Abstract

This dissertation examines how the congregation makes the sermon meaningful for themselves. Chapter one studies the works of the New Homiletician and proposes to study the nature and function of imagination in order to deepen and clarify New Homileticians' preaching theory. The second and third chapters discuss the nature and function of imagination. Chapter two discusses how Descartes and Kant understood imagination, while chapter three criticizes their view from the phenomenologist's point of view relying heavily on the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. In chapter three, the author selects two structures, the bio-physical and the linguistic, and discusses the relationship between meanings and these structures. Chapter four discusses how the imagination works in creating meaning for each of us. Imagination works as a point of contact, creates meaning through image association, involves our unconsciousness, and plays a significant role in providing emotional and religious meaning. Finally, based on the outcome of chapters two and three, the fifth chapter analyzes how the congregation understands the meaning of the sermon in the dynamic interaction with the images or meanings provided by three factors of worship: theological and historical meanings of the worship place, the congregation's preference regarding the style of worship, and the congregation's relationship with the preacher. In this dissertation, "imagination" is defined as follows: Imagination is always an imagination of X by Y. X could be the product of imagination or the source of imagination. Imagination is a living organism Y's faculty to discern, construct, or create a structure in or with X to find or identify the significance, value, or meaning of X. It is the author's contention that the congregation makes the sermon meaningful for themselves through their power of imagination by creating structures with the images presented in the setting of the preaching