Helmut Thielicke: A Preacher in an Age of Fear, Part One
Helmut Thielicke: A Preacher in an Age of Fear, Part One
Helmut Thielicke had lived on the borderline between life and death enduring a life-threatening illness in his youth and confronting the perpetually present carnage of World War Two. He ministered to a skeptical generation that teetered on the borderline between faith and unbelief.
Helmut Thielicke (1908-1986) did not set out to be a preacher.[1] As a theological student, he thought he was not cut out for pastoral work, preparing himself instead for an academic post. The rise of National Socialism and the eruption of World War Two would change that. Called to teach systematic theology at Heidelberg in 1936, Thielicke would lose his post in 1940 due to his opposition to the Nazis agenda. After a brief stint in the army, Thielicke would serve a congregation in Ravensburg, near Lake Constance. Bishop Wurm, of the territorial church, created a position for Thielicke to serve as his theological advisor in Stuttgart. It was here Thielicke would preach throughout the duration of the war.
Although he was forbidden to teach at the university or to travel and prohibited to publish articles or books, Thielicke did receive permission to give a series of evening lectures at the “Stiftskirche” in Stuttgart. One of his series was based on themes from Luther’s Small Catechism, and it would be published after the war under the title, Man in God’s World. Recognizing Hitler had not only plunged Germany into a disastrous war bringing about the loss of life and property, but Nazism also sought to replace Jesus Christ with pagan deities. In the face of brutal attempts to eradicate Christian faith, Thielicke assumed the task of preaching to a frightened and dis-spirited people. The church in which these lectures/sermons were delivered would finally be destroyed as bombs rained down from the sky. These sermons were given before the raids began, but the preacher recognized the anxiety in the air, the fear of an uncertain future which had overtaken the minds and hearts of his hearers. Thielicke acknowledges that religious platitudes will not help. He must speak with clarity and realism the Word of the Cross into the dread and chaos of the moment. Through these tense experiences, Thielicke the theologian is transformed into Thielicke the preacher. This transformation will mark the remainder of his career.
A theme evident in Thielicke’s work is “life on the borderline.” This characterized Thielicke’s approach in a variety of ways. Professionally, he lived on the borderline between the Academy and the Church. Personally, he had lived on the borderline between life and death enduring a life-threatening illness in his youth and confronting the perpetually present carnage of World War Two. He ministered to a skeptical generation that teetered on the borderline between faith and unbelief. Thielicke realized good preaching would take place on the borderline and the preacher must be fully at home in the world of the Bible without losing touch with the world of his hearers.
Thielicke realized good preaching would take place on the borderline and the preacher must be fully at home in the world of the Bible without losing touch with the world of his hearers.
Helmut Thielicke was not a homiletics professor. He would produce magisterial volumes on systematic theology, theological ethics, and the history of modern Christian thought but he never lost touch with the fact that theology is the handmaiden of proclamation. In a little book, entitled A Little Exercise for Young Theologians (something of a primer for students who were embarking on the journey to ordination), Thielicke is quick to remind students how the study of theology is not for its own sake but to enter into “dialogue with the ordinary children of God.”[2] Theological study is not the pursuit of esoteric lore built on abstractions. It is careful engagement with the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Church in the context of humility and prayer. For this reason, the theological student should not preach prematurely.
I have mentioned that I do not tolerate sermons by first-semester young theological students swaddled in their gowns. One ought to be able to keep still. During the period when the voice is changing, we do not sing, and during this formative period in the life of the theological student he does not preach.[3]
The preacher himself needs to live a life seasoned with the Word of God. In his book, The Trouble with the Church, Thielicke puts forward this question:
Does the preacher himself drink what he hands out in the pulpit? This is the question that is being asked by the child of our time who has been burned by publicity and advertising.[4]
In The Trouble with the Church, Thielicke recognizes what he calls “the plight of preaching” and sets out to offer pastors numerous suggestions to rectify pulpit poverty.
First, preachers are to give attention to a disciplined approach to organizing the sermon lest it become a free-ranging flow of consciousness:
Each individual sermon must have an organizing center that grows out of the text... So, in hunting and in preaching one must know what one is after, and then one must concentrate on that. Therefore, one cannot say everything in every sermon.[5]
Preaching the “whole counsel of God” does not mean the preacher makes of each sermon a compendium of all the articles of faith, nor does he trace salvation history from Genesis to Revelation:
The Church of Jesus Christ will go on preaching until the Last Day and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Therefore, we should not try to crowd all eternity in one sermon.[6]
Thielicke suggests what he calls a “textual-thematic” approach where the theme is distilled from and shaped by the text. In this way, the sermon will have order and clarity for the hearer.
Second, Thielicke counsels the preacher to avoid abstraction. The language of preaching should be concrete. Generalizations tend toward abstraction. For example, “modern man” is an abstraction. He warns against preaching to “the man who does not exist.”[7]
Third, Thielicke warns preachers against living in a ghetto of romanticism, insulating themselves from current realities by “the flight into busy work and liturgical artcraft.”[8] Thielicke is disturbed by ministers who are more concerned with textiles than texts and rubrics more than the challenges of the mundane life in a creation broken by sin. The sermon should not be populated with predictable and formulaic phrases. This does not mean Thielicke is anti-liturgical. On the contrary, he values the liturgy for the stability it gives. The sermon functions differently though. While the liturgy remains constant, the sermon is always changing:
The ‘cantus firmus’ is the liturgy, and the counterpoint is the sermon. The sermon can swing out in a wide arc, it can be venturesome.”[9]
Thielicke is disturbed by ministers who are more concerned with textiles than texts and rubrics more than the challenges of the mundane life in a creation broken by sin.
Thielicke reflects on how the sermon functions:
The aim of the sermon, after all, is to create something living and set it in motion. Consequentially, it should be directed not only to the intellect, but must at the same time also be aimed at the conscience, will, and imagination.[10]
The sermon, for Thielicke, was never static. The preacher of the Word of God enters into conversation with his hearers in a particular time and place. Thielicke’s own sermons give evidence of how he is attuned to the doubts and disappointments, aspirations and hopes of his auditors. His sermons reflect empathy and compassion without condescension or sentimentality. Here, Thielicke praises the British Baptist preacher, Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), whom he sees as having the ability to connect the Word of God with human experience.[11]
In his autobiography, Thielicke criticizes what he calls two types of degenerate sermons:
The first of these decadent forms is the transformation of the sermon into a set political speech proclaiming a particular political position as the Christian position.[12]
Thielicke lived through the student revolution of the late 1960’s and was well-aware of tendencies to subvert the pulpit for advocacy of social issues, making the preacher a cultural warrior for the right or the left. While such preachers often thought themselves prophetic, in reality, they were enthusiasts promoting their own dreams rather than the Word of the Cross.
The first of these decadent forms is the transformation of the sermon into a set political speech proclaiming a particular political position as the Christian position.-Helmut Thielicke
Thielicke then turns his attention to another perversion of preaching:
The second type of degenerate sermon is a certain ritualism that suppresses or at least obscures the personal faith of the individual through excessive use of time-honored phrases and traditional musica sacra.
In this instance, the sermon might be orthodox in citation of theological slogans and decorated with the poetry of hymns, yet it remains aloof and disconnected from the day-to-day life of those who hear it. As we have already noted, Thielicke was not anti-liturgical. He also makes use of hymn stanzas in his preaching, but these are used judiciously in order to make a point for the life of faith. When hymns are cited, especially those of Paul Gerhardt and Matthias Claudius, they are not merely decorative poetry but serve to drive into the heart and mine the truth of the proclamation.
Through the sermons he preached, Thielicke sought to let God’s Word be heard in a human voice. Thielicke reminds us:
Jesus did not speak with His human brothers in a voice from Heaven. He sat down and talked with them at their wells. He did not scorn to join the table-talk of sinners as He entered the homes of publicans. Though many would be struck by the glory of His majesty (how could it be otherwise, since the fullness of the Godhead was present in the carpenter of Nazareth), nevertheless it certainly was never shown by His having spoken from Heaven.[13]
There are many accessible examples of how Thielicke accomplished the preaching task in particular settings and situations. After German historical critical scholarship had practically rendered the Old Testament unsuitable for public proclamation, Thielicke preached a series of sermons on Genesis 1-11. They were published under the title How the World Began. In the wake of World War Two, he preached sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, collected in Life Can Begin Again, holding out hope and new life to people who had lost everything in the war. In a similar vein, his How to Believe Again takes on an apologetic tone. Other sermon collections, such as I Believe: The Christian’s Creed, are more catechetical in nature. Sermons in Christ and the Meaning of Life reflect the classic themes of the Church Year. After the war, Thielicke addressed nihilism, calling it “the last god after all the other ‘-isms’ have evaporated.”[14] Post-war sermons in Out of the Depths engage nihilism in a way that embraces both lament and hope. Examples of Thielicke’s preaching on the New Testament miracles may be found in How Modern Should Theology Be?
His sermons found receptive hearers among refugees from war, the elite business tycoons of Hamburg, dockworkers and sailors, university students and their professors, factory employees, and domestic servants. Thielicke seems to move freely among these different audiences, recognizing their particularities but also the inclusiveness of sin and the universality of the evangelical promise.
The sermons of Thielicke are marked by vivid and memorable word pictures such as “the Babylonian captivity of the human heart” or “the cross and the crib are made of the same wood.” He effectively uses images such as light and darkness. He can speak compellingly of the anxiety of atheism and futility of looking to political solutions for the human predicament. In the words of the great historian of homiletics, Hughes Oliphant Old, “One of Thielicke’s greatest abilities as an evangelist is to present the human situation in such a way that his hearers realize they are caught in the same trap.”[15] Thielicke preaches the Law as “a mirror of existence” (Herman Stuempfle) and the Gospel as a mirror of “the fatherly heart of God” (Luther) revealed in Christ.
This series will continue with Part Two: “Thielicke’s Preaching on the Parables.”
*The material in this article was originally presented to the pastors of the Decatur Circuit (Indiana District, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) at their meeting on July 9, 2024. The author gratefully acknowledges their discussion, questions, and comments which helped shape it.
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[1] For a biographical overview of Thielicke’s life and the shape and sources of his theology, see John T. Pless, “Helmut Thielicke” in Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians, ed. Mark C. Mattes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. 270-290; also, John T. Pless, “Helmut Thielicke” in Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions, ed. Timothy J. Wengert. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017. 737-738. Other helpful studies of Thielicke which focus on his preaching and apologetics are Fabian F. Grassl, In the Face of Death: Thielicke-Theologian, Preacher, Boundary Rider. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2019; and Jeffrey L. Hamm, Turning the Tables on Apologetics: Helmut Thielicke’s Reformation of the Christian Conversation. Eugene: Pickwick, 2018. For the setting of Thielicke’s wartime preaching, see Nathaniel S. Jensen, “Resistance Preaching in the Third Reich: Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Helmut Thielicke, and Hermann Sasse” in Lutheran Preaching? Law and Gospel Proclamation Today, ed. Matthew C. Harrison and John T. Pless. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2023. 116-143.
[2] Helmut Thielicke, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, trans. Charles L. Taylor. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959. 51.
[3] Thielicke, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians. 31-32.
[4] Helmut Thielicke, The Trouble with the Church: A Call for Renewal, trans. John W. Doberstein. New York: Harper and Row, 1965. 3.
[5] Thielicke, The Trouble with the Church. 55.
[6] Thielicke, The Trouble with the Church. 61.
[7] Thielicke, The Trouble with the Church. 70.
[8] Thielicke, The Trouble with the Church. 81.
[9] Thielicke, The Trouble with the Church. 99. In his dogmatics, Thielicke expresses a similar sentiment: “Another musical comparison might illustrate the relation between liturgy and preaching. As liturgy recites the classical biblical and traditional texts, it brings what is canonically established to worship. It is as it were the score, while preaching is the musical interpretation, which includes the subjectivity of the witness.” Taken from The Evangelical Faith, Vol. III: The Holy Spirit, the Church, Eschatology, trans. G.W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. 245.
[10] Helmut Thielicke, Notes from a Wayfarer: An Autobiography of Helmut Thielicke, trans. David Law. New York: Paragon House, 1995. 291-292.
[11] See Helmut Thielicke, Encounter with Spurgeon, trans. John W. Doberstein. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963. Thielicke says of Spurgeon on page one of this book: “He worked through the power of the Word which created his own hearers and changed souls. Now, this was not his word, the product of his own rhetorical skills. It was, rather, a word which he himself had ‘merely’ heard. He put himself at its disposal, as a mere echo, and it brought to him the Spirit over whom he did not himself dispose. His message never ran dry because he was never anything but a recipient.”
[12] Thielicke, Notes from a Wayfarer. 293.
[13] Helmut Thielicke, The Freedom of the Christian Man, trans. John W. Doberstein. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975. 187.
[14] Helmut Thielicke, Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature-With a Christian Answer, ed. John W. Dobersein. New York: Harper and Row, 1961. 26.
[15] Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church-Vol. 6: The Modern Age. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. 841.
