience and Newman’s preaching touches the heart and the conscience and calls people to a life of daily obedience. It’s not glamorous and he says that often. It’s not the kind of the thing that just fills you with a kind of emotional high. But over time, our lives are more and more, they become more and more godly, which is our destiny. McDermott: Yeah. I have to say, Mike, that I’ve read oh, hundreds, probably a few thousand sermons in my last 30, 40 years. You’ve probably read thousands and thousands of sermons. And so many sermons are saying the same thing or saying the same things in slightly different ways. I have never read a sermon from that big fat volume, Parochial and Plain Sermons by Newman, where I haven’t learned something and been deeply moved. Let’s turn now, ‘cause we only have a few more minutes, to the 21st century – preaching today. I would really like to hear your thoughts, Mike, on three different styles of sermons today. The first is expository. The second is moralistic, but that’s perhaps a term that is necessarily derogatory and so let’s say rather than moralistic – self-help, therapeutic. And then finally there’s a very popular style of preaching today called Fallen Condition Focus preaching. I wonder if you could talk about that. So expository, therapeutic, and Fallen Condition focus. Pasquarello: Yes. Well I would say this to your listeners – one of the wonderful things about Anglicanism is because it serves as a way of sort of bridging Protestant and Catholic, you don't have to choose a narrow vision of preaching in that you can have a breadth in your preaching that includes what some schools of preaching make their primary emphasis. So for example, Anglican preaching at its best is going to open the text, it’s going to exposit in a way that allows the life giving word of God to come forward and to touch the lives of people. An Anglican preacher is going to want to do that and there are plenty of examples in the Anglican tradition that show that. However, Anglicans sees scripture as a means of grace. It’s not an end in itself and it serves as an instrument by which Christ the risen Lord who’s present in the liturgy through the work of the Holy Spirit is the primary speaker through the lips of the preacher who reaches out and touches us and draws us to himself. And so scripture then has ... I’m gonna use a word they would often use – an appropriate use – “use.” Not in a pragmatic way, but a liturgical, pastoral, and theological way that points us and orients us and draws us to what is it that truly needs to be exposited, which is the person and work of Jesus Christ. Newman said, “To know Christ is to know scripture since he is the living word.” The second therapeutic or moralistic preaching – well I think that, for example, in the Caroline Divines, they would say, “Well by all means in preaching, what we want to see take place is a deep, deep healing of human lives.” But it’s not psychologically oriented. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit through the word of God by which God’s justifying and sanctifying grace enters into us and restores our humanity to the divine image. And that’s something only God can do. And so Anglican preaching aims to serve that end and assist it and cooperate with it by its use of language, by its interpretation of scripture, and also by positioning preaching within the liturgy and showing how it is one of God’s numerous acts in the worship of the Church by which he gives himself to us. Now in terms of Fallen Condition, I think Anglican preaching, because it works out of the Great Tradition, recognizes that we begin with the goodness of creation. And this is what I, as a Wesleyan, appreciate so much about being in the Anglican tradition. It has a high Christology, which has a correlative high anthropology. It’s not necessary to diminish humanity in order to lift up Jesus Christ. But Christ comes and assumes human nature in the Incarnation in order to lift us up. As the Fathers often said, he became what we are so that we might become what he is. And the fullness of salvation, which is union with God, a communion with the triune God. And so Anglican theology takes sin very seriously, the need for repentance and the need for forgiveness and the need for the renovation of life. But it’s not the final word, and it’s situated within the larger narrative of salvation that begins with God’s good creation and ends with a completion and perfection of God’s good creation. McDermott: Well Mike, thank you very much. We’ve had a great survey here of about 500 years of Anglican preaching (laughing). Pasquarello: Yeah. McDermott: And Beeson students are blessed to have you here. Thank you. Pasquarello: You’re welcome, Gerry. Thank you for having me. McDermott: To you and thank you to our listeners for listening to Via Media. Announcer: You've been listening to Via Media with host Gerald McDermott, the director of The Institute of Anglican Study Studies at Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The Institute of Anglican Studies trains men and women for Anglican ministry, and seeks to educate the public in the riches of the Anglican tradition. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Via Media.