The Mission of Preaching by Johnson Patrick W. T.;Lose David J.;

Author:Johnson, Patrick W. T.;Lose, David J.; [Johnson, Patrick W. T. ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830897124
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2015-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

Preaching Confesses Jesus Christ

We turn now to consider the essential activity in which preachers are engaged: confessing Jesus Christ. The homiletical proposals we explored earlier all operate within the general framework of “testimony” and consider preaching a form of that activity. Long proposes preaching as bearing witness, connecting to Old and New Testament precedents and the hermeneutical work of Paul Ricoeur. However, he argues that the witness testifies and what the witness offers is a testimony. Thus, going back to Ricoeur’s courtroom analogy, Long appears to combine witness and testimony. Likewise, Anna Carter Florence describes “preaching as testimony” and draws on the same material in Ricoeur. Influenced by Walter Brueggemann, she has much of the same Old Testament precedent in the background. Although she appears to prefer the term “testimony” to “witness,” like Long, Florence combines the two. By contrast, David Lose purposefully characterizes preaching as confession rather than witness or testimony, and the bulk of his work in Confessing Jesus Christ aims to develop “confession” as a distinct concept for homiletical use. In my view, confession is the more appropriate category for missional preaching for several reasons.

First, there are the reasons Lose himself offers. While he does not compare “confession” to other testimonial terms used in homiletics, he does argue that it is a useful term for at least four distinct reasons. First, “‘Confession’ designates a summary of the church’s essential assertions concerning God’s decisive activity in Jesus of Nazareth, the one crucified and raised from the dead.”24 Lose finds this aspect of confession important both in contemporary theology and in New Testament usage, especially in the post-Pauline documents, where homologein had evolved to signify both a doctrinal summary of the gospel and the essential tenets that distinguish orthodox from heterodox teaching.

Second, “‘Confession’ denotes articulating faith as a living response both to this proclaimed word and to the current situation and crisis of the world.”25 It is important here that confession is the articulation of faith in response to the challenge and crisis of the world because by this dimension of confession Lose draws a thin distinction in biblical usage between homologein (to confess) and martyrein (to bear witness). He writes, “For whereas ‘witnessing’ is most often self-consciously evangelistic in purpose, ‘confessing’ reflects a stalwart declaring of what one believes, not simply toward the end of evangelistic persuasion, but also and especially because the circumstances demand it.”26

Third, confession is central to the life of faith and the life of the church. This insight is present in the New Testament usage and even more strongly in the work of theologians Miroslav Volf, Brian Gerrish and Douglas Hall, upon whom Lose relies.27 It is by confession, which is the essential summary and articulation of faith, that the community maintains its identity, learns its distinctive way of making meaning in the world, confers identity on individuals and responds to the questions and challenges posed by competing confessions. Finally and fourth, drawing on the speech-act theory of John Searle, Lose argues that confession

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