POWER
IN EXPOSITORY PREACHING
by Faris D. Whitesell
Chapter 5:
Power Through ARGUMENTATION
Not as much emphasis
is put upon formal argument in preaching as was done a few generations
ago. Older books on preaching written by Broadus, Phelps, Pattison,
and Breed contained chapters on argument. But recent writers such
as Blackwood, Luccock, Sangster, Davis, and Jones hardly mention it.
David R. Breed, in 1911, noticed this shift: "The older books
upon homiletics gave a very large place to the consideration of argumentation:
some of them devoted chapter after chapter to the subject. Various
forms of argument were considered, one after another, with minute
care and large emphasis, but it is a most significant fact that the
books upon preaching in its various forms which have appeared within
the past few years obtain scarcely a reference to the subject."1
Does this mean that argument is not as important in preaching
as it used to be? In part, it does. People are not used to lengthy
or heavy arguments today. They are swayed more by illustrations, humor
and emotion than by sober argument. A century and more ago denominational
rivalry was fierce. Preachers defended their own positions and attacked
those of other denominations with strong arguments. Sometimes outstanding
debaters conducted public debates on religious questions which lasted
a week or more. They used the technicalities of argument cleverly
and sharply. Such proceedings are not known today. We are more likely
to hear of tolerance and the right to choose among religious positions
according to one’s own individual preference.
But there is still a place for argument in preaching, especially
when we think of it as a means to persuasion. The concept of persuasion
is a prominent one today. While argumen-tation proper is the use of
reasoned discourse to get others to believe or to do what we think
they should, we might enlarge this meaning to include all right methods
in preaching to persuade people to do right. If so, argumentation
and persuasion are much alike.
Breed had this idea: "Let it be remembered that suitable
argumentation is no more or other than the art of persuasion. He who
adopts it, particularly in the pulpit, for any other purpose, has
misused it. Dr. Willis G. Craig…has said…, ‘The problem
of argumentation is to make use of the best means of bringing others
to believe or act as we wish them to believe or act.’ Consider
how much such a principle involves. It rules out of argument everything
calculated to arouse the antagonism of the opponent; everything that
reflects on his motives; everything that ministers to pride or prejudice;
everything that is associated with ridicule and sarcasm; everything
that looks for personal victory and the glory of conquest. The principle
confines the debater to those arguments and considerations which are
likely to please and win our adversaries."2
T. H. Pattison believed that, from the viewpoint of Scripture,
argumentation in preaching has great importance: "Pictorial though
it was, a strain of reasoning ran through the teaching of Jesus. When
it was first preached by the apostles the gospel was preached argumentatively.
Our faith in the great central truths of salvation rests on the basis
of argument."3
Phillips Brooks said, "A sermon exists in and for its
purpose. That purpose is the persuading and moving of men’s souls."4
and John A. Broadus asserted: "Every preacher, then, ought to
develop and discipline his powers in respect to argument. If averse
to reasoning, he should constrain himself to practice it; if by nature
strongly inclined that way, he must remember the serious danger of
deceiving himself and others by false arguments…one must constantly
remind himself to argue for the truth rather than victory, and as
a rule never to maintain a proposition which he does not really believe."5
In expository preaching formal arguments are usually few but
the major methods of persua-sion have a large place. Let us take ten
methods of argumentation, or persuasion, in expository preaching.
The first, by the use of the Word of God. Since expository
preaching gives first place to unfolding the meaning of the Scriptures
(usually a rather large passage) the persuasive power of the Word
of God comes into strong play. Broadus wrote: "The Scriptures
themselves are an authority indeed. All that they testify to be fact
is thereby fully proven, all that they teach as true and right is
thereby established and made obligatory."6
Again, he said: "Argument in preaching has one peculiarity.
There is a great authority, the Word of God, whose plain utterances
upon any question must be held by the preacher as decisive and final.
This is proof without arguing in the narrow sense."7
Part of the power in evangelist Billy Graham’s preaching
lies in his frequent use of "The Bible says…." He believes
that whether or not men believe the Bible to be the Word of God, there
is an authority and persuasive power in it that cannot be ignored.
When we accept what the Bible says about itself, we see that
it claims strong persuasive power. Please note the following:
It converts
(revives, rsv) the soul
(Psalm 19:7, kjv)
It accomplishes
the divine purpose
(Isaiah 55:11, kjv)
It is like
a fire and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces
(Jeremiah 23:29, kjv)
It is a
seed sown in the soil of men’s hearts
(Matthew 13:23, kjv)
If it cannot
persuade men to repent, neither will one come back from the dead
(Luke 16:31,
kjv)
The words
of Jesus are spirit and life
(John 6:63, kjv)
The word
of grace is able to build up and to give an inheritance among the
sanctified (Acts 20:32, kjv)
It is the
sword of the Spirit
(Ephesians 6:17, kjv)
It is living
and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division
of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts
and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12, kjv)
It is inspired
of God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete,
equipped for every good work (II Timothy 3:16-17, rsv)
The second persuasive
factor is the character of the preacher. Aristotle called this
the "ethos," meaning the impression the speaker makes upon
his audience. People certainly expect an expository preacher to be
a man who not only knows and believes the Book, but also one who lives
the Book. They wish to believe that back of everything he says is
the fact that he is a man of God. James H. McBurney, James M. O’Neill,
and Glen E. Mills tell us that in the area of secular argumentation
and debate the ethos of the advocate should include assurance, preparation,
intensity, flexibility, sincerity, directness, and modesty when referring
to himself.8 All these and more should characterize the
expository preacher. The very fact that the expositor lives much in
study and meditation upon the Scriptures should go far to make him
a holy man.
The third method of argumentation is reasoning. Aristotle
name this "logos." This means the use of logic and formal
methods of argument. Paul made frequent use of reasoning as these
references show:
In Athens,
he spent three weeks reasoning or arguing (rsv) with them out of
the Scriptures (Acts 17:2, kjv)
In the same
city, he disputed or argued (rsv) in the synagogue with the Jews
and the devout persons, and in the market place every day (Acts
17:17, kjv)
In Corinth,
he reasoned or argued (rsv) in the synagogue every sabbath and persuaded
Jews and Greeks (Acts 18:4)
In Ephesus,
he went into the synagogue and argued with the Jews (Acts 18:19,
rsv)
Again, in Ephesus,
"And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly,
arguing and pleading about the kingdom of God" (Acts 19:8,
rsv).
From the synagogue,
he moved to the hall of Tyrannus and argued daily (19:9, rsv)
The same Greek
word for reasoning or arguing is used of Paul’s preaching in
Troas (Acts 20:7, kjv)
and of his
presentation to Felix and Drusilla (Acts 24:25, rsv)
In addition to
argument from the testimony of Scripture, there is general argument
from testimony, analogy, cause to effect, effect to cause, induction
and deduction, and from examples. When explanation is done well it
has persuasive effect.
The fourth persuasive element is the emotional appeal.
Aristotle referred to this as "pathos," or appeal to the
feelings. We should never appeal to emotion for its own sake but the
sake of moving men to positive action. Most people are more likely
to be moved by their emotions than by their reason. We should never
appeal to baser motives but we may rightly appeal to higher ones.
Broadus reduces them to three: happiness, holiness and love.
Charles W. Koller has treated them as the seven appeals to
the heart: the appeal to altruism, the appeal to aspiration, the appeal
to curiosity, the appeal to duty, the appeal to fear, the appeal to
love, the appeal to reason.9 In no case is the emotional
appeal to be separated from the appeal to reason.
A fifth persuasive element is the use of facts and statistics.
Blackwood is strong on the use of facts in preaching. This is a day
of statistics. Batteries of computers spew them out; moun-tains of
records and filing cabinets preserve them; the magazines and newspapers
publicize them. While very few people remember the statistics they
hear or read, they tend to be swayed by them. If the preacher can
cite statistics to show that Sunday school pupils become less involved
in crime than others, he has a strong argument for Sunday school attendance.
If he can prove by statistics that divorce is more common among unbelievers
than believers, he has a strong case. Walter A. Maier packed his sermons
with relevant statistics and facts.
A sixth consideration in persuasion is audience analysis.
This means finding out the facts about his congregation and about
the physical factors under which he preaches. The preacher should
know his audience’s age range, educational range, occupations,
cultural interests, prejudices, sex division, and spiritual maturity.
In addition, if he knows something about the homes of his people,
the institutions in the community, the history of the area, and the
traditions of the neighborhood, he will be better prepared to speak
to them. Of course, he should know the seating conditions of the sanctuary,
the acoustics, and the ventilation and lighting facilities. These
are areas of knowledge which an alert pastor will soon gain as he
lives in a community and mingles with its people. But it is easy to
take some of these items for granted and not be really informed about
them. After a period of acquaintance, it would be wise for a pastor
to take inventory of his congre-gation. This could be done by passing
out a card or check-sheet listing items for checking, but requiring
no signature. One might be a Bible knowledge inventory, another a
spiritual achieve-ment inventory. One could be a Christian literature
inventory, another a Christian aspiration inventory. If the people
were taken into partnership, by showing them that they were helping
their pastor to preach more effectively and to serve them better,
they would not object to checking a few audience inventory records.
An important modern emphasis in preaching is that of preaching to
the needs of the people. This can be done as well in expository preaching
as any other, maybe better. But we must know what the needs of the
people are. It is the purpose of audience analysis to determine them.
The seventh method of persuasion is visualization. This means
that we try to picture the new life in such a way that the listener
sees himself living it. In the case of the unconverted, the approach
might be: "Picture how much better off you would be now if you
were a Christian. You would know forgiveness of sins, the power of
prayer, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and happy fellowship with
God’s people." If the appeal were to urge people to become
tithers, you might say: "Let us think how it would go with you
if you were a tither. You would have so much money to give to your
church that you would be glad to come and put it on the offering plate.
You would feel a sense of partnership with our work here and in the
mission fields of the world much more than you experience now. Can
you not see yourself enjoying the other nine tenths that you have
left for yourself much more than if you were trying to squeeze out
a little for God while you stretch the rest to cover the bills?"
Alan H. Monroe’s famous motivated sequence consists of five steps
in persuasive speeches:
Of the visualization step, he says, "The visualization step should
project the audience into the future so that they are emotionally
impressed with an image of future conditions."10
The eighth element of argumentation in expository preaching
is testimony, already mentioned under reasoning. This refers
to accounts of personal experience which support the Scripture passage
expounded. The testimony of the preacher himself will carry considerable
weight, but it cannot be used often. The experiences of members of
his family will bear using occasionally.
A preacher should keep a file of conversion experiences
told in the words of the convert. Other personal accounts of answers
to prayer, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, physical healing, solutions
to problems, deeper experiences, divine deliverances, and personal
evangelism cases can all be used to illustrate various points in expository
sermons.
The man who reads Christian biography will find many
illustrations in the area of testimony. The pastor who visits among
his people will hear many testimonies of God’s help which he
can feel free to use. This will not be true in most of his counseling
cases.
The expository preacher will use the testimonies of
the Bible characters themselves when they support a point. The conversion
cases of Paul, Lydia, and the Philippian jailor are ones that can
often be used.
David R. Breed calls testimony the best argument:
"It is well, however, to emphasize the argument from testimony
as generally the best for the preacher’s use. Testimony is involved
in every other form of argumentation. It is virtually inseparable
from it. There can be no proof without evidence. Testimony is witness
borne to a fact…. This argument is, therefore, more frequently
employed in the Scripture than any other, as much perhaps as all other
forms of argument put together, both in the Old Testament and in the
New. The God of the Scripture appeals to his witnesses and calls upon
them for their testimony."11
The ninth method in effective argumentation is answering
objections. Since the preacher’s audience seldom has an opportunity
to voice questions or objections during the meeting, it is no more
than fair and courteous for the preacher to try to anticipate some
of them. In doing so he will try to state them with force and fairness,
and proceed to give his answer. This tends to cut the ground from
under an objector before he can firmly claim it.
During the preparation of his message, the preacher
can look at it from the known viewpoints of members of his congregation,
asking himself what objections they might have to his interpretations
and applications. Paul used this form of argument in: Acts 26:25-29;
Romans 3:5-9, 31; 6:1-4; 9:19-21.
In anticipating objections, the preacher will seek
to avoid two mistakes. First, he will not raise objections that no
one has; that would only be a waste of time. Second, when he does
anticipate objections, he will show respect and consideration for
those who might hold them. He will not ridicule, lambaste, or be sarcastic
toward the imaginary objector and his question. If the preacher has
done a good job of audience analysis, he will understand what objections
his people might have to certain doctrines or interpretations of Scripture.
And if he lives in close touch with his people, he will meet many
objections in one form or another.
Excuses for not believing and obeying the gospel are
probably easier to anticipate than are objections. Certainly there
is much practical value in foreseeing and answering them with Christian
grace and kindliness. Moses had plenty of excuses in Exodus 3-4, and
so did people in Jesus’ day, Luke 14:16-24.
The tenth method of persuasion is good arrangement.
When the sermon outline is orderly, logical, and cumulative, it becomes
persuasive. The persuasive element can be made stronger if the thesis
contains a responsibility word: "You should," "You
ought," or "You must."
Walter A. Maier, formerly of the "Lutheran Hour,"
has a sermon on John 3:5-7, entitled, "Be Born Again in Christ."
He discusses his thesis under this outline:
