Distance in Preaching by Brothers Michael;

Author:Brothers, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerdmans
Published: 2014-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

The Bible as Realistic Narrative

In his preface to Preparation and Manifestation: Sermons for Lent and Easter, Ellingsen declares that the basic supposition of the biblical narrative approach is that we should read the Bible neither as the sourcebook for history of the early church, nor as a symbolic expression of religious experience. Instead, the Bible should be read in the same way we read a “piece of great literature.” Ellingsen proposes that, if the Bible is to be read as literature, it then follows that the best tools for its interpretation and criticism are those of “literary analysis,” for they provide the “most appropriate approach” to interpreting and preaching on biblical texts.9

The particular tools of literary analysis that Ellingsen deems most appropriate for biblical interpretation are those from what he terms “early Anglo-­American New Criticism.” A movement that began in America and England in the 1930s, New Criticism focused on a work of art as an “object in itself,” or in the case of literature, “the text alone.” According to the New Critics, a work of literature cannot be analyzed or interpreted according to the languages of science, the social sciences, history, or philosophy, for the object has its own language of meaning as “the thing in itself.” The New Critics reacted against the mechanistic and positivistic nature of the modern world that reduced meaning to facts, propositions, and systems. They also protested against the Romantic notion that a work of art should be interpreted as a form of self-­expression. The early New Critics argued that art should be viewed “objectively” — that is, according to its own language of meaning.10

With regard to literary texts, the New Critics exposed the “intentional fallacy” and the “affective fallacy” in methods of interpretation. They perceived the “intentional fallacy” to be the erroneous interpretation of a text according to the intentions of its author. Ellingsen draws parallels between the quest for authorial intent in literary criticism and the source/historical method in biblical criticism, with its attempt to get “behind the text” to the “original meanings” according to an author, redactor, or historical context.11

Not only did early New Criticism call into question meaning as found in authorial intent; it also rejected meaning in the text’s reception. New Critics exposed the “affective fallacy” as the mistaken attempt to locate the meaning of a text according to its “affect” on the contemporary reader (what would later be labeled “reader-­response” criticism). Ellingsen identifies the affective fallacy in contemporary homiletics as the aestheticism of narrative or story preaching. According to Ellingsen, this movement of the last two decades has focused on the experience and feelings of the hearer through its use of “life stories.” Using Richard Lischer’s essay “The Limits of Story” in support of his argument, he criticizes contemporary narrative preaching for serving the “narcissism of our day” by turning the hearer away from others and inward toward the self.12

According to the New Critics, both “intentional” and “affective” approaches of interpretation overshadowed the meaning of the text according to the “text itself.

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