In his wonderful collection Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching R. L. Dabney lays out a course in sacred rhetoric for preachers. This is an area our American public education system has long since forgotten. While our culture still places a premium on the skills of rhetoric, the emphases of classical education have since passed away. So much has been said and written of late regarding President Obama’s oratory skills and his ability to mesmerize a crowd (at least with a teleprompter!) that we should be reinvigorated for the much more important work of preaching.
In the introductory lecture, Dabney describes the art of preaching. First, he reminds us that the sacred calling of preaching is not above the study of rhetoric.
The assumption that the preacher’s sacred attitude is above rhetoric reveals ignorance of the nature of true art. Let us then, at the outset, seek a correct conception of it. And we may be led to this idea by considering the distinction between art and artifice. Art is but the rational adjustment of means to an end. Art is adaptation; it employs proper means for a worthy end; it is but wisdom in application (15-16).
He builds upon this definition by stating that because of the nature of the activity and message, preachers not only have a suggestion to study rhetoric, but a duty.
But I assert none the less that, since this duty is to convey gospel truth effectively to other souls, and since there are adapted means by which this end may be the better accomplished, there is a true art of preaching, which is not only lawful and honest, but sacredly obligatory… Art, I repeat, is but a well-adapted method, and the real option which we have is not between art and nature, but only between art wise and art foolish, art skilful [sic], or art clumsy (16-17).
Let all ministers of the gospel be concerned not only with the integrity and weight of their message, but with delivering that message well with the skill that honors it.
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