Prophecy and Preaching: Does What Paul Calls ‘Prophecy’ in 1 Corinthians 14 Include What We Would Today Call ‘Preaching’?

Very many readers of this journal are in local Church ministry, as clergy or Readers/Local Preachers/Lay Preachers or equivalent, and as such the preaching of sermons is a key part of our role. Indeed, surely one of the purposes of the Expository Times is to resource preachers in the preparation of their sermons. If it were not, the inclusion of the full script of a sermon for each Sunday of the coming month in every issue would have little point to it.

So preaching is a core part of church ministry, and resourcing preaching is a key purpose of this journal. And by ‘preaching’ we mean the delivering of a spoken address that seeks to glorify God, proclaim the Good News and build up the people of God, within the context of Christian worship. This is the definition of preaching that I advanced in 2004 in my article, ‘Why Preach? How to Prepare for it?’, and then reiterated in a published sermon on Deuteronomy 18:20, ‘The Preacher’s Peril’, some years later. ¹ Others may have slightly different definitions, but in broad terms it seems to me that what most of us mean by ‘preaching sermons’ can be covered by my description.

However, the term ‘preaching a sermon’ as a spoken activity that takes place in Christian worship, is not often described in this exact way in the New Testament. Many ‘sermons’ in the NT are, in fact, evangelistic addresses, so not in the context of worship at all. Many of the ‘sermons’ recorded in Acts fall into this category, as being delivered to non-believers in non-worship contexts, not to believers within a worship setting. Similarly, the discourses of Jesus, some of which are conventionally called ‘sermons’ (the ‘Sermon on the Mount’, the ‘Sermon on the Plain’, the ‘Nazareth Synagogue Sermon’) are not set within the context of Christian worship, and the words ‘preach’ and ‘sermon’ are not used to describe them—in Matthew 5:2, the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ is introduced, ‘And he opened his mouth and taught them’; ² the Lukan parallel begins, ‘And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said’ (Luke 6:20), while Jesus’ words in the synagogue at Nazareth after he reads from Isaiah are introduced by ‘And he began to say to them’ (Luke 4:21). So—despite common current nomenclature—Jesus’ ‘sermons’ are not defined as sermons at all within the NT.

The word ‘preacher’ is in fact a rare one in the NT. Κηρυξ, ‘herald’, is often translated as ‘preacher’, but it only appears in 2 Peter 2:5, of Noah as a ‘preacher of righteousness’, so not about a Christian at all, and in 1 Timothy 2:7 and 2 Timothy 1:11, ‘Paul’ ³ in each case combines ‘herald’ with ‘apostle’ and ‘teacher of the Gentiles’ to describe himself, which implies that the reference is to his ministry as an evangelist, rather than to any ministry he may have had that involved speaking to those already Christian during worship. The cognate κηρυσσοντος appears in Romans 10:14, but once again refers to evangelistic proclamation, while in 1 Corinthians 9:18, Paul describes himself as εύαγγελιζομενος, which seems to be more about his general ministry of proclaiming the gospel, rather than the specific act we would understand as the ‘preaching of sermons.’

Similarly, in the famous list of ministries given to the Church as gifts of God, ‘for building up the body of Christ’, in Ephesians 4:11–12, we have no direct reference to those who might preach sermons within worship to the gathered followers of Jesus. We have mention of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors (or shepherds) and teachers—but not of ‘preachers’. On the other hand, only 2 Timothy 4:2 (which I will deal with below) does seem to refer to what we might understand as preaching in the usual contemporary sense, when ‘Paul’ instructs Timothy, ‘Preach the word (κηρυξον τον λογον); be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke and exhort, with complete patience and teaching’.

And it is clear that such speaking of God to existing followers of Jesus within the setting of gathering for worship was a part of the life of the Church from the earliest days. The clearest example of this is Acts 20:7–12, Paul’s farewell visit to Troas, where the congregation meets on the ‘first day of the week … to break bread’, and Paul holds ‘a discussion with them’, continues ‘speaking’ until midnight, then ‘talked still longer’, such that the unfortunate Eutychus falls asleep and then out of the window to his death, from which he raised to life by Paul, who then ‘continued to converse with them until dawn.’

This surely describes an early Christian Sunday Eucharist and sermon, albeit a very long one! But the words that are used are ‘hold a discussion’, ‘speak’, ‘talk’, ‘converse’, not ‘preach’ or ‘teach’ or ‘deliver a sermon’.

So the activity that we now call ‘preaching’ obviously went on in the early Church, but was usually described in ways other than with the words that we use today.

A key place where this insight may prove suggestive is in 1 Corinthians 14. This is the section of 1 Corinthians where Paul discusses and contrasts ‘Prophecy’ and ‘Speaking in Tongues’ in public Christian worship. He shows a clear preference for ‘Prophecy’ over ‘Tongues’, particularly when there is no one to interpret what might be said in ‘tongues’. But what exactly is prophecy? Can what we today call ‘preaching’ be encompassed within the concept of ‘prophecy’ in the New Testament, indeed in the whole Bible? In ‘The Preacher’s Peril’, I wrote:

I am convinced that those who are preachers in the Church today are among the contemporary equivalents of the Biblical prophets, in the sense that prophecy in the Bible, no less than preaching today, is about speaking in the name of God, and is about proclaiming far more than it is about predicting, about forth-telling more than it is about fore-telling.

And there are some other commentators and writers who make this connection, between what the Bible calls ‘prophecy’ and what we generally understand by ‘preaching.’ So, Donald Coggan, in his The Sacrament of the Word, quotes what is said about prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14:3–4 to argue that a purpose of preaching today is to build up the body of Christ. ⁴ And K. J. Foreman, in his Laymen’s Bible Commentary on Romans and Corinthians, when discussing ‘Tongues’ as a gift in 1 Corinthians 14, writes ‘It is contrasted with prophecy, that is, preaching.’ ⁵ He continues on the following page, ‘[Paul] rates this gift [of tongues] low when it is contrasted with ‘prophecy’ or, as we would say, preaching.’ ⁶

In the rest of this article I want to examine whether this claim, that what is described as prophecy in the Bible, especially in 1 Corinthians 14, includes what we now conventionally call preaching, can be exegetically substantiated. In doing this, it is important to attend carefully to what the texts actually say, rather than what we might think they may say, about prophecy, especially. In doing this, I am aware that the Early Church contexts were far from the same as our own—the Church at Corinth, for instance, was entirely made up of what can be termed ‘new Christians’—even those who were responsible for leadership and those who delivered messages within the gatherings for worship in that Church were not ‘long-term’ followers of Jesus, nor had they been ‘theologically trained’ prior to taking on leadership and speaking roles. There was no New Testament at that point, only occasional letters from Paul and—presumably—oral stories about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Access to copies of the Jewish scriptures (the ‘Old Testament’) in either Hebrew or Greek would have been extremely limited. (Individuals would not have owned their own ‘Bibles’!) Those of a non-Jewish background in the community would not necessarily have had a good knowledge of the contents of those Jewish scriptures, and literacy rates among the members of the Church were probably quite low. In addition, it is clear from the whole of 1 Corinthians 12–14 that charismatic or spiritual gifts were a strong—too strong, in Paul’s view—feature of Christian worship at Corinth.

The Church context implied by the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) seems to be that of longer-established, more stable, more ‘regularised’ congregations with a more authorised leadership. There are instructions about the qualities of ‘overseers’ and ‘deacons’, instructions about life within the church, a call to Timothy to devote himself to ‘the public reading of scripture, to exhortation [preaching?]; teaching’ until ‘Paul’ comes (1 Timothy 4:13), so a copy of the Scriptures are obviously available to ‘Timothy’—whether this includes any writings that are now included in the NT is unclear (cf. 2 Peter 3:15–16, where Paul’s letters seem to be equated with ‘the other scriptures’). ‘Charismatic’ gifts also seem quite far removed from the concerns in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus.

Does this reflect a later context than that implied in 1 Corinthians? Possibly—and it is certainly true that very many New Testament scholars see the Pastoral Epistles as having been written substantially later than the likes of Romans, Corinthians and Galatians. Certainly, the nature of Church life assumed in Timothy and Titus seems to be more stable and ordered than that in 1 Corinthians, and this may indicate a later date and a different geographical location.

And it is a common working assumption that most congregations today—certainly in the ‘West’ (and that is my own context, as a white, British, middle-aged, male ministering in a Church of England Church and Parish)—are more akin to the model of Church implied by the Pastorals than to that depicted in 1 Corinthians. Certainly, for instance, since the rise of printing—and now of electronic media—access to a copy of the Bible is easy for all, both within and outside the Church.

But the distinction should not be pressed too hard. My own current congregation, Lord’s Hill Church, Southampton, ⁷ was only founded in 1970, as the (ecumenical and evangelical) Church for two newly-built outer edge estates. It still has some of its original members in the church today and still has the feel of being a ‘new’ church. Certainly, we sense strongly that, within living memory, we were founded as the result of the pioneering ministry of the first Vicar. Today, we have a number of ‘new Christians’, whose knowledge of the ‘Christian story’ is very limited indeed; we have a number of people with learning or other disabilities, for whom reading is far from easy or even impossible; around a quarter of the congregation are Zimbabwean who, while their English is now fluent, are not native English speakers (their first language is Shona); and there are some in the congregation for whom the exercise of ‘spiritual gifts’, as per the list in 1 Corinthians 12, is very important. The Bible is readily available and is always used within our acts of worship. So, Lord’s Hill Church perhaps has as many features in common with the church in Corinth as it does with the church depicted in the Letters to Timothy and Titus—and I am sure we are not unique in that respect!

And this insight—that there are similarities between the Church in Corinth and at least some congregations today—suggests that I am warranted in turning to 1 Corinthians 14 and to what it says about ‘prophecy’ as a way of understanding what we conventionally today call ‘preaching.’

In 1 Corinthians 14:1, Paul counsels his readers to ‘pursue love and strive for spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy’. Straightaway, he is assigning a crucial importance to prophecy, an importance that is sustained throughout verses 1–33a of this chapter. He contrasts prophecy with speaking in tongues and indicates a strong preference for the former over the latter (though while retaining a key role for speaking in tongues). Thus, in verse 3, having described those who speak in a tongue as speaking to God and not to other people, ‘for nobody understands them’, Paul says that ‘one who prophesies speaks to people for their building up and encouragement and consolation’. Then in verse 4, he states that, ‘the one who prophesies builds up the church’, whereas one who speaks in tongues does not, unless there is someone present who can accurately interpret what has been said in tongues.

So, from this, it is clear that in Paul’s thinking prophecy is intelligible, is addressed to the church (and so is corporate in nature) and is purposeful—it is for the building up, the encouraging and the consolation of the people of God. It is I think noteworthy that Paul says nothing here about prophecy being about ‘predicting’ future outcomes or being about ‘words of knowledge’ for individuals. This is re-emphasised in verse 31, where the purpose of prophesying is ‘so that all may learn and all be encouraged.’

Then, in verse 19, following several verses (14–18) where Paul contrasts praying in tongues as coming from the spirit with praying, praising, and speaking ‘with the mind,’ he says, ‘In the church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue.’ The implication of this is that ‘prophecy’ comes from the ‘mind’ not from the ‘spirit,’ so is rational, reasoned, logical—though not thereby ‘unspiritual!’

In 14:26, Paul describes how the Corinthian Christians gather for worship. ‘When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation’—this sounds as if these have come to or been thought out by individuals before the gathering for worship, so they are in some sense ‘pre-prepared’. So, in 1 Corinthians 14 prophecy is not necessarily what could be termed ‘ecstatic’ or ‘charismatic’, in the sense of a person being given a word by God during the meeting and then instantly speaking it. Prophecy, in Paul’s thought, can be ‘grown’ or prepared beforehand. As F. F. Bruce, commenting on verses 32–33a puts it, ‘There is no thought here of prophesying under an uncontrollable impulse; the prophet’s rational mind is expected to be in command, even in moments of inspiration, so that they can speak or refrain from speaking at will, whichever may be more expedient.’ ⁸

What about prophecy elsewhere in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament? Prophecy in the OT is of course not the same as prediction, though it does on occasion have a predictive element to it. It is more about ‘consequences’—‘unless you change your ways this will happen.’ The repentance of the Ninevites at Jonah’s prophecy of a definite disaster and the Lord’s then change of mind because of that repentance show that even what seems like a firm prediction of a future event in OT prophecy need not be so, but may rather be aimed at producing repentance, i.e., a change of behaviour. This suggests that prophecy in the Old Testament is, like that at Corinth, intended to build up, encourage, and console (as well as to rebuke), not predict the future. Prophecy in the OT is also, of course, generally (but not exclusively) addressed to a corporate audience, like prophecy at Corinth.

We tend to think that the OT prophets received the word of the Lord and then spoke it immediately. But these prophets often used complex poetic and other literary forms—were these really ‘charismatically’ inspired or were they composed with careful thought, the inspiration and the ‘word’ coming at least partly or at least sometimes through that process of thinking? Though I am no poet, it seems to me that poetic words do not just ‘come’ at the moment of composition/delivery, but that there is a lot of thought and ‘crafting’ that goes into the formation of a poem, or of a prophetic oracle.

There is some evidence within the OT of prophetic oracles coming to prophets before they go and deliver them. A good example of this is Jeremiah 7:1–2, where the Lord tells Jeremiah to go to the gate of the Lord’s house and there deliver the message contained in the rest of the chapter, which is clearly being given to Jeremiah before he goes to deliver it. So the prophet’s message, in this case at least, has been discerned prior to its delivery.

It is not clear, however, whether the OT prophets ever wrote anything down by way of a script or an aide-mémoire prior to delivering their oracles. We do know that both Isaiah and Jeremiah made use of written messages within their prophesying (cf. Isaiah 8:1, 16; Jeremiah 36 passim), but the extent to which they wrote the words of their oracles down before delivering them is unknown.

Of course, the precise content, the exact words, of prophecies at Corinth is not described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 14, while the OT prophetic books contain much that is cast as the actual words of the prophets—their oracles, speeches, etc. There is a variety of speaker in the prophetic oracles in the OT—sometimes it is the prophet himself who is speaking, on other occasions it is the Lord speaking directly through the prophet, while in still others it is the words of other human beings are that are recorded. There is no consistent pattern! It is also the case that there are a number of places in the Old Testament where prophetic oracles are clearly based on earlier traditions, perhaps even on earlier writings—see, for example, the use of the Exodus story in Hosea 11 and the use of the traditions about Jacob in Hosea 12:2–6, as well as the explicit reflection on Jeremiah in Daniel 9. These instances suggest that at least sometimes a prophecy in the Bible is given to someone through reflection on a sacred text or tradition and that they subsequently speak it.

With all of this in mind, let us now turn to preaching. In 2 Timothy 4:2, ‘Paul’ tells Timothy, ‘preach the word; be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke and exhort, with complete patience and teaching’. Reproving, exhorting, and rebuking surely are very similar functions to building up, encouraging and consoling (the purposes of prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14)! So already, even within the NT, there can be seen to be a clear functional overlap between ‘prophesying’ and ‘preaching the word’, even if the two terms do reflect different time periods and different ecclesial and geographical contexts, as I noted above. And surely every preacher today would see at least part of the purpose of their preaching as being to ‘build up, encourage and console’. I certainly do—hence ‘edification’ being one of the three reasons for preaching in my definition. In that sense, Donald Coggan was quite right to use what 1 Corinthians 14 says about prophecy being to build up the Body of Christ as an indication of one of the purposes of preaching today.

Christian preaching today is typically rooted in scripture. Sermons published in the Expository Times often relate to at least one of the set lectionary readings for the day, and all but one of the forty-odd sermons composed by me to have been published in this journal have been so rooted in a biblical text. ⁹ By and large, all my delivered sermons are related to at least one of the readings that has been used in the act of worship. However, the sermons preached by my father-in-law, who was a vicar, were hardly ever biblically based. His sermons were what he felt God was leading him to say, which may or may not have been directly connected to a biblical text. It was rare for him to begin his sermon with one of the set readings for the day. My definition of contemporary Christian preaching, above, as seeking to glorify God, proclaim the good news and build up the people, does not of itself specify that preaching needs to be based on a biblical passage, though my ‘method’ for preparing sermons, as described in ‘Why Preach?’, takes it for granted that the discerning of the ‘word for today’ will begin with the set scripture passages for the occasion. And there are other definitions of preaching that explicitly connect the sermon to the Bible—such as ‘A manifestation of the Incarnate Word, from the Written Word, by the spoken word.’ ¹⁰

But, of course, it is possible to deliver something that is drawn from, related to or about the Bible and it not be a sermon at all, even if it is delivered in the context of Christian worship! What is said may be ‘from the Written Word, by the spoken word’, but may not actually be a ‘Manifestation of the Living Word’. In any case, as I have observed, there are explicit instances in the Bible of ‘prophecy’ taking the form of the exposition of earlier traditions and texts, so it cannot be claimed that a fundamental difference between prophecy and preaching is that the latter is related to or drawn from the scriptures and the former is not. Some biblical prophesying is drawn from sacred texts and some preaching is not, just as the discourses of Jesus recorded in the NT vary between being rooted in the Jewish Scriptures (as in Matthew 5:21–48) and being almost completely unrelated to them (as in the ‘Parables of the Kingdom’ in Mark 4 and parallels (once again described as Jesus ‘teaching’ his hearers)).

Contemporary Christian preaching is also typically—but again by no means exclusively—composed and delivered with the help of a script or notes and this can often be seen as a contrast with prophecy being delivered ‘unscripted.’ The sermons published in the Expository Times are full scripts. ¹¹ However, far from all preachers today use either a script or notes. In the time when I knew my father-in-law and he was still serving as a vicar, he never used either. Similarly, in my own preaching now I usually do not use a script or notes, even if for the first 15–20 years of my ordained ministry (and for the nearly ten years I was a preacher before being ordained) I prepared and used a full script. I used to ‘write sermons’. Now I only do so when the editor of this journal asks me to! But for me, certainly, ‘extempore’ preaching is far from unprepared. It is far from ‘off the cuff’. Except in unusual circumstances, I do not rely on the Spirit to ‘inspire’ me simply at the moment of delivery. I have been prayerfully pondering and allowing the word to be formed in my head in the preceding days.

And, again, as I have described above, there is evidence in the Bible that some or even much prophecy was not unprepared, or simply the result of the Spirit of God inspiring a person at a particular moment and them then immediately speaking what they had been given to say. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that, as with Christian preaching today, some biblical prophecy was prepared, composed beforehand, that the ‘inspiration’ for an oracle could come over time and through reflection, not simply at a moment, though clearly sometimes that inspiration did come in that way.

But I imagine that many preachers will have had occasions when they have had to ‘preach’ unexpectedly, with little or no time to prepare or discern the message. I certainly have! Then, as a preacher, you have to rely on and ask the Lord to give you that ‘word in season,’ and then just get on with it. But again, this might be reflected in the NT, too. Perhaps the injunction in 2 Timothy 4:2 to be ready in season and out of season is an instruction to be willing to deliver both prepared and spontaneous sermons?

Of course, in the OT prophetic books, there are also frequent oracles which are the direct words of the Lord speaking through the prophet as a mouthpiece. Often these oracles are introduced, ‘Thus says the Lord…’, or concluded with, ‘declares the Lord’. Contemporary Christian preaching within worship does not—as far as I am aware—ever take this form, ¹² even if there are hymns and worship songs that are cast as the direct word of God to those singing them. ¹³ But this is far from the only way in which the OT prophets speak their words, and in any case there is much less evidence of this in the NT, except in the opening chapters of the Book of Revelation. Note, however, that while Revelation is explicitly cast as ‘prophecy’ (Rev. 22:18–19), it is also explicitly a written composition (Rev. 2:19 et al.), not a recording of words or oracles originally delivered orally. ¹⁴ Other than this, the phenomenon of someone speaking the ‘direct’ words of God is not found. 1 Corinthians 14 does not describe prophecy in this way, for instance. Therefore, any suggestion that a difference between ‘prophecy’ and ‘preaching’ can be made in that the former is the direct word of God and the latter is an inspired human word cannot be sustained from the texts, either.

We are wrestling here with the issue of exactly how one is inspired by the Spirit to prophesy or to preach. Does the inspiration come simply at the moment of speaking or does it come in the thinking, praying and preparing beforehand? There is I think a temptation to see ‘prophecy’ as something ‘extempore’ and preaching as something ‘pre-planned’, but, as I have shown, that distinction is not one that can be justified from the texts.

It may sound a statement of the obvious, but Christian preaching today is clearly intended to be addressed to a group of people—a congregation. Speaking to an individual would not be defined as preaching! And this is consonant with what 1 Corinthians 14 says about prophecy being for the building up of the Body of Christ, even if there are some oracles to individuals in the OT prophetic books (e.g., Jeremiah 45).

So preaching—as in the delivering of a sermon within the context of a Christian congregation gathered for worship—and prophecy are both to be intelligible, corporate, and purposeful. The purposes of each are described in similar ways. Either may be ‘pre-prepared’ or ‘spontaneous’. Either may or may not be based on or related to scripture. Both are aimed at building up, encouraging and consoling the Body of Christ, and both are (or should be!) intelligible and are surely ‘inspired’ in some way.

This is not to say that I think Foreman was necessarily right in totally equating prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14 with what we today generally understand by preaching. I think it is clear from elsewhere in the Old and New Testaments that there are other forms of prophecy that do not correspond with our contemporary conception of preaching, and I would not want to rule those forms of prophecy out of the life of the Church in the 21^st century by claiming that what Paul had in mind by ‘prophecy’ is only what we today conceive of by ‘preaching’.

What I do argue, however, is that the answer to the question posed in the title of this article, ‘Does what Paul calls prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14 include what we would today call preaching?’, can only be ‘Yes.’ ¹⁵ Contemporary giving of sermons in public Christian worship is embraced within the understanding of prophecy in 1 Corinthians, and therefore we can use chapter 14 of this epistle to help us to understand the purposes and the nature of what we are doing as preachers within our congregations.