THE SCANDAL OF HAVING SOMETHING TO SAY: Ricoeur and the Possibility of Postliberal Preach-ing By Lance Pape

Concordia Journal, Dec 2014

Pape likens the cyclical nature of mimesis to be a spring, building on Ricoeur’s notion of mimesis gaining “altitude” with each cycle.

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THE SCANDAL OF HAVING SOMETHING TO SAY: Ricoeur and the Possibility of Postliberal Preach-ing By Lance Pape

" Concordia Journal: Vol. 40: No. 3 THE SCANDAL OF HAVING SOMETHING TO SAY: Ricoeur and the Possibility of Postliberal Preach-ing By Lance Pape Dennis Matyas Concordia Seminary St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.csl.edu/cj Part of the Christianity Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation - None can accuse Lance B. Pape of domesticating the word of God. On the contrary, Pape begins his monograph with the insistence that the only valu- able Christian preaching is the preach- ing that conforms to the scandal of the cross of Christ. The scandalous word of the cross is not something to be embar- rassed by, but proclaimed in a bold and confident fashion. More than that, Pape decries preaching that seeks to conform to the milieu of human experence. The preacher’s task is not to locate a need in the hearers and fill it, per se. Rather, the preacher’s task is to encounter the strange word of God and bring the hearers into the divine encounter in life-changing and formative ways. Such thinking shifts the usual paradigm of American, consumeristic thinking under submission to God’s word, and is the gist of postliberal theology. Pape picks up the postliberal direction of homiletics where Charles Campbell left off in Preaching Jesus–– he even critiques the same Walter Brueggemann sermon as Campbell does at the end of the monograph. However, instead of carrying exactly the same torch, Pape detours from Hans Frei’s postliberal theology in favor of Paul Ricoeur’s. Through a deft and dense comparison, Pape shows that Frei and Ricoeur are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but instead Ricoeur’s three-fold mimesis supplies what is lacking in the Published by Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary, 2014 Matyas: THE SCANDAL OF HAVING SOMETHING TO SAY practical application of Frei’s postliberal theology. Mimesis, the narration of human experience in time, is the grappling of humanity to find meaning in an otherwise disconnected, confusing jumble of experiences. It is broken down into three sub-categories, which Ricoeur (and thus Pape) names: mimesis1, mimesis2, and mimesis3. Each sub-category addresses a theoretical moment in the preaching task that enables divine transformation in the Christian community. Mimesis1, which Pape nicknames “Debt to the Actual,” is the event in which the preacher is sent to a text on behalf of the hearers. There is a debt to pay, so to speak, to the situation itself: like a photographer snaps a portrait, the preacher needCsotnocorredifaleJcoutrannal, Vol. 40 [20a1t4t]e,mNop.t3in,Agrat. 2c3omprehensive homiletic, accurate picture for the hearers. This is Pape elucidates the often inaccessible not the “context” of the text in an his- world of Ricoeurian hermeneutics and torical vein, but rather the context of the sheds light on this important theory in hearers themselves. Much of this is done postliberal theology. Peppered subconsciously, as preachers have a natu- throughout the book is Pape’s insistence ral grasp over the predicaments of their on divine authority: only a preaching that people and the various jumbles of experi- conforms people’s lives to God’s will is ence that make up their lives. worth preaching. This book should be Mimesis2, or “Debt to the Real,” is read by anyone interested in postliberal the interaction of the people and preach- theology and homiletical theory (certainly er with the text itself. Here is where the anyone familiar with Campbell’s work preacher pays a debt to the meaning of Preaching Jesus owes themself a the text itself, like the director of a musi- continuation of the discussion), but not cal score. The text is not described with necessarily the aver- age preacher looking propositional statements, as if humans for sermon ideas. Indeed, Pape himself could transcend physical experience and leaves the discus- sion of sermon poetics, capture God, nor is it explored with a structure, and delivery to another fine-toothed exegetical comb, as if the conversation. mere exercise of exegesis brings transformation. Rather, the text brings sense to the hearers, and joins their mimesis1 together into a comprehensive narrative. Put another way, mimesis2 is the proclamatory word of the scandalous Gospel of Jesus Christ interacting with and making sense of the rigmarole of human life. Mimesis3, then, is the “Debt to the Possible,” in which the hearers (and preacher) naturally find themselves trans- formed by God’s word and redefined–– changed forever. The preacher functions here as a museum docent, showing the hearers their experience in a different light. The three-fold mimetic process then begins anew, with the hearers discovering themselves in a less puzzling amalgam of human experience. Pape likens the cyclical nature of mimesis to be a spring, building on Ricoeur’s notion of mimesis gaining “altitude” with each cycle. This work is deceptively short. While only 166 pages (...truncated)


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Dennis Matyas. THE SCANDAL OF HAVING SOMETHING TO SAY: Ricoeur and the Possibility of Postliberal Preach-ing By Lance Pape, Concordia Journal, 2014, Volume 40, Issue 3,