Preaching the New Testament as Rhetoric: The Promise of Rhetorical Criticism for Expository Preaching

Preaching the New Testament as Rhetoric

The Promise of Rhetorical Criticism for Expository Preaching

Tim MacBride

A thesis submitted to the Australian College of Theology in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Theology.

Preaching the New Testament as Rhetoric

The Promise of Rhetorical Criticism for Expository Preaching

Australian College of Theology Monograph Series

Copyright © 2014 Tim MacBride. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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The English Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Greek Scripture quotations contained herein are from The Greek New Testament, copyright © 1983 by the United Bible Societies, U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Preface

This doctoral thesis presented to the Australian College of Theology argues for an expanded definition of the task of biblical exposition: it is not merely to discern the original meaning of the text and then to apply that meaning to a contemporary audience, but also to discern the original rhetorical function of the text in order to preach a contemporary sermon with an analogous rhetorical function. In other words, the sermon is not only to exegete and apply what the text says, but also what it does.

It is proposed that the discipline of rhetorical criticism, in which much work has been done over the past few decades, provides a means by which this might be achieved in the field of New Testament preaching. Although the term rhetorical criticism represents a diversity of methodologies, the presuppositions and aims of biblical exposition fit most naturally with rhetorical critical approaches that use the analytical terms and methods of the New Testament writers’ contemporaries, rather than more recent or universal analyses of rhetoric.

Limiting the scope of the present investigation to the Pauline corpus, the bulk of the thesis systematically works through the various aspects of rhetorical criticism. This includes questions of rhetorical species, rhetorical arrangement, and the three different kinds of proof (ethos, pathos, and logos). In each of these areas, scholarship in the field is carefully examined to provide an up-to-date understanding of the subject. The focus at each point, however, is on how this approach can inform the task of bringing to life the rhetorical function of an ancient text in a contemporary sermon. The principles for preaching thus derived are applied to a variety of Pauline texts throughout the discussion, culminating in a workshop which looks at how a sermon series on 1 Corinthians 1–4 might be designed.

1

The Promise of Rhetorical Criticism

Designing a sermon that does

For some decades there has been a growing awareness in homiletic circles of the relationship between the function of a text and the function of a sermon. In 1975, David Kelsey drew our attention to the fact that Scripture does something in the shaping of individuals and the Christian community.¹ David Buttrick, reacting against what he saw as a prevailing atomistic approach to expository preaching,² argued that true ‘biblical preaching’ will want to be faithful not only to a message, but to an intention. The question, ‘What is the passage trying to do?’ may well mark the beginning of homiletical obedience.³ Fred Craddock, one of the fathers of the New Homiletic, then urged us to ask the question, does the sermon say and do what the text says and does? in terms of both content and rhetorical strategies.⁴ Consciously building on Craddock, Thomas Long labeled what a text aims to say as its focus, and what it aims to do as its function; he observed that a sermon on a given text also had a focus and function, and said that this should grow directly from the exegesis of the biblical text.⁵ Without wanting to abandon historical questions and concerns, he wants to augment them with questions about rhetoric: the things that take place between text and reader.⁶ In more recent times this has been acknowledged by homileticians such as Michael Quicke, whose 360-degree-preaching model takes as a basic assumption that Scripture not only says things but also does things.⁷ In light of this, he reworks Haddon Robinson’s notion of the big idea as the main impact,⁸ and defines the task of homiletics as designing a sermon that says and does the same things the biblical text says and does.⁹

Despite this growing awareness, there has been less of an established consensus when it comes to how this might be achieved. Craddock had already broken new ground in 1971 when he urged preachers to take their hearers on the same journey of discovery they experienced when encountering the text in the study, rather than presenting the congregation with the finished product from the outset;¹⁰ in other words, one way of making a sermon do something was to preach inductively, not deductively. Although this approach was enormously influential,¹¹ it remains essentially subjective, as the sermon does not seek to recreate the original impact of the text on its first hearers, merely the impact on the preacher. Indeed, it is this original impact which Long encouraged us to recapture and bring across the preaching bridge:

Once upon a time, everything about the biblical text made a claim upon its first readers, and now everything about that text makes a new claim upon us. What we bring across the bridge from text to sermon is not just an idea, or even an idea wrapped in our own inductive process of discovery, but rather this claim upon the hearers" (italics mine; note the reference to Craddock’s approach).¹²

Long then went on to give some practical guidance as to how this might be achieved, but it is still largely an intuitive process by which the preacher attempts to discern the nature of this claim on the first hearers. More recently, Quicke has sought to apply this by breaking it down into a two-step process which mirrors the traditional approach to hermeneutics. Instead of merely asking what a text said to its original hearers, and then what it might be saying to us today, we are also to ask what a text did to its original audience, and what it might do now.¹³ Again, however, we are left without much in the way of tools in order to answer these questions.

Interestingly, Buttrick also argued for an investigation of the text’s original function, and then gave some clues as to how this might be achieved. He pointed to the usefulness of redaction criticism in locating secondary intentions, and appeared to foreshadow a discipline that located the primary intention.¹⁴ Such a discipline would explore the different ‘logics’ of language in consciousness so that homiletics may well discover that different biblical rhetorics will demand different homiletic strategies including variable logic of movement.¹⁵ That is, he seemed to envision a discipline which investigated the rhetorical rules of a given text, and sought to assimilate this into a homiletic strategy.

Rhetorical criticism and expository preaching

It is our intention in this thesis to advance one such discipline in relation to the preaching of the epistles, namely, rhetorical criticism.¹⁶ Over the past few decades this discipline has received an increasing amount of attention, with a plethora of commentaries labeled socio-rhetorical becoming available. The aim of this discipline is to recover, as much as possible, the original rhetorical intent (or function) of the text using a defined set of critical tools. In this thesis we will explore how this discipline might be used as a fundamental building block in the task of biblical exposition.

To date, there has been little in the way of systematic application of rhetorical criticism to preaching. James Thompson has drawn the link between the goal of the New Homiletic and the goal of rhetorical criticism,¹⁷ but has not provided any concrete methodology for matching the rhetoric of the biblical text to the rhetoric of the sermon. He seems simply to note where Paul uses rhetorical techniques, and to suggest that we might therefore apply similar techniques in our sermons. Similar, too, is the approach by Hogan and Reid, who use a (particularly well-presented) mixture of classical and modern rhetorical theory to show how rhetorically effective sermons might be constructed;¹⁸ however, the existence of rhetoric in Scripture is for them merely a justification for using rhetorical techniques in sermons, nothing more. In contrast, our thesis here is that our sermon will say and do what the biblical text says and does if we understand and appropriate the rhetorical function and techniques of the particular text itself, not just rhetorical theory in general.

There have been several studies along this trajectory, most notably those of Long, Greidanus, and Graves.¹⁹ Long outlines a process of determining the genre of a biblical text and interpreting it in light of the rhetorical function of that genre, including an analysis of the literary devices used to achieve that function. In light of that, he asks how the sermon, in a new setting, might achieve the same function.²⁰ He stresses that this is not simply a call to use the same literary form for the sermon (so that a narrative text must yield a narrative sermon, etc.). The preacher is not to replicate the text but to regenerate the impact of some portion of the text.²¹ Long then seeks to apply this approach to all of the major biblical genres, including epistles (which is our focus here).²² However, he deals only with functions drawn from epistolary theory and essentially neglects those drawn from the rhetorical handbooks which—as we will argue—are more useful in interpreting the bulk of an epistle.

Greidanus similarly argues for the sermon to take the form of the text into account, as well as its meaning.²³ He also clarifies that it is not just about copying biblical forms, as the goal is to study carefully the form of the text and how it, in its literary context, plays its part in carrying the message to its intended effect with the hearers.²⁴ Regarding epistles, Greidanus also deals more with epistolary theory, despite noting that letters could function as sermons or speeches.²⁵ His use of rhetorical theory is limited to micro-rhetorical forms and devices²⁶ rather than the macro arrangement of arguments which will be our subject here.

Building on Greidanus’s approach, Graves calls for form-sensitive sermons,²⁷ which seek to capture the mood and movement of the text and recreate this in the sermon. He applies his model in a practical way to many of the smaller forms found in the New Testament, such as parables, aphorisms, pronouncement stories, admonitions and topoi, poetry and hymns, etc. This differs from our approach here as he mostly uses analytical constructs derived mostly from form criticism (together with his construction of mood and movement which he derived from Long), rather than from sources contemporary to the New Testament. He also, like Thompson (above), discusses rhetoric as timeless principles²⁸ which can be used to create sermons on any kind of text, rather than first-century principles which were used to create particular New Testament texts, and can aid us in preaching specifically those texts.

The study most closely aligned with our intention here is a recent, unpublished dissertation by Joseph Buchanan, which identifies rhetorical criticism as useful for expository preaching, and seeks to set forth a model for incorporating socio-rhetorical analysis in expository preaching.²⁹ The great strength of this thesis is the series of sermons actually preached by Buchanan using the method, with congregational response measured through qualitative surveys. He also provides an overview of how rhetorical criticism in general can benefit expository preaching, citing text selection, authorial intent, and understanding how the parts relate to the whole.³⁰ It should also inform the shape of the sermon, as a sermon should be structured in a manner consistent with the shape of the text.³¹ In short, Buchanan raises awareness and outlines a trajectory for future study.

Unfortunately, this is not matched by sufficient practical detail in theory, with many good socio-rhetorical insights being applied to preaching in a very vague manner.³² Furthermore, much of Buchanan’s presentation of rhetorical criticism remains at a superficial level, without exploring many of the nuances and debates, although much of this can be attributed to the fact that the thesis attempts to deal with macro-rhetoric, micro-rhetoric, and social-scientific criticism in only one chapter each. By contrast, we will here spend the vast majority of our time dealing with macro-rhetorical considerations (species, form, and argumentation strategy) in some detail, and attempt to apply our insights in a practical and concrete manner.

Expository preaching

The term expository preaching could be used in different ways, depending on one’s previous experience of preaching and denominational background. We will adopt here a functional definition of expository preaching in line with the New Homiletic outlined above. That is, any sermon which seeks to say and do what the text says and does will be considered expository. The message and function of the sermon are determined by the message and function of the passage of Scripture. Expository preaching, as we will use the term, encompasses any spoken act of proclamation or teaching which seeks firstly to discern the meaning of a biblical text in its original context, and secondly, to apply that message to a new context in a persuasive and life-transforming way. The first part of the process involves understanding the original intention of the authors (both divine and human) and how it would have been received by the original audience; or to put it negatively, a text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its author or his or her readers.³³ Then, and only then, can the second part be attempted: translation of that message so that it has application for a different audience, in a different cultural, historical, and linguistic context.

Although the term is frequently associated with a verse-by-verse explanation and application of the text, this is only one particular form of expository preaching. Many different styles and shapes of sermon are expository, in our definition, if their function is to convey to our own congregation what the biblical text originally said and did in respect to its original audience. In other words, it is our intention here to advance an approach for creating a sermon, rather than advocating for a particular style of delivery.

Implicit in our definition is that an expository sermon is shaped not only by the original text but also by the contemporary audience. That is, if the sermon is to do what the biblical text did, the preacher must account for the differences between the original and contemporary audiences. Just like a first-century epistle, a sermon is a word on target to a particular group of people in a particular time. This means that throughout this thesis any examples of concrete sermon application will be precisely that: examples. These will be for the purposes of illustration and clarification, rather than the definitive way in which a text should be preached or applied. Although we will be arguing for some general strategies to be used, the way in which these strategies are enacted is in the hands of the preacher, who will engage in exegesis of the audience as well as the text.³⁴

Furthermore, the examples given will relate to the writer’s own context and experience of preaching, namely a suburban congregation in twenty-first-century Australia. Attention will regularly be drawn to strategies which might need to be employed differently in other contexts, but it is not possible to cover all eventualities. Again, this is the task of the preacher who knows his or her flock.

It is important to point out here that this thesis will limit itself to discussing expository preaching as thus defined. There are, of course, other forms of preaching which have different aims in relation to the text. For example, sermons of a more topical nature may seek to build on secondary inferences drawn from the text in order to examine issues which are not directly addressed by any particular biblical text. Our application of rhetorical criticism is limited here to those sermons which seek to do and say what the text did and said. Although we will not be arguing for it here, it is our opinion that this ought to form the staple diet of regular, pastoral preaching.

Rhetorical criticism

The term rhetorical criticism similarly can refer to a range of different approaches, which will be surveyed in chapter 2. It will be argued that a historical (or diachronic) approach to rhetorical criticism, broadly following the method outlined by George Kennedy, is best suited to the task of expository preaching as defined above. The chapter will also present a brief defense of the use of rhetorical criticism in the analysis of Paul’s letters.

The bulk of the thesis will then follow three key aspects of rhetorical criticism: rhetorical species or genre (chapter 3), rhetorical form (chapter 4), and the rhetorical strategies or proofs employed (ethos, pathos, and logos, the subject of chapters 5 through 8). Each of these aspects will be examined in sufficient detail as to avoid a superficial or overly homogeneous understanding of ancient rhetorical practice, which has been a fault of some earlier studies. Armed with this understanding, we will then attempt to apply these insights to the task of expository preaching. At each point this will include the formulation of homiletic strategies in light of our rhetorical understanding. These strategies will perform a role much like that of the bridging contexts section found in application-style commentaries, in that they will define the trajectory which sermon application might take if it is to be in line with the original rhetorical function. We will also illustrate throughout with concrete examples of how we might apply these strategies to the preaching of Paul’s epistles. This will be compared and contrasted with the lines of application found in application-style commentaries, with a particular focus on the popular NIV Application Commentary series as a representative example.

The study will conclude with an extended example (chapter 9). This is intended as a workshop to illustrate how a sermon series through the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians might be informed by the rhetorical approach to homiletics outlined in chapters 3 through 8. It also functions as a test case to see if there is indeed homiletical fruit to be found in a rhetorical approach.

Although it is not treated separately, the importance of understanding the original rhetorical situation will become evident throughout the study, as each of the key aspects of rhetorical criticism provides further tools to aid in our reconstruction. This will be integral in determining how the text might function in a different, yet analogous, rhetorical situation.

Scope

The study is being limited to epistles as these are the New Testament documents which function as speeches-by-proxy and thus have the most in common with ancient rhetorical theory. There is scope for similar work to be done on the rhetorical forms found in the Gospels and Acts,³⁵ but the specifics would differ enough to require separate treatment.

This thesis will be further limited to the preaching of Paul’s epistles, for reasons of space and convenience. Significant work is needed to demonstrate Paul’s awareness and use of rhetorical conventions (see chapter 2); this would need to be replicated for other New Testament authors. In addition, the non-Pauline epistles have their own individual considerations that warrant separate treatment if superficiality is to be avoided.³⁶ Therefore, the choice of the Pauline corpus means that homiletic strategies can be developed which relate to a significant number of New Testament documents, providing the greatest immediate benefit to a preacher, as well as a large well of material from which to draw examples. It is hoped that similar work will be done in the future to expand the principles here to other New Testament writings. Although the focus of this study will be on Paul’s undisputed epistles, examples will be drawn from the entire Pauline corpus.

1. Kelsey, Uses of Scripture, 91, 208.

2. Buttrick, Interpretation, 48.

3. Ibid., 58.

4. Craddock, Preaching, 28.

5. Long, The Witness of Preaching, 108–9.

6. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible, 24.

7. Quicke, 360-Degree Preaching, 53. Quicke himself is consciously building on the work of Craddock and Long.

8. Ibid., 157.

9. Ibid., 131. So also Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible, 24; Bugg, Back to the Bible, 416; Graves, The Sermon as Symphony, 16–18.

10. Craddock, As One without Authority, 124–25.

11. See especially Lowry, The Homiletical Plot.

12. Long, The Witness of Preaching, 107.

13. Quicke, 360-Degree Preaching, 149.

14. Buttrick, Interpretation, 54.

15. Ibid., 56.

16. Of course, rhetorical-critical principles can also be applied to the OT as well, and the Gospels are also fertile ground for rhetorical analysis. The present study, however, limits its focus to the NT epistles whilst encouraging similar research in other genres.

17. Thompson, Preaching Like Paul, 14–16.

18. Hogan and Reid, Connecting with the Congregation.

19. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible; Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text; Graves, The Sermon as Symphony.

20. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible, 24.

21. Ibid., 33. So also Graves, The Sermon as Symphony, 7.

22. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible, 107.

23. Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text, 16.

24. Ibid., 18.

25. Ibid., 318.

26. Ibid., 63, 319. For example, he shows how text selection can be assisted by the use of inclusio and chiasm to identify text units.

27. Graves, The Sermon as Symphony, 6.

28. Ibid., 30–31.

29. Buchanan, Benefits of Socio-Rhetorical Analysis, 2.

30. Ibid., 73–77.

31. Ibid., 77–79. See also Corley et al., Biblical Hermeneutic, 399–400.

32. Just to give one example: Discovering what the purpose may have been by using rhetorical analysis can be very enlightening; Buchanan, Benefits of Socio-Rhetorical Analysis, 42.

33. Fee and Stuart, How to Read the Bible, 64.

34. As Witherington, NT Rhetoric, 239–40, points out, it needs to be asked before the NT is preached—do these sorts of arguments and discourses have the same effect on modern audiences as they did on ancient ones? If one simply repeats the patterns found in the NT, are they equally or less likely to persuade a modern audience as they did ancient ones? How do modern pluralistic culture and its biases and assumptions differ from the pluralistic cultures of the NT era? We will be wrestling with this question throughout our investigation, as we seek to make our sermon function in a new context the same way the text functioned in its original context.

35. Some of the principles in this thesis can be applied to Paul’s speeches in Acts, although there is the added complication of a third audience: the speeches were given to a particular group of people in a particular context, but were recorded in their present form for a different audience in a different context. Therefore, their function in Luke’s narrative is not necessarily the same as in the original speech, and this complexity must be accounted for in any preaching strategy.

36. In fact, for some of the non-Pauline epistles the case for conscious rhetorical construction is stronger and therefore less controversial, according to Watson, Rhetorical Criticism of Hebrews, 178. Therefore, if we can demonstrate the case for the Pauline corpus, many of the results will follow more easily for the other epistles.

2

The Tapestry of Rhetorical Criticism

Where are all these surveys taking us?

It is customary to begin with a survey of scholarship in the field, detailing the various developments and assessing the different approaches which have been taken. Yet initially at least, it appears that this might be a touch superfluous, given the existence of numerous excellent articles dedicated to just this task.³⁷ (Indeed, it is tempting to speculate how further advanced the discipline of rhetorical criticism might be were it not for so many taking time out to survey the collective progress and dream up witty re-takes on the titles of each other’s articles!³⁸) Duane Watson has also kept his colleagues up-to-date on virtually every publication in the field, with his helpful and exhaustive bibliographic survey first published in 1994 and most recently updated in 2006.³⁹ Additionally, numerous articles have been dedicated to probing and divergent assessments of the various methodologies currently being employed in rhetorical criticism, the fruitfulness of the research which uses these methodologies, and even the foundational assumptions of the discipline itself.⁴⁰

In light of this, the aim of the present chapter is not merely to rehash the work already done, but to survey the field with an eye to the central question being discussed here: the appropriateness and usefulness of rhetorical criticism for expository preaching. To this end, after a brief look at earlier forms of rhetorical analysis, we will examine the various schools of rhetorical criticism which have flourished over the past forty or so years. In doing so, each of these approaches will be assessed specifically for its potential contribution to the task of expository preaching, as defined in chapter 1. (A significant issue in this assessment is the current debate over the appropriateness of using rhetorical forms and genres in analyzing Paul’s letters in particular. This will be addressed in considerable detail, as it is a foundational question for the rest of the present study.)

A focus on style: previous methods of rhetorical analysis

A rhetorical approach to the New Testament is not a recent phenomenon. The early church fathers were themselves rhetoricians, and so studied the New Testament accordingly, in order to imitate its persuasive artistry.⁴¹ Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana, book four, provides not only a window into this approach, but also to some extent sets the rhetorical agenda for the centuries which followed, with its focus on rhetorical figures and matters of style.⁴²

The Renaissance witnessed a revival of interest in the study of Greco-Roman rhetoric, which influenced many of the Reformers. Melanchthon, in particular, wrote a handbook on classical rhetoric which would often employ examples from the Scriptures. However, he followed Augustine’s focus on micro-rhetorical figures and style. When he came to the topic of arrangement, it was dealt with very briefly and almost without biblical reference.⁴³

Late in the nineteenth century, scholars began yet again to analyze Paul’s letters in rhetorical terms. Johannes Weiss, in particular, stressed the rhetorical element in Paul as being generally recognized.⁴⁴ Yet Weiss still maintained a narrow focus on his gripping artistry, often through symmetry, rhythm, flourish, and sonority⁴⁵ and essentially ignored questions of arrangement.

In summary, from the time of the church fathers right up until the middle decades of the previous century, rhetorical analysis was concerned more with style and artistry at the micro level than the more macro concerns of form and arrangement. Dennis Stamps concludes, it would be fair to say that much of this history of rhetorical criticism centred on an analysis of literary and rhetorical devices that can be isolated in the New Testament as a form of style or ornamentation.⁴⁶ Or, as Wilhelm Wuellner puts it, previous centuries saw the reduction of rhetoric to stylistics, and of stylistics in turn to the rhetorical tropes or figures.⁴⁷ Meanwhile, macro-rhetorical features of the New Testament, such as rhetorical genre and arrangement, went largely unstudied.

Compounding this, during the nineteenth century rhetorical criticism as a discipline fell out of favor with academics generally (not just in biblical studies), with the rise of modern, historical approaches.⁴⁸ The study of rhetoric had all but vanished from universities.⁴⁹ It was not until the 1960s that a renewed interest in rhetoric occurred; and this time it started to pay attention to the broader questions of rhetorical form and structure.

Those who survey what critics up to and including Judge have said about Paul’s use of rhetoric will note that most of the discussion has been centered around examinations of style . . . The kind of rhetorical criticism of Pauline literature that has appeared in the 1970s and since is of a markedly different sort, a rhetorical criticism no longer primarily concerned with the elucidation of style or the identification of smaller rhetorical figures or of particular sentence structure.⁵⁰

The renaissance of rhetorical criticism

The year 1968 marks a watershed in rhetorical approaches to the New Testament, with James Muilenburg’s presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature.⁵¹ It is difficult to find a scholar who does not use the term programmatic when referring to this address, in which he sought to introduce the term rhetorical criticism to a wider audience. He defined it as an analysis of the structural patterns that are employed for the fashioning of a literary unit, whether in poetry or in prose, and in discerning the many and various devices by which the predications are formulated and ordered into a unified whole. Such an enterprise I should describe as rhetoric, and the methodology as rhetorical criticism.⁵²

Muilenburg called upon Old Testament scholars (his own field of study) to go beyond the approach of form criticism and its focus on small units and the role of tradition. He urged them to embrace this new rhetorical criticism, which looked also at the formal features on a larger scale and the role of the author in shaping the material. He argued against the form critics’ separation of form from content, and their fragmentary approach which all but ignored connections between the smaller units. Although Muilenburg’s definition of rhetorical criticism has since been criticized as a little vague, ⁵³ and his practice of it still bore the legacy of the earlier, stylistic approaches,⁵⁴ he is rightly credited with a significant role in inspiring the work of a generation of rhetorical critics both in Old and New Testament studies.

However, although Muilenburg may have provided the rallying point for a movement, his call-to-arms did not occur in isolation. Several earlier works pointed the way. Several years before in the field of New Testament studies, Amos Wilder had argued for a form of rhetorical criticism which focused not so much on what the early Christians said, as how they said it.⁵⁵ Edwin Judge also issued his own challenge for more work to be done to investigate the