Believing: Sermons by Horton Davies

Believing

Sermons by Horton Davies

edited by John Booty and Marie-Hélène Davies

BELIEVING

Sermons by Horton Davies

Copyright © 2007 Marie-Hélène Davies. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.

ISBN 10: 1-55635-071-6

ISBN 13: 978-1-55635-071-9

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7610-8

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

I Believe

Lord, I Believe, Help My Unbelief

A Victorious Faith: Conquering Skepticism

I Believe in God the Father Almighty

The Hidden God

The God of Nature and the God of Grace

The Severity of God

All Things Work Together

I Believe in Jesus His Only Son Our Lord

The Incarnation 1

The Incarnation 2

The Divinity of Our Lord 1

The Divinity of Our Lord 2

The Divinity of Our Lord 3

God’s Covenant with Men

The Atonement: Divine Blood-Transfusion

The Meaning of the Cross 1

The Meaning of the Cross 2

The Verdict on the Cross

The Meaning of the Resurrection Today

I Believe in the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit

The Harvest of the Holy Spirit

I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church

Why I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church

A Victorious Faith: Conquering Racial Tension

Wanted: Our Own Pentecost as a Company of the Church of Christ

Wanted: A Perpetual Pentecost

Christianity as the Servant Church

I Believe in the Communion of Saints

All Saints’ Day

The Living Union of Christ and His Disciples

Saints Alive

I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins

Sin Is Rebellion Against God

I Believe in Life Etern

Immortality

Eternal Life: Here & Hereafter

Terminus Becomes Tunnel

The Fruit of Belief: JOY

Essentials of Happiness

acknowledgments

I want to thank Ted Lewis, from Wipf and Stock Publishers for agreeing readily to publish theological and doctrinal sermons from my late husband. I also want to express my gratitude to John Booty, the first graduate student of my husband in Princeton, who guided me as to the choice and order of the present sermons, wrote the major part of the introduction and is ready to assist me for another volume. He and his wife greeted me to their home and have been a moral as well as an intellectual support. And I thank Princeton University, without whose technology I would still be typing the sermon corpus as well as the Princeton Religion Department whose door has always been open and whose warmth has provided a steady support.

To all, Horton would have been grateful, yet not surprised for he knew their boundless compassion.

foreword

What a very rich career Horton Davies had! Born in Wales of devout parents in 1916, he graduated from Edinburgh University, served in London during the Blitz, worked for several years in South Africa during the dark days of apartheid, and then moved to a teaching post at Princeton University. That is the skeleton of a remarkable ministry which enabled him to produce 35 learned books on a variety of issues. Although I never had the privilege of meeting him, his death in 2004 came as a sadness to me, because his writings were so well known that it was as if I had lost a good friend.

What I especially valued in Professor Davies was the seamlessness of his faith and academic work. Such was his commitment to the Christian faith, that it was never for him a dull and boring subject for intellectual enquiry. His faith was real and he tackled every topic and task with passionate interest.

Passion, indeed, runs like a golden thread through this collection of addresses. As I read the sermons in draft form I found myself reflecting on the difference between a great deal of modern preaching and the focus and themes of Horton’s addresses. Listening these days, in retirement, to the preaching of others I confess with dismay that so many sermons lack theological and intellectual depth, so many preachers lack passion and—this is the most worrying part—so many addresses seem to spring from hasty preparation, lacking in reflection.

None of that will be found in this anthology. Here we find addresses that are well prepared and aimed at intelligent people. Horton acknowledges the doubts and difficulties of modern people and he seeks to speak to his fellow men and women in terms and in a language that they will understand. He drew upon a well-stocked mind and, from a vast knowledge of literature and the experience of life, was able to inform and entertain his listeners. Perhaps it was the influence of his skill as a teacher that led to such a fierce commitment to connecting with others. Whether this is so or not, it is impossible to read any one of his addresses without knowing what his intention was in preaching it. With rigor he attempted to draw his listeners to a decision.

Indeed, this stress on communication made his preaching ‘evangelical’ in the best way that noble word is understood. Not for him fundamentalism, because his love of learning and commitment to truth, did not allow him to submit to superficial conclusions. However, neither was he a vague liberal to whom all forms of knowledge are provisional. He believed, and believed passionately; and such believing in the truth of the Christian faith was nourished by scholarship and by a life-long faith in his Lord. He called people to personal commitment.

Is such preaching dated these days? Preaching that is relevant has to be localised and contemporary. From that perspective Horton’s preaching has to be read in the light of his time, just as we have to read Augustine’s sermons in the same way. But that does not mean that great sermons are dated, if, by that, we mean that they are no longer meaningful for our time. Horton’s addresses have much to contribute to our thinking today. I am convinced that our contemporaries will respond positively to carefully crafted addresses, honed by deep knowledge of the faith and reason.

Horton Davies, who died in 2004 at the great age of 88, stands in a great tradition of eminent Welsh preachers who have graced the pulpit. This anthology is a not only a tribute to a great teacher but also a vivid example of a great one at work.

George Carey

Lord Carey of Clifton

103rd Archbishop of Canterbury, 1991–2002

introduction

Background

Horton Davies was Putnam Professor of Religion at Princeton University where his teaching was focused on the history and liturgics of Christianity. It was in relation to his interest in and knowledge of the Western church that he considered the art of preaching. Beginning with his Oxford University doctoral dissertation, The Worship of the English Puritans, published in 1948, Davies demonstrated his acute understanding of the Free Church tradition of Christian worship in England, especially at its beginnings in the 16th and 17th centuries. Chapter 12 considers Puritan preaching as central to the tradition. He wrote:

The importance of preaching consisted in the fact that it was the declaration by the preacher of the revelation of God, confirmed in the hearts of the believers by the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit. (Page 182)

This declaration was rooted in a theological base which included the awareness of the great abyss that separated God from man. It was of infinite importance that God should cross that abyss and speak to the Christian through the sermon, rather than that the Christian should traverse it in prayer or praise (Page 183).

For the 16th century Reform Theologians, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli, the sacraments were the invisible words of God, serving in dramatic form, as it were, but for many the preaching of the Word of God was preeminent, not in place of the sacraments but as with ingredients of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Nevertheless the Puritan emphasis was on the sermon and the preacher. Davies wrote: The preacher was the man of God, the prophet, who declared to the congregation the ‘mystery’ of the Gospel, unfolding the whole plan of salvation, under compulsion to bring men to the parting of the ways that lead to salvation or damnation (Page 185). For the Puritan the exposition and discussion of the Scripture was the outstanding feature of their worship (Page 190).

Beyond and beneath Davies’s study of Puritan worship is the Free Church tradition, with its influence on his understanding of preaching, was the example of his father, the Reverend David Dorian Marlais Davies, who for more than fifty years served congregations of the Congregational Church in Wales, England, Scotland and the Channel Islands. In his book Varieties of English Preaching: 1900–1960 (1963), Davies remembers his father fondly and with great respect for the man and for the dedicated and talented preacher. With such a father how could one doubt that the ministry was a high calling and preaching a pre-eminent calling? (Pages 13 & 14). He witnessed a wide range of people, from Welsh miners to doctors, professors, and naval officers arrive at church worried and hearing David Davies preach the word leave with a clearer conviction and the courage of faith (Page 14).

In Varieties of English Preaching Horton Davies discusses the task of the preacher. First is apologetical preaching, vindicating the Christian faith, refuting barriers to that faith and demonstrating that the Gospel of God as transforming truth fulfills the nature and destiny of man. Examples of such preaching are to be found in the sermons of Archbishop Temple and Professor Herbert Farmer (Page 29). The second task is to deepen the congregation’s understanding of God and, assisted by the interior power of the Holy Spirit in preacher and congregation alike, to awaken and confirm faith (Page 30). Thus there is a teaching function and the task of arousing faith in the worshipers hearing the preacher. As the sermons in this volume affirm, Davies was both a preacher and a prophet, challenging his auditors to believe and to act in accordance with belief. This is the expository type of preaching exemplified in the sermons of Dr. W. Sangster, in England, Dr. James Stewart of the Church of Scotland, and the Rev. John R. W. Stott of the Church of England (Page 30–31). The third task of the preacher, related to the second, is to teach the holy love of God so as to elicit the response of adoration (Page 31). Examples of such preaching are to be found in the sermons of Dr. J. H. Jowett and Dean Inge, proponents of Christ in mysticism. Davies also points to the Roman Catholic tradition as a whole in which devotional preaching flowers in the rich loam of the Roman liturgy. Davies came to possess a wide and rich knowledge of liturgy in the various denominational expressions and viewed his own preaching not in isolation from but in the context of liturgical worship as a whole. The fourth task is to assist the members of the congregation to rediscover that their near or remote neighbors of every race and class are brothers in Christ. The motivation is compassion (literally a suffering with others), not sentimentality (Page 32). Such moral or ethical preaching, exemplified by Henley Henson and William Temple, with their quest for social justice, was inspired in part by Davies’s experience preaching in London during the horrors of World War II, in South Africa during the apartheid regime, and in the United States during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.

Davies’s sermons in this volume exhibit the realization of these four tasks. Under the title of apologetic preaching there are many examples. I think of his sermon on The Hidden God expositing Isaiah 45:15. Here, during World War II, he remembers the pain and agony, the 10 million deaths of World War I, the Great War, and asks Where was God then? Where is God today? and seeks to answer the question in terms of God’s dwelling in light unapproachable, God’s transcendence, but also in relation to the profound insight into God’s respect for humanity. He will not thrust himself upon men. If He did, He would undo His own works in us: He would take from us the most precious thing we have—our freedom of choice and will. But, God, though hidden, is not absent. The Incarnation speaks to how God came hidden in the form of Christ, for us and for our salvation.

In sermons on the Incarnation Davies exhibits the challenge of the second task, teaching faith to arouse an awakening faith. He speaks in plain terms, teaching that at Christmas time we celebrate not the rising of man to deity: but the infinite condescension of God to mankind. The Virgin Birth is simply a poetical and pictorial way of suggesting that the birth of Jesus was no ordinary birth. It was the spirit of divine intervention, with human cooperation, of the spirit of God and of Mary. And so he proceeds ending with the assertion that the last word is not argument: it is adoration in the presence of Christ. To adore is to feel faith awakening, belief affirmed as we fall down before the One who is God incarnate. Here is evidence to the third task: to respond is properly adoration resulting in the life of the devout mystic or the ordinary way of life transformed by the Holy Spirit working in us.

Davies’s involvement in the fourth task was focused on realizing the effects of faith in life individually and corporately. His sermon called A Victorious Faith: Conquering Racial Tension given at the Congregational Church of Brookfield, Connecticut, on July 15, 1959, was clearly exemplary of the fourth task. Beginning with St. Paul (Galatians 3:26–28), Davies set forth the two great classes of the church’s inter-racial Charter that we are all God’s adopted children and that Christ’s new family, the new ‘Christian race’ has overcome racial prejudice, class prejudice, educational prejudice and sexual prejudice. It is not surprising that the world seeks to destroy such revolutionary affirmations. The preacher was clearly inspired by the Holy Spirit, stating with various illustrations that to be a disciple of Christ is to affirm the infinite worth of all people, to fight for justice for all.

This does not mean that Davies ultimately focused on social justice. Such justice was the fruit of faith in God, in Christ, by means of the Holy Spirit. A vital faith was integrally relational. First, it was so in relation to the church. Davies could be severely critical of the church when it mirrored the faulty society around it rather than reflecting the Kingdom of God. But, he affirmed that it was still, under God, the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church. Believing is mainly belonging to a community that affirms the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And this affirmation leads to relationships to the world, the society to which it is sent by Christ with the message of love, reconciliation, forgiveness, peace and justice. Davies quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer as writing: The Church is her true self only when she exists for humanity. Davies adds:

In the past the church has been an institution alongside, not the leaven within the world it is meant to change . . . Christ is the man for others; the church is men and women for others. This is the suggestion of the central Christian affirmation of the Incarnation where we see the Supreme as servant.

Christian joy according to Davies involves a good conscience: freedom from resentment against others or against life, the affirmation of faith, the realization of trust, and finally the deepest source of joy is a selfless spirit that forgets itself and its worries in seeking the good of others. He recalls a newspaper photograph taken during the fire raids on London during the second World War, showing two elderly nuns in the midst of the smoke and terror delivering trays of tea to the exhausted fire-fighters, unaware of their own danger, heroic, undisturbed. He concludes, They had all four secrets of Christian joy.

In so speaking, Davies was bidding his listeners to follow Christ, thus receiving that which the ever-living Christ promises you in his service, a clear conscience, the removal of bitterness, the faith and love that cast out fear and the selflessness of the Cross.

Admittedly, reading the sermons of Horton Davies is not the same as hearing him preach them. But reading the few sermons that follow in this book gives you, and all of us, an opportunity to benefit from his inspiration, as in all good preaching, as spirit speaks to spirit, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.

Artistry

Although most of the sermons in this collection were often youth sermons, yet one can find in them the artistry that led Horton to write later about the Puritan sermons and about the metaphysical preachers. Indeed Davies took sermons very seriously as the exposition of the Word of God. His family would know that on the morning of his preaching they had to make themselves scarce, so high was the level of intensity of the preacher. When in the pulpit, the sermons were delivered with controlled Welsh passion, the voice strong and persuasive, trying to keep his voice from falling at the end of sentences. This was a completely different manner from the humble and gentle delivery of his lectures or precepts. He preached with great conviction, very much aware of the responsibility that preaching entailed, on truth, the human condition and the turmoils of the world he lived in.

Typically a sermon would be 4 to 6 single-spaced typewritten pages in length and very compact. Davies preferred the plain style of the Puritans, designed to move his flock to repentance and transform them