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THE PREACHER, THE TEXT, AND CERTAIN DOGMAS
By Robert W. Jenson*
A preacher's advance situation is easy to
descrive, On some not very distant day, | must
tae something to say—currently, about 20
ninutes! worth, Today, | must find what then to
siy by reading a piece of the Bible. But how does
that work? In some sense, | am to say the same
thing as the text says. But in what sense of “the
sae thing"?
{As | write this, the “I” is not merely literary. I have
tobe thinking of Sunday at Trinity, East Berlin, Pa.,
where | am currently vicepastor, and of my text, |
Samuel 31-10, the “Call of Samuel.” The following
qarentheses will not report the whole of my reflec-
ton on text or sermon, only some relevant bits.)
The dogmatic history of the church may ap-
smopriately be understood as a sustained effort to
ind the justdemanded hermeneutic rules, Two
haveso far been defined. | will here argue the truth
sineither, But assume and develop them. The first
tue is stated by the paired dogmas of Nicaea and
Clalcedon, the second by the Reformation’s defini-
ton of God's word as “law and gospel.”
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The councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon
stipulated the matter of right preaching. The creed
"Gatysburg Seminary
of Nicaea says that God is not God apart from the
Son, The decrees of Chalcedon say that the Son and
the human person Jesus are without qualification
the same one. We can pick up this rule from either
end. If we assume the occurrence of proclamation,
of ultimate address in God's name, these dogmas
stipulate that there can be no true such address
that is not somehow about the human person Jesus.
If, on the other hand, we assume Christianity, the
occurrence of vital discourse about Jesus, these
dogmas stipulate that for discourse in fact to be
true to the person by that name, it must be pro-
clamation, eschatological address; speech only in
the name of morality or religion or health, not in
the name of God, cannot be true to Jesus
A
So, picking up the rule from the one end, all right
preaching is about the human person Jesus. What
then when the text apparently is not? Most New
Testament texts are plainly about Jesus; a few are
not. A few Old Testament texts are plainly mes-
sianic, which if Jesus is indeed the Messiah makes
them be about him; but most are not. (Including |
Samuel 3:1-10.) Here a variety of positions have
been taken through the history of the church
The ancient church combined two expedients.
One was the concept of the “Logos asarkos” (“unin-
carnate Logos”), of the second hypostasis of theTrinity before he is Jesus. The “Logos” is God as his
own revealer, as both agent and content of all the
Bible—and of whatever other revelation there may
be. Since the Logos “asarkos” is not yet Jesus, he
can be the speaker and content of divine revelation
that does not yet have Jesus as its literal object; yet
since he is eternally determined to become Jesus,
all revelation can rightly be interpreted
christologically, once this determination is itself
revealed by the incarnate Logos.
Such interpretation is of course attempted
penetration to a meaning “deeper” than the literal
sense of the texts, a meaning hidden in the inten-
tion of the Logos. The legitimacy and technique of
such interpretation are given by the second expe-
dient: the concept of typological exegesis. The
typological question is: What would the Logos have
said, e.g. to and through Abraham, had the
historical situation been ripe for the Logos’ inner-
most intention, ie. for Jesus?
‘Thus the ancient church was able to assert that
all biblical texts are in fact, at least typologically,
about Jesus. (The ancient preachers would surely
have made the young Samuel in the sanctuary at
Shilo, and his call to be a prophet, a type of Jesus’
calling or even of his youthful visit to the Temple.
Indeed, one supposes that reminiscence of such in-
terpretation must be the reason the lectionary com-
mittees appointed this text here, for Epiphany II.) So
the old preachers could abide by the ecumenically-
ordained tule: right preaching “says the same
thing’ as the text partly in that it is about the same
object as the text, the person Jesus, and so can be
guided by the text in its effort to speak correctly of
this object
The ecumenical stipulation of sermonic content,
has been sabotaged in the subsequent history of
the western church, by the collapse of the ancient
expedients for maintaining it. Our western church
father, Augustine, so altered the orginal doctrine of
Trinity as to eliminate any essential relation of the
Logos to Jesus; only after and in contingent conse-
quence of the Incamation is the Logos related to
Jesus. Augustine created the pattern we take as ob-
vious: first there was the Logos, a purely
metaphysical entity; then he became Jesus in
Tesponse to the emergency of sin. With that,
Augustine destroyed the dogmatic basis of
typological exegesis; and through the middle ages
typological exegesis in fact gradually lost
theological validity. Already Aquinas stated the
principle that Luther would so insist upon: only the
“Witeral” sense of a text has more than illustrative
value
The abandonment of typological exegesis is
doubtless in itself a gain, Since we have no in-
dependent access to the heart of the Logos, there is
no control on what the typological exegete thinks
he “hears the text saying.” But what are we todo
instead? What we in fact have done has been most
ly disastrous
To maintain the hermeneutic rule of Nicaea ad
Chalcedon without typology, one would hae
roundly to assert that all biblical texts are inthe
literal sense about Jesus. Most of the church kas
not managed such daring. Then only three moves
remain. The first: preach only from New Testament
and plainly messianic texts, abandoning mos o
the—still allegedly inspired!—Bible to purely
historical interest. (But I don’t want to preach on
the Gospel for Epiphany II!) The second: give wp
the founding dogmas of the ecumenical church
which insist that right preaching is always about
Jesus somehow, and with apparently nor
christological texts preach about whatever they ae
about. This move is regularly covered by thease
of “progressive revelation” and by praise of the
ble’s theological diversity. It is the classic Calvinist
move, biblicistically maintaining the revelatoy
authority of the canonical text, whatever its various
pieces may turn out to be about, The third: giveup
the demand for an identity between what
preaching is about and what the text is about
Where the second move is once made, it o
course is no longer possible absolutely to insston
christological content in preaching, not even fia
ly when preaching on New Testament texts. When
the third move is once made, it is no longer genete
ly possible to insist on identity of the texts objec
and the sermon’s object, even when this would te
possible. In general practice, through the mide
ages to the present, all three moves are made at
once, to be safe
Thus the preaching of the church has for cn
turies been conceptually defenseless against tee
temptations, one for each of the above moves. The
first: flight from the rich concreteness of actual lie
and of corresponding eschatological hope, mair
tained also for the New Testament church mos
by the necessity of preaching on the Old Teste
ment. The second: christological faithlessness
Praise the variety of Scripture as we may, the
choice faced by Nicaea is still peremptory: Isitoris
it not possible and sometimes right to proclaim
God without the Son? Arius said Yes; and the
christology of those who make the second of the
modern moves is invariably Arian, once dug out
(Perhaps a sermon on "The Prophetic Movement i
Israel”? Or on “Samuel at the Hinge of History"? 0:
“God's Call” [in general]?) The third: loss of te
text's control over the sermon’s matter, so thattie
sermon’s matter is whatever the preacher thins
currently important, usually something of slight ir
terest to anyone else. (“Also in Our Day There istoFrequent Vision? Or "Do We Answer, as Did
Samuel, ‘Speak, Lord, for Thy Servant Heareth’?”2)
In its abject submission to all three sins at once,
current protestant preaching merely perfects the
besetting errors of the middle ages
(Of the church’s great teachers, perhaps only
Luther had the nerve to go all the other way, and to.
claim without qualification that every biblical text
is literally about the person Jesus. Of course it was
apparent also to Luther that most Old Testament
and many New Testament texts do not name Jesus
‘or mention his acts, (Assuredly not | Samuel 3:1-10!)
But, according to Luther, if a text belongs in Scrip-
ture, it somehow “urges Christ”, ie., put us ina
position where it is precisely this particular person
with whom we have—also verbally —to do. All the
biblical occurrence is in fact one act of God, whose
internally demanded climax is Jesus’ death and
resurrection. Thus, e.g., one simply has not correct-
ly read—in any sense!—a set of Levitical rubrics
unless one reads them as events within the encom-
passing event of the worship of that God who
presents himself for worship on the cross. Or more
in Luther's own mode, if those Levitical rubrics
belong in the Bible it is because Christ the
Logos—not a Logos asarkos—tells us by them
something about himself. And if faith that the
human person Jesus is the author of the Old Testa-
ment violates our usual interpretation of time and
its sequences, then it is that interpretation that
needs revision.
Here preachers simply have a choice to make. |
can obey the ecumenical rule: preach about Jesus.
To do so now, | must either forget about most of
the Bible or defy the metaphysical common sense
of our civilization. | am unlikely to achieve such
defiance unless | do it consciously, for every self-
evidency of my education will hinder. | must be
constantly asking: What about my inherited way of
construing reality must | amend, in order to read
this text about Jesus? Or | can make Jesus just one
item of my preaching, who appears when the text
seems right. Or | can refuse to have the text deter-
mine my matter
lfwe make what I must regard as the right move,
certain means of exegesis become dominant. We
want to grasp both the text and, if the text has
referential content, the realities to which it refers,
as a moment or moments in the one event of God's
self-revelation as Jesus. The branch of Reformation
Christianity with this intention has, laudably, pro-
duced exegetical method to match it: so-called
“tradition criticism,” “form criticism,” and “redac-
tion criticism.”
All these “criticisms” are no more than the ex-
plicit determination to notice and exploit an ob-
vious but usually ignored fact about any text: that
it has its own history. Thus, e.g. with one of Jesus’
parables, form criticism investigates the parable’s
role in the life of the primal church that—surely for
some reason!—told and passed on the parable;
tradition criticism investigates the antecedent and
perhaps contemporary history of the parable’s
motifs and concerns; and redaction criticism in-
vestigates the parable’s role in the documents in
which it is now available to us. By such reading, a
text is read in its own history, and just so can take
its place in the whole sweep of the history of which
Jesus’ death and resurrection are the climax, of
which the Eschaton is the conclusion, and in which
we too live
(A day's reflection, recollecting, and reading
about Samuel in general and |, 3:1-10 in particular
has garnered the following. Samuel is a connected
account of the founding of the Israelite state, in oc-
cupation of the whole of the promised land. The
core and bulk of the account is the earliest docu-
ment and probably the first creation of the
specifically historical consciousness in Israel. What
was to be grasped, within and by Jahwistic faith, was
the tremendous event of David's achievement,
which at once first truly fulfilled the promise of land
by which Israel had lived, and fulfilled it by a
political and religious system in glaring contrast to
Israel's traditions. The account was probably com-
posed within direct memory of the events, so that
while sundry items of traditional narrative were in-
corporated, an oral-traditional prehistory of the text
is not decisive for the general account. The account,
was composed to legitimate the Davidic state; when
it was later made a segment of the larger
Deuteronomistic history, the editing incorporated
the view of certain prophetic circles, that the mon-
archy was an intrusion in Israel.
(Chapters 1-6 are a sort of preface, probably
added later, with two motifs. One is the collapse oF
the old “amphictyonic” system, necessitating
David's new beginning. The other is the origin of
Samuel. Doubtless, this prophet was indeed a chief
agent of the transition to monarchy; by Israel's faith,
he was God's agent. Precisely a newly historicizing
consciousness had to know where he came from.
The stories in | Samuel 1-3 develop conventional
motifs of piety—the childless woman, etc.—and
probably relay little actual information. Chapter 3 is
the mandatory call-story; it is built up around its
theological point and probably had little if any
history prior to its composition for its present place.
What was needed to move history to necessary in-
novation, and lacking until Samuel came, was, ac-
cording to v. 1, “the word of the Lord” and “vision.”
“Vision,” the concordance reveals, covers both
visual and auditory receptions of God's communica-
tion; it equals our “revelation.” Needed and lackingwas the reception and utterance of God's word.
When in v. 10 Samuel finally says “Speak,
Lord...,” the deficit is overcome. The facit of my
text is a profound but timeless and conventional
theologoumenon: when the word is needed,
because God wants to create something new, he
raises up the required prophet.
(I have, then, from my text, a theological truth ap-
plicable to all chief junctures of the history of God’s
people. But if that were all that could be said, the
history of God’s people would be dreadful: new
beginning leading to worn-out ending, followed by
new beginning leading to..., etc, forever. As
precisely the next great event of Israel's history — the
Exile—made inescapably clear, for history con-
ceived as repeated recreation to be good , there
must be finally be new beginning that leads to no
decrepitude. It is the church’s conviction that this
happened with Jesus’ resurrection. In terms of
revelation, there must be a prophet's call followed
by no renewed drought of vision. It is the church’s
conviction that this is what happened with Jesus, in-
cluding—attending to the Gospel for Epiphany
1—-his call of disciple-prophets.}
Picking up the Nicaean-Chalcedonian rule from
the other end, right talk about Jesus is always
preaching, eschatological proclamation,speech on
behalf of God. What then when such speech is not
desired, as it is not much now? Here | will be
peremptory. then the church should either never
theless keep proclaiming, or just shut up. The
faithlessness, paltriness and irrelevance of all at-
tempts to maintain Christian discourse as other than
eschatological proclamation, to find a use for Jesus
as religious or therapeutic inspiration within the im-
manent continuities of life, and to enlist—of all
books!—the Bible in this enterprise, were estab-
lished once for all by Karl Barth and his fellows of
the 20s.
So, from this end, | will be peremptory also in the
rule: right preaching says the same as the text in that.
it promises the same God as the text, in that it opens
to hearers the same final future as the text. When
this elemental principle is not followed, the result is
not bad preaching but no preaching at all, discource
that simply belongs to a different genre. (Here is
another, and the basic reason why I could not stop
with extracting a general theological-historical prin-
ciple from 1 Samuel 3:1-10.)
c
Drawing this section together, let me propose a
version of the old rules. About every text | must
ask: What eschatological future, possible and cer-
tain only because there is one particular person
Jesus, may 1 promise my hearers by the leading and
authority of this text? And | must remember: | will
be able so to question the text only by reading it
form, tradition- and radaction-critically.
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The Reformation stipulated the function of right
preaching. In all the foregoing, the definition of
both text and sermon as “law and gospel” is
already presupposed and obeyed, by the key posi
tions of such notions as “address,” “opening,”
“finality” and so on. Insisting that no text can be
understood except as “law and gospel,” the Refor
mation insisted that texts are rightly read only as
they come to life, only as they do something(s) to
us, Insisting that the preacher must speak “law and
gospel,” the Reformation insisted that the preacher
may not merely inform hearers about
something—not even about God or Jesus—or even
urge hearers to do something; | must myself do
something to the hearers, precisely by my speaking
to them. The text is understood as biblical text only
when it casts us down and raises us up, and when
we grasp that it is doing this. A sermon is a real ser
mon only when it casts down and raises up; and my
labor to make a sermon is well directed only when
it is directed to this event
The Reformation’s proposed dogma thus in
structs that the text is and the sermon is to be &
istential address, “law-and-gospel” Just so, it fur
ther instructs that existential address, whether of
text, sermon, or whatever churchly discourse, is
to be law and is to be gospel, in sharp distinction
The duality of law and gospel is demanded by the
content of text and sermon, as specified by Nicaea
and Chalcedon. In that the content of every text is
Jesus, the crucified and risen one, every text as ac
tive address crucifies and raises, opens the future
as threat and opens it as fulfillment, is law and is
gospel. The task of sermonic exegesis, that is sup-
posed to activate the text as address, is therefore to
discover the text’s law and the text's gospel
A
The text is to be exegeted as, and the sermonisto
be, existential address. That the sermon is to say
the same thing as the text, can in this mode only
mean that text and sermon make one living
discourse, ie, that text, preacher and hearers a¢-
dress each other, that they are brought into conver
sation. How does this happen?
For there to be conversation, my potential part
ner must both be together with me and other than
me, familiar to me and strange to me. If it is a text
that is to be my partner, this dialectic is established
historically: on the one hand, the text is an event in
that one history in which I too occur; on the otherhand, the text is an event at some distance from me
in that history
Itis “historical-critical” reading in general, and
especially the various modes of criticism discussed
earlier, that reads the text as an historical event
Therefore it is historical-critical exegesis that can
discover at once the strangeness and the familiarity
of the text, and so enable conversation with it, In-
deed, form and redaction criticism, by reading the
text as itself an extent of history, let the text slide
sometimes toward my present and sometimes away
from me further into the past, thus establishing a
dialectic of familiarity and strangeness within the
very act of reading. I read the text as a sequence of
versions of itself, some closer to me and some
stranger to me
Historical-critical exegesis enables the conversa-
tion; it cannot compel it. For precisely as conversa-
tion in which | am involved, my discourse with the
text is my free act, | can, if | insist, go through all
the exegetical steps and remain aloof. | have to
speak up, and so question the text as to invite it to
question me. Here we touch the chief concern of a
century’s hermeneutic pondering
can understand a text at all, as Bultmann ana-
lyzed in detail, only because it speaks to my “prior
understanding” of its matter, and cannot help so
speaking. | do not come to the text blank, without
ideas about and attitudes toward its matter; if | did,
Icould never get started with the text at all. When |
read a synoptic parable, | already know—as it
seems to me!—about seeds and kingdoms and
God. And a text such as those of the Bible will
necessarily speak to that antecedent stock of ideas
and attitudes, for it has—probably unknown to
me—helped create it. My prior understanding itself
is a creation of the total historical and linguistic
tradition into which | am born, one item of which is
the text. | construe reality as I do because of the
language | was taught and the “obvious” facts |
was told, and those who taught and told me were in
the same case; and if | keep pushing this chain back
Iwill find among the multitude of its links the
preservers and authors and objects of any biblical
text you please—or Homeric text or pietist text
or... The text has a hold on me before | ever see
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The prior hold of the text obtains however | then
go about reading it. If the alliance between the text
and my prior understanding of its matter remains in
my reading itself undisturbed, my reading will not
be a conversation, for everything will be familiar. |
will experience no difference between what the
text itself says and what “I hear the text saying.” It
is historical-critical reading, which keeps putting
the text back into its own time that is not mine, that
can change my monologue with my own “common
sense” into dialogue with the text. Indeed,
historical-critical reading is nothing more than per-
sistence in the question: | know that is what | hear
the text saying, but is that what the text itself says?
Which is why the church has always practiced
historical critique, long before anyone knew there
was such a thing
The distancing effect of historical critique can,
or course, result in sheer alienation from the text,
breaking its prior hold on me so that it becomes a
mere object of historical investigation—as has hap
pened to the whole Bible in most American depart-
ments of biblical studies. But this need not happen.
What can and should happen instead is that the
strangeness of the text over against my prior
understanding of its matter becomes a challenge to
that understanding, interpreting it as prejudice in
possible need of correction. When this happens,
the prior bond between the text and me holds, but
now as mutual interrogation, as conversation.
(As a good pietist of a vanishing generation, |
know about prophets and temples and how badly
Hannah wanted Samuel and “God calling yet — shall
I not hear?” [If | were educated as is the subsequent
generation, doubtless the connections would be
vaguer—and | had better think about that too
before | preach] What | immediately hear the text
saying is: “We should respond instantly to God's
call, as did Samuel—except of course that we are
not exactly prophets, they were for olden times —ex-
cept of course that we are indeed to be prophetic.”
Except—why does the story of David's political
achievement need a prophet at all? And if indeed
because prophecy, in the original Hebrew concep-
tion, is the agent of creative change, how does God
now get along without prophets? Or does he? If not,
is the prophecy by which he now works that sort of
with-it agitation we call “prophetic”? What exactly
is the call of God to which I might say “Speak,
Lord... ”? Have | ever heard it? Does the pattern of
the God-Samuel exchange really fit anything but the
call to be an actual prophet? If it does, what? If it
does not, what does it fit about us?
(I do not construe the world as moved by words,
nor does my congregation. The text does. Which is
right? If the text, how can it be right?)
B
The text is to be exegeted as, and the sermon is to
be, two distinguished kinds of existential address. |
will consider “gospel” first, for a reason | will come
to.
The fundamental insight of all the “eschato-
logical’ theologies currently afoot, is that the
Reformation’s demand that text and sermon be
living address, and the ecumenical demand that
text and sermon have an actual object, Jesus, can
be simultaneously obeyed only if text and sermonare promise. All addresses of whatever sort are
living challenge of some kind, they “open the
future” somehow, but most addresses are not
about anything. Thus, to stay churchy, “Bless you,”
‘You are forgiven,” “Be righteous.” What seemed
to many of us the inadequacy of the gospel-address
toa challenge without object-content—when | was
a student in Germany, a story went around about
the discovery of the original manuscript of John’s
Gospel, minus all churchly “redactions”, unrolled.
it read only “Decide.” But if we ask what sort of
speech both inseparably opens the future and
refers to objects, there in only one sort. specific
promise, assurance that particular such-and-such
will happen. The particular such-and-such about
which the biblical text speaks and the sermon is to
speak is the person Jesus. Thus, at the end of this
argument, there are the exegetical and sermonic
rules. the text promises and the sermon is to prom:
ise Jesus.
Jesus, of course, has died and can be coming in
the future only because he is risen. So the question
is: What does this text promise, and what may I pro-
mise, that can come because and only because
Jesus lives? The object-content of the gospel-
promise is given by who this Jesus is, by the facts
about him, by the theme of his life and the manner
of his death
The promise is and is to be final This can be
established simply by reference to the outcome of
part I, or by noting that the coming of a crucified
and risen one, a person with death behind him
must be an unsurpassable event, | e., the promise in
question is “eschatological ” The rule is. What does
this text promise, and what may | promise.
eschatologically, as the last future that Jesus and
he only can bring? Since there can be, tautologous.
ly, only one Eschaton, the answer to the question in
what sense the sermon and the text can say the
same thing is in this connection: both promise the
same event, so that the sermon’s description of the
event can be straightforwardly guided by the text’s,
description
The final promise is and has to be, lastly, ab-
solute, unconditional, entirely and utterly free of
“if’s or “maybe”’s of any sort The point is again
tautologous. an Eschaton can be promised only un-
conditionally —whatever problems that may raise
about the significance of the hearer’s acceptance,
etc I have not got things going until | hear from the
text and can say to my hearers, “You will be, in
spite of all considerations to the contrary.” This is
the distinction of gospel from law; for the law is
any address with an “if.”
Since the text’s eschatological promise is ap-
prehended only in involved and therefore free con-
versation with the text, there is no laying down in
advance how this 1s to happen, not even for any
one text If the conversation is genuine, if the text
participates as its historical seli, the conversation’s
course will nevertheless not be merely undeter.
mined, and | will not be able to find in the text
whatever promise | like But neither must you and
I, or | yesterday and | tomorrow, always find the
same evocation of the Eschaton, the same descrip.
tion of history's Fulfillment
(So what does | Samuel $ 1-10 eschatologically
and unconditionally promise? For this time. and pro-
Visionaily to writing the sermon itseli, | read at least
the following complex. The world will be recreated
by a prophetic word. because there is now a risen
prophet, whose prophecy cannot fail. Indeed, the
world will be recreated by our word, called as we
are to be his atter-prophets —here a note from the
Gospel for the day Never again can there be a
drought of the word of God. a cessation of vision;
for the gospel can always be truly spoken. And its
content in turn is a coming word entirely shaped by
the word of God, held together by a universal
“Speak, Lord. Somehow, this is what I have to
get said Sunday.)
Thave to harp on this matter a bit more, for a par
ticular historic reason. The tendency to evaporate
all material content trom the gospel is not only a
peculiarity of Bultmann, it is the centuries
besetting curse of Lutheran exegesis and preaching
generally Lutherans preach the same sermon from
every text “Never mind, God loves you anyway.”
Perhaps in many periods this was merely inane,
perhaps in some period it was the appropriate
promise, now it 1s actively destructive For in the
time and place of any likely to read this, it 1
precisely antinomianism trom which the gospel
must rescue its hearers It 1s precisely promise that
Iife is not a series of “Never mind”s, that life has an
ordained and describable Fulfillment and value,
that can now be the gospel
Lutheran contentless gospel comes about
because of the particularly Lutheran sort of
legalism that our fundamental exegetical and
homiletic quest is still for law, even af only to over
throw it When we look for law tundamentally and
so directly, our question get to be What does the
text demand? Or What does the text condemn? (So
queried, | suppose my text might yield, e.g.’ “People
don't respond ‘Lord, speak as they should,
which is why there is a shortage of revelation.)
Once off on this foot, we will almost inevitably cast
the gospel in the category of “forgiveness.” And if
we then remember that the gospel is to be uncondi-
tional, we end up with the great Lutheran sermon
cliche-outline. “You ought to be _; but since you
are not, that is OK too, for Jesus’ sake.” (“You
should listen to God, but if you do not, he forgivesthat t00.”) All the matter is in the law, and is merely
cancelled by the gospel
The authentic gospel 1s a promise with descrip-
tive content of its own It describes the
eschatological future that Jesus, because he is
Jesus and not Gandhi or Stalin or whoever, will
bring, insofar as the text enables me to articulate
such description And it describes the present
possibilities that obtain because this Fulfillment is
coming and not some other or no fulfillment [From
1 Samuel 3:7-10: “You can be prophets; it is not
hopeless or impossible “} The primary exegetical
and homiletic assignment 1s to come to such
description
Now—and, I think, only now —we can fruitfully
tum to the law. A text or sermon 1s law insofar as it
poses the last future as a Fulfillment that may not
te ours. It is vital to see that this can happen in
many different ways. A text or sermon can say You
do not deserve the Fulfillment This 1s the most
usual form of law preaching, and usually the least
appropriate. Or: Your present course will not lead
tothe Fulfillment Or God will withhold the Fulfill-
ment, because. Or: 1s the course that would
lead to Fulfillment Or the task of life, set by its
Outcome, may merely be stated, leaving hearers to
measure themselves against it Or it may often sut.
fice simply to analyze structures of life, revealing
life as fulfillable while retraining from assurance
thereof.
Not only is there an unpredictable variety of
ways in which the text or the sermon can be law.
there is also no definite way for the text as law to
guide the sermon as law. However it works, that is,
how it works. The bond to the text is that estab-
lished by its exegesis—not as law but—as gospel
The sole rule is the description of the Eschaton
against which the sermon as law pits its hearers
must be the same description discovered in the text
as gospel and spoken by the sermon as gospel
(Sunday, | think it will suffice to say: “Since the
resurrection and your baptisms, you have to be
God's prophets, whose word must recreate the
world.)
c
There is a second way in which the distinction of
law and gospel determines the preacher's relation
tothe text, which I cannot altogether omit because
t touches problems that are currently much
debated and are, moreover, very real for preachers
more recently in seminary But a full discussion
would burst the limits of this essay, and a middling
one only be confusing So | will be very brief
The text is supposed to be authority for the ser-
mon But the kind of historical-critical study here
commended, and now more or less taught in stan-
dard seminaries, grasps the text as a sequence of its
own forms With, eg. a parable of Jesus, we may
sort out a parable that Jesus told, two or three
stages of oral tradition, the canonically written
form, and finally the christologically exegeted
parable in my notes. Which is the authoritative
text? Whole schools of current biblical studies sort
themselves out on this question, and every
seminary student sooner or later asks it
The distinction of law and gospel lets us answer
That depends For the Reformation doctrine
detines also the authority of the text over the
preacher as double On the one hand, the text has.
authority as gospel for the preacher: it grants my
sermon, liberates me for my sermon, sug-
gests possibilities for my sermon, On the other
hand, the text has authority as law for the preacher:
it judges my sermon, limits my arbitrary and pious
reflections, makes me back up and start over
Insofar as the text has gospel-authority over the
preacher, it is the text as the whole sweep of its
‘own history that is the authoritative text. Itis, eg
all the forms of a parable, precisely in their
historical movement, that set my thoughts moving,
that liberate me from fixed conceptions, that will at
some point or other in my conversation with them
grant me that new thing, my sermon. But insofar as.
the text has Jaw-authority over the preacher, it is
the canonically written text that is the authoritative
text. Its by the canonical writing that I am to judge
my product, criticize and perhaps give up my
bright ideas. It is about the canonical text that | am
obligated to ask after the fact: Is this sermon | have
prepared faithful to the text?
{I write this last parenthesis after Epiphany II at
East Berlin, Looking back, it seems clear to me that
what got me started toward an actual sermon was
the perception that the author of | Samuel 1-10,
probably a later hand than the original writer of the
story of Saul and David, composed this piece of a
preface around a general theological truth: When
God has recreating to do, he calls a prophet. Here is
where the movement of the text picked me up. at a
redaction. As to that other question, “Was what I
said faithful to the canonical text?” | will have to
think a while.)