This article explores Professor T.F.J. Dreyer's definition for preaching that he developed for preaching in the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa (NRCA) three decades ago. Dreyer's own homiletical perspective towards preaching developed continuously through numerous philosophical paradigm shifts since 1989. His basis theory plays an important role in the theological training of the church's students today. The aim of the research is to reflect on the changes, following Dreyer's homiletical development over three decades. The research discovers a strong prophetical character (...) in the homiletical approach of Dreyer and concludes by asking how a kairos moment of prophetical speech can benefit the NRCA. CONTRIBUTION: This research hopes to contribute to the existing research that was done in the homiletical field of traditional Afrikaans-speaking churches in South Africa. The research also contributes by identifying some homiletical perspectives that can help the church to proclaim the gospel in times of transition. (shrink)

Today there is considerable disagreement between the US and the EU with respect to food safety standards. Issues include GMOs, beef hormones, unpasteurized cheese, etc. In general, it is usually asserted that Europeans argue for the precautionary principle (with exceptions such as the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement where ``substantial equivalence,'' a form of familiarity, is used) while Americans defend risk analysis or what is sometimes described as the familiarityprinciple. This is not to suggest that EUmember countries agree on how the (...) precautionaryprinciple should be applied; considerabledifferences exist among nations as will benoted below.In this paper I review both positionsarguing that they are best understood asvariants of the homiletics of risk rather thanas differing scientific positions. I concludethat while science must necessarily enter intothe formulation of food and agriculturalstandards, state policy, private economicinterests, and the interface between the two(e.g., when democratic states are successfullylobbied to support particular privateinterests), play important roles in determininghow particular risks will be treated. Moreover,I argue that the role of science mustnecessarily be limited if its credibility is tobe preserved. (shrink)

Feminism’s contribution to homiletics so far has arguably been restricted to exploring gender difference in preaching. In 2014, however, Jennifer Copeland identified a need not merely to ‘include women “in the company of preachers” but to craft a new register for the preaching event’. This article considers what that new register might be and how it might be taught in the academy. It defines preaching as ‘the art of engaging the people of God in their shared narrative by creatively (...) and hospitably inviting them into an exploration of biblical text, by means of which, corporately and individually, they might encounter the divine’ and proposes that in both the Church and the Academy, women’s voices are suppressed by a rationalist hegemony. For the stories of women to be heard, a new homiletic is needed, in which would-be preachers first encounter themselves, then the Bible as themselves and finally their congregation in communality. Findings of researchers in practical preaching discover that women preachers are being influenced by feminist methodology, while the teaching of preaching is not. In order to achieve a hospitable preaching space, it is proposed that the Church and the Academy work together towards a new homiletic. (shrink)

The large number of xenophobic attacks that broke out in different places in South Africa during 2008 was still continuing unabated 10 years later. We were stressed to come to terms with the reality that this occurred in a country that is globally considered to be an example of reconciliation. It is clear that we were confronted by the politics of fear, which were manifested in xenophobia and all the other -isms. In this article, the primary causes of these xenophobic (...) outbreaks were scrutinised and placed within the wider framework of a culture of fear. The central research question is: Why are we still struggling with this phenomenon more than a decade after it first appeared on South African soil? In-depth analysis will be performed on what is lying behind the culture of fear underlying these acts of violence. After exploring some of the factors related to a culture of fear by making use of a sociological frame, the author moved on to answer a second question: How do we, as preachers, researchers and practical theologians, respond in a theological way to the challenges posed by a xenophobic culture in our preaching activities? Finally, the impact of violence and fear on the practice of preaching within a Christian context was discussed. (shrink)

Review of Pr. Ioan Chirilă, Scara cuvântului. Eseuri omiletice [ The Ladder of the Word. Homiletic Essays ],.

The article investigates the hypothesis that preaching implies more than merely verbalising, proclaiming and rhetoric reasoning. Preaching is fundamentally the art of poetic seeing; an aesthetic event on an ontic and spiritual level; that is, it provides vocabulary and images in order to help people to discover meaning in life (preaching as the art of foolishness). In this regard, preaching should provide God-images that open up the dimension of aesthetics and provide vistas of the ‘unseen’. The iconic dimension of preaching (...) is about symbols and metaphors that help people to ‘see’ in everyday life (a poetic gaze) the presence of God in such a way that tragic events, the awareness of death and the anguish about the fear for loss and rejection become events for signifying life and for healing (the quest for wholeness). It is argued that practical theology should be about a liturgy of life. In this regard, the ‘ugliness of God’ becomes an aesthetic category in a Christian spiritual approach to iconography. In order to do this a critical approach to praxis thinking should probe into the realm of paradigms, especially paradigms that describe the ‘power of God’. Due to the assumption that the depiction of God’s power was predominantly influenced by the Serapis, Zeus and Roman cult (Emperor mystique), a paradigm shift from omni-categories (pantokrator) to bowel categories (passio Dei) in the homiletic depiction of God is proposed. (shrink)

This article is a critical attempt to develop a homiletic methodology for preaching to the episodic self of the 21st century. The British philosopher Galen Strawson contends that postmodern people today do not regard themselves as living out their lives in a diachronic or narrative sense, but rather in an episodic-existential sense. This episodic-existential way of perceiving one’s life has recently posed a significant challenge to the current preaching practice that is mostly composed and delivered from the pulpit through a (...) narrative. This article provides a considerate response to that episodic-existential challenge. Specifically, the article proposes a dramaturgical narrative form of preaching, in close collaboration with Paul Tillich’s existential theology, as a creative alternative to the conventional narrative way of preaching. (shrink)

Humans live by experiencing various types of sufferings, directly or indirectly. For this reason, it is evident that one of the topics of great interest in congregations is the question of suffering. This study aims to present redemptive-historical narrative preaching as a homiletical strategy for preaching on suffering. Redemptive-historical narrative preaching can be a homiletical alternative for preaching on suffering because it improves the weaknesses of the traditional homiletic and new homiletic and further develops their strengths. In this study, we (...) will identify the main problems of preaching on suffering in Korean churches. Then, we will discuss redemptive-historical preaching and narrative preaching, which form the foundation of redemptive-historical narrative preaching. Finally, we will propose and explain the redemptive-historical narrative preaching in detail and why it is suitable to respond to contexts of suffering within congregations.CONTRIBUTION: Redemptive-historical narrative preaching has greater significance, not only in terms of overcoming the limitations of redemptive-historical preaching and narrative preaching but also in maximising the advantages of both. This research would contribute to the field of homiletics of the Hervormde Teologiese Studies journal. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza el pensamiento de Agustín respecto a la incorporeidad de Dios, una doctrina que él desarrolló principalmente como una reacción contra las reflexiones maniqueas y arrianas sobre este tema. La decisión de Agustín de integrar la Iglesia católica estuvo fuertemente influenciada por su manera de entender la incorporeidad divina, un concepto con el cual se familiarizó hacia la mitad del año 380 en Milán. Esta implica que Dios no es sujeto de tiempo ni espacio en ningún sentido, compromiso (...) metafísico que le permite a Agustín responder a varias objeciones dirigidas a la cristiandad. Poco después de su bautizo, Agustín aplicó su visión de la divinidad a sus críticas de los maniqueos. En ese artículo vemos cómo, décadas después, este compromiso doctrinal fue desarrollado y expresado en sus homilías y en sus polémicas contra el arrianismo. Knotts examina tanto fuentes del 390, como homilías de la segunda década del 400. Esto nos permite apreciar cómo el tema de la incorporeidad es desarrollado y movilizado en mayor grado en los contextos homiléticos y polémicos. Así, dos temas íntimamente relacionados emergen: primero, Agustín mantiene que no debemos concebir la generación del hijo en los términos de la lógica terrena, no debemos buscar una duración temporal en la eternidad; segundo, debemos tener la humildad intelectual para constatar que nuestras categorías terrenas no son suficientes para pensar acerca de Dios. Agustín opta por confesar su ignorancia acerca de lo que significa que el hijo sea eterno y más bien funda su teología sobre las escrituras. Estos son los dos puntos cruciales que surgen de la crítica de Agustín hacia los arrianos. Veremos también cómo el Evangelio de Juan forma un locus theologicus para Agustín. El desarrollo de la incorporeidad divina aparece en las homilías y polémicas de Agustín como una vía para neutralizar a sus oponentes y le ofrece a su audiencia mayores herramientas. (shrink)

Based on a reading of Basil’s Ad Adulescentes and the epistles, it is clear that Basil finds moral value in Homer and Hesiod. The trickier issue is to what extent Basil uses Homer and Hesiod in his homilies. It seems that Basil does not abandon his respect for the utility of Hellenic paideia for the Christian in his homilies. Rather, he must approach Homer and Hesiod more gingerly because he fears that his uncultivated audience will have difficulty with reading texts (...) allegorically; at the literal level, Homer and Hesiod can potentially corrupt the unsophisticated listener. What we have in the homilies are less explicit references to Homer and Hesiod—they are the source of literary flourish, the origins of which probably went over the heads of Basil’s audience. As seen above, Basil also uses the poets—when read at the literary level—as counter-examples to Christian conduct. Basil in no way, then ‘lies’ or ‘changes his view’ on Greek paideia, as is oftentimes argued by scholars, but, rather, he adjusts his use of paideia depending on what his audience can handle at any given time. (shrink)

In the late first and early second millennia, mainland Southeast Asians created sophisticated techniques to accurately and efficiently render Pali into local vernaculars, including Burmese, Khmer, Khün, Lanna, Lao, Lü, Mon, and Siamese. These techniques for vernacular reading, parallel to approaches for reading Latin in medieval Europe and Literary Sinitic in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, led to the development of bitexts that contained a mix of Pali and vernacular material. Such bitexts, arranged in both interlinear and interphrasal formats, gradually allowed (...) second-millennium Southeast Asian writers to sprout a vernacular literature from the established branches of Pali genres. Bitexts themselves formed the basis for a new literary style that stemmed from the techniques of vernacular reading, a style that set the standard for belles-lettres until the early twentieth century. The spread of Pali-vernacular bitexts in Southeast Asia allowed for the literary elevation of the vernacular without renouncing the cosmopolitan idiom of Pali. To support these arguments, this article draws on some of the earliest examples of bitexts in Central Thailand and Northern Thailand. These include a hitherto undeciphered form of manuscript annotation in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Siam; two of the oldest palm-leaf documents surviving in any Tai language, from sixteenth-century Lanna; and the oldest known Pali-Siamese literary work, thought to be composed in 1482. These bitexts provide detailed evidence for vernacular reading and the emergence of vernacular literature in mainland Southeast Asian in general and Thailand in particular. (shrink)

Behind every sermon lies an understanding of the nature of the Bible; by its contribution to that understanding, biblical studies can make a crucial difference for preaching.

To preach the LORD'S word is to administer God's relief for this world's cardiac sclerosis with the shock of healing grace.

The monograph under review, written as a doctorate in 1999 and later revised and supplemented, offers a searching analysis of the form and function of rhetoric in the Pascal-Pentecost cycle of the 12th century homilist Cyril of Turov, together with an examination of the Byzantine sources. Lunde scrutinizes eight festal homilies for the period from Palm Sunday to the Sunday before Pentecost, using the edition by Igor' Erëmin [TODL 11–13,15 (1955–1958), reprinted as Literaturnoe nasledie Kirilla Turovskogo: Archeologičeskij obzor I izdanie (...) tekstov in 1989]. All Slavonic fragments are accompanied by English translations, predominantly drawn from Simon Franklin's Sermon and Rhetoric of Kievan Rus' [1991, reviewed by Francis Thomson in Slavica Gandensia 19], with minor alterations (e.g. p. 266, note 11) and critical remarks (e.g. p. 180, note 37). The study is positioned along the line that marks a shift in focus from philological and historical commentary towards the literary analysis of Cyril's sermons. Lunde's approach is clearly indebted to various developments in modern literary criticism, from structural linguistics to discourse analysis and communication theory. Questions of dating, attribution, and textual criticism are consciously left aside. (shrink)

How might discourse generate political change? So far, democratic theorists have focused largely on how deliberative exchanges might shift political opinion. Responding to empirical research that casts doubt on the generalizability of deliberative mechanisms outside of carefully designed forums, this essay seeks to broaden the scope of discourse theory by considering speech that addresses participants’ identities instead. More specifically, we ask what may be learned about identity-oriented discourse by examining the practice of religious preaching. As we demonstrate, scholars of (...) class='Hi'>homiletics—the study of preaching—have identified three core features that support its focus on identity: its unconditionality, its appeal to authoritative texts and traditions, and its diffuse instrumentality. We then ask what each of these features might look like in more straightforwardly political contexts. Finally, we address several normative questions raised by this practice, as a way of exploring the promises and dangers accompanying identity-oriented discourse more generally. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the review of history of homiletics as a science in the Kyiv theological tradition. On the basis of the analysis of the first domestic work on the theory of the sermon, made by Yoanykyi Haliatovskyi, process of influence of the Catholic baroque sermon on original homiletics in Kyiv in 17th century is shown. The article also analyzes homiletic views of an archbishop Theofan Prokopovych, who sought to reform the domestic church sermon, depriving it (...) of the extremes of Baroque literature. The author discusses contribution of professors Yakiv Amfiteatrov and archpriest Nazariі Favorov to homiletics as a science in Kyiv Theological Academy in 19th century. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the Professor Vasyl Pevnytskyi’s views who criticized the traditional approaches in Orthodox homiletics. In particular, Professor Pevnytskyi rejected the view on homiletics as a purely practical discipline, designed to provide students with knowledge about the preparation and delivery of the sermon. He believed that homiletics should not teach the method of preparing a sermon, but morally educate preachers. Pevnytskyi offered to rename homiletics to “spiritual literature” and introduced a historical method in its teaching. The course of “spiritual literature” had to show students how the living word influenced people and changed the world. Consequently, homiletics should turn into an analytical history of spiritual literature. The poetics shares the opinion of a number of Protestant theologists that success of the sermon does not depend on the perfection of its external form, but on how deeply a preacher captures the truth. He attributed the decisive feature of the preaching word not to abstract rules of drafting and preaching, but to a special inner inspiration of the preacher. Similar opinions were observed, in particular, in Protestant thinkers such as Philip Jacob Schpener, Franz Theremin, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Prof. Pevnytskyi tried to creatively rethink their ideas. An alternative to scholasticism he saw in the holy tradition. It was on the foundation of patrician homiletic heritage that Pevnytskyi aimed to build a new course in homiletics. (shrink)