Proclaimer Blog
What has Hilary of Poitiers got to do with PT? Quite a lot as it turns out.
‘We look to Thee to give us the fellowship of that Spirit who guided the prophets and apostles, that we may take their words in the sense in which they spoke and assign its right shade of meaning to every utterance.’
That is from Hilary of Poitiers’ De Trinitate (c. AD 350). I came across it this week, quoted by Douglas Kelly, learned Patristic scholar and Professor at RTS in Charlotte, in vol.1 of his Systematic Theology. It comes early on in Kelly’s book (p.50 – this is a book where p.50 really is early on). It’s in the middle of a beautiful section of ten pages or so on ‘Faith and Prayer’, setting out the centrality of prayer for all knowledge of God from a sample of godly men in Scripture and Christian history.
- It did my soul some good, and perhaps a this list of the different things it made me think of may do you some good too:
- I came across this in a learned book of systematic theology, and the focus on prayer was a surprise. Why was I reading this book? So I would have opportunities to drop some of its learning into future conversations and teaching and thereby feel good? Or was I at some level reading with a desire to be drawn to praise God more deeply?
- What PT aims to focus on is an ancient and thoroughly orthodox thing. Here’s part of our aim, Hilary-style: to assign the right shade of meaning to every utterance of Scripture, and to do so by taking the words in the sense in which they were first spoken.
- Wherever that task becomes merely the accumulation of techniques, and is not prayer-full from start to finish, it has become a horrible aberration.
- Expository preaching is a thoroughly Holy Spirit-dependent task. He spoke through those who wrote the Bible, and we as preachers need him now. Every expository preacher is doing no more (and no less!) than putting his energies in line with the consistency of the Holy Spirit’s past and present actions.
- We ought not to be shy of telling people that that’s why we’re doing what doing. We ought not to be thought of as those who speak much less about the Spirit in relation to our preaching than others do; differently maybe, but certainly not less.