Each year, around the country, recognized masters of the biblical "art" of preaching offer help and advice in scores of lecture series on preaching. The Sprunt, Warrack, Mullins, Payton, Hester, Jameson Jones Lectures -- to name only a few -- have become for many one answer to the question, "Where do I go to find masterly advice on preaching?"

Of all the lectures, however, none, in Warren Wiersbe's words, "can claim the scope and influence of those delivered at Yale."1 His judgment has been seconded by other voices of the "contemporary preaching fraternity." The published versions of the lectures -- to date there are about ninety-five -- have become treasured volumes in many a preacher's study.

The Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching (the Yale Divinity School Lectures), which began in 1872 with Henry Ward Beecher's famous First Series of lectures, have included a hall of fame of preaching masters. Older names such as John Hall, Phillips Brooks, P. T. Forsyth, J. H. Jowett, and newer ones like Frederick Buechner, Henry Mitchell, Fred Craddock and Walter Brueggemann have been added to the list of distinguished speakers on preaching.

One hundred years ago this year, it was John A. Broadus' name on the marquee at Yale's Marquand Chapel. A century later, Broadus is treated either as pillar of homiletical method or pilloried as representing all that is wrong with preaching method. For some critics, Broadus is a classical dinosaur attempting to navigate modern highways. As representatives of what has been variously called a "conceptual," "deductive," "discursive," "classical" approach to sermon composition, his method and advice is viewed as something akin to the anesthesiologist's needle, which -- when artfully applied -- puts hearers into the third stage of anesthesia.

What is worse, other Broadus critics say, is his very notion of a "Christianized Rhetoric," which for American homiletics has "severed the head of preaching from theology and dropped it into the basket of rhetoric held by Aristotle."2

While numerous contemporary writers who speak positively about Broadus could be cited, F. R. Webber's accolade in A History of Preaching seems representative of the "pillar" school. "The general principles of preaching, set forth so admirably by Dr. Broadus," he writes, "are timeless. They will command respect long after the homiletical fads of the present time are forgotten."3

It would be fairly easy to offer an extended criticism of Broadus' homiletical thought. Much of his writing bears the marks of the past age in which it was written. It is the purpose of this article, however, not to censure the faults of the tradition from which Broadus wrote, but -- following Fred Craddock's advice -- to "listen carefully to that tradition."4 A sympathetic examination of Broadus' 1889 Yale Lectures and his other homiletical thought reveals much that is perpetually modern.

Broadus' Reputation

In his own day, John A. Broadus (1827-1895) enjoyed an international reputation. At the age of twenty-eight he was offered the Chair of Greek at the University of Virginia -- ahead of Basil L. Gildersleeve, who was destined to become the most prominent professor of languages in America. Broadus traveled and read widely. He personally knew Moody, Spurgeon, Bishop Ellicot, Lightfoot, Westcott, Hort and other luminaries of the age.