An influence on preaching that originated from both the monasteries and the scholastic theology of the universities was the logic of Aristotle. As a result, sermon writers placed greater emphasis on coherence and clarity. This scholarly approach to preaching was developed in the great universities of the medieval period such as Paris and Oxford and spread to the Dominicans (Bernard), the Franciscans, and the Augustinian Anchorites. Consequently, a great many new handbooks on preaching were published along with collections of illustrations and outlines for sermons.
These works urged preachers to first find a theme and then allow the sermon to grow organically from that theme. The sermon was to be characterized by natural and logical divisions and subdivisions. Likewise, material was to be carefully grouped into supporting texts from the Bible, the writings of the Fathers, and illustrations. Readers could also find suggestions for appropriate gestures and humor.
Unfortunately, these academic sermons lost touch with people’s lives and failed to address their spiritual and moral needs in the way that the simpler sermons of the early church did. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest intellect of the thirteenth century, was an exception, for he had a way of presenting his vast learning with warmth and simplicity.
An Intelligent, Yet Practical Style
Thomas Aquinas, the Neapolitan count and Dominican friar, who died in 1274 at the age of fifty, is by common consent regarded as the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages and one of the greatest minds in the history of philosophy. It is surely an interesting fact that he was at the same time very popular as a preacher to the common people, being thus faithful to his Dominican vow.
Amid the immense and amazing mass of his works are many brief discourses, and treatises that were originally discourses, marked by clearness, simplicity, and practical point, and usually very short, many of them not requiring more than ten minutes, though these were doubtless expanded in preaching. He has also extended commentaries on perhaps half the books of Scripture, in which the method of exposition is strikingly like that of Matthew Henry’s commentaries, leading us to believe that the exposition was, for the most part, first presented in the form of expository sermons.
Aquinas is not highly imaginative nor flowing in expression; the sentences are short, and everything runs into division and subdivision, usually by threes. But while there is no ornament and no swelling passion, he uses many familiar and lively comparisons, for an explanation as well as for argument. It is pleasant to think of the fact that this great philosopher and author loved to preach, and that ordinary people loved to hear him. Like him, contemporary preachers would do well to combine philosophical and other profound studies with simple and practical preaching.