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
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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)