Four adverbs of Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith

without confusion, without change, without division, without separation
ἀσυγχύτως ἀτρέπτως ἀδιαιφέτως ἀχωρίστως

Logos Visual Filter: Ex 34:5–7

My Psalms lecturer — Dr John Kleinig — suggests that Exodus 34:5–7 plays a key role in Hebrew theology. Walter Brueggemann, in his book Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope, explains in detail (see below). To help analyze such texts, I have created and shared a visual filter for Logos Bible Software: This allows one to easily see which words/sections of an OT passage share a common vocabulary with YHWH's Ex 34 covenant promise:

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Walter Brueggemann, 2000, 'Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World', Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN.

The first crisis I will comment upon is the violation of the Sinai covenant in the incident of the golden calf in Exodus 32. According to conventional source criticism, Exodus 32–34 follows in the “early source” immediately after the Sinai events of theophany and covenant in Exodus 24. That is, the materials in chapters 25–31, whether later or not, are in any case of a very different kind, from a different source. The crisis of covenant-breaking, in this narrative, concerns the sin of Aaron and Israel in the making of the calf (32:30–31), Yahweh’s resolve to punish (vv. 33–34), and the plague against Israel instituted by Yahweh (v. 35). It is clear that Israel’s life with Yahweh is in jeopardy. (It is of course exceedingly difficult to determine what is “historical” in this narrative. First, the text in some important way is linked to the later narrative account of 1 Kings 12, thus making one extremely cautious about any “historicity” in Exodus 32. Second, the “facticity” of the Sinai tradition is exceedingly problematic, no doubt shaped as it is for ideological purposes. I do not purpose to adjudicate the relationship between “historical” and ideological elements in the text, but to take the text, as it is surely intended, as a paradigmatic account of covenantal crisis.) Even though we recognize the problematic character of the text, for our purposes it is enough to see that this text witnesses to a crisis in which we may attend to Israel’s “most characteristic speech.” After the tense negotiations between Yahweh and Moses in chapter 33, wherein Moses seeks assurances from Yahweh for Israel’s continued life, we arrive at chapter 34, at the awesome theophany Yahweh has just promised in 33:21–23. This theophany is enormously important for Moses and Israel, for on it hangs the potential for Israel’s political future. Moreover, the theophany is as dangerous as it is important, for there is an unresolved fierceness about Yahweh in this confrontation.

The dangerous coming of Yahweh (34:5) eventuates in the utterance of Yahweh (34:6–7). We arrive at the first of our three texts that I take as “most characteristic” of Israel’s speech. The text is situated in and evoked by the fracture of the covenant of Sinai. Yahweh would not have spoken in this way if there had not been the violation of covenant. It is not known in this moment of the covenant whether Israel can survive its disastrous affront against Yahweh. And if the possibility of covenant is not known, then it is also not known if Israel has any future in the world. Everything for Israel, everything theological and sociopolitical, depends upon this utterance of Yahweh evoked by the crisis of broken covenant.

So now Yahweh speaks. Israel receives from Yahweh in this awesome moment a divine oracle, an utterance out of God’s own mouth (34:6–7). It is Yahweh, in the crisis, who is permitted now to speak as Yahweh has never before spoken in Israel. Or should we better say, Yahweh is now required to speak as Yahweh has never had to speak before. The crisis for Israel is deep and irreversible, and now Israel’s text gives an offer of Israel’s “most characteristic speech,” expressed as divine oracle, as an utterance on God’s own lips. The oracle is in two parts. In the first part, Yahweh presents Yahweh’s own self as utterly faithful and generous:

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin … (vv. 6–7a)

What is important for us is that this oracle provides most of the working vocabulary whereby Israel will subsequently (as, for example, in the Psalms) speak to God and about God. This rich array of terms … merciful, gracious, steadfast love, faithfulness, forgiving … bespeaks a God who is generous in fidelity, thus providing a basis for Israel’s future, even after the disaster of Exodus 32. It is in this crisis that Israel hears (not speaks!) its most characteristic “God-talk,” that it had not heard before. It is, moreover, to the crisis that God’s oracle speaks, for the oracle asserts that even the episode of the golden calf has not nullified God’s covenantal fidelity for Israel.

Many scholars have noted that this originary speech in God’s mouth stands at the beginning of a major theological trajectory, to which Israel repeatedly returns. In its hymns of praise Israel speaks about God in these terms, for example, Ps. 111:4–9 and 145:8–9. In its prayers of complaint, Israel speaks to God in these terms, urging God to act in ways consistent with this self-announcement, for example, Ps. 86:15. It is clear to Israel, here and subsequently, that this cluster of terms, given as divine oracle, provide the basis for life beyond the crisis. Israel will stake everything on its capacity and will to move beyond the disruption. Yahweh’s characteristic speech, however, is not yet finished. The oracle continues in v. 7b:

… yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.

Yahweh is shown to be tough and unaccommodating. That also is given in the divine oracle. Thus the same Yahweh who in vv. 6–7a is so generously for Israel, in v. 7b is so ominously demanding and threatening against Israel. Israel is not yet through the crisis, not yet assured of a future, because the very oracle that offers assurance, in the next breath takes away any certain assurance. It is no wonder that in vv. 8–9 Moses responds by promptly bowing toward the earth in worship, acting with profound deference. Moses offers a prayer that confesses the sin of Israel and seeks pardon for Israel:

If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.

It is as though Moses has spotted the deep contradiction between vv. 6–7a and v. 7b, and seeks assurance that Yahweh will act out of the great terms of fidelity in vv. 6–7a. In v. 10, Yahweh responds to Moses’ passionate prayer, and agrees to be the faithful God of vv. 6–7a for Israel:

I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the LORD; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

Now, finally, after deep risk and danger, Israel is through the crisis and out of jeopardy. It is God’s speech of faithfulness and steadfast love, of mercy and graciousness, of a promise of forgiveness, speech never before uttered, that is the basis of Israel’s future with Yahweh and in the world. It is no surprise that this divine oracle emerges as a “characteristic speech” in Israel about God. The great words uttered (raḥum, ḥanun, ḥesed, ’emeth) are embedded in a sentence attributed to Yahweh, situated in a divine oracle that serves as God’s own announcement of God’s self. Speech cannot become anymore elemental and primordial than this. And so we have a datum for Israel’s “God talk,” evoked in crisis, serving to resolve the crisis of broken covenant. Note well, that while v. 7b adds vocabulary that is threatening and dangerous, the option taken by Yahweh in v. 10 seems promptly to remove the statement of v. 7b from Israel’s most characteristic speech.

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Preaching the resurrection all year round

Tips for Easter Preaching – Year Round http://concordiatheology.org/2014/04/tips-for-easter-preaching-year-round/

Palm Sunday sermon by N T Wright

On Palm Sunday, Jesus Rides into the Perfect Storm, by N T Wright http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/04/11/3983587.htm

The crowd went wild as they got nearer. This was the moment they'd been waiting for. All the old songs came flooding back, and they were singing, chanting, cheering and laughing. At last, their dreams were going to come true. But in the middle of it all, their leader wasn't singing. He was in tears. Yes, their dreams were indeed coming true. But not in the way they had imagined.

He was not the king they expected. Not like the monarchs of old, who sat on their jewelled and ivory thrones, dispensing their justice and wisdom. Nor was he the great warrior-king some had wanted. He didn't raise an army and ride to battle at its head. He was riding on a donkey. And he was weeping - weeping for the dream that had to die, weeping for the sword that would pierce his supporters to the soul. Weeping for the kingdom that wasn't coming as well as the kingdom that was. What was it all about? What did Jesus think he was doing?

On Palm Sunday, Jesus was riding into the perfect storm. Recall the story of the famous "perfect storm." It was late October 1991. A New England fishing boat by the name of Andrea Gail had sailed five hundred miles out into the Atlantic. But the weather was changing rapidly. A cold front moving along the American-Canadian border sent a strong disturbance through New England, while at the same time a large high-pressure system was building over the Maritime provinces of south-eastern Canada. This intensified the incoming low-pressure system, producing what locals called "The Halloween Nor'easter."

These circumstances alone could have created a strong storm, but then, like throwing petrol on a fire, a hurricane coming in from the Atlantic brought incalculable tropical energy to the mix. The forces of nature converged on the helpless Andrea Gail from the west, the north and the south-east. Ferocious winds and huge waves reduced the boat to matchwood. Only light debris was ever found.

The first two elements of Jesus's perfect storm are comparatively easy to describe; the third less so, but all-important if we are to understand both the original meaning of Palm Sunday and the meanings that it might have for us as we draw nearer to the cross in this holiest of weeks.

Rome

To begin with, the storm sweeping in from the west. The new social, political and (not least) military reality of the day, the new superpower - Rome. Rome had been steadily increasing in power and prominence over the previous centuries. Until thirty years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Rome had been a republic. But with Julius Caesar all that changed. His ambition, and then his assassination, threw Rome into a long, bloody civil war, from which Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, emerged as the winner.

Octavian took the title "Augustus," which meant "majestic" or "worthy of honour." He declared that his adopted father, Julius, had become divine - this meant that he, Augustus Octavian Caesar, was now officially "son of god" or "son of the divine Julius." The word went round the world which Rome was quickly conquering: Good news! We have an emperor! The Son of God has become King of the world!

After Augustus's death, he too was divinized, and his successor, Tiberius, took the same titles. I have on my desk a coin from the reign of Tiberius (there are plenty of them, readily available). On the front, around Tiberius's portrait, it says, "Tiberius Caesar, son of the Divine Augustus." On the back is Tiberius portrayed, and described, as "chief priest." It was a coin like this that they showed to Jesus of Nazareth, not long after he had ridden into Jerusalem, when they asked him whether or not they should pay tribute to Caesar. "Son of God"? "High priest"? He was in the eye of the storm.

Why was Rome interested in the Middle East? For surprisingly familiar reasons. Rome needed the Middle East like today's western powers need it: for raw material. Today it's oil; then it was grain. Rome itself was grossly over-populated and grain shipments from Egypt were vital. In a region just as unstable in the first century as it is today, the job of a Roman governor was to administer justice, collect the taxes, and keep the peace - and particularly to suppress unrest.

That was the gale: the first element in the perfect storm at whose centre Jesus of Nazareth found himself.

Israel

The second element in Jesus's perfect storm, the overheated high-pressure system, is the story of Israel as Jesus's contemporaries perceived it and believed themselves to be living in it. As far back as we can trace their ancient scriptures, the Jewish people had believed that their story was going somewhere, that it had an appointed goal. Despite many setbacks and disappointments, their god would make sure they reached the goal at last. The stories they told were not simply stories of small beginnings, sad times at present, and glorious days to come. They were more specific, more complex, dense with detail and heavy with hope.

Their theme came to full flower in the story of the Exodus, when Moses had led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, across the Red Sea and through the desert to their Promised Land. The Jews lived on the hope that it would happen again. The tyrants would do their worst, and God would deliver them.

Understand the Exodus and you understand a good deal about Judaism - and about Jesus. Jesus chose Passover, the great national Exodus-festival, to make his crucial move. The long story of Israel must finally confront the long story of Rome. This is no time to be out on the sea in an open boat. Or riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.

The western wind meets the high-pressure system. But what about the hurricane?

God

The Jewish story always contained one highly unpredictable element - namely, God himself. God remained free and sovereign. Again and again in the past, the way that Israel had told its own story was quite different from the way God was planning things. Jesus believed that was happening again now.

God had promised to come back, to return to his people in power and glory, to establish his kingdom on earth as in heaven. The Jewish people always hoped that this would simply underwrite their national aspirations - he was, after all, their God. But the prophets, up to and including John the Baptist, had always warned that God's coming in power and in person would be entirely on his own terms, with his own purpose - and that his own people would be as much under judgment as anyone if their aspirations didn't coincide with God's.

Jesus believed that as he came to Jerusalem he was embodying, incarnating, the return of Israel's God to his people, in power and glory (see Zechariah 9:9-17). But it was a different kind of power, a different kind of glory. Recall that moment in Jesus Christ Superstar - produced when Tim Rice was still writing shrewd, sharp lyrics and Andrew Lloyd Webber was still writing interesting music - when Jesus is approaching Jerusalem and Simon the Zealot urges him to mount a proper revolution. "You'll get the power and the glory," he says, "forever and ever and ever." But Jesus turns and sings those haunting lines: "Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand; nor the Romans, nor the Jews; nor Judas, nor the Twelve, nor the priests, nor the scribes, nor doomed Jerusalem itself - understand what power is! Understand what glory is! Understand at all."

He then continues with the warning of what was going to happen to Jerusalem, because, as he says, "You didn't recognise the time of your visitation by God." This is the moment, and you were looking the other way. Your dreams of national liberation, leading you into head-on confrontation with Rome, were not God's dreams. God called Israel so that through Israel he might redeem the world; but Israel itself needs redeeming as well. Hence God comes to Israel riding on a donkey, in fulfilment of Zechariah's prophecy of the coming peaceful kingdom, announcing judgment on the system and the city that have turned their vocation in upon themselves, and going off to take the weight of the world's evil and hostility onto himself, so that by dying under it he might exhaust its power.

Throughout his public career, Jesus had been embodying the rescuing, redeeming love of Israel's God, and Israel's own capital city and leaders couldn't see it. The divine hurricane sweeps in from the ocean, and to accomplish its purpose it must meet, head on, the cruel western wind of pagan empire and the high-pressure system of national aspiration. Jesus seizes the moment, the Passover-moment, the Exodus-moment, not least because these, too, speak of the sovereign freedom and presence of God as much over his rebellious and uncomprehending people as over the tyranny of Egypt.

Weathering our own "perfect storm"

As the events of Holy Week unfold, and as we share in them and make our own pilgrimage to the foot of the cross, it should be impossible for us simply look on and register them as an odd quirk of history. This was the perfect storm. This was where the hurricane of divine love met the cold might of empire and the overheated aspiration of Israel.

Only when we pause and reflect on that combination do we begin to understand the meaning of Jesus's death. Only then may we understand how it is that the true Son of God, the true High Priest, has indeed become King of the world. And perhaps only then can we begin to make sense of all the other things that preoccupy us, the things we carry with us as we make our pilgrimage to the foot of the cross.

"Take up your cross," said Jesus, "and follow me" - and as we do so we often find ourselves caught up in our own micro-versions of the perfect storm. We are subject, first, to all the usual pressures of contemporary culture. If you want to get on in the world, you've got to play by its rules. We find quite quickly, however, that the price of "getting on" in the world is our own integrity, as secular pragmatism continues to sweep old-fashioned moralism out of the way. That is one element in our own perfect storm.

The second is that each of us has our own aspirations and expectations. We want to graduate, get a job, earn some money, perhaps get married. But somehow we have to navigate the choppy and increasingly stormy waters where all those normal and natural things meet the sharp, often heartless, wind of contemporary culture. How do we prevent our own aspirations being merely self-centred and ultimately idolatrous?

As we approach Good Friday, we should be aware of, and we should be praying for, the third element: where is God in all of this? Woe betide us if we merely invoke God to back up our own ambitions and aspirations. Woe betide us doubly if we imagine we can find God simply in the spirit of the age. These are the two weather-systems with which we live all the time - but during Holy Week we are called to open ourselves to the third one.

If we try to follow Jesus in faith and hope and love on his journey to the cross, we will find that the hurricane of love which we tremblingly call God will sweep in from a fresh angle, fulfilling our dreams by first shattering them, bringing something new out of the dangerous combination of personal hopes and cultural pressures. We mustn't be surprised if in this process there are moments when it feels as though we are being sucked down to the depths, five hundred miles from shore amid hundred-foot waves, weeping for the dream that has had to die, for the kingdom that isn't coming the way we wanted. That is what it's like when we are caught up in Jesus's perfect storm.

But be sure, when that happens, when you say with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, "We had hoped ... but now it's all gone wrong," that you are on the verge of hearing the fresh word - the word that comes when the storm is stilled, and in the new great calm we see a way forward we had never imagined. "Foolish ones," said Jesus, "and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and so enter into his glory?"

Who knows what might happen if each of us were to approach Holy Week and Good Friday praying humbly for the powerful fresh wind of God to blow into that combination of cultural pressure and personal aspiration, so that we each might share in the sufferings of the Messiah and come through into the new life he longs to give us.

N.T. Wright is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is one of the world's most distinguished and influential New Testament scholars. Among his many books are Jesus and the Victory of God, The Resurrection of the Son of God and, most recently, Paul and the Faithfulness of God.

The cross behind the manager

Sasse writes about the alleged one-sidedness of Luther's Theologia Crucis [Theology of the Cross]:

The cross is just one part, among others, of the Christian message. ... Is not there also a theology of incarnation and a theology of resurrection? Must not the theology of the Second Article be supplemented by a theology of the Third Article, a theology of the Holy Spirit and His activity in the church? ... Thus the question arises as to what that alleged narrowing, that much criticized one-sidedness of Luther’s theologia crucis, means. The theology of the cross obviously does not mean that for the theologian the whole church year shrinks to Good Friday. It rather means that one cannot understand Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost without Good Friday. ... [H]e saw the cross behind the manger.

(Sasse, Hermann, 1951. Theologia Crucis (BLP 18), Concordia Publishing House)

Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide

In dealing with an unbeliever we cannot begin with an attempt to convince him of the divine authority of Scripture. We must first bring him to the knowledge of his sins and to faith in Christ, the Redeemer from sin. We should preach to him on the basis of Scripture—without discussing the authority of Scripture—repentance and remission of sin.

(Pieper, F (1953). Christian Dogmatics, Concordia Publishing, pp 137–138)

To say it very bluntly: Luther believed in the Bible because he believed in the Lord Christ. The theologians of late orthodoxy believed in the Lord Christ because they believed in the Bible. In Luther’s case the sola Scriptura was a consequence of the sola fide, whereas here the sola fide was a consequence of the sola Scriptura.

(Sasse, Herman (1950). On the doctrine De Scriptura Sacra (BLP 14), Concordia Publishing, pg 97)

Become a teaching church again

"Today the need of the hour for the Lutheran Church is to become a teaching church again. The success of Rome, of the sects, and of Communism is based substantially on the fact that what they teach, they teach unflaggingly. And our congregations hunger more than we know for teaching . Why don’t we give them the bread that they want?"
Sasse, Letter 42

Exegesis is like underwear

Exegesis is like underwear: your congregation wants to be able to assume it is there, but they don’t want you to show it to them.

Powell, Mark, 2009. What Do They Hear?: Bridging the Gap Between Pulpit and Pew, Abingdon Press, Kindle Edition, pg 9.

Helpful Luther resources

There is a nice summary of online Luther resources over at "Glosses from an Old Manse": http://acroamaticus.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/a-very-helpful-resource-for-luther.html

Bridge Builders — How adults become Christians

How Adults become Christians is the result of the work of Dave Bennett, National Director of Bridge Builders (A UK Evangelical organisation).

Lazy preachers

Luther wrote in the introduction to John Spangenberg's Postil in 1542 [quoted in Fred Meusner, Luther the Preacher, 40–41]:

Some pastors and preachers are lazy and no good. They do not pray; they do not study; they do not read; they do not search the Scripture ... as if there were no need to read the Bible for this purpose .... The call is: watch, study, attend to reading. In truth you cannot read too much in Scripture and what you read you cannot read too carefully, and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well, and what you understand well you cannot teach too well, and what you teach well you cannot live too well. .. the devil. .. the world ... [and] our flesh are raging and raving against us. Therefore dear sirs and brothers, pastors and preacher, pray, read, study, be diligent. .. this evil, shameful time is not the season for being lazy, for sleeping and snoring.

Surrender reason at the foot of the cross

“[A]nyone who has surrendered their reason at the foot of the cross will discover that Christ hands it back again to be used more appropriately and insightfully in the search for truth” (David Crump, Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture, Eerdmans, 2013)

Come to the pulpit as if "wooing a bride"

Walther encouraged his students to:

“make a vow to God … that you will not stand in your pulpits sad-faced, as if you were bidding men to come to a funeral, but like men that go wooing a bride or announcing a wedding” (p. 406).

(Walther, Carl F W, 1884–85. The proper distinction between law and gospel: 39 evening lectures, translated 1929 by William H T Dau, published 2000 by Concordia Publishing House, Saint Louis, MO.)

Book outline: What is narrative criticism? by Mark Allan Powell

Differences between literary and historical criticism:

1. Literary criticism focuses on the finished form of the text.
2. Literary criticism emphasises the unity of the text as a whole.
3. Literary criticism views the text as an end in itself.
4. Literary criticism is based on communication models of speech-act theory.

"Literary criticism is concerned with the question: Who is the reader? Rhetorical criticism is interested in the original readers to whom the work was first addressed (intended readers). Structuralism wants to define the responses of a competent reader who understands a work's codes. Narrative critics generally speak of an implied reader who is presupposed by the narrative itself.

Story and discourse: point of view, narration, symbolism and irony, narrative patterns (repetition, contrast, comparison, causation, climax, pivot, particularization/generalization, statements of purpose, preparation, summarization, interrogation, inclusio, interchange, chiasm, intercalation)

Events: order (story time vs discourse time is called anachronies), duration (summary, scene, stretch, ellipsis, pause), frequency (singular narration, repetitive narration, multiple-singular narration, iterative narration), causation (possibility, probability, contingency), conflict.

Characters: point-of-view, character traits, empathy/sympathy/antipathy.

Settings: spatial, temporal, social.

Benefits of narrative criticism:

1. Focuses on the text of Scripture itself.
2. Provides some insight into biblical texts for which historical backgrounds are uncertain.
3. Provides for checks and balances on traditional methods.
4. Tends to bring the scholars and non-professional Bible readers closer together.
5. Stands in a close relationship to the believing community.
6. Offers potential for bringing believing communities together.
7. Offers fresh interpretation of biblical material.
8. Unleashes the power of biblical stories for personal and social transformation.

Objections to narrative criticism:

1. Treats the Gospels as coherent narratives when they are actually collections of disparate material.
2. Imposes on ancient literature concepts drawn from the study of modern literature.
3. Seeks to interpret the Gospels through methods that were devised from the study of fiction.
4. Lacks objective criteria for the analysis of texts.
5. Rejects or ignores the historical witness of the Gospels.

How long does it take to prepare a sermon?

• "The question has always flummoxed me, because it is impossible to give a simple reply. Probably the best answer is 'your whole lifetime', because every sermon is, in a way, a distillation of everything one has learned hitherto; over the years. ... I think that beginners will need ten to twelve hours. 'Twelve hours' work on a sermon is a good general rule', said Bonhoeffer." (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, Eerdmans, 1982, pp 258)

Stott on sermon preparation

Stott's method for sermon preparation:

1. Choose your text. How? Liturgical (based on church season, lectionary), external factors (e.g. significant public event), pastoral reasons, and/or personal factors.
2. Meditate on it. Subconscious incubation, maturation, percolation. What does it mean? What does it say today?
3. Isolate the dominate thought. Find the main theme, concentrate on one theme (differentiates sermon from lecture).
4. Arrange your material to serve the dominant thought. Knock the material into shape so as to best serve the dominant thought. Many different ways of structuring a sermon: exposition, argument, faceting, categorizing, and analogy. Or ladder sermon ("takes one from point to point like the rungs of a ladder"), jewel sermon ("consists of turning one idea around as one might turn a jewel in his fingers allowing different facets to catch the light"), sky rocket sermon ("begins on the ground, rises to a height, the breaks into pieces and comes down to earth again").
5. Add the introduction and conclusion. Start with the body, then add intro and conclusion. A good introduction: arouses interest, and introduces the hearers to the theme. Conclusions are more difficult than introductions, more than mere recapitulation (stimulating people's memory, 'dinning it into their heads continually' (Luther)); it also involves personal application.
6. Write down and pray over your message. No fixed rule for writing out (each to their own), but a general consensus to do so.

(John Stott, Between Two Worlds, Eerdmans, 1982, pp 211-258)

Stott on sermon preparation

"There was a young American Presbyterian minister, whose besetting sin was not laziness, but conceit. He frequently boasted in public that all the time he needed to prepare his Sunday sermon was the few minutes it took him to walk to church from his manse next door. Perhaps you can guess what his elders did: they brought him a new manse five miles away!" (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, Eerdmans, 1982, pp 211)

Theology vs methodology

"The essential secret [to preaching] is not mastering certain techniques, but being mastered by certain convictions. In other words, theology is more important than methodology. ... To be sure, there are principles of preaching to be learned, and a practice to be developed, but it is easy to put too much confidence in these. Technique can only make us orators; if we want to be preachers, theology is what we need." (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, Eerdmans, 1982, pp 92)

Engage in conversation

"A preacher should be motivated to 'get up from his desk, leave behind interpretative reading, and go in search of real bodies to engage in conversation about the text'. Listening to the range of responses to a biblical text reveals that there are many ways of knowing, and these different ways will play a decisive role in how a sermon is received." Different ways of knowing: feeling, thinking, imagining, doing.
Multiple intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic. (Troeger and Everding, So that all might know, Abdingdon Press, 2008, pg3)

Preaching as conversation

If greater attention is to be given to the sound of the sermon by preachers and trainee preachers, then students will need to be alerted to the different 'languages' they are learning during theological study, and the particular purpose of each. Furthermore, students should be encouraged, in the great Reformed tradition, to speak in the vernacular to their audiences, or perhaps more appropriately, in a style sometimes termed 'high conversataion'. The goal is for 'natural, honest, enlivened speech'.

(Keith Weller ed, Please no more boring sermons, Acorn Press, 2007, pp 57)

Paul Scott Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory

"I assume that while preaching is a gift of the Holy Spirit, it nonetheless requires knowledge and skills that can be taught. ... Preaching need not be learned only by doing. ... The standard homiletical approach, at least until recently, has been to state a thesis. This homiletical or rhetorical theory dates back to a least two centuries before Christ [e.g. Cicero]. ... Such as statement helps to ensure unity in the final speech."

Grady Davis: The sermon was to be an idea that grows.

Fred Craddock: "Where a deductive sermon begins with its premise and then proves it, Craddick's inductive sermon tests several possibilities and narrows to a conclusion. "What is the text saying? In one sentence, and as simply as possible, state the message of the text"."

[Paul Scott Wilson's approach] "is to break the text down into many short complete sentence statements and concerns. Then they select one main statement from these. This is called the major concern of the text (i.e. the theme statement), not because it is only one possible but because it is the major one that the preacher chooses. ... Most important in [Wilson's] understanding is that the thesis sentence focus on God in one of the persons of the Trinity."

"[Wilson] affirms four key beliefs [concerning the authority of Scripture]: (1) God's authority in the Word, (2) the necessity of the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Word, (3) the authority of the church in affirming scripture as the book by which it measures and guides its life, (4) Christ's commandment that we preach the Gospel."

Theology of preaching:

1. Preaching as Event: God's word is an event of God's encounter. Threefold form: (a) the written word of God, (b) the preached word of God, (c) the revealed word of God. Modern responses to Barth: "Barth in some ways all by destroyed preaching in the name of of the Bible. His stress on the objective nature of the event of God's self-disclosure implied that preacher and contemporary experience have no role in preaching. For Barth, preaching is 'from above'."
2. Performative Word: Not just an event, but performative: it did what it said. e.g. "I promise", "I pronounce you husband and wife". Therefore "the effectiveness of preaching cannot rest in the number of people who hear it, or the a preacher's ability to perform it, but in God's ability to bring about what is spoken. See Isa 55:11.
3. Preaching as transformation: see Richard A Jensen, Lucy Rose, David Brown. Also called narrative/imaginative/existential preaching. "Sermons should be an experience that transforms the worshippers" (Rose). Criticism: sees the congregation as backsliders who need a radical change each week. Wilson uses the term to mean "what is effected through preaching, lives are transformed and confirmed to the image of Christ."
4. Preaching as poetic language and structure: a shift away from logic/arguments/points/illustrations to poetry/imagination/metaphor/story. Introduced by Grady Davis. "Davis believed that a mechanical approach to sermon form left much to be desired because content and form affected each other."

(Paul Scott Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory, Chalice Press, 2004)

Karl Barth on preaching

"Homiletical theory largely followed Augustine's lead until Karl Barth. ... Barth's homiletical starting point is God: 'Preaching is the Word of God which he himself has spoken'. God chooses to use human words but is never bound by human words. ... The preacher must not, however, become arrogant, for preaching depends always on God and is possible only by God's power. 'Revelation is a closed system in which God is the subject, the object, and the middle term'. In preaching, 'God alone must speak'. Preaching is not a forum for human thoughts, ideas, reflections, or the propagation of ideologies."

(Andre Resner, Preacher and the Cross, Eerdmans, 1999, pp58-59)

Dependant on God

"Augustine's ideal Christian orator is dependant upon God. God is the source of the preacher's "ability" to teach, delight, and persuade. One should both do all one can in interpretation and articulation, and should be expectant that God will bring the message God chooses. ... Preachers fret over how best to understand Scripture and then express it, and that is as it should be. But when is all said and done, Augustine urges the preacher to allow God to fulfill his promise to say and do what needs saying and doing. For Augustine, prayer is the most crucial aspect of the preacher's ministry."

(Andre Resner, Preacher and the Cross, Eerdmans, 1999, p52)

Augustine, eloquence, and appropriation of classical rhetoric

Augustine writes, "Therefore a certain eloquent man [Cicero] said, and said truly, that he who is eloquent should speak in such a way that he teaches, delights, and moves. Then he added, 'To teach is a necessity, to please is sweatness, to persuade is victory.'" It can be said that Augustine takes these classical rhetorical virtues of eloquence and "puts them to Christian use" (Doyle, "Augustine's Sermonic Method", Westminister Theological Journal, 39, 1976-77, 213).

(Andre Resner, Preacher and the Cross, Eerdmans, 1999, pp49-50)

Augustine on preaching

"There are two things on which all interpretation of Scripture depends: the mode of ascertaining the proper meaning, and the mode of making known the meaning when it is ascertained." (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapter 1, para 1).

"The author divides his work into two parts, one relating to the discovery, the other to the expression, of the true sense of Scripture. He shows that to discover the meaning we must attend both to things and to signs, as it is necessary to know what things we ought to teach to the Christian people, and also the signs of these things, that is, where the knowledge of these things is to be sought." (Preface to Augustine's On Christian Doctrine)

Incarnation is untheological

“That is what incarnation means,” writes Frederick Buechner. “It is untheological. It is unsophisticated. It is undignified. But according to Christianity, it is the way things are. All religions and philosophies that deny the reality or the significance of the material, the fleshly, the earthbound, are themselves denied.”

http://www.rzim.org/a-slice-of-infinity/the-world-we-know-2

Advent

Eugene Peterson writes, “Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.”(2) Waiting itself is, of course, a reminder that we are earthbound.

http://www.rzim.org/a-slice-of-infinity/the-world-we-know-2

Preparation for preaching

“I read myself full. I pray myself hot. I let myself go!”

http://blog.logos.com/2014/01/finding-your-voice-as-a-preacher-an-interview-with-greg-laurie

Rethinking Economic Theodicy

When a God who is supposed to be both powerful and good is involved, we have the problem of theodicy. This problem received its canonical formulation in David Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion: "Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?"

Besides human nature and ends, another thing banished from contemporary economic discussion is evil.

This combination of the centrality of a deformed concept of scarcity and the neglect of evil means contemporary economics has a very different view of suffering to that of Robert Malthus or Adam Smith. Suffering is both trivialized by the neglect of evil and made an insoluble problem by the deformed view of scarcity.

economics as a technical discipline can contribute to the formulation of adequate theodicies

For philosophers and theologians who favour "free will" theodicies, an account of such connections is an essential ingredient of a contemporary economic theodicy. For those who favour "best of possible worlds" theodicies, it is crucial to identify what if any economic phenomena are separable from the larger system.

we all need a richer understanding of economic suffering and evil, and a renewal of the discussion of economic theodicy

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/01/03/3920284.htm.

Hamann on metaphors

Hamann acknowledges that the formal work of metaphor mimics the primordial act of condescension as much as it proposes it. To say that God humbles himself for the sake of his creation is to use an analogy with the human world to understand something of the divine world, and the reason Hamann and others find it (or any Christological reading of kenosis) acceptable, despite its Catholic censure, is because it comes as close as possible to describing the level of otherwise unthinkable sacrifice which must attend any possibility of a God willfully dividing from a state of absolute fullness. And, once contracted, this image also helps to orient our (admittedly poetic) imagining of the ends for which such contraction was willfully enacted. Hamann takes it to be neither accident nor blithely poetic irony that when metaphors do their work, they succeed with the same symbolic action of condescension.

http://katieterezakis.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/is-theology-possible-after-hamann_final_1.pdf