Interpretation And Preaching

This following article takes issue with the way sermons are customarily developed and delivered. The author argues that preaching should speak of Scripture, not about Scripture. Since the time of the Protestant Scholastics, sermons have been designed according to a schema: subtilitas intelligendi, subtilitas explicandi, subtilitas applicandi-careful understanding, explication, and application. A text was exegeted, interpreted, and applied in what was often a tri-part sermon. Through the years the pattern modified. A preference for brief texts emerged, employing a single verse from Scripture or sometimes even a phrase. Where a brief text was not chosen, preachers reduced longer passages to a single topic, a theme that could be stated propositionally. As a result,"stock" homiletic design evolved: An introduction was followed by the text, which in turn was reduced to a propositional topic, which was developed in a series of "points" (often categorical), before the sermon ended in a conc…