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49 chapter Three Paul Ricoeur and the World of the Text Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of language and interpretation theory will be explored in depth. Though Ricoeur’s hermeneutical thought has been explicated in connection to both Barth and frei,1 it has not been sufficiently appreciated in the field of homiletics.2 The goal is to draw upon Ricoeur’s approach to fund a homiletical proposal that responds to weaknesses that come clear through campbell’s homiletical appropriation of frei. campbell deploys frei’s approach to biblical narrative in support of his argument that preaching should conform itself more closely to the particulars of the biblical text and its distinctive subject matter. he worries that the recent fascination with sermon form and a vague allegiance to the “power of story” have distracted attention away from the true calling of homiletics, which is to preach Jesus. 1 See mark i. Wallace, The Second Naiveté: Barth, Ricoeur, and the New Yale Theology, Studies in american Biblical hermeneutics, 2nd ed. (macon, ga.: mercer University Press, 1995). 2 Though not developed extensively, two exceptions with respect to the application of Ricoeur’s narrative theory to homiletics are long, Preaching from Memory to Hope, 45–53, and mary catherine hilkert, Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination (new york: continuum, 1996), 93–99. for a discussion of Ricoeur’s general interpretation theory in relation to homiletics, see nancy lammers gross, If You Cannot Preach Like Paul . . . (grand Rapids: eerdmans, 2002), 92–105. 50 The Scandal of having SomeThing To Say But frei, especially in his later cultural-linguistic turn favored by campbell , offers a theory-averse theory that is not thick enough to fund a robust and pedagogically useful account of the text-to-sermon process. frei assures us that the Bible is a book of stories that function within the ecclesial context to render the identity of Jesus, and campbell builds on this assurance and urges that sermons be conformed in minute detail to biblical texts. But campbell does not give an adequate account of how sermonic language makes the text’s claim available in a new and different context than that of the original text, and therefore he has a hard time saying exactly what the sermon has to offer. The very existence of preaching as a practice is powerful testimony to the church’s and the synagogue’s long experience that even when it is properly conformed to the biblical text, preaching necessarily involves carefully negotiating the text’s meaning in relation to a new situation (context) and bringing it to fresh and eventful language for a new hearing (poetics). a successful postliberal homiletic must honor this long history by giving a clear account of what is to be gained in preaching over merely repeating the biblical text. Some who share this concern with campbell’s homiletic have attributed the problem to overreaching claims about the power of “realistic narrative” to render the presence of Jesus.3 if the biblical genre itself is assumed to have the power to make Jesus present to the reading community, preaching is obviated . however, campbell may not have as much at stake in the genre “realistic narrative” as may be supposed. Just as frei pivoted away from claims about the autonomous text and toward the ecclesial community of interpretation in order to safeguard the meaningfulness of biblical language in the face of poststructural assaults, so campbell turns to cultural-linguistic construals of religious language in order to address questions about the language of the sermon. for campbell, the language of preaching is a special linguistic competence nurtured within a distinctive community—a kind of improvised variation on the themes established by the biblical text.4 campbell follows the later frei in arguing that context is a nonfactor because the context of 3 in an acerbic review of Preaching Jesus, James Kay presses this critique and attributes the problem to overreaching claims about “realistic narrative” when he wonders why, according to campbell’s theory, “anyone would bother to preach these narratives. Why not just read or recite them? Why muck things up with preaching . . . [?]” Kay, “Review of Preaching Jesus: New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology,” Theology Today 56, no. 3 (1999): 404. 4 for an example of how campbell attempts to leverage communal reading practices and the notion of a traditioned linguistic competence to address questions of context and poetics, see the section titled “Preaching as linguistic improvisation” in campbell, Preaching Jesus...

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