Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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"By means of the homily the mysteries of the faith and the
guiding principles of the Christian life are expounded from
the sacred text during the course of the liturgical year.
The homily, therefore, is to be highly esteemed as part of
the liturgy itself." Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and
Post Conciliar Documents. Edited by Austin Flannery.
(Tenbury Wells, Worcester: Fowler Wright Books, 1975), p.
17,18.
On this table (as well as the next two),
parentheses enclose single entries which do not fit the
proposed pairing patterns.
Two criteria make these data lines stand out.
First, the high percentages associated with 'Lloyd-Jones
(and only slightly lower percentage with 'Stewart')
lecturers' on these lines. No other entries on tables 40-42
document figures as high as those associated with
'Lloyd-Jones lecturers' here. Second, both of these data
lines relate to the same general topic, the relationship
between preaching and the Bible. On both these lines, the
'Tillich'+'Rahner' lecturers reponded in significantly lower
percentages.
-2-3 The criteria determining importance here are
twofold. First, frequency of a theme's appearance on one of
the tables 40-42, e.g., factors relating to the Bible show
large statistical contrast between the paired groups of
lecturers three times on this table, whereas only one other
Individual theme appears more than once. Second,
exclusivity of appearance, e.g., the theme of the Bible as
the source and content of preaching appears much less
frequently on the other two tables. This indicates that it
is in this theological pairing that opinions regarding the
Bible as the source and content of preaching reveal most
agreement within a pair (and corresponding disagreement
between the pairs). In contrast, the theme of the "purpose"
of preaching appears twice on both tables 40 and 41. This
decreases the importance of that theme in this analysis.
11.14 Table 32 reveals that "a text's context" is, to
'Lloyd-Jones' and 'Stewart lecturers', a secondary or
tertiary hermeneutical principle. Yet, the 'Lloyd-Jones'
and 'Stewart' composite responses on this data line, are
greater than the 'Rahner'+'Tillich' responses.
2 '5The use or non-use of a lectionary is irrelevant
to this discussion. The lectionary does not stipulate
preaching content, only the Scripture pericope.
261is stated above (in note 23), this theme of
preaching to the congregation appears on other tables, thus
indicating an apparent inconsistency in lecturer response to
the survey. We would, therefore, not want to build the
entire argument here (defining the distinction between these
two pairs of lecturer groups) on the evidence of these
questions relating to the congregation. But the
'Stewart'+'Tillich lecturer' agreement here, in conjunction
with the 'Lloyd-Jones'+'Rahner' agreement on the three "God"
questions, does appear to explain the contrast.
'Two 'Lloyd-Jones lecturers' wrote that the
preacher must be true to his calling. The distance between