새 설교학자들의 성경관과 개혁주의 설교

The most important factor for the Reformed preaching concerns the authority of the biblical text in the sermon. The biblical text should be the basis to make the sermon, and the sermon must follow the main message of the biblical text. As God speaks through the Bible, when preachers fail to ground their preaching in the biblical text, they abandon their authority. Because the Bible is both the source and substance of preaching, Christian preachers must deliver what the biblical text intends to speak. This conviction, however, is seriously attacked in the New Homiletic. New homileticians of the last four decades contend that the conventional preaching style is neither attractive nor effective for contemporary congregations. Rather than using the traditional attempt to appeal to listeners with the cognitive and propositional ideas of the biblical text, these scholars have focused on the listener's experience and participation in preaching as they draw their own conclusions from the sermon. Three leading contemporary homileticians represent these movements: first, the inductive approach to preaching was advocated and developed by Fred Craddock; second, narrative preaching by homiletical plot was suggested by Eugene Lowry; and finally, sermonic shape within the structure and movement of the sermon was pursued by David Buttrick, whose approach is called the phenomenological method. This article explores how these three major figures of the New Homiletic dealt with the biblical text in Christian preaching. The present writer believes that the New Homiletic has attempted to revive Christian preaching with a revolutionary methodology of preaching, but it does not do justice to the message of the biblical text. Christian preachers should glean from the New Homiletician's emphasis on the importance of listeners and creatively utilize their methodology for effective communication. However, we must realize that the preaching philosophy of the New Homiletic cannot be supported by the Word of God because the Bible is to be preached with conviction about its truth.