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 "THE IMPERATIVE OF PREACHING: A THEOLOGY OF SACRED RHETORIC"
John Carrick
Banner of Truth, hdb., 2002, 200 pp
Price: UK £13.50 US $21.99 192pp. Clothbound
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This important book is very readable. John Carrick has unapologetically taken grammatical phrases as his key to one crucial element of preaching. Even university students, I have found, do not know what 'adjectives' and 'adverbs' are, unlike their parents' and grandparents' generation, so some of the younger readers will require a little initial effort to be instructed in the following divisions of John Carrick: the 'indicative' - a grammatical term that points out, states and declares: the 'imperative' - expressive of command, calling out for action: the 'exclamative' a word, or phrase which expresses some emotion: the 'interrogative' a word or phrase employed in asking a question.
This is not a 'scholarly' book (though the author is a professor at Greenville Presbyterian Seminary). This is written for any preacher to understand, and the author has succeeded brilliantly in that end. The point he has made is so important. What is the gospel? What is the good news that the pulpit preaches to the church and world? "Ye must be born again!" No. That is not news. It is a commandment. In other words it is an imperative. The good news is a statement of what has been achieved, accomplished and applied to us by a mighty act of God. "Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative," said J. Gresham Machen. He went on to say that Christianity was founded on facts, and not on aspirations. Modernism always emphasises the imperative mood, telling the world such things as, "Make love not war." It instructs the sinner as to what he should be doing. Go to church! Meditate! Love your neighbour! But Christianity begins by telling the sinner what God has done. The modernist offers us exhortation: the Christian evangelist offers good news. It begins with the indicative.
So in the apostolic preaching the disciples declared who the Lord Jesus was, and what he had done and where he now reigns. Their first notes were always indicative. Then they went on to the imperative, that is, there were consequences for the hearers. They should believe what they had heard, especially believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and repent of their sins. The King had come! The kingdom of God was here, so repent! The indicative led to the imperative. This becomes the vast structure in the most important of the New Testament letters. The first eleven chapters of Romans are indicative. They present to us the mercies of God, all that he has achieved for us through Christ. Then chapter twelve begins with exhortation and imperative in the light of all that has gone on before. This is how you should live who have received God's mercies. This same structure is found in the letter to the Ephesians. But also within a single verse the same structure is found: God is working in you to will and to do of his good pleasure. Good news! Wonderful news! So what are the consequences for us? It is the imperative of our having to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
That structure is explained by John Carrick with judicious warm quotations from great preachers - Edwards, Whitefield, Nettleton, Davies and Lloyd-Jones. These come at the end of each chapter and also in two or three appendices (which are a bit of an anticlimax, though the material is warm). Carrick makes it his argument very clear and persuasive. Then the author concludes by expressing his concern with a school of preaching that tends to absolutise the indicative alone, and fails to apply the word by imperative command, or by sentiments of exclamation or forceful words of exhortation. This is the school of history of redemption preachers, or 'biblical theology' preachers. There may be a complete absence of the imperative mood in their preaching. They claim that eschatology is prior to soteriology and so major exclusively in the divine work. Some redemptive-historical preachers seem to have an antipathy to the very idea of application. They want to avoid practical application in their fear of 'moralism.' "Very often," Dick Gaffin is quoted as saying, "it seems to involve a conception of preaching that is unduly exclusive, narrow, restrictive, even straitjacketing iin a way that it loses sight of diversity and flexibility in preaching."
Such concerns are the heart of this book as Carrick pleads for balance in preaching in two chapters both entitled the Imperative, Parts 1 and 2. The emphasis on history of redemption preaching is widespread, in the reformed churches in the Netherlands associated with Klaas Schilder, in the Presbyterian seminaries in the USA, in the magazine 'Kerux' and in evangelical Anglican churches in Australia and England. Its strengths are in its exegesis and biblical theological insights. It is weak in evangelism, repentance, self-examination, piety, mortification, and in moving a congregation to fulfil the greatest commandments.
This is a book for the hour. It is commended by Al Martin, whose book on the theology of preaching, "My Heart for Thy Cause" (Christian Focus) should be read in tandem with it.
Geoff Thomas
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