Preaching, Not Conversation
There is more & more of a push from well meaning folks today, even trying to cite Biblically from Acts, that preaching as we know it today was not part of the early church. We want to minimize preaching today in exchange for dialogue & "priesthood of the believer" becomes "you can't tell me objectively what this passage means - I figure out what it means to me, for me."
Greg Gilbert's comment on a misuse of a Greek word in Acts from the book, Houses that Changed the World, is very timely & helpful:
There are other Scriptural missteps, too. One of the worst—and least obvious—is on pages 84-85, where Simson says New Testament teaching was more a conversation than modern-day “preaching.” He writes:
The Greek word often translated “preaching” in the New Testament is dialogizomai, which means to have a dialogue between people. When Paul ‘preached for a long time’ in Ephesus (Acts 20:7) . . . Paul did not preach at all in the sense of having an endless monologue; he was having a dialogue, a time of questions and answers.
There are several problems here. First of all, Acts 20:7 does not use dialogizomai at all; it uses dialegomai, which can have the meaning, “to exhort” or “to address.” (See especially Hebrews 12:5). Even if we look at Simson’s word dialogizomai, however, we find it is used only 16 times in the New Testament, and not one of those refers to anything close to the preaching of the gospel. Most have to do, in fact, with the Pharisees “dialogizomai-ing” in their hearts against Jesus. The most common verb for “proclaim, exhort” is kerysso, a word Simson does not mention but which is used 61 times in the New Testament. The preaching of the gospel then is not a conversation; it is the proclamation of God’s grace in redemption, an exhortation to sinful people to repent and believe.
Greg Gilbert's comment on a misuse of a Greek word in Acts from the book, Houses that Changed the World, is very timely & helpful:
There are other Scriptural missteps, too. One of the worst—and least obvious—is on pages 84-85, where Simson says New Testament teaching was more a conversation than modern-day “preaching.” He writes:
The Greek word often translated “preaching” in the New Testament is dialogizomai, which means to have a dialogue between people. When Paul ‘preached for a long time’ in Ephesus (Acts 20:7) . . . Paul did not preach at all in the sense of having an endless monologue; he was having a dialogue, a time of questions and answers.
There are several problems here. First of all, Acts 20:7 does not use dialogizomai at all; it uses dialegomai, which can have the meaning, “to exhort” or “to address.” (See especially Hebrews 12:5). Even if we look at Simson’s word dialogizomai, however, we find it is used only 16 times in the New Testament, and not one of those refers to anything close to the preaching of the gospel. Most have to do, in fact, with the Pharisees “dialogizomai-ing” in their hearts against Jesus. The most common verb for “proclaim, exhort” is kerysso, a word Simson does not mention but which is used 61 times in the New Testament. The preaching of the gospel then is not a conversation; it is the proclamation of God’s grace in redemption, an exhortation to sinful people to repent and believe.
