Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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Table 5
The Bible 73.5%
Himself 49.0%
God 38.8%
The congregation 34.7%
A theological construct (the gospel,
truth) 20.4%
Tradition, the Church 12.2%
The preacher's calling 10.2%
The world 6.1%1°
Another question (no. 12) asked the lecturers to
name one important principle they wish students to
remember as they handle Scripture texts in sermon
preparation. Again, one would assume that lecturers
would inculcate their own hermeneutical principles. The
principles stated?
Table 6
Say what the text says - includes
responses which mentioned the need for exegesis
or finding the original meaning of a text
46.2%
Keep the text in context 21.2%
Remember the Bible is God's Word 15.4%
Find the text's relevance to today 15.4%
Interact personally with the text 5.7%
Compare the text with other Scripture
passages 3.8%11
Another set of questions focussed on methodologies
of teaching. The most straightforward of these asked
lecturers what work they required from their preaching
students (no. 14).
(I prepared the survey on the basis of the
Inaccurate assumption that, in the process of teaching
preaching, all lecturers actually lecture on the sublect.
If this assumption had been correct, then differences in
methodology would appear, only secondarily in lecturer
activity, and, primarily, in required student response.
A few lecturers, however, objected to the word "lecture"