WONDROUS DEPTH

WONDROUS DEPTH: Preaching the Old Testament
By Ellen F. Davis
Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005
ISBN 0-664-22859-3

Book Review by George R. Pasley

I purchased this book by Davis after hearing her lecture on preaching the Psalms at the Calvin Institute of Worship in 2006. Only recently did I read it, and I am exceptionally joyful that I did not neglect that task entirely.

What we have is a relatively simple book on preaching. It does not try to accomplish a great number of things, but that which it seeks to do it does well. The book contains only about 75 pages of text by Davis on how to exegete and preach. The remainder of the book consists of sermons- two from 17th century preachers and four by Davis.

Davis starts out with a theme that has recently been expounded on in excellent manner by Anna Carter Florence, homiletics professor at Columbia Theological Seminary (See, “Preaching As Testimony.” I have not reviewed it, but highly recommend it. I gave it away to a colleague as soon as I read it.). The best way to describe it is to quote Davis:

“The plain fact is that no preacher can ever be astonishing (in a positive sense) unless she has first been astonished. And the only regular and fully reliable source of astonishment for the Christian preacher is Scripture itself.” (p. 2)

Davis claim is that Scripture is astonishing, and in an extremely successful attempt to prove scripture’s astonishing nature she exegetes the story of the binding of Isaac. Those few pages alone deem this book worthy of a place on every preacher’s bookshelf.

Davis urges preachers to immerse themselves I scripture and especially to pay attention to each word, and she makes extensive use of examples of paying attention to the Hebrew words found in the Old Testament.

An Episcopalian, Davis also provides some very solid commentary on the way that lectionary texts, tied to the liturgical context, can be used to teach theology to congregations.

That which I enjoyed most in Davis’ work was her fine commentary on the two early 17th sermons provided in the book, one by the famous poet John Donne and the other by Lancelot Andrews. Each sermon was first introduced with instruction by Davis. Then, the sermons were printed in narrower column on the following pages, with comments and interpretation by Davis in the margin. While their archaic language virtually made interpretation necessary, that circumstance allowed commentary on techniques and sermon structure by Davis. I would like to see more sermons that are published in collections or examples be commented on in this way (I’m sorry to see that she didn’t choose to do the same thing with her own four sermons). The two old English sermons were definitely long by modern standards but there was certainly much to be learned by studying them, and it seems that Davis makes use of many such sermons in her teaching at Duke.

August 15, 2008
Ketchikan AK