The inability of hearers to listen to a sermon

Contemporary people seem to have a fundamental problem of listening to a sermon, because of “the context of the non-Christian religious universe of our modern world” (Ellul 1985:192). To explain the fundamental problem, Ellul (1985:192) asks a central question: “In what do people place their confidence today?”

According to Ellul (1985:192), modern people “rely not on the sight of a reality that surrounds them, but rather on the multiplication of artificial visual images that constantly attract their attention.” The artificial visual images shown on television202 cause “the stupefying multiplication of images” as “a whole universe of images in which we are situated” (Ellul 1985:194). Ellul (1985:195) insists that “a modern individual’s beliefs” are all situated within the fictitious universe.

200

Cf. 5.1.2.1.2.

201 _{Cf. 5.1.2.1.2.}

Because of the fictitious universe, “what people do not understand is not certain words but the word itself, whatever its content” (Ellul 1985:201). They can no longer trust a person’s word itself. Contemporary people’s fictitious reality is a fundamental obstacle to listening to a preacher’s sermon,203 as Lischer (1981:85) teaches:

We have learned to distrust words, and rightly so. Even such words as ‘democracy,’ ‘perfectability,’ and ‘kingdom of God’ in the above paragraph mask as much as they reveal, and no one articulates a position on any subject without flirting with ideology. The underside of democracy was slavery; the implication of perfectability was the Master Race; the vehicle for the kingdom of God was the lunatic Crusades and mass murder in the name of Jesus.

Taylor (1993:207) also comments on a language problem in the church: “Charity is more likely to mean a tax-deductible donation to us that anything having to do with the heart, mission is something every corporate business has, and stewardship is a dreary season in the fall.” These examples illustrate that our beliefs and language have been kidnapped by the fictitious universe; that is, the fictitious reality prevents us from listening to a sermon.

According to Ellul (1985:202), an artificial means of church can be another obstacle to listening to the words of God, as follows:

Since people no longer understand the word, we should use propaganda: ‘audiovisuals’, expositions, and large gatherings where the word will be only background noise or a pretext. Such a gathering is an image in itself. You have the crowd, orchestration, projectors, and, in this context, someone who speaks and is nothing but an image himself … These means can move people, gather them, convince them, and even bring them to church. But such means really convey nothing of the truth of Jesus Christ to people. They merely recruit people by leading them into all sorts of misunderstandings about Christianity. Thus theologians, priests, and pastors are contaminated by the relentless triumph of images.

As mentioned above, it is difficult for contemporary parishioners to hear the words of truth because of the multiplication of artificial images inside and outside of the church. Moreover, many contemporary Christians do not sense the situation because the positive results of the technical means are immediate and concrete, but the negative effects are long-term and usually abstract.204

203 _{According to Baym (2010:26), “Communication technologies make us dumber.” The more we use them, the}

more the new technologies use us, the more we are influenced by them.

204

According to Ellul (1990:73-75), most people do not sense the negative effects of contemporary technique because of the factors as follows:

6.1.2

Actually, the problem of the reality of man is not only a current issue, but also one that has vexed the scholars of earlier periods. According to the doctrine of “total depravity” of the five-point Calvinism (Neuhaus 2008:61),205 and “As a consequence of original sin, there is absolutely nothing we are capable of doing in order to be saved.” In other words, human beings are incapable of listening to God not just because of the context, but also because of their depraved nature as lost beings. As an expert on Calvin, Parker (1992:13) comments, “When an unbeliever is still in darkness and ignorance, without the knowledge of God, he is completely senseless and heedless.” According to the afore- mentioned, it seems to be more difficult than before for contemporary hearers to listen to the words of God because they must deal with the problem of their own sinful natures and the problems of their context. If so, how can contemporary people hear the words of God?

According to Parker (1992:13),206 after being utterly lost and incapable, and the grace of the reconciliation has enlightened man, he now has unplugged ears and can listen to the truth of God. In Parker’s view, contemporary people cannot hear the words of God without the grace of the reconciliation. We definitely need “sola gratia” in order to hear God’s words. Calvin (as quoted in Parker 1992:51) comments on this as follows:

When we come to hear the sermon or take up Holy Scripture to read it, let us not have this foolish presumption of thinking that we shall easily understand by our own wit everything that is said to us and that we read; but let us come with reverence, waiting entirely on God, well aware that we have need to be taught by his Holy Spirit, and that without that we can in no way understand what is shown us in his Word (1Tim 3.9; Sermon 25. CO 53.300; 6-16).

Parker (1992:51) believes that “It is God’s Spirit who makes a man ready to be taught by his Word.” In other words, it is the work of the Holy Spirit, not that of human nature, that enables us to listen to a

term and are felt only with experience.

ii. Whereas only a small fraction of the population usually has to bear the costs and carry the risks of a new technique, the advantages are widespread.

iii. Except in the case of accidents, the problems and dangers are very diffuse and there seems to be no clear causal relation between the technique and its effects.

iv. The advantages are concrete but the disadvantages are usually abstract.

205 _{According to a theological journal, edited by a predominantly Catholic perspective (Neuhaus 2008:62), the}

five points of Calvinism are not a worn-out doctrine, because five-pointers (Calvinist) are increasing in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant ecclesial community (about 15 million members) in the United States as follows: “I bring this up because a 2006 study found that about 10 percent of ministers in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) are five-pointers. A new study of the most recent SBC seminary graduates, however, reports that 27 percent ‘somewhat agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that they are five-point Calvinists. For instance, 67 percent affirm that ‘God's grace is irresistible,’ and 58 percent say they believe that ‘people do not choose to become Christians; God chooses and calls people who respond to him.’”

sermon as the words of God, and to submit ourselves to the words.207 Then, above all else, preachers and hearers must seek the grace of the Holy Spirit, who unplugs our ears and enables us to hear the words of God.

In that case, what does “seeking grace” mean? According to Parker (1992:50), the seekers for grace need to pray and strive towards “mortifying our rebelliousness against God’s Word.” Calvin (as quoted in Parker 1992:13) advises, “We must no longer put God and the salvation of our souls out of our minds but be attentive to it.” Furthermore, Parker (1992:14) argues that the preacher should not be content to just talk to hearers, but must speak with “force and violence” to reform them, so that, if they have sunk into vice, they may be raised out of it.

For their part, preachers and hearers do not find their endeavour lessened by God’s grace (cf. Carson 1981:203).208 Calvin termed the relationship between God’s grace and human endeavour, “duplex gratia,” and this is elucidated as follows:

It is in the context of this differentiated unity of the duplex gratia that Calvin develops his theology of sanctification … Faith is an act of the Spirit, a ‘gift’ from God, received through God’s freely elected favour. Yet, faith is also a human act, requiring consent, knowledge, and the affections of the heart. Faith needs to grow in a gradual manner, through being nurtured by the Word and the Spirit. In a twofold way, faith involves reception as a ‘gift’, but it is inseparable from a human response of grateful knowledge through the Spirit. These two, like the two natures of Christ, can be distinguished but not separated (Billings 2007:108).

For instance, many Calvinists who give priority to God’s grace, such as “unconditional election” and “irresistible grace,”209

do not see the important point of trying to win those who are not saved. However, according to Neuhaus (2008:62), “the more Calvinistic recent graduates report that they are somewhat more committed to personal evangelism than their peers,” because Calvinists have “a richer theological and intellectual tradition that equips them to be more effective ecumenical interlocutors” (Neuhaus 2008:62). There is no conflict between God’s grace and discipling as a human endeavour. Therefore, preachers must strive to discipline and prepare the hearers as disciples for faithful listening to a sermon.210

207 _{Parker (1992:50,51) comments on this: “The submission to God’s message is the work of grace, not of}

nature. … As the work of grace, this submission to God’s Word is the work of the Holy Spirit.”

208

Carson (1981:206) claims that logical pitfalls may be avoided, so that belief in divine sovereignty and in human responsibility does not entail logical contradiction.

209 _{According to Neuhaus (2008:61), “Unconditional election means that God predestines who will be saved}

and who will be damned” and “irresistible grace means in the case of the elect, just what it says. And the perseverance of the saints is often expressed as once saved, always saved.”

210 _{Foss (2000:11) comments on the central challenge facing Protestant mainline congregations as a paradigm}

6.1.3

Discipling of hearers as disciples, is always practised within the community of the faith (cf. Campbell 1997:69, 247; Davis 2008:113),211 because, when someone becomes a Christian, he/she becomes a part of the body of Christ.212

“The body of Christ, the social body, was originally understood as a visible and temporal entity” (Sigurdson 2008:27). This means that the body of Christ is not just a phantom-body, but a real, physical body, as follows:

When the Christian church confronted interpretations of the gospel from the side of Docetism (that maintained that the body of Christ was not a real, physical body) and Gnosticism (that maintained that salvation meant salvation from the body), one of its main points against these movements was that the resurrected body – both the resurrected body of Christ and the resurrection that his disciples look forward to – really was a physical body and not just a phantom-body (Sigurdson 2008:30-31).

The “body” means not only an “intersubjective” community, but one that also is “intercorporeal” or “transcorporeal” (Sigurdson 2008:27). According to Sigurdson (2008:28), the “history of the privatization of faith also meant the individualization of the body, which, together with the philosophical and cultural paradigm shift, had as an effect the objectification of the body.” As a result, the dynamic and intercorporeal conception of the body has disappeared and the body has become mute (Sigurdson 2008:27-28). In addition, Buttrick (1998:2, 47) warns that “American individualism” has undercut the imagery of the kingdom of God, because such individualism has “a constitution supposedly designed to guarantee individuals ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ and overlooks the more useful goal of a free, worthy interactional life together.”213

We remember the doctrine of the incarnation as the complete Christological definition, which was agreed upon at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD; that is, “Christ was complete in his divinity as well as his humanity, he is ‘truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body’” (Sigurdson 2008:31). The body of Christ, to which an individual belongs, was similar to our own physical body. As our “own body does not stop at its finger-tips but extends into other bodies” (Sigurdson 2008:27),

words of God.

211 _{Cf. 5.1.2.1.2.}

212 _{Cf. 4.2.2. Howe (1967:43) comments that the believers should be participants because they are a part of the}

church, a part of the people of God! As such, they are not meant to be passive recipients of, but active participants in, the witness of the church in the world.

213 _{Buttrick (1998:47) comments on the history of democratic individualism as follows: “We have so}

personalized the gospel message that we have de facto excluded the political. We tell congregations that Jesus’ teachings are to be lived out in one-to-one human situations, ‘my neighbor and I’ situations. Nineteenth-century pietism was personalistic, twentieth-century psychology has been personalistic, and even existentialism in the 1950s tended to set an existing self, dasein, over against the das Mann inauthenticity of society; we are inheritors of American individualism.”

so the body of Christ does not stop at the borderline of an intersubjective community, but extends into others. Accordingly, “the personal body of the individual Christian cannot be divorced from incorpo- ration in the social body, the body of Christ” (Sigurdson 2008:38). Moreover, according to Küng (1995:88), the individual believer never exists alone, but subsists in the community of the church, because the beginning of the church was not by an individual, but by God who calls all his people ahead of every individual deed, including faith. Bonhoeffer (1998:190) also comments on this: “Not all the individuals, but the church-community as a whole is in Christ, is the ‘body of Christ’; it is ‘Christ existing as church-community.’”

Through his words, God speaks to the church as a community, and the church responds to God through prayer and praise during the worship service (Küng 1995:109). If we consider that “the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God” (praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei),214 God’s people can hear his words through the preaching of his Word in the community of the church. To use Lischer’s (1993:115-116) words, “Preaching is not a virtuoso performance but the language of the church that accompanies the laborious formation of a new people. No speaker preaches a sermon, then, and no hearer receives it apart from a medium of encounter, and that medium is the church.”

Accordingly, a Christian can hear the words of God in the community of the church, rather than in an individual strategy.215 However, as explained in 4.2.2, preaching, as a sense of community, was weakened by the print culture (cf. Barry 2004:1-5; Farrington 2003:126-132; Johnson 1990:9-21; Long 2007:139-181; Morris & Olsen 1997:77-107; Waltke 1995:104-120); i.e., because the “private reading world” (Ong 2009:73) of the print culture made the hearing world of the community of disciples feeble (cf. Bohren 1980:456; Eisenstein 1994:132; Meyers 1993:21; Peterson 1995:90-93). Once, Socrates (as quoted in Baym 2010:25-26) warned the inventors of the alphabet and writing, which was a threat to the oral tradition of Greek society: “This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.” Peterson (1995:91) also comments on this: “Gutenberg’s invention changed all that. A thorough-going orality in which the word held people in a listening community gave way to discrete individuals silently reading books alone.” Thus, we need to restore the sense of community for faithful listening to the preaching as the route of God’s voice, especially for contemporary people in the secondary orality culture.

The new communication technologies of the secondary orality culture are “a complex mixture of positive and negative elements” (Ellul 1990:37). However, preachers need to use the positive elements of these technologies for their hearers’ discipline. Fortunately, the new communication technologies of

214

Cf. 4.1.4.

215 _{On the communalism of listening, Peterson (1995:88) says: “Listening is an interpersonal act; it involves}

the secondary orality culture seem to bring hope for the community, as compared to television.216 In

this regard, see Baym’s (2010:36) following remark

:

In the context of contemporary digital media, the hope remains that new communication technologies will bring families and loved ones together. Today, we hear of people staying in touch with their children through Facebook, or using mobile ‘family plans’ to keep the family in continuous contact (Baym 2010:36).

As seen in Table 12 of Chapter 3.1.2, a characteristic of the writing and print era is individuality, so the characteristic of the secondary orality era is community. According to Brockman (2011:xxvii), contemporary people have a “collective externalized mind” because of the Internet as “a code for the collective consciousness that requires a new way of thinking.” Such thinking ways of these people can provoke collective selfishness (Park, Glenn, Gorden & Florescu 2011:50) or totalization, as Root (2006:70) elaborates, “From totalization is bred hatred, violence, and dehumanization, all of which the ministry of the historical Christ opposes.” However, contemporary preachers need to use a collective externalized mind - the characteristic of the secondary orality era - to restore the sense of community.217

Johnson (1990:138-139) states, “The solitary individual, without roots in a community, face another common and pervasive malady-amnesia,” that is, forgetfulness of God’s grace. The solitary hearer who lives outside the Christian community, can be confronted with the danger of becoming deaf to the words of God. Therefore, both preachers and hearers are in urgent need of understanding the change in the way of thinking, as a chance to recover the sense of community to hear God’s words.218