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Fall 1996
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Promoted from Theologian to Preacher
October 1, 1996
Helmut Theilicke served as professor of theology at Heidelberg until he was dismissed by the Nazi regime in 1940. To protect him from rising Nazi pressure, a caring bishop sent him to pastor a rural church in remote Langenargenby-Constance. There, the brilliant theologian, still in his early thirties, learned some important lessons about the local church and about preaching.
We had never felt so lonely in our lives. Not a single person knew why we had come. Nor could we tell them, because in their innocence they would not have understood. We often said to ourselves that it would have been better to have lived in the concrete jungle of some big city and to have had good friends that were on our level.
The task that caused me the most problems was the propagation of the gospel from the pulpit, that is, the sermon. Up until that time, I had lived under the foolish illusion that I could only set foot in the pulpit when I had the theological theory completely clear in my mind. For this reason I had always avoided preaching whenever possible.
It was only after I had to preach every week that I gradually realized how false my previous conception had been. I learned that faith comes from preaching and that theology is merely the result of later reflection on this faith. Thus theology does not, as I had previously imagined, precede preaching but follows it. In retrospect, I now know that I could not have written the eight volumes of my systematic theology—ethics, dogmatics, and the history of theology—if I had not had the spiritual experiences I owe to my preaching duties.
My academic style
There was another reason for the fear I felt when I made my first visit to the Ravensburg pulpit. I tended to express myself rather abstractly ...
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