Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

ABSTRACT
This study examines the efforts of British universities
and colleges to educate students for the ministry of
preaching. It evaluates the hypothesis that a preaching
lecturer's theology significantly influences his teaching,
both in its content and methodology.
A summary and comparison of seven twentieth century
theologies of preaching serves as the foundation for this
study. The research considered each theology as presented
by either its originator or a leading exponent: Harry
Emerson Fosdick, Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich,
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, James Stewart, and Karl Rahner.
Surveys completed by fifty-five lecturers in preaching
provided the second primary focus of research. These
surveys both described current practices in homiletical
education and offered a means of dividina the lecturers into
subgroups for purposes of comparing their teaching. In
order to evaluate the primary hypothesis that theology
exerts great influence on the teaching of preaching, the
study compares the teaching practices of theological
subgroupings of lecturers (each grouping matched with one of
the theologians mentioned above). Likewise, it compares the
teaching of other lecturer subaroupings formed on the basis
of contrasting institutional and denominational settings.
Institutional and denominational setting does affect
the teaching of preaching, but, as hypothesized, not to the
degree theology does. The manner in which a lecturer's
theology determines his teaching is most noticeable in
relation to three questions relating to teaching content: