CONCEPTUAL CONNECTIONS AND NARRATIVE DISPLACEMENTIN THE RUSH TOWARD RELEVANCE

We are clearly engaged in cultural wars, worship wars, and homiletics wars. What are the cultural and intellectual factors which have precipitated these post modem phenomena? In our brief trek we propose the paradigm shifts from (1) Classical communication theories of Aristotle to Bacon, (2) the Post Christendom model of communication; to (3) Post modem homiletics (also entail education and media prime time TV, e.g.. Jay Leno and David Letterman).

Four articles would be of particular interest for those interested in our post modem homiletic journey. Robert Stephen Reid, "Post modernism and the Function of the New Homiletics in Post Christendom congregations" Homiletics (Winter, 1995): 1-13); Robert Reid, David Fleer and Jeffrey Bullock, "Preaching as the Creation of An Experience"; John Stewart, "A Post Modem Look at Traditional Communication Postulates" Western Journal of Speech Communication (55: 1991); and the not so —"Rational Revolution of the New Homiletic" The Journal of Communication and Religion. (Vol. 18, no. l, March 1995): 1-9).

The Post Modem Homiletical paradigm did not arise full bloom from Athenie's head. In fact the homiletic paradigm derives from a number of radical shifts in the physical sciences. These are —The conservation of energy; the kinetic theory of gases; the second law of thermodynamics; the evolution of the earth's crust and of the fossils found therein; the stages of embryological development; the principles of domestic breeding; Quetelet's, Comte's, and Buckle's sociological generalizations; Taylor’s laws of development of primitive societies; Maine's theory of the passage from status to contract; the Malthusian law of population growth (which Darwin said suggested to him the idea of the struggle for survival). All of these confirm the legitimacy of the Philosophy of Science. The radical developments of Einstein precipitated the Bohr/Heisenberg "Indeterminacy Principle" and they continue to search for Einstein's "Unified Field Theory." The conflict within the post modem developments in Chaos Physics is fundamentally between micro and macro physics, i.e. the search for cosmic order. Einstein's contributions centered in his continuing search for this unified "cosmic order", i.e., this interpretation of the view of micro and macro dimensions of the universe. The implications of these developments will be made clear in the discussion concerning narrative homiletics because the developments of science are also narrative displacements.

In tracking trends to Post Modem Homiletics, we must keep in mind these three philosophical premises of the modem mind. These are (1) Epistemological Foundationalism; (2) Representational Expressive Theory of Language; and (3) Atomistic Reductionism.

Three pillars of the Post Modem Mind are (1) Holism in Epistemology; (2) the Relation of Meaning to "use" in the Philosophy of Language; and (3) the Presupposition of the Organic Panentheistic View of the Global Community in Ethics, Politics and Philosophy.

Willard V.O. Quine is perhaps the first post modem epistemologist for his explicit rejection of the foundationalist model of knowledge and replacing it with a holistic paradigm dependent account. His two articles regarding "Dogmas of Empiricism" (Philosophical Review LX (1951) have become landmarks in post modem epistemology. (Compare Quine's Holistic Epistemology

with Kuhn's paradigm within The Structure of Scientific Revolution (2nd ed. University of Chicago, 1970). The ultimate question in Holistic Epistemology is of legitimacy and criteriology and is communication across "the accepted theory" possible? If so, how? Why accept one theory rather than another? (See my papers, "New Hermeneutical Horizons in Logic, Epistemology and Language Communication" and "Philosophical and Psychological Horizons of Post Modem Hermeneutics"; also see Maurice Mandelbaum's "Epistemological Crisis, Dramatic Narrative and Philosophy of Science" in Monist. vol. 60,1977):453-472).

THE INFLUENCE OF THOMAS KUHN'S CONCEPT OF PARADIGMON POST MODERN HOMILETICS

A major contribution to the discussion of Post Modern Homiletics is Thomas Kuhn's Scientific Revolution, which provides a vigorous discussion of the contextual character of knowledge. Critical interaction with Kuhn's thesis is available in Gary Cutting's, Paradigms and Revolutions (University of Notre Dame Press, 1980); lan Hacking, ed. Science and Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 1981); Imre Lakatos and Aloan Musgrave, eds.. Criticism and The Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1970); and Allan Megill, "What Does The Term "Post Modem" Mean?" (Annals of Scholarship (6, 1989): 136, whole article).

Kuhn’s concept of paradigm is concerned with the contextual conditioning of scientific research. In his preface he acknowledges the influence of Alexandre Koyre', Etudes Galaleennes. 3 vols. (Paris: Henmann, 1939); Emile Meyerson, Identity and Reality (NY: Macmillan, 1930); Helene Metzger, Les doctrines Chimiques in France, du debut du XVII a la fin du XVIII siecle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France;) Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post Critical Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 1958); idem. Science, Faith, and Society (Chicago. 1964): idem. The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967); and Jean Piaget, The Child's Concept of Physical Causality (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1930).

There is a pluralism of responses to Kuhn's thesis. On the left of Kuhn, taking a more relativistic, even anarchist, position is Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1978); on the right of Kuhn, but endeavoring to take account of his insights, is Imre Lakatos, The Method of Scientific Research Progamme (Cambridge University Press, 1978). A significant extension of Kuhn in the direction of embedding scientific exploration in historical explanation is Alasdire Maclntyre, "Epistemological Crisis, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Science," in Paradigms and Revolutions, ed. Gary Gutting (University ofNotre Dame, 1980). The essence of the Kuhn, Popper, and Hanson debate is the denial that all empirical knowledge claims ultimately rest on the foundation of theory neutral observation statements.

One of the crucial results of Kuhn's influence has exposed various forms of relativism and pragmatism because they focus on the relativity of pieces of knowledge to a whole framework or conceptual system. This influence is present in Richard Rorty, Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979); see esp. Jack M. Meiland and Michael Krausz, eds., Relativism—Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame Press, 1982). These philosophies may be called relativistic because they do not see any supposed knowledge as foundational (see my paper "Demise of Foundationalism: From Rationalism to Relativism: What Ever Happened to True Truth?) This is a far cry from the foundational presuppositionalism of Van Til, Dooyeweerd,

2

et al. The Christian meta narrative asserts that it has knowledge from outside of the limitations of human finiteness. Biblically ordered Christians can never adopt a full fledged relativism. But we cannot ignore the radical revival of relativistic philosophy expressed in pluralistic multiculturalism. Non Christians can still have some valid insights about the implication of human finiteness.

FROM SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION TO PHILOSOPHICALHERMENEUTICAL AND HOMILETICAL REVOLUTIONS

The phenomenological/existential tradition in philosophical hermeneutics has long been interested in the conditioned character of human understanding. Every person understands against the background of assumptions and realities of human existence in history, existence as a person in society, existence and a person immersed in language as a pre and supra individual reality, and existence "unto death." Two major gurus are Heidegger and Gadamer (see Heidegger's, Time and Being and Gadamer's Truth and Method; Also, we would be amiss if we failed to mention the "hermeneutic of suspicion" practiced by people with interest in economic and political conditioning of ideologies and propaganda (see esp. Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest (Beacon Press, 1972), and Paul Recoeur, Interpretation Theory (Texas Christian University Press, 1976); idem. The Rule of Metaphor (University of Toronto Press, 1977).

THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE THESISCOMES AS AN INFLUENCE ON HOMILETICS

Another expression of the relativity of all human interpretative schemes is the Sociology of Knowledge which has analyzed the ways in which the formation and beliefs that a society counts as knowledge are passed along, maintained, legitimated and supplemented by social processes and institutes. The Sociology of Knowledge makes clear the great dependence that knowledge has on a social setting for its maintenance.

Kuhn's thesis might be understood an nothing more than the application of Sociology of Knowledge to the field of science (note attention to his influence on homiletics). Sociology of Knowledge is in fact interested in the social context for knowledge in any academic discipline including post modem hermeneutics and homiletics. It also has interest in the social contexts of the more informal and tacit knowledge of mass participants in religious institutions. Kuhn's thesis is similarly rooted in the general characteristics of the social context of all human knowledge.

The 20th century is not the origin of the Sociology of Knowledge but it received its formal inauguration with Karl Mannheim's, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to The Sociology of Knowledge. (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968); org. pub. 1929. Note the cultural relativism thesis asserted in 1934 by Ruth Benedict's cultural relativism thesis in Cultural Anthropology Works. 1934; a post modern expression of the Sociology of Knowledge thesis in Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on The Sociology of Knowledge (NY: Doubleday, 1966); Susan Hedman, Hermeneutics and The Sociology of Knowledge (Notre Dame University Press, 1983)

3

This debate is hotest in Anthropology and is most significant since Derek Freeman demolished Margaret Mead in the early 1980's. The heart of the post modem cultural debate is that different cultures have different rationalities.

KUHNIAN REVOLUTION ENTERS EPISTEMOLOGICAL,HERMENEUTICAL AND HOMILETICAL DEBATE

Kuhn is an honored guest in all post modem homiletical discussions. The implications of Contextualization for methods of biblical interpretation are legend (see my paper Contextualization in Context). Liberation Theology, Feminist Hermeneutics, Black Hermeneutics, African American Hermeneutics—all promote interest groups, (see esp. Vol. 7, Foundation of Contemporary Interpretation (Zondervan). What is lacking in these developments is the absence of discussion on Scientific Method in comparison with Theological Methods.

One notable exception is Torrance's work, Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (Oxford University Press, 1981) and Transformation and Positive Progress in The Frame of Knowledge (Eerdman, 1984).

In this later work, Torrance mentions Kuhn (p. 243) and notes the conditioning character of world views and the social background of knowledge, especially the philosophical dualism of modern Western thought (eg. pp. x-xiii). Torrance uses science and epistemology where convenient for analogically illustrating his Barthian theology.

A more notable exception is Ian G. Barbour, Myths. Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion (NY: Harper, 1974); and his Issues in Science and Religion (NY: Harper, 1971). Barbour's main weakness is his comparison of science and religion, not science and Christianity. Vern S. Poythress, Symphonic Theology: The Validity of Multiple Perspectives in Theology (Zondervan, 1987) examines the tension between single perspective versus multiple perspective approaches to this post modem debate. In Symphonic Theology Poythress interacts primarily not with Kuhn, but with the internal developments within theology as linguistics. The magisterial works of Pike or Nida in linguistics have demonstrated that there is a universal structure within world languages. Language is perhaps the most crucial weapon for confrontation with the epistemological-cultural relativism thesis available. Fused with M. Behe's, Darwin's Black Box, Christians are armed for constructive confrontation with post modern radical contextualization.

The influence of Kuhn's thesis will now enter the post modem homiletic debate (e.g. esp. James 0. Martin, "Towards a Post Modem Critical Paradigm," New Testament Studies. 33 (1987):370-385; Vern S. Poythress, Science and Hermeneutics: Implications of Scientific Method (Zondervan, 1988). Our brief trek into Kuhn's influence was necessary because the influence of his concept of paradigm is employed by Loren Mead in his work. The Once And Future Church: Reinventing the Congregation For A New Mission Frontier (WDC: Alban Institution, 1991). Mead calls post modem homiletics a "crack in the system of Christendom Paradigm." But the homiletical shifts from Apostolic paradigm, Christendom paradigm, medieval paradigm,

4

Renaissance paradigm. Enlightenment paradigm, Modern paradigm, and post modern paradigm are not parallels to radical scientific revolutions. Mead uses Kuhn's paradigm as a "promise." The interpreter becomes a translator "attempting to create" the conversion experience that Kuhn likens to a "gestahit switch." (Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolution (2nd d. University of Chicago Press, 1970): 23-24).One crucial outcome of Mead's paradigmatic shift is the demise of "universal theory," "paradigm," legitimization. Instead of no paradigm we have a pluralism of conflicting/contradictory paradigms which are all together equal in the universe of discourse. What rational foundation is available to select irrelevant versus fraudulent data in the universe of discourse? Such post modernism erases the difference between True Truth and error and between theory and nonsense, and this opens the door to Nihilism. "Since there is no True Truth, there is no error either and all beliefs are equal." (Robert Scholes, Protocols of Reading (Yale University Press, 1989):56).

For the sceptics to deny that they are endorsing Nihilism is a fatal, irrational enterprise. "The absence of truth is a positive, liberating activity in as much as it accepts complexity and complication." (David Hoy, "Splitting the Difference: Habermas' Critique of Derrida," Praxis International. 1989 8(4):442-464; also "Jacques Derrida" in The Return of Grand Theory in Human Sciences, ed. Skinner (Boston: Cambridge University Press).

Derrida contends that the abuse of any possible truth claims makes not for "Nihilism; rather it make totalitarianism impossible. But since totalitarianism is a fact, it is not impossible. This is, of course, not true. But if it were, what could be "wrong" with totalitarianism? This judgment would require a meta ethic, narrative which post modem epistemology cannot abide. Is it true that totalitarianism is wrong? If so, how and why? What is the legitimization ground for this "universal judgment?" If there is no "true truth" what could be the rational norm for its negation? Even the negation requires a true truth claim. "The secret of Theory is indeed that truth doesn't exist." (J. Baudraler, Social Text 15 (Fall}: 140-144: 1986}: 147; see my critique, "Terrorism of Truth: Truth and Theory in Post Modem Epistemology")

SEARCH FOR CRITICAL PARADIGM

As previously noted, there is extensive employment of dominant scientific paradigms and hermeneutical schemes currently in analysis by post modem homiletics. Scientific revolutions in physics, cosmology, biology, philosophy, theology, hermeneutics and homiletics together signify a radical shift from a Mechanistic (critical) to a Holistic (post critical) Paradigm. Albert Outler traces this radical shift in "Toward A Post Liberal Hermeneutic" Theology Today XLX (3, 1985): 281-91. The same radical shift relates to the homiletical revolution. Each of these areas of radical shift derives from "scientific paradigms" generated in Western culture generally, (see my Scientific Context of Post Modern Homiletics: Crisis, Narrative and Science).

With respect to the symbiotic change in post modern science, Ted Peters writes that "Post modernity is defined primarily as advocacy for holistic thinking over against the alleged fragmentation characteristic of the modem mind since Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton... the thirst for post modernity is the thirst for a renewed sense of the whole." (Peters, David Bohm, "Post Modernism and The Divine" Zygon 20 (1985):193)

5

The ultimate consequences of resurgent search for holistic thinking is expressed in the pantheism of Fritz Capra, The Turning Point: Science. Society and The Reading of Culture (NY: Simon/Schuster, 1982); (see my critical essay on Carl Sagen). In our fragmented world there must be Christian concern for pattern. Pattern is qualitative, and quantity does not determine pattern. (Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (NY: Dutton, 1979):58, chp 7 ….

… IV) Criteria of mental process, attempts to define mind systems) and according to Gregory Bateson, a holist biologist and theoretical physicist, David Bohn, there is a holistic implicated order underlying what they call the explicate order of fragmented things. Their proposed Hologram is a pantheistic monism. The current methodological ferment of this concern lies at the heart of transformational hermeneutical and homiletical concern as represented in feminist liberation and post Holocaust interpretation.

These post modem interpretive systems are transformational and heterarchical rather than hierarchical. Heterarchy has to do with ordering on comparable levels, (see esp. Peter Schwartz and James Ogiivy, The Emerging Paradigm: Changing Patterns of Thought and Belief (Menio Park:CA: SRI International 1979): 13). These paradigm-structures are used by Schwartz and Ogiivy surveying patterns throughout science, economics and religion (note 14). The physicist, Fritz Capra, the historian Morris Berman and the psychiatrist John R. Batessta, employ one or more of these Paradigms as heuristic aids in their interpretation of Holistic Metaphysics. The interpretative "root metaphors" have gone through revolutions from Vitalistic and Mechanistic to Holistic Paradigms. Only the Christian God as creator of the universe can enable us to escape from the resurgent pantheistic holistic monism. Vitalism is precritical, mechanistic is critical, and Holistic is post critical! A Paradigm shift occurs in periods of transformation through the emergence of anomalies in terms of the current paradigm. (Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution (2nd ed.. University of Chicago Press, 1970):52.

For example, the move from classical Newtonian to post modem physics, began in the 19th century in the field theory of James Cark Maxwell and in the development of non-Euclidian geometries, which stem from Cantor's theories of sets; Frege's definition of natural number;Russell's theory of logical types; Hiebert, Tarski, and Goedel's logical theories (Gaston Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit (Boston: Beacon, 1984): 19). Bachelard assigns importance to the development of non-Euclidean geometries. He believes that the dialectical progress of thought is more clear in geometry than in any other science (see my paper, "Changing Paradigms of Mathematics: From Eucledian Geometry to Goedel's Theorem").

Non-Euclidean geometries were first received as mathematical toys of pure mathematicians until Einstein used Riemannian geometry to construct his theory of relativity. This paradigm shift is even more evident in the rise of quantum theory (see my papers "Quantum Paradigm"; "Tao of History (Capra Pantheism)"; "Heisenberg's Indeterminacy Thesis"; "Demise of Transcendence: Race Towards Immanence, Resurgent Scientific Pantheism.")

Note the impact of these radical paradigm shifts from non-eschatological to eschatological biblical theologies, but the roots are already found in the 19th century (see Paul Minear,

6

"Christian Eschatology and Historical Methodology" in Neutestamentliche Studien fuer: also Jurgen Moltman, R. Bultmann, Theology of Hope (Berlin: A Toepelmann, 1954). The senses of space and time within the mechanistical paradigm moves to post Euclidian, post modem understanding of space and time and space-time, which allows new and more flexible ways of interpreting the time consciousness and the spatial metaphor in biblical texts and in personal experience (Karl Heim, Christian Faith and Natural Science (NY: Harper, 1953); Ian C. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (NY: Harper Torch, 1961) interprets transcendence in terms of spiritual dimensions); T.F. Torrance, Space. Time and Incarnation (Oxford: 1969); also Space. Time and Resurrection (Eerdman. 1976).

This represents a radical shift from Galileo, Descartes and Newton. Within the classical period of mechanical paradigm the scientific views of space, time, causality, ontology (life and death), dynamics (entropy), analysis, etc. all of the comprising parameters of the mechanics paradigm. Post modem science, hermeneutics, homiletics, etc., consider this paradigm to be only a value judgment and not a necessary description of historical reality.To simply name this epoch pre critical displays an inability to appreciate a system of interpretation of the world which shaped biblical interpretation and communication models for over one thousand years. Perhaps we should name the period Symbolic instead of negatively pre-critical. In classical Aristotelian communication theory the four-fold sense of Scripture was not an aberration existing in total isolation, but corresponded to Aristotle's four-fold causalism. (Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1964): note 11) This model searched for transcendent reality while the mechanical analysis sought causal and genetic origins (James Huizmga, The Waning of The Middle Ages (NY: Doubleday, 1954): 202,210).

The progressive disavowal of teleology/design was already strongly affirmed by Spinoza's Tractatus and Ethics I. Appendix in Apera (4 vols. Lund, 1914):68) By Kant's time teleology was in total disarray, and not until Michael Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box could an informed person accept Teleology, which is so essential to the biblical world view. Perhaps Behe's work is the most significant work written in the 20th century. It confronts a naturalistic evolutionary world view and suggests "order" which is essential for the origin of the universe. This recovering of teleological design is fundamental for the Christian world view.

Analysis in the Mechanical Paradigm is reductionistic. Knowledge is achieved by disassembling, taking apart, breaking up in order to discover the constituent element(s) of a given whole. It is atomistic in its aims. In a Christian world view paradigm parts are integrated by ideological design of the creator Designer. Behe's work makes this a rational claim once more!

In the 19th century, stratigraphic source analysis of the Bible following geological models was one way biblical scholars sought to address the formation of a set of questions about the origins and causes raised by the 17th century scientific revolution and its development. For a discussion of connecting patterns between geological and historical science are Stephen Toulman and James Goodfield, The Discovery of Time (University of Chicago Press, 1982):237; esp. see the work of Dr. Bumgartner of Los Alamos, NM research center is crucial for a defense of the Christian world view. see esp. his "Main Geological Aspects of The Flood Event"; computer modeling of Large Scale Techtonics associated with the Genesis Flood." He is the world's leading plate

7

techtonic specialist and affirms the accuracy of the Biblical geological account. The ultimate resolution of the contradiction between order, teleology and mechanical fragmentation of data is not to be found in Holism. The structural analysis of Steady State Structure or atomic reductionism is severely limited in the knowledge it is able to supply.

There is a vast difference between a live person and a cadaver or a cat chasing a mouse and dissecting both. Our chaos calls for new models of order which might come from biology instead of positivistic physics or geological stratigraphy. There must be fusion of space/time structure analysis if we are to constructively engage deterministic frames which made biological models so dangerous when applied to history and to social and political forms. But note that this evaluation entails a moral paradigm which is unavailable or irrational, i.e., non cognitive, on the foundation of reductionistic, materialistic naturalism. One of the results of the mechanic explanatory mode is radical individualism that cannot "rationally" escape solipsism. Holism has a long and influential history. Methodological holists, or collectivists, as some would prefer to be called, claim, rather that social phenomena maybe studied at their own autonomous, macroscopic level of analysis. Social "wholes", they say, not their human elements, are the true historical individuals. (Note this emphasis in Marxian socialized Communism) This issue obviously bears directly upon the way we are to conceive the relations between such social sciences as psychology, sociology and between these and historical inquiry. Holism involves us in wide-ranging metaphysical problems. Those of positivism, historicism and organism and have grave ethical and political implications as well.

May Brodbeck, in "Methodological Individuation: Definition and Reduction" expresses a common opinion when she writes: "Culturally, holism is intimately connected with hostility toward the liberal political individualism of Western tradition." This mind set has often encouraged laissez-faire in economics and anarchy in politics, the alleged natural consequences of adopting an "atomistic" view of social life. F.A. Hayek and K.R. Popper are well known champions of the Principle of Methodological Individualism as a bulwark against the supposed horrors of the "planned society", or at any rate against anything worse than piecemeal social engineering. From Thomas Hobbes to Maurice Mandelbaum, methodological holists, they would certainly repudiate "invisible powers" and "impersonal entities"; but political or ethical argument has, in any case, a dubious place in an examination of holism and individualism as methodological prescriptions for social and historical research. It is widely held that the principle of methodology is a correlate of the principle of mechanism in physics, which held triumphant savvy from the 17th to the 19th centuries. An especially prestigious example of the application of the mechanistic principle is the explanation of the solar system by reference to Newton's Laws and the positions, masses and moments of its component "individuals." Another example often cited, is the explanation of macro properties of a gas—its temperature for example as a resultant of the micro properties of its molecules. A classical illustration of the same explanatory procedure in social sciences is afforded by classical economics, which regard macro states of the market as resultants of the dispositions of consequence activities of individual producers and consumers, esp. ten crucial scientific developments which concern the power of the scientific method to generate new knowledge and produce explanatory power.

There are vast differences between the way particles in a mechanistic system are linked with what they explain and the way psychological facts about individuals are linked with social

8

events. The rival thesis of methodological holism is that explanation in history and social science may employ holistic societal laws or dispositions. Social dispositions are envisaged as being holistic not only in the sense of being macroscopic relative to individual behavior but as being irreducibly so. Holistic explanation leave little room for anonymous individuals. This is the epistemological problem of Internal and External Explanation. If an individual is changed the whole is changed. This is of course pantheistic Monism, Hegelian and post modem.

In our post modem maze few Holistics would argue directly from a corresponding ontological thesis, which would rest upon some such principle as a "whole is not equal to the sum of its parts."

Typical of objections to this thesis are Ernest Nagel's "observation" in The Structures of Science that wholes are recognized in physical science, too, apparently without presenting special problems for individualistic explanatory and Popper's jibe, in The Poverty of Historicism, that the metaphysical principle of Holism, although "trivially true," applies even to three apples on a plate. However, most methodological holists, e.g. Maurice Mandelbaum in "Societal Facts" prefer to argue that although social phenomena can be said to be ontologically dependent upon the actions and attitudes of individuals, the two are not simply identical. They point out, too, that their doctrine does not commit them to claiming that societies could exist without people, this being an absurdity eschewed even by full blooded ontological Holists like Hegel. (Note that Hegelian Holism is monistic pantheism.)

The usual response of the Holists to this line of argument is to ridicule the implied denial of "social conditioning" as if people were not born into social situations in the first place. The "real oddity" of methodological individualism, wrote Ernest Gellner in "Explanation in History," is that "it seems to preclude a priori the possibility of human dispositions being the dependent variable in an historical explanation—when in fact this is what they often are. (Ideas have consequences, especially The Great Books.) An associated peculiarity is that it precludes "the possibility of causes... being a complex fact which is not describable in terms of the characteristics of its constituent parts alone, which again seems often to be the case. "The social conditioning thesis" is referred to compendiously by "Holistic terms."

Alan Donagan, in The Later Philosophy of R. C. Collingwood. provides a version of the individualists' causal argument which on a conception of human action made familiar by Idealist Philosophers. The only way men's actions can be explained, Donagan maintains, is through their "thoughts"; it is not men's actual situations which explain what they do, but their conception of the situations. Although it may be necessary to refer to the actual situation in explaining a man's success. Our failure is translating his "intentions" into action. Unless we are to challenge the common assumption that the causal relation is transitive, however methodological Holists may well feel that such conditions, even if they are acceptable to themselves, do little to establish classical views of Holism. For to say that social causes require the mediation of individual thoughts and responses is not to establish the pattern as the only "moving forces in history. On the contrary to "cause" individuals to "cause" is still to "cause."

"Methodological individualism describes, predicts and controls social events and controls holistically, we still could properly claim to understand them without retaining them as a

9

collection of individual responses. Intelligible dispositions can be understood at the level of social wholes only on the assumption either of an immanent group mind (a la Hegel's geist) or of external historical providence, in other words, methodological Holism now would require ontological Holism. This phenomenon exposes the tension between God's providence and Hegel's pantheistic geist. (Note the demise of God's providence in the intellectual concept of these interpretative paradigms.)

Another basic epistemological claim is that whereas we can observe human individuals, we cannot similarly obtain knowledge of the macro features of social groups. Herein lies the post modem denial of meta narrative except via myth, which is purely arbitrary. But even if this claim is conceded, why does Myth solve the problem of relating individuals and collective wholes? Why and How does it resolve our dilemma? Would the Creator/Redeemer God also resolve this impasse? The entire post modem thesis of the Social Construction of Reality and that language, and logic are merely human social constructions to support a micro dimension of the universe with a private agenda. Where is the meta narrative to resolve a pluralism of linguistic-cultural context? Every cultural context has a narrative; but without Biblical Revelation where is the meta narrative?

Methological individualism has affinity with both Ontology and Epistemology. Its point of contact is-logic and semantics. As L.J. Goldstein stated it, in his "The Two Thesis of Methodological Individualism," individualism requires as a condition of this being meaningful, "that all of the concepts used in social science theory be exhaustively analyzable in terms of the interests, activities, violations and so forth of individual human beings." If this condition were met, the apparent Holism of explanations employing societal laws would be tolerable, because it would be illuminable "by translation." An example might be "the Jewish race is cohesive," if it is to be empirical, meaning must mean such things as "Jews usually marry Jews" is not a statement about anonymous individuals. This thesis is expressed by Max Weber, who insists that the only way to make the meaning of social terms precise is to define them individually as if such concepts appear Holistic only when they remain vague or undefined. All nouns - grammatical groups -appear to be Logically Holistic. As Mandelbaum has observed, the problem here is analogous to one which phenomenologists have paid great attention to in post modem theory of perception.

The full meaning of a material object statement, it is generally agreed, cannot be given by any finite set of sensation reports alone. We always need reference to "conditions of appearance," which are stated in the material object language. Attempts to translate societal statements into psychological terms founder on the similar need to specify the social condition under which an action must be performed in order for it to count as an exemplification. If translation of physical language to social conditions is not possible, then there would be no way of verifying societal statements. This has a serious epistemological result. Full translatibility between physical and societal language must not be related to psychological terms, with "psychological laws" as the "permissible kind of connecting generalization."

THREE RADICAL OBSCURITIES:THE DEBATE BETWEEN INDIVIDUALISM AND HOLISM

10

There are at least three obscurities in the debate between Individualism and Holism: (1) What is the sense of "explain" if individualistic methodology is the hermeneutical center? The conceptual claim is stated as an argument for explanation as though it were itself a theory of explanation.

Holist like Nagel and Brodbeck have contended that it would not, at any rate, achieve reduction in the sense most familiar to the philosophy of science. For the derivability of macro laws from micro laws, no matter what the field of inquiry, is at least partly an empirical matter. Even in such exemplary cases as the reduction of chemistry to physics, they have pointed out: composite laws, which specify the way individual behavior changes as groups increase in size, must be added to the ordinary laws of the micro disciplines and these, however self evident they often seem, have an empirical status. If laws of individual psychology are to be related "reductively" to laws of group behavior, empirical composition laws would similarly have to be found. The reduction could never be just a matter of definition, (see esp. May Broddeck, "Methological Individualism: Definition and Reduction" Philosophy of Science, vol. 25, no. 1 (1958):1-22; A.C. Danto, "Methodological Individualism and Methodological Socialism" Filosofia (vol. 13, no. 1, 1962):3-24; Maurice Mandelbaum, "Societal Facts," British Journal for The Philosophy of Science, vol. 8, no. 31 (1957): 211-224; Nagel, The Structure of Science (NY, 1961, pp. 336, 397, 536-546-Like Donogan he treats the problem of Holism in context of a broader discussion of Science; K. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London, 1957); J.W.H. Watkins, "Historical Explanatory in The Social Sciences" British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 8, no. 30, (1957): 104-117).The heart of the "Individualism" and "Holism" debate is the "translatability thesis." How does scientific explanation move from "individuals" to group-general Law Statements? Holism is a dubious scientific explanatory system and it is no less dubious for postmodern homiletics. Pluralistic horizons cannot rationally be fused by the Monist pantheism of Holism in either science or post modem communication theory, e.g.., preaching Christ in/for post modem audiences (see James P. Martin, "Towards a Post Modem Paradigm," New Testament Studies 33 1987):370-385, or for a post modem homiletical proposal of Holism as viable for preaching The Gospel to Seeker Friendly audiences. Also Susan J. Helman, Hermeneutics and The Sociology of Knowledge (Notre Dame Press, 1986); see my paper, "Quantum Mechanics: From Mach and Planck to The Copenhagen School").

Radical Individualism derives from a distortion of scientific positivism and its reductionism. The developments from Einstein to Heisenberg have falsified Positivism. We empirically only have to accept "individuals", not societal groups or "laws"—generalizations or abstraction from concrete data. We can never "experience" the "Laws of Physics" or "Holism." Radical individualism is irrational and solipsistic. Without "meta narrative" we can only experience a "private experience." How can we establish community of communication by irrational solipsism?

POST MODERN HOLISM ENTERS HOMILETICS

Fred Craddock's Overhearing The Gospel functions as an apologetic for his homiletical approach. Most post modem homileticians trace the birth of the New Homiletic to the publication in 1971 of Craddock's One Without Authority: Essays In Inductive Preaching. Here Craddock initiated a move away from the deductively propositional and pedagogical approach of

11

sermon preparation to a more inductive conception of the task. The purpose of preaching from this perspective "is to engage the hearer in the pursuit of an issue or an idea so that he [or she] will think his [or her] own thoughts and experience his [or her] own feeling in the presence of Christ and in the light of the Gospel." (One Without Authority, p. 157) The goal of such a sermon is to create an experience of "Word of God" in the listeners in order to effect a hearing of the Gospel. But Holism cannot be the source for either a normative Word of God or Gospel. Craddock's orientation toward listeners is further determined in his book Preaching where he describes the sermon as a communication event in which listeners are co-creators of the sermon experience (84-98). Sermons are to be designed to allow congregations to experience Christ, not imparting knowledge "for knowledge acquisition!" Therefore the Word of God has nothing to do with "true propositionalindicative statements" about Christ. This kind of sermon seeks to affect an experience by cultivating the surprise of the Gospel through the preacher's ability to embed that experience in the "local soil" of the world of the congregation . Craddock's Christians are surely Gnostic-virtual reality.

Craddock's method is based on a Kierkeggardian premise that "there is no lack of information in a Christian land, something else is lacking, and this is a something which one man cannot directly communicate to the other." (p. 9) The essence of what is new is the hermeneutical concern for the audience as listeners and for what they can experience. Instead of arriving at pre-determined truths, [Bible Creeds, etc.] Craddock proposes a model in which the preacher's own acts of coming to insight provides a pattern for a process rather than the blueprint for an answer. The nature of the scientific model of knowledge acquisition contains both process and blueprint!! This paradigm shift toward the understanding as an event, implicit in Craddock's concern for process and the experience of the listener, is made explicit in Buttrick's homiletics.

DAVID BUTTRICK'S HOLISTIC MODEL OF PREACHING

This move away from argument to what the audience effectively experiences is clearly the center of David Buttrick's Homiletics as well as his other work. Moves and Structures shifts the discussion of thesis and argument style to ask: (1) How ideas form a communal consciousness of an audience [the received view in science], and (2) What difference considering a question like this should make in the structuring of sermons (pp. 28 and 276-279). Those of us who have heard Buttrick preach will come across not believing in the power of his communication model. One could just as well have an irrational experience of any guru or avatar or any gnostic entity, i.e. virtual reality.

Instead of developing an argument, Buttrick wants the preacher to focus on whether she or he has shaped the sermon in a way that can bring about "communal convictional" understanding. Just what the specific visible content of his communal conviction is by no means is self evident. This procedure is precisely what Madison Avenue uses to sell candy and ice cream. Our most crucial post modem question is — "Can you market Jesus?" To deny this possibility is also to accept George Bama's suggestions of how to market Jesus. Because people interpret the world in consciousness-metaphorically and in self consciousness metaphorically, Buttrick concludes that a sermon should be characterized by this same rhetorical process of imaging. After all Metaphor is itself an act of consciousness. He maintains that because "faith" (convictional understanding) is formed with Nexus of image, symbol, metaphor, and ritual"... therefore, the language of

12

preaching [should] essentially [be] metaphorical as well." (125) In this sense, Buttrick wants to remove the persuasive sermon from the traditional argument mode without denying that an argument is being made. Buttrick attempts to reconceive symbolical reflective preaching without its classical ratio-rational baggage. Buttrick's design is to construct a sermon that affects an experience for an audience. Fine, but what is the "content" of this experience? If not content, then what is the "concrete relationship" it is supposed to produce?

This rhetorical concern for what happens with listener arid the question of how it is that the audience participates in the event of preaching is central to that which is new in the New Homiletics of Craddock and Buttrick to show that this experience is of the Christ of The Scriptures. If not Him, then only a gnostic Jesus is evident. Craddock's inductive approach "firmly locates the authorizing impetus for the moment of insight in the preacher's hermeneutical experience with the biblical text, whatever this is? This is pure gnosticism. The inductive approach is to produce dialogical re-experience as an "event" by the audience. How is this procedure to produce a committed community? Committed to what or whom? Craddock turns away from both pedagogy and congregation approbation as the goals of preaching, instead of arriving at predetermined truth, i.e., not a blue print. How is this receiving audience to communicate their new experience to others? Craddock's concern for process and the experience of the listener is made explicit in Buttrick's homiletics.

Buttrick reinterprets the persuasive sermon without denying that an argument is being made. "Naming" and "story" (pp. 16-20) seeks symbolical reflective preaching without its classical rationalist baggage. Perhaps Buttrick's approach can be useful for those already within communal consciousness but one is hard put to locate power to convict, convert, i.e.. Generation X, to positive decision of "Belief in Christ as Lord." His procedure of liberating the preaching event from "the tyranny of a textual historicism." Thus, for Buttrick; "Preaching is the Word of God" because it functions with God's liberating purpose and not necessarily because it is per se biblical (1994, p. 31). Buttrick's theology is exposed in his claim that if the preaching is effective, it is God's word; if it is not effective, it is not God's word. This is pure Barthian theology.

Tom Long (The Witness of Preaching (Westminster. 1989); and How Shall They Hear?. The Listener in Contemporary Preaching (Studies in Honor of Fred B. Craddock (Abingdon, 167-188), emphatically critiques Buttrick's "theoretical move", the notion of unified communal consciousness; Barth's concept of The Word of God runs deep in our post modem debate. Long's preacher is one who "becomes a witness to what has been seen and heard through the scripture and the preacher's authority grows out of this seeing and hearing." (1989, p. 44) The productive attention to the effective experiences represents that which we find to be New in the New Homiletics. Both Craddock and Buttrick acknowledge this emphasis in black preaching (F. Craddock, Preaching (Abingdon, 1985, p. 27) Black preaching usually speaks in and for the community rather than to it (note esp. Henry Mitchell, Celebrating and Experience in Preaching (Abingdon. 1990).

Mitchell writes, "The term experimental encounter is used to denote a homiletical plan in which the aim is to offer direct or vicarious encounters with experiences of truths already certified as biblical, coherent and relevant (1990, p. 36). In this mode of preaching the goal is not simply to

13

substitute story (or stories) for points. Instead, the preacher attempts to provide a vicarious reinterpretation of the biblical story instantiated in the lived experience of the Church members and fashions that re-emplotted story in such a way as to arrive at a final celebrative pronouncement of hope and possibility. But if there is no authoritative Word to preach, how and why should anyone positively participate by conviction in the message of the Gospel? Other than some gnostic appeal to the work of the spirit.

THE NARRATIVE BRIDGE TO EXPERIENCE

It is no secret that the soul of narrative and story has been privileged in the New Homiletics. Narrative homiletics is always in the "first person." Since narrative is a quality implicit, or at least fundamental to human existence, homileticians such as Eugene Lowry, have argued that preachers would do well to structure sermons more by the theory of arrangement in Aristotle's Poetics than the theory of argument in The Rhetoric. The history of this reference is that the Poetics is concerned with aesthetic experience and The Rhetoric is concerned with communicating "True Truth" and getting the audience to accept the message.

As a first class jazz pianist, Lowry suggests "that sermons should trade in the resolution of disequilibrium and the pursuit of complicating riffs rather than the linear logic of argument." (The Narrative Quality of Experience As A Bridge to Preaching. Journeys toward Narrative Preaching, W.B. Robinson, ed.. (NY: Pilgrim Press, 1990):67-84). Lowry is interested in how to employ an experience instead of how to make an argument. He models this approach on the narrative of Jesus, whose manner of communicating invariably seemed to upset comfortable notions of religious responsibility and productivity only to reset the table according to a surprising gospel pattern (The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon As Narrative Art Form (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980):58-61). In Doing Time In The Pulpit. Lowry argues that propositionaltruth is reductionistic by design, while narrative truth, like a poem, is never reducible to just one thing but can be filled with ambiguity and complexity. This is the new Theory of Holism of post modem homiletics. Propositional sermons order ideas spatially, while imaging a sermon orders experience temporally.

"Ideas," Lowry maintains, "seldom have the power to supplant time; a story seldom fails." (Doing Time. Abingdon, 1985): 13). The only way to communicate meaning, he maintains, is to do time in the pulpit. Lucy Rose locates approaches to the process of sermon invention on a continuum of logic strategies; rational logics at one end and narrative strategies on the other (The Perimeters of Narrative Preaching: Journey Toward Narrative Preaching. W.B. Robinson, ed, (Pilgrim Press, p. 24-29); see especially Gary Comstock's article, "Everything Depends On the Type of the Concepts That the Interpretation Is Made to Convey": Modern Theology 5:3 April, 1989). Authors as influential as Hans Frei, Paul Ricoeur and Stanley Hauerwas have so valorized communal practices and sacred stories that recent Christian thought has usefully been called Narrative Theology. These scholars continue to struggle with what Gadamer calls the central problem of hermeneutics, the problem of appropriation [Truth and Method. NY:Seabury, 1975, p. 274]. That is, how should we understand the act of interpreting and applying scriptures? Should Christians understand their sacred stories as historical accounts, as myths, or as metaphors of communal identity? Should we submit the text to our critical methods of interpretation making it squirm beneath our probes? Or ought it be allowed to question us,

14

putting readers under the microscope? These are the problems of appropriation, and the answer one gives to them is closely tied to one's prior construal of the Bible's religious function. A pluralism of answers have been given to these questions and can be characterized as pre critical, liberal and neo orthodox.

Before the 18th century, Christians read the Bible as making unqualified, literal claims about the world [Hans Frei, The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative: A Study in 18th and 19th Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1974). The Christian's task in interpreting the story was to learn to view history as it was recounted in the text, and to come to accept as true the various doctrines arising out of it. With the advent of historical critical textual criticism, this response became increasingly untenable. It seemed fantastic to many who had read David Hume's attack on miraculous narratives. These theoretical discoveries had the practical effect of undermining the significance of the Bible for the life of piety. 19th and 20th century scholarship was not much concerned with this effect; the Gospel message needed demythologizing, and whatever methods could help in the chore were readily employed. Shorn of its mythological trappings, the Bible, it was hoped, could give rise to a scientifically defensible Christianity. The Kernel-and-Husk hermeneutics behind this quest tended to focus on Jesus' self consciousness, his devotion to God and to man. Once this Kernel had been identified, it was assessed by the principles and methods of psychology, sociology, and critical history. These disciplines became the courts in which the theological claims of the Bible were tried. Never were the claims of humanists and scientists subject to the claims of the book; the book was subject to them. David Tracy attempts to recover the vitality of Biblical narratives by beginning less than the exegesis of the text than with a general phenomenological analysis—inspired in part by the work oft French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, of the post modem human condition. Following in the footsteps of historians of religion, Rudolph Otto and Mircea Eliade, Tracy finds that religious dimensions of life is found in ultimacy, the experience of encountering the limits of our capacities. Starting from this analysis of religiosity as one's total response to what is experienced as ultimate, Tracy's hermeneutic applies this analysis to Christian experience. Like Hindu or Jewish experience, Christian experience appears as a particular instantiation of a more universal type; the Christian encountering Christ while reading the New Testament adopts a limited mode of being in the world. (David Tracy's Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (NY: Seabury, 1978, pp. 218-223).

The distinguishing feature of narrative preaching is found in the inventional strategy that controls the approach to the task and whether that strategy draws people into an experience, into a process of thinking her own thoughts, or in one way or another supplies the answers/propositions to which they should subscribe.

Paul Ricoeur's extensive reflection in the third volume of Time and Narrative concludes that personal identity is only intelligible in the temporal realm. Narrative exercises the imagination more than the mind or will. Post Modem Homiletics is trying to reach the will through imagination over argument-reason. Argument has this privileging of the individuals experience of narrative and imagination over rational argument has the effect of reversing Bacon's classical reformulation of the function of rhetoric in the advancement of learning. "The duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply imagination to reason for the betterance to prove moving of the will." (Ricoeur, Life: A Story in Search of a Narrative: A Ricoeur Reader (University of Toronto, 629).

15

The intention of post modem homiletics is hierarchical to suggest the dramatic difference between the new homiletics' approach to the communicative task and those approaches still rooted in Enlightenment reasoning. "This privileging of the individual's experience of narrative and imagination over rational argument is conceptually the essence of what is the enlarging paradigm shift in homiletic theory." (Robert Reid, Jeffrey Bullock and David Fleer, "Preaching as the Creation of An Experience," The Journal of Communication and Religion, p. 7, March 1995:1-9); my paper "Heidegger's Critique of Positivism;" and Joel C. Weinscheimer, Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method (Yale University Press, 1985).

POST MODERN HOMILETICS ARE ESPOUSEDBY POST EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY

Post modem homiletics become crystal clear in post conservative theology and The Evangelical Left (see esp. Millard J. Erickson (Baker, 1997) Erickson locates one of the most crucial challenges to Classical Christianity from friends inside the intellectual citadel. The consul debate centers on how we are to respond to the influence of The Enlightenment. As long ago as the work of Bernard Ramm the structures of Classical Christianity began to crumble (e.g.. The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Eerdman, 1955); his Protestant Biblical Interpretation supposed a propositional view of revelation. By his After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelical Theology (Harper, 1983), his major preoccupation became how we are to relate The Enlightenment (18th century) to the new influences of radical secularization of European culture. Upon the heels of scientific successes came Biblical Criticism which claimed that all historical claims must stand under the knife of historical criticism and literary criticism. The new secularistic naturalism made devastating attacks on the very foundations of classical Christianity. Kant's First Critique attacked the very possibility of having rational or theoretical knowledge of any object which transcends sensory experience. Albrecht Ritschl, Friedrick Schleiermacher, et al. accepted Kant's critique of transcendence and crippled with the scientific advances—dark days hovered over the Christian citadel. Ramm ultimately accepted Barth's dubious response to the scientific revolution and its implication for the Christian faith. Ramm rejects all forms of response to Enlightenment influences from the classsical liberal scholarship.Another post-evangelical scholar is Clark Pinnock. In his book. Tracking The Maze: Finding Our Way Through Modem Theology From A Evangelical Perspective (Harper. 1990 ). Pinnock's analysis centers on relating the core of the Christian message to the Post Modem world. His response seeks to strike a balance between text and context (ibid., pp. 11-14). Pinnock lists six characteristics of post conservative evangelicals (ibid 67-68). Only his sixth characteristic will be mentioned here: "... an openness to annihilation rather than hell as endless suffering of the lost." Pinnock describes the thought of three precursors of the modernist movement, Descartes, Locke, and Hume. He notes the reaction to modernism by Kierkeggard, Bultmann, Barth, Brunner and the death of God theology.

Stanley Grenz in some ways is more radical than Pinnock and Ramm. In his work, Revising Evangelical History, he calls for a new approach of doing theology and its implications for homiletics. Grenz defines post modem evangelicalism in light of three historical waves: (1) The Reformation, (2) Puritan and Pietism, and (3) Post Fundamentalism. Harold J. Ockenga pioneered the 'new evangelicalism' as a result of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. This

16

new emphasis was more inclined to engagement of the world and to dialogue with those who were non evangelical in their theology. Grenz says, "The ethos of evangelicalism in any generation and in any expression ... is an experiential piety cradled in a theology." (Revising Evangelical Theology, p. 35)

Like Pinnock, Grenz is critical of the propositional approach to revelation and theology. This stance represents resurgent gnostic influence and was earlier expressed by liberals and neo orthodox theologians. This represents radical contextualization of propositional truth. Grenz's stance proposes a narrative approach of God's working within history. This means that theology can be done from within the faith community. This post modem position dominates much homiletic literature, e.g.. David Buttrick, et al. This raises at least two fundamental issues; (1) What is the origin of the faith community? This entails that faith is non-rational in origin. How can this Kierkeggardian leap of faith escape Freudian criticism? (2) The "faith community" can have no evangelistic mandate because "all are in the faith community." What/how are we responding to contradictory faith communities? Surely the scriptural revelation is word/language oriented! If there is reason for participating in a given "faith community" then the Christian faith community is the "only one" who has no reason(s) for commitment to a specific faith community, rather than a pluralism of contradictory communities. Grenz declares "Theology in contrast is the believing community's intellectual reflection on faith." (ibid., p. 81) "A revisioned evangelical theology seeks to reflect on faith." (ibid., p. 85) Here Roger Olson observes that Grenz is explicitly agreeing with post liberal George Lindbeck's definition of doctrine (George . Ludbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Post Liberal Age (Westminster, 1984). Classical evangelicalism has claimed to limit this [theology] to one source, the Bible. Grenz again describes his approval and attitude toward it. "Evangelical theologians ought to move away from conceiving their faith as merely to discover divinely revealed truth understood as the single doctrinal system purportedly laid within the pages of Scripture and waiting to be categorized and systematized." (ibid., p. 88) Grenz proposed three sources of theology: (1) The Bible; (2) The Theological heritage of the Church; (3) Post Modem Culture.

With very little critical preparations one can discern that these three authoritative norms are often mutually exclusive within their "faith communities." This Hegelian dialectical movement should be little comfort to witnessing Christians in our post modem culture. To be relevant, the Church must fashion its message in terms of post modem culture, but to be faithful to the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, syncretism is not an option. The Church has always done its theology in a particular historical-cultural setting, as when Abraham lived in a Babylonian cultural context, Moses lived in an Egyptian context, Israel repeatedly lived in cultural contexts in which she responded with apostate syncretism, Jesus lived and died in a Rabbinic/Hellenistic cultural context, Paul encountered a mutually exclusive world view at Mars Hill (Acts 17); Romans 1.17,1 Cor., 1.10ff ; the patristic church employed Greek metaphysical categories to express the doctrine of the incarnation, Anselm replaced the ransom theory of the atonement with the satisfaction theory in a feudalistic society. Renaissance period recovered classical pagan Greek thought forms; Reformation emphasized Sola Scriptura; the modem period thought they should make the faith relevant by succumbing to the assured results of Newtonian physics; soon, the Darwinian, then Freudian, influence entered the arena. The 20th century revolutions of Einstein, Plank, Heisenberg, et al. brought the house of Positivism to destruction. Biblical criticism, Hermeneutical revolution. Revisionist history and the Anti science movements are

17

crucial results of post modem epistemological/hermeneutical revolutions. Vital influences in the 19th century were Historicism and Positivism. How much accommodation is too much? How is this question to be adjudicated except by a meta narrative norm, which is totally rejected by those within these shaping influences. Grenz has imbibed on the role of post modem culture in reshaping new evangelical theology. Cultural syncretism is a much greater challenge to classical Christianity than liberalism (Grenz, Revisioning. pp. 107,108). Through these influences there has entered radical emphasis on story narrative and biography in post modem homiletics.

A standard message of post modem interpretation on Evangelicalism is that Christian beliefs are not so many propositions to be catalogued or juggled like truth functions in a computer, but are strong convictions which give shape to actual lives in actual communities." (James McClendon, Biography as Theology, p. 22). How can we formulate a portrait of Jesus within the hermeneutical science? What does it mean that we cannot formulate a portrait of Jesus but we can learn what his character was (McClendon, Biography, p. 169). The heart of our homiletical debate is, what is the nature of meta theological discourse? What paradigm is being followed when one discusses paradigms and paradigm shifts? Speech act theory and religious language discussion falters; or fails to tell us what type of Speech Acts is involved in discussion of Speech Act Theory (James W. McClendon, Jr and James M. Smith, Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism (Philadelphia: Trinity, 1994):47-79).

Narrative homiletics without discussion of the foundations of the discussion is fruitless. The Old Testament is ca. 57% in narrative form; the New Testament is ca. 56-62% narrative forms. But the Scriptures have a meta narrative which I propose is Promise Theology!! It is not enough to acknowledge that the Scriptures are historically conditioned. This judgment also applies to the post modern judges of Classical Christianity! Our challenge is to clarify our own presuppositions and be able to critically compare them with post modern presuppositions. Classical Christianity cannot imbibe on a functional conception of truth that is so often assumed derives ultimately from pragmatism which is a blood relative of Darwinian naturalistic evolution. There is also considerable indebtedness to the Existentialist view of Subjective Truth, which was fathered by Kierkeggard. No selective blending of Pragmatism and Existentialism will prove positive presuppositions for any constructive discussion within evangelicalism or anything else. Pinnock's contrast of propositional and narrative theology very closely follows that of Terrence Tilley, Story Theology (Wilmington, DE); Michael Glazier, 1985):esp. 5-16). All major neo-evangelical gurus are critical of the propositional approach to revelation, theology and homiletics.Two very important recent books perusing the challenge of post modern homiletics are Keeping Life in Perspective: Sharpening Your Sense of What's Important by Jim Henry with Marilyn Jeffcoat (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), 208 pp., and Moral Earthquakes and Secret Faults: Protecting Yourself from Minor Moral Lapses that Lead to Major Disaster by O.S. Hawkins (Broadman/Holman, 1996), 1992. In contrast to a book of "how to" advice, Richard L. Eslinger offers a book of "what not to" counsel! "A word of caution: Eslinger's perspective is that of the "new homiletic," an approach shaped by Fred Craddock and David Buttrick who reject the more propositional, "rationalistic" homiletical approach of previous generations, and substitutes a more inductive, narrative mode. The "new homiletic" has assumed a virtual canonical status in main line homiletics, and has made a substantial influence on many evangelicals." (Pitfalls in Preaching by R.L. Eslinger (Eerdmans, '96) In contrast to the post

18

modem influence see the journal. Narrative Preaching, Truth for Today, Searcy, AR, esp. Feb. 1997.

This development represents resurgent Gnostic, Monistic pantheism influence of the Romantic emphasis on "imagination" over against the priority of "Reason." But surely it requires Reason to critique the situation and adjudge that imagination "should" have priority! What is the reason for us or anyone else believing that "Imagination" should have priority over "Reason?"

BUYERS BEWARE!!!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Bacon, [Excerpts from] The Advancement of Learning the Traditional: Readings from the Classical Times to The Present (Bedford Books, 1990).

David Buttrick, Homiletics: Moves and Structure (Fortress Press, 1987). ________. A Captive Voice: The Liberation of Preaching (Westminster Press, 1994).Fred Craddock, As One Without Authority: Essays on Inductive Preaching (Abingdon, 1971).________. Overhearing The Gospel: Preaching and Teaching The Faith To Persons Who Have

Heard It All Before {Abingdon. 1978)._______. Preaching (Abingdon. 1985).R. Eslinger, A New Hearing: Living Options in Homiletical Method (1980).S. Fish, Is There A Text In This House? (Abingdon, 1987).H.G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (2nd revised edition) NJ: Crossroad, 1991).E. Lowry, The Homiletic Plot: The Sermon As Narrative Art Form (John Knox Press, 1980).________. Doing Time In The Pulpit: Relationship Between Narrative and Preaching

(Abingdon, 1985.M. Heidegger, Truth and Method (Yale, 1985).Mitchell, Black Preaching: The Recovery of A Powerful Art (NY: Harper & Row, 1979)Strauss, James, "Heidegger's Critique of Positivism"

James D. Strauss

19