Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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God"--is the primary criteria for selecting preaching
content.
C. Preparation and Delivery of Selected Material
As stated above, the four frequently chosen
preacher-theologians find some basis for agreement to the
question of preaching's source in Karl Barth's trinity of
God's Word Incarnate, Written, and Preached. Similarly,
the varying criteria for selecting material from the
source(s) find a common basis in the 'project method' of
another preacher-theologian the preaching lecturers
generally consider secondary: Harry Emerson Fosdick.
If the pattern continues, a consensus answer to this
chapter's third broad question (the priority of content
or congregation in the preparation and delivery of
selected messages) should come from Rudolf Bultmann. In
reality, the situation is not quite that tidy, yet a
Bultmannian perspective offers a helpful starting point.
Bultmann saw preaching as incarnational. Note this
fact in the following two quotations:
A man just like myself speaks to me the Word of
God: in him the Word of God becomes incarnate.
For the incarnation is likewise an eschatological
event and not a datable event of the
past; it is an event which is continually being
reenacted in the event of proclamation. °°
The eschatological occurrence continues to take
place in preaching in the address which
proclaims. The preaching, therefore, . . . is
always the word of man and at the same time it
is to be understood as God's address.101
Three related points summarize his thought on the
relation between preaching and the concept of