Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 36:1 (Fall 1973)
Article: The Relevance Of Preaching
Author: C. Trimp

WTJ 36:1 (Fall 1973) p. 1

The Relevance Of Preaching

C. Trimp

Translated by Stephen Voorwinde

(in the light of the Reformation’s “Sola Scriptura” Principle)*

To talk of “relevant preaching” is a kind of pleonasm: this assumption is a fixed entity in all homiletics. Repeating it threatens to make it a platitude. Yet we are in no position to bid farewell to this assumption. For it preserves a vital concern of the church and offers an undeniable point of departure for our thinking about the nature of preaching in the church. Such preaching is worthy of its name only when it speaks to church members in their concrete situation and, in contemporary language, brings to expression God’s relevant message for His people. The church pulpit is not a platform for demonstrating a timeless system of truths, but the place which God Himself reserves for the proclaiming of His living Word which seeks the heart of God’s children in their concrete needs, temptations, and expectations. Thus preaching is by definition “relevant.”

Now “preaching” is ministering the Word of God that comes to us in Holy Scripture. This is the unequivocal point of departure of every Reformed homiletics1 which thus applies the “sola Scriptura” principle of the Reformation to its own task. By the words “sola Scriptura” the Reformed Churches confessed the Reformation’s one and only foundation and reduced its rule for faith and practice to the shortest possible formula. It then goes without saying that at the very outset this confession determines the source, nature, and course of our hermeneutical and homiletical work which necessarily precedes Biblical preaching, and puts itself at its disposal. If we are going to speak at all of

* This address was given at the installation of the Rector at the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands on Monday, 6 December 1971.

WTJ 36:1 (Fall 1973) p. 2

Reformed preaching, then the way in which the relevance of God’s Word unveils itself to us and the actual presentation of this relevance in preaching are subject to the exclusive norm of the “sola Scripture” principle. This seals and guarantees the fact that Reformed homiletics is always called upon to focus its interest directly on the question as to how the “sola Scriptura” principle carries with it the relevance of preaching. The entire authority of preaching stands or falls with the answer given to the question as to how far the minister of the Word can use the “sola Scriptura” principle to make the relevance of his sermon clear to the conscience of his hearers. Should he not succeed, then the sermon has failed as ...