Papias' Logia: Real Preaching

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Real Preaching

From Tim Keller:

Dr. D.M.Lloyd-Jones, hardly a trendy type in article on how Edwards effected him, makes a major critique of evangelical-expository preaching as currently taught many places. "The first and primary object of preaching is not only to give information It is, as Edwards says, to produce an impression. It is the impression at the time that matters, even more than what you can remember subsequently. In this respect Edwards is in a sense. critical of what was a prominent Puritan custom and practice. The Puritan father would catechize and question the children as to what the preacher had said. Edwards, in my opinion, has the true notion of preaching. It is not primarily to impart information; and while you are writing your notes you may be missing something of the impact of the Spirit (He mentions how discouraged people taking notes preaching--'this is not a lecture' Welsh growl.) As preachers we must not forget this. We should tell our people to read certain books themselves and get the information there. The business of preaching is to make such knowledge live."

Edwards Thoughts on Revival fits in: 'The frequent preaching that has lately obtained has in a particular manner been objected against..It is objected that..so many sermons in a week is too much to remember and digest Such objections against frequent preaching. if they be not from an enrmty against--re1igion are for want of duly considering the way that sermons usually profit an auditory. The main benefit obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind at the time, and not by an effect that arises afterwords by a remembrance of what was delivered. And though an after-remembrance of what was heard in a sermon is oftentimes very profitable; yet
for the most part. that remembrance is from an impression the words made on the heart at the time: and the memo y profits. as it renews and increases that impression' (Thoughts on revival).

Sum: If it is true that auditors are now less rational and more interested in 'encounter' and 'experience', and so on--Edwards and Lloyd Jones' advice is even more on target than ever before. Not iust to make the truth clear, but to make the truth real

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About my namesake...

Papias wrote in the first half of the second century and was one of the early leaders of the Christian church. Church historian Eusebius calls him the "Bishop of Hierapolis" (modern Pamukkale, Turkey) which is 22 kilometers from Laodicea near Colossae (see Colossians 4:13).

His “Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord” (his word for "sayings" is "logia") in five books, would have been a prime early authority in the exegesis of the sayings of Jesus. His treatise, however, has utterly disappeared, and is known only through fragments quoted by later writers, with approval by Irenaeus in "Against Heresies", and later with scorn by Eusebius of Caesarea in "Ecclesiastical History."

Eusebius calls Papias "a man of small mental capacity" (Hist. Eccl. 3.39.13), who mistook the figurative language of apostolic traditions. Whether this was so is difficult to judge without the text available; it is thought that perhaps Eusebius objected to Papias' premillenialism (chiliasm), which by the fourth century had been supplanted by the common church doctrine of amillennialism.

It was thought that Papias was "a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, a man of old time." According to another tradition, Papias shared in the martyrdom of Polycarp, (c. AD 155). Eusebius, who places him with Clement and Ignatius under the reign of Trajan, suggests that he wrote about AD 115. In all likelihood, he wrote his treatise in the first quarter of the second century. What remains today are only fragments of his Treatise quoted in the writings of Irenaeus and Eusebius.