Dialogical Preaching: Bakhtin, Otherness and Homiletics (Arbeiten Zur Pastoral Theologie, Liturgik Und Hymnologie) (German Edition) (Arbeiten zur Pastoraltheologie, Liturgik und Hymnologie, 74) 9783525624241, 9783647624242, 3525624247

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© 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525624241 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647624242

Arbeiten zur Pastoraltheologie, Liturgik und Hymnologie

Edited by Lutz Friedrich, Eberhard Hauschildt, Franz Karl Praßl and Anne M. Steinmeier Volume 74

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

© 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525624241 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647624242

Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen

Dialogical Preaching: Bakhtin, Otherness and Homiletics

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

© 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525624241 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647624242

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-525-62424-1 ISBN 978-3-647-62424-2 (E-Book) Ó 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting by Konrad Triltsch Print und digitale Medien GmbH. Ochsenfurt Printed and bound in Germany by Hubert & Co, Göttingen Printed on non-aging paper.

© 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525624241 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647624242

Acknowledgements This book is a slightly revised version of the PhD dissertation entitled Preaching as a Carnivalesque Dialogue—between the ‘Wholly Other’ and ‘Other-wise’ Listeners, which I defended at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, in June 2012. The journey leading to this book has been inspired by dialogues with colleagues and friends prompting me to move back and forth between Denmark and the United States for the past many years. These people and their places have had a profound influence on me and the book could not have been written without them. First of all my gratitude goes to my ‘Doctor Vater’ Bent Flemming Nielsen, who has been my primary theological dialogue partner at the University of Copenhagen since 2000. I have benefitted immensely from Bent Flemming’s theological wisdom and integrity, methodological reconsiderations of theory and practice and stubborn insistence on relating to ‘die Sache’ of theology as a subject rather than an object. Bent Flemming also led the group of ‘Practicetheoreticians’ including Kirsten Donskov Felter, Christine Tind JohannesenHenry, Diana Rigtrup, and Lena Sjöstrand, who have provided an energetic environment for creative thinking and academic experimentation at the Faculty of Theology in Copenhagen. Charles Campbell has, more recently, become a very precious colleague and friend who brings me great joy by insisting on the importance of laughter and playfulness in the theological field. Since Chuck and Johan Cilliers wrote their Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly, drawing upon Bakhtin at the same time as I was writing on the subject we did not get the chance to enter into discussion of each other’s books but deposited points of further discussion to footnotes, cross-referencing to each other’s forthcoming works. Chuck’s invitation to co-teach and do postdoctoral research at Duke Divinity School, however, enabled us to take up those discussions and helped me see further implications of my work (and Dana Campbell’s loving care for our family helped us all feel at home in Durham). It will take me years to digest the brainstorming sessions we have been having in our offices at Duke and on the weekly trips to Butner Federal Prison. I am particularly happy that our collaboration will continue over the internet, in Copenhagen, and wherever Societas Homiletica and Academy of Homiletics may lead us. Marianne Gaarden is not only a precious friend but also one of my closest homiletical colleagues. I am deeply grateful for the intermingling of theological and personal conversations we have had through various international conferences, long plane rides, hotel breakfast buffets, and feedback on each other’s work, and I particularly enjoy now working and writing together.

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Acknowledgements

Marianne has proven invaluable for my work by challenging and anchoring the theoretical reflections in empirical groundedness and inspiring me to contextualize international inputs in a Danish context. Kenneth Swanson has been a most wonderful preacher, spiritual director, and friend for more than half of my life. Independent studies with him in New York and Nashville have shaped my theology in ways too deep to express. In addition to inspiring me to have the highest expectations of preaching, Ken proofread the entire dissertation. Susan Bond worked with me on David Buttrick’s homiletics at Vanderbilt Divinity School and encouraged me to present my first paper at the Academy of Homiletics’ Annual Meeting. Thomas Troeger from Yale welcomed me and continues to ensure that all the international participants at the Academy Meeting get a central seat at the table. I was honored by being elected as a member of the Executive Committee. For this gesture I am grateful to the whole Academy of Homiletics. Benny Grey Schuster and Eberhard Harbsmeier not only encouraged me to pursue PhD studies but provided me with opportunities to let my theories and international didactic experiences be challenged by Danish pastors and practical theologians at the Theological Pedagogical Center in Løgumkloster and in the Danish Homiletical Network, whose members also are cherished. Mogens Lindhardt invited me into the local planning group for the Societas Homiletica’s Meeting in Copenhagen and helped me get acquainted with that colorful group of international homileticians. The number of colleagues, teachers and students who have shaped me and my work from the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, are too numerous to mention. Special recognitions go to the lively group of doctoral candidates and postdocs, as well as the student secretaries and librarians of whom Jan Masorsky provided me with much needed editorial assistance on the dissertation and an exquisite understanding of what lies between the lines. Regarding my dissertation, I am deeply grateful to the members of the assessment committee—Charles Campbell, Duke Divinity School; Alexander Deeg, Universität Leipzig; and Pia Søltoft, University of Copenhagen—for entering into open-ended dialogue with my work. Alexander deserves a special recognition for his encouragement of and assistance to me in the pursuit of publication. Also, analyzing the works of contemporary theologians has turned out very fruitful for me as I have benefitted from the subsequent dialogues with these scholars on the subject. I am thus particularly grateful to Svend Bjerg, James Henry Harris, John S. McClure; they not only graciously accepted my analyses of their works but ensured that the provisional monologue transformed into continuing dialogues. The Danish Council for Independent Research / Humanities (FKK) has generously funded the project and the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen has been an excellent host. I am deeply grateful for the recognitions given by the Research Council, as well as the Faculty of Theology,

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Acknowledgements

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that not only supported the research but also provided time and resources for maternity leaves so that an academic career could be combined with parenting. Furthermore I am grateful to Duke University Divinity School for enabling me to do postdoctoral studies in their stimulating environment and for granting me teaching opportunities, a spacious office and the assistance of Judith Heyhoe, who deserves a special thank you for her linguistic editing and proof reading. From Duke I am particularly influenced by the great company of homileticians led by Richard Lischer, Bill Turner, Luke Powery, and Chuck Campbell, who have inspired me through their teaching, preaching, writing, and conversations. A special thank you to the wonderful students in the Introduction to Preaching course at Duke whom I had the privilege of working with in the spring of 2013. I thank Lutz Friedrichs, Eberhard Hauschildt, Franz Karl Praßl, and Anne M. Steinmeier for reviewing and including the book in the series “Arbeiten zur Pastoraltheologie, Liturgiewissenschaft und Hymnologie”, as well as the publisher Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, particularly Jörg Persch and Christoph Spill for their editorial work. Finally, my most heartfelt gratitude goes to my family, especially my mother, Gerda, for passing on an insatiable appetite for learning as well as taking care of our entire family. I cannot sufficiently thank my husband Peter and our children: Lukas, Freja, and Markus. Not only did they love me through the PhD project, filling my life with hugs, laughter, songs, and stories but they also bravely accompanied me for postdoc studies in North Carolina, which necessitated that the children learn English overnight and Peter become a Visiting Professor at Duke’s School of Computer Science. Thank you, always, Peter for datalogical expertise and didactic inspiration but most of all for never failing patience, friendship, and love. Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen

Duke University Divinity School, April 2013

© 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525624241 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647624242

© 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525624241 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647624242

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theories of Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialogicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carnivalesque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Double Otherness . . . . . . . . . . . . . Architecture of the Book . . . . . . . . . . The Achilles Heel of Bakhtinian Dialogism

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Chapter 1: Practice-Theoretical Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . Homiletical Search for Dialogical Theories of Practice . . . . . . . Theology as the ‘Thinking of Faith’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Practice-Theoretical Interaction between Preaching and the Bakhtinian Oeuvre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bakhtin as ‘Founder of Modern Pragmatism’ . . . . . . . . . . . . Trans-Linguistic Critique of Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialogical Methodology for Homiletics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bakhtin’s Third Way between Pragmatism and Theories of Practice Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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21 23 25

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27 30 32 36 38 39

Chapter 2: Bakhtinian Dialogism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Homiletical Request for New Communication Theories . . . . . . . . Critique of Communication Theories in a Homiletical Context . . . . Bakhtinian Dialogism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A) Bakhtinian Dialogism between Dialogue Philosophies and Speech Act Theories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Martin Buber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Søren Kierkegaard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Speech Act Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neo-Pragmatic Alternation between ‘Prior’ and ‘Passing Theories’ . Linguistic Ability as ‘Feel for the Game’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B) Bakhtinian Alternative to the ‘Transfer Model’ of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C) 3 Levels of Dialogicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1) Language Theoretical Level: Language is Per Definition Dialogical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Foreign Word—tjusjoje slovo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Model of the Foreign Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2) Communication-Theoretical Level: Response can be More or Less Dialogical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3) Philosophical Level: Dialogue as Truthful Existence . . . . D) Heteroglossia, Chronotope, and Polyphony . . . . . . . . . . Chronotope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heteroglossia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Polyphony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 3: Dialogical Preaching: From ‘New Homiletics’ to ‘Other-wise Homiletics’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . German Shift of Paradigm toward Interactive Dialogicity . . . . . . . Dialogicity in Swedish Homiletical Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recent Danish Homiletics between Orality and Literacy . . . . . . . The ‘Dialogical Principle’ in Fred Craddock’s Homiletics . . . . . . . Craddock’s ‘Inductive Method’ in Light of Kierkegaard’s ‘Indirect Message’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Listener-Oriented Preaching in Light of Kierkegaard’s Reflections on ‘The Upbuilding’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Craddock’s ‘Dialogical Principle’ in Light of Bakhtin . . . . . . . . . Buttrick’s Conversational Homiletics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other-wise Critique of the New Homiletics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Who are the Others in ‘Other-wise’ Homiletics? . . . . . . . . . . . . Listener-Oriented Preaching in Light of Bakhtinian Dialogism . . . . Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 4: Preaching as a Carnivalesque Genre . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Problem of the Mixed Genre of Preaching . . . . . . . Bakhtinian Carnivalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Preaching as a Carnivalesque Genre . . . . . . . . . . . . Generic Characteristics of Carnivalization . . . . . . . . . Carnivalization between Bodies and Texts . . . . . . . . . Carnivalesque Bodies in Preaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kierkegaardian Carnivalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . God as the Superaddressee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Word with a Loophole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carnivalesque Texts Considered as Action . . . . . . . . . Practice-Theoretical Analyses of Contemporary Preaching Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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61 62 64 64 65 65 67 68 68 69 71 73 75 78 81 82 85 87 90 92 93 95 95 96 99 99 101 103 106 107 108 110 111 113 115

Chapter 5: Novelist Approach to Carnivalesque Preaching . . . . . . . 116 Carnival or Masquerade? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

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Novelistic Heir of Proclamatory Genres . Implicit versus Explicit Listeners . . . . . Homiletic Experience with the Experience Free and Bound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 6: Heteroglot Approach to Dialogical Preaching . . . . . ‘The Sermon is not a Sermon until it is Spoken’ . . . . . . . . . ‘Homiletical Musicality’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Participant Proclamation’ as Co-Authorship . . . . . . . . . . Excursus: Listeners as Authors in Danish contexts . . . . . . . Seeing Oneself through the Eyes of Another : the Asymmetrical Otherness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other-wise Surplus of Outsideness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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126 126 128 129 130

Chapter 7: Other-wise Polyphonic Preaching . . . . . . . . . . . Homiletical Paradigms in Light of Philosophical Frameworks Pragmatic Approach to Communication and Philosophy . . . Other-wise Communication Model for Preaching . . . . . . . Bakhtinian and ‘Other-wise’ Co-Authorship . . . . . . . . . . The Preacher as Guest and Host for a Polyphony of Voices . . Contemporary Other-wise Preaching as the Word from God . Comparison of the Homiletics of Campbell and McClure . . . Textualized Experiences versus Experientalized Texts . . . . . Three-Fold Foolishness of Homiletics . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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138 139 139 141 142 143 144 146 148 149

Chapter 8: Chronotopic, Carnivalesque Preaching . The Confounding Word of Holy Fools . . . . . . The Scandalous Particularity of Street Preaching The Chronotopic Significance of Street Preaching Carnivalesque Sermon: ‘An Unsettling Debut’ . . ‘The Gospel, too, is Carnival’ . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 9: The Double Otherness of Dialogical Preaching . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialogical versus Dialectical Differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ‘Qualitative Difference’ according to Kierkegaard . . . . . . . . Homiletical Implications of the Qualitative Difference— According to Barth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carnivalesque Dialogue as ‘gestörtes Gespräch’ . . . . . . . . . . . The Qualitative Difference as a Conjoining Difference? . . . . . . . Otherness and Identity in Light of Jüngel’s Advent Analogy . . . . The Problem of Analogy in the History of Theology . . . . . . . . . ‘Difference in the Midst of an even Greater Similarity’ . . . . . . .

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Comparison of Jüngel, Bakhtin and Other-Wise Homiletics . . . . . 174 The Potential of the ‘Breaking In’ of the Wholly Other on Contemporary Preaching Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Index of names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Subject index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

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Introduction This book explores the genre of preaching in light of the theories of dialogicity and carnivalization developed by the Russian philosopher, literary critic, and communication theoretician, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895 – 1975). The concepts of otherness and difference play a central role in human communication as well as in theological descriptions of the relationship between God and humans. Accordingly one of my central aims is to explore ways in which various ‘others’, different from the designated preacher, influence contemporary preaching practices and in that sense can be seen as co-authors of homiletic meaning. In order to study the complex genre of preaching, the exploration is developed within the following tension fields that are distinct yet intertwined: 1) Theory versus practice; 2) dialogue versus monologue; 3) carnivalesque interactions and role-reversals between voices, bodies, and texts; and 4) the ‘Wholly Other’ versus ‘Other-wise’ listeners. In the following I will briefly address what is at stake within these different fields.

Theories of Practice The academic discipline of homiletics shares the challenges of other disciplines of practical theology. These challenges emerge not only from the overlapping boundaries between theology, sociology, literary criticism, communications theory, and philosophy but first and foremost from the tension field between theory and practice. The latter tension is crucial to keep in mind, granted that one of the primary tasks of practical theology is to analyze acts and practices that are transformed by the very theoretical attempt to account for them.1 In spite of the radical differences between homiletical theory and practice, one of my intentions is to explore whether a new homiletic approach, based on a practice-theoretical methodology and theories of dialogue and carnivalization developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, can enable homileticians to manage in 1 See Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 80 – 83; Sherry B. Ortner, ‘Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 26.1 (1984): 126 – 166; Daniel Franklin Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis: Exploring Theological Method with Pierre Bourdieu. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005); Theodore R. Schatzki et al., Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (New York: Routledge, 2000).

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these tension fields without either ignoring their differences or dividing theory and practice into mutually exclusive fields.2 Accordingly, it is not my primary intention to provide practical guidelines for dialogical preaching. Having learned from competent, yet problematic approaches to analysis of written sermons3 I will try to surpass traditional approaches of either building homiletic theories upon presumptions of how listeners might respond to preaching or set up rhetorical rules for preaching based on generalization from empirical studies.4 As an alternative approach, therefore, some of the primary aims in this book are to explore: 1) How preachers expose their preaching to interaction with various ‘others’ of preaching; 2) How homileticians might incorporate this ‘other-wisely’ ‘co-authored’ impact on preaching into homiletical theories.

Dialogicity In accordance with certain classic homiletic reflections I understand preaching as an act of dialogue. However, comparative analyses of the notion of dialogue according to Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855), Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘New Homiletics’,5 ‘Other-Wise Homiletics’,6 and others reveal that the concept of dialogue is used in very different, if not incompatible, ways. The word dialogue has two basic connotations, both of which are relevant to the use of the word in homiletic contexts. In everyday use dialogue is often understood in contrast to monologue. In confirmation of this use some etymologists have argued that there are relevant connotations between diaand duo-/di- (meaning two) in the sense that the term dialogue emphasizes two discourses instead of one. Yet, the Greek dia + logos indicates another sense, namely ‘through words.’7 Both senses of the word play a significant role 2 See Mikhail Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993). 3 As discussed in reference to Johnny Karlsson’s Bakhtin-inspired sermon analyses in chp.3. 4 As David Buttrick does in an informative and inspiring, albeit problematic, way in his Homiletic: Moves and Structures (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 211 ff. 5 The ‘New Homiletics’ paradigm dominated American homiletics from approximately 1969 until the early 1990’s. In my analysis it is primarily represented by Fred Craddock and David Buttrick. 6 ‘Other-wise preaching’ is a term coined by the American homiletician John S. McClure in his Other-wise Preaching: A Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001). Based on his reflections I will be using the terms other-wise preaching and other-wise homilectics as a prism for analyzing the many faceted contemporary homiletic movements that emphasize listeners as co-authors of preaching. The notion, ‘other-wise’ is inspired by the French philosopher, Emmanuel L¦vinas’ (1906 – 2005) description of otherness. 7 Per Linell, Approaching Dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001), 13.

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in my use of the term. Based on Bakhtin I interpret it as a decisive characteristic of dialogue that it is a ‘two-sided action’, confirming the first definition. However, in the present interpretation of dialogical preaching, the two-sided action often appears to surpass and even subvert the verbal aspect of the interaction. It is therefore the latter ‘through words’ connotation that will be challenged in the following exploration of preaching as a carnivalesque dialogue. Bakhtin’s communication theories are characterized by a continuous emphasis on dialogue. According to his interpretation, all discourses are dialogical in the sense that addressees explicitly or implicitly play an active part as co-authors. The determining difference between monological and dialogical discourses lies in whether the words of the other are used merely as scaffolding, which does not constitute the discourse in itself, or if they are allowed to influence the ‘architectural’ whole.8 Bakhtin’s claim that discourse production always happens in dialogue with the ‘already-said’ and the ‘notyet-said’ echoes many preachers’ acknowledgement of their congregation’s implicit influence on their preaching. The not-yet-spoken voices imagined in the preparation process, however, may have more or less in common with the reactions of the actual congregation during preaching.

Carnivalesque When the concept of ‘carnivalesque’ is applied to the dialogue of preaching, this accentuates the hypothesis that the complex genre of preaching cannot be understood in light of communication theories alone. Consequently, the determining influence of extra-verbal aspects of preaching such as embodiment, tonality, rhythm, time, and place become emphasized. The Bakhtinian authorship examines how certain literary genres, including preaching, are ‘carnivalized’—that is, how they 1) re-enact the ritualized reversals of public roles and hierarchies, breaking the traditional lines between actors and audience, and 2) transpose the embodied interaction between the ‘grotesque bodies’ in the carnival square to literary texts. One of the benefits of analyzing the Bakhtinian theories of carnivalization for homiletics is that they make apparent ways in which incarnated acts continue to live on in literary genres. As a result, they address the potentially fruitful tension between embodied acts and reflexive texts. One of the crucial questions to be explored in the present homiletic approach to Bakhtinian carnivalization, however, is whether the carnivalesque text becomes a 8 Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984 [1963]), 187.

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Introduction

substitution for or ‘heir’ of all oral genres9 so that intersubjective, corporate acts of carnivalization, and, in the field of homiletics, corporate worship, become superfluous. Or, whether carnivalization of literature carries the potential of leading to new events of carnival.

Double Otherness One of the classic theological discussions of otherness was inaugurated by the Dialectical Theologians in the 1920’s, who in their rejection of the Liberal Theological focus on human experience and culture, claimed that God is the ‘ganz Andere’. As such all attempts of creating points of contact with contemporary culture and human experience were regarded as mere ‘child’s play’10 compared to proclaiming the foreign Word of the Wholly Other. Inherent in this claim was also an understanding of inter-human differences as insignificant compared to the qualitative difference between God and humans. If we approach preaching from an empirical perspective, we get a quite different impression of the listeners’ experience of preaching than from that described by the Dialectical Theologians. Empirical surveys of people listening to sermons11 portray the peculiar intersubjective interaction taking place in the act of listening to preaching. The creative agency of listeners indicates that they are far from passive receivers of the preacher’s message and that their different perspectives and situations play a significant role for their approach to the sermon. These insights have prompted contemporary homileticians to incorporate serious attention toward inter-human difference and otherness into their preaching practices and homiletical theories. The recent approach to preaching as ‘other-oriented’ dialogue, as represented by the ‘other-wise homiletics’, provides a practical theological counterpart to the classical discussion of the divine otherness which, on one hand, can prove fatal, yet if handled carefully might be theologically fruitful. Drawing upon the analyses of the ‘qualitative difference’ between God and humans performed by Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855), Karl Barth (1886 – 1968), and Eberhard Jüngel (b. 1934), the driving question that then emerges is whether the recent homiletical emphasis on inter-human differences and otherness functions as a reinforcement or subordination of the divine-human difference.

9 As claimed by Svend Bjerg, cf. chap. 5. 10 Karl Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1925), 158. 11 John S. McClure et al., Listening to Listeners: Homiletical Case Studies (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004).

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Architecture of the Book

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Architecture of the Book The book consists of nine chapters that explore the contemporary field of homiletics and the genre of preaching in light of Bakhtinian theories of dialogicity and carnivalization. As should be evident from the architecture of this book, my aim is neither to develop a thorough analysis of the Bakhtinian authorship nor to map out any single practice of preaching comprehensively. Rather, the focus is on the tension field between theory and practice, between the Bakhtinian oeuvre and contemporary preaching practices, in order to explore how they might critically correct and illuminate each other. Chapter 1—Practice-Theoretical Methodology— describes the Bakhtinian based approach to the homiletical field and genre. The method is based on Bakhtin’s methodological reflections on a dialogical approach to the human sciences12 informed by the multidisciplinary ‘Turn to Practice’.13 In this chapter the differences between theories and practices of preaching are recognized yet without categorizing them as mutually exclusive. Rather than regarding the differences as an obstruction for dialogue and interaction, they are, based on Bakhtin, approached as a precondition. Chapter 2—Bakhtinian Dialogism— unfolds the Bakhtinian theories and neologisms that play a central role in the book. These theories have been selected in consideration of the challenges that characterize the critique by contemporary homileticians of the preceding New Homiletics’ paradigm. The theories presented are communication as a ‘two-sided action’; dialogicity in three senses; otherness as constitutive of communication; carnivalization as role exchange and subversion of traditional authorities; listeners as coauthors; and the Bakhtinian neologisms: chronotope, heteroglossia, and polyphony. Chapter 3—Dialogical Preaching: From ‘New Homiletics’ to ‘Other-wise Homiletics’—provides a thematically focused analysis of the New Homiletics paradigm, represented by Fred Craddock (b. 1928) and David Buttrick (b. 1927). Particular focus is on those aspects of the New Homiletics that have been critically rejected by more recent homileticians, particularly inductive preaching as a practical implementation of the theological notion of ‘priesthood of all believers’ and shared experiences as a precondition for dialogical interaction. Based upon the methodological, theoretical and historical analyses of dialogicity in the first three chapters, Chapter 4—Preaching as a Carnivalesque Genre—challenges the traditional understanding of preaching as a 12 Primarily developed in Bakhtin’s Toward a Philosophy of the Act and the essays ‘The Problem of the Text’ and ‘Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences’, in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986). 13 Ortner, ‘Theory in Anthropology.’

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Introduction

dialogue by exploring the genre in light of the Bakhtinian theories of carnivalization. Particular focus is given to the role reversals between actors and spectators, speakers and listeners, bodies and words, as well as the Kierkegaardian mix of genres. Chapters 5 – 8 analyze the genre of preaching through contemporary American and Danish homiletic practices and theoretical reflections. The homileticians I examine have been selected in accordance with two main criteria: 1) they play a significant role in developing and redefining the contemporary genre of preaching, and 2) they have acknowledged the potential of a Bakhtinian approach for further homiletic reflection and development. As indicated by the titles of the chapters, each of these homileticians emphasizes different elements of the Bakhtinian complex of theories. Through analyses of the relationship between these homiletic practices and theories I intend to show not only the multifacetedness of the Bakhtinian oeuvre, but also how theories, rather than determining practice, are used contextually and transformed in the use. Chapter 5—Novelist Approach to Carnivalesque Preaching—and Chapter 6—Heteroglot Approach to Dialogical Preaching—present different approaches to preaching as developed by the Danish systematical theologian Svend Bjerg and the African American homiletician James Henry Harris. Their positions are juxtaposed because they both understand the sermon in light of Bakhtin’s genre-theoretical understanding of the novel. However, in spite of their shared emphasis on a novelistic approach to preaching, Harris and Bjerg embody this understanding quite differently in their preaching practices. Whereas Bjerg interprets the Bakhtinian genre theories as validating that speaking subjects of the ‘proclamatory’ genres have been replaced by the writer of novelistic sermons, Harris interprets orality as one of the defining characteristics of novelistic preaching, claiming that ‘the sermon is not a sermon until it is spoken.’14 The preaching practices of Bjerg and Harris then lead into discussions of the genre of preaching, including intertextual versus ‘intercorporeal’ dialogue, and implicit versus actual listeners. Chapter 7—Other-wise Polyphonic Preaching—is based on an approach to preaching as collaborative conversation as represented by the American homiletician John S. McClure’s developments of Other-wise Homiletics and ‘Roundtable Preaching’. McClure’s homiletics give rise to practice-theoretical discussions of different kinds of dialogicity, other-wise co-authorship, the ‘Wholly Other’ and the ‘other-wise listeners’, preaching as ‘decentring’, and the preacher as guest and host for a polyphony of voices. Chapter 8—Chronotopic, Carnivalesque Preaching—focuses on preaching as a reversal of roles and places of preaching. Based on the American homiletician Charles Campbell’s ‘dis-located’ analyses of street preaching 14 James Henry Harris, The Word Made Plain: The Power and Promise of Preaching (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 52.

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The Achilles Heel of Bakhtinian Dialogism

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versus liturgical situatedness, I explore the significance of the spatio-temporal matrix of preaching as well as the relationship between ‘literary’ and ‘real life’ chronotopes in light of Bakhtin. The final Chapter 9—The Double Otherness of Dialogical Preaching— reflects on the genre of preaching in light of a theological discussion informed by Kierkegaard, Barth and Jüngel of the qualitative difference between God and humans. The central question in this chapter is whether the qualitative difference between God and humans is best understood as a disjunctive or a conjoining difference in the practice of preaching.

The Achilles Heel of Bakhtinian Dialogism Before embarking upon the homiletic field in dialogue with Bakhtin I would like to articulate one of the critical challenges inherent in this project. What makes the Bakhtinian authorship constructive for the field of homiletic reflections—that is, its interdisciplinary focus—is also its Achilles heel in the sense that it makes it difficult to delimit the focus from other relevant studies, positions and fields. Rather than helping scholars to reduce complexity, the Bakhtinian approach may well further complicate the complexity, since it embraces the ‘simultaneity’ of disparate forces, voices, and disciplines. Instead of zooming in on one at the exclusion of others, the approach trains its users to ‘hear voices everywhere’ and see ‘loopholes’ in what appears to be finite. This is because, as Bakhtin describes it in his proposal for a methodology for the human sciences, ‘[t]he contexts of dialogue are without limit.’15 While the porous juxtaposition of several positions and disciplines is an advantage when it comes to describing the interdisciplinary discipline and practice of homiletics, it can turn out to be an Achilles heel when evaluating its usefulness as the foundational method in an academic work. When characterizing his own approach, Bakhtin acknowledges and embraces its boundary breaking character : ‘[A] positive feature of our study is this: [it moves] in spheres that are liminal, i. e., on the borders of all the aforementioned disciplines, at their junctures and points of intersection.’16 The biographical circumstances surrounding the Bakhtinian authorship only add to the ambiguities. Basic data about his formal education and publications are often disputed, so, for example, he is often credited with works that were originally published under the names of his close friends, 15 ‘Towards a Methodology for the Human Sciences’, in Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 170. 16 Bakhtin, Estetika, 281, qtd. by Mikhail Holquist in Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002 [1990]), 14.

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Introduction

Medvedev17 and Voloshinov,18 and scholars disagree to what extent he has been involved in writing them.19 The ‘grotesque body’ of the Bakhtinian authorship, although flawed compared to more self-sufficient, finalized authorships, nevertheless ironically illustrates some of the core concerns in the Bakhtinian approach. The authorship manifests the difficulties of discerning where one body of literature ends and the other begins because they stand in dialogical, intertextual relationship with each other. The Bakhtinian oeuvre embodies polyphonic co-authorship and use of the ‘words of others’ to an extent that makes it hard to analyze conclusively and discern who is authoring whom. One of the challenges, following in the wake of Bakhtin, becomes to discern and differentiate between the many different positions in order to keep the ‘polyphonic’ interaction alive rather than conflating the different voices into one great harmonious whole. As a consequence of the Bakhtinian interdisciplinary approach to homiletics there are, thus, many disciplines that call for further exploration: dialogue philosophy, language philosophy, phenomenology, rhetorics, hermeneutics, and pragmatics in particular. In the following I will draw on the relevant fields of study without attempting to represent any of them exhaustively. Instead, the interest lies in how to enter into a dialogical encounter with them from a homiletical perspective, and in this regard, the Bakhtinian approach is illuminating.

17 Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin /Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1978). 18 M. B. Bakhtin/V. N. Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (New York and London: Seminar Press, 1973). 19 In an introduction titled ‘Bakhtin in the sober light of day’, Ken Hirschkop describes the biographical problems connected with the Bakhtinian authorship; see Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd, eds., Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, 2nd rev. ed. (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2001), 1 – 25.

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Chapter 1: Practice-Theoretical Methodology Empirical studies of people who listen to sermons show that, rather than passively apprehending the preacher’s sermon, listeners engage actively as coauthors, creating a mosaic of their own experiences and anticipations in more or less explicit dialogue with the sermon to which they are listening.1 The informative, yet, for some, daunting insight into the active co-authorship of listeners of preaching has been described by the American homiletician John S. McClure in his reflections on conducting an empirical survey of homiletical case studies. He states: It was illuminating, and sometimes unnerving, to see what laity are doing with sermon[s], cutting and pasting bits and pieces of language into personal and communal religious narratives… . In large part, the preachers’ words were removed from the ground (paradigm, life world, premises) on which the preacher stood and inserted wholesale onto a very different ground, in each case controlled by unique life conditions… . [M]ore often than not, listeners were painting the preacher’s words and sentences into a very different horizon of meaning altogether.2

Insight into listeners’ creative agency in preaching calls for serious reconsideration of traditional theological understandings of the Pauline and Lutheran emphasis that faith comes from hearing.3 Traditionally the incongruence between the practice of preaching and theological ideals has often been dealt with by either ignoring or trying to limit the ‘mindwanderings’ of the listeners and communicate with greater rhetorical efficiency so that the preacher’s message may be received more ‘clearly’.4 A radically different approach has been displayed in the recent homiletic turn toward practice which has caused a shift of focus toward the listeners of preaching, rather than the manuscripts of preachers. These listener-oriented studies have emphasized ways in which sermons are used actively by people in 1 John S. McClure et al, Listening to Listeners: Homiletical Case Studies (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2004); Theo Pleizier, Religious Involvement in Hearing Sermons: A Grounded Theory Study in Empirical Theology and Homiletics (Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers, 2012). 2 John S. McClure, ‘What I Now Think vis-—-vis Homiletic Theory’, unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Homiletics, Florida 2006; www.homiletics.org (accessed 16 April, 2013). 3 Romans 10:17 (New International Version). 4 See Karl Wilhelm Dahm, ‘Hören und Verstehen. Kommunikationssoziologische Überlegungen zur gegenwärtigen Predigtnot’, in Homiletisches Lesebuch. Texte zur heutigen Predigtlehre, ed. Albrecht Beutel (Tübingen: Katzmann-Verlag, 1986), 242 – 52; David Buttrick, Homiletic: Moves and Structures (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).

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the pews and consequently suggest the need for developing pragmatic approaches to homiletical communication. To what extent the words of the preacher influence the listeners’ own new ‘sermon’5 and whether the preacher enters into the listeners’ new construction dialogically is, however, still in need of investigation. To this end, I suggest that the communication theories developed by Mikhail M. Bakhtin can prove a valuable source, especially as empirical documentation of the agency of listeners of preaching confirms the Bakhtinian claim that addressees are far from passive receivers of the speaker’s discourse. One of the important aspects of the approach used by Bakhtin, at least for contemporary homiletical studies, is that he is critical of attempts to simply reverse the focus from speaker to listener. Instead of trading in traditional production-oriented understandings of communication and literature with a reception-aesthetics, Bakhtin focuses on the mutual influence between speakers and listeners, ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’. Furthermore, of crucial relevance to classic theological discussions of the ‘qualitative difference’ between God, as the ‘Wholly Other’, and human subjects, who are also increasingly understood through postmodern notions of difference, Bakhtin’s theories criticize traditional presuppositions of identity and symmetry as constitutive of communication and understanding. Instead he demonstrates how intersubjective difference is the sine qua non of ‘creative understanding’.6 I will thus use Bakhtinian theories to analyze how addressees explicitly or implicitly, positively or negatively, play a constitutive role in the development of the genre, as well as in the performed practice, of preaching. The focus on addressees as co-authors challenges traditional understandings of preaching as a one-way movement from the ‘Word of God’, as presented in the biblical texts, through the preacher, as a more or less neutral medium, to the listeners as passive receivers. The Bakhtinian emphasis on addressees as co-authors implies instead that communication is a ‘two-sided action’ performed in co-operation between a ‘polyphony’ of voices and an assembly of interacting bodies. However, before embarking upon communication theoretical and systematic theological analyses of the act of preaching, it is important to explore and discuss the inherent dilemmas connected with a theoretical approach to the practice of preaching. One of the questions accompanying this approach is whether new theories have any influence on practice, or if theory and practice are such different kinds of logic7 that they tend to become mutually exclusive. 5 See also Marianne Gaarden and Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen, ‘Listeners as Authors in Preaching—Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives’, Homiletic: A Review of Publications in Religious Communication, 38.1 (2013), http://www.homiletic.net/index.php/homiletic. 6 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 7. 7 For descriptions of the different logics of theory and practice, see Bourdieu, Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 80 – 83.

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Homiletical Search for Dialogical Theories of Practice

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As a precondition for pursuing this question the present chapter explores whether the way scholars use theories might enable us to enter into a dialogical, interactive relationship with the studied subjects.

Homiletical Search for Dialogical Theories of Practice This book is developed in a Danish context of practical theology in which the relationship between theory and practice, text and situation, is under fundamental investigation and reconsideration.8 Traditionally, hermeneutical approaches based on the analysis, translation, and interpretation of written texts have been dominant, but in order to explore the interaction between speaking listeners and listening preachers, a new methodology is required. Consequently, it is one of the aims of the discussions in this chapter, as well as throughout the book, to contribute to the development of this new practicetheoretical methodology for homiletics. However, while the Danish context may be the starting point of my investigations, the methodological approach of theology9 in general and homiletics in particular is being transformed and reconsidered internationally. Therefore, in spite of the radical differences between, for example, American and Danish scholars of practical theology, there seems to be a common quest for a more practice-oriented, situated approach to theology, and it is one of the aims of this book to explore whether the common quest of the two traditions can be enriched and challenged by the pragmatic Bakhtinian ‘translinguistic’ approach to the human sciences. Although the last forty years of American homiletics,10 from a Northern European perspective, appear very pragmatic and listener-oriented, American homileticians11 describe how they are in the process of changing from an idealistic understanding of theological interpretation and proclamation toward a more pragmatic understanding of theological communication in 8 Cf. Bent Flemming Nielsen, ‘Kroppen i liturgien—teologiske og antropologiske perspektiver’ (‘The Body in the Liturgy—theological and anthropological perspectives’), in Kroppens Teologi—Teologiens Krop, ed. Kirsten Busch Nielsen and Johanne Stubbe Teglbjærg (København: Anis, 2011); ‘Ritualization, the Body and the Church: Reflections on Protestant Mindset and Ritual Process’, in Religion, Ritual, Theatre, ed. Bent Flemming Nielsen, Bent Holm and Karen Vedel (Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 2009). 9 Daniel Franklin Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis: Exploring Theological Method with Pierre Bourdieu (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005) . 10 Inaugurated by Fred B. Craddock’s As One without Authority (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979), followed by the New Homiletics paradigm represented by David Buttrick, Homiletic: Moves and Structures; Eugene L. Lowry, The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980); and others (see chap. 3). 11 E.g., McClure, Other-wise Preaching, and ‘What I Now Think vis-—-vis Homiletic Theory.’

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embodied, located practices.12 Even though it is arguable to what extent the structural linguistic approach has had a significant influence on practical theology in a Danish context, a similar critique of an ideological, essentialist approach toward a more embodied, practical approach13 to liturgics and homiletics is emerging in ways that share significant traits with the American development. The logic of the traditional one-way transfer of theological theory to practical application has previously been supported by reference to Schleiermacher’s (1768 – 1834) descriptions of theory and practice in his Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums from 1811. Schleiermacher proposes a tree metaphor as model for the organization of the study of theology in which the roots consist of the philosophical disciplines and the trunk is made of the historical disciplines, such as biblical exegesis, church history and the history of theology/dogmatics. Additionally, at the crown of the tree, is placed the discipline of Practical Theology, because Schleiermacher regards practical theological studies as involving the ‘leading of the church’. In his description of the relationship between the different theological disciplines, Schleiermacher does not suggest that one discipline is more important than another, nor that there is a one-way transfer from roots to the crown. In fact he introduces his proposal with precautions about the complicated relationship between theory and practice; however, these precautions have often been ignored in the history of theology where there has been a tendency to regard the relationship as a one-way transfer.14 In order to make a comparative analysis of the American and Danish practical theological developments it is crucial to notice that although the two paradigms focus on similar problems they are informed by different philosophical backgrounds. Whereas the contemporary Danish approach to

12 See Charles L. Campbell, ‘Preacher as Ridiculous Person’, in Slow of Speech and Unclean Lips: Contemporary Images of Preaching Identity, ed. Robert Stephen Reid and Thomas G. Long (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010), and Charles L. Campbell and Stanley P. Saunders, The Word on the Street: Performing the Scriptures in the Urban Context (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004). 13 Kirsten Donskov Felter, Mellem Kald og Profession (Between Vocation and Profession) (København: Det Teologiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet, 2010); Nielsen, ‘Kroppen i liturgien’ and ‘Ritualization, the Body and the Church’; Lena Sjöstrand, Mer än tecken. Atmosfär, betydelser och liturgiska kroppar (More than Signs: Atmosphere, meanings and liturgical bodies) (København: Det Teologiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet, 2011); Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen and Bent Flemming Nielsen, ‘Praktisk Teologi’, Teologi – derfor. Fønix 32.2 (2009). 14 This analysis is more fully developed in Lorensen and Nielsen, ‘Praktisk Teologi.’ The tendency of one-way transfer from biblical exegesis, church history, and dogmatics toward practical theology, rather than the intended interaction between the disciplines, has been confirmed and critiqued by the Canadian homiletician Paul Scott Wilson, ‘Biblical Studies and Preaching’, in Preaching as a Theological Task: World, Gospel, Scripture: In Honor of David Buttrick, ed. Thomas G. Long and Edward Farley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 138 – 39.

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Theology as the ‘Thinking of Faith’

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practice is primarily shaped by the practice theories of Bourdieu,15 the American homileticians16 are influenced by the pragmatic movement,17 primarily defined by William James (1842 – 1910) and John Dewey (1859 – 1952). Although the respective practice-theoretical and pragmatic approaches to theology are valuable in themselves, I suggest that they can benefit from a third way, as developed by Bakhtin.18 The practice-oriented alternative to the traditional ‘essentialistic’ and ‘deductive’ approach can be described as an inductive movement from empirical and communication-theoretical descriptions of theological practice towards conclusions and definitions rather than the reverse. This methodology is developed in acknowledgement of two primary problems delineated below : 1) an essentialistic approach to practical theology and the inherent notion of interpretation and communication as representation and transfer of a static ‘content’. 2) the problem of the situated observer and the question of who has the rights of interpretation.

Theology as the ‘Thinking of Faith’ The dilemma of trying to describe theoretically what happens in theological practice, and, by so doing, transforming the event in the very description thereof, has a systematic theological counterpart. The problem concerns the distinction between the intrinsically connected notions of humans, faith, and God. According to the German Lutheran theologian, Eberhard Jüngel, the connection between humans, faith, and God calls for a critical theological distinction. Jüngel claims that the study of theology needs to be critical, not because God and humans must be kept at a distance, but due to the understanding that there is nothing more inseparably connected than faith and the believer, on the one hand, and faith and God, on the other. In order to prevent the presumption that when we speak of faith God is automatically implied, or when we speak of believers the phenomenon of faith 15 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) and Logic of Practice; and Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis. 16 The indebtedness to American pragmatism of most American homileticians is striking from a European perspective, but the relationship could benefit from a closer analysis. 17 For an insightful, comprehensive introduction to pragmatism, see Richard J. Bernstein, The Pragmatic Turn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010). 18 Although Bakhtin himself was not familiar with any of the two traditions his position is being recognized as relevant by both Pierre Bourdieu in Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991) and neo-pragmatists such as Stephen Yarbrough, who compares him with James and Dewey ; cf. Yarbrough, After Rhetoric.

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is superfluous, Jüngel argues that in order to preserve its freedom, one of the primary tasks of theology is to distinguish faith from God as well as from the believer: ‘Weil der Glaube in jeder Hinsicht von sich weg weist, brauchen die Glaubenden so etwas wie Theologie.’19 How theology is able to make the distinction is, however, a rather complex question since knowledge of God, in Jüngel’s view, can only be given in the practice of Christian existence and thus risks the threat of ‘Feuerbachian’ inversion, seeing itself as grounding God rather than vice-versa’.20 Es gehört zum Wesen des Glaubens, daß er sich ‘nicht auf sich selbst berufen kann’. Daraus folgt für den Theologen, daß er für seine Forschung ‘nicht seinen Glauben als Erkenntnismittel voraussetzen und über ihn als eine Voraussetzung methodischer Arbeit verfügen’ kann.21

The theological task of differentiation implies a double hermeneutic, since it as thinking is both related to and separated from faith. As a reflection of and on faith, academic theology can, on the one hand, be seen as related to the gospel, yet, on the other, it is related to the law in the sense of having to follow the changing historical paradigms of thinking and scientific reasoning.22 By participating in the history of philosophy and various scientific paradigms, theology is threatened by a double risk. One risk is that theology might identify with the development of the history of philosophy that it partakes in with the result that the changing paradigms of thinking become decisive for theology’s object: faith. If that happens, theology’s relation to the gospel can be seen as determined by its relation to the law. The other risk is that theology clings to and dogmatizes certain paradigms from the history of philosophy and thus isolates itself from the development in thinking it must follow if it wants to be considered scientific.23 As an example of how theologians often take over philosophical paradigms uncritically, Jüngel criticizes how the Platonic use of faith (Gr. pistif) , in the sense of a subcategory of epistemology, has influenced dogmatic thinking resulting in a philosophical understanding of faith as something possessed by the individual subject. In contradistinction to this notion, Jüngel describes faith as an occurrence that happens to people beyond their own capacity rather than something they possess or do. Rather than being an ‘expression’ of the human subject, faith is, in this sense, an event in which a person participates.24 19 Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Die Freiheit der Theologie’, in Entsprechungen: Gott—Wahrheit—Mensch. Theologische Erörterungen (München: Christian Kaiser, 1980), 25. 20 Paul J. DeHart, Beyond the Necessary God: Trinitarian Faith and Philosophy in the Thought of Eberhard Jüngel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 26. 21 Both quotes within the Jüngel-quote are from Rudolf Bultmann; cf. Jüngel, ‘Die Freiheit der Theologie’, 25. 22 Peter Thyssen, Eberhard Jüngel (København: Anis, 2002), 26. 23 Thyssen, Eberhard Jüngel, 26 – 27. 24 In this context Jüngel gives due acknowledgement to Gerhard Ebeling’s ‘Sprach-Ereignis’; cf.

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Interaction between Preaching and the Bakhtinian Oeuvre

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I find that Jüngel’s reflections on the methodological task of theology can— to a great extent—be transferred to that of homiletical methodology. The discipline of homiletics must simultaneously relate to changing paradigms or ‘turns’ of academic development (such as, for example, various linguistic, practical and corporeal turns), yet it must nevertheless be critically aware of their historical relativity and contingency. Furthermore in reference to the continual discussion of whether homiletics can benefit from social sciences or not, the present book challenges those understandings of preaching that regard it as sui generis in the sense that human sciences are not applicable. Yet, from a theological perspective the genre is unlike any others in the sense that its object is its subject. This ambiguity calls for a dual differentiation, which is how we might summarize Jüngel’s understanding of the task of theology.25 I see significant parallels between Jüngel’s descriptions of theology’s dual differentiation and the methodological dilemmas of the homiletic distinction between the Word of God and the Word of humans. Jüngel works in continuity with the Dialectical Theological tradition in which one of the main challenges is to explore how the church’s proclamation can be true to the Word of God in the sense that it is based on God’s revelation, ‘gesprochen von ihm selbst.’26 Yet at the same time it is crucial to realize that human preaching can never be more than an attempt to speak the Word of God hoping that these words might be able ‘als menschliche Worte, Gott selbst zur Sprache zu bringen.’27

Practice-Theoretical Interaction between Preaching and the Bakhtinian Oeuvre As the very architecture of this book suggests, the methodological approach to the homiletical field is exercised by letting preaching practices and Bakhtinian theories illuminate and critique each other reciprocally rather than letting one determine the other or by keeping them apart. The analyses of the different homileticians, namely Svend Bjerg, James H. Harris, John S. McClure, and Charles L. Campbell, serve to illuminate the contemporary field28 of homiletics and, in light thereof, present recent developments of the genre of preaching. In discussing the work of these homileticians, I will take their philosophical

25 26 27 28

Jüngel, ‘“Theologische Wissenschaft und Glaube” in Blick auf die Armut Jesu’, in Unterwegs zur Sache: Theologische Bemerkungen (München: Christian Kaiser, 1972), 19 – 23. Cf. Paul J. Dehart, Beyond the Necessary God, 19 – 40. Cf. Barth’s ‘Attempt at a New Definition’ of preaching. For English translation see Barth, Homiletics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 44. Jüngel, Predigten (München: Christian Kaiser, 1968), 130. ‘Field’ in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu: the positions and interactions between various agents, their ‘habitus’, resources, and norms of the field.

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and theological frameworks into consideration, but my primary aim is not to evaluate whether their preaching practices are in accordance with these theories and positions. In light of the practice-theoretical approach, the homileticians’ practical way of doing theology—in the sense of interacting with other agents situated in the homiletical field and reflecting on this interaction—will be analyzed and discussed. Similar to the practice-theoretical approach to the homiletical field, the Bakhtinian theories of dialogicity and carnivalization will also be analyzed from a practice-oriented perspective. As demonstrated in the following, I find such an approach to Bakhtin to be in accordance with his own methodology29 and it is on the basis of his works that I include the practice-theoretical and pragmatic positions as larger frameworks for understanding this contribution. Yet since the practice-theoretical approach emphasizes aspects of Bakhtinian authorship that are not commonly acknowledged30 and carries these aspects into a practical theological field foreign to that of Bakhtin, let me provide a fuller picture of what constitutes practice-theory and pragmatism. The practice-theoretical approach is primarily connected with the works of Pierre Bourdieu (1930 – 2002).31 Today, however, it is used in different ways by scholars of various disciplines ranging from sociology, cultural theory, anthropology, philosophy, and theology.32 Shared by the scholars concerned with ‘The Turn to Practice’,33 its use is an attempt to transcend traditional problematic dichotomies. Within the philosophical field, for example, it has been argued that practices ‘at once underlie subjects and objects, highlight non-propositional knowledge, and illuminate the conditions of intelligibility.’34 Cultural theorists, in a similar vein, insist on viewing language as ‘discursive activity in opposition to structuralistic, semiotic, and poststructuralist conceptions of it as structure, system, or abstract discourse.’35 Finally, practice-theoreticians are proposing that science must be understood as a matter of activity rather than representation. As a consequence of this practice-theoretical approach, my argument

29 As shown in the following, a number of Bakhtin-scholars interpret him in light of American pragmatism but I find that the pragmatic interpretation in addition can benefit from the practice-theoretical approach. 30 The Danish Bakhtin-interpreter Nina Møller Andersen is, however, one of the scholars who has explored the pragmatic aspects of the Bakhtinian oeuvre; cf. her I en verden af fremmede ord: Bachtin som Sprogbrugsteoretiker (København: Akademisk Forlag, 2002). Andersen’s analysis of the role of the ‘foreign word’ in everyday utterances has helped shape my understanding of the notion of dialogue. 31 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. 32 Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis; Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike Von Savigny, eds., Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (New York: Routledge, 2001). 33 Ortner, ‘Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.’ 34 Schatzki et al, Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, 11. 35 Ibid.

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differs from other homiletic works that have made use of Bakhtinian theories36 in two major ways: 1) it uses the practice-theoretical reflections of Bakhtin to develop a new37 methodological approach to homiletics, rather than appropriating the theories of Bakhtin in a traditional hermeneutical approach to preaching. 2) it develops the notion of preaching as a carnivalized genre and analyzes contemporary preaching practices in light thereof. The pragmatic homiletical approach to Bakhtin differs from more traditional literary and philosophical engagements with his work that him see him as an exclusively literary critic.38 While not dismissing the value of the literary and philosophical approaches, the present use of Bakhtin interprets his literary and philosophical analyses in light of his practice-oriented view on language and communication. This approach is in accordance with the way Dostoevsky is interpreted by Bakhtin in his masterpiece, Problems of the Poetics of Dostoevsky : [W]e have in mind discourse, that is, language in its concrete living totality, and not language as the specific object of linguistics, something arrived at through a completely legitimate and necessary abstraction from various aspects of the concrete life of the word. But precisely those aspects in the life of the word that linguistics makes abstract are, for our purposes, of primary importance.39

The present approach is furthermore informed by Bakhtin scholars Nina Møller Andersen’s40 and Michael Holquist’s interpretations, which emphasize 36 As far I have been able to gather, three other homiletical dissertations relate to various aspects of the Bakhtinian authorship for homiletical analyses. They are David Aubrey Davis, ‘Hearers of the Word: Homiletics, Ecclesiology, and the Hermeneutics of Bakhtin’ (PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2002); Wesley D. Avram, ‘Theo-Homilia: Rhetorical Theology through the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin’ (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1994); and Jonny Karlsson, ‘Predikans Samtal, En studie av lyssnarens roll i predikan hos Gustaf Wingren utifr”n Michail Bachtins teori om dialogicitet’ (Skellefte”: Artos, 2000). Of primary relevance is Karlsson’s ‘Predikans Samtal’, which I will discuss in a section on dialogicity in a Swedish homiletical context in chap. 3. 37 The practical theological appropriation of the Bakhtinian approach for the theological field is inspired by the British scholar of religious studies Gavin Flood, who, in his Beyond Phenomenology : Rethinking the Study of Religion (London: Cassell, 1999), explores how a Bakhtinian approach can help studies of religion and theology to become more dialogical and practiceoriented. 38 See Charles Lock, ‘Double Voicing, Sharing Words: Bakhtin’s Dialogism and the History of the Theory of Free Indirect Discourse’, in The Novelness of Bakhtin: Perspectives and Possibilities, ed. Jørgen Bruhn and Jan Lundquist (København: Museum Tusculanums Press, 2001); Robert Cunliffe, ‘Bakhtin and Derrida: Drama and the Phoneyness of the PhonÀ’, in Face to Face: Bakhtin in Russia and the West, ed. Carol Adlam et al. (Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 357. 39 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 181. 40 Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord.

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how Bakhtin’s literary analyses are closely connected with his theories about human communication in use, ‘because what he has to say about novels is incomprehensible if the emphasis on utterance is not always kept in mind.’41 Due to this practice-theoretical approach to Bakhtin, his practice-oriented work, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, and communication-theoretical works, such as Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, and ‘The Discourse in the Novel,’42 are here used as a prism for interpreting the authorship as a whole. Obviously Bakhtin’s masterpiece, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, with its focus on the carnivalization of genres and polyphonic authorship, plays a central role, but it too is interpreted in light of a pragmatic approach.

Bakhtin as ‘Founder of Modern Pragmatism’ Before approaching the Bakhtinian works and theories from a pragmatic perspective, it should be noted that although one of the earliest Western Bakhtin-interpreters, Tzvetan Todorov (b. 1939), characterized him as the founder of modern pragmatism, he is not likely to appear in a history of pragmatism and there is no indication that Bakhtin has read any of the American pragmatists. Todorov’s characterization was part of his attempt to describe what Bakhtin, in contrast to Saussurean linguistics, came to characterize as ‘meta’- or ‘trans’-linguistics. In order to further define this notion Todorov claimed that ‘the term in current usage that would correspond best to Bakhtin’s aim probably is pragmatics, and one could say without exaggeration that Bakhtin is the modern founder of this discipline.’43 Pragmatism is traditionally regarded as a philosophical tradition which was inaugurated in the United States around 1870 by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 – 1914), William James, and John Dewey. One of the central agendas of the American Pragmatists was to argue for academic freedom. In striking contrast to the American pragmatists’ discussions of academic freedom, Bakhtin lived and wrote in exile in Kazakhstan from 1930, because he had been expelled from the academic life in the Soviet Union.44 In spite of the lack of 41 Michael Holquist, ‘Foreword’ to Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin: University of Texas, 1981 [1975]), xxi. 42 In Dialogic Imagination. 43 Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984), 24. 44 According to his biographers Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Bakhtin was arrested on several charges around the 7th of January in 1929. One of the known charges was that his name appeared on a list of a ‘future anti-Communist Russian government’; another that he had engaged in ‘corrupting the young’ through pastoral courses. A third charge was that he was a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Serafim, but that accusation was dropped. Cf. Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 142.

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direct contact between the so-called ‘founder of modern pragmatism’ and the ‘fathers’ of American pragmatism, several Bakhtin-interpreters continue to describe his approach as pragmatic. One scholar who has tried to analyze why the notoriously difficult thinker, whose authorship is full of fragmentations and disputed works, has enjoyed such a growing popularity is the Danish Bakhtin-interpreter Jan Lundquist.45 In Lundquist’s interpretation the reason is not so much that Bakhtin is a genius, but rather that his thinking is in accordance with and yet at the same time challenges contemporary philosophical and literary trends towards pragmatism. The pragmatic analyses that converge with those of Bakhtin are recognizable through their descriptions of how thought is not to be interpreted as sovereign but as situated knowledge—a knowledge that is embedded in situations, contexts and socio-cultural conditions.46 When describing the Bakhtinian pragmatic methodology it must be noted that Bakhtin only discusses scientific theoretical problematics directly in minor works such as ‘The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis’, ‘Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences’ and ‘From Notes Made in 1970 – 71.’47 Still, there are four core areas in Bakhtin’s thinking that correspond with the philosophical consequences of pragmatism. Those are the subject and language, science and the status of science. Bakhtin perceives the subject as open, developing, and changing in the sense that a subject never coincides with him/herself because s/he is always already embedded in relation to the surrounding historical context, as well as in relation to the other subjects. In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin describes this dialogical understanding of the subject: The very being of man (both external and internal) is the deepest communion. To be means to communicate… . To be means to be for another, and through the other, for oneself. A person has no internal sovereign territory, he is wholly and always on the boundary ; looking inside himself, he looks into the eyes of another or with the eyes of another.48

The central issue, in this context, is that Bakhtin posits a notion of the subject that goes against the Enlightenment philosophical idea of an autonomous 45 The following description of the correspondences between Bakhtin and the pragmatic turn is based on Jan Lundquist, ‘Bakhtin og pragmatisk vending’, unpublished essay based on a lecture at Copenhagen University in 1998, http://www.bachtinselskabet.dk/artikler/jl(1).htm (accessed 16 April, 2013). 46 For a solid introduction to contemporary pragmatic theory and philosophy, see Bernstein, Pragmatic Turn, and Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971). Bernstein, however, does not refer to Bakhtin in these works. 47 All three essays are to be found in Speech Genres. 48 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics.

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subject. In the Enlightenment view, the subject relates to the world as an object to be mastered, and as a way of coordinating meaning. Thus the subject solely understands the other based on the ‘I’; that is, merely as another, foreign ‘I’. Instead Bakhtin claims, in the modernist manner, that the subject is decentered and not coinciding with her/himself. Yet he maintains, in a pragmatic manner, that this de-centering is positive. Rather than regretting the subject’s lack of autonomy, Bakhtin sees this as the subject’s possibility for continual development and change, which is essential for the subject’s possibility of entering into a relation to the other.49 In Bakhtin’s writing this understanding of the subject is manifested in critical contrast to what he characterizes as a ‘monological’ approach to the world: that is, the approach used by nineteenth-century linguists from Wilhelm von Humboldt to Ferdinand de Saussure, who separate language and communication as if the latter were something secondary and derived from the first: Language is regarded from the speaker’s standpoint as if there were only one speaker who does not have any necessary relation to other participants in speech communication. If the role of the other is taken into account at all, it is the role of the listener, who understands the speaker only passively. The utterance is adequate to its object (the content of the uttered thought) and to the person who is pronouncing the utterance. Language essentially needs only a speaker—one speaker—and an object for his speech.50

The linguistic understanding of thinking developing within the individual with no influence from communication partners contributes to the monological, reified understanding of the listener that Bakhtin so vehemently critiques throughout his writing. As an alternative approach to the human sciences, he develops what he came to call ‘trans-linguistics’.

Trans-Linguistic Critique of Linguistics The interdisciplinary approach of Bakhtin can be seen as a constructive counterpart to contemporary homiletical requests for new pragmatic theories. One of the primary convergences between my exploration of dialogical preaching practices and Bakhtinian theories is that difference and otherness is seen as a precondition, rather than an obstacle for communication and proclamation. Furthermore there is a shared understanding of personhood as developing on the boundaries between self and other. This understanding of otherness, as a constitutive element for intersub49 Lundquist, ‘Bakhtin og pragmatisk vending.’ 50 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 67.

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jective interaction and preaching, poses some serious challenges for the human and theological sciences that differ from those of the natural sciences. Yet it is crucial, for Bakhtin’s approach as well as for the present project, that the lack of predictability, repeatability, and identity does not negate the humanistic sciences, even though they must be approached with a different kind of academic precision than the natural sciences. The crucial awareness of otherness, as a precondition for theological, as well as humanistic reflection, has been stated in a concise manner in Bakhtin’s ‘Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences’: The object of the human sciences is the expressive and speaking being. Such a being never coincides with itself, that is why it is inexhaustible in its meaning and significations… . In the human sciences, accuracy consists in overcoming the other’s strangeness without assimilating it wholly to oneself.51

The challenge of interacting with and trying to understand others with respect to their otherness is one of the theological tasks that I intend to pursue throughout this book. Yet in order to overcome the Bakhtinian methodological particularities without assimilating them completely to the homiletical field, it is necessary to delineate the contours of his distinct, yet far from fixed method. In one of his early works Bakhtin labeled his approach ‘philosophical,’ in lack of a more comprehensive characterization. At other places he characterizes it as ‘trans-linguistic’ because it transcends the limited focus of structuralist linguistics: Our analysis must be called philosophical mainly because of what it is not: it is not a linguistic, philological, literary or any other particular kind of analysis … On the other hand, a positive feature of our study is this: [it moves] in spheres that are liminal, i. e., on the borders of all the aforementioned disciplines, at their junctures and points of intersection.52

This boundary-breaking, inter-disciplinary approach was developed as a critique of Saussurian linguistics that tends to focus on one aspect of language and to separate it from its dialogical situation in order to describe it scientifically. This kind of scientific abstraction is acceptable according to Bakhtin only if it is acknowledged that it is an abstraction, but it becomes fatally misguiding if it is taken as a comprehensive description of reality. In what follows, I will unfold a critique of Saussure’s linguistics for two reasons. First, that the critique helps to delineate the contours of Bakhtin’s alternative approach, and second, that the structuralist understanding that speakers and preachers prepare their discourse or sermon independently from their listeners is central to the homiletical discussion developed in later chapters. 51 Ibid., 169. 52 Bakhtin, Estetika, 281, qtd. in Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World, 14.

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Criticizing Saussurean linguistics, Bakhtin describes his alternative as ‘trans-or meta-linguistic’ because his analysis, rather than limiting itself to decontextualized words in a static system of language or a “text” cut off from its dialogical universe, is oriented towards the interactive situation of the ‘already-said’ and the ‘not-yet-said’ of past and future contexts and generations in which the discourse is incarnated. He thus describes how his metalinguistic approach53 studies the word not in a system of language and not in a “text” excised from dialogic interaction, but precisely within the sphere of dialogic interaction itself, that is, in that sphere where discourse lives an authentic life. For the word is not a material thing but rather the eternally mobile, eternally fickle medium of dialogic interaction. It never gravitates toward a single consciousness or a single voice. The life of the word is contained in its transfer from one mouth to another, from one context to another context, from one social collective to another, from one generation to another. In this process the word does not forget its own path and cannot completely free itself from the power of these concrete contexts into which it has entered.54

Bakhtin criticizes traditional linguistics for the static division between ruleordered langue and arbitrary parole because it ignores the interaction between the two and dismisses the scientific study of situated everyday utterances. As an alternative to the static division between language as a system and utterances as derived products, in his Speech Genres Bakhtin describes how everyday utterances also can be recognized as typical genres, which we learn to master unconsciously. Speech genres differ from langue’s grammatical categorizations in that whereas the latter are static and normative, the pragmatic speech genres are more flexible and interactive. Bakhtin’s alternative entails an emphasis on language in use and interactive communication as a ‘two-sided action’. The critique of the Saussurian ideal transfer of meaning from an active sender to a passive receiver is not limited to linguistic, communication theoretical matters, however. The reason that the transfer model has become the object of immense attention and critique is linked to the fact that it has been used in fields other than the linguistic, so that the transfer model, and its presuppositions, has gained a strong hold on descriptions of the relationship between theory and practice, in anthropology, sociology homiletics,55 etc. Bakhtin is far from the first person to criticize56 the Structural Model of 53 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 202. 54 Ibid. 55 In The Four Codes of Preaching: Rhetorical Strategies (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), John S. McClure categorizes theological use of language under different codes of preaching that are inspired by Saussurian structuralism. Later, however, McClure criticizes the structuralist approach (see chap. 7). 56 The Bakhtinian critique shares many elements with the Poststructuralists’ critique of structuralism. To explore further the similarities and dissimilarities between Bakhtin and the

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Communication as developed by Saussure in his Cours de linguistique g¦n¦rale.57 Scholars from various academic disciplines—including homileticians,58 philosophers of language,59 communication theorists, and sociologists60—reject it, but only a few have provided a comprehensive, convincing alternative to Saussure’s model. Bourdieu describes the problems of the legacy of Saussure in a way that corresponds with current discussions of the role of language in religious practices: The linguistic model was transposed with such ease into the domain of anthropology and sociology because one accepted the core intention of linguistics, namely, the intellectualist philosophy which treats language as an object of contemplation rather than as an instrument of action and power.61

The fact that scholars of such diverse disciplines have criticized the structuralist grip on their fields yet continue to find themselves in need to reject it seems to suggest that there is something about it which is not easily dismissed. Confirming this assumption, the contemporary neo-pragmatist Bakhtininterpreter, Stephen Yarbrough, has suggested that although the structuralist descriptions of communication as transfer of meaning have been heavily critiqued, many scholars continue to have the transfer model as a primary frame of reference because language, when studied from an academic point of view, lends itself to categorization in accordance with structuralist theories. From this scholarly position the transfer model seems to confirm the understanding that communication … consisted of a transference of meaning that depended upon interlocutors sharing the same, or at least commensurable, languages, understood (apparently, at least) as coherently integrated systems of signs and convention.62

Yarbrough’s paraphrase of the structuralist understanding of communication expresses quite precisely the very opposite of the Bakhtinian-based understanding unfolded in this chapter. Rather than viewing communication as a

57 58 59

60 61 62

Poststructuralists (such as Lacan, Kristeva, Foucault, Derrida, etc.) is, however, beyond the scope of this book. For an English translation, see Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966). Buttrick, Homiletic, 175 – 77. Ricoeur critically summarizes the main elements of Saussure’s structural model when he problematizes ‘why linguistics could make progress under the condition of bracketing the message for the sake of the code, the event for the sake of the system, the intention for the sake of the structure, and the arbitrariness of the act for the systematicity of combinations within synchronic systems’ (Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning [Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976], 3). Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. Ibid., 37. Yarbrough, After Rhetoric, 5.

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one-way transfer of meaning, Bakhtin emphasizes that communication is a ‘two-sided action’ influencing both parties. Instead of viewing language as a shared, transparent medium that the speaker can appropriate, mold, and pass on according to her/his own intentions, language is seen as a field, on foreign ground, that is ‘populated—overpopulated—with the intentions of others.’63

Dialogical Methodology for Homiletics The Bakhtinian methodology revolving around dialogue and practicetheoretical interaction will be used as a continuous guideline throughout this book. This focus is not chosen in order to subjugate the homiletical discussions and preaching practices under one systematical position; rather, the Bakhtinian approach has been selected in order to let the plurality of diverse aspects and disciplines pertaining to practice-theoretical analyses of preaching interact dialogically. In agreement with Bakhtin, I understand the adequate relation to objects of homiletical studies as a matter of intersubjective dialogue. In distinction from the natural sciences, the discipline of theology shares the challenge of the humanistic sciences that the objects to be studied are themselves subjects. Bakhtin expounds the reasons for the dialogical methodology in his ‘Methodology for the Human Sciences’ thus: The exact sciences constitute a monologic form of knowledge: the intellect contemplates a thing and expounds upon it. There is only one subject here – cognizing (contemplating) and speaking (expounding). In opposition to the subject there is only a voiceless thing. Any object of knowledge (including man) can be perceived and cognized as a thing. But a subject as such cannot be perceived and studied as a thing, for as a subject it cannot, while remaining a subject, become voiceless, and, consequently, cognition of it can only be dialogic.64

Rather than treating the object of research as a ‘voiceless thing’ analyzed from a neutral position, the dialogical research is approached as an inter-subjective dialogue between situated participants. The practice-theoretical focus on socially embedded interaction is here maintained in the sense that the objects of the field of homiletics are studied as situated practices rather than texts abstracted from their discursive environment. This method requires a shift from traditional hermeneutic theological approaches65 that analyze sermons as texts interpreting other texts toward analysis of preaching as situated acts. 63 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 295. 64 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 161. 65 In Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. John B. Thompson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

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Although this reversal echoes Paul Ricoeur’s paradigmatic essay ‘The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text’ the present practicetheoretical approach does not dismiss Ricoeur’s hermeneutical approach, but the emphasis is different.66 The act-oriented approach happens in rejection of traditional enlightenment views of the relationship between theory and practice as a one-way determination from insight to application. As shown in the following, the attempt of one-way transfer from theory to practice not only ignores the constitutive influences of practice on theory, but tends to result in a separation of the two. The separation of theory and practice is, in the interpretation of Bakhtin, not only a problem for practitioners trying to relate to the theories in practice but perhaps even more acutely for theoreticians if Bakhtin is correct in his judgment that: Since theory has broken away from the actually performed act and develops according to its own immanent law, the performed act itself, having released theory from itself, begins to deteriorate.67

Although Bakhtin, in his Toward a Philosophy of the Act, criticizes scholars’ use of ‘objective knowledge’ as an ‘alibi for being’,68 he does not reject the existence of an objective world of knowledge.69 Comparable to Bakhtin’s description of how scholarly knowledge cannot be used as an alibi for a neutral scholarly position, Paul Ricoeur has, in a more contemporary hermeneutical context, underscored that there is no: placeless place, a surveillance point, from which the uninterested epistemological subject considers with a neutral and simply curious eye the dispersed field (of religious beliefs).70

Based on the Bakhtinian ‘translinguistic’ approach, I intend to analyze the clash of centering and decentering forces such as practice and theory, speech and text, words and bodies that constitute the act of preaching. Rather than siding with one over the other I trace the interaction between the different forces in what can appear as incommensurable systems. The focus on the interaction between theory and practice does not imply that the differences between the various fields are not recognized as fundamental but rather the working thesis will be explored whether difference, rather than identity, is constitutive of genuine interaction and re-creation. 66 67 68 69

Further unfolded below in ‘Carnivalesque Texts Considered as Action’ in chap. 4. Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 57. Ibid. As some of the ‘Life Philosophers’ (Dilthey and Bergson) and the 1950’s Existentialists tended to do; cf. Holquist: ‘Introduction’ to Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, xiv. 70 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Experience and Language in Religious Discourse’, in Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’: The French Debate, ed. Dominique Janicaud et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 131.

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Bakhtin’s Third Way between Pragmatism and Theories of Practice Bakhtin’s reflections on the relationship between theory and practice share central elements with the practice-theoretical proposals of Pierre Bourdieu as well as classical pragmatist and neo-pragmatist positions.71 Common to the pragmatists and theoreticians of practice is a rejection of traditional idealism presupposing that human behavior is governed by ideas and thinking alone. Instead they propose a ‘turn to practice’72 emphasizing that habits and actions, including physical movement, radically influence thinking and that knowledge is situated and contingent rather than universal. In his early work, Philosophy of the Act, Bakhtin criticizes theoretical attempts of overcoming the dualism of thought and act: All attempts to surmount—from within theoretical cognition—the dualism of cognition and life, the dualism of thought and once-occurrent concrete actuality, are utterly hopeless. Having detached the content/sense aspect of cognition from the historical act of its actualization, we can get out from within in and enter the ought only by a way of leap.73

Bakhtin’s critique of theoreticism, which ignores the problem of overcoming the ‘dualism of cognition and life’, could suggest a dualistic approach that hinders any exchange between the two spheres. But what he actually claims is that the tendency to separate the different spheres into mutually exclusive, binary oppositions—as performed by structural linguistics—is one of the foundational problems. As an alternative to attempts of transcending the qualitative differences between thought and experience, theory and practice, Bakhtin suggests that the distance can only be surpassed through a ‘leap’. It should be emphasized here that it is not my aim to criticize Saussurian linguistics as a linguistic discipline as such.74 Instead my critique pertains to the consequences of using Saussure’s linguistic theories of language and communication to describe the homiletical field. A similar critique could be directed at my present use of Bakhtinian trans-linguistic theories in a homiletic context where the present ‘extrinsic’, ‘centrifugal’ interpretation75 of Bakhtin carries the risk, not only of transforming the Bakhtinian oeuvre, 71 Bernstein, Pragmatic Turn, and Praxis and Action; and Yarbrough, After Rhetoric. 72 The ‘Turn to Practice’ paradigm was originally described in relation to the field of anthropology by Ortner, ‘Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.’ 73 Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 7. 74 This has already been done intensely by Poststructuralists such as Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Kristeva and others. 75 Cf. Michael Holquist’s categorization of intrinsic and extrinsic Bakhtin-interpreters focusing on, respectively, the Bakhtinian authorship in itself and using its dialogic approach as tool for analyzing other fields, in Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (New York: Routledge, 1990), 185 – 90.

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written in another context, but also of altering the conditions for analyzing the genre of preaching. In acknowledgement of this potential critique, the analyses of the Bakhtinian oeuvre lead me to emphasize one of the theses of my argument, namely that the transformative dialogical interaction between author and addressees, analyzer and analyzed, is one of the conditions of interpretation and communication rather than a disturbance. In comparison, Bakhtin describes thinking and interpretation in the human sciences as a: special kind of dialogue: the complex interrelations between the text (the object of study and reflection) and the created, framing context (questioning, refuting, and so forth) in which the scholar’s cognizing and evaluating thought takes place. This is the meeting of two texts—of the ready made and the reactive text being created—and, consequently, of two subjects and two authors.76

Based on this dialogical methodology the following analyses will engage in an encounter between several authors and texts, bodies and voices, in order to explore the notion of preaching as a carnivalesque dialogue between the Wholly Other and other-wise listeners.

Concluding Remarks Bakhtin’s trans-linguistic methodology shares central elements with European theories of practice, as when it shows how theoretical analyses of human acts tend to differ radically from the act upon which they reflect. At the same time, however, the methodology rejects the tendency toward a dichotomous split between the two. In that sense the Bakhtinian approach also shares central perspectives with American pragmatism, as when Bakhtin claims that a philosophy of the act recognizes the radical differences between thought and act yet must incorporate these differences77 without wholly assimilating them to itself. The dialogical incorporation of theories and practical acts entails neither ignorance nor fusion of the different fields. Rather it is ‘the only way whereby the pernicious non-fusion and non-interpenetration of culture and life could be surmounted.’78 Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy of the act seems to comply well with, yet challenge, the practice-theoretical approach to homiletics that I will develop here. In light of these observations one of the guiding questions to be pursued in the following chapters is whether the replacement of traditional theoretical 76 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 106. 77 Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 56. 78 Ibid., 3.

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approaches79 with the dialogical approaches of Bakhtin, can enable the academic discipline of homiletics to enter into a critically constructive relationship with the practice of preaching.

79 Primarily the structuralist priority of language systems over contextual utterances and communication models such as the ‘transfer model’ elaborated in the following chapter.

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Chapter 2: Bakhtinian Dialogism Introduction There is a long tradition for understanding the genre of preaching as a kind of dialogue. This understanding is, however, a rather broad one as it includes not only inter-human conversation but also interpretation of biblical texts, theological traditions, and interaction between God and humans through prayer and song. The latter kind of dialogue has been described by Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) in his often quoted summary of the ultimate motive of worship services and churches, namely : ‘dass unser lieber Herr selbst mit uns rede durch sein heiliges Wort und wir wiederum mit ihm reden durch Gebet und Lobgesang’.1 The technical term for the study of preaching, homiletics, furthermore confirms the understanding of the genre as a kind of conversation since it is derived from the Greek homilein meaning ‘converse with’, and homilos meaning ‘crowd’. Although recent international homiletic developments have reinforced the fruitfulness of approaching preaching as a kind of dialogue, they have also manifested radically different conceptions and practices of the notion. Bakhtin’s analyses of dialogicity are of particular relevance for the practical-theological field. Although his theories are as multi-facetted as contemporary homiletical uses tend to be, Bakhtin has managed to trace the characteristics of dialogicity in such diverse fields as everyday communication, ‘complex speech genres’ such as preaching and academic works, and embodied interaction. Some of the guiding principles for recognizing the dialogical principle in all these different kinds of interactions are, one, that the discourse emerges from situated voices and bodies, and, two, that the discourse is a ‘two-sided act’ in the sense that both perspectives are transformed in the encounter. Even though the Bakhtinian understanding of dialogue turns on the use of words it also points beyond to the non-verbal conditions and aspects of verbal communication. The basic everyday understanding of dialogue as a conversation between two people is central to Bakhtin, yet it is crucial to acknowledge that dialogicity is neither guaranteed nor limited to face-to-face 1 ‘… that our dear Lord himself may speak to us through his holy Word and we respond to Him through prayer and songs of praise’ (the Inauguration Sermon for the Schloßkapelle in Torgau, 5 October, 1544, in Martin Luther, Weimarer Ausgabe 49 [Weimar: Verlag H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1972], 588, 15 – 18 [my translation]).

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conversations. The following analysis of Bakhtinian dialogicity examines the different senses and conditions of this large concept and does so for two main purposes: namely, to provide a base for a redefinition of preaching as a carnivalesque dialogue, and to provide contemporary preaching practices with pragmatic communication theories incorporating the notion of dialogicity.

Homiletical Request for New Communication Theories The contemporary focus on dialogical interaction in sociological and practical-theological contexts signals a rejection of traditional understandings of communication as a kind of transfer from an active speaker to passively receiving listeners. The traditional ‘transmission’ model of communication2 seemed to correspond well with a dialectical theological image of the preacher as a herald3 proclaiming the Word of God to passive recipients, but it is highly problematic from contemporary homiletical perspectives in which the preacher is described either as a fool4 mocking traditional hierarchies or as a host5 inviting listeners in for co-authorship. From a practical perspective the preparation of preaching is rarely developed as a one-way transfer from Bible to congregation. In her work on Pauline preaching, Nancy Lammers Gross describes the dilemma of preachers who have problems accommodating the common-sense transfer model in the practice of preaching: Preachers who intuitively preach biblically do not find themselves strictly on one side of the bridge or the other. They find themselves in the process of sermon construction even as they are investigating the text… . Preachers who have been trained to do exegesis first and then carry the discovered meaning over to sermon construction

2 Also called the ‘common sense communication model’ (in a European context originally developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, yet nuanced and kept alive by Roman Jakobson and others). The model is further discussed later in this chapter. 3 Building upon one of the New Testament terms for preaching (jgqussy), Karl Barth used the image of the preacher as a heraldic mouthpiece: ‘Proclamation is human language in and through which God himself speaks, like a king through the mouth of his herald, which moreover is meant to be heard and apprehended’ (Karl Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Church Dogmatics I/1 [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936], 57). 4 The notion of the preacher as a foolish person is unfolded in chap. 8 in reference to the homiletics of Charles Campbell. 5 See chap. 7 for an analysis of the image of the preacher as host, guest, and listener in reference to the homiletics of John S. McClure.

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often feel guilty that the cart of the sermon seems to be getting ahead of the exegesis horse.6

Although a large number of preachers seem to be struggling to live up to the conventional ideal of communication as one-directional transfer, they nevertheless actually practice preaching according to a different model, even if they cannot identify it. As unfolded in the following the ‘problematic’ practice of homiletical exegesis, as described by Gross, can be critically and constructively explained by the alternative theories of communication developed by Bakhtin. In accordance with these practical experiences of preaching preparation, Bakhtin claims that discourse composition is a dialogue between the ‘already-said’ (of scripture, tradition, past conversations) and the ‘not-yet-said’ (listeners’ and readers’ future reactions).7 Even though the transmission model has been rejected for communicationtheoretical, theological,8 and practical homiletical reasons9 rather than providing an alternative to the transfer model the solution has often been to complicate the picture by showing how many obstacles are in the way in order for the sender’s information to succeed in reaching the intended addressee.10 Yet in the quest of showing how complicated it is for a message to reach its ideally passively receiving addressee, the basic monologic, one-directional movement of the transfer model is often maintained as the constitutive model for all communication. As an example of this tendency, the influential and internationally recognized American homiletician Thomas Long criticizes homiletic collaborative approaches for what he sees as yet another one-way transfer of meaning that leaves little room for a genuine dialogue between the words of the gospel and the voices of contemporary congregations. Long categorizes the conversational homiletics of Lucy Rose11 and John S. McClure12 within the 6 Nancy Lammers Gross, If You Cannot Preach like Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2002), 80 – 81. 7 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 280. 8 One major exception that proposes an entirely different approach to communication is that of the German System theorist, Niklas Luhmann. Whereas the ideal conditions for communicating within the transfer model’s paradigm depends on the reduction of noise and disturbances in order for the sender’s information to reach the addressee undistorted, communication, as described by Luhmann, depends on, and to some extent only exists as, noisy irritation in need of reparation. See Bent Flemming Nielsen, Genopførelser. Ritual, kommunikation og kirke (Reenactments. Ritual, communication and church) (Frederiksberg: Anis, 2004), and Inger Lundager Knudsen, Religiøs og teologisk kommunikation. Luhmann om religion, samfund og massemedier (Religious and theological communication. Luhmann on religion, society and mass media) (Frederiksberg: Anis, 2009). 9 For an insightful discussion of ‘communication’ models for preaching, see David Buttrick, Homiletic: Moves and Structures, 175 – 84. 10 Cf. Dahm, ‘Hören und Verstehen’, 242 – 52. 11 Lucy Atkinson Rose, Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).

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‘pastor-model’ of preaching, which, unlike the text-oriented ‘herald-model’, is primarily focused on the congregation’s needs: If the herald image created a one-directional model of preaching, from the Bible nonstop to the hearers, the pastoral image threatens simply to reverse the flow by moving from the experience of the hearer toward the gospel, with a resulting constriction of the gospel agenda.13

It is my impression that Long expresses a concern shared by several homileticians and preachers, namely, that the inclusion of ‘round-table’ conversations, in preparation for preaching, threatens to exclude the ‘foreign word’ of the gospel. Yet this interpretation, although critical of the transfer model as a paradigm for homiletics, easily ends up confirming the validity of the rejected transfer model by claiming that the other-wise homileticians ‘simply reverse the flow’.14 Based on Bakhtinian dialogism, what follows is a proposal for how homileticians and preachers can approach the mixed genre of preaching which acknowledges how other-wise embodied voices, vocative texts, and incarnated truths interact in a way that maintains and develops a ‘polyphonic’ sense of truth. However, before embarking upon the communicationtheoretical investigations and critique it must be emphasized that in spite of the continuous focus on dialogue, the present interpretation and use of the Bakhtinian theories is not limited to analyses of words and texts. Instead the Bakhtinian notion of dialogicity presses and often even subverts traditional verbal understandings of communication in the sense that it “strains words to the limit—encouraging them to take on intonation, flesh, the contours of an entire worldview”.15 Central to my interpretation of preaching as a carnivalesque dialogue—as well as the Bakhtinian approach I am using—is the importance of physical situatedness of dialogue in general and preaching in particular. In this interpretation, genuine dialogue is constituted by physically positioned agents entering into intersubjective interaction rather than merely a manifestation of intertextual echoes between sign systems. The notion of intertextualit¦ was originally developed by Julia Kristeva16, as inspired by Bakhtin. Kristeva’s interpretation of Bakhtin, was, however, also influenced by a French 12 The Roundtable Pulpit: Where Leadership and Preaching Meet (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995). 13 Thomas Long, The Witness of Preaching, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 36. 14 Ibid., 36. 15 Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 161. 16 Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 66.

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structuralist context that differed significantly from the pragmatic approach described in the previous chapter.

Critique of Communication Theories in a Homiletical Context In line with the ‘intertextual’ interpretation of dialogue as an interaction between sign systems, the application of communication theories in a homiletical context often leads many homileticians to associate along the lines of mechanical transfer of information from one machinery to the other. The American homiletician L. Susan Bond, noting the tendency to view communication as the sending of static packages from an active sender to a passive receiver, thus criticizes the use of communication theories for homiletics, claiming that ‘[r]hetoric is more suited to homiletics than communication theory, since it attends more to the audience’s modes of hearing than to ways of packaging ideas for consumption.’17 Although I share the critique by Bond and others of the fatal flaws of transfer models of communication for homiletics, I do not think the models disappear by ignoring them. It is my impression that the transfer model, though essentially incorrect in illustrating what goes on in actual conversation, still plays a dominant role as a common-sense, working-theory and thus needs to be refuted and replaced by more adequate theories. In addition I do not share Bond’s characterization of communication theories versus rhetorics as a matter of either focusing on ‘ways of packaging ideas of consumption’ or listeners’ way of listening. One of the central insights in Bakhtinian communication theories is that author and addressee/speaker and listener are intrinsically connected in the communication situation. Focusing on one while excluding the other, whether from a communication-theoretical or rhetorical perspective, is highly problematic if we are trying to understand the situation of preaching as a whole. Taking the critique of communication models one step further one might ask whether the whole focus on language is appropriate today when the ‘linguistic turn’ seems to be overtaken by new turns toward practice18 and embodiment to such an extent that we may even speak of a ‘corporeal turn’.19 With my focus on communication theories and literary dialogicity I do not intend to dismiss the importance of the role of the body in communication and cognition; in fact, one of my key interests here is to explore the 17 L. Susan Bond, Trouble with Jesus: Women, Christology, and Preaching (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1999), 17. 18 Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis; Nielsen, Genopførelser. Ritual, kommunikation og kirke. 19 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy of the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Lena Sjöstrand, Mer än tecken.

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connections between the trans-linguistic insights and the corporeal practices—the interactions or Bakhtinian ‘loopholes’ between texts, speakers, listeners, and bodies in the genre of preaching. As a foundation for analyzing how words might ‘take on flesh’ in the carnivalesque genres and situations, let me now unfold the Bakhtinian critique of traditional linguistics, followed by his expositions of dialogism, the foreign word, and polyphony. I shall conclude by showing how Bakhtin, although sharing central tenets with speech act theorists,20 surpasses their positions in a way that is highly relevant to the study of the genre of preaching in general and the historical analysis of the New Homiletics in particular.

Bakhtinian Dialogism Several Bakhtin-interpreters agree that if one is to understand and use the unity in the multifaceted contribution of Bakhtin ‘without losing sight of the dynamic heterogeneity of his achievement’,21 it is best understood as ‘dialogism’. The Bakhtinian understanding of dialogism, however, reaches further than traditional understandings of what dialogue is as it entails epistemology, communication theories, ethics, and aesthetics. As described by Holquist: Although, then, dialogism is primarily an epistemology, it is not just a theory of knowledge. Rather, it is in its essence a hybrid: dialogism exploits the nature of language as a modelling system for the nature of existence, and thus is deeply involved with linguistics; dialogism sees social and ethical values as the means by which the fundamental I/other split articulates itself in specific situations and is thus a version of axiology …22

Holquist’s summary of Bakhtinian dialogism touches upon one of the central points of my argument, namely, the correspondence between how we communicate and how we treat others. Because something as apparently simple as dialogue is used in several different senses throughout Bakhtin’s authorship, the nuances and complexities of his approach are often underestimated. As a foundation for developing a homiletic ‘communication theology’, I shall explore Bakhtin’s dialogism from four different angles: A) Bakhtinian dialogism between dialogue philosophies and speech act theories. 20 Especially the British philosopher of language John Austin (1911 – 1960) and the American philosopher John Searle (b. 1932). Although Bakhtin and Austin were contemporaries they did, unfortunately, not know nor read each other’s works, but their common approach to utterances as acts has been highlighted by several interpreters. 21 Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, 15. 22 Ibid., 33.

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B) Bakhtinian alternative to the ‘transmission model of communication’. C) Bakhtinian senses of dialogicity : 1) language theoretical 2) communication theoretical 3) philosophical/anthropological D) Bakhtinian neologisms: heteroglossia, chronotope, and polyphony. A) Bakhtinian Dialogism between Dialogue Philosophies and Speech Act Theories. Martin Buber One of the obvious and acknowledged sources of inspiration for Bakhtin was the dialogue philosophy of the Austrian-born Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878 – 1956). Bakhtin read Buber and although he does not often refer to Buber in his works, he confirmed the inspiration in an interview when he acknowledged that “I am very much indebted to him; in particular for the idea of dialogue.”23 The centrality of dialogue saturates the whole Bakhtinian authorship but the concrete legacy from Buber might best be traced from his Ich und Du.24 In this epochal work Buber describes the differences between an ‘I-Thou’ relationship that is characterized by mutual directness and presence rather than a subject-object connection, defined as the ‘I-it’ relation in which the subject relates as an unmoved mover to the manipulable object. The crucial element is, in the interpretation of Buber, not located in either of the individuals but in the interaction between them. Accordingly Buber is highly critical of psychological approaches that attempt to study the psyches of individuals independently from their relationships because, from his point of view, the development of the self happens primarily in relationship to the other. Buber’s understanding of the human self is intrinsically connected to his view on communication. Buber distinguishes between dialogue, in which the subject enters into an open, unfinalized relation to the foreign otherness of the other, and monologue, in which the subject treats the other as merely an aspect of his or her own experience. Consequently, whenever we relate to the other in this reifying way, dialogue becomes a fiction, the mysterious intercourse between two human worlds only a game, and in the rejection of the real life confronting [us] the essence of all reality begins to disintegrate.25 23 Qtd. in Maurice Friedman, ‘Martin Buber and Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogue of Voices and the Word that is Spoken’, Religion & Literature 33.3 (2001): 25. 24 Martin Buber, Ich und Du (Berlin: Shocken Verlag, 1923). 25 Martin Buber, Between Man and Man (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 24.

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One of the most central claims shared by Bakhtin and Buber26 is that personhood is not to be located in a Cartesian cogito ergo sum but is rather characterized by ‘addressivity’. As formulated by Bakhtin in his interpretation of Dostoevsky : ‘personality is not an object but another subject. The depiction of personality requires above all a radical change in the position of the depicting author—it requires addressivity to a thou.’27 The common thrust on addressivity is furthermore crucial to the theological anthropological understanding28 accompanying the homiletical explorations throughout this book.

Søren Kierkegaard Another source of inspiration for Bakhtin was the Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. According to Clark and Holquist’s biographical portrait, the young Bakhtin began to read Kierkegaard while in the gymnasium in Odessa and was so fascinated by the Kierkegaardian writings that he attempted to learn Danish, even though he ended up relying on German translations.29 Clark and Holquist also describe the significant role Kierkegaard played for the theological and philosophical discussions of the socalled Bakhtin circle in Petrograd30 in the 1920’s. The Kierkegaardian inspiration, however, was not unproblematic. The religious philosophical thrust of the Bakhtin circle caused isolation from some of the leading intellectual groups, and this intellectual isolation, combined with political censorship, manifested itself in a use of language that was predominantly sociological even when discussing religious issues.31 Although the inspiration from Kierkegaard can appear as a remarkable undercurrent of the Bakhtinian authorship and certain passages in his early works Toward a Philosophy of the Act (1919 – 1921), ‘Art and Answerability’ (written in 1919), ‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity’ (ca. 1920 – 1923), and ‘The Problem of Content, Material, and Form in Verbal Art’ (1924)32 all 26 Further correspondence between the works and thoughts of Buber and Bakhtin has been documented and analyzed by Maurice Friedman in The Affirming Flame: A Poetics of Meaning (New York: Prometheus Books 1999) and ‘Martin Buber and Mikhail Bakhtin’, 25 – 36. 27 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 300. 28 Cf. Eberhard Jüngel’s descriptions of the human being as an addressed and addressable linguistic creature in Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten in Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus (God as the Mystery of the World. On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism) 7. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001 [1977]), 12 – 13, 216: ‘Mit der Einsicht in die wahre Sprachlichkeit des menschlichen Wesens als eines angesprochenen und ansprechbaren Sprachwesens’. 29 Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 27. 30 The name of Saint Petersburg was in 1914 changed to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, and in 1991 back to Saint Petersburg. 31 Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 122. 32 The three essays are collected in Art and Answerability (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).

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show striking similarities to the Kierkegaardian writings—there are very few explicit references to Kierkegaard. One of the passages in Bakhtin’s early work that bears strong resemblances to Kierkegaard’s key interests, such as the question of simultaneity with Christ developed in Philosophical Fragments33, can be found in Bakhtin’s Philosophy of the Act: This world, the world in which the event of Christ’s life and death was accomplished, both in the fact and in the meaning of his life and death – this world is fundamentally and essentially indeterminable either in theoretical categories or in categories of historical cognition or through aesthetic intuition. In the first case we cognize the abstract sense, but lose the once-occurrent fact of the actual historical accomplishment of the event; in the second case we grasp the historical fact, but lose the sense; in the third case we have both the being of the fact and the sense in it as the moment of its individuation, but we lose our own position in relation to it, our ought-to-be participation in it.34

In his analyses of the role of laughter in Rabelais and his World Bakhtin categorizes the Kierkegaardian contribution as representing the genres of ‘reduced laughter’.35 Yet he fails to acknowledge that Kierkegaard in several of his works discusses the potential of irony and humor as means to critique and ridicule institutions of power36 in ways that are highly relevant to Bakhtin’s depictions of the revolutionary potential of carnivalesque laughter. In his doctoral dissertation on The Concept of Irony (1841),37 Kierkegaard mentions explicitly the three carnivalesque phenomena—Pascal laughter, the Feast of the Donkey, and the Feast of the Fools38—that are also crucial to Bakhtin’s analysis.39 33 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments. By Johannes Climacus, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 1985). 34 Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 16. 35 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1984), 120. 36 Kierkegaard-interpreter and pastor Søren Bruun has thus recently accentuated the theological potential of laughter in regard to Kierkegaard’s authorship in ‘Inkarnationsbegivenheden som det utilgængeliges vej—eller : Er latter alle tings m”l?’, Fønix 33.4 (2011): 239 – 52. 37 In this dissertation Kierkegaard analyzes Socrates from the perspectives of Xenofon, Aristophanes, and Plato. In Kierkegaard’s interpretation, the portrait of Socrates by Aristophanes— the poet of comedy—was the most apt of the three, because in contrast to Xenofon and Plato, who portrayed him from a rather serious angle, Aristophanes evoked the complex ironic stance of Socrates. 38 The three carnivalistic phenomena are all medieval traditions. In the first a donkey participates in processions and theatrical happenings; the other is a carnivalistic new year’s celebration in which the ecclesiastical rituals are parodied. The third refers to the sermonic parodies that take place during Easter (see http://sks.dk/bi/kom.xml – k1630). Kierkegaard acknowledged how the medieval Roman-Catholic church consciously withdrew itself from its own ‘absolute reality’ and enjoyed the freedom of approaching itself ironically. Cf. Kierkegaard, Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt Hensyn til Socrates (On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates), Søren Kierkegaard’s Skrifter, http://sks.dk/BI/txt.xml, 291.

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The political circumstances of Bakhtin’s life and Stalinist censorship of literary works made it problematic for Bakhtin to acknowledge the indebtedness to Kierkegaard. In an interview towards the end of his life Bakhtin even describes the ‘demonization’ of Kierkegaard during the Soviet era. According to his description the name of Kierkegaard could not even be mentioned unless it was transformed into ‘demonical epithets, such as the manic philosopher or the possessed obscurantist’.40 In another late interview, however, Bakhtin acknowledged the importance of Kierkegaard’s works for his own thinking and described the significant correspondence between the Danish philosopher and Dostoevsky : I was the first Russian … to study Søren Kierkegaard … Dostoevsky, was, of course, unaware of Kierkegaard’s existence, despite the fact that they were nearly contemporaries. The sympathy, however, between the concerns of these two authors and the similarity of the depth of their insights is astounding.41

Although there are innumerable elements in the Kierkegaardian authorship worth pursuing,42 for the present I choose only to relate to those centers of gravity between Bakhtin and Kierkegaard that are connected to the genre of preaching as well as recent and contemporary homiletical interpretations of Kierkegaardian communication theories.43 However, moving forward with my examination of Bakhtinian Dialogism in light of the dialogue philosophers, I want to touch upon one of the apparent major differences between Buber and Kierkegaard: namely the question of the role of the human other in relationship to the divine other. Even though Buber appreciated much of Kierkegaard’s thinking, he was critical of Kierkegaard’s theological anthropology. According to Buber, 39 Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, 5. See my chap. 4 for further analysis. 40 My translation of Fryszman’s Danish rendering of Bakhtin’s Russian; cf. Alex Fryszman, ‘Den andens stemme: Michail Bachtin og Søren Kierkegaard med særligt henblik p” subjektivitetens problem’, in Smuthuller—Perspektiver i dansk Bachtin-forskning, ed. Nina Møller Andersen and Jan Lundquist (København: Politisk Revy, 2003). 41 Quotation from an interview with Bakhtin published in the literary journal Tjelovek, qtd. in Alex Fryszman, ‘Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky seen through Bakhtin’s prism’, Kierkegaardiana 18 (1996): 103. 42 Although the relationship deserves much closer analysis, insightful articles have already been written by Fryszman and Pattison. See ibid. and Alex Fryszman, ‘Den andens stemme’; also George Pattison, ‘Bakhtin’s Category of Carnival in the Interpretation of the Writings of Søren Kierkegaard’, in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2006, ed. Jørgen Cappelørn, Hermann Deuser, and K. Brian Söderquist (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), and ‘Kierkegaard and Genre’, Poetics Today 28 (2007): 475 – 97. 43 Thus in the discussion of Fred Craddock’s homiletical implementation of Kierkegaard’s ‘indirect message’ as ‘inductive preaching’, an alternative interpretation of Kierkegaard will be proposed in chap. 3. Furthermore, in chap. 4 the insights of Bakhtin and Kierkegaard will be used to illuminate each other, and finally in chap. 9, the Kierkegaardian descriptions of the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between God and humans will be discussed in relation to Dialectical Theological interpretations and contemporary homiletical practices.

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Kierkegaard’s descriptions of personhood depends on an exclusion of human others in order to enter into a genuine relationship with the divine other : ‘The relation to individual men is a doubtful thing to Kierkegaard, because in his view an essential relation to God is obstructed by an essential relation to man.’44 Although there is material in the works of Kierkegaard legitimizing much of Buber’s critique, his interpretation of Kierkegaard’s description of the role of the ‘neighbor’ or the ‘other’ in relationship with God is highly debatable.45 Furthermore, Buber’s reading is impaired by the fact that it is based on a limited selection of Kierkegaard’s works and apparently overlooks not only the role of pseudonymity and irony but also the importance of the ‘upbuilding’.46 Speech Act Theories In addition to the dialogue-philosophical aspects of Bakhtin’s work, his emphasis on how language is being used in practice makes it obvious to categorize him as a philosopher of language in the tradition of semantics known as ‘philosophy of everyday language’ and speech act theories.47 Bakhtin describes language primarily as an act48 and this approach provides interesting similarities between his theories and those of the everyday language philosophers, Austin, Searle, and Wittgenstein, for whom the meaning of the language equals its use. Bakhtin, like Wittgenstein and Searle, studies language as embedded in social reality. Language is a common medium and cannot be used independently of the words of others, whether in writing, speaking, or thinking. Thus, if our language was private, we could not be understood. According to Bakhtin-interpreter Andersen, Bakhtin could, like Austin, have stated that ‘all utterances are speech acts’.49 Differing from the speech act theorists Bakhtin’s theories are not based on an idea of successfulness. The Bakhtinian speech genres are neither 44 Martin Buber, qtd. in Andrew F. Herrmann, ‘Kierkegaard and Dialogue: The Communication of Capability’, Communication Theory 18 (2008): 81. 45 Discussed by Pia Søltoft in ‘The Presence of the Absent Neighbor in Works of Love’, in Kierkegaard Studies 1998, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Hermann Deuser, Jon Stewart and Christian Fink Tolstrup (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), 113 – 28. 46 See chap. 3. It is not my aim to enter into a thorough discussion with Buber’s critique of Kierkegaard. This has already been done by the Danish Kierkegaard-scholar Pia Søltoft in her Svimmelhedens Etik—om forholdet mellem den enkelte og den anden hos Buber, L¦vinas og især Kierkegaard (Ethics of Dizziness—On the Relation between ’the Singleone’ and ’the Other’ in Buber, L¦vinas and especially in Kierkegaard) (København: Gads Forlag, 2000), 65 – 81. 47 Both Michael Holquist, in his introduction to Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, xxi, and the Danish Bakhtin-interpreter Nina Møller Andersen categorize Bakhtin as sharing significant insights with the ‘philosophers of everyday language’, including the ‘speech act theorists’. My comparison is primarily based on Andersen’s analysis; cf. her I en verden af fremmede ord, 121 – 22. 48 Cf. his early work, Toward a Philosophy of the Act. 49 Austin, How to do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).

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determined by constitutive rules nor divided into categories according to their illocutionary force, but rather after compositional criteria depending on the degree of orientation towards the word of the other.50 What distinguishes Bakhtin’s theories from those of the ‘everyday language philosophers’ is thus first and foremost his insistence that the other voice, the word of the other, tjusjoje slovo, is as important for the meaning-making as our own word is.51 These differences, in spite of similarities, between the dialogism of Bakhtin and the speech act theories play a central role in my critique of the New Homileticians and for my approach to the genre of preaching as otheroriented carnivalesque dialogue as developed in the following chapters. From a practice-theoretical point of view one might acknowledge that Bakhtin’s descriptions of ‘other’-oriented dialogue give a better grasp of the complexities of human communication and interaction than the static categorizations of the Speech Act theoreticians. Yet, the insight into the practical complexities does not necessarily lead to corresponding theories. In his article ‘Conversation as Dialogue’52 John R. Searle himself acknowledges the limitations of the speech act theory regarding dialogue, as when he recognizes the practice-theoretical problem that ‘[t]raditional speech act theory is … largely confined to single speech acts. But, as we all know, in real life speech acts are often not like that at all.’53 Additionally, Searle points out some of the fundamental challenges inherent in practice theories of dialogue and conversation: Now the question naturally arises: could we get an account of conversations parallel to our account of speech acts? Could we, for example, get an account that gave us constitutive rules for conversations in a way that we have constitutive rules of speech acts? My answer to the question is going to be ‘No.’ But we can say some things about conversations; we can get some sort of interesting insights into the structure of conversations.54

It should be noted that the shortcomings that Searle points out are not directed toward Bakhtinian dialogism.55 In fact the Bakhtinian approach56 differs from

50 Cf. the typology in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 199. 51 Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord, 122. 52 John R. Searle, ‘Conversation as Dialogue’, in Dialogue and Critical Discourse: Language, Culture, Critical Theory, ed. Michael S. Macovski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 237 – 55. 53 Ibid., 237. 54 Ibid. 55 Searle explicitly addresses his critique toward H. P. Grice and Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson; cf. ‘Conversation as Dialogue’, 255. 56 Searle does not mention Bakhtin in the article, but the article is included in Dialogue and Critical Discourse in which the editor, Michael Macovski, states that the book ‘seeks to develop and refine the critical extensions of Bakhtin’s dialogic theory during the last decade, and to imply a variety of related influences’ (4). This summary suggests that the editor also sees connotations between

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the approaches analyzed by Searle that attempt to set up rules for conversation. The interest of Bakhtin is rather to show the complexity of dialogue than attempt to predict and reduce the complexity. However, one way we might overcome the problem of having to choose between either predictable classifications of communication into static one-way speech acts or letting all theories dissolve in the non-predictable dynamics of real life discourses has been outlined by American Neo-Pragmatists as described below.

Neo-Pragmatic Alternation between ‘Prior’ and ‘Passing Theories’ Bakhtin’s understanding of dialogism differs from the Speech act theorists by its focus on the continual change of roles between speaker and addressee.57 The change of roles and shifting perspectives between speaker and listener set the scene, not only for a retrospective analysis of past communication but also for a prospective anticipation of how communication will continue. The forward anticipation is particularly important and difficult in the complex genres of dialogical monologue such as preaching. The significance of forward expectation has also been described by the American philosopher Donald Davidson (1917 – 2003).58 Davidson argues, in line with Bakhtin, that successful communication is not a matter of whether a discourse correctly represents an idea or object that lies behind it. Instead the success of a communication act lies in its future effects: ‘communication is successful when the words one utters to others have the effect upon them that one intended.’59 Following the pragmatic perception of communication, ‘linguistic ability’ cannot be restricted to a question of whether the communication partners share the same linguistic grammar and rules. The success criteria require that ‘the speaker needs to know … how the speaker will interpret him, while what the interpreter needs to know is how the speaker expects her to interpret him.’60 Linguistic ability, when viewed from the perspective of Davidson, requires

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Searle’s acknowledgement of the problems related to the theory of speech acts as well as his criticism of the shortcomings of more conversational approaches. In his definition of understanding as dialogical Bakhtin is close to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s (1900 – 2002) interpretation theories in Wahrheit und Metode. However, while Gadamer sees understanding as a fusion of ‘mine’ and the ‘foreign’, Bakhtin does not see it as a fusion, but rather as a dynamic interaction, an unfinalized dialogue between two different horizons; cf. Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord, 129. Described by the post-semiotic communication theoretician, Steven Yarbrough, who bases his theories on M. M. Bakhtin, the founders of pragmatism, and Donald Davidson. See Yarbrough, After Rhetoric. Ibid., 172. Ibid.

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that the interlocutors are able to distinguish between, on one hand, ‘prior theories’ of communication or our prior expectancy as to how the addressee will interpret our utterance, and, on the other hand, our ‘passing theories’, which designate our revisions of the communication based on the other’s actual reaction. In order for communication to succeed we do not have to share prior theories but we must come to share passing theories, which requires a continuously dynamic interaction between the interlocutors: The prior theory, then, does not correspond to linguistic competence, but neither does the passing theory. Because the passing theory is good only for ‘a particular utterance on a particular occasion’ … ‘language’ cannot be governed by learned conventions. Moreover, the passing theory may or may not be useful as a prior theory on later occasions; it all depends upon the character of later occasions, and those, being always highly particular, will almost always call forth prior theories adjusted to those interpretive responses we anticipate.61

When linguistic ability is described as a matter of handling the dynamic development of prior and passing theories it resembles Bourdieu’s62 practicetheoretical reflections regarding what it takes to develop le sens pratique or a ‘feel for the game’. A feel for the game—unlike Saussure’s comparison of communication with the game of chess—is not primarily a matter of decoding universal rules and grammar. Rather, it is cultivated through embodied practice in a specific field, at a particular time. Linguistic Ability as ‘Feel for the Game’ In order to show the difference between Saussure’s description of linguistic ability and the pragmatic, dialogical model developed by Bakhtin and interpreted in light of Davidson’s prior and passing theories another game analogy might be illustrative. In the game of soccer the feel for the game does not depend on whether the players share the same language, culture, or grammar. Good game playing depends instead on the right ‘timing’: when FC Barcelona player Lionel Messi passes the ball to Samuel Eto’o, Messi does not aim at the position in which Eto’o is placed when he kicks, but where he expects him to be, after some seconds of sprinting. Furthermore, Messi, who first passed the ball, does not stand still in order to enjoy his long shot, instead he moves in the direction that makes him a suitable receiver for Eto’o who now changes from being the one receiving the ball to passing it along.63 61 Ibid., 174 62 Bourdieu, Logic of Practice, 82. See also Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis. My analysis of Bourdieu-based theological practice theories is also indebted to discussions with Danish theologian Bent Flemming Nielsen. 63 The illustration is based on Nielsen’s elucidation of Bourdieu’s feel of the game in ‘Kroppen i liturgien’, 307.

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The soccer analogy should not be pushed too far but at a basic level it illustrates the feel for the game that is required both of soccer players and preachers. The players might have a ‘prior theory’, an ideal game plan of how they will move along if the opponent team plays as expected and the game unfolds as hoped for. More often than not, however, the game does not unfold as expected. In this situation the ‘timing’ and the ability to develop ‘passing theories’ different from the ‘prior theories’ is what constitutes a successful game. The demand of continual interactive adjustments between interlocutors in order for communication to succeed is a challenging task in the traditionally monological act of preaching. The tradition of articulated response during the sermon, as known in many African American churches,64 gives the preacher a hint of the congregation’s passing theories or adjustments for interpreting the sermon. The congregation’s gestures, facial expression, etc., can also be very telling, but they can also rather easily be ignored in favour of a manuscript closer at hand. Preachers might have a more or less adequate pre-understanding of how the congregation is prepared to interpret the sermon, but when they do not get any verbal feedback on which to develop a passing theory of how the actual congregation does hear the sermon, successful dialogical preaching seems an almost impossible ideal. In my interpretation, collaborative preaching practices65 developed in light of Bakhtin’s theories of dialogicity carry the potential of transcending the traditional monological models of preaching. The potential lies in the development of a more pragmatic, situated understanding of human interaction that requires preachers to explicitly develop understanding (prior theories) and pre-understandings (passing theories) in collaboration with actual interpreters and co-authors rather than merely assuming them.

B) Bakhtinian Alternative to the ‘Transfer Model’ of Communication As I have already mentioned, the contours of the Bakhtinian theories of dialogicity are in part indebted to his critique of the Saussurian description of language as a static system of rules and codes (langue) that individual users use arbitrarily (parole). Inherent in this understanding is also the presupposition that utterances are mere instantiations of an abstract language system.66 Today the transfer model of communication is primarily known through Bakhtin’s contemporary, the Russian linguist and literary scholar Roman 64 James Henry Harris provides a penetrating interpretation of the dialogical preaching practice of the African American Church in light of Bakhtin’s dialogism in The Word Made Plain, ix and 60. See also chap. 6. 65 As described in chaps. 6, 7, and 8. 66 Speech Genres, 81.

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Jakobson (1896 – 1982), who imported the analyses of Saussure to a communication-theoretical context, as shown in the following diagram: Context Addresser ! Message ! Addressee67 Contact Code

It should be noted that Saussure and Jakobson were not alone in promoting the transfer model of communication.68 A similar model has been proposed by the American Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, who were neither linguists nor social scientists but engineers working for Bell Telephone Labs and aiming to improve the efficiency of telephone cables and radio waves. As a result, Shannon and Weaver’s model, based on a mathematical theory of communication, turned out useful to engineers measuring the capacity of diverse communication channels to transmit ‘bits per second’, and thus it contributed successfully to computer science. By being able to measure ‘information’ it furthermore contributed to the mathematical study of ‘information theory’. However, despite the benefits of the model, it became fatally misleading when applied to the study of human communication. The many ‘founders’ of the transmission model—Saussure, Jakobson, Shannon and Weaver—testify, on the one hand, to the claim that it functions as a ‘common-sense’ model of communication, but on the other hand, it illustrates the tendency to interpret human communication in light of nonhuman entities from telephone to computer science. As a critical corrective the Bakhtinian emphasis on a dialogical approach to human communication reveals the problems of approaching speaking subjects as if they were passive objects, which is inherent in the monologic approach. While Bakhtin’s communication theories have been compared to those of Jakobson, they differ decisively in that Bakhtin’s emphasis is on the ‘utterance’ as opposed to Jakobson’s ‘message’. Key to this distinction is that Bakhtin’s ‘utterance’ incorporates the changing interaction, in which the listener becomes the speaker, between an I and another. Understanding is not a mere decoding of a message sent from a sender to a receiver.69 Bakhtin is also 67 Jakobson’s theory of communicative functions was first published in ‘Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics’, in Semiotics: An Introductory Reader, ed. Robert E. Innis (London: Hutchinson, 1985), 150 – 56. 68 It turns out that Jakobson, Shannon, and Weaver did actually collaborate on the information theory connected with the transmission model; cf. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, ‘From Information Theory to French Theory : Jakobson, L¦vi-Strauss, and the Cybernetic Apparatus’, Critical Inquiry 38 (Autumn 2011): 96 – 126, http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/uploads/pdf/ Geoghegan,_Theory.pdf (accessed 15 April, 2013). 69 For further elaboration on the difference between the communication theories of Jakobson as compared to Bakhtin, as well as alternative Bakhtinian models, see Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord, 63 ff.

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particularly critical of descriptions of communication as composed of a speaker creating a message autonomously and a listener decoding it. Although Bakhtin’s critique shares much with language philosophers and hermeneuticians such as Austin, Searle, Jakobson, and Ricoeur, Bakhtin’s alternative is more radical, as it moves decisively beyond the perception that communication is basically a matter of transfer. In the understanding of language inherent in the transfer model, communication needs only a speaker—merely one speaker—and an object to talk about. Bakhtin criticizes how this traditional interpretation presupposes that thought is something that arises independently of communication, that language emerges merely from an individual’s need to express herself, to objectify herself and that the listener is basically superfluous in the act of communication: Language is regarded from the speaker’s standpoint as if there were only one speaker who does not have any necessary relation to other participants in speech communication. If the role of the other is taken into account at all, it is the role of the listener, who understands the speaker only passively.70

In critique of the transfer model Bakhtin insists that language is basically dialogical, rather than monological and that the listener or conversation partner plays a constitutive role for the speaker’s development and shaping of his utterance. In this sense the ‘addressee’ is regarded as co-author of all utterances either polemically or in attempt of attaining understanding and agreement and in this sense: “the listener becomes the speaker”.71 Bakhtin shows how all communication is in some way systematized, that is, in the form of genres, which, although always in continuation with tradition, are malleable as they are transformed in use.72 The relationship between the system and the use of langue is thus much more interdependent and flexible in the sense that utterances are seen as ‘two-sided actions’. Fundamental to this understanding is the notion that thinking as well as communication is shaped in relationship to other interlocutors. C) 3 Levels of Dialogicity Because dialogue is used in several different senses throughout Bakhtin’s writings, the nuances and complexities of his dialogically oriented, metalinguistic approach are often underestimated. In addition it can seem confusing when he sometimes describes dialogue as a natural state of language and sometimes as a liberating practice that requires methodologically 70 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 67. 71 Ibid., 68. 72 Ibid., 68 – 70.

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competent skills to master. The many different ways of describing dialogue makes one wonder whether Bakhtin presupposes that: what we believe about how discourse works partially determines how our discourse actually works, or does he believe that our discourse will work as it will, no matter what we believe about its workings?73

This question (posed by Stephen Yarbrough) discloses a problem that is crucial for exploring the potential of Bakhtinian dialogism in a homiletical context. However, in order to understand the different ways in which Bakhtin makes use of the term dialogue, it is useful to see it from three different perspectives: language theoretical, communication theoretical, and philosophical.74 These three basic senses provide the structure for the following elaboration of the Bakhtinian notion of dialogue and also aid in thinking about whether insight and/or ‘belief’ in theories of dialogicity enables the agents to communicate dialogically or if dialogicity is a basic condition of all communication.

1) Language Theoretical Level: Language is Per Definition Dialogical Central to the notion of dialogicity is the sense of addressivity. With his focus on addressivity Bakhtin displays certain affinities with theological thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Jüngel, yet he differs from Jüngel—and Ricoeur— who emphasizes metaphorical language75 as constitutive of addressivity. Bakhtin focuses on the ‘word of the other’ and what we say in response to or as a reflection or anticipation of the words of ‘others’: [E]very word is directed toward an answer and cannot escape the profound influence of the answering word that it anticipates. The word in living conversation is directly, blatantly, oriented toward a future answer-word; it provokes an answer, anticipates it and structures itself in the answer’s direction. Forming itself in an atmosphere of the already spoken, the word is at the same time determined by that which has not yet been said but which is needed and in fact anticipated by the answering word.76

From this perspective the interactive nature of language can be described by tracing communication as an (internal as well as external) dialogue between 73 Yarbrough, After Rhetoric, 148. 74 Based on Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson’s categorizations in Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 130 ff. 75 Jüngel, ‘Metaphorische Wahrheit. Erwägungen zur theologischen Relevanz der Metapher als Beitrag zur Hermeneutik einer narrativen Theologie (1974)’, in Jüngel, Wahrheit-Mensch: Theologische Erörterungen II, 3. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck 1998/2002); Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor : Multidisciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). 76 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 280.

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the ‘already-said’ (of previous conversations, tradition, genre, text, etc.) and the ‘not-yet-said’ (of immediate and future conversation partners). In contrast to Saussure’s description of language as a static system and communication as a means of conveying an independently developed thought from an active speaker to a passive receiver, Bakhtin emphasizes the interactive, dialogical nature of language: There is no such thing as a ‘general language,’ a language that is spoken by a general voice that may be divorced from a specific saying, which is charged with particular overtones. Language, when it means, is somebody talking to somebody else, even when that someone else is one’s own inner addressee.77

The determining difference between monological and dialogical utterances is whether the ‘foreign words’ (of texts and/or conversation partners) are used only as a scaffolding, which does not constitute the discourse in itself, or whether they are allowed to influence the ‘architectonical whole’78 to an extent that the original perspective and presuppositions are transformed by the dialogue.

The Foreign Word—tjusjoje slovo Bakhtin also describes the ‘other’s word’ as the ‘foreign word’ and since this foreign word is central to Bakhtin’s understanding of communication, as well as to the present study, I shall analyze it further. According to Nina Møller Andersen, Bakhtin refers to and presupposes the notion of the ‘foreign word’ throughout his authorship, even if he does not treat it comprehensively in any one work. In order to compensate for this lack, Andersen has provided a thorough analysis of the notion of the foreign word, upon which I base my analysis. The foreign word can be defined as any word that belongs to another human being, whether it has been written in my mother tongue or in any other language. In that sense it can be described as any word that is not mine.79 The process of making ‘the other’s word’ ‘mine’ is, although a continuous interaction, a rather complicated affair : As a living, socio-ideological concrete thing, as heteroglot opinion, language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in 77 Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, xxi. 78 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 187. 79 Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord, 114.

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other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own.80

In her study of the foreign word Andersen has developed a simplified model81 of ways in which the semantic traces of the foreign word can manifest themselves in an utterance:

Model of the Foreign Word

As illustrated in the model, the other’s foreign word is a consequence of the condition that any utterance is a response to another utterance and that all utterances happen in expectancy of a new utterance. This means that all utterances are marked by traces of the words of another conversation partner, the foreign word. The foreign word can thus be analyzed as semantic traces in any utterance and these semantic traces can manifest themselves in many ways. They can be directed toward the already-said or the not-yet-said but they can also be directed towards what has been said about the ‘said’.82

80 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 294. 81 In Nina Møller Andersen, Henning Nølke and Rita Therkelsen, Sproglig polyfoni. Tekster om Bachtin og ScaPoLine (ærhus: ærhus Universitetsforlag, 2007), 23 (my translation). 82 Andersen et al, Sproglig polyfoni, 23, and I en verden af fremmede ord, 114.

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2) Communication-Theoretical Level: Response can be More or Less Dialogical Following the above language-theoretical claim that there are no words that are not already inhabited and shaped by former use, a speaker has no choice but to take over the word from another’s interpretation and context. Recognizing this dialogical nature of language and communication, Bakhtin’s meta-linguistic approach offers a way to analyze how this basic dialogicity can be handled. The focus on how words of others are handled underscores the pragmatic emphasis found in the Bakhtinian approach: Therefore the orientation of a word among words, the varying perception of another’s word and the various means for reacting to it, are perhaps the most fundamental problems for the metalinguistic study of any kind of discourse, including the artistic.83

In practice, we can use the dialogical foundation of utterances to stimulate further dialogue and multi-voicedness or we can take on a monologizing attitude, pretending or assuming that all the different perspectives and the past and future claims about a subject can be subsumed under one. One way of monologizing a dialogical discourse is, polemically, to take the other’s words hostage in order to prove our own point. Another alternative is, out of empathy, to enter into the words of the other, forgetting one’s own place and time. Despite the good intentions inherent in, for example, an empathic approach, trying to ‘put oneself in the place of the other’, it is not authentic dialogue, in a Bakhtinian sense, if one of the positions is absorbed by the other. The choice between a monological or dialogical approach is present in everyday conversations involving two or more interlocutors in face-to-face interaction as well as in various forms of ‘complex speech genres’, such as letter-writing, academic articles, dissertations, novels and sermons in which the dialogical interaction is indirect. In order to be considered dialogical, in Bakhtin’s second sense of the notion, the discourse must be two-sided. Once we are aware of how dependent we are on the words of others we can work consciously to develop a new discourse in either an open, dialogical, or a finalizing, monological manner. Yet the dialogical appropriation of foreign words is not a simple quest, as described by Bakhtin: [M]any words stubbornly resist, others remain alien, sound foreign in the mouth of the one who has appropriated them and who now speaks them; they cannot be assimilated into his context and fall out of it; it is as if they put themselves in quotation marks against the will of the speaker. Language is not a neutral medium

83 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 202.

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that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated—overpopulated—with the intentions of others.84

In order to work systematically and methodologically competently with the dialogical overtones of utterances, Bakhtin’s descriptions and categorizations can be helpful. As a means to distinguish between the different ways of handling the dialogicity of communication he has developed a complex typology of different kinds of utterances based on their relationship to the ‘foreign word’/ someone else’s discourse.85 As cautioned by Bakhtin, the classification is rather abstract, as schemes of communication tend to be. In spite of this precaution, I find the scheme useful in order to approach systematically what in itself is very open-ended and dynamical. The main typologies are: A. Direct, unmediated discourse; B. Objectified discourse (discourse of a represented person); and C. Discourse with an orientation toward someone else’s discourse. Some of the key questions inherent in Bakhtin’s typology of ways of relating to the foreign word revolve, in my interpretation, around four major questions: i)

What is the relationship between the referential object, the speaker, the addressee, and the situation of communication? ii) Do the foreign words have a direct or indirect impact on the discourse? iii) Is the impact of the foreign words treated actively, interactively, or passively? iv) Are the words used empathetically or polemically? These four questions will help structure my analysis of the homiletical reflections and preaching practices examined in the following chapters. 3) Philosophical Level: Dialogue as Truthful Existence In order to understand the notion of dialogism it is central to recognize that for Bakhtin dialogicity is not merely a theory about language or literary means. Rather, the authorship represents an other-oriented way of relating to co-beings, text and life, that turns on interactive addressivity. According to Bakhtin, dialogue is not merely a pedagogical device for trying to convince someone else of a certain proposition or truth claim. Instead, he regards dialogue as essential to understanding, truth, and authentic existence, as stated in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics: ‘The very being of man (both external and internal) is the deepest communion. To be means to communicate.’86 Dialogue is a way of relating to life and other people because truth, in the interpretation of Bakhtin, is unfinalizable: 84 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 295. 85 See Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 199. 86 Ibid., 287 – 88.

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The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life is the openended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium.87

With his continual focus on multi-voicedness and the destabilizing effect of foreign words, Bakhtin’s approach might be mistaken for a relativistic postmodern relinquishing of all truth claims. However, the rejection of monological consciousness and discourse does not imply that there cannot be a unified truth. Instead truth is regarded as something which emerges, not in the mind of an individual thinker, but in the interaction of several embodied minds.88 Authentic human life in the Bakhtinian vision is connected to the notion of truth as intersubjective, because truth, like the person, continually is in the process of becoming—a point he describes in his interpretation of Dostoevsky’s polyphonic authorship: For Dostoevsky there are no ideas, no thoughts, no positions which belong to no one, which exist ‘in themselves.’ Even ‘truth in itself ’ he presents in the spirit of Christian ideology, as incarnated in Christ; that is, he presents it as a personality entering into relationships with other personalities.89

In this dialogical understanding of truth every voice is authoritative in the sense that it must be taken seriously ; yet, at the same time, Dostoevsky also strives after the highest and most authoritative approach, which Bakhtin describes as found in the unfinalizable, paradoxical person of Christ. But since this truth is presented as ‘a person entering into relation with other people’, it implies that the highest truth also in a fundamental way is unfinalizable.90 As elaborated in the following chapters, the focus on dialogue does not imply an agreement or ‘fusion of horizons’. Instead of seeing identification as a precondition for understanding, Bakhtin characterized Dostoevsky’s multivoiced authorship as a model for authoring, in everyday life as well as in complex speech genres.91 The Bakhtinian understanding of difference and foreignness as the driving force in the continual process of becoming, as well as in dialogical interaction, is furthermore manifested through some of the 87 Bakhtin, ‘Toward a Reworking of the Dostoevsky-book’ (1961), and Appendix II in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 293 88 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 81. 89 Ibid., 31 – 32 90 Ibid., 39. 91 Ibid., 91.

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central concepts in the authorship: heteroglossia, chronotope and polyphony, which I shall now describe.

D) Heteroglossia, Chronotope, and Polyphony Bakhtin is known for his significant neologisms as well as his expansion of familiar concepts, such as dialogue, in ways that exceed traditional understandings. Although I have chosen to focus on his theories on dialogue and carnivalization, intrinsically related to these phenomena are Bakhtin’s concepts of chronotope, heteroglossia, and polyphony.

Chronotope The notion of chronotope is a conjunction of the Greek words wq|mor and t|por. Bakhtin combines these terms in order to describe the spatio-temporal embeddedness of communication and literary production.92 While the interrelatedness of time and space has been foundational for the thinking of Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), Bakhtin distances himself from Kant’s description of time and space as transcendent categories for universal consciousnesses, and instead describes how human acknowledgement and interaction are intrinsically connected with specifically situated time-spaces:93 In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope.94

It is one of the central elements in Bakhtinian genre theory that genres are chronotopically situated in the sense that their plots are constituted by certain typical times and places. Interestingly, the typical places in which the plots of carnivalesque genres develop are located on public thresholds and on the boundaries between selves and the others. As is seen particularly in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment,95 the typical sites for carnivalized action are in the doorway, the hall, on the staircase, and in bars and public squares. The characters are usually on their way in or out, leave their doors open (particularly Raskolnikov), listen through doors (Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov), and live in a room with several doors leading to their neighbors 92 93 94 95

Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’, in Dialogic Imagination. Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, 51 ff. Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 84. Rodion Raskolnikov I + II (Crime and Punishment) (Copenhagen: People’s Press, 2006).

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(Sonja, Svidrigailov, the Marmaladovs). While Bakhtin’s analysis of the crucial importance of chronotopic elements in Dostoevsky, as well as in everyday life, is often overlooked, these descriptions are important, especially in how they illumine carnivalized genres. Heteroglossia Heteroglossia literally means ‘foreign-tonguedness’. This concept serves to accentuate the diversity of speech types or dialects not only among different cultural-linguistic groups but as a stratifying element within different cultures and communities. The diversity of socially constituted speech types and their influence on interaction and cognition is easily recognizable for preachers who try to preach ‘the Word’—grounded in the interpretation of a ‘foreigntongued’ gospel—to a socially, cultural-linguistic mixed group of listeners. What is new in the works of Bakhtin is that he describes how a polyphonic approach to authoring, like that of Dostoevsky, may be able to ‘orchestrate’ many heteroglot voices so that their differences are allowed to interact and accentuate each other rather than being subsumed under one dominating voice. In ‘Discourse in the Novel’, Bakhtin states: Authorial speech, the speeches of narrators, inserted genres, the speech of characters are merely those fundamental compositional unities with whose help heteroglossia [rasnorecie] can enter the novel; each of them permits a multiplicity of social voices and a wide variety of their links and interrelationships (always more or less dialogized). These distinctive links and interrelationships between utterances and languages, this movement of the theme through different languages and speech types, its dispersion into the rivulets and droplets of social heteroglossia, its dialogization – this is the basic distinguishing feature of the stylistics of the novel.96

Bakhtin depicts the novels of Dostoevsky as ingenious examples of a polyphonic handling of heteroglossia, a feature that the African-American homiletician, James Henry Harris draws on in order to describe the constitutive significance of the interaction of diverse voices situated at a specific time and place in the African-American preaching tradition. It is this homiletical reflection on heteroglossia that I shall pursue in the following chapters. Polyphony One of the elements that Bakhtin describes as revolutionary in Dostoevsky is the polyphonic relationship the author has with his heroes, as opposed to the traditional one found in the monological novel with its closed, finalized system, governed by one consciousness—that of the author—which is 96 Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in Dialogic Imagination, 263.

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omniscient and has the final, decisive word.97 The polyphonic author, as exemplified by Dostoevsky, relinquishes these monological privileges in favor of a polyphonic interaction between author, ‘heroes’, and readers.98 Dostoevsky’s fictional figures are neither expressions of different perspectives of the author’s consciousness or typical characters playing certain roles in order for the plot of the novel to develop. Instead they are personalities, free and with their own consciousness. They are regarded as ‘autonomous and equally signifying consciousnesses’,99 to which the author relates dialogically. The relationship between Dostoevsky and the novel’s figures is thus, according to Bakhtin, not a monological relationship in which the characters simply articulate the thoughts of the author ; rather they live their own lives in accordance with their own personalities’ inner logic. This means that the addressee does not just hear one voice, that of the author, but many voices, voices belonging to ‘personalities’ with whom the reader, via the act of reading, is drawn into a dialogue. In this polyphonic encounter the border between discourse and reality is transcended. No one has the monopoly of interpretation; neither author nor characters or readers possess the truth because the truth cannot be born and kept within the mind of an individual. Instead it is born between people who seek the truth in dialogical interaction.100 In contrast to the polyphonic work, the monologic novel is governed by an author who is omniscient and has the final, decisive word, thereby acting as might an autocrat over a fictional world that attempts to pass for social realism.101 The polyphonic author, as exemplified by Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, relinquishes these monological privileges: The clearly polyphonic nature of both Kierkegaard’s and Dostoyevsky’s works represents a deep affinity between the two thinkers, while it also serves to distinguish them from other authors who populate the borderland between philosophy and poetry. This plurality of discourses, literary styles and perspectives, collapsing one into the other in the poetical context is referred to by Bakhtin as heteroglossia and is considered by him to be the central characteristic within a polyphonic work.102

If the polyphonic novel is not just created in the consciousness of the author, but on the border between the author and the “heroes” and the readers of the novel, then it could be argued that the role of the preacher in contemporary preaching practices has striking similarities to the polyphonic author-

97 98 99 100 101 102

Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 293. Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord, 41 – 42. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 284. Jonny Karlsson, Predikans samtal, 55 – 56. Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord, 41 – 42. Fryszman, ‘Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky seen through Bakhtin’s prism’, 107.

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Concluding Remarks

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position.103 It is therefore my impression that the practice of preaching can be methodologically strengthened by a Bakhtinian analysis.

Concluding Remarks In the preceding pages I have examined the notion of dialogicity in light of Bakhtin’s three senses of dialogue—language-theoretical, communicationtheoretical, philosophical—as well as the neologisms chronotope, polyphony, and heteroglossia. These analyses of Bakhtinian dialogism have served to nuance and qualify the homiletical discussion about dialogicity I shall engage in in the following chapter. When reflecting on how preaching can enter into a dialogue with both ancient canonical texts and contemporary listeners, the polyphony of ‘heteroglot’ voices can seem to make a cacophony of foreign words that threaten to drown the preacher’s theology, let alone the Word of God. If preaching, in spite of its monological appearance, is to function as a dialogical encounter, one of the most important tasks for the preacher, from a Bakhtinian perspective, is to avoid conflating the voices of the listener, preacher, and scripture into one and instead let the three positions interact in a way that lets them transform and enrich each other mutually. In the following I shall make use of the Bakhtinian analyses of dialogicity in order to analyse the homiletical notion of dialogue in recent NorthernAmerican and Northern-European contexts.

103 For a theological interpretation of Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony, see also Jostein Børtnes, ‘The Polyphony of Trinity in Bakhtin’, in Polyphonie-linguistique et litt¦raire 5 (2002): 137 – 47.

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Chapter 3: Dialogical Preaching: From ‘New Homiletics’ to ‘Other-wise Homiletics’ Introduction The recent turn toward the listener in both Northern European and the Northern American homiletics has resulted in new surveys of and reflections on the homiletic field. In addition it has led to different forms of engagement with rhetorical studies, speech act theory, and reception aesthetics. In light of the Bakhtinian theories of dialogicity I shall now explore what kinds of dialogue are at stake in the listener-oriented homiletical reflections and preaching practices ranging from the New Homiletics to contemporary Otherwise Homiletics. Some of the central questions I will pursue are what the conditions are in order for a genuine dialogical two-sided transformation to take place and to what extent speakers and listeners, preachers and churchgoers tend to perform mutually excluding monologues. In order to narrow the scope of the analysis, I shall now focus on a very particular homiletic development from the American paradigm: the so-called New Homiletics. This development was primarily inaugurated by Fred Craddock’s As One Without Authority and Overhearing the Gospel and then built upon by David Buttrick’s Homiletic: Moves and Structures. Although Craddock’s inductive homiletics was inspired by European language philosophy—notably the New Hermeneutics1 and Kierkegaard—the New Homiletics is primarily an American phenomenon. Nevertheless, as described in the following, the Northern European homiletics from the early 1970’s until today shares significant similarities with the Northern American developments. The New Homiletics2 signaled a shift of focus from preachers’ interpretation and application of biblical texts toward listeners’ appropriation of the 1 The relationship between the New Hermeneutic and New Homiletics has recently been captured by the American homiletician Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm, ‘New Hermeneutic, New Homiletic, and New Directions: An U.S.—North American Perspective’, Homiletic 35.1 (2010), http://www.homiletic.net/viewissue.php. 2 The American homileticians David Randolph and Fred Craddock can be described as co-founders of the New Homiletics, in the sense that Randolph (in 1969) provided the theoretical framework for the movement while Craddock developed the methodological approach in addition to a highly influential practice of narrative and inductive preaching; cf. As One Without Authority. Further comparative analysis of Randolph and Craddock can be found in David J. Randolph, The Renewal of Preaching in the Twenty-First Century : The Next Homiletic (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009 [1969]), 113 – 19.

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German Shift of Paradigm toward Interactive Dialogicity

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heard sermon. The development began in the early 1970’s with Fred Craddock’s advocacy for inductive preaching as opposed to the deductive approaches of earlier models. In the 1980’s David Buttrick developed his ideas about how to preach in accordance with how meaning forms in congregational consciousness and also explicated the radical differences between the sermon as heard under the aural-oral conditions of preaching and the written sermon.3 In the late 1990’s, the New Homiletics’ focus on the listeners’ experience was followed up by more radical listener-oriented approaches—which not only listen to the listeners after they have heard the sermon, but furthermore invite listeners to become dialogue partners in preparation for preaching4—and these continue today.5 In my analysis of the homiletics of Craddock and Buttrick I intend to show that there is an overlooked potential in the original sources of the New Homiletics, but also that there are some shortcomings—shortcomings that might be compensated for by a Bakhtinian-based approach to other-wise homiletics. Although the New Homiletics continues to have a strong influence on American as well as international homiletical theory and practice, I consider the development of the other-wise homiletics6 in the late 1990’s a turning point within recent homiletical history. I will delineate this movement toward the end of this chapter and analyze its proponents in the following chapters.

German Shift of Paradigm toward Interactive Dialogicity The empirical turn within practical theology in Germany in the early 1970’s led to a number of quantitative analyses.7 Research in mass communication had a significant impact on the early development as can be seen in the empirical studies of preaching developed primarily by theologian and sociologist Karl-Wilhelm Dahm (b. 1931).8 Inherent in this approach to preaching as mass communication was the ‘transfer model’9 in which communication was reduced to a matter of transferring information. Central to this transfer was the attempt to reduce the number of disturbances in order to let the content arrive as undisturbed as possible from an active sender to 3 Buttrick, Homiletic: Moves and Structures. 4 McClure, Roundtable Pulpit; Rose: Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church. 5 McClure et al., Listening to Listeners; Ron J. Allen, Preaching and the Other: Studies of Postmodern Insights (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2009). 6 As coined by McClure in Other-wise Preaching. 7 The following summary of dialogicity within recent German homiletics is developed in reference to the German homiletician Hans Werner Dannowski’s Kompendium der Predigtlehre (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 1985), 88 – 158. 8 Karl Wilhelm Dahm, ‘Hören und Verstehen‘, 242 – 52. 9 Represented by Shannon and Weaver in chap. 2.

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passive receivers. From this perspective the practice of preaching appeared as monological one-way communication. In spite of the insights gained through the empirical surveys, homileticians soon started questioning whether the practice of preaching had enough in common with mass communication to benefit from the comparative approach. Accordingly it was described as a homiletical shift of paradigm10 when the behavioristic approach to preaching, as mass communication, was supplanted by the acknowledgement of the need to treat the listeners of preaching as active participants rather than passive receivers: Der Paradigmenwechsel deutet sich dort an, wo Rezipienten als aktiv handelnde Interaktionspartner beschrieben werden, die von ihren eigenen Lebenszusammenhängen und von ihren eigenen Interessenkonstellationen her Informationen bearbeiten, sie also nicht nur rezipieren, sondern in einem von der Person gesteuerten Prozess interpretieren.11

In connection with the paradigmatic turn Karl-Fritz Daiber, Hans Werner Dannowski (b. 1933), and others embarked upon empirical surveys of the listeners’ interaction with preaching. In accordance with the speech act theories of Austin and Searle,12 Daiber and colleagues found that listeners do not just de-code the message but rather interpret and transform it according to their own situation and interests. Another, more recent, understanding of preaching that builds on the acknowledgement of mutuality in the communication process is that of Wilfried Engemann’s (b. 1959) semiotic homiletics. Engemann works in continuity with the reception aesthetics of Umberto Eco that argues for a multi-facetted reception aesthetic that stands against the one-sided focus on the author in production aesthetical approaches. Reception aestheticians draw on the works of Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish and focus on the ‘readerhorizons’ within which a work is created, the way in which a text’s structure directs a reader’s understanding, and how the work is perceived by actual readers.13 Eco’s theories about the open art work imply that the reader is a co-author of the work. Engemann reinterprets the open artwork, in the homiletical context, toward the more spatial notion of ‘Erschliessungsräume’: open entrance doors or open places in which the listeners are given room to move

10 Dannowski, Predigtlehre, 117. 11 Karl-Fritz Daiber, Predigen und Hören. Ergebnisse einer Gottesdienstbefragung—Band 2: Kommunikation zwischen Predigern und Hörern. Sozialwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen (Munchen: Kaiser, 1983), 33, qtd. from Dannowski, Predigtlehre, 117. 12 Austin, How to do Things with Words. Described in comparison with Bakhtinian theories of dialogicity in chap. 2. 13 Karlsson, Predikans Samtal, 45.

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Dialogicity in Swedish Homiletical Contexts

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and co-create the sermonic work of art from their perspective.14 Engemann argues that the preacher is neither to induce nor ‘lure’ the listeners’ thoughts, emotions or consciousness in any way ; instead the preacher’s role is to provide an ‘open room’ in which the listeners can interact freely. Engemann’s emphasis on open rooms thus designates the preacher’s relinquishment of authoritative guidance in favor of creating open possibilities.15 In recent years the German homiletician Martin Nicol (b.1953) has introduced and adapted to a German theological context the insights from the New Homiletics; in his Einander Ins Bild Setzen: Dramaturgische Homiletik he has especially made use of David Buttrick’s homiletics to a German context.16 In line with Buttrick, Nicol emphasizes how preaching can re-enact the gospel in a way that corresponds with how contemporary listeners listen and interpret. To this end he envisions how preachers can work like filmmakers, thinking in perspectives and scenes rather than as lecturers presenting propositional points.

Dialogicity in Swedish Homiletical Contexts Traditionally, Scandinavian theology has been significantly inspired by the German developments, but in recent years American homiletics has also come to have a significant influence on practical theology, particularly in Swedish contexts. The Swedish homiletician Carina Sundberg is one of those theologians whose studies of theology of preaching emerging from contemporary Scandinavian, German, and American contexts manifests the constructive convergences and dynamic differences between the three traditions.17 In her doctoral dissertation Här är rymlig plats: Predikoteologier i en komplex verklighet (Here is a Lot of Space: Theologies of Preaching in a Complex Reality) (2008), Sundberg analyzes the theologies of preaching inherent in the works of Eberhard Jüngel and the American theologians Mary Catherine Hilkert, W. Paul Jones, and Rebecca S. Chopp. Sundberg’s 14 Wilfried Engemann, Personen, Zeichen und das Evangelium. Argumentationsmuster der Praktischen Theologie (Leipzig: Evang. Verlag, 2003), 145 – 63. 15 Frihed og kristen livskunst (Freedom and Christian Art of Life); Bent Flemming Nielsen, ‘Prædiken og Liturgi’ in Menneskesyn og gudstjeneste, ed. Eberhard Harbsmeier, Værkstedshæfte no. 55 (Løgumkloster : Folkekirkens Pædagogiske Institut, 2011). 16 Martin Nicol, Einander Ins Bild Setzen: Dramaturgische Homiletik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2005). 17 The Danish pastor and teacher in homiletics at the Pastoral Institute in Copenhagen Jan Sievert Asmussen is another theologian who is well steeped within both the American New Homiletics and the German ‘Dramaturgische Homiletik’ represented by Martin Nicol and Alexander Deeg. The fruitful interaction is evident in his recent pastoral theological introduction to homiletics: Asmussen, Ord virker—retorisk homiletik (Words Work—Rhetorical Homiletics) (Frederiksberg: Anis, 2010).

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conceptual summary of the four distinct positions indicates crucial elements shared by New Homiletics and other-wise homiletics such as preaching as address (Jüngel), sacramental imagination (Hilkert), perspective-provider (Jones), and testimony (Chopp). Another Swedish homiletician, Jonny Karlsson, provides in his doctoral dissertation, Predikans Samtal (The Conversation of Preaching),18 a concise description of the listener’s role in contemporary homiletical research in light of the German thought. Karlsson does not refer to concurrent American homiletical developments but the similarities are striking (as I intend to accentuate in this comparative presentation). Predikans Samtal is also of further interest because Karlsson analyzes the listener’s role in the preaching of the Swedish theologian Gustaf Wingren in light of Bakhtin’s theories of dialogicity, and he provides thorough, systematical analyses of a larger number of held sermons in light of Bakhtinian dialogicity. These analyses provide an illuminating insight into how having different congregations as addressees transforms Wingren’s preaching on identical texts and how the listeners, in that sense, function as implicit co-authors. Through his appropriation of Bakhtin, Karlsson provides new homiletical ground by dissolving the traditional dichotomy between production- versus reception-oriented approaches to preaching. This modification is important, not only as a critical corrective of recent German homiletics but also in the contemporary American change of focus from text-oriented toward more recent listener-oriented preaching.19 One of the critical issues, related to Karlsson’s analysis of dialogicity and co-authorship in preaching, is that although his Bakhtin-inspired sermon analyses provide the reader with a nuanced insight into the homiletical practice and theological universe of Wingren, it lacks the empirical insight and documentation of the listeners’ actual reactions and input toward the preaching of Wingren. As a result, it becomes difficult to discern whether the listeners of Wingren’s preaching actually have an ‘othering’, confounding impact on the preacher’s sermon, so that it becomes dialogical in the Bakhtinian second sense,20 or whether the preacher merely accommodates his preaching to the different groups of listeners, as traditionally described by rhetoricians. Comparable to the New Homiletics’ imaginative identification with the listeners of preaching, Karlsson’s method of analysis can only presume that there is an actual dialogue going on between the ‘already-said’ (of the biblical text, Wingren, etc.) and the ‘not-yet-said’ of the actual listeners. 18 Predikans Samtal, 27 – 46. 19 As outlined in this chapter, there has been a gradual movement towards the listeners of preaching since the late 1960’s until today, cf. Craddock, As One Without Authority ; Buttrick: Homiletic: Moves and Structures; McClure, Listening to Listeners. 20 In distinction from the first sense in which all communication is dialogical because it orients itself retrospectively toward the ‘already said’ and prospectively toward the ‘not-yet-said’; see chap. 2.

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Recent Danish Homiletics between Orality and Literacy

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This presumption of the implied listeners confirms the thesis by Walter J. Ong, that the ‘the writer’s audience is always a fiction’.21 Although inspired by Karlsson, my approach differs from his in a number of ways, and in what follows I will try to avoid the traditional approaches of either building homiletical theories upon presumptions of how listeners might respond to preaching or set up rhetorical rules for preaching based on generalization from empirical studies.22 As an alternative approach I will explore 1) how preachers expose their preaching to interaction with various ‘others’ of preaching, and 2) how homileticians might incorporate coauthored impact on preaching into homiletical theories. Additionally, another major difference between my approach and that of Karlsson is that I analyze preaching as a ‘carnivalesque dialogue’ in order to emphazise on those elements that surpass and even confound dialogue.23

Recent Danish Homiletics between Orality and Literacy Although practical theology as an academic discipline at the Danish universities is rather young, issues pertaining to the field and resembling contemporary discussions were being addressed already in the 1970’s. Bent Flemming Nielsen describes how the influential Danish systematic theologian Regin Prenter (1907 – 1990) criticized how the congregation in modern preaching had become a mute object of proclamation toward whom the preachers could proclaim their kerygma. Prenter’s understanding of the congregation was inspired by the Anglican as well as Grundtvigian24 emphasis on worship as the gathering of the singing and celebrating congregation.25 This Grundtvigian emphasis revolved around experience and the ‘event’ of the spoken word in ways that can be compared to the New Homiletics. One of the fundamental characteristics shared by the above mentioned group of German homileticians as well as the American New Homileticians is the rejection of the homiletic attempt to transfer ‘content’ from the biblical text to the contemporary preaching situation. The traditional notion of communication as transfer via more or less neutral media shows, according to 21 Walter J. Ong, ‘The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction’, PMLA 90.1 (1975): 9 – 21. Ong’s impact on the New Homiletics is elaborated further below. 22 As David Buttrick does in an informative and inspiring but nevertheless problematic way in his Homiletic: Moves and Structures, 211 ff. 23 Cf. chaps. 4 and 9. 24 Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783 – 1872). Danish theologian, poet, pastor, author, politician. 25 Further described in Nielsen, ‘Menigheden i prædikenen: I anledning af en bogudgivelse og Wilfried Engemann’s besøg i Danmark’, Præsteforeningens Blad 101.33 (2011): 684 – 89.

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Walther J. Ong, a ‘chirographic conditioning’26 that is problematic in the oral genre of preaching. Ong’s studies of the different cultures of orality and literacy have had a significant impact on, particularly, David Buttrick’s oral/ aural-oriented phenomenological homiletics27 but also on recent Danish homiletics. In his Genopførelser (Re-enactments), Bent Flemming Nielsen has analyzed the relationship between rituals and communication in contemporary liturgical contexts. Working within a Lutheran context Nielsen’s focus is on this tradition and he describes how contemporary Lutheran preachers often find themselves in a dilemma trying to maintain traditional Lutheran ideals with contemporary practical experiences of preaching. As described by Nielsen, there is on one hand a strong reformed emphasis on the belief that Preadicatio verbi dei est verbum dei28—‘The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God’—while on the other hand, the majority of preachers in the Lutheran tradition cannot easily make themselves advocates for continuing the category ‘Word of God’ as a homiletical basis. In the interpretation of Nielsen, as both Barth-interpreter and practical theologian, Dialectical Theology’s attempt of reviving the category of the Word of God, in the middle of the twentieth century, led homiletics into dire difficulties and had too great a co-responsibility for the drying out of the church’s preaching tradition. The claim that preaching is the Word of God has, in the opinion of many preachers and homileticians, led to too much postulating, listener-immune, monological preaching. However, although most preachers struggle to identify with such a ‘high homiletics’, the continuing study of Luther within Danish theology contributes to a continued consciousness among preachers about the belief that proclamation demands to be understood somehow as the Word of God. The traditional Lutheran emphasis on ‘Sola Scriptura’ can be seen as the Achilles’ heel of the Lutheran preaching tradition. The literary oriented academic education of Lutheran pastors of the twenty-first century tends to make literacy our ‘second nature,’ which makes it difficult to grasp the importance of the fact that Luther’s emphasis on scripture was formulated in a culture that was predominantly orally oriented.29 Just as Nielsen has examined orality and literacy and the tension between them, the Danish homiletician Sanne Thøisen, in her dissertation Dialog Undervejs (Dialogue on the Way),30 has analyzed the notions of orality, 26 As described by Walter J. Ong in Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Routledge, 1982). 27 Cf. Buttrick, Homiletic: Moves and Structures, 463 – 64. 28 As formulated by the reformed theologian Heinrich Bullinger (1504 – 1575) in an often quoted sentence from the second Helvetic Confession from 1566. 29 Nielsen, Genopførelser, 155 – 57. 30 Dialog undervejs: mundtlighed, retorik og imagination i nyere amerikansk homiletik (Dialogue on the Way: Orality, Rhetoric and Imagination in recent American Homiletics), PhD Diss., ærhus University, 2005.

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rhetoric, and imagination in the works of some of the proponents of the New Homiletics, namely Fred Craddock, David Buttrick, Tom Long, and Paul Scott Wilson. Thøisen’s dissertation explores the potential of Ong’s authorship with particular focus on the different cultures of orality and literature in order to describe the oral genre of preaching. Ong does not propose another communication model to replace the transfer model. Instead, he displays the fallibility of the transfer model in ways that converge with the Bakhtinian descriptions, as when he states that ‘[i]n real human communication, the sender has to be not only in the sender position but also in the receiver position before he or she can send anything.’31 This book continues, in many ways, where Thøisen’s investigation ended. In recognition of Ong’s characterization of the differences between oral and chirographic communication, one of my foci is on the tension field between the two cultures. This recognition is also crucial in Bakhtin’s communication theories in general and his description of ‘carnivalization’ and ‘speech genres’ in particular. My exploration of the contemporary ‘other-wise’ homileticians in light of Bakhtin accentuates, however, a divergence from Thøisen’s analyses of the New Homiletics’ explorations into rhetoric and imagination. As an alternative to Ong’s claim that ‘the writer’s audience is always a fiction’,32 which corresponds well with the preaching practices of the New Homiletics, I explore the other-wise homiletics in light of the Bakhtinian claim that the ‘listener is co-author’. In order to analyze the carnivalesque co-authorship of listeners of preaching in contemporary other-oriented preaching practices and homiletical reflections, let me now turn to the approach to dialogue and coauthorship in recent homiletics. As a means to providing this historical background I shall first examine the notion of the ‘dialogical principle’ in the inductive preaching of Fred Craddock and the perspectival approach to conversational logic in relation to David Buttrick’s homiletics.

The ‘Dialogical Principle’ in Fred Craddock’s Homiletics Fred Craddock was one of the homileticians who inaugurated the New Homiletics movement with his epochal book As One without Authority. Craddock’s influence on theoretical homiletics as well as preaching in practice is immense and widely recognized. In the United States the literature on the New Homiletics is vast and its influence is still recognized in those more recent homiletical works that critique and try to transform the inheritance from the 31 Ong, Orality and Literacy, 173. 32 Ong, ‘The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction’, 9 – 21.

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movement.33 One of the primary inspiration sources for the New Homiletics is the German ‘New Hermeneutic’ developed by Gerhard Ebeling and Ernst Fuchs. In accordance with the New Hermeneutics, the New Homileticians stress the sermon’s capacity to create an ‘experience’ of the gospel (cf. ‘wordevent’ by Ebeling and ‘language-event’ by Fuchs). The focus on experience manifests a rejection of the traditional homiletic attempt to convey static biblical truths to passively receiving listeners. In order to proclaim the gospel as an experience the scholars of New Homiletics suggest that the forms of preaching should vary analogically with the genres of the scriptures. Craddock exemplifies the genius of one of the biblical forms of preaching, the parable. Here the message is inherent in the method, which reverses the traditional primacy of the content over form: Rather than being distilled for their content, the parable communicates as parable; it is the method that effects the experience. The method is the message. So it is with all preaching: how one preaches is to a large extent what one preaches.34

Critical consideration of the practical homiletic method is crucial for the New Homiletics paradigm considering that ‘the method is the message’. The Word of God is neither to be located in some past events, nor logically deduced from universal principles, but it comes to the congregation in the event of preaching through activation of the performative potential of the biblical text. Of particular interest here is Craddock’s distinction between the method and principle of dialogue, which indicates how the act of preaching, although methodologically performed by one speaker, can embrace the dialogical principle. In contrast to the dialogical principle Craddock describes how two or more interlocutors might be talking to each other but if none of them answers or takes responsibility for a dialogical interaction, even though the conversation might methodologically be categorized a dialogue, the dialogical principle is not present. In my interpretation, most dialogically oriented preachers and homileticians can adhere to Craddock’s description of the kind of transformation the incorporation of the dialogical principle has on the practice of preaching as well as homiletical reflections: [E]mbracing the dialogical principle requires a radical reassessment of one’s role as a preacher, one’s view of the congregation as the people of God, one’s understanding of whether the sermon is the preacher’s or the church’s, and one’s theology of the Word; that is, does the Word of God occur at the lips, at the ear, or in the sharing of it?35

33 E.g., Charles Campbell, Preaching Jesus: New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 126; and McClure, Other-wise Preaching, 50 – 51. 34 Craddock, As One Without Authority, 44. 35 Ibid., 18.

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In As One Without Authority, Craddock describes a crisis of preaching so profound that not only laypeople, but also preachers and homileticians are reluctant to defend the accused genre. Craddock compares the critical situation with the historical Danish36 ‘preaching crisis’ described by Søren Kierkegaard and suggests serious reconsiderations of the different roles given to ‘what’ and ‘how’ in the traditional homiletic paradigm: ‘How’ is for many an ugly word, a cause of embarrassment… . What has skill to do with the kingdom of God? SK [Søren Kierkegaard] sensed some of this condescension among the clergy and regarded it as major cause for the decline in the quality of preaching. Perhaps no word among us has suffered more abuse than ‘how’, not the honorable abuse of attack, but the humiliating abuse of inattention, disregard, slight. ‘How’ has been made to stand out in the hall while ‘what’ was being entertained by the brightest minds among us.37

Led by Craddock, the New Homileticians revolted against a homiletic paradigm in which the lack of academic reflection on how to implement the theological theories resulted in a more or less unconscious transfer of scientific ideals, entailing a propositional-deductive method to preaching. The lack of critical consideration of how to preach meant that a rationalistic preaching form, based on Enlightenment ideals of research and reasoning alien to the biblical universe, came to dominate. Craddock claims that preaching suffers from the separation of form and content since it ignores the fact that the method, whether consciously chosen or not, does communicate a theological content: ‘[T]he separation of form and content is fatal for preaching, for it fails to recognize the theology implicit in the method of communication.’38 As an example of how the inherent theology in the manner of preaching can communicate more than the ‘content’ expressed by the preacher’s words, Craddock describes how a sermon on the subject of ‘priesthood of all believers’—although explicating and showing applications of the concept— often is contradicted by the way it is being proclaimed. Whatever the preacher’s attitude toward the idea as expressed in the content of the sermon, ‘the movement of the shared material may not allow the hearers to be priests at all in any responsible sense’!39 36 The critical diagnosis of a ‘preaching crisis’ is far from new in a Danish context, where the Danish ‘church father’, Grundtvig, in his early sermon from 1811: ‘Hvi er Herrens Ord forsvundet af Hans Hus’ (‘Why has the Word of the Lord Disappeared from His House’ proclaimed that preaching was in a state of crisis; cf. his ‘Dimis-prædikenen’ (1810), in Nik. Fred. Sev. Grundtvigs Udvalgte Skrifter II (København: Gyldendal, 1905). Although they agreed on very little, Grundtvig’s younger contemporary Søren Kierkegaard also criticized the preaching in the Danish church throughout his authorship. The judgment of preaching as in a state of crisis has echoed throughout the twentieth century, cf. Eberhard Harbsmeier and Hans Raun Iversen, Praktisk Teologi (Frederiksberg: Anis, 1995), 356. 37 Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel, 10. 38 Craddock, As One without Authority, 5. 39 Ibid., 18.

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From Craddock’s perspective, the inductive method of theological exploration, which issues in the preacher sharing his or her own journey of sermonic discovery with the congregation while at the same time letting them ‘draw their own conclusions’, implements the doctrine of priesthood of all believers in practice.40 Nevertheless, the judgment that ‘inductive preaching’ is the best way to incorporate the evangelical doctrine of universal priesthood is not without its critics. According to the American homiletician, Charles Campbell, Craddock’s individualistic understanding of the listener’s ‘right’ to draw his/her ‘own’ conclusions ‘represents a gross distortion of that doctrine’.41 He adds that ‘[t]he point of the doctrine is not that each person can serve as his or her own priest, but that every person is a priest to every other person’.42 An alternative incorporation of the Protestant doctrine in the practice of preaching is that of the African-American homiletician Evans Crawford, who has analyzed the phenomenon of call-and-response in the African American preaching tradition. Crawford argues how this interactive co-authorship of the preaching situation can be seen as a way of enacting and embracing the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers in homiletical practice.43 The discussion of whether the dialogical principle inherent in Craddock’s inductive preaching incorporates the theological doctrine of the priesthood of all believers shares significant elements with the Bakhtinian understanding of dialogicity in the second and third senses44, which requires mutual transformation between the participants. Since Craddock bases his inductive preaching on the ‘indirect method’ of Kierkegaard it will furthermore be discussed in light of the notion of the ‘upbuilding’ in the Kierkegaardian authorship.

Craddock’s ‘Inductive Method’ in Light of Kierkegaard’s ‘Indirect Message’ Craddock’s Kierkegaard-inspired shift of focus from abstract content to situated methodology, from ‘what’ to ‘how’, contributed significantly to the homiletical development in a new orientation toward a phenomenology of listening:45 40 41 42 43

Ibid., 56. Campbell, Preaching Jesus, 133. Ibid. Evans E. Crawford with Thomas Troeger, The Hum: Call and Response in African American Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 15 ff. Crawford’s analyses of ‘participant proclamation’ and ‘homiletical musicality’ is highly relevant to my enquiry and is further examined in chap. 6. 44 Described in chap. 2. 45 Partly based on Ong, Orality and Literacy.

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Craddock’s ‘Inductive Method’ in Light of Kierkegaard

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It is vital to our task that we be aware that the experience of listening is not a secondary consideration after we have done our exegesis of the texts and theological exploration. The listener is present from the beginning. The Christian tradition, biblical and extra-biblical, came to us from those who heard it, and we hear it and pass it on to other hearers.46

The inductive preaching paradigm attempts to identify with the experience of the listeners by grounding the theological reasoning in, supposedly, universal human experiences. The intention is to let listeners draw their own theological conclusions instead of having them ‘applied’ by the preacher.47 Craddock’s ‘inductive method’ was, according to his own rendering, based on Kierkegaard’s ‘indirect message’.48 In spite of the fact that it is As One Without Authority that has become the most influential of Craddock’s works, it is in Overhearing the Gospel (1978) that he provides the communication-theological reflections behind his proposal of inductive preaching. Here he states it was through reading Kierkegaard that he radically changed his mind regarding the relationship between the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of theology. In Craddock’s interpretation all of Kierkegaard’s authorship revolves around the question of how : ‘how to be a Christian, here in this place, now at this time.’49 While recent work in the field of homiletics and Kierkegaard scholarship has resulted in a wealth of insights relevant for a renewed understanding of Kierkegaardian homiletics, I shall limit myself here to an outline of Kierkegaard’s view on preaching, dialogue, and the ‘upbuilding’ in order to sufficiently analyze Craddock’s contribution to preaching as a dialogic genre. One of Kierkegaard’s pivotal definitions of preaching is found in the introduction to his Concept of Anxiety. There his emphasis on preaching as an art of dialogue rather than science, and the understanding that conversation turns on the ability to receive rather than transfer, accentuates crucial elements for the New Homiletics as well as dialogical preaching. Kierkegaard describes the sermon as the place in which: the single individual speaks as the single individual to the single individual. In our day, scientific self-importance has tricked pastors into become something like professorial clerks who also serve science and find it beneath their dignity to preach. Is it any wonder then that preaching has come to be regarded as a very lowly art? But 46 Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel, 104. 47 Cf. Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel, 5. 48 Kierkegaard’s own reflections on the ‘indirect method’ play a major role throughout the authorship but is specifically addressed in Kierkegaard, Synspunktet for min Forfatter-Virksomhed, Søren Kierkegaard Samlede Værker, vol. 18 (København: Gyldendal, 1992 – 94); and Kierkegaard, ‘Det ethiske og den ethisk-religieuse Meddelelses Dialektik’ (1847), in Søren Kierkegaards kommunikationsteori, ed. Paul Müller (København: C. A. Reitzel, 1984), http://sks. dk/p364/txt.xml. 49 Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel, 5.

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to preach is really the most difficult of all arts and is essentially the art that Socrates praised, the art of being able to converse… . Appropriation is precisely the secret of conversation.50

The Kierkegaardian description of preaching, as essentially the ability to converse, as well as his critique of scientific aspirations at the cost of conversational preaching, is central to Craddock’s inductive preaching. Yet Craddock’s appropriation of Kierkegaard is, in my interpretation, rather onesided and misses out on the critically constructive potential for preaching in the Kierkegaardian authorship. Bakhtin’s description of generic features characteristic of the carnivalized genres shares many characteristics with Kierkegaard’s reflections on religious communication in general and homiletics in particular, and the two can be used to critically and constructively supplement each other when analyzing the genre of preaching. Tracing the historical, carnivalesque roots of the genre of preaching from an outside position, Bakhtin is able to describe this strange, mixed genre quite directly in a way that makes it comparable to other literary genres. Indeed, his literary comprehensive, outside description is valuable to a homiletic analysis that has often struggled with an understanding of preaching as a genre that does not easily fit in with other literary genres and sometimes even is categorized as a genre sui generis. On the other hand, while the Kierkegaardian analysis of the genre of preaching shares essential characteristics with the Bakhtinian description, Kierkegaard performs his analysis from an inside, practical theological position,51 which carries with it great precautions and dilemmas regarding the systematic, academic approach to homiletics. Although the two positions analyze preaching from respectively an outside and an inside position, the comparative and the sui generis position do not necessarily exclude each other, and it can be argued that what Kierkegaard lacks regarding a contemporary homiletical project can be supplied by Bakhtin’s position and vice versa. Although Kierkegaard did write quite extensively on the ‘indirect method’ of communication he did not write much on the theory of language.52 Furthermore, he was too early to respond to Saussure and others, whose theories have had a massive impact on contemporary communication theory and practice. Being born a generation after the death of Kierkegaard and emphasizing theories of communication, Bakhtin can be used to set the 50 Jane Chamberlain and Jonathan R¦e, eds., The Kierkegaard Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 187. 51 Although Kierkegaard was not an ordained pastor he preached several times at the Friday Communion in the Church of our Lady, Cathedral of Copenhagen, and has written numerous ‘edifying speeches’. 52 Cf. George Pattison, Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology and Literature (London: Routledge, 2002), 121.

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Listener-Oriented Preaching in Light of Kierkegaard

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Kierkegaardian reflections into a more contemporary communicationtheoretical context. As a theologian, however, Kierkegaard’s ideas are coupled with profound reflections of what it means to try to communicate with the transcendent, the Wholly Other, which is indispensable for a homiletical study, yet which Bakhtin only discusses indirectly.53

Listener-Oriented Preaching in Light of Kierkegaard’s Reflections on ‘The Upbuilding’ Other-wise homiletics questions the supposedly power-neutral equality between the preacher and the listener which is presupposed in Craddock’s appropriation of the Kierkegaardian ‘indirect message’ for ‘inductive preaching’. Instead other-wise homileticians suggest that the relationship between the preacher and the congregation is asymmetrical but can be dynamically reversed for some time enabling genuine dialogue and reciprocal transformation. In comparison the Danish Kierkegaard-scholar Pia Søltoft criticizes traditional interpretations which describe the category of the ‘upbuilding’ as if it were identical with Kierkegaard’s theory of indirect communication.54 In my interpretation, Søltoft’s critique and delineation of the upbuilding as a ‘double dialogical relationship’ resemble significantly the other-wise homileticians’ replacement of ‘inductive’ preaching with more collaborative, conversational approaches. In rejection of traditional interpretations of Kierkegaard Søltoft argues that ‘the upbuilding’, although based on some similarities of the ‘indirect communication’, differs significantly regarding the relationship between the one who builds up and the one being upbuilt. This, quite different, relation is characterized by a ‘double dialogical relationship’ which forms a very different strategy of communication than the ‘indirect’,55 which in its strategy of ‘luring’ its listener/reader carries the risk of becoming demonic. In addition to the problem of omission, inherent in the dialectic of communication, namely that it tends to ignore the potential of the interactive, 53 Several works have been written in recent years on the theological undercurrent in the Bakhtinian authorship. One of the more profound is Alexandar Mihailovic, Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin’s Theology of Discourse (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997). 54 Søltoft, ‘To Let Oneself be Upbuilt’, in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2000, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Herman Deuser (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000); Müller, Søren Kierkegaards kommunikationsteori (published posthumously). These communication-theoretical sketches were intended for a series of 12 lectures on homiletics on the Pastoral Seminary of Copenhagen where Kierkegaard considered applying for a position. This intended shift of position from author to lecturer happened at the time when Kierkegaard had decided that he had finished his authorship. 55 Søltoft, ‘To Let Oneself be Upbuilt’, 20.

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mutually upbuilding relationship between the interlocutors, Søltoft accentuates how a very negative shadow tends to cling to it: [T]here is a problem with the ‘dialectic of communication’, a problem Kierkegaard himself draws our attention to, when he questions the degree to which a person is allowed to use it, and asks if there is not perhaps something demonic in it.56

An alternative understanding of the relationship between the upbuilder and the one being upbuilt is developed in Works of Love, which Kierkegaard wrote the same year as the lecture notes. In this work he describes a more symmetrical relationship between the communicator and the addressee because the one to build up must see something lovable in the one to be upbuilt. It is crucial to the ‘upbuilding’ that by looking for what is lovable in the other the upbuilder does something to himself and is changed by the relationship. Although the term ‘upbuilding’ is a rather awkward term in English it is preferable to ‘edifying’ because it underscores the, to Kierkegaard, important connotation of different ways of building something or someone up from the ground. Of further interest to my argument, the architectonical imagery also corresponds with Bakhtin’s descriptions of communication as a kind of ‘architectonics’.57 Bakhtin scholar Michael Holquist has described the crucial role the notion of architectonics plays in the Bakhtinian authorship in ways that, in my interpretation, are comparable with both the Kierkegaardian definitions of the upbuilding in Works of Love as well as other-wise homileticians’ description of the task of other-oriented preaching, described in the following. Architectonics is, from this perspective, the key to Bakhtin’s philosophical anthropology because at the heart of all human action is the problem of achieving wholeness of one kind or another out of parts of different kinds. But the basic difference is between self-perception and other perception. This division cannot be overcome; it can only be mediated. Architectonics is how particular differences flowing from this Urdifferenz are negotiated into specific relations. Bakhtin’s account of architectonic activity is, thus, radically perspectival and situational.58

Craddock’s ‘Dialogical Principle’ in Light of Bakhtin In spite of the coincidence of Craddock’s emphasis on the homiletical task of embracing the ‘dialogical principle’ and the categorization of the same term as the ‘dominant theme whatever subject under scrutiny’ in the authorship of 56 Ibid., 21. 57 Particularly in Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 72 – 75. 58 Michael Holquist, ‘Introduction’ in Bakhtin, Art and Answerability, xxviii.

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Bakhtin,59 Craddock was most likely not familiar with Bakhtin’s works since they were not published in English until the early eighties. Craddock’s claim that the listener plays a fundamental role in homiletically oriented exegesis and theological reflection, however, resembles Bakhtin’s description of how all utterances are shaped in dialogue with implicit or explicit addressees: ‘[F]rom the very beginning, the utterance is constructed while taking into account possible responsive reactions, for whose sake, in essence, it is actually created.’60 Craddock’s listener-oriented homiletics can thus be described as consciously dialogical in the first sense of the word.61 Whether Craddock’s homiletics is dialogical in the second, analytical, sense of the word is more problematic. The critical question, from a Bakhtinian perspective, is what kind of listener is imagined in the preparation process of preaching. Is it an ideal listener, who is basically identical with the preacher or is the addressee ‘other’ than the preacher in the sense that s/he contributes to a transformation of the thinking and sermonic discourse of the preacher? If we base our understanding of other-oriented dialogue on Bakhtin’s discussion of the addressee the literary notion of the ‘ideal listener’ has very little chances of contributing dialogically to the discourse. In the interpretation of Bakhtin, the ‘ideal’ listener’s impact is basically a reflection of the author and cannot have an ‘othering’ effect’.62 If the addressee is seen as fundamentally identical with the author he does not contribute anything new. The description has been further unfolded in one of Bakhtin’s disputed works, published in the name of one of the members of the ‘Bakhtin-circle’—V.N. Voloshinov63—who describes why it is a fatal mistake to underestimate the actual listener’s autonomous role. The chapter in which the difference between ideal and actual listeners is described is tellingly titled ‘Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art’, and, in my interpretation, it provides an interesting challenge to Walter Ong’s dictum, echoed in the practice and theories of the New Homiletics, that the ‘The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction’.64 In fairness toward the insightful and important studies by Ong, I do not interpret his claim as an expression of a presupposed identity between writers 59 60 61 62

Cf. Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, 13. Bakhtin, ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’, 95. Cf. chap. 2. Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 165. The discussion of the implied listener in preaching is further discussed in relation to the homiletical reflections and preaching practice of the Danish theologian Svend Bjerg in chap. 5. 63 In Bakhtin/Voloshinov, Freudianism: A Marxist Critique (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 112. Since this chapter basically unfolds some of the ideas in the non-disputed works of Bakhtin, I will not enter into a discussion of whether the book primarily should be attributed to Voloshinov or Bakhtin. Instead I adhere to the evaluation of Bakhtin-scholar, and translator, Michael Holquist, who in his ‘Introduction’ to Bakhtin’s Dialogical Imagination , xxvi, estimates that approximately ninety percent of the three disputed works are developed by Bakhtin. 64 In PMLA 90.1(1975): 9 – 21.

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and their readers. Quite contrarily, Ong describes how the addressee of a discourse is never identical with the addressee the author has in mind. Not even if that addressee is the author himself, as reader of his/her own discourse or diary. What I am critical towards, in relation to Ong’s description, is that the image of the listener, as a fictional audience, can be used to legitimize a homiletical perception of the listeners of preaching as a uniform multitude (Kierkegaard’s mængden) in which all differences have been dissolved because they are ‘always a fiction anyway’. In contrast to the approach to listeners of preaching as a fictional multitude having the role of passive objects of the preacher’s imagination, contemporary homileticians, analyzed in the following chapters, emphasize the value of the ‘othering’, ‘heteroglot’ (J. H. Harris), ‘polyphonic’ (J. S. McClure) and ‘chronotopically’ (C. L. Campbell) disturbing impact actual listeners can have through ‘participant proclamation’.65 Since Bakhtin/Voloshinov’s discourse-theoretical analyses of the addressee pertain to both art and everyday life they do not reject that there is an element of fictionalization in the author’s perception of the listener. Yet, in contrast to Craddock’s presupposition of identity between preacher and listeners, they suggest that the speaker should rather assume difference as a precondition for the communication: [T]he listener never equals the author. The listener has his own independent place in the event of the artistic creation; he must occupy a special, and what is more, a twosided position in it – with respect to the author and with respect to the hero—and it is this position that has determinative effect on the style of the utterance.66

Intrinsically connected with Bakhtin’s analyses of the importance of otherness and difference in dialogical encounters and discourse productions is the notion of ‘exotopy’, outsideness. In order to understand Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue and carnivalization it is essential to keep in mind that the goal of dialogical encounters is not a fusion of horizons or mutual identification67. Whether the inductive homiletics of Craddock is dialogical in the (second and third) sense of Bakhtin, or even in the sense of Kierkegaard, is highly disputable if the inductive dialogue only causes transformation on one side of the relationship, namely in the individual experience of the listener. An alternative approach to the understanding of preaching as dialogue within the New Homiletics, has been developed by David Buttrick. Buttrick is in continuity with, yet distinctive from Craddock, as we will see by examining his phenomenological-rhetorical approach to preaching. 65 Crawford, The Hum, 37 – 38. Crawford’s practice-theoretical analysis of ‘participant proclamation’ in relation to the social scientific notion of ‘participant observation’ is further developed in chap. 6. 66 Bakhtin/Voloshinov, Freudianism: A Marxist Critique, 112. 67 An analysis of the notion of outsideness/exotopy in a homiletical context will be provided in chap. 6.

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Buttrick’s Conversational Homiletics In the 1980’s David Buttrick developed his major work, Homiletic: Moves and Structures, on how to preach in accordance with how meaning forms in the experience of the listeners. One of the central concerns in Buttrick’s homiletics is for preachers to recognize the radical difference between the sermon as heard under the aural-oral conditions of preaching and the written text read by an individual. Buttrick shares Craddock’s rejection of traditional ‘propositional preaching’ in which sermons are modeled after scientific paradigms such as lectures or articles. As an alternative to the ‘3 points and a poem’-structure characterizing propositional preaching Buttrick suggests that preachers should work more performatively, like film makers thinking in perspectives and moves from scene to scene.68 Inspired by narrative and metaphorical insights he finds that ’Thinking homiletically is always a matter of thinking theology toward images.’69 Buttrick continues in the tracks laid by Craddock and other early New Homileticians when he reflects on how to present the gospel as an event experienced inductively by the congregation through evocative images. Differing from the traditional New Homiletic terminology, however, Buttrick describes the event as a ‘transformation of congregational consciousness’ by which he intends that sermons build a world, a faith-world, in consciousness, made from images, metaphors, illustrations, and examples. … What we are after is a kind of imitation of the way in which humans grasp meaning. Meaning is never an abstract thinking, it incorporates images of lived experience. Thus, in a sermon ideas must be imaged, and images must interact so that sermons will be natural to modes of human consciousness.70

Although Buttrick agrees with Craddock and other New Homileticians’ understanding of the importance of analogy in preaching, he is highly critical of the fact that sermon illustrations are often developed with a lack of both theological and empirical discernment. Buttrick thus acknowledges the existence and relevance of homiletic use of analogy and sees the homiletic task as a matter of discerning how to use them, because, as he states, ‘though a danger, illustrations are here to stay. Our task is to learn how to use them well.’71 Analogies are essential to Buttrickian homiletics because of their ability to ‘join concept and percept, enabling us to see what we mean.’72 He thus embraces the use of analogies because of their ability to make theological 68 69 70 71 72

Buttrick, Homiletic, 23 ff. Ibid. 29. Ibid., 169 – 70. Ibid., 127. Ibid., 128.

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claims come alive as recognizable phenomena. Yet in order to accomplish this homiletic intention not all analogies will do. Analogies have to be developed with systematical theological discernment and practical phenomenological insight into what kind of impact they make upon the listeners: For preaching is not only a hermeneutic activity of reading texts and human situations; it involves shaping words with rhetorical savvy to form understandings in common consciousness. The homiletical task involves the informed study of Scripture, theological reflection, cultural analysis, and hard-nosed rhetorical craft.73

Buttrick’s approach to monitoring the homiletic use of analogy consists of a combination of practical phenomenology,74 rhetoric, and empirical studies of what congregations hear, see, and remember when listening to a sermon. Through interviews congregations have been asked what they remember immediately after having heard a sermon and this information has been analyzed and interpreted in light of rhetorical studies.75 On this empirically based but phenomenological and rhetorical informed foundation Buttrick creates a comprehensive homiletic approach to how to structure sermons in practice. Criticizing the traditional use of objectively distanced third person point of view, as well as the preacher’s own perspective, Buttrick describes the need to move between different points of view in order to imitate how consciousness works. In order to shift between the different perspectives listeners do not need transitions and ways of smoothing out the differences. Quite contrarily the ‘moves’, accentuated by different perspectives, work best if they are distinctive in terms of different metaphors, analogies, tone-of-voice, etc. What joins them together is a conversational logic rather than a narrative plot. In this sense Buttrick’s descriptions of a sermon resembles Bakhtin’s descriptions of Dostoevsky’s polyphonic authoring in which several voices interact without merging. Different from other-wise polyphonic preaching however, Buttrick’s perspectives emerge from the preacher rather than a roundtable group. Furthermore the intention of the perspectival homiletics is to ‘transform congregational consciousness’, rather than to function as a mutual listening/speaking process transforming both congregation and preacher.

73 Ibid., 89. 74 Although Buttrick does not go into details discussing his phenomenological basis, his homiletics carries innumerable implicit references to the thoughts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, yet in his main work Homiletic: Moves and Structures, the explicit references are almost exclusively to be found in the comprehensive bibliography. 75 Buttrick, Homiletic, xi, 211.

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Other-wise Critique of the New Homiletics One of the homileticians who has signaled the need to transcend the New Homiletics is the American L. Susan Bond. Bond’s work is well grounded in the New Homiletics, particularly along the lines of David Buttrick, yet she also acknowledges that the presupposition of a common ecclesiastical identity crucial to Buttrick’s project76 is problematic. In her book Trouble with Jesus: Women, Christology, and Preaching (1999) Bond traces the centrifugal effects of the diverse ecclesiological experiences of certain groups of contemporary women. Bond recognizes that although these groups are proposing alternatives to the traditional European/American account of ‘common’ human experiences it is impossible to shape an alternative ‘working christology’ that can be acknowledged universally. Instead she suggests that there is a need to develop ‘an elastic christology that allows for different approaches to be highlighted and explored within the language and symbols of ordinary Christian believers.’77 The homiletical reflections and proposals of Bond have, by one of the otherwise homileticians, John S. McClure, been characterized as an important bridge-work in homiletic theory because it has feet deeply planted within both the fragmentation of the ecclesial experience of Christ and the profound desire for some vision of common ‘ordinary’ ecclesial experience.78

The dispersal of ecclesiastical experience paired with the attempt to meet on the common ground of alienated believers is a project that lets the works of Susan Bond point in the direction of the other-wise homiletics to which we turn now. In line with Bond’s Trouble with Jesus, the other-wise homileticians question the existence of an ideal symmetrical situation in which people’s experiences are essentially interchangeable, as presupposed by the New Homileticians and their inductive preaching. Following in the wake of, yet criticizing central tenets of the New Homiletics, contemporary homileticians have criticized the fundamental presupposition of the New Homiletics, namely the similarity of human experiences and identification between preacher and listeners. At the risk of reductive generalization, I categorize recent homileticians who have criticized and proposed ways to transcend the New Homiletics in a rather broad and heterogenic group under the name other-wise homileticians in contrast to the New Homiletics. 76 Buttrick describes the common ‘double consciousness’ of the members of the ecclesiastical community who, when gathering in church on Sunday mornings, are liturgically constituted as the ‘people of God’ yet at the same time are acutely aware of being ‘in but not of the world’; cf. Buttrick, Homiletic, 41. 77 Bond, Trouble with Jesus, 109. 78 McClure, Other-wise Preaching, 53.

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Other-wise preaching is a category used by John McClure in his Other-wise Preaching: A Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics. Here I use the notion in order to analyze how situatively embedded listeners function as co-authors in the sense that they have an active impact on preaching before and while it is being performed, rather than functioning as merely end-of-the-line interpreters drawing their own conclusion based on identification with the preacher’s inductive preaching. Other-wise homileticians question preachers’ ability to identify with the experiences of the congregation and predict their reactions on the biblical text. As a consequence they reject the former Inductive Homiletics’ presupposition of identification between preacher and listeners. In continuation of this rejection they are critical toward the way Kierkegaard’s ‘indirect message’ is used homiletically. The problem with the use of Kierkegaard’s indirect communication in the homiletical context is that the presupposition of preachers’ and listeners’ ‘sameness’ has been used to legitimate the preacher’s attempt to ‘lure’79 the listeners into drawing their ‘own’ conclusions on the preacher’s sermon as if it were their own conclusion, when in fact the sermonic plot has carefully been planned by the preacher. The presupposition of similarity and universal human experiences is seen as a hindrance to communication and shows an ignorance of the communicative potential of the inter-subjective differences in communication and preaching. As described by McClure, ‘The assumption that the listener is ‘like me’ may preclude the realization that the listener can, in fact, be (temporarily) ‘above me’ as partner-teacher’.80 The similarity ideal saturates both Craddock’s As One Without Authority and Overhearing. Craddock explicitly formulates it in opposition to those preachers who view alterity as an indispensable condition for sermonic communication: The fundamental presupposition operative here is the general similarity of human experiences. It is this that makes communication possible, but it is surprising that so many speakers do not trust this to be the case and feel it incumbent on themselves to supply descriptions of experiences as though they were foreign to the hearer.81

The other-wise homiletics can almost be seen as an embodiment of Craddock’s categorization of those preachers who describe experiences as 79 Cf. Craddock’s own descriptions of Kierkegaard’s indirect message: ‘Most of Kierkegaard’s analogies had to do with the fact that the indirect approach slipped up on his readers, luring or deceiving into the truth. He referred to himself as a spy in a higher service, an infiltrator behind the enemy lines, one who attacked from behind and wounded to heal, one who seduced to save’ (Overhearing the Gospel [Nashville: Abingdon, 1978], 81 – 82). 80 McClure, Preaching Words:144 Key Terms in Homiletics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 9. 81 Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel, 105 – 106.

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particular and foreign rather than generally shared. As alternative conversational approaches to preaching, the American homileticians Lucy Rose82 and John S. McClure have proposed ways to invite congregations into collaborative brainstorming and feedback sessions before and after preaching. What characterizes authentic dialogue, according to the other-wise homileticians, is a relationship in which the asymmetrical differences between people in general and preachers and listeners in particular is acknowledged. Instead of approaching listeners of preaching as theologically illiterate objects in need of being informed and transformed by the preacher, listeners are treated as collaborative partners in the practice of preaching in the expectancy that all participants are mutually transformed in the sermonic encounter. Although other-wise homileticians have good reasons for criticizing the tendency toward one-sided manipulation inherent in Kierkegaard’s indirect method and Craddock’s inductive preaching, I have to emphasize that Kierkegaard was indeed aware of the interhuman differences. In his typical idiosyncratic way Kierkegaard describes the interhuman differences, which are among the key interests in this book, by envisioning all of human life as an embodied discourse. If the reader will, for a moment, accept a ‘suspension of the ethically’ problematic categorization of most people as merely ‘copulas’, we might benefit from the metaphorically puzzling image of the indeclinable irregularity characterizing human relationships as described by Kierkegaard: All human life could well be conceived as a great discourse in which different people come to represent different parts of speech… . How many people are merely adjectives, interjections, conjunctions, adverbs; how few are nouns, action words, etc.; how many are copulas. People in relation to each other are like irregular verbs in various languages—almost all the verbs are irregular.83

Although it would be too far reaching to enter into a deeper analysis of the complex relationship between the communication theories and theological anthropology inherent in the works of Kierkegaard I find it misleading to reduce his theology to concern only the individual standing ‘alone before God’84 as Craddock tends to do in Overhearing the Gospel.85 A more nuanced insight into the potential, as well as the problems of Kierkegaard’s 82 Rose, Sharing the Word. 83 Søren Kierkegaard, I A 126 March 1836, in Journals and Papers, ed. Howard V. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), qtd. in Andrew F. Herrmann, ‘Kierkegaard and Dialogue: The Communication of Capability’, Communication Theory 18 (2008): 71. 84 See in comparison Kierkegaard’s discussion of ‘To stand—solely by the help of another’ versus ‘To stand alone—by the help of another’ (my translation of ‘At staae—ene ved en Andens Hjælp’ versus ‘At staae ene—ved en Andens Hjælp’). In ‘Den ethiske og den ethisk-religieuse Meddelelses Dialektik’ (Notes from 1847 for a planned series of homiletic lectures), in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, http://sks.dk/p364/txt.xml, 366:5. 85 Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel, 78 – 79.

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‘communication theology’, can be found in the ‘speech’ titled ‘Love seeks not its own’ in Works of Love. Here Kierkegaard describes the complex, dynamic relationship between you and I, yours and mine, in what has the potential, by the help of God,86 of becoming a conjoining difference87 rather than an ignorance of difference. Yet, since one of my central hypotheses is that the irregularity and incommensurability of differently positioned subjects and objects is a precondition rather than a hindrance to carnivalesque dialogue and preaching, I will, in the following, enter into a closer examination of what kind of otherness it is that is at stake in other-wise homiletics and preaching practices.

Who are the Others in ‘Other-wise’ Homiletics? ‘Otherness’ and ‘alterity’ have become central concepts in much contemporary philosophical, theological and literary theories. The diverse treatment of the notions, however, has made it rather complicated to define exactly who these ‘others’ are and what the effect of ‘otherness’ is. If one studies poststructuralist theories, otherness tends to imply a ‘radical rupture’ that transforms and undermines fixed identities and totalizing systems. From this perspective ‘otherness’ appears as an anonymous force nudging us toward acknowledging the foolishness and inadequacy of our knowledge and tends thereby to function as a fountain of relativistic skepticism.88 From a very different, theological, perspective, like that of Emmanuel L¦vinas’ (1906 – 2005), otherness is perceived as the threshold opening up the possibility for divine revelation and transcendence. Otherness has come to represent a number of radically different phenomena, as described by Handelman who encourages one to ponder : Is it the basis for nihilism, or for a political awareness of the relation of power to knowledge and the commitment to subvert oppression? Is it Derrida’s ‘diff¦rance,’ Kristeva’s feminine semiosis, Lacan’s Unconscious, Foucault’s marginalized discourses?89

A thorough study of the different contemporary understandings of the ‘other’ as well as the difference between theological and anthropological concepts of otherness could be relevant but it is not the primary aim of the present work.90 86 Kierkegaard, Kjerlighedens Gerninger (Works of Love), in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, http://sks. dk/KG/txt.xml, 82. 87 Cf. the discussion of conjoining differences in chap. 9. 88 Susan Handelman, ‘Facing the Other : Levinas, Perelman and Rosenzweig’, Religion and Literature 22 (1990): 61, www.jstor.org/stable/40059449 (accessed 21 December, 2010). 89 Handelman, ‘Facing the Other’, 61. 90 Some of the highly relevant works for these insights are Michail Theunissen, The Other : Studies

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One of the crucial questions lurking behind the different understandings of otherness that will be discussed, is whether otherness is a hindrance to or constitutive of communication in general and the genre of preaching in particular. Instead of digging into the theological and philosophical foundations for these perceptions of otherness my aim is thus to investigate how foreignness and differences are being encountered in contemporary practice-theoretical approaches to preaching. The term ‘other-wise listeners of preaching’ is here primarily used to characterize participants in preaching other than the appointed preacher. The homiletical understanding and practice is paralleled by similar practices within contemporary biblical studies such as Reading Other-wise: Socially Engaged Biblical Scholars Reading with Their local Communities (2007). The differences between the preacher and the ‘other-wise’ are seen as a meaningfully challenging potential for preaching rather than lack of theological knowledge in need of being corrected and filled. The term is based on John McClure’s descriptions in Other-wise preaching: a postmodern ethic for homiletics.91 Since McClure has provided the most comprehensive description of the movement and outlined a philosophical framework as well as a homiletical practice for it, I will primarily refer to his works, but it should be kept in mind that his reflections are based on and in dialogue with a plurality of voices and practices.92 Based on the above mentioned works, I use the term ‘other-wise preaching’ as a prism for analyzing the multifaceted homiletical movements that emphasize listeners as co-authors having an active impact on preaching before and while it is being performed, rather than merely end-of-the-line interpreters drawing their own conclusions based on identification with the preacher’s inductive preaching. Rather than taking general similarity of human experiences as a precondition for sermonic communication the other-wise homileticians see inter-subjective alterity as an indispensable condition for preaching: By opening preaching to what L¦vinas calls ‘proximity,’ other-wise homileticians claim that preachers become aware of the infinite and irreducible difference between their own experiences, the forms of experience assumed by the tradition and the experiences of their hearers. This ensures that points of identification do not degenerate into uncritical totalities (common human or ecclesial experience). To use L¦vinas’ terms, an infinity of others is welcomed into preaching as that which

in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Buber (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984); Walter Lowe: Theology and Difference: The Wound of Reason (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), Søltoft, Svimmelhedens Etik. 91 The term, ‘other-wise’, is inspired by the French philosopher, Emmanuel L¦vinas’ (1906 – 2005) descriptions in Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence and Totality and Infinity. 92 McClure, Other-wise Preaching, 97 – 152. See also Allen, Preaching and the Other.

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dislodges or ruptures every experiential totality, including that which is denoted within the canon and the Christian tradition.93

Differing from the New Homiletics the other-wise homileticians emphasize on the asymmetrical relationship between preacher and congregations, and between people in general. They try to acknowledge this asymmetrical condition by meeting and talking face to face to the listening co-authors of preaching as well as decentering the tenets that used to be held for privileged, namely scripture, history, experience, tradition.94 The homiletical approach to human otherness will, in chapter 9, be discussed in relation to theological understandings of God as the ‘Wholly Other’ primarily described by Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel, and Søren Kierkegaard. The different kinds of others are interpreted in light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s descriptions of otherness including the ‘words of others’. The goal of this study is not to discuss the differences between the various kinds of otherness, although this discussion will be entered to a certain extent, but to explore how the words and physical presence of participants, ‘other’ than the preacher, may influence the genre of preaching, or how otherness may interfere with the practice of preaching.

Listener-Oriented Preaching in Light of Bakhtinian Dialogism In the previous chapter on Bakhtinian Dialogism, dialogue was described in its three basic senses. According to this categorization the listener-oriented homiletics can be described as dialogical in the first sense because the presence and expectations of the congregation play a role, positively or negatively, regarding the way a sermon is prepared and performed. Whether it is dialogical in the second, analytical, sense of the word as a two-sided act in which the speaker and the listener continuously change roles, is more questionable. The preacher can handle the basically dialogical situation by seeking to encounter the listeners where they are and invite them to accompany him or her on an inductive trip where they are intended to have their own experience of the word-event of the gospel, drawing their own evangelical conclusions from the trip. Alternatively the preacher can choose to preach a deductive sermon, trying to apply doctrinal truths to the situation of the congregation. Although the preacher might reject that she is trying to create a common ground for preaching, there is a dialogical aspect in the sense that she tries to predict where the congregation has gone wrong and is in need of correction. A third alternative 93 McClure, Other-wise Preaching, 63. 94 Ibid., 13 – 96.

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(out of many) is the collaborative95 approach in which the preacher, instead of trying to predict the reactions and reflections of the congregation, invites a representative group into common interpretation of the gospel to be preached. Although all three examples of preaching approaches—the inductive, the deductive and the collaborative approach—to some extent react to the presence of the congregation, their preaching can be developed in more or less monological ways. In spite of her openly dialogical intentions, the inductive preacher’s predictions can be more or less in tune with her congregation and succeed or fail in getting them aboard her evangelical journey. Likewise the dialogical initiatives of the collaborative preacher may result in a monological sermon if she ends up using the congregations stories and reactions merely as a springboard for preaching the sermon already planned in advance. Dialogical in the third sense, as an understanding of truthfulness, seems to be a notion that both the New Homileticians and other-wise homileticians can adhere too. The question is only if they succeed at it in practice. As a critical reminder to dialogically oriented preachers and homileticians who try to ‘practice (communicatively) what they preach (theologically)’, we might reflect on the Bakhtinian understanding of the relationship between communication theory and theology. As expressed by some of his most insightful interpreters and biographers, Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Bakhtin’s insistence on the necessity of ‘understanding’ the position not only of the other but of all others, by adding communication theory to theology, extends the meaning of Christ’s biblical injunction to treat others as we would be treated ourselves, to take on, in other words, the role of others with the same depth of sympathy and understanding that we bring to our own perception of ourselves. In Bakhtin’s system this is not merely a moral imperative but an epistemological requirement.96

Concluding Remarks The present chapter’s analysis of dialogical preaching provides an important background for the following chapter’s exploration of preaching as a carnivalesque genre. Central to Bakhtin’s genre-theoretical studies is the understanding that a genre is developed in the tension field between the ‘given’ and the ‘created’.97 In continuation of this insight I suggest that a retrospective appropriation of the past is most fruitfully performed in dialogue with the present and in anticipation of the future. 95 Rose, Sharing the Word; McClure, Roundtable Pulpit. 96 Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 208. 97 Bakhtin, ‘The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis’, in Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 120.

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One of the emerging insights from the other-wise homileticians’ critique of the New Homiletics is that dialogue is a rather complicated affair and that it revolves around foreignness and difference rather than familiarity and identification. Furthermore it has been emphasized how genuine dialogue is constituted by verbal and corporeal elements that surpass, decenter and even undermine dialogue in its traditional sense. In order to incorporate these new insights into a practice-theoretical analysis of the genre of preaching I will in the following envision how we might consider to expand and challenge traditional understandings of preaching as dialogue in order to approach it as a ‘carnivalesque dialogue’.

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Chapter 4: Preaching as a Carnivalesque Genre Introduction In the first three chapters of this book I have focused on the dialogical element in preaching in light of Bakhtinian methodology and theories, as well as recent homiletical developments. While analyzing preaching as a particular kind of dialogue is illuminating, a focus on dialogicity alone is insufficient. Therefore, by characterizing preaching as ‘carnivalesque’ I intend to emphasize the constitutive aspects of worship and proclamation that surpass and often undermine the verbal elements such as face-to-face interaction, embodied gestures, tone of voice, ritual, time, and place.1 While a carnivalesque qualification may suggest that dialogue must be broadened in order to encompass extra-verbal elements, it does more than this, and here I want to emphasize the paradoxicality of the genre of preaching. One of the constitutive aspects of the genre according to the present Bakhtinian interpretation is that it is driven by a dynamic tension of centrifugal and centripetal forces. The tension between carnivalesque subversive and dialogically gathering dynamics can hardly be resolved in a synthesis because they tend to pull in different directions. The different elements do not necessarily belong together, but in the mixed genre of preaching they are ‘forced’ together due to the polyphonic mix of liturgical, biblical, hymnal, and contemporary prosaic voices and bodies gathered at a specific time and place. The word carnival has two etymological connotations that simultaneously confirm and confound the experiential comprehension of carnival as a rather corporal festival of differences, disguises, and revelations. The first meaning of carnival is traditionally interpreted as carne vale, that is ‘fare well to the flesh’. This explanation confirms the overturning of everyday life through a grotesque kind of eating and drinking that has traditionally proceeded the time of fasting. Yet the notion of carnival also suggests a celebrative elevation

1 Among the elements that surpass and undermine verbal dialogue and which Bakhtin has analyzed as part of the carnivalesque genres is the role of laughter. For a radical rethinking of the genre and practice of preaching in light of laughter and foolishness, see Charles Campbell and the South African homiletician Johan Cilliers, Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012). Other relevant writing on the cathartic, ethical, and political potentials of laughter include Brian Poole, ‘What does Laughter Embody?’, and Dirk Westerkamp, ‘Laughter, Catharsis, and the Patristic Conception of Embodied Logos’, in Embodiment in Cognition and Culture, ed. Krois et al. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2007).

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of the flesh and resurrection of the body.2 Both senses of ‘carnival’ shape the understanding of the carnivalesque dialogue because our interest here turns on the mutually transforming collision between words, bodies, and texts as well as speakers, listeners, writers, and readers. The approach to preaching as a carnivalesque dialogue finally suggests that it benefits from being approached as a triologue between authors, other-wise co-authors, and the Wholly Other .3 In his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin examines how certain literary genres are ‘carnivalized’, and he argues that the carnivalization of literature indicates a reversal of roles and hierarchies, as well as a dissolving of traditional lines between actors and audience. In the field of homiletics, one of the fruits of analyzing the notion of carnivalization is that it manifests ways in which embodied interaction and historical events can be re-enacted and continue in literary genres. However, a dilemma to be examined in this context is whether the carnivalesque text becomes a substitution for the embodied spoken genres. Does the carnivalization of literature replace interhuman, communal gatherings? Or does the literary feature of carnivalization have the potential of evoking new carnivalesque happenings?

The Problem of the Mixed Genre of Preaching As I have already shown, homiletical research in the past decades has tended to analyze the genre of preaching as primarily an oral speech-event rather than as a literary text. Sermons are described as interactive events, in which meaning occurs in the interplay between preacher and listeners, rather than as one-way transfers of meaning from an ancient literary universe. Additionally, empirical surveys4 of people listening to sermons show that the ‘heard sermon’, which the listeners relate to in the worship service, appears radically different from a written sermon read outside of the liturgical context. The practice of preaching, however, tends to develop in a more or less methodological competent mix of oral and literate modes of interpreting, reasoning, and communicating. In order to understand and clarify this mixed genre of preaching I suggest that Bakhtin’s genre-theoretical reflections on the hybrid, carnivalesque genres can complement his communication theories of 2 ‘“Carnival” appears to derive from Latin caro, carnis, flesh, and levare, to lift up, elevate, or raise up. Carnival might be understood as the elevation of the body, the resurrection of the flesh’ (Mark C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology [Chicago: University Press, 1984], 167). 3 The Bakhtinian neologism for the ‘third person’ presupposed either in the metaphysical distant or in a remote historical ¦poque is seen as the constitutive element of the dialogue which ‘does not stop at immediate understanding but presses on further and further (indefinitely)’ (Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 126). 4 Gaarden and Lorensen, ‘Listeners as Authors in Preaching’; John S. McClure et al., ed., Listening to Listeners.

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dialogicity that see discourse as a dialogue between the ‘already-said’ of past foreign words, texts, and traditions and the ‘not-yet-said’ of the dialogue partners/listeners’ response. The description of preaching as a dialogue with listeners whose anticipated and actual responses make them co-authors shares many characteristics with recent understandings of ‘congregational exegesis’.5 The Bakhtinian-based carnivalesque approach to preaching does not, however, dismiss the importance of biblical exegesis. In fact, a growing number of biblical scholars have in recent years shown the fruitfulness of interpreting the biblical texts in light of the Bakhtinian theories on genre,6 dialogicity,7 carnivalization,8 and co-authorship.9 While the homiletical potentials of these Bakhtin-inspired exegetical studies deserve fuller and closer examination, in the following I will compare preaching as a dialogue between situated bodies and literary voices in light of the mixed genre characteristic of the letters of Paul. It is a significant characteristic of Paul that his theology develops hand in hand with his dialogical encounters with congregations about their situations and conflicts. Yet in addition to these embodied encounters, a congregation’s situation is analyzed through literary means that perform a theological reconstruction of the congregational situation. This reconstruction can, from a Bakhtinian perspective, be described as developing in a dialogue between, on the one hand, the ‘already-said’—in the sense of ‘echoes of scripture’10—and recent congregational dialogue, and the ‘not-yet-said’ of anticipated congregational response, as well as Paul’s theological visions on the other hand. The fact that Paul writes his letters when he is at a distance from the congregation enables him to cultivate and deepen the ‘outside’ position in relation to his addressees. This outside position is essential to creative understanding: An utterance is never just a reflection or an expression of something already existing outside it that is given and final. It always creates something that never existed before,

5 Described by Nora Tubbs Tisdale, Preaching as Local Theology and Folk Art (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 56 – 90. 6 Roland Boer, ed., Bakhtin and Genre Theory in Biblical Studies, Society of Biblical Literature, Semeia Studies 63 (Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007). 7 Walter L. Reed, Dialogues of the Word: The Bible as Literature according to Bakhtin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Dennis Olson, ‘Biblical Theology as Provisional Monologization: A Dialogue with Childs, Brueggemann, and Bakhtin’, Biblical Interpretation 6 (1998): 171 – 80. 8 L. Juliana M. Claassens, ‘Laughter and Tears: Carnivalistic Overtones in the Stories of Sarah and Hagar’, in Perspectives in Religious Studies, Journal of the NABPR 32.3 (2005): 295 – 308. 9 Baek-Yong Sung, ‘Revealed to Infants, not to the Wise and Intelligent’: Reader, Character, and Dialogic Interaction – A Bakhtinian Reading of the Gospel of Matthew, PhD diss., Drew University, 2008. 10 Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 167.

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something absolutely new and unrepeatable … But something created is always created out of something given … What is given is completely transformed in what is created.11

The Danish theologian Lars Kjær Bruun12 has demonstrated how letter writing emerges from the tension field between speech and writing, between presence and absence. The importance of this ‘mixed medium reality’ has been overlooked in most epistolary interpretations which tend to either disregard the letter’s groundedness in a specific communication situation (‘the speech’) and infer a ‘theology’ (‘the writing’), or focus on the concrete, historical communication situation, while disregarding the letter’s ‘theology’.13 Instead of siding with either of these two tendencies, Bruun claims that once we take seriously the letter’s ‘medium reality’, we must maintain that the letter is (one side of) a written dialogue. Because the letter is put in writing, it is capable of transcending time and space, that is, the literacy of the letter opens up a temporary and alternative space in which the dialogue partners can communicate and be present to one another.14 Bruun reformulates Ricoeur’s claim regarding the implications of breaking the ‘narrow boundaries of the dialogical situation’15 stating that due to the written medium human beings have a world and not just a situation16. However, Bruun goes beyond Ricoeur’s praise of writing when he emphasizes the value of the mixed genre between orality and literacy and claims that ‘thanks to the letter we have both a world—and a situation’.17 The letters of Paul can, like the genre of preaching, be categorized as one side of a dialogue. As described by literary theorists, ‘letters do not set forth a onesided oration: they represent only half of an ongoing, multi-voiced dialogue.’18 Both letter writing and preaching practices operate in the tension field between orality and literacy : situative dialogue and distanced provisional monologization. Both genres thus cultivate the literary potential for creative, theological redescriptions, yet they also share a groundedness in conversational, embodied encounters. Thanks to the written medium, preachers have the opportunity to reflect on how the text might create a new room widened out and transformed by a literary universe rather than being determined by the congregational situation alone. We do not have to side with one or the other.

11 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 120. 12 Lars Kjær Bruun, Nærværets (u)mulighed. Paulus og brevgenren i spændingsfeltet mellem tale og skrift (The [Im]possibility of Presence. Paul and the Letter Genre between Speech and Writing), PhD diss., ærhus University, 2000. 13 Ibid., 1. 14 Ibid., 6. 15 Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, 36. 16 Ibid. 17 My translation from Danish; cf. Bruun, Nærværets (u)mulighed, 1. 18 Michael Knowles, We Preach Not Ourselves: Paul on Proclamation (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008), 21.

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Bakhtinian Carnivalization The notion of carnivalization is primarily treated in two of Bakhtin’s major works. In Rabelais and His World he describes the impact of the historical communal event of carnival that functioned as the public counterculture to the official, ecclesiastical holy days and engaged crowds of people in the marketplace. Central in these descriptions are the ritualized crowning and decrowning of a carnival king, illustrations of the ‘grotesque body’, and the revolutionary, cathartic potential of humor and laughter. As summarized by Bakhtin ‘carnival is the people’s second life, organized on the basis of laughter.’19 In his other main work, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin incorporates the notion of carnival in a literary setting, as when he presents the idea of carnivalization of certain genres including the gospels and early Christian proclamation. In order to understand Bakhtin’s theories of carnivalization it is crucial to recognize how the roots of literary carnivalization belong to the historical phenomena of celebrating carnival. The notion of carnivalization refers to the historical folk festival in which all kinds of people gather at public thresholds and turn traditional hierarchies and values upside down. Carnivalization means that the ambivalent language, symbols, rituals, and laughter of carnival are transposed into literary genres that maintain the dynamic other-oriented interaction and role change of the ritualized embodied event. The polyphonic carnivalization of discourse imitates the embodied encounter between people of different social locations and languages.

Preaching as a Carnivalesque Genre The following summary presents Bakhtin’s description of the carnivalistic roots of the genre of preaching, although I do not claim this to be a historically indisputable survey. Instead its value is found in its insistence on the double influence of, on the one hand, a Socratic, dialogic tradition, yet on the other hand, a more sensuous, carnivalistic tradition. These dual characteristics have the potential of evoking the mixed elements of competing voices, texts, and bodies that characterize the genre of preaching in a way that is easily overlooked in traditional rhetorical classifications. Bakhtin describes the genres of Christian proclamation, including preaching, as primarily shaped along the lines of the Socratic dialogic rather than the classical rhetorical genre. However, despite traditional classifications of the Socratic dialogue as a rhetorical genre, Bakhtin locates it in folk-carnivalistic 19 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 8.

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traditions deeply permeated by a ‘carnivalistic sense of the world’.20 This carnivalistic influence was particularly obvious in the oral stage of the Socratic dialogic genre but early in its literary development it turned into a memoir genre with short narrative frameworks supporting the remnants of dialogues as they had been remembered. Rather quickly, however, the genre was characterized by a casual or creative relationship towards the remembrances of historical conversations ‘and retained in it only the Socratic method of dialogically revealing the truth and the external form of a dialogue written down and framed by a story.’21 Out of the dissolution of the original genre of Socratic dialogue developed a number of other dialogic genres, of which Bakhtin places particular emphasis on the Menippean satire. Although this satirical form can be described as emerging out of the Socratic genre it should not be seen only in this light because it has its own roots directly planted in the folkloristic soil of carnival.22 In Bakhtin’s historical survey of literary genres he describes how the Socratic dialogue and the Menippean satire both belonged to the so called ‘serioussmiling’ (spoudocekoiom) genres flourishing at the end of classical antiquity (700 BC-500 AD) as well as in the Hellenistic epoch. These ‘serio-comic’ genres are all developed in rejection of the monologicity of the serious genres (tragedy, etc.) that imply a static universe of truth: Menippean forms are based on man’s inability to know and contain his fate. To any vision of a completed system of truth, the menippea suggests some element outside the system. Seriocomic forms present a challenge, open or covert, to literary and intellectual orthodoxy, a challenge that is reflected not only in their philosophic content but also in their structure and language.23

These genres reject the finalizing, centripetal force of the monologic genres and focus on open ended dialogicity instead. The serio-comical genres include very different kinds of works but are tied together by common roots in carnivalistic folklore and a carnivalistic approach to life. This boundarybreaking, unfinalizable ‘carnival sense of the world’ thoroughly permeates the genres including their plot, places for action, descriptions of bodies and relationship to time.24 Crucial elements in the carnivalized genres are threshold places, pregnant bodies, role changes, and dreams. According to Bakhtin’s categorization, the menippean genre has penetrated and absorbed a number of other genres such as the banquet dialogue of symposium, the individual’s internal dialogue known as the soliloquy,25 and the diatribe. A 20 21 22 23 24 25

Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 109. Ibid., 109. Ibid. Ibid., 107. Ibid. Marcus Aurelius and Augustine of Hippo are considered the original masters of the soliloquy.

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significant shared trait of these genres is the ‘external and internal dialogicality of their approach to human life and human thought.’26 The diatribe is of particular interest in our homiletical context because Bakhtin emphasizes that it was the diatribe, rather than classical rhetoric, that had the most penetrating impact on the generic development of the earliest Christian preaching. Characterized by a conversational structure in which an absent or distant interlocutor plays a constitutive part, the diatribe, according to Bakhtin, is thus marked by a ‘dialogization of the very process of speech and thought.’27 Although the carnival is in itself a syncretic ritualistic event rather than a literary phenomenon, Bakhtin describes how it has given a symbolic, sensuous language to a certain sense of the world. Although carnivalistic elements cannot really be grasped by verbal language and particularly not abstract, conceptual discourse, it is open toward a ‘certain transposition into a language of artistic images that has something in common with its concretely sensuous nature’,28 and in this sense it can penetrate literary language. It is this kind of transposition from ritualistic event into literary discourses that Bakhtin refers to with the notion of carnivalization. In addition to the carnivalized genres that have emerged out of repeated ritualized folk festivals, the genre of preaching has developed along with the practice of liturgical worship in the Christian church. It is one of my contentions that the interaction among the participants in a worship service has had a comparable impact on the development of the genre of preaching as have carnivalized genres emerging from historically, embodied carnivals.

Generic Characteristics of Carnivalization Before analyzing the genre of preaching, from a contemporary perspective, we will explore Bakhtin’s description of the historical literary genres from which the genre of preaching, in this interpretation, stems. The question of genre is of crucial importance to the Bakhtinian understanding of literature and communication because it both signifies the continuous elements of the original discourse, yet only is preserved by being renewed: A genre is always the same and yet not the same, always old and new simultaneously. Genre is reborn and renewed at every stage in the development of literature … For the correct understanding of a genre, therefore it is necessary to return to its sources.29 26 27 28 29

Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 120. Ibid. Ibid., 122. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 106.

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Approaching preaching as a mixed carnivalized genre does not mean that anything goes.30 Rather the intention is to become analytically conscious and methodologically competent in handling the strange hybrid genre driven by a polyphonic relationship to the foreign words of the divine and human others in the present, past, and future. Consequently, the genre of carnivalization is worth pursuing here because it embraces the above mentioned reversal of hierarchies, roles, time, and place essential to the proclamation of the gospel, and because the mixed genre of preaching, instead of being lamented as lacking literary competence, can be understood and improved as a particular genre of its own. Although preaching is far from the primary focus of Bakhtin’s theories he does describe early Christian narrative, including the genre of preaching, as deeply permeated by elements of ‘carnivalization’.31 However, when trying to understand the notion of carnivalization in light of contemporary celebrations of Mardi Gras (originally connected to the ‘Feast of Fools’)32 and carnival it should be noted that Bakhtin problematizes the comparison of the medieval carnival with contemporary Mardi Gras because the latter tends to be a mere masquerade and a spectacle whereas the original carnival was characterized by a mixing of participants and spectators.33 Along with the dialogical novel, carnival shares the ability to manifest and yet enter into a subversive, playful relation to foreigners and their otherness. Carnival makes familiar relations strange and familiarizes the foreign. Although mixing elements of utter seriousness and laughter, the carnivalization of a genre, in Bakhtin’s universe, is not meant as a caricature. Rather it carries the greatest potential for creating transformative new meaning: The carnival sense of the world possesses a mighty life-creating and transforming power, an indestructible vitality … In our opinion the problem of carnivalized literature is one of the very important problems in historical poetics, and in particular of the poetics of genre.34

When Bakhtin describes generic features characteristic of the carnivalized genres they resemble the genre of preaching in numerous ways. The first characteristic is that the starting point for shaping reality based on ancient truths is the present, often the very day, such as ‘this Sunday morning’. 30 Bakhtin, Dialogical Imagination, 366. 31 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 135. 32 Homiletical reflections inspired by the ‘foolishness’ of the Gospel and fruitful for descriptions of preaching as a carnivalesque genre can be found in Charles L. Campbell, The Word before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); Campbell & Cilliers. Preaching Fools. L. Susan Bond, ‘Apocalyptic Vocation: The Foolish Church in the World’, in Preaching as a Theological Task, ed. E. Farley and T. G. Long (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996). 33 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 135. 34 Ibid., 107.

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Differing from the traditional epic and tragic genres, the subject to be illustrated is, in the carnivalized genres, presented not in the absolute past of myth and legend but on the place of the present day, in a zone of immediate and even crudely familiar contact with living contemporaries; they act and speak in a zone of familiar contact with the openended present… consequently, a radical change takes place in that time-and-value zone where the artistic image is constructed.35

The second major characteristic of the carnivalized genres is that, rather than relying on legend, they deliberately draw on contemporary experience and free invention. The third is a ‘deliberate multi-style and hetero-voiced nature’36 in which the authors reject the single-styled unity characterizing more traditional genres. Instead authors make use of a ‘multi-toned narration’ and a ‘mixing of high and low.’ In addition these authors make use of inserted genres, such as letters, found manuscripts, retold dialogues, and reinterpreted citations. Some combine prosaic and poetic speech and many present themselves through alternating ‘authorial masks’ that enable the carnivalized genres to sound of ‘double-voiced words’.37 Bakhtin describes several characteristics of carnivalization as they appear in Dostoevsky’s novels, beginning with Crime and Punishment, which is deeply permeated by these elements. This novel reveals the core of carnivalization as the lives, experiences, ideas, fates of its characters all develop on the boundaries: [E]verything is prepared, as it were, to pass over into its opposite (but not of course, in the abstractly dialectical sense), everything is taken to the extreme, to its outermost limit. There is nothing in the novel that could become stabilized, nothing that could justifiably relax within itself, enter the ordinary flow of biographical time and develop in it … Everything requires change and rebirth. Everything is shown in a moment of unfinalized transition.38

Carnivalization between Bodies and Texts Although I have so far explored the potentials of Bakhtinian dialogue for contemporary homiletical practice theories, it should now be evident that at the heart of the Bakhtinian emphasis on dialogue is an awareness of the ineffable, that which cannot be communicated by words alone. This 35 36 37 38

Ibid., 108. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 167.

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interpretation has been confirmed by the American Bakhtin-interpreter Caryl Emerson who gives an insightful description of the paradoxical matter : Dialogism uses language, but the ‘first philosophy’ that underlies it is not (in the usual sense of the term) linguistic. It relies on an interactive logic that strains words to the limit—encouraging them to take on intonation, flesh, the contours of an entire worldview. The carnival world, it has been argued, is even more interactive—and the role allotted to words in that world far more problematic.39

In order to provide a fuller description of the carnivalesque genres, I will briefly describe the communal phenomenon of carnival and its relation to socially and physically embedded bodies interacting at particular places. For Bakhtin, the polyphonic novel and events of carnival display the diversity and foreignness of literary characters and people respectively. Both carnival and the novel indicate how social roles are culturally created rather than naturally given.40 Related to the diversity of social roles another essential carnivalistic feature is embodiment—a feature that is central to my dialogic understanding of theological truth and communication as ‘intercorporeal’ (in ways that resemble how the novel is intertextual). Michael Holquist has captured this ‘intercorporeal’ analogy between texts and bodies in Bakhtin when he states: In dialogism, the novel is the great book of life, because it celebrates the grotesque body of the world. Dialogism figures a close relation between bodies and novels because they both militate against monadism, the illusion of closed-off bodies or isolated psyches in bourgeois individualism, and the concept of a pristine, closed-off, static identity and truth wherever it may be found.41

The Bakhtinian emphasis on embodied interaction or interconnectedness characterizes both his descriptions of novelness and polyphony as a literary feature developed by Dostoevsky, and the ‘grotesque body’ as displayed in his Rabelais and His World. Comparable to the celebration of the Eucharist, carnival designates both a historical phenomenon and a mode of interacting, embodied in concrete events at designated places. The public square is a crucial base for the historical phenomenon of carnival. Likewise in the carnivalesque genres the central ‘chronotopic’ metaphors are ‘thresholds’, doorways, streets, and squares. Carnival is the place for working out a new mode of interrelationship between individuals… People who in life are separated by impenetrable hierarchical barriers enter into free and familiar contact on the carnival square.42 39 40 41 42

Emerson, First Hundred Years,161. Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, 89 – 90. Ibid., 90. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 123.

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The people in the carnival square, like literary characters, are continuously in the process of becoming—becoming not only as individuals but as beings that interact with others. Also, in addition to their own birth, they are in the process of giving birth to something outside themselves. The ‘grotesque body’ is thus, as described in Rabelais and His World, ‘a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed: it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body.’43 Laughing, eating, and drinking are among the most characteristic manifestations of the grotesque bodies participating in carnival. From a theological perspective the connection between the social event of eating/ drinking and being transformed into something larger shares significant common ground with the celebration of the Eucharist: The distinctive character of this body is its open unfinished nature, its interaction with the world. These traits are most fully and concretely revealed in the act of eating; the body transgresses here its own limits: it swallows, devours, rends the world apart, is enriched and grows at the world’s expense… Here man tastes the world, introduces it into his body, makes it part of himself… Man’s encounter with the world in the act of eating is joyful, triumphant; he triumphs over the world, devours it without being devoured himself. The limits between man and the world are erased, to man’s advantage.44

Within the field of anthropology, Thomas Csordas has described the phenomenon of ‘intercorporeality’ in ways that resemble Bakhtin’s descriptions of the grotesque body in the continual process of becoming. In ‘Intersubjectivity and Intercorporeality’, Csordas analyses different degrees of embodiment from sound over gesture to touch in order to show how : intersubjectivity is a concrete rather than an abstract relationship and that it is primary rather than a secondary achievement of isolated egos, as well as the methodological conclusion that cultural phenomenology is not bound by subjective idealism.45

Bakhtin’s and Csordas’ intercorporeal and intersubjective proposals for anthropological thinking as an alternative to traditional descriptions of subjectivity, as pertaining to the individual cogito, have significant theological parallels as suggested by systematical theological analyses and empirical studies.

43 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 317. 44 Ibid., 281. 45 Thomas J. Csordas, ‘Intersubjectivity and Intercorporeality’, Subjectivity 22 (2008): 110.

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Carnivalesque Bodies in Preaching The Swedish theologian, Ola Sigurdsson, has analyzed Bakhtin’s notion of the grotesque body from a systematic theological perspective. Based on these studies Sigurdsson proposes that it is more fruitful, theologically, to understand the ‘Christian body’ as a grotesque body, transcending its own boundaries, rather than as a ‘classic body’, closed off from surrounding bodies. Especially significant is the grotesque body’s indication of the metaphorical character of theological language: Whenever one wants to say something about theological or eschatological matters, there is the risk of literalism. But the grotesque as a form draws attention to the difference between what is said and what the said refers to, and thus resists premature closure.46

Taking the systematical theological analyses to another level, qualitative interviews with listeners of preaching show how the difference between what is being said and what that which is said comes to signify in the process of listening can hardly be underestimated.47 The grotesque body, transcending its own boundaries, is not merely a theological ideal for the preacher to keep in mind but an empirical phenomenon experienced by the churchgoers who describe a paradoxical relationship between words and bodies in the event of preaching. According to these listeners there is a subtle interaction between words and bodies, a sense of silence through sounds of voices, and an experience of transcendent presence activated by the liturgical situatedness. As they describe it, there is something about the preaching event that ‘sent [them] off’ to a place ‘not of this world’ and which makes them return with a new sense of calm and inner peace.48 In traditionally word-oriented church traditions, such as the Lutheran (from where these interviews stem), the bodily reactions to the ‘Word’ of preaching tend to puzzle both listeners and preachers. Listeners admit apologetically that they often do not remember much of the sermon they have just heard. Some talk about their own reflections in relation to the sermon, but several describe a bodily reaction that surpasses the cognitive level. When this form of contemplative interaction is analyzed through Bakhtinian theories of dialogue and carnivalization, the interaction between words and bodies, liturgical situatedness and transcendence is not necessarily paradoxical. On the contrary, cognition and perception, epistemology and aesthetics presuppose each other, as described in ‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity’.49 This text is part of a larger collection titled Art and 46 Ola Sigurdson, ‘The Christian Body as a Grotesque Body’, in Embodiment in Cognition and Culture, ed. Krois et al. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2007), 245. 47 Cf. Gaarden and Lorensen, ‘Listeners as Authors in Preaching’, 38 – 39. 48 Ibid. 42. 49 Bakhtin, Art and Answerability.

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Answerability, in which Bakhtin emphasizes how ethical reflection and behavior are interlinked with people’s physical context and situatedness. As summarized in an analysis of the relationship between aesthetics and theology in the authorship, ‘aesthetics has for Bakhtin the task of tempting ethics away from “morality” and toward an ontology of the uniquely situated body.’50 The grotesque kinds of transcending interaction shared by uniquely situated bodies in carnivalesque events such as preaching have their parallels in various theological genres. In order to get a better understanding of carnivalesque elements in contemporary preaching practices I will now reflect on the idiosyncratic mix of genres performed by Søren Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaardian Carnivalization As described by the Russian/Danish scholar Alex Fryszman there are good reasons for including Kierkegaard’s literary practice, in addition to that of Dostoevsky, as a manifestation of what Bakhtin describes as carnivalesque, polyphone authorships: Kierkegaard’s rupturing of familiar literary genres and forms of literary communication in his pseudonymous authorship represents a type of poetic praxis that corresponds to Bakhtin’s theoretical concepts and embodies theses concepts in a more refined manner than even Dostoevsky’s poetics.51

In the Kierkegaardian authorship the carnivalistic use of masques, pseudonyms, experiments, indirect messages, and grotesque bodies are not simply a matter of literary experimentation to improve the aesthetic pleasure of the readers. Instead the Kierkegaardian style has a particular theological emphasis. The British theologian George Pattison has analyzed the christological motives in the Kierkegaardian genre mix and shows how Bakhtin’s genre theories can be helpful in order to understand the peculiar Kierkegaardian approach.52 According to Pattison, Kierkegaard distinguishes poetic works of literature from ‘Christian writing’ in the sense that the christologically oriented works emphasize existential theological demands over, or even on behalf of, literary perfection. Based on this priority, literary forms emerge which, rather than adhering to stock literary models ‘advert to their own secondariness in relation to the infinite importance of the religious content’.53 50 Graham Pechey, “Philosophy and Theology in ‘Aesthetic Activity’,” in Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith, eds. Susan M. Felch and Paul J. Contino (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 52. 51 Fryszman, ‘Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky Seen through Bakhtin’s Prism’, 108. 52 Pattison, ‘Kierkegaard and Genre’, 493 – 96, and ‘Bakhtin’s category of carnival in the interpretation of the writings of Søren Kierkegaard’, 127. 53 Pattison, ‘Kierkegaard and Genre’, 495.

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The description of the form as secondary to the content in the works of Kierkegaard should, however, in no way be understood as an act of dichotomous separation between the ‘kernel’ and ‘shell’ of theological discourse. Fred Craddock did capture one of the essential characteristics of the Kierkegaardian authorship when he described the intrinsic connection between form and content in theological studies and proclamation.54 The theological motives of a discourse, expressed in the form of polyphone authorship, carnivalized discourses, sudden shifts of genre, and ‘indirect communication’ can—from a literary critic perspective—appear to be a failure. Yet this literary ‘failure’ might be seen as a manifestation of the understanding that all genres and human discourses are doomed to fail when trying to proclaim the divine word that became flesh. As evaluated by Pattison, the ultimate inadequacy of the given form must be made apparent in the very execution of the work. In this Kierkegaardian perspective, Christian writing will therefore necessarily fail at a purely literary level. One might see here a reason why Kierkegaard’s religiosity has, from Georg Brandes (1877) on, been adduced as the reason for the literary failure of his writing. In Kierkegaard’s own terms, of course, such failure is not unqualified. On the contrary, it is the precondition (though not, of course, a sufficient condition) for the religious effectiveness of that same writing.55

The Kierkegaardian acknowledgement of the inability to communicate the divine word in human words is not, however, used as an excuse for insufficiently considering the form of discourse. Instead Kierkegaard works hard to manifest a work’s inability to perform that which it is supposed to. In the following pages I will explore comparable deliberate ways of handling the failure of theological proclamation in light of Bakhtin’s notion of loophole words and the superaddressee.

God as the Superaddressee When we reflect homiletically on Bakhtin’s theories of carnivalization and dialogue, we might be able to understand the theological claim that preaching is the Word of God by seeing God, not as a monological author sending fixed messages to passively receiving listeners, but rather in the sense of a ‘superaddressee’ of carnivalized preaching. From the Bakhtinian perspective dialogical interaction is constituted by the change of roles in which the addressee to some extent becomes the co-author of the discourse. This does not imply, however, that the addressees at hand dictate the content of the discourse, thereby excluding a wider audience or a potential divine meta54 Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel, 5. 55 Pattison, ‘Kierkegaard and Genre’, 496.

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communicator. Just as communication can never be a one-way transfer, it cannot be limited to two positions in the Bakhtinian understanding. In fact, dialogue should rather be described as a triologue: ‘The word is a drama in which three characters participate (it is not a duet, but a trio).’56 Speakers model their utterances, not only in accordance with their object and the immediate addressees, whose understanding the author seeks and transcends, but on a more or less conscious, fundamental trust that there is a third participant, a higher superaddressee: whose absolutely just responsive understanding is presumed, either in some metaphysical distance or in distant historical time (the loophole addressee). In various ages and with various understandings of the world, this superaddressee and his ideally true responsive understanding assume various ideological expressions (God, absolute truth, the court of dispassionate human conscience, the people, the court of history, science and so forth).57

Bakhtin does not claim that the superaddressee is a metaphysical, divine being yet he emphasizes that in a given, religious understanding of the world, it makes sense to express the superaddressee as such. In addition many scholars interpret the superaddressee as a significant God concept in the authorship of Bakhtin,58 since ‘[e]ach dialogue takes place as if against the background of the responsive understanding of an invisibly present third party who stands above all the participants in the dialogue’59 The third person of the dialogue—or rather triologue—is the foundational meta-listener to whom all utterances are aimed. The presence of this ‘third person’ or superaddressee is, in Bakhtin’s interpretation, as foundational as is the physically present conversation partner. From this perspective the most horrific situation imaginable is that in which a person has lost the belief that there is such a superaddressee. Hell is thus, in Bakhtin’s interpretation ‘the absolute absence of a third person,’60 a situation he describes by referring to fascist torture chambers where no one, besides the torturing other, seems to hear the screams of the victims.61 Compared to most of the Bakhtinian authorship focusing on the centrifugal forces of dialogue and carnivalization the mature Bakhtin’s introduction of the ‘superaddressee’ can appear as a centripetal countermovement or even a watering down of the earlier works’ open-ended tendency toward open squares and omnipresent loopholes. Bakhtin-interpreters who embraced the polyphonic author position have criticized how this ‘ultimate Other’ seems to relativize the 56 57 58 59 60 61

Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 122. Ibid., 126. Holquist, ‘Introduction to Bakhtin’, in Speech Genres, xviii. Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 126. Ibid. To what extent the understanding of hell as the absence of a third person stands in opposition to Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Hell is other people’ is an important discussion but it exceeds the boundaries of my present scope.

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dialogical inputs of the other two participants when he ‘stages his comeback through the back door, offering the consolation of metaphysical grounding which seems to hollow out the very concept of the dialogue.’62 Bakhtin did try to modify the metaphysical appearance of the superaddressee, claiming that although ‘a constitutive aspect of the whole utterance’, the third person in the triologue was not necessarily ‘any mystical or metaphysical being (although, given a certain understanding of the world, he can be expressed as such).’63

The Word with a Loophole The primary role of the superaddressee is that of trust in the communicative interaction. Trust, that in spite of the feeble words of the speaker, the listener will understand the utterance—or, in fact, hopefully understand something more, because the listener’s different perspective and shared trust in the presence of the superaddressee open up a new understanding particularly relevant for the latter’s present position and outlook. Yet, if we try to approach the matter analytically, one of the ways the dialogical influence of the superaddressee can be interpreted as manifesting itself is from the presence of words with a ‘loophole’. The term loophole is connected to Bakhtin’s general interest in dialogicity and the reversal of traditional hierarchies. He describes the loophole of human consciousness as well as of the word in connection with confessional self-definition: A loophole is the retention for oneself of the possibility for altering the ultimate, final meaning of one’s own words. If a word retains such a loophole this must inevitably be reflected in its structure. This potential other meaning, that is, the loophole left open, accompanies the word like a shadow. Judged by its meaning alone, the word with a loophole should be an ultimate word and does present itself as such. But in fact it is only the penultimate word and places after itself only a conditional, not a final period.64

The word with a loophole appears in many different kinds of discourses. Bakhtin describes how the confessional self-definition with a loophole is the most widespread form in the authorship of Dostoevsky. In the confessional discourse, the critical self-description, analyzed on the surface, is an ultimate, final judgment on oneself and one’s actions. Yet, the finalizing self-critique can only be expressed in the hope that another will reverse the finalizing, reductive self-definition and turn it into acceptance and blessing. 62 Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, ‘Between the face and the voice: Bakhtin meets Levinas’, Continental Philosophy Review 41.1 (2008): 43 – 58. 63 ‘The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis’ (written in 1959 – 1961), in Bakhtin, Speech Genres. 64 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 233.

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The loophole is the dialogical word in which two meanings meet. Likewise the authoritative, monological human word spoken from the pulpit can, if preaching is developed as a carnivalized genre, present itself as a word with a loophole, awaiting a gracious divine transformation. The word with a loophole functions as an undercurrent accompanying the monological and authoritative word. It thus challenges the monological word that seeks the ‘definitive signification’ of what is right and wrong—and thereby attempts to maintain the hierarchy of power. The word with a loophole challenges this monologue of power because it opens up the possibility of change. The loophole word pretends that it is the power and thereby it toys with the power. As such the loophole is like a figure of carnival. On its face it bears the hierarchical masque of authority and on the back of its head the liberating masque of laughter.65 Thus the loophole word can have a transformative, liberating, or chaotically violent effect. It carries with it the potential of disruption of conventional thinking and preaching but whether this decentering disruption leads to a liberating encounter with other fellowbeings, the Wholly Other, or simply leads to dispersal and fragmentation cannot be guaranteed beforehand. One of the qualifying elements, in my interpretation, however, is that just as ‘every figure needs a ground’,66 the loophole word and the carnivalesque sermon have the best conditions of becoming liberating if they are uttered in ‘answerable’ dialogue.

Carnivalesque Texts Considered as Action The present exploration of the Bakhtinian understanding of the carnivalesque genres serves to evaluate whether the carnivalization of genres, rather than merely reflecting the attributes of medieval events, bears the potential of inaugurating new carnivalesque events in liturgical contexts. This analysis of texts as actions can seem problematic in light of more traditional hermeneutical approaches, primarily represented by Paul Ricoeur in his seminal article ‘The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text’,67 in which actions must be transformed into texts in order to be studied scientifically. Although it is possible to emphasize a dichotomy between a practicetheoretical and a more literary hermeneutical approach, Ricoeur argues, in ways that correspond with the ‘translinguistic’ reflections of Bakhtin, that the 65 This imagery and expressions of the loophole word, as a figure of carnival, is indebted to Jan Lundquist, ‘Omkring smuthuller—et forord’, in Smuthuller—Perspektiver i dansk Bakhtinforskning, ed. Nina Møller Andersen and Jan Lundquist Andersen (København: Politisk Revy, 2003), 7 – 8. 66 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, xx. 67 In Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences.

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interaction between discourse and action is evident and it would be anachronistic to be stuck in a discussion between the two: We know that every form of practice is discursive and that, conversely, practices are always articulated by norms, symbols, signs, not to speak of the unsaid (prejudices, for example), which is still a kind of discourse in action.68

In correction of a potential one-sided focus on hermeneutics as the interpretation of texts only, Ricoeur emphasizes that, in additions to texts, the crucial objects of hermeneutical interpretation are events, institutions, and personages. In his further unfolding of this understanding Ricoeur specifies that one of the central aims of the hermeneutical task is to establish the relations of intersignification among these objects, to understand texts in terms of events, events in terms of institutions, institutions in terms of personages, by adding to them their parallels, intersections, and intersignification.69

In this sense the present exploration of the mutual interaction between carnivalesque texts and events is in line with Ricoeur’s understanding of hermeneutics. In my interpretation, Bakhtin confirms the hermeneutical analysis of the benefit of textualization for study, but at the same time he emphasizes how the text cannot be the end-goal of the event in the human sciences. This interpretation is a rather disputable claim but it is in accordance with some of the most acknowledged Bakhtin-scholars, such as Michael Holquist, who explicitly distinguishes Bakhtin’s understanding of the relationship between text and event from that of Ricoeur : Bakhtin does not believe writing rescues the event from its spatial limitations in mere memory. The textualization that the work of art accomplishes needs itself to be rescued from the sterility and fixity of its formal manifestation: it is as an ‘event that we must understand and know the work of art’… Long before Derrida’s Of Grammatology, Bakhtin was working against the ideology of literacy.70

The dialogical approach to the orality versus literacy discussion is in accordance with the way I interpret Bakhtin’s perspective on the relationship between the two cultures. Bakhtin sees great potential in writing, as he thoroughly demonstrates in his analysis of the novel, but he continuously emphasizes how written discourse cannot exist without the spoken words from living people: ‘The fundamental condition, that which makes a novel a novel, that which is responsible for its stylistic uniqueness, is the speaking person and his discourse.’71 68 Ricoeur, ‘Pastoral Praxeology, Hermeneutics and Identity’, in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and Imagination (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), 305. 69 Ricoeur, ‘Pastoral Praxeology, Hermeneutics and Identity’, 306. 70 Holquist, ‘Introduction’, in Bakhtin, Art and Answerability, xxx. 71 Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in The Dialogic Imagination, 332.

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In the view of several of his interpreters72 Bakhtin is first and foremost a pragmatic researcher of language in use who demonstrates how the words, voices, and dialects of living, particular people are the indispensable elements of all discourse. One of Bakhtin’s most foundational interests is to show how these primary utterances of everyday speech are constitutive for the more complex secondary genres, as known from novels, academic articles, and preaching.73 Although Bakhtin throughout his works diligently demonstrates how the novel depends on the dialects and intonations of speaking people, it would, in my interpretation, be just as much in disaccord with his own works to categorize him as ‘phonocentric’ as it is to describe him as ‘graphocentric’. The primary reason why this either-or categorization seems problematic is because of Bakhtin’s fondness for carnivalization in which a creative, liberating event emerges from the clash of centrifugal and centripetal forces as represented by an authoritative, monologizing culture versus a heteroglot, embodied culture. According to this perspective, the lack of a dominating culture does not create room for creative liberation, rather it tends to monologize and thus become the new authority. Rather than eliminating the opposition of either orality or literacy, Bakhtin analyzes how spoken utterances and literary works (simple and complex speech genres) constitute a tension field for centrifugal and centripetal powers. The dialogical approach to this battle is not to suppress one in favor of the other but to let them interact and challenge each other mutually.74

Practice-Theoretical Analyses of Contemporary Preaching From a Bakhtinian perspective the genre of preaching is under continual development, which means that it cannot be defined exhaustively and conclusively but must be analyzed in accordance with its contextual developments in time. Although these contextual developments may differ significantly, the following analyses will explore to what extent there are common understandings and practices that tie the different cases into a common genre and can thereby be analyzed systematically. 72 E.g., Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord. 73 In opposition to those Bakhtin-scholars who, like Michael Holquist, claim that Bakhtin prioritizes the spoken word over writing, it should be noted that some of the more chirographically oriented scholars, like Charles Lock and Robert Cunliffe, claim that Bakhtin shares Jacques Derrida’s suspicion of speech since they both find a freedom in writing from the possessiveness of voice. Cunliffe even claims that Bakhtin is more ‘graphocentric’ than Derrida. See Robert Cunliffe, ‘Bakhtin and Derrida: Drama and the Phoneyness of the PhonÀ’ in Face to Face, 357; Charles Lock, ‘Double Voicing, Sharing Words’, in The Novelness of Bakhtin. 74 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 60 – 62.

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The preaching practices are developed by homileticians who have both developed homiletical reflections that, more or less explicitly, relate to Bakhtinian theories of dialogicity, polyphony, co-authorship, words of others, etc. and have published sermons that carry carnivalistic traits. The positions are not chosen as representative of typical, contemporary preaching practices, and the analyses thus do not attempt to analyze contemporary preaching practice exhaustively. Instead the different positions are chosen because of their contribution to homiletical reflection over practice, particularly preaching as a carnivalized genre. The positions also serve to manifest how the theories of Bakhtin are being used, in very different ways, in preaching practice and practice theories today. Finally they highlight different (and not always easily compatible) aspects of the Bakhtinian approach. The four positions will not be analyzed exhaustively in order to map out the particular homiletical perspectives. Instead the analyses will evolve around those aspects of the positions that relate to the Bakhtinian approach. In accordance with Bakhtin’s ‘chronotopically’ oriented interpretation of speech genre as well as literature, my analyses will focus on the complex interaction between time, place, text, body, and meaning. This focus is based on the hypothesis that the influence of time and place on religious meaning and experience is not a one-way determination, but a reciprocal movement. This reciprocal movement happens in the encounter between ancient texts articulated by physically proximate individuals at a designated time and place, an encounter that bears the potential of a mutual transformation so that not only meanings are colored by their situatedness but that also the places for religious practice to some extent are rewritten in light of the texts. In what follows I will only include excerpts of actually held/published sermons. The inclusion of sermon examples and preaching practices are in accordance with the Bakhtinian focus on the contextually embedded utterance, the word in use addressed to specific listeners. However, there are many precautions and problems connected with analysis of sermons when they are separated from their context.75 Ideally the published sermons and broadcasted audio recordings should be analyzed in dialogue with the listeners/readers of the sermons in accordance with the insight that addressees and listeners of preaching function as active co-authors of preaching. This more empirical, interview based approach, however, would entail a different project than the

75 Cf. my discussion of the Swedish theologian Karlsson’s Bakhtinian-based analyses of the preaching of Wingren in chap. 3. These analyses provide the reader with an insight into the ‘already-said’ of Wingren, but when analyzing the role of the listeners, as co-authors, Karlsson acknowledges that his method of analysis can only presume what kind of interaction might have taken place in the actual situation of preaching and that evoking an image of the listeners’ participation merely though analyzing the preacher’s manuscripts is problematic; cf. Karlsson, Predikans Samtal, 172.

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Concluding Remarks

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present one in which I have chosen to develop more meta-theoretical reflections on the potential impact of various kinds of co-authors on preaching. In the following chapters the practice-theoretical, interactive approach to method is displayed in how the method, theories, and objects of study are allowed to interact in order to create a new whole. My task is not to analyze exhaustively any single authorship or a fixed set of theories. Instead of a oneway determination that allows only those aspects of the preaching practices to show forth that can be evoked by the Bakhtinian theories, the homiletical positions also serve to illuminate and challenge the Bakhtinian theories and methodological approach.

Concluding Remarks When analyzing the practice of preaching in light of the carnivalesque genres, the sermonic mix of orality and literacy, textual interpretation, and dialogical bodies can be seen as a feature of preaching to be critically improved rather than a failure to be repaired. In continuation of these practice-theoretical explorations I will pursue the claim that it is on the threshold between the foreign words of ancient texts and the strange reactions of embodied contemporary conversation partners that sermonic meaning might develop most fruitfully. As we will see in the following chapters several contemporary preaching practices and homiletical reflections work in ways that correspond, in one way or another, with Bakhtin’s descriptions of dialogue and carnivalization. Therefore, I will explore whether the understanding of preaching as a carnivalesque dialogue can help us to understand how the multitude of voices and the interaction between familiar and foreign words can nudge preaching in the direction of an unfinalizable dialogue between the other-wise and the Wholly Other.

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Chapter 5: Novelist Approach to Carnivalesque Preaching The systematic theologian, Svend Bjerg,1 has had a significant impact on the development of narrative theology in a Danish context. His extensive authorship ranges from systematical theological interpretations of death, literary analysis of the theological elements in the authorship of Karen Blixen, pedagogical ‘manifests’, satirical criticism of the Danish Lutheran Evangelical Church, pastoral theological ‘handbooks’, and at the latest two sermon collections. While I cannot address the complex details and insights inherent in all of Bjerg’s authorship, I shall here examine his sermon collections, Profane Prædikener (Profane Sermons) (2010) and Sakrale Prædikener (Sacred Sermons) (2009) in light of his recent essay on the carnivalesque sermon2 inspired by Bakhtin. Bjerg’s sermon collections illustrate a literary approach to preaching that, in content and theory, has a lot in common with the carnivalesque as described by Bakhtin. Yet, the sermons can be seen as problematic from a more practiceoriented interpretation of preaching as a communally embodied carnivalesque interaction. The authorship of Bjerg in general and his sermons in particular can be seen as illustrating examples of how the carnivalized genres tend to mix high and low, the sacred and the profane. Although the titles of his above mentioned sermon collections could indicate that he tries to separate the profane from the sacred, he nevertheless tries to evoke how preaching can open up everyday life and experiences toward eternity and theological ‘experience with experience’ rather than keep the two spheres apart. Although Bjerg proposes that Danish preachers could benefit from approaching preaching as a carnivalesque genre,3 his proposal is accompanied by a severe critique of contemporary Danish preaching practice for being centralistic rather than dialogical in a Bakhtinian sense. By ‘centralistic’ he means that such sermons are characterized by the preacher’s attempt to 1 Associate Prof., dr. theol. at the Department of Systematic Theology at Copenhagen University, 1982 – 2011. 2 Svend Bjerg and Sten Lynglund, ‘Den karnevalesque prædiken: En anderledes homiletisk model’, Præsteforeningens Blad 100 (2010): 943 – 46. Although the essay is written in cooperation between Bjerg and Lynglund, there are no indications of differences nor polyphone undertones suggesting different perspectives. Furthermore, Bjerg’s two sermon collections are given as reference to the article, whereas Lynglund, to my knowledge, has not published any relevant works. As a consequence, I take the liberty to interpret the essay as presenting the position of Bjerg without discussion of Lynglund’s contribution. 3 Bjerg and Lynglund, ‘Den karnevalesque prædiken’, 943 – 46.

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control his/her speech to the smallest detail. This is a manifestation of the language of force.4 Bjerg describes how, in contrast to Bakhtin’s descriptions of dialogicity, preachers tend to treat lectionary texts, hymns, etc. monologically by eliminating contradictions in order to integrate them in the preacher’s own discourse. As a consequence the sermons emerge as the preacher’s comprehensive personal witness of faith and are presented in a similar vein Sunday after Sunday. The monological message from the pulpit can usually be summoned up as a predictable confirmation of God’s forgiveness and provision or an encouragement of carpe diem.5 As an alternative to the typical monological sermon, which, in Bjerg’s interpretation, is the predominant form to be found in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark, Bjerg refers to Bakhtin’s descriptions of polyphonic discourse in order to describe a more dialogical sermon. The dialogical sermon is characterized by having many voices supplement each other so that all sound through a chorus of voices. Alternatively the many voices can fight interactively as they try to undermine each other by the use of irony.6 The polyphonic, dialogical sermon functions, in contrast to the monological sermon’s centralizing tendencies, as a centrifugal force. As a consequence this kind of sermon creates room for a number of individual voices and opens up a mighty room of experiences because although the preacher speaks with a single voice the sermon is carried by a polyphony of voices.7 The attempt to create a mighty room of experience can be recognized in Bjerg’s sermons. In the following I will focus on his sermon on Matthew 8:23 – 27 entitled ‘Shock-waves’.8 In this sermon ‘our’ engagement with the text is likened to the theater as the fear of the disciples is pouring shock-waves over the theater goers. Bjerg makes continual use of an inclusive ‘we’ in order to describe the congregation/readers/listeners as the ‘people’ who have ‘paid to see the piece’. He goes on to describe how ‘we’ the ‘theater goers’ play a double role because although we mostly find ourselves at a secure distance we enter into the role as the choir in a Greek tragedy : we articulate our wonder, we stiffen with fear, and we yell our warnings and objections. All the way up to the upper seats in the theater, down to the seats farthest away in the church, we sense the shock of the disciples.9 If the performative intentions of Bjerg’s sermons are co-experienced by the 4 Ibid., 944. 5 ‘Denne prædikenform er monologisk; prædikanten taler som med ¦n stemme, ¦n røst, og talen graviterer som regel mod ¦t centrum, dagens ene evangelium, der gerne sammenfattes i et alment tilgængeligt sprog, som lyder temmelig ens og fladt fra søndag til søndag, fx “du er tilgivet” eller ‘grib dagen i dag’ eller “alt st”r i Guds faderh”nd”’ (ibid.). 6 Ibid., 945. 7 ‘I alle tilfælde virker prædikenen med centrifugal kraft, s”ledes at talerummet ”bner for et væld af individuelle røster, og et mægtigt oplevelsesrum skabes’ (ibid., 944). 8 Bjerg, Sakrale Prædikener (Frederiksberg: Anis, 2009), 129 – 32. 9 Bjerg, Sakrale Prædikener, 130.

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congregation he can be said to excel in Bakhtinian carnivalesque preaching. Here is found the role exchange between actors and spectators (the choir of the Greek tragedy), a mixing of high and low (the church is likened to a theater with wind-machines and rolling waves), bodily interaction (we sense the shock of the disciples), etc. In this sense Bjerg’s sermons illustrate Bakhtin’s claim that ‘[c]arnival is a pageant without footlights and without a division into performers and spectators.’10

Carnival or Masquerade? Yet, the question remains whether it is sufficient for a dialogical, carnivalesque sermon to write the part of the congregation into the (manu)script as Bjerg does? Can the preacher presuppose that the reader of sermons or the member of the congregation is able and willing to place him- or herself in the (theater/) seat designated by the preacher in the form of a sermonic playwright? Are his verbally written wind machines and rolling waves capable of spreading the fear of the disciples through the pages of the sermon collection to the reader? From a Bakhtinian perspective we may ask whether the preacher enters into an interactive dialogue with a polyphony of voices coming from different locations, or if he merely ventriloquizes in order to mimic foreign voices. The relationship between preacher and congregation, speaker and listener is crucial: Are they interacting in mutual transformative dialogues or is one partner simply expected to imitate the other? To understand correctly the problem of carnivalization, one must dispense with the oversimplified understanding of carnival found in the masquerade line of modern times, and even more with a vulgar bohemian understanding of carnival.11

Bakhtin describes the decline of the ‘carnival sense of the world’ as intrinsically connected with the waning connection to the original communal performances in public squares. The historical carnival turned into a ‘masquerade’ when its roots were cut off from the folkloristic base out of which it had grown. While some of the elements of the carnival have been preserved in modern theaters, these ‘bohemian’ approaches to carnival are, says Bakhtin, a ‘degradation and trivialization of the carnival sense of the world’, primarily because there is ‘not a grain of that carnival spirit of communal performance.’12 When the carnival was transformed into masquerades, the carnivalization of literature also lost its roots in the communal ‘carnival sense of life’. Until the seventeenth century there was a direct link between the carnival as 10 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 122. 11 Ibid., 160. 12 Ibid., 131.

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Novelistic Heir of Proclamatory Genres

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an embodied, communal phenomenon and the carnivalization of literature: ‘The source of carnivalization was carnival itself.’13 Central to my interest in the potential of carnivalesque literature to nudge toward new communal carnival performances in a homiletical context, Bakhtin describes how ‘several genres in fact directly serviced carnival.’14 Yet, in contrast to the organic relationship between carnival and carnivalization of literature from the middle of the century carnivalization became a purely literary tradition, and the carnivalistic influence became restricted to the content of literary works and lost its original potential of genre transformation.

Novelistic Heir of Proclamatory Genres Crucial to Bjerg’s appropriation of the Bakhtinian approach is the focus on preaching as a literary genre.15 In his essay on the carnivalesque sermon he paraphrases what he sees as central to the development of carnivalesque preaching, namely that the speaking subjects of the proclamatory genres— priests, prophets, preachers, judges, patriarchs, and so on, have left this life and been replaced by the writer who has become heir of all genres.’16 What Bjerg omits in this paraphrase of Bakhtin is that the writer who has become heir of the proclamatory speech genres is not the writer in general but the novelistic writer. The discussion of who is the legitimate heir is thus not a matter to be settled between speakers and writers, as Bjerg seems to interpret Bakhtin, but between novelistic and non-novelistic authors. Bakhtin does acknowledge the novelistic genre for its unique potential of describing human experience. This potential is partly due to its mixed nature but primarily because of its capability of polyphonic authoring, as developed by Dostoevsky : We consider the creation of the polyphonic novel a huge step forward not only in the development of novelistic prose, that is, of all genres developing within the orbit of the novel, but also in the development of the artistic thinking of humankind. It seems to us that one could speak directly of a special polyphonic artistic thinking extending beyond the bounds of the novel as a genre.17

It order to evaluate whether Bjerg is correct in letting Bakhtin claim that the writer is heir of former spoken genres it must be considered that the claim 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Bjerg & Lynglund, ‘Den karnevalesque prædiken’, 944; Kunsten at Prædike (Valby : Aros, 2002), 9. 16 Bjerg & Lynglund, ‘De høje proklamatoriske genrers talende subjekt – præster, profeter, prædikanter, dommere, patriarkalske fædre osv.—har forladt dette liv. De er alle blevet erstattet af skribenten, som er blevet arving til alle stilarter’, in ‘Den karnevalesque prædiken’, 943. 17 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 270.

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belongs to a period in the Bakhtinian authorship that is corrected and later revised by Bakhtin himself. The claim belongs to the early period in Bakhtin’s authorship marked by a ‘radical novelistic imperialism’, as described by Morson and Emerson.18 By contrast, in the later period, when Bakhtin revised his book on Dostoevsky,19 he poses the question of whether polyphony makes monologism ‘obsolete’. Furthermore he widens the question to ask whether new genres, such as the novel, supplant older ones. The mature answer rejects the ‘novelistic imperialism’ of his earlier writings: A newly born genre never supplants or replaces any already existing genres. Each new genre merely supplements the old ones, merely widens the circle of already existing genres. For every genre has its own predominant sphere of existence.20

Bjerg, through his literary preaching practice and as a writer of sermons to be published rather than given, can be seen as embodying the substitution/ replacement of the speaking subjects of the past proclamatory genres. Bjerg’s two collections of sermons are written for publication and have not been developed nor given in a congregational setting.21 And while Bjerg does acknowledge the difference between ‘reading sermons’ written for the eye22 and sermons that are prepared for hearing, he describes the difference merely as a stylistic matter, claiming that his literary sermons could easily be given in an oral setting.23 Nevertheless, Bjerg’s tendency to prepare his sermons for an anonymous, reading audience distanced from actual listeners’ situations and reactions can be seen as symptomatic for the Danish preaching situation. As described by the Danish pastors and practical theologians Jørgen Demant and Finn Vejlgaard there is a strange disproportion between the rather large number of sermon collections published in Denmark and the relatively small number of people who come to church and listen to sermons.24 Furthermore, Bjerg’s works are widely read by pastors in the Danish ‘Folk Church’ and thus likely function more as inspiration for preachers preparing their own sermons than as upbuilding literature for lay people. Seen in that context, the monological preaching style that he criticizes as prevailing in the Danish Folk Church seems to reflect his own approach to preaching in many ways. 18 19 20 21 22

Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics, 300 – 301. The revision of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics was completed in 1963. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 171. Excepting a few which have been held; cf. Profane Prædikener (Frederiksberg: Anis, 2010), 7. ‘Skønt jeg ikke udelukker, at prædikenerne kan holdes fra en prædikestol, er der tale om læseprædikener, skrevet for øjet. Fordelen er den lidt mere komplekse form, som øjet fanger, gerne ved genlæsning, mens øret halter bagefter og forlanger udtalt gentagelse, Jeg har ikke bestræbt mig p” at give sproget en mere mundtlig skikkelse (sideordnede sætninger, rigelig brug af fyldord, dacapo og lignende)’ (Bjerg, Kunsten at Prædike, 70). 23 Ibid., 7. 24 Cf. Jørgen Demant and Finn Vejlgaard, ‘Den skriftlige prædikenkultur’, Kritisk Forum for praktisk teologi 40 (1990): 61 – 71.

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Implicit versus Explicit Listeners Although his sermons are written for publication, Bjerg specifies that he does have listeners in mind, such as the congregation in Frederiksborg Slotskirke, Hillerød, whom he served as a voluntary assistant preacher for six years. He describes the explicit listener as part of an attentive congregation, a listener with a certain cultural formation in the ‘middle field of the Folk Church’.25 Bjerg claims that all sermons have an inherent implicit listener, depending on what the form, language, thought, and speech demands. Interestingly enough he also emphasizes that if a sermon is to succeed in having its intended effect, there must not be a difference between the implicit and the explicit listener.26 Bjerg’s reflections on the role of the implicit listener of his sermons can be illustrated and also criticized using Bakhtin’s critique of the notion of the ‘ideal listener’. As discussed earlier, Bakhtin claims that discourse composition is never a one-way transfer but rather a dialogue between the alreadyspoken and the not-yet-said,27 and that addressees unknowingly play an active part and in that sense can be seen as co-authors. In that sense Bjerg is in accordance with Bakhtin in claiming that the congregation he has served in the past is the sine qua non of new sermons written for publication. However, the voices of the past and the future ‘heard’ in the composition of discourse might have more or less of an impact on the author.28 In accordance with the homileticians described in the following analyses, Bakhtin rejects the perception that a fictionalized ‘ideal-reader’ (or listener) can replace an interactive dialogue partner : the ideal listener is essentially a mirror image of the author who replicates him. He cannot introduce anything of his own, anything new, into the ideally understood work or into the ideally complete plan of the author. He is in the same time and space as the author or, rather, like the author he is outside time and space (as in any abstract ideal formulation), and therefore he cannot be an-other or other for the author, he cannot have any surplus that is determined by this otherness.29 25 My translation of Bjerg, Kunsten at Prædike, 70. 26 ‘Enhver prædiken har indbygget en implicit tilhører, helt afhængigt af, hvad form og sprog, tanke og tale kræver for at kunne tilegnes. . . . Skal prædikenen f” sin tilsigtede virkning, m” der ikke være forskel p” den implicitte og den eksplicitte tilhører’ (ibid.). 27 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 280. 28 It should be noted that if we compare Bjerg’s descriptions of the implicit listener of his ‘reading sermons’ with one of his earlier descriptions of the listener of preaching, we might get a fuller picture of his implied listener. In one of his earlier homiletical works Bjerg repeats an often referred to understanding of the primary addressee of preaching, namely that the preacher is his own first listener. He preaches first to himself and then to the congregation; cf. Svend Bjerg, Øjnenes Faste: Homiletisk læsning af teksterne til faste- og p”sketid (Frederiksberg: Anis, 1997), 63. 29 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 165.

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From a Bakhtinian perspective dialogue is the sine qua non if one wants to hear and understand foreign words and perspectives. The determining difference between monological and dialogical utterances is whether the ‘foreign words’ are used only as a scaffolding, which does not constitute the building in itself, or if they are allowed to influence the ‘architectonical whole’.30

Homiletic Experience with the Experience Bjerg’s theology sets itself apart from more traditional Danish/Lutheran theological and historic critical perspectives on the preaching genre due to his focus on experience. As a critique of the traditional understanding of the Lutheran insistence on sola scriptura, Bjerg stresses Luther’s own modification that experience alone can make a person a theologian.31 The background for this statement, according to Bjerg, is Luther’s emphasis on the experiences of both mysticism and everyday life. The intention is to bring the exclusive theological topoi—sola scriptura, sola fide, solo verbo, and Solus Christus—into the lived experiences. They only belong there, in experience. This is how Luther connects life and lesson. The bible is to be read in dialogue with lived experience.32 The emphasis on the theological relevance of experience relates closely33 to Jüngel’s concept of the ‘experience with experience’.34 This kind of experience differs from simple reflection on ordinary experience in that it views human experiences in light of the biblical narrative in the analogy of faith. It is characteristic of Jüngel’s theology that he insists that if proclamation is to address people of different experiences and world-views it must emerge from a God who does not come from our context, but from himself. The theology of Jüngel is accordingly characterized by a continual focus on the importance of analogical thinking and metaphorical language that attempts to find similarities in the midst of dissimilarities, and analogies of divine grace in the human life.35 Yet, although this re-description happens in the light of faith, Bjerg emphasizes the importance of describing life phenomenologically before or along with the redescription of faith. If this initial description is skipped, the redescription tends to become too slick and turn into mere self-confirmation.36 Bjerg’s emphasis on the need to describe lived experiences phenom30 31 32 33

Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 187. Svend Bjerg, Tro og Erfaring (Faith and Experience) (Frederiksberg, Anis, 2006), 10 – 11. Ibid., 11. Jüngel is also quoted in Bjerg’s preface to Sakrale Prædikener for his claim that ‘God is not a boring, but a compassionate God. Therefore shall no sermon be boring but compassionate’; cf. Jüngel, Predigten. 34 Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 40 – 41. 35 Ibid., 390. 36 Bjerg, Tro og Erfaring, 11.

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enologically before redescribing them in light of faith is important as it touches upon the problem of contemporary experience of listeners in the Lutheran churches. Yet it is disputable to what extent people who come to church in a Danish context experience themselves as addressed by God. In her dissertation titled ‘Here is a Lot of Space: Theologies of Preaching in a Complex Reality’,37 the Swedish homiletician Karina Sundberg describes it as a weakness in the theology of preaching of Jüngel, as well as an acute problem for contemporary churchgoers, that members of the congregation often do not experience that their lives are being transformed in ways that accord with Jüngel’s ‘experience with the experience’. Extending Sundberg’s critique, I find that Bjerg’s insistence on an in-depth phenomenological description of lived experiences, as a precondition of a genuine re-description of experience in light of faith, requires critical insight into whether the faith-experiences, described by the preacher, are recognizable in the lives of the listeners. According to a statement in ‘Profane Sermons,’38 Bjerg appears to presuppose that preaching can ‘take good care of our everyday life experiences’. The dilemma of whether preacher and congregation share universal experiences bears striking resemblances to contemporary American homiletics, in which the assumptions of the former ‘New Homiletic’ paradigm, that the experiences of congregation and preachers are interchangeable, are questioned.

Free and Bound Bjerg is indeed aware of the empirical and theological problems connected with the intention of evoking a certain effect through preaching. He describes the listeners of preaching as simultaneously free and bound. The listener is free in the sense that what has been heard depends on the ears that have heard it. This empirical insight is in accordance with the biblical understanding expressed, for example, in the Gospel of Mark (4:9) where Jesus emphasizes, ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear’.39 In accordance with both the empirical insights and biblical claims, Bjerg acknowledges that the preacher cannot force a message or effect upon the listener because to some extent we hear what we want to hear.40 In spite of the listener’s freedom, Bjerg maintains that s/he is bound because s/he belongs. Bjerg draws upon the connection between ‘hear’ and ‘adhere/ 37 Translation of the Swedish title Här är rymlig plats. Predikoteologier I en kompleks verklighet, doctoral dissertation, Karlstad University Studies: 16 (Karlstad: Universitetstryckeriet, 2008), 88. 38 Bjerg, Profane Prædikener, 8: ‘Mine prædikener tager godt vare p” vore almindelige livserfaringer’ (‘My sermons take good care of our normal life experiences’). 39 The New International Version (NIV). 40 Bjerg, Øjnenes Faste, 63 – 64.

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belong’, which in Danish is etymologically connected as ‘høre’ and ‘tilhøre’. In reference to the statements by Jesus in the Gospel of John (10:16): ‘My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me’,41 and (10:27 – 28): ‘I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd’, Bjerg claims that we are bound by what we hear, because he who has heard the words cannot do anything but follow. In that sense the listener is bound and free, and in that order, because through belonging and listening (‘høre til’) in that evangelical room that the bible text opens, the listener is set free to listen with his or her own ears. From Bjerg’s perspective the preacher’s task is, accordingly, to create room for a double movement: to draw his/her listener inside the room of the gospel in order to send him/her out again renewed. The picture painted of the addressee in Bjerg’s recent ‘reading’ sermons42 appears in some ways in contrast with his earlier homiletical reading of the texts for Lent and Easter, ‘Fast of the Eyes’.43 In this earlier work Bjerg describes the addressee of preaching as a churchgoer who is defined by the room that he enters. Significant to this situatedness is the claim that there are several rooms in the church room: The words create a linguistic room, the liturgy a performative room. During the worship service the churchgoer enters the evangelical room. He belongs to it and perhaps the words and the actions bind the churchgoer so much that on the way out of the church s/he listens with new ears to what the spirit says.44

Bjerg concludes his description of the listener with a reminder to the preacher. From this perspective a listener of preaching is thoroughly characterized by a duality : s/he is bound in the sense that s/he, as a churchgoer has a room in common with other church goers yet as the same time s/he is free as an individual who is equipped with unique ears with which to hear. As indicated above, I find that Bjerg’s dual differentiation of the listener, described in Øjnenes Faste, is very apt, yet the perspective tends to become one-sided in his latest ‘reading-sermons’ where the novelist writer has succeeded the proclamatory speaker and the listening congregation has been replaced by the individual reader. These sermons instead appear rather monological, in spite of the polyphonic theories behind them. In this sense the implicit theology of preaching resembles the inductive approach of Craddock in which the theological notion of ‘priesthood of all believers’ is interpreted as the 41 42 43 44

Verses 26 – 28. Profane Prædikener and Sakrale Prædikener, as discussed above. Bjerg, Øjnenes Faste. ‘[O]g der er flere rum i rummet. Ordene skaber et sprogrum, liturgien et handlingsrum i kirkerummet. For en stund, den tid en gudstjeneste varer, vandrer kirkegængeren ind i det evangeliske rum, han hører til her, og m”ske binder ord og handling ham s” meget, at han p” vej ud af kirken har f”et nye ører at høre med, s” han hører hvad ”nden siger’ (ibid., 64 – 65).

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individual’s ‘right’ to draw his own conclusions rather than the polyphonic reciprocal edification that Bjerg claims to embrace.

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Chapter 6: Heteroglot Approach to Dialogical Preaching Another theologian who has provided a keen insight into the potential of a Bakhtinian novelistic approach to preaching is the African American Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, James Henry Harris. Harris is the author of numerous books covering topics ranging from black liberation theology, homiletics, and literary criticism. He combines his position as Professor of Pastoral Theology at Virginia Union University with that of Senior Pastor in the Baptist Church. This dual responsibility makes him particularly conscious of the schism between theological practice and theory as well as the potential of combining the two. Harris’ work in the tension field between culture studies, theology, and literary criticism testifies to his multidisciplinary interests and competencies1, resembling the pragmatic sociolinguistic approach of Bakhtin, which I suggest as fruitful for the compound discipline of homiletics. His book, The Word Made Plain (2004), is of particular interest for the present project because it draws explicitly on the theories of Bakhtin for preaching.

‘The Sermon is not a Sermon until it is Spoken’ In The Word Made Plain Harris explores the potential of Bakhtinian dialogism and novelness as well as Kierkegaardian approaches to indirect communication. He describes how the Bakhtinian dialogism, interpreted both as intertextuality and carnivalized embodiment, can critically and constructively illuminate the practice of preaching, particularly in African American Churches. Although Harris displays a strong interest in different kinds of textuality he emphasizes the orality of the African American homiletical tradition as that which makes Bakhtinian dialogism and heteroglossia a fruitful framework for preaching: [T]he spokenness of African American preaching has a dialogical character such that the voices of the sermon are tantamount to what Mikhail Bakhtin calls heteroglossia. 1 Harris has master’s degrees in philosophy, theology and English literature, a doctorate in ’Sociology of Urban Studies’ as well as the Doctor of Ministry degree in ’Preaching and African American Church Studies’. Furthermore Harris has completed post-doctoral studies in theology, ethics, and culture.

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These many voices often rise from the scriptural text, the preacher as text (a postmodern notion), the congregation as text, and the sermon itself as text.2

Harris’ description of the sermonic voices as heteroglot underscores the significance of the interaction of socially diverse voices situated at a specific time and place. The various social, physiological and historical conditions governing the situated act of preaching play, in Harris’ interpretation of the heteroglossia of preaching, such a constitutive role that meaning is intrinsically connected to that specific time and place.3 Echoing the Bakhtin-inspired claims by Svend Bjerg, that the preacher can learn from the novelist,4 Harris compares the genre of preaching to that of the novel. Yet the way Harris describes a novelistic interpretation of preaching differs radically from Bjerg’s literary, chirographic interpretation and preaching practice. Differing from Bjerg’s claim, that the novelistic writer is the sole heir of the ‘former’ oral, proclamatory genres, Harris describes how a ‘sermon is not a sermon until it is spoken’: Inasmuch as the sermon, especially in the Black-church tradition, is a dialogical enterprise, it too is stylistically novelistic, especially in its spokenness. And in many ways, the sermon is not a sermon until it is spoken. It is written to be spoken more than read. Accordingly, in the African American church tradition, the congregation expects the preacher to speak as if he or she is speaking from an orality grounded in memory rather than in written discourse. Written discourse has to be written in a way that, when spoken, captures a natural rhythm and cadence that allows for dialogue.5

Harris describes a traditional theological presumption of the text’s interpretive authority as ‘the straitjacket approach to meaning and interpretation’6—a description that resembles Bjerg’s critique of the ‘centralistic’ sermon.7 When Harris describes the dialogical, polyphone alternative as characterizing African American preaching, he does not, however, relate this polyphony to the novelistic writer’s intertextual echoes. Instead, meaning and interpretation is created out of the situated dialogical interaction between the preacher and the listeners: Meaning is often determined by the preacher/interpreter and the hearer/interpreter in dialogue with each other based on the context. The African American preacher is open to a multiplicity of voices that emanate from and surround the scripture as well as the congregation and the society, which can also be ‘read’ as ‘texts.’ The language of the African American preacher—a language that extols freedom, justice, repentance, 2 Harris, Word Made Plain, 52. 3 Further unfolding of the concept of heteroglossia can be found in Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, 324. 4 Bjerg & Lynglund, ‘Den karnevalesque prædiken’, 943 – 44. 5 Harris, Word Made Plain, 52. 6 Ibid., 53. 7 Bjerg, ‘Den karnevaleske prædiken’, 944.

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and salvation—is similarly multivoiced. It is often the language of the scriptural text as well as the language of the people and their contexts.8

In Harris’ analysis the Bakhtinian approach also proves itself a critically acute way of diagnosing some of the problems that hinder dialogicity in contemporary preaching. In accordance with this perspective, Harris diagnoses it as a symptom of a lack of connection between preacher and listeners when their different discourses and contexts end up overwhelming each other instead of stimulating dialogical interaction: The voices of the many, when played against each other, can either advance or destroy the voice of the poet as the preacher. It is a difficult and dangerous discourse that has to be dialogical if understanding is to be achieved. Mikhail Bakhtin helps in so many ways because his thoughts intersect with so many other disciplines, especially those that are word-oriented, such as preaching and poetics.9

‘Homiletical Musicality’ Another African American homiletician whose work converges with Harris’ description of the oral-aural aspect crucial to preaching is Evans E. Crawford10. Crawford describes how the African American ‘talk-back’ traditions can be interpreted as a manifestation of a theological understanding of the ‘priesthood of all believers’, in the sense that ‘[t]he sermon belongs not only to the preacher, but also to the entire congregation, which joins in with their oral responses.’11 Crawford’s interpretation of the ‘priesthood of all believers’ in the practice of preaching is of particular interest for my analysis of the co-authorship and mutual interaction inherent in the carnivalesque dialogue between the Wholly Other and the other-wise listeners. Crawford manifests a unique competence in practice-theoretical analyses that both embraces the distinct logic, musicality, and corporality of homiletical practice yet manages to describe these elements theoretically. In that way he exemplifies the kind of practice-theoretical approach to homiletics that honors the distinct logic of, respectively, the field of practice and the theoretical field, without creating a dichotomous opposition between the two. Implied in the notion of homiletical musicality lies an approach that surpasses traditional ‘chirographically conditioned’12 academic concepts that have 8 9 10 11

Harris, Word Made Plain, 53. Ibid., 61. Professor Emeritus and Dean of Chapel at Howard University, Washington D.C. Crawford, The Hum, 37. Cf. the discussion of Craddock’s interpretation of the ‘inductive sermon’ as a practice of the ‘priesthood of all believers’ in chap. 3. 12 Cf. Ong, Orality and Literacy, and Bent Flemming Nielsen’s description of ‘literacy as a second nature’ described in chap. 3.

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traditionally been transferred and used in the homiletical context. Instead of analyzing preaching in terms of structure, outline, and points, Crawford’s ‘musical’ approach manifests an ability to transcribe some of the practical ‘feel for the game’13 theoretically. In contrast to traditional literary, chirographically oriented understandings of preaching, Crawford’s analyses testify to the practice of preaching as an oral-aural event ‘a sonic experience with musical qualities.’14

‘Participant Proclamation’ as Co-Authorship One example of Crawford’s musical practice-theoretical approach is his notion of ‘participant proclamation’.15 Crawford has coined the term based on the social scientific process of ‘participant observation’ employed in the human sciences and which has led to the development of a research method that can study the agents of a field as speaking subjects rather than as mute, reified objects. The social scientific procedure of ‘participant observation’ furthermore resembles Bakhtin’s proposal of a dialogical methodology for the human sciences. Crawford’s analyses of the congregational ‘participant proclamation’, as a constitutive element in the practice of preaching, confirm the Bakhtinian descriptions of the co-authorship of addressees and dialogicity in the second, interactive, mutually transforming sense.16 His analyses of preaching can also be set apart from those of Craddock and Bjerg where the listeners’ impact on the practice of preaching is described as either in the form of implicit addressees imagined in the preacher’s preparation process or as silent ‘overhearers’ of the gospel.17 What makes the homiletical works of Harris and Crawford especially interesting is that they describe their particular preaching traditions with a unique ‘homiletical musicality’18 that embraces the socially embedded and

13 Cf. chap. 2 for the practice-theoretical description of balancing between ‘prior’ and ‘passing theories’ inspired by Bourdieu. 14 Crawford, The Hum, 17. 15 Ibid., 37 – 38. 16 For further analyses of the distinction between the three senses of dialogicity, see chap. 2. 17 Cf. Craddock’s Overhearing the Gospel. Craddock’s understanding of similarity as a precondition for preaching and the listeners of preaching as passive ‘overhearers’ has been analyzed in chap. 3. 18 The notion of ‘homiletical musicality’ is unfolded in Crawford, The Hum, 15 – 24. In addition to Crawford’s book several other homileticians have interpreted the practice of preaching as kind of musical activity, see Thomas H. Troeger, Wonder Reborn: Creating Sermons on Hymns, Music and Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); John S. McClure, Mashup Religion: Popmusic and Theological Invention (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011); Charles L. Camp-

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embodied practice of preaching at specific places and contexts. However, their analyses are not restricted to these contexts and their participants. In his analyses of ‘participant proclamation’ Crawford describes how congregational response cannot be restricted to verbally articulated ‘talk-back’. In other contexts of preaching, Crawford describes how silent interaction, turning on body language and gestures characterize people of the so called ‘feel-back school of response’.19 Characteristic for this kind of co-authorship is the embodied interaction in which the various kinds of facial expressions and gazes function as hints of silent attention and participation. Crawford’s description of listeners of preaching as interactive co-authors is confirmed by Harris’ description of how the preacher’s sermonic understanding is dialogically shaped through congregational response. Harris’ shares my interpretation that a Bakhtinian approach is able to evoke this intricate relationship between understanding and response, and even quotes Bakhtin in order to describe the preaching tradition in the African American context in which ‘[u]nderstanding comes to fruition only in the response. Understanding and response are dialectically merged and mutually condition each other ; one is impossible without the other.’20

Excursus: Listeners as Authors in Danish contexts Harris’ and Crawford’s descriptions of talk-back cultures and participant proclamation in African American church traditions can seem foreign to cultures in which preaching, on the surface, is a rather monological affair where the preacher speaks and the congregation listens in silence. Qualitative interviews with people listening to preaching in other cultures, such as the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Denmark21, however, show a significant degree of implicit dialogical interaction taking place during and after the event of preaching. Although listeners in these apparently monological preaching traditions tend to stay quiet during preaching they will often describe and discuss the sermon they have just heard in ways that indicate that they do in fact function as very active co-authors, if not primary authors of the discourse. One of the crucial questions to be asked of these complex speech genres, in which the dialogical response is silent and/or delayed, is to what extent the preacher incorporates this co-authoring potential in the sermon. The bell, Preaching Jesus, 236 – 37; and Luke A. Powery, Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death, and Hope (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress 2012). 19 Crawford, The Hum, 27. 20 Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in Bakhtin, Dialogical Imagination, 282. 21 The interviews have been conducted and analyzed by the Danish homiletician, Marianne Gaarden, as part of her PhD dissertation forthcoming from the University of Aarhus, Denmark, 2014.

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interviews, however, also give reasons to explore to what extent listeners allow preachers to have a co-authoring impact on their inner sermonic reflections during the preaching event. The preliminary answer to this question is that although listeners seem to function as primary authors of their own sermonic discourses, a significant majority tend to express a desire for and appreciation of fruitful disturbances of their own circles of thoughts and thus emphasize the importance of a dialogical relationship with the preacher. A minority of the listeners, however, get rather frustrated when the preacher does not say what they want to hear.22 With his practice-theoretical analyses Harris confirms that the interaction between preacher and congregation manifests a dialogicity in the second sense of Bakhtin that has a transforming impact on all the participants in the discourse: This dialogue between speaker and listener has characterized the majority of African American preaching such that one has informed the other. The preacher must be oriented toward the listener if understanding and faith development are to be achieved.23

The description of a shared understanding evoked through interactive response between preacher and congregation resonates with the Bakhtinian notion of coauthorship. Bakhtin’s interest in the question of authorship is not restricted to literary texts but first and foremost he pursues the question of authoring in everyday life in which meaning takes on the flesh of embodied interlocutors.24 Clark and Holquist have captured the relationship and significance of this otheroriented co-authorship in their biography of Bakhtin: To be successful, the relation between me and the other must be shaped into a coherent performance, and thus the architectonic activity of authorship, which is the building of a text, parallels the activity of human existence, which is the building of a self. And if the activity of being is generated by the constant slippage between self and other, then communication—the never convergent but always reciprocal interdependence of the two—is of paramount concern.25

As indicated by Clark and Holquist, Bakhtin’s descriptions of ‘simple’ everyday speech genres26 become a prism through which we can analyze the 22 Gaarden and Lorensen: ‘Listeners as Authors in Preaching—Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives’, 37. 23 Harris, Word Made Plain, 60. 24 Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 88. 25 Ibid., 64. 26 ‘To ignore the nature of the utterance or to fail to consider the peculiarities of generic subcategories of speech in any area of linguistic study leads to perfunctoriness and excessive abstractness, distorts the historicity of the research, and weakens the link between language and life. After all, language enters life through concrete utterances (which manifest language) and life enters language through concrete utterances as well’ (Bakhtin, ‘The Problem of Speech

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relationship between the other and the self. The question of who is authoring whom and whether that authoring is dialogically creative or monologically reifying thus becomes a critical concern. The question of who is authoring whom is crucial in the ‘complex speech genre’ of preaching. As indicated by the Bakhtinian characterization of conversation—as involving a vertical triologue with a superaddressee rather than merely a horizontal dialogue with the addressees at hand—the ways in which sermonic meaning and understanding of the self and the other are intermingled are rather complex. In the following I will analyze how this interactive authoring has the potential of evoking a bi-focal vision leading to either a wholesome widening of one’s own perspective or a troublesome double sight.

Seeing Oneself through the Eyes of Another : the Asymmetrical Otherness In a sermon titled ‘A Question of Identity—Chaos, Self, and Other’,27 Harris describes how ‘[s]elf-understanding always occurs through understanding something other than the self ’.28 This other-oriented approach to subjectivity accords with the Bakhtinian interpretation of the dialogicity of human nature. It is characteristic of the preaching practice and homiletical reflections of Harris that this other-oriented approach to self-knowledge goes in both horizontal and vertical directions, toward the diversified neighbors and the Absolute Other. Harris acknowledges Bakhtin’s description of the otheroriented subjectivity claiming that ‘[a] person has no internal sovereign territory, he is wholly and always on the boundary ; looking inside himself, he looks into the eyes of another or with the eyes of another.’29 Yet, although he insists on the need for getting to know others in order to come to know oneself, Harris is also painfully aware of how seeing oneself through the eyes of another often can be a demeaning and reducing experience30 rather than a fruitful widening of one’s own horizon. Harris refers to the writings of the African American author William Du

27 28 29 30

Genres’, in Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 63). For a further unfolding of the relationship between ‘simple speech genres’ and ‘complex speech genres’—which is how I categorize the practice of preaching—see Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 60 – 63. In Harris, Word Made Plain, 140 – 46. The sermon is on Luke 8:22 – 25. Ibid., 144. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 287. Harris, Word Made Plain, 64 ff. For further descriptions of this experience see also his autobiographical analyses of reading Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in James Henry Harris, The Forbidden Word: The Symbol and Sign of Evil in American Literature, History, and Culture (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012).

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Bois (1868 – 1963) and his often quoted description of how an unreconciled “double-consciousness” has characterized African Americans who have been forced to see themselves through the eyes of the hegemonic other : After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.31

Du Bois describes the demeaning experience of being determined, as a person, on the basis of one’s outer appearance, thereby limiting one’s own selfreflection and identity. On the other hand, the ‘double consciousness’ inherent in this marginalized, outside position carries the potential of an epistemological ‘surplus of seeing’ that in some ways resembles, yet in other ways differs radically from, Bakhtin’s analyses of the ‘excess of seeing’ in authentic dialogical encounters as shown in the following. The painful ‘double consciousness’ of people who see themselves stereotypically reduced and racially discriminated through the eyes of others stands in dire contrast to the creative potential that Bakhtin describes as being called forth in a person through the loving gaze of another. In his Toward a Philosophy of the Act, Bakhtin delineates the constructive potential of the ‘loving gaze’ performed from an outside perspective. In ways that resemble Kierkegaard’s description of the ‘upbuilding’, Bakhtin notes how the act of seeing lovingly is a two-sided action that transforms both the beholder and the beheld: ‘In aesthetic seeing you love a human being not because he is good, but, rather, a human being is good because you love him. This is what constitutes the specific character of aesthetic seeing.’32 Aesthetic seeing — la Bakhtin is not to be confused with a passive registration of a given phenomenon or ignorance of that which is tragic and disturbing. Rather, it expresses an active engagement in ‘building up’ an architectonic whole of the self and the other that bestows love and goodness upon both parties: [T]he center of value in the event-architectonic of aesthetic seeing is man as a lovingly affirmed concrete actuality, and not as something with self-identical content. Moreover, aesthetic seeing does not abstract in any way from the possible standpoint of various values; it does not erase the boundary between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood. Aesthetic seeing knows all these distinctions and finds 31 W. E. B. Du Bois, qtd. in: Harris, Word Made Plain, 64. 32 Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 62.

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them in the world contemplated, but these distinctions are not drawn out of it and placed above it as ultimate criteria …33

The difference between the two kinds of seeing lies, according to Bakhtin, in whether the outside perspective is accompanied by an ‘unfinalized’ surplus of view that sees potential in the other or a ‘finalized’ deadening perspective that judges the wholeness of the other by generalizing from one aspect, whether it is the color of the skin, sex,34 language, ethnicity, or any other characteristic.35 Although Harris does not explicitly link the ‘double consciousness’ of Du Bois with Bakhtin’s notion of ‘heteroglossia’, the Bakhtinian echo seems to sound in the background. Confirming this echo Bakhtin-interpreter Dorothy J. Hale has described the solid tradition of African American literary theorists who have ‘glossed Du Bois by way of M. M. Bakhtin, and argued that double consciousness is most powerfully represented in African American literature by the Bakhtinian technique of “double voice”.’36 Crawford has not referred to Bakhtin in his homiletical works but as I show below, he illustrates and problematizes crucial notions of the Bakhtinian authorship in a homiletical context. Crawford also refers to the ‘double consciousness’ described by Du Bois and adds to this experience Ralph Ellison’s analysis of the problems of the ‘invisible man’.37 Crawford’s problematization of the phenomenon that ‘being seen’ depends on the eye of the beholder can thus be interpreted as an ambiguous implicit commentary on the Bakhtinian claim that aesthetic seeing, rather than being a passive registration, requires an active ‘building up’ that bestows something upon the other. If being seen depends on those doing the seeing, then inherent in the reference to the ‘beholder’s eye’ lies the acknowledgement that the phenomenon of seeing cannot be reduced to an act of passive observance of the world exterior to the observer. Instead the act of seeing requires an intricate process of perception that is intrinsically linked with the predispositions, experiences, and anticipations of the beholder.38 When one of these perceptual faculties shuts down or ignores the embodied other it can have fatal consequences, not only for epistemological understanding but for interhuman relationships, as indicated by Crawford’s reference to the ‘invisible man’: 33 Ibid., 63. 34 Cf. the American homiletician Anna Carter Florence’s analyses of historical and contemporary women challenging the reductive perspective on women in the history of preaching in Preaching as Testimony (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 94 ff. 35 Cf. Eunjoo Kim, Preaching in an Age of Globalization (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press 2010). 36 Dorothy J. Hale, ‘Bakhtin in African American Literary Theory’, English Literary History 61.2 (1994): 445 – 71. 37 Crawford, The Hum, 49. 38 Ibid., 50.

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[I]t often follows that there can be sights unseen and selves unseen. Likewise, if ‘being heard’ is in the beholder’s ear, there can be sounds unheard and sighs unheard. And the breakdown of sight and sound may reinforce each other so that the beholder’s failure to see may result in a failure to hear. It is as if the senses confuse themselves in a mutual failure that results in sights unheard and sounds unseen.39

One of my paramount concerns here is to analyze whether ignorance of those who are different and on the margins of the immediate horizon of the explicitly authoring preacher also entails a risk of ignoring the ‘healing disruption’ of the ‘Wholly Other’.40 As a potentially constructive challenge of the problem of ignoring the impact of other-wise co-authors on the practice of preaching I shall now explore the potential of an epistemological ‘surplus’ or ‘second sight’ connected with an outside point of view.

Other-wise Surplus of Outsideness Inherent in Bakhtin’s notions of heteroglossia and aesthetic seeing are his descriptions of approaching life and other people as a dialogical balancing between the I and the other. The other and I function as two centers of value ‘that are fundamentally and essentially different, yet are correlated with each other : myself and the other ; and it is around these centers that all of the concrete moments of Being are distributed and arranged’.41 In a critique of an epistemology that aims at total identification between the other and I, Bakhtin emphasizes the constructive importance of alterity and ‘exotopy’/outsideness. With his focus on otherness and outsideness he suggests that rather than trying to understand something foreign as a matter of either self-projection or identification, the analyzer benefits from encountering the other dialogically from the outside, that is as another ‘authoring’ subject rather than as a fictionalized, reified object.42 Whether the author/interlocutor sees his addressee as his own ‘alter ego’, creating him/her in the author’s own image or trying to leave him/herself behind in order to identify with the other in sympathy, Bakhtin claims that constructive, fruitful 39 Ibid., 49. 40 Cf. the theological discussion of the ‘qualitative difference’ between God and humans and the potential of the ‘breaking in’ of the other-wise in chap. 9 41 Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 74. 42 For a telling example of white, hegemonic attempts of ‘beneficient’ identification and seeing the other as someone on his way to attain the fullness of one’s own superior culture rather than as an authoring subject in his own right, see Frantz Fanon’s (1925 – 1961) reaction to Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1905 – 1980) preface entitled ‘Black Orpheus’. The confrontation has been analyzed in light of Bakhtin’s notion of polyphonic truth by Helge Vidar Holm, ‘On the Incarnation of Ideas: Bakhtin, Fanon and Sartre’, http://bachtin.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/helgevidarholm.pdf (accessed 4 April, 2013).

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understanding cannot be reached if the interlocutors ignore their different perspectives and positions: In what way will the event be enriched if I succeed in fusing with the other? If instead of two, there is now just one? What do I gain by having the other fuse with me? He will know and see but what I know and see, he will but repeat within himself the tragic dimension of my life. Let him rather stay on the outside because from there he can know and see what I cannot see or know from my vantage point, and he can thus enrich essentially the event of my life.43

Dialogical understanding of a foreign person, or ancient text, depends rather on the irreducibility of both participants. The fact that people who communicate can never totally identify or empathize with each other is interpreted in terms of the ‘outsideness’ of each participant’s perspective.44 This outside perspective is seen as a constructive distance by Bakhtin, since it implies a surplus of seeing and thereby understanding: A meaning only reveals its depths once it has encountered and come into contact with another, foreign meaning … Without one’s own questions one cannot creatively understand anything other or foreign … Such a dialogic encounter of two cultures does not result in merging or mixing. Each retains its own unity and open totality, but they are mutually enriched.45

In continuity with my interest in the potential link between Bakhtin’s heteroglossia and Du Bois’ ‘double consciousness’—as interpreted in a homiletical context by Harris and Crawford—the African American homiletician Joseph N. Evans46 argues convincingly how double consciousness can be used as the basis of a hermeneutic approach for other-wise homiletics: In short, Du Boisian double consciousness constitutes the hermeneutic methodology of other-wise people—and by extension, other-wise homiletics. Considered from this perspective, postmodern hermeneutics is other-wise hermeneutics. It is the hermeneutics of double consciousness: the Du Boisian hermeneutic. Among marginalized peoples, this hermeneutic has a long history, functioning in multivoices, multi-faces and multi-places.47 43 Tzvetan Todorov’s translation of Bakhtin’s passage from ‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity’. Cf. Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, 108. 44 Cf. Bakhtin’s description of the role of outsideness in the intersubjective encounter in Art and Answerability, 22 – 23. 45 ‘Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff ’, in Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 6 – 7. 46 Joseph N. Evans holds a doctorate and is a Senior Pastor at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, Washington D.C. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Howard University School of Divinity and taught at Wesley Theological Seminary. 47 Joseph N. Evans, ‘Double-Consciousness: The Du Boisian Hermeneutic’, Homiletic: A Review of Publications in Religious Communication 36. 2 (2011): 7, http://www.homiletic.net/index.php/ homiletic/article/view/3459 (accessed 4 April, 2013).

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In summary, Evans’, Crawford’s and Harris’ descriptions of other-wise hermeneutics in dialogue with those who tend to be marginalized all challenge and stimulate my interpretation of approaching difference as an ‘other-wise’ potential of a fruitful disruption of preaching.

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Chapter 7: Other-wise Polyphonic Preaching In spite of the radical differences between international scholars of homiletics, there seems to be a common quest for more pragmatic ‘other’-oriented preaching practices and homiletical reflections. ‘Other-wise’ preaching carries the potential for embodying these explorations as it analyzes how the presence and words of others can have an impact on preaching that can create a ‘healing disturbance’. Other-wise preaching has been developed as both a philosophical ethic of preaching1 and as a practical model of preaching.2 What other-wise preaching is missing, however, are two elements that constitute the middle ground between philosophy and practice: namely a) a model of communication, and b) a theology of communication. In chapter two I described a model of communication that is able to supply other-wise homiletics with a suitable and yet challenging model of communication, and in this chapter I will continue my examination of other-wise preaching in light of Bakhtinian dialogicity and polyphony in order to suggest the contours of a theology of communication. This theological analysis will then be further unfolded in chapter nine, where I reflect on the double otherness of preaching. As previously mentioned, the moniker other-wise preaching first appeared in Other-wise Preaching: A Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics, in which John McClure3 describes a contemporarily emerging homiletical movement that is ‘in every aspect, other-inspired and other-directed. It is homiletics that strives to become wise about other human beings—to gain wisdom about and from others for preaching.’4 Since McClure has provided the most comprehensive description of the movement and outlined a philosophical framework, as well as a homiletical practice for it, I will primarily refer to his works, although it should be kept in mind that his reflections are based on and in dialogue with a plurality of voices and practices.5 I will thus use the term ‘other-wise preaching’ as a prism for analyzing the many faceted homiletical movements that emphasize listeners as co-authors of preaching.6

1 McClure, Other-wise Preaching. 2 McClure, Roundtable Pulpit. 3 Professor of Preaching and Worship at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee. 4 McClure, Other-wise Preaching, xi. 5 Ibid., 97 – 152. 6 For parallel yet distinct contemporary homiletical approaches to otherness in preaching, see also Allen, Preaching and the Other; Florence, Preaching as Testimony ; and Rose, Sharing the Word.

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Homiletical Paradigms in Light of Philosophical Frameworks The term ‘other-wise’ is inspired by the French philosopher Emmanuel L¦vinas’ (1906 – 2005) distinction between otherness and sameness, as well as his descriptions of the interconnectedness of faces, bodies, and subjectivities. McClure’s argument for gathering and coining a contemporary homiletical paradigm under the umbrella of the L¦vinasian position includes an analysis that relates it in an interesting way to the discussion of theory and practice I presented in chapter one. According to McClure, other-wise homiletics has not been recognized as the significant, original movement it is because unlike, for example, New Homiletics’ acknowledged indebtedness to the New Hermeneutics, and postliberal homileticians’ acknowledgements of Wittgenstein, MacIntyre, Frei, and Lindbeck, other-wise homileticians have not positioned themselves in relation to a specific philosophical framework. In McClure’s analysis, while other-wise homileticians work hand in hand with the insights of critical theory, structuralism, and poststructuralism, they have not acknowledged these relations explicitly. In order to make the movement visible McClure coined the name and attempts to: reconstruct this legacy of indebtedness, but with a particularly close eye to further contributions found in the deconstructive phenomenology of Emmanuel L¦vinas and the new forms of testimonial homiletics inspired by his work.7

With a nod to the maxim (attributed to Immanuel Kant) claiming that ‘experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play’, we might reformulate the analysis of McClure and claim that homiletical movements without explicit philosophical frameworks are invisible, while philosophical theories without practice are impotent.

Pragmatic Approach to Communication and Philosophy Although McClure has described the need of philosophical frameworks in order to facilitate and delineate the contours of emerging homiletical movements, he has become increasingly critical of attempts to interpret the practice of preaching in light of abstract, decontextualized philosophical systems. Nevertheless, the development from an ideological, abstract philosophy towards a more pragmatic, embodied approach to homiletics can, as a case study, be traced in the development of McClure’s own homiletical authorship. McClure’s homiletical development is of value for my work not only 7 McClure, Other-wise Preaching, xi.

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because it illustrates how preaching has evolved into new practices that challenge the traditional perception of the genre as one-way communication, but also because it makes explicit some of the implicit assumptions inherent in the genre and practice of preaching, namely the decentering influence of words of ‘others’, co-authorship, and polyphony. In his early work, The Four Codes of Preaching: Rhetorical Strategies, McClure categorizes theological uses of language under different codes of preaching. This book exemplifies a homiletic prioritizing of code over use, in continuation of Saussure’s insistence on the dominance of langue (the language system) over parole (human utterance). The premise of Four Codes of Preaching was that preaching is restricted by prior codes—theo-symbolic, semantic, scriptural, and cultural—in the form of homiletic culture, traditional styles, and language systems that determine preachers’ ‘use’ of theological language as well as the listeners’ reception thereof. In McClure’s later work he criticizes the understanding that paradigms of language and culture create reality, which he sees as having dominated the homiletical field for some thirty years.8 The homiletical rejection of structural linguistics can be traced in McClure’s The Roundtable Pulpit in which he reversed the early homiletic predominance of the coded langue system over human utterances. Instead of deciphering the codes and rhetorical styles of homiletics, The Roundtable Pulpit accentuated the conditions that produced the styles and the anticipated ethical and theological effects of communicative utterances. The book’s exploration of preachers taking the role of homiletic hosts, inviting members and strangers of the congregation in as partners of preaching, demonstrated the development of preaching away from the study of theological ideas and texts toward the field of embodied, lived theology, that is, in the midst of the congregation.9 Rather than approaching homiletics as a method of shaping consistent theological codes, the practice of roundtable preaching embarked on exploring how to develop a homiletic practice that corresponded with the way participants in worship weave together impressions, words, and experiences into frameworks of faith-experience or, in other words, how to ‘invent a language adequate to their having come into proximity with one another and the transcendent at this time and place.’10

8 Represented by structural linguists and linguistic philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) and Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004); McClure, ‘What I Now Think vis-—-vis Homiletic Theory’, 92. 9 Another emphasis on the importance of other-oriented ‘dislocation’ of biblical interpretation and preaching from its traditional place in the preacher’s office to public thresholds such as homeless shelters, emergency rooms, etc. has been practiced and theoretically reflected upon by Campbell and Saunders, The Word on the Street. 10 McClure, ‘What I Now Think vis-—-vis Homiletic Theory’, 94.

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Other-wise Communication Model for Preaching McClure has emphasized the need for, and envisioned the contours of, a new pragmatic model of communication for preaching although he has not yet developed one: What I think I see, therefore, is a glimmer of a new theology of communication that is no longer dominated by language and culture at all… we have the option to listen to multiple languages in order to gain some access to the conditions of life endured by others along with the ways that they are using language to help them find their way to God, and [sic] act that involves discerning God’s word. We listen, therefore, in order to expand, grow, increase our own world, language, and our discernment of God, and in order to co-create a new world of discernment and hope with others.11

Having rejected the traditional transfer model of communication, other-wise homileticians are searching for an alternative model of communication.12 In an unpublished paper, presented at the Academy of Homiletics, McClure has referred to the position of Bakhtin as one of the ‘post-semiotic philosophies of communication that [is] more dialogic in nature’13 than the traditional semiotic approaches. In spite of his acknowledgement of the potential of a Bakhtinian approach to preaching, McClure had not developed the Bakhtinian contribution further until his most recent book, published in 2011—Mashup Religion: Pop Music and Theological Invention. Here McClure acknowledges that he is moving between two rather different understandings of communication theories/ language philosophies: the ‘almost apophatic form of ethical linguistics pursued by Emmanuel L¦vinas … [and] a straight pragmatist view of language in which words are things in the world like anything else, a view in which the world and theological words codetermine one another’.14 The question that remains for McClure is ‘whether both options could not function as mutually informing limit-conditions.’15 As an implicit response to McClure’s question, what follows is a proposal, based on Bakhtinian dialogism, for how homileticians and preachers can approach the mixed genre of preaching so that it becomes a carnivalized genre that allows other-wise embodied voices, vocative texts, and incarnated truths to interact in a way that maintains and develops the polyphonic truth of the gospel. One of the potentials of developing other-wise preaching in collaboration with Bakhtinian communication theories is that the dialogical 11 12 13 14 15

Ibid., 98 – 99. Ibid. McClure, ‘Preaching Theology’, Quarterly Review 24.3 (2004): 256 – 57. McClure, Mashup Religion, 200 n. 86. Ibid.

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interaction and power-plays between the different parties become more visible, enabling preachers to enter into a continued dialogue in a more methodologically competent way.

Bakhtinian and ‘Other-wise’ Co-Authorship Common to Bakhtinian thinking and other-wise preaching practices is the understanding that dialogue is not a matter of trying to convince each other of one’s own, individual understanding. Insight cannot be transferred as if it is a package being sent from one who knows to someone who does not know. Understanding happens in interaction where teacher and learner, speaker and listener, preacher and congregation switch roles continually in order to get at a deeper understanding. The catalyst for dialogical understanding is ‘the other’, the foreign, as this ‘other’—the addressee—interacts with the interpreted text or object. The decisive difference between monological and dialogical utterances lies in whether the words of others (including texts and conversation partners) are used merely as scaffolding, which does not influence the building in itself, or if they are invited to have a constitutive impact on the whole.16 When Bakhtin describes how foreign words can be used as either scaffolding facilitating the ways that the constructor builds his own building, or as fundamental elements erecting a new original building that echoes the words of others, the distinction accords with how McClure describes the interactive co-authorship characterizing collaborative preaching practice: Collaboration is not the same as consultation. It is not using the insights of others to shore up the preacher’s homiletical messages. Collaboration means that others may, indeed, have something to teach the preacher, since there is no way that the preacher can sit where they sit. Another person’s reading of the gospel may transform the preacher’s interpretation entirely. When preachers have interacted with these interpretations, they may find themselves in the pulpit on Sunday morning proclaiming a very different Word than they otherwise could have expected.17

In accordance with McClure’s description of the importance of making room for ‘other-wise’ perspectives on the gospel, rather than the preacher’s empathic attempts to merely imagine the positions of others, Bakhtin dismisses the conviction that a fictionalized ideal listener can function in the stead of an embodied conversation partner.18 16 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 187. 17 McClure, Roundtable Pulpit, 23. 18 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 165.

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The Preacher as Guest and Host for a Polyphony of Voices The interactive, other-wise oriented preaching practice calls for new images for the preacher, distinct from the traditional herald-images that correspond with models of communication as a static one-way transfer of meaning from active preachers to passive listeners. The continual exchange of roles, which is crucial to the interactive dialogicity described by Bakhtin, challenges the traditional static images of preaching. Yet when tracing the images for preachers that are emerging from reflections on other-wise preaching, another striking correspondence between other-wise preaching and the works of Bakhtin emerges. In the book, Slow of Speech and Unclean Lips, based on a panel discussion at the Academy of Homiletics, McClure proposes a dynamic double role for the preacher : guest and host. There are numerous descriptions of the importance of the guest-host relationship in the New Testament and the implications are manifold and theologically significant. Yet in relation to other-oriented preaching practices the crucial characteristic lies in the relationship’s potential of role reversal.19 The story of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus serves as an illuminating prism for how this dynamic relationship can function in preaching. Like the disciples on the road, other-wise oriented preachers act as hosts when they invite strangers in to a dialogue about the gospel, but the host-role changes when the stranger interprets the scriptures differently from what the host expects. At this surprising encounter, ‘the preacher, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus become guests. As we host charismatic (gift-bearing) guests who “open scriptures” in striking new ways (Luke 24,32), we find ourselves suddenly guests, hosted by others.’20 The dynamic portrayal of the preacher as the host who becomes guest as s/ he invites in and listens to foreign perspectives21 is not only in accordance with the way Bakhtin describes how dialogical communication and understanding develops. It also shares crucial elements with the ‘polyphonic author-position’ developed by Dostoevsky in which the author has a polyphonic—instead of a traditional monological—relationship with his heroes in the novel. While a monologic work is a closed, finalized, unequivocal system, governed by one consciousness, the author, who is omniscient and has the final, decisive word,22 in a polyphonic work the author, as exemplified by Dostoevsky, 19 McClure, ‘Preacher as Guest and Host’, in Slow of Speech and Unclean Lips: Contemporary Images of Preaching Identity, ed. Robert Stephen Reid (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010), 119 – 43. 20 McClure, ‘Preacher as Guest and Host’, 123. 21 McClure, Roundtable Pulpit, 25 – 29. 22 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 293.

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relinquishes these monological privileges in favor of a polyphonic interaction between author, ‘heroes’, and readers.23 Seen from the perspective of an other-wise approach to preaching, emphasizing the embodied encounter between the dialogue partners, Bakhtin’s literary approach to polyphony and heteroglossia can function as an excuse for merely ventriloquizing the different voices of others throughout the medium of one’s own voice or writing. Yet from the perspective of several of his interpreters Bakhtin is first and foremost a pragmatic researcher of language in use, who continually emphasizes how the words, voices, and dialects of situated, speaking people are the indispensable essence of all discourse.24 Indeed, one of Bakhtin’s foundational interests is to show how these primary utterances of everyday speech are constitutive of the more complex secondary genres, such as preaching. According to Bakhtin, ‘in order that language becomes an artistic image, it must become speech from speaking lips, conjoined with the image of a speaking person.’25 Other-wise homiletics and Bakhtinian theories of communication and literature, in my interpretation, supplement each other well for developing a polyphonic pragmatic communication theory for preaching. Other-wise preaching practices provide preachers with ways of entering into dialogues with others about preaching texts, theology, and experience so that the relationship between preacher and congregation can become a dynamic interaction rather than a static attempt of transfer. What the Bakhtinian approach might add to these encounters are literary means of transforming the roundtable dialogue into polyphonic preaching so that the genre of preaching, although monological in form, functions as a dialogical interaction, not only at the roundtable conversation, but also around the pulpit. How this polyphonic kind of preaching might relate to the truthfulness of preaching as the Word of God will be described in the following.

Contemporary Other-wise Preaching as the Word from God Reactions towards listener-oriented preaching, such as the collaborative practice of roundtable preaching, are often that they might succeed at responding to the situation of the immediate dialogue partners but that they thereby exclude a wider audience, such as the diversified group of listeners at a Sunday service. Another critique is that the collaborative co-authorship of the

23 Andersen, I en verden af fremmede ord, 41 – 42. 24 Ibid., 11 – 12. 25 Bakhtin, Dialogical Imagination, 336.

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congregation threatens to dismiss the ‘othering’ impact of scripture or divine agency.26 The critique implying an either/or between concrete versus universal addressees as well as that of dual—or triple authorship—can be disputed with Bakhtin, who claims that communication always happens in dialogue with immediate as well as distant discourses and dialogue partners. The question is not so much whom we are in dialogue with, because the larger discourse is always loaded with several competing dialogue partners and the concrete word is always a two-sided action. The determining factor as to whether preaching is dialogical is how we engage in these several concurrent dialogues: in an open, unfinalizing or a reductive, finalizing manner. In Roundtable Pulpit McClure rejects traditional inductive27 and narrative28 homiletics because the preachers use stock forms of argumentation, based on the preacher’s own induction and Aristotelian anticipatory emplotment based on standard literary forms.29 Instead of letting either the plot/form of the biblical text30 structure the sermon McClure suggests letting the brainstorming conversation of a roundtable preaching group structure the sermon held in the pulpit: ‘[T]he collaborative sermon must both describe and imitate in the pulpit the collaborative process of sermon brainstorming that took place in the sermon roundtable.’31 Although McClure acknowledges that the preacher in her/his sermon may argue against the direction set by the roundtable conversation, it is crucial to the Roundtable preaching32 that the direction and plot of the sermon is loyal to the collaborative movement. As indicated by McClure’s rejection and conversational alternative there are many homiletical prescriptions for how the sermon ought to be structured: according to the biblical text (Barth); ‘literary forms of the bible’ (Long); repetition of the biblical text, potentially replotted according to how meaning forms in contemporary consciousness (Buttrick); five stages of narrative emplotment based on Aristotle (Lowry); etc. Although all these approaches have their good reasons for being loyal to either the biblical text, contemporary consciousness, or narrative and inductive logics, they all have a tendency to let the sermon be a secondary, derivative representation of a more original text, experience, or insight. 26 Cf. Thomas Long’s critique of collaborative preaching as a one-way transfer from congregation to scripture in Long, Witness of Preaching, 36. 27 Eg., Craddock, As One Without Authority. 28 Eg., Thomas G. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989), and Lowry, Homiletical Plot. 29 McClure, Roundtable Pulpit, 116. 30 As suggested by, among others, Karl Barth: ‘In preaching it is necessary to follow the direction of the text and to relate it to our own times, the text shows where the road leads, but we have to walk on it at the present day’ (Barth, Prayer and Preaching [London: SCM Press, 1964], 105). 31 McClure, Roundtable Pulpit, 57. 32 In McClure’s later works he does suggest other ways of structuring sermons. For examples, see Mashup Religion.

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In comparison to the homiletical reflections on the sermonic representational emplotment in the authorship of Dostoevsky, the dialogical elements of carnivalization and polyphony have their own particular impact. They neither make the plot unnecessary nor let it have the final word: Plot in Dostoevsky is absolutely devoid of any sort of finalizing functions. Its goal is to place a person in various situations that expose and provoke him, to bring people together and make them collide in conflict—in such a way, however, that they do not remain within this area of plot-related contact but exceed its bounds. The real connections begin where the ordinary plot ends, having fulfilled its service function.33

The notion of truth as emerging in the encounter between a plurality of perspectives rather than possessed as an individual insight corresponds, in my interpretation, with McClure’s description of how the Word of God emerges in the communal process of dialogue34.

Comparison of the Homiletics of Campbell and McClure McClure’s explorations of the theological implications of preachers who exchange the traditional role of the herald with that of the host who invites strangers in as partners of preaching implies a physical movement of preaching. The development of theological ideas and sermonic structure is moved from the preacher’s office toward the field of embodied, lived theology of the congregation. A similar physical ‘dislocation’ of preaching from its traditional places in the preacher’s office to public thresholds has also been practiced and theorized by Charles L. Campbell, whose works on homiletical ‘dis’-location and foolishness I also will analyze in dialogue with Bakhtinian theories. However, before I enter into the analysis of Campbell’s homiletics in its own right, a comparison of McClure’s and Campbell’s homiletical positions will be useful. McClure and Campbell both reject the structuralistic approach to exegesis and preaching but for different reasons. As described above, McClure has, in The Four Codes of Preaching, analyzed the usefulness of a structuralist approach to homiletics but rejected it in favor of a L¦vinas-inspired focus on the boundary-breaking impact of proximity connected to the act of preaching. In distinction from McClure’s attempts of ‘inventing’ a language that corresponds with the worshippers’ experience of encountering each other 33 Appendix 1 from the 1929 edition of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 276 – 77. 34 McClure, Roundtable Pulpit, 24. A point I will further explore in chapter nine.

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and the transcendent at a designated time and place,35 Campbell holds on to certain tenets that could be interpreted as endorsing structuralist principles of prioritizing and separating codes and grammar of language from contextual use, but—building upon the post-liberal works of Hans Frei—instead emphasize that learning the grammar of Scripture happens by participation in a community of interpretation: Christians learn to interpret Scripture not by learning general hermeneutical or literary theories, but by being trained to apply the informal rules and conventions for the use of Scripture that are embodied in the language and practices of the Christian community.36

Although Campbell emphasizes the need to train people in the appropriate ‘grammar’ of Christian language, he is also highly critical of the structuralist approach. Following the lead of Ricoeur, Campbell criticizes the structuralist emphasis on showing the basic structures shared by all narratives rather than focusing on the particularities of the concrete biblical text to be interpreted and preached on.37 The position of Campbell resembles Bakhtin’s analysis demonstrating that contextual language in use is what shapes interpretation and development of speech genres rather than general rules and theories. Of particular note is Campbell’s comparison of preaching with jazz improvisation—an interesting insight when considering his post-liberal descriptions of how the Christian ‘language’ and ‘grammar’ are crucial in shaping belief and Christian practice. The musical focus clearly separates Campbell’s approach from Saussure’s description of language as a rule-ordered game of chess: Preaching, in this sense, is something like jazz improvisation. Starting with a basic ‘text’ of music, jazz musicians do not translate that text into a new language, but rather ‘go on’ with the language of the text in new ways for new contexts.38

The post-liberal focus on using the language of the gospel in order to cultivate listeners as practitioners of the word resembles in some ways the kind of deciphering and prolonging of theological codes that McClure criticizes. Yet, inherent in Campbell’s emphasis on preaching as a long, slow process of training is a critique of the New Homiletics’ New Hermeneutics-inspired attempts to transform preaching into existential, individual ‘language events’.39 Critiquing the recent focus on preaching as disparate events, Campbell explores the theological, world-shaping potential of appropriating the 35 McClure, ‘What I now Think vis-—-vis Homiletic Theory’, 94. 36 Campbell, Preaching Jesus, 84. 37 Campbell refers to Ricoeur’s argumentation of why structuralist analysis falls short of interpreting the gospel narratives in Ricoeur’s ‘Interpretative Narrative’. Cf. Campbell, Preaching Jesus, 169 n. 5. 38 Ibid., 263. 39 Campbell, Preaching Jesus, 238.

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particularities of biblical language and Christological utterances in the interpretation that: Christian speech changes situations by providing people with a language—a world of discourse—that may be learned and come to shape the world for them, even if no ‘experiential event’ initially occurs.40

Textualized Experiences versus Experientalized Texts In a review of Campbell’s Preaching Jesus, John McClure has criticized what he sees as Campbell’s ‘overemphasis’ on the text on behalf of the listeners’ experience. As I shall show in the following chapter, I find that McClure’s critique has been negated by Campbell’s more recent research into the impact of physical location and embodied presence on preaching, and the newer work of both McClure and Campbell propose radical alternatives to the transfer model of theological communication. Therefore, when McClure’s critique is still repeated here it is partly because it gives a rather concise summary of certain other-wise homileticians’ critique of the post-liberal position: Is the polarity between the biblical text and experience overstated? Campbell shares with postliberals a vehement certainty that there must be a polarity between text and experience. Ironically, this polarity is mirrored by many within the liberal tradition, who simply reverse the polarity by making experience prior and text secondary. What is lost, in this chicken-egg epistemological warfare, it would seem, are the many ways that text and experience are intervowen.41

The chicken-egg epistemological warfare over text versus experience has taken many forms throughout history. One of the more recent clashes can be recognized in the encounter between Gerhard Ebeling, who claims that experience is constitutive of language, and George Lindbeck, who argues that language has primacy over experience. On the one hand, Ebeling describes language as an outer articulation of an existential event and so interprets the work of Martin Luther in an existentialist/expressivist way that gives him reasons to claim that ‘the authority to use the language of faith is a matter of experience. Language arises only from experience.’42 On the other hand, cultural-linguistic interpretations, as described by George Lindbeck, regard experience and meaning-making as derivative of grammar and language. Lindbeck claims that ‘[i]nstead of 40 Ibid., 239. 41 McClure, Review of Charles Campbell’s Preaching Jesus, Journal for Preachers 21.2 (1998): 36. 42 Ebeling qtd. in Vitor Westhelle, ‘Communication and the Transgression of Language in Martin Luther’, Lutheran Quarterly XVII (2003): 13.

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deriving external features of religious language from inner experience, it is inner experiences which are viewed as derivative.’43 As an alternative, McClure suggests a via media between the traditional dichotomous split between text and experience. The via media should help preachers recognize how text and experience are in fact intermingled and thus encourage them to both ‘textualize experience’ and ‘experientialize the text’44 in the practice of preaching. The description of the via media recognizing the intermingling of text and experience resonates with the works of Bakhtin and his colleague Voloshinov, who criticize both ‘individualistic subjectivism’— whose proponents see language as a product of subjective experience—and ‘abstract objectivism’45—which regards subjective experience as derived from objective norms of linguistic grammar. Rather than give primacy to subjective, spontaneous, or objective authoritative language, Bakhtin suggests that situated communication is what constitutes meaning-making, not language per se. In order to understand human communication we must thus analyze the situated conditions under which utterances emerge, because all utterances are embedded in concretely embodied interactions.

Three-Fold Foolishness of Homiletics A final element, evoked by the Bakhtinian approach to a comparative analysis of the authorships of Campbell and McClure, is that of foolishness. While the stress on foolishness is evident in Campbell’s recent work,46 it has been less overt in McClure’s very ethically oriented concern to enter into non-violent conversations with marginalized others. Inherent in the homiletical exposure to the other, inspired by L¦vinas, however, lies the potential of ‘pure non-sense invading and threatening signification … folly at the confines of reason’,47 which guards the sermonic encounter from a retreat to monologic essentialism and sameness.48 McClure describes how the continual orientation toward the stranger not only disrupts the preacher’s practical preparation but, also, on a theoretical level, breaks in and places the academic discipline of homiletics ‘under deconstructive erasure’.49 When it comes to the discipline of homiletics Campbell’s approach 43 Lindbeck qtd. in ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Valentin Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 48. 46 Campbell, ‘Preacher as Ridiculous Person’, and Campbell and Cilliers, Preaching Fools. 47 Emmanuel L¦vinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence 50. 48 McClure, Other-wise Preaching, 121. 49 Ibid., xi.

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manifests and recognizes a three-fold foolishness. The first foolishness is that of the gospel to be preached.50 The second foolishness characterizes preachers trying to preach the foolishness. And the third foolishness concerns those homileticians who try to analyze and teach preaching. As Campbell says, Teaching preaching is in some ways utter folly. For all the wisdom of homiletics cannot bring someone to faith or enable someone to look. All the wisdom of homiletics cannot teach someone the foolishness—the scandal—of the gospel. And even for preachers who learn to “look,” even for those who “get” the scandal, all the homiletical insights in the world can never tell them how to capture what they see in words.51

In spite of the shared recognition of the foolishness of homiletics, or rather, based on the disturbing interaction between ‘confounding words’ and unsettled time, space, and bodies, we will now trace the contours of a chronotopic, carnivalesque homiletics in dialogue with Bakhtin and Campbell.

50 This first foolishness is particularly articulated in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘[W]e preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength’ (I Cor 1: 22 – 25, NIV). 51 Campbell, ‘Preacher as Ridiculous Person’, 106.

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Chapter 8: Chronotopic, Carnivalesque Preaching In his earlier work Charles Campbell1 has focused on the Christological, ethical, and apocalyptic aspects of preaching, but in recent publications his emphasis has moved to the physical situatedness and foolishness of preaching in ways that resonate with Bakhtin’s descriptions of dialogue and carnivalization. As the following analyses will show, Campbell’s homiletics manifests the kind of dialogical interaction with physical, extra-textual sources that I suggest is characteristic of the genre of preaching. In The Word on the Street: Performing the Scriptures in the Urban Context, Campbell takes a pragmatic approach to the relationship between biblical text and physically situated experience, emphasizing the interconnectedness of and potentially fruitful disruptions between outer authoritarian texts and inner convincing experiences. Campbell has studied the interaction between text and experience by interpreting scripture and preaching practices in secular threshold places, such as the street, and showed how these settings transform the interpretation and experience of biblical texts and sermons. Although Campbell himself has done extensive work in biblical interpretation, particularly the Pauline letters, he nevertheless underscores the limitations of traditional individually performed exegesis that attempts to ‘lead meaning out of ’ the text2 and suggests a more interactive approach to biblical exegesis and interpretation. The title of one of the chapters in The Word on the Street captures precisely this two-sided action: ‘Reading the Bible Through the Lens of the Streets, Reading the Streets Through the Lens of the Bible.’3

The Confounding Word of Holy Fools While the assertion of the importance of learning the Christian language4 might seem as if Campbell is advocating a one-directional influence from the authoritative word of the gospel to the lives of the congregation or community of interpretation, his recent focus on the foolishness of preaching, as well as his actual practice of preaching, reveals an understanding that is much closer to 1 2 3 4

Professor of Homiletics at Duke University Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina. Campbell and Saunders, Word on the Street, 86 – 87. Ibid., 86. Campbell, Preaching Jesus, 84.

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Bakhtin’s analysis5 of the intricate process of oscillating between internally convincing and external authoritarian words. As a homiletical example of the tension between ‘one’s own’ words and the ‘words of others’, Campbell’s ‘Closing Convocation’ sermon, held April 20, 2011 in Goodson Chapel at Duke Divinity School, is illustrative. In the opening passage of this sermon,6 Campbell refers to the ‘confounding word’ and its impact on the odd, yet decisive state of being ‘in-between’. The ambiguity of the confounding word in Campbell’s preaching practice has striking similarities with Bakhtin’s descriptions of the challenges of appropriating an outer, authoritative word.7 Campbell’s attention to the ‘confounding’ word, the foolishness of preaching, and the role of the grotesque body furthermore resembles Bakhtin’s descriptions of carnival in many ways, especially when Campbell describes the radicalized acts of preaching performed by the ‘holy fools’, which, although often ignored, have played a continuing role within the history of preaching: these holy fools engaged in an intentional, carefully orchestrated kind of street theatre. They offered up a kind of daily ‘carnival’ that unmasked the social hierarchies and decorum of the day and turned the wisdom and power of the world on its head. They lampooned and burlesqued social structures and systems shaped by the power of sin and death in order to unmask human sin and to help set people free from the powers.8

Campbell’s focus on the carnivalesque preaching of ‘holy fools’, exemplified by Symeon the Fool, Francis of Assisi, Jesus, and Paul9—rather than the folk festivals of Rabelaisian carnivals—gives him, however, a somewhat different context than that of Bakhtin. Campbell’s approach to sermonic carnivalization will thus, in the following, be analyzed in reference to Dostoevsky-interpreter Harriet Murav’s10 emphasis on the continuances with and differences from the Bakhtinian approach to carnival and holy foolishness. Campbell describes how Murav’s radical interpretations of the naked street preachers radically changed his former understanding of this obscure historical practice. In light of his former research on homiletical ethics Campbell had originally interpreted the history of naked street preaching as the embodiment of the kind of social ethic that has traditionally been at the center of his studies. Central to The Word before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching and Preaching Jesus: New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology is the focus on the social ethic of preaching and the 5 See “Discourse in the Novel,” in Dialogical Imagination, 342 – 48. 6 ‘Closing Convocation Sermon’, http://divinity.duke.edu/news-media/news/20110502closingconv (accessed 5 April, 2013). 7 In Dialogical Imagination, 342 – 48. 8 Campbell, ‘Preacher as Ridiculous Person’, 97. 9 Ibid., 90 – 99. 10 Harriet Murav, Holy Foolishness: Dostoevsky’s Novels and the Poetics of Cultural Critique (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992)

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exploration of ways of resisting oppressive forces through communitybuilding preaching. At first the preaching practices of the holy fools seemed to embody and exemplify this ethical approach to preaching. Yet, on a closer encounter Campbell describes how the phenomenon and theological implications of the ‘naked street preachers’ changed his mind about homiletics in theory and practice because the insight into the foolish role of these historical figures ‘began to unmask and lampoon the foolishness of homiletics itself—the foolishness of both preaching and teaching preaching.’11

The Scandalous Particularity of Street Preaching Instead of describing the holy fools as displaying ethical virtues worthy of emulating, it was the scandalous particularity of the street preachers’ witness that seemed to set the stage for the ‘problem of recognition.’12 As described by Campbell: They enacted a spectacle that was always, intentionally, susceptible to a double interpretation—just like Jesus’ scandalous life, death, and resurrection. Through their carnivalesque street theater, the holy fools, including the naked street preachers, created a space that provoked people to learn to ‘look.’ They enacted events that challenged people to discern the gospel within the scandal—the holiness within the madness. It was all carefully staged to provoke a kind of looking, a way of ‘seeing.’13

In his interpretation of the ‘holy fools’ Campbell emphasizes how scripturebased, ecclesiastical practices often overlook how much of preaching in the Bible is situated in the streets14 and public places. By ‘street preaching’ Campbell refers to acts of preaching that are taken ‘out to people in public places rather than waiting for people to come to the preacher.’15 Campbell refers to Kierkegaard in a way that echoes the Bakhtinian insight that genres are defined and transformed by their situatedness in time and space.16 The spatio-temporal significance of the genre of preaching is emphasized when Campbell joins Kierkegaard in claiming that when preaching is reserved for certain ‘quiet places and quiet hours’ its very nature 11 12 13 14

Campbell, ‘Preacher as Ridiculous Person’, 100. Murav, Holy Foolishness, 97. Campbell, ‘Preacher as Ridiculous Person’, 101. Street preaching is thereby separated from ‘open air’ preaching events, such as the ‘crusades’ of Billy Graham (b. 1918) and much of the preaching of the Awakenings in the US in the early eighteenth and the late nineteenth centuries (Campbell and Saunders, Word on the Street, 97). 15 Campbell and Saunders, Word on the Street. 16 Bakhtin, ‘Chronotope in the Novel’, in Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination.

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is transformed. In contrast to the liturgical approaches to preaching, Kierkegaard17 claims that: sermons should not be preached in churches. It harms Christianity in a high degree and alters its very nature, that it is brought into an artistic remoteness from reality, instead of being heard in the midst of real life, and that precisely for the sake of the conflict (the collision). For all this talk about quiet, about quiet places and quiet hours, as the right element for Christianity, is absurd… . So then sermons should not be preached in the churches but in the street, in the midst of life, of the reality of daily life, weekday life.18

Kierkegaard stresses time and again the importance of preaching on the street, often followed by a reference to Luther.19 The British Kierkegaard and Bakhtin scholar, George Pattison, argues that the ‘governing principle of the Kierkegaard carnival—as perhaps, the Bakhtinian, Dostoyevskyan and indeed Medieval is indeed theological.’ Such a theological principle in the Kierkegaardian carnivalization is manifested by his continuous focus on whether and how believers today can become contemporary followers of Christ:20 [T]he decisive issue of contemporary Christian life is whether it is possible to believe that, in any real sense, one is contemporary with Christ … [P]ractice Christianity ‘here in Copenhagen, in Amager Square, in the everyday hustle and bustle of weekday life.’21 That, at least, is Kierkegaard’s view and as a result he sees this same weekday life of the modern city as the stage on which Christian truth is to be acted out.22

Interpreted together the perspectives of Bakhtin and Kierkegaard seem to support the position of Campbell regarding carnivalization of traditional chronotopes for preaching and proclamation.

17 It should be noted here that Kierkegaard himself, although primarily known as a Socratic street wanderer in dialogue with the citizens on the streets of Copenhagen, did preach several times in the Church of our Lady, the Cathedral of Copenhagen. 18 Kierkegaard, Attack upon ‘Christendom’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 2. In his often expressed emphasis on the problem of reserving preaching for specific times and places, Kierkegaard refers to Martin Luther’s sermon on Acts 6:8 – 14 and 7:54 – 59 in which he criticizes the tendency to build private chapels and altars. As a rejection of this tendency Luther suggests that it would be beneficial if preaching instead was performed in regular houses and under the sky, as was done by Jesus and the Apostles. 19 Particularly in his writings attacking the church that were published in his own pamphlet series Øieblikket (The Moment) from 1855. 20 Cf. Kierkegaard’s analysis of the contemporary follower in Philosophical Fragments, 55 – 71. 21 Kierkegaard, SV3 16, 59. 22 Pattison, ‘Bakhtin’s Category of Carnival‘, 127.

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The Chronotopic Significance of Street Preaching In ways that seem to converge with Bakhtin’s emphasis on the interrelatedness of time and space in human cognition as well as in literary works, Campbell has explored the impact on biblical exegesis and proclamation when the traditional spaces for theological studies are exchanged with more extreme threshold situations such as the prison and the street. Reinforcing and yet complicating this approach is the on-going discussion in the practical theological field regarding the proper place for the genre of preaching. Liturgically oriented theologians, for example, refer to the ritual-theoretical studies of Cathrine Bell, who indicates that the shaping of religious meaning and level of participation is inextricably connected to the physical placement and movements within designated spaces for ritualistic activity such as church buildings at designated times.23 Based on these studies, preaching and religious meaning appear to be inextricably connected to the church room. The ritual theoretic position therefore stands in opposition to contemporary homileticians, like Campbell, who (extending Kierkegaard’s line of thought) see it as a distortion of original Christianity that there should be designated ‘quiet times and places’ for worship and preaching. Although it would be highly relevant to explore the thesis that preaching belongs in the public square rather than a designated liturgical space, my focus here is on the extent to which the impact of time and place subverts or reinforces the verbal and textual interpretation and communication and how the Bakhtinian notion of the chronotope can help nuance such an examination. In ways that resemble Bakhtin’s emphasis on the chronotopic situatedness of textual interpretations and performances, sociological24 and literary researchers have increasingly dwelt on the importance of the social location of authors and readers as well as speakers and listeners. Yet in recent times the impact of physical location, in addition to the social, has gained growing attention.25 In accordance with this sociological and literary movement one of the most remarkable steps taken by Campbell towards carnivalesque preaching is to explore the impact of performing exegesis and preaching when the traditional spaces for theological studies are exchanged with more extreme threshold situations such as the street and the prison. As forcefully shown by Campbell, physical location plays a decisive role in interpretation: ‘Social location’ itself is usually articulated in terms of elements of our personal identity, especially race, gender, and socioeconomic status. But these elements of ‘social location’ take on different priority and meaning in the different physical 23 See Nielsen, Genopførelser. 24 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and the Genesis of “Classes”’, in Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). 25 Michel Foucault, ‘Des espaces autres’, in Foucault, Dits et Êcrits, vol. 4 (Paris: Gallimard, 1994).

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locations through which we move in life. Thus, if social location plays a crucial role in the interpretation of Scripture, then so do the physical settings in which we read.26

In addition to his literary, exegetical studies, Campbell is in the process of exploring the impact of different time-spaces for interpretation of biblical texts and preaching. Recognizing the determining influence the local contexts of the Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, and others had on the development of the letters of Paul, Campbell explores the impact of that insight in contemporary preaching practice and homiletical reflection. Campbell thereby demonstrates how the genre of preaching can be approached as a ‘two-sided’ action, in the words of Bakhtin, in which ancient and contemporary contexts and chronotopes influence each other reciprocally : When we read the Bible with our classes on the streets of Atlanta, we use the same methodological tools we do in classrooms at the seminary. The only difference is the physical space itself, and our usually heightened sensitivities. The sights, sounds, smells, social arrangements, and experiences form the canvas for our engagement with the text. The principle is simple: where we learn shapes what we learn, and where we read shapes how we read.27

The exegesis and preaching preparation at public places such as squares, hospital waiting rooms, homeless shelters, hotel lobbies, public transportation centers, etc., can also be interpreted in light of Bakhtin’s analysis of the chronotopes of Dostoevsky’s novels.28 Space and places for action are crucial symbols in carnivalized genres in general and in Dostoevsky’s novels in particular,29 and public squares and thresholds are typical spaces for the carnivalized plot to occur, marked as it is by openness, unfinishedness, hierarchical structures, and reversal of roles. That the movements in thresholds and peripheries characteristic of the carnivalesque genres are of crucial importance in the gospels is particularly striking in the gospel of Mark. As described by the Danish New Testament scholar, Henrik Tronier, the periphery becomes the new place for the people of Christ, the ‘Christ-ethnos’. The movement towards Jerusalem, the traditional center, does not happen in order to enforce the center of worship but rather to dissolve it, as manifested in the revolt against the temple and the political and religious rulers. The same transcendence of ethnic boundaries manifested by the back and forth crossing of the lake in the beginning of the gospel is marked by the continuous crossing of the city limit of Jerusalem. Furthermore, the institution of the Eucharist in the house instead of the temple can be seen as another manifestation of the ethnically transcended room/place as precon26 27 28 29

Campbell and Saunders, Word on the Street, 88. Ibid., 89. In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. See chap. 2 and my discussion of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

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ceived in the miracle stories of the feeding of the crowds in Mark 6:30 – 44 and 8:1 – 9.30 The chronotope designates the interrelatedness of time and space, not only for literary production but also for the reader’s and listener’s interpretation and co-authorship. Describing their importance in ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’, Bakhtin states: What is the significance of all these chronotopes? What is most obvious is their meaning for narrative. They are the organizing centers for the fundamental narrative events of the novel. The chronotope is the place where the knots of narrative are tied and untied. It can be said without qualification that to them belongs the meaning that shapes narrative.31

Although the Bakhtinian chronotope is primarily analyzed as a literary phenomenon, the interaction between exterior ‘real-life chronotopes’ and ‘literary chronotopes’ is of particular relevance for the complex speech genre of preaching developed in the tension field between biblical texts and contemporarily situated spoken utterances. Bakhtin describes how in ancient times the ‘real life chronotope’ was intrinsically connected to the public square and how [i]t is precisely under the conditions of this real-life chronotope, in which one’s own or another’s life is laid bare (that is, made public), that the limits of a human image and the life it leads are illuminated in all their specificity.32

Carnivalesque Sermon: ‘An Unsettling Debut’ As a significant example of the creative potential of linking literary chronotopes with the chronotopes of everyday life in the carnivalesque genre of preaching, Campbell’s sermon—‘An Unsettling Debut’33—on Matthew 2:1 – 12 is quite illuminating. The sermon develops and explores carnivalesque chronotopes, as when Campbell states that ‘Time becomes unsettled … Space also becomes unsettled … , becomes unsettled by Jesus’ big debut’.34 Campbell describes the unsettling of space as evoked by the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, rather than in Jerusalem, which has traditionally been regarded the center of power and kingship, while the unsettling of time is 30 Cf. Henrik Tronier, ‘Markusevangeliets Jesus som biografiseret erkendelsesfigur’, in Frelsens Biografisering, ed. Henrik Tronier and Thomas L. Thompson (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005), 243 – 45. 31 Bakhtin, Dialogical Imagination, 250. 32 Ibid., 131. 33 Given at Duke University Chapel, Durham, North Carolina, on January 4, 2009, http://ondemand.duke.edu/video/19290/an-unsettling-debut. 34 Campbell, ‘An Unsettling Debut.’

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manifested by Matthew’s emphasis that it was ‘in the time of King Herod’. Thus mention of the reign of Herod can be seen as a symbolically loaded utterance rather than an informative detail. Due to the birth of Jesus at this marginalized place and tension-filled time, ‘Everything becomes unsettled. Time, space, characters’.35 After describing the unsettling of the literary chronotope in Matthew, Campbell then moves on to the ‘real life chronotope’ of the congregation. Keeping in mind the magis’ boldness in worshipping the newborn king Jesus, rather than the reigning king Herod, Campbell asserts that ‘[a]ll our worship is subversive’ because it testifies to belief in a counter-story. As a result, the connection between Matthew’s literary and the ‘real life’ chronotope of the congregation becomes particularly manifest when Campbell describes the unsettling position in which Matthew places his addressees: Like carnival houses of mirrors, distorted, bent out of shape… . Trying to keep our balance in order to figure out what is real and what is illusion … Matthew sits us down in one of those carnival houses of mirrors and at this point in the story he just leaves us there.36

Campbell continues to intermingle the chronotopes of the nativity story with the disturbing time-space of the listeners of the sermon: ‘Maybe it’s good for us to be unsettled for a while by this public Jesus who interrupts our business as usual. Many faithful disciples actually begin with this unsettling which disrupts the old order and invites us to something new.’37 The sermon develops further with themes derived from Campbell’s carnivalesque interpretation of marginalized outsiders as ‘holy fools’. Here he sees the magis as such holy fools, whose foolishness is accentuated by the fact that they were laughed at and mocked by serious scholars. Campbell goes on to depict the presence of contemporary scandalous street preachers who continue to unsettle the world and the church as holy fools, marked by their disturbing witness of another order, and in particular he describes a barefooted Korean street preacher who used to be professor but now wanders the streets and subways of Seoul proclaiming the gospel. Campbell interprets the reactions toward the message of this Korean street preacher and his scandalous appearance, emphasizing the ambiguity connected with proclamation: ‘Maybe he was just a crazy old man. Or maybe he was one of the magi, unsettling the world. Inviting us into a new space and a new time.’38 In addition to the connection between literary and everyday life timespaces and the ambiguity surrounding foolish preachers, Campbell also describes a reversal of roles and traditional hierarchies as when he tells of his 35 36 37 38

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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experiences at a homeless ministry in Atlanta. In this carnivalesque encounter the homeless tell the visitors what to do and share their leftover doughnuts in a way that turned the usual orders of the world upside down. Campbell states: We took them and we broke them and shared them around that circle. In a very small way it rearranged the world. I think that homeless man was one of the magi, inviting us to the town of Bethlehem, which means town of bread. And I can no longer come to this table and eat this bread without remembering that other meal and the new order in it.39

The chronotopic loopholes between the nativity story in the gospel of Matthew and the congregation whose time-space becomes unsettled by the disturbingly foolish magi and street preachers confirm the interpretation of Campbell’s sermon and preaching practice as carrying significant traits of carnivalization.

‘The Gospel, too, is Carnival’ In Bakhtin’s interpretation both the New Testament Gospels and early Christian preaching40 are carnivalesque genres,41 yet one of the serious questions that has emerged in response to Bakhtinian carnivalization might also bear further critical reflection in relation to my interpretation of Campbell’s ‘dislocated exegesis’ and ‘extreme homiletics’ as a kind of carnivalesque homiletics. Bakhtin emphasizes how carnival and the carnivalesque genres, due to their destabilization of traditional hierarchies, are capable of opening up the potential for re-birth: [B]y relativizing all that was externally stable, set and ready made, carnivalization, with its pathos of change and renewal permitted Dostoevsky to penetrate into the deepest layers of man and human relationships.42

In contrast to Bakhtin’s own optimistic interpretation of the revolutionary prospect of carnival and my present exploration of the notion as a fruitful understanding of the genre of preaching, critics of Bakhtin are less optimistic about carnivalization. These critics refer both to the works of Dostoevsky43 and the gospels to show how carnival also can lead to violence and death. Bakhtin-scholar Emerson notes: [A] certain nervousness about carnival in practice—its potential for anarchy and victimization—has tended to encourage a demonization of carnival rather than a 39 40 41 42 43

Ibid. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 135. Qtd. from Emerson, First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin, 37. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 166. Murav refers to Dostoevsky’s The Devils to show how ‘“Carnival” leads to a frightening chaos’ (Holy Foolishness, 9).

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celebration of its possibly sacred roots. Many Russians would concur with Natalia Reed’s wary remark in response to … Bakhtin’s insistence that the Gospels were carnival, too: ‘Indeed they are. Up to and including the mob-lynching of Christ.’44

The risk of violence when the ‘multitude’ gathers for carnival and the demeaningly reducing gaze that can dominate in the momentarily change of roles of interlocutors are a latent danger of carnival. In recognition of this critique, I find it important to emphasize that the practice of preaching is most fruitfully performed when it achieves a balance between centrifugal and centripetal forces of carnivalization and dialogicity. In this delicate balance the genre of preaching might have the potential of keeping the dialogue open and decentering enough to remain a triologue between the preacher, the other-wise co-authors, and the Wholly Other.

Concluding Remarks There are significant insights to be gained from Campbell’s reflections on and experiments with alternative places and times for preaching as compared to the traditional ‘quiet hours and places’. In my view, the works of Campbell transcend traditional text-hermeneutical tendencies toward a dichotomous separation of text and situation, thinking and embodiment.45 Consequently, I find the discipline of homiletics can learn how the embodiment of communicative interaction plays a crucial role and how physical situatedness and interaction does not necessarily entail a situative slavery46 that closes off universal dialogues and unfinalized intertextual echoes; rather the chronotopic situatedness entails an inexhaustive number of ‘loopholes’47 that surpass the present situation and conversation partners. Based on a dialogical interpretation of the homiletical insights of Campbell and the Bakhtinian notion of the ‘chronotope’, I believe that insight into the significance of the situated placement of preachers and congregations (whether liturgical time-space, contemporary public squares, or other thresholds) has the potential to lead to a fruitful engagement with the chronotopes of biblical texts as well as voices and perspectives foreign to the individual situations. 44 Emerson, First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin, 175. 45 However, this intrinsic relationship has been increasingly recognized in recent years. See Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh. 46 See chap. 4. The emphasis on the situatively embedded participants in the act of preaching could be seen as a critical reversal of Paul Ricoeur’s proposal to read human actions as texts; cf. ‘The model of the Text.’ However, Ricoeur’s hermeneutical project does take the significance of embodied practice into account. 47 See chap. 4 for a description of Bakhtin’s notion of the loophole.

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Chapter 9: The Double Otherness of Dialogical Preaching Introduction The present analysis of the genre of preaching and contemporary homiletical positions has so far primarily turned on questions of inter-human otherness —questions that are at the heart not only of the Bakhtinian oeuvre, but of contemporary philosophical and sociological discussions. Although the Bakhtinian approach is not theological in a traditional sense I find that its dialogical, other-oriented concern carries a crucial potential for contemporary religious practices and theological reflection. In the following I will unfold the theoretical framework, developed by Kierkegaard, Barth, and Jüngel that can help evoke the theological potential in this Bakhtinian focus on otherness. At the same time I hope that the practice-theoretical analyses from the preceding chapters will serve to illumine and reinterpret the theological discussions in a homiletical context. When it comes to the theological anthropology inherent in dialogical preaching practices,1 my emphasis on a dual alterity as constitutive of preaching challenges some of the traditional theological understandings of human differences as insignificant compared to the qualitative difference between God and humans. In order to account for this understanding I will use the positions of Bakhtin and contemporary homileticians to challenge those approaches that tend to dismiss the quantitative inter-human differences in light of the greater qualitative distinction between God and humans. As a corrective I will suggest that attention to the double otherness of the divine-human and inter-human relationships can be theologically stimulating and homiletically fruitful.

Dialogical versus Dialectical Differences One of the philosophical approaches to difference, which Bakhtin criticizes and from which I wish to distance my understanding, is that which issues from certain kinds of dialectics. In Bakhtin’s interpretation the dialectics inherent in the dialogues of Socrates manifest a dialogic understanding of the world,2 1 See chaps. 6, 7, and 8. 2 Cf. Dialogicity in the third sense described in chap. 2.

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yet this dialogical sense slowly fades through history and gets lost in the dialectics of Hegel and Marx.3 According to Bakhtin, dialectics loses its dialogical anchoring when it severs itself from situatively positioned voices and bodies: Dialogue and dialectics. Take a dialogue and remove the voices …, remove the intonations …, carve out abstract concepts and judgments from living words and responses, cram everything into one abstract consciousness—and that’s how you get dialectics.4

Now, Bakhtin is obviously giving a rather simplified and polemic account of dialectics but the problem with dialectical thinking, abstracted from dialogical interaction, is that it can be conducted within a ‘single consciousness’. Bakhtin likens the monological dialectical process to a ‘fish in an aquarium that knocks against the bottom and the sides and cannot swim farther or deeper’.5 He then summarizes this kind of thinking by categorizing it as ‘Dogmatic thoughts’.6 Corresponding to the Bakhtinian critique of a structuralist notion of otherness as a manifestation of internal differences within an abstract language system, the theological conception of the Wholly Other is characterized by a critique of systemic relativization of differences. Characteristic of the differences described in the structuralist system, they do not refer to something outside the system but receive their meaning by their opposition to other signs within the system. In contrast to the structuralist understanding of difference, as a category within a system of differences, and the Hegelian dialectical dissolution of differences in a synthesis, the difference of the Wholly Other is, is my approach, understood as a phenomenon that distorts or breaks down dialectical thinking and systematic reasoning. This focus on otherness as a distortive force accords with classic theological discussions of the qualitative difference between God and humans and refers at the same time to the foundational problem of proclaiming the Word of God in human words.

3 ‘The unified, dialectically evolving spirit, understood in Hegelian terms, can give rise to nothing but a philosophical monologue’ (Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 26). 4 Note written by Bakhtin in 1970 – 71, in M. M. Bahktin, Estetika Slovesnogo tvorchestva, 351, qtd. in ‘Editors Preface’ to Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, xxxii. 5 Bakhtin, qtd. in Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, ‘Extracts from a Heteroglossia’, in Dialogue and Critical Discourse: Language, Culture, Critical Theory, ed. Michael S. Macovski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 262. 6 Bakhtin qtd. in ibid.

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The ‘Qualitative Difference’ according to Kierkegaard The theological conception of God as the ‘Wholly Other’ has been imprinted on the modern history of theology through the Dialectical Theologians’ appropriation of Kierkegaard’s philosophy of religion.7 Kierkegaard’s discussion of the ‘infinite qualitative difference’8 between God and humans is most fully elaborated in Sickness unto Death. Here he claims that any teaching that ignores this difference is nothing short of, in human terms, insanity and, according to a divine understanding, blasphemic: Gud og Menneske ere to Qvaliteter, mellem hvilke der er en uendelig QvalitetsForskjel. Enhver Lære, der overseer denne Forskjel, er menneskelig talt afsindig, guddommelig forstaaet, Guds-bespottelse.9

In Kierkegaard’s opinion it is one of the fatal misfortunes of Christendom that the doctrine of God, who became human, has ended up being taken for granted. Kierkegaard recognizes that Christian doctrine insists on the unheard of proximity between creator and creatures—‘Never anywhere has any doctrine on earth brought God and man so near together as has Christianity’10—and so sets itself apart from other doctrines. Nevertheless, the crucial point is that this proximity between God and humans cannot be initiated, captured, or preached through human efforts. All human attempts to produce this unique relationship remain ‘after all a dream, an uncertain imagination.’11 One of the best antidotes to the misfortune of taking the proximity between God and humans in vain, in the judgment of Kierkegaard, is for each person to become conscious of being an individual. The awareness of each person’s distinctiveness serves to prevent people from being fused into a multitude12 and thereby becoming an abstract notion. Alternatively when the multitude of creatures appears as an indistinguishable abstraction, this abstract notion is easily identified with God and, according to Kierkegaard, ‘[t]his then is called 7 Karl Barth has described the Kierkegaardian influence on the early Dialectical Theological movement, including a serious critique of the problems of the theology of Kierkegaard (as the mature Barth sees it), in a lecture given at Copenhagen University on receipt of the Sonning Prize on April 19, 1963. Published in Karl Barth, Dank und Reverenz (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1963). 8 Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden, in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, http://sks.dk/SD/txt.xml, 130. For English translation, see Sickness unto Death (Radford: Wilder Publications 2008), 126. 9 Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden, 130. English translation: ‘God and man are two qualities between which there is an infinite qualitative difference. Every doctrine which overlooks this difference is, humanly speaking, crazy ; understood in a godly sense, it is blasphemy.’ Cf. Sickness, 106. 10 Kierkegaard, Sickness, 97 – 98. 11 Ibid. 12 ‘Mængden’; cf. ibid., 98.

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the doctrine of the God-Man or the doctrine that God and men are idem per idem.’13 Kierkegaard criticizes it as an impertinence of Christendom that its people have turned the doctrine of the God, who became human, upside down so that the humans now have elevated themselves and assume consanguinity with their creator. In this role-change God’s power is likened to that of a king who is forced from absolute to constitutional monarchy and can only govern within the parameters of the people’s constitution.14 Kierkegaard’s descriptions of the shameless change of roles initiated by the multitude of people who attempt to take the place of God is of particular interest here for several reasons. First of all it touches upon the paradoxical problem for human beings to preach the Word of God. Secondly it resembles Bakhtin’s descriptions of carnivalization.15 The carnival consists exactly of a multitude of people who come together and dress themselves up in order to pretend they are someone else. Indeed, one of the central rituals of the carnival is the crowning and de-crowning of a jester as a king. Although Kierkegaard is highly critical of the preaching of his contemporaries in the Danish Church and is notorious for his focus on ‘hin enkelte’, the single individual, preachers and homileticians, instead of assuming that Kierkegaard rejects public preaching altogether, might learn something crucial from the Kierkegaardian critique. As he understands it, the problem with the multitude is not inherent in the actions of a larger group of people who come together to worship and listen to preaching. The problem resides in whether the group is perceived as an identical mass or as a diverse group of distinctive individuals. This distinction is important in the present homiletical context and for the ongoing discussion of whether the preacher can take identity with the congregation for granted or even presuppose that preaching must proceed from universal experiences—one of the core premises of the New Homiletics.16 In my view, the challenge of preaching lies in honouring the otherness and difference of both God and humans so that they are neither kept apart in a static grip nor forced together in an undistinguished mass.

13 14 15 16

Ibid. Ibid. See my discussion of Bakhtinian carnivalization in chap. 4. As described in chap. 3.

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Homiletical Implications of the Qualitative Difference— According to Barth Although Karl Barth was extremely critical of attempts to categorize ‘the inner dialectics’ of theology systematically he acknowledged that if he had a system, it was best described by Kierkegaard’s ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between time and eternity, God and humans, in its positive and negative sense. From the Barthian perspective this dialectical relation between God and humans summarizes the theme of the Bible and the essence of philosophy.17 Barth quotes Kierkegaard regarding the implications of ignoring the infinite qualitative distinction between God and humans: Remove from the Christian Religion, as Christendom has done, its ability to shock, and Christianity, by becoming a direct communication, is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them; by discovering an unreal and merely human compassion, it forgets the infinite qualitative distinction between man and God.18

The Dialectical Theologians’ emphasis on the qualitative difference between God and humans must be seen in the context of their rejection of the Liberal Theological concern with human experience and culture. Compared to proclaiming the foreign word of the Wholly Other, all human attempts of creating points of contact with contemporary culture and human experience is, seen from this perspective, mere child’s play.19 The Dialectical Theological emphasis on God as the Wholly Other entails that inter-human differences are insignificant compared with the radical difference between God and human beings. Seen from this grand perspective the different particularities, situations, etc. of the listeners and preachers are quantitatively small and tend to look the same when compared to the divine difference. The early Dialectical Theological disparagement of inter-human differences and ignorance of the role of listeners in preaching has of course been met by harsh critique. Yet in defense of the Word of God theology, Barth claimed that the listener is just as implied in the concept of the Word of God as the speaking God is. He is co-presupposed just as Friedrich Schleiermacher’s20 God is co-presupposed in the feeling of utter dependency :

17 Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung) (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1922), XX. 18 Barth, Karl, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 98 – 9. 19 Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. Barth’s influence on practical theology in a Danish context has been discussed by Barth-scholar and practical theologian Bent Flemming Nielsen in his article ‘Hvor praktisk er den praktiske teologi?’ Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 66.1 (2003): 1 – 17. 20 (1768 – 1834).

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[D]er hörende Mensch ist im Begriff des Wortes Gottes ebenso eingeschlossen wie der redende Gott. Er ist in ihm ‘mitgesetzt’ wie der Schleiermacher’sche Gott im schlechthinnigen Abhängigkeitsgefühl.21

Barth’s defense of the Word of God echoes the general Dialectical Theological critique of the Liberal Theological perception of God, where God is implied as the object of the individual’s sense of absolute dependence. Schleiermacher, in turn, developed his theology critiquing the rational religious philosophy of the Enlightenment, and, in contrast, categorized the essence of religion as emerging from a ‘pious self-consciousness’ manifested as a sense and taste for the eternal. It is beyond my scope here to discuss the problems inherent in Barth’s claim of the ‘implied listener’ in his Word of God theology and the ‘implied God’ in Schleiermacher’s Liberal Theology.22 The positions of both Barth and Schleiermacher are much more nuanced and dialectical than the ‘theocentric’ vs. ‘anthropo-centric’ categorizations suggest.23 The reason that I find the notion of the ‘implied’ other important, however, is because it continues to be echoed,24 more or less explicitly, throughout the history of homiletics.

Carnivalesque Dialogue as ‘gestörtes Gespräch’25 Karl Barth is often categorized as a Dialectical Theologian26 but in fact he insists on calling his approach a ‘Word of God theology’. Accordingly he 21 Karl Barth, Christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1927), 111. 22 Rather than further discussing Barth’s claim of the mitgesetzten, ‘implied’, ‘other’, it should be noted that Barth corrects himself on this matter in Die kirchliche Dogmatik I/1 §5 Das Wesen des Wortes Gottes (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1980): ‘Also: Der hörende Mensch als Gegenstand der Absicht des redenden Gottes ist im Begriff des Wortes Gottes zwar faktisch notwendig, aber nicht wesensnotwendig eingeschlossen. Er ist in ihm nicht [note: Wie ich in der ersten Auflage S. 111 erstaunlicherweise behauptet hatte.] ‘mitgesetzt’ wie Schleiermachers Gott im Gefühl schlechthinniger Abhängigkeit. Es ist Gottes freie Gnade, daß er tatsächlich notwendig in ihm mitgesetzt ist’ (145). 23 A concise yet nuanced summary of the ‘theocentric’ vs. ‘anthropocentric’ positions of Barth and Schleiermacher has been provided by Jonny Karlsson in Predikans Samtal, 27 – 33. 24 In addition to Barth’s more or less polemical description of the implicit other in his and Schleiermacher’s theology, Bultmann’s sermons have also been described as speaking directly of humans and thus indirectly of God. For this reason, concludes his interpreter Götz Harbsmeier, they are only indirectly ‘Christ-sermons’ but will not be anything else than Christ-sermons. Götz Harbsmeier, Gedrückte EPredigten (1957), qtd. in Konrad Hamann, Rudolf Bultmann: Eine Biographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 229. 25 ‘Distorted conversation’; cf. Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief II (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1989 [1922]), 449. 26 Along with the German theologians Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), Friedrich Gogarten (18871967), and the Suisse theologian Emil Brunner (1899-1966).

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interprets the distortion of the ‘Wholly Other’ as that which breaks in on dialectical thinking:27 Laßt euch unterbrechen, ihr Mitdenkenden, Mitpilgernden, Mitanbetenden, unterbrechen in eurem Denken, damit es ein Denken Gottes sei, unterbrechen in eurer Dialektik, damit sie dialektisch bleibe, unterbrechen in eurer Erkenntnis Gottes, damit sie sei, was sie bedeutet: selber die große, die heilsame Störung und Unterbrechung, die Gott dem Menschen in Christus bereitet, um ihn heimzurufen in den Frieden seines Reiches!28

I have chosen to refer to Barth’s original German text of Der Römerbrief here because its use of the passive tense ‘let yourselves be’ is lost in the published English translation, which renders it actively : ‘break off your thinking that it may be a thinking of God; break off your dialectic, that it may be indeed dialectic’.29 The passive activity of ‘letting ourselves be disturbed’ by the Wholly Other is crucial to my interpretation of the classical theological reflections and contemporary homiletical practices I examine below. Paul’s encouragement to the Romans to worship God by offering their bodies as a ‘living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God’ (Rom 12,1) does in Barth’s interpretation become an exhortation to a particular kind of active passivity : ‘let yourselves be broken, you [Romans] who are thinking with us, you who pilgrimage with us, you who worship with us, let yourselves be interrupted in your thinking in order that it may be the thinking of God.’30 Likewise Paul’s exhortation that the Romans ‘be transformed by the renewing of your mind’ (Rom 12:2) does in Barth’s rendering become an urging to ‘let your dialectic be interrupted, that it may be indeed dialectic’.31 Although Barth’s descriptions of the ‘breaking in’ of the Wholly Other are often interpreted and used to emphasize the ‘senkrecht von oben’ vertical relationship between the individual human and God, at a cost to the horizontal relationship with other humans, I find it significant that the chapter, within which the passage appears, is titled ‘The Great Disturbance. The Problem of Ethics’32 and is followed by a description of a ‘Theorie der Praxis’.33 When the disturbance of the Wholly Other is interpreted in the context of an ethically oriented practice theory I see great potential for a constructive although critical dialogue between the (in contemporary homiletical contexts much disputed34) Word of God theology and other-wise homiletics. 27 Barth, Der Römerbrief II, 449 (Commentary to Romans 12:1). 28 Ibid. 29 Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 425 – 26. English translation by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, qtd. from Lowe, Theology and Difference, 138. 30 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 449, my translation. 31 Ibid., my translation. 32 ‘Die Große Störung. Das Problem der Ethik’, in ibid., 447 – 62. 33 Ibid., 450. 34 Cf. David G. Buttrick, ‘Foreword’ to Barth, Homiletics, 8 – 9.

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In accordance with this interpretation we will in what follows explore whether the qualitative difference between God and humans described by Kierkegaard and Barth is to be seen as a disjunctive or a conjoining difference. Based on this analysis I will then suggest the contours of a ‘theology of communication’ in which both the Wholly Other and other-wise (or ‘otherfoolish’ in the case of Campbell) listeners play a constitutive role.

The Qualitative Difference as a Conjoining Difference? In spite of the fact that the concepts of difference and otherness in the Word of God theology must be understood as part of a historical polemic against Liberal Theology, I do not think we have to restrict the implications to that historical context. Instead I find it illuminating, in a contemporary context, to describe the Dialectical Theological project as revolving around an ‘experience of difference’ as proposed by the American theologian Walter Lowe in his Theology and Difference: The Wound of Reason. Lowe’s deconstructive interpretation shows significant convergences between Dialectical Theological understandings of God as the Wholly Other and contemporary philosophical and theological understandings of difference. In light of Lowe’s analyses, as well as Jüngel’s descriptions of identity, unfolded below, I suggest that the qualitative difference between God and humans is a conjoining rather than a disjunctive difference. Lowe has reached a similar conclusion based on a trajectory of convergences between the theology of Barth and the deconstructive philosophy of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). Based on this comparative analysis Lowe claims that it does make sense to suggest a positive, analogical relationship between the ‘qualitative difference’ between God and the world, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the lesser but nonetheless real differences which obtain within this finite world.35

Corresponding with the analysis of Lowe I suggest that instead of rejecting either contemporary communication theories, empirical studies of preaching,36 or the theological claim that preaching can be the Word of God, we might approach the disturbing impact of the double foreignness between God and humans as a vital condition for the ‘disrupted’ or ‘carnivalesque’ dialogue that we call preaching. Although Barth may be justly criticized for the severe injuries he inflicted on the discipline of practical theology,37 the ‘other-oriented’, Bakhtinian-inspired ‘communication theology’ emerging in this book shares Barth’s critique of the 35 Lowe, Theology and Difference, 43. 36 Gaarden and Lorensen: ‘Listeners as Authors in Preaching’. 37 Cf. Nielsen, ‘Hvor praktisk er den praktiske teologi?’, 1 – 17.

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Liberal Theological presuppositions of ecclesiastical familiarity and cultivation of ‘sameness’ in the form of shared feelings, experiences, language, and values as a prerequisite condition for proclamation. Barth’s critique of the Liberal Theological assumption of shared experience shares, in my interpretation, significant elements with recent homiletical critiques of the presupposed shared identity and experiences of the New Homiletics.38 Instead of grounding their preaching practices and homiletical reflections on a static identification of preachers and listeners, contemporary homileticians emphasize the ‘heteroglot’ diversity (Harris)39, ‘other-wise’ decentering (McClure)40, and ‘foolish’ reversal of roles and places (Campbell)41 as constitutive of genuine dialogical preaching. This intentional exposure to the disruptive voices, faces, and locations of people who are different from the preacher can be seen as a practically embodied way of subjecting oneself to the ‘breaking in’ of the Word of God rather than relying on one’s own ability of direct communication. In this sense contemporary other-oriented homiletical practices can be seen as ‘practicetheoretical’42 ways of reinterpreting and practicing Barth’s radical exhortation to ‘let your thinking be disrupted that it may be a thinking of God … let your dialectics be disrupted, that it may be indeed dialectic, let yourselves be disrupted in your acknowledgement of God so that it may become what it means: the great, healing disturbance and disruption.’43 Throughout this book the theological concern with otherness has been a pivotal interest. Shaped by Bakhtinian theories and other-oriented homiletical positions, the practical implications of otherness and difference have been approached as the sine qua non for genuine inter-human dialogue as well as preaching. However, in order to further unfold the understanding of the double foreignness of the Wholly Other and the other-wise listeners as a constitutive element, I will now turn to, first, Eberhard Jüngel’s reinterpretation of Barth’s understanding of the ‘qualitative abyss’ between God and humans as an ’even greater similarity in the midst of a great dissimilarity’,44 and, second, contemporary homiletical incorporations of otherness and difference in the practice of preaching.

38 E.g., David Buttrick’s description of a shared ‘being-saved’ consciousness cultivated through the homiletical use of universal, common experiences in Homiletic: Moves and Structures. Cf. my other-wise critique of inductive identification in chap. 3. 39 See chap. 6. 40 See chap 7. 41 See chap. 8. 42 Cf. Barth, Römerbrief, 450, and chap. 1 of this book. 43 My translation of Barth, Der Römerbrief, 449. 44 Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 408.

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Otherness and Identity in Light of Jüngel’s Advent Analogy Eberhard Jüngel, who works in the wake of Barth, maintains that the Dialectical Theological understanding of the foundational difference45 between God and humans is one of the primary theological and homiletical challenges. The problem of preaching, as a theological task, however, is that preaching cannot achieve what it is supposed to do, namely to bring the God who is radically different from humans to speech. Since preaching is a human effort, it cannot, in and of itself, pose the radical difference. Although the works of Jüngel and the American homileticians analyzed in these chapters are developed within different cultural traditions and theological fields, they share a common bond with the “New Hermeneutic” as developed by Ernst Fuchs46 and Gerhard Ebeling,47 which, from my point of view, makes their theology and homiletics compatible.48 The fact that Jüngel has close ties to the New Hermeneutic can be seen from his notion of wordevent and language as address.49 When I suggest that the language theology of Jüngel carries greater potential for homiletics (whether ‘new’ or ‘other-wise’) than that of Ebeling and Fuchs,50 it is because, in addition to incorporating the approach to the parables as speech/word events Jüngel also provides an original interpretation of the Word of God theology as developed by Barth. In his language-theological reflections on analogy and addressability Jüngel weaves together the Barthian revelation-theological concept of ‘Entsprechung’51 with the event-category of Fuchs and Ebeling’s hermeneutical theology. The Jüngelian consequence is that the being of God is revealed in the Word of God in the sense that the God-word is appropriated and experienced as speech-event. The potential of bringing the work of Jüngel into the homiletical discussion is, thus, a greater awareness of the Trinitarian concept of God that in the use of speech events such as ‘advent analogies’ finds a way to locate the being of God Jüngel, ‘Metaphorische Wahrheit’. (1903 – 1983). (1912 – 2001). The connection and convergences between the New Hermeneutics and the New Homiletics has insightfully been described by Ottoni-Wilhelm, ‘New Hermeneutic, New Homiletic, and New Directions’; and David J. Lose, ‘Whither Hence, New Homiletic?’ Paper presented at The Academy of Homiletics Annual Meeting, Dallas, Texas, 2000, http://www.homiletics.org/ (accessed 29 April, 2013). 49 The following description of Jüngel’s creative interpretation of Fuchs, Ebeling, and Barth is indebted to Peter Thyssen, ‘Arven fra den dialektiske teologi’, Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift, vol. 57, ed. N. H. Gregersen et al. (Frederiksberg: Anis, 1994). 50 A closer analysis of how Jüngel has advanced beyond the insights of Fuchs and Ebeling has been developed by Roland Daniel Zimany in Vehicle for God: The Metaphorical Theology of Eberhard Jüngel (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1994), viiff. 51 The claim that God’s revelation outwards ad extra corresponds with his inward being ad intra. 45 46 47 48

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as a ‘being in becoming’.52 The concept of advent analogy furthermore compensates for a lack of reflection on the use of analogy and metaphor in the authorship of Bakhtin—elements that play a crucial role in biblical language and preaching. Finally Jüngel’s contributions can provide the Bakhtinian reflections on human nature and relations as ‘unfinalizable’ and in a continuous process of ‘becoming’ with a theological counterpart.

The Problem of Analogy in the History of Theology The Barthian rejection of the theological use of analogies of being in proclamation has been expressed in such a radical way that it can hardly be forgotten once encountered: ‘Ich halte die analogia entis for die Erfindung des Antichrist und denke, dass man ihretwegen nicht katholisch werden kann.’53 According to Jüngel, Barth rejected analogia entis because he regarded it as the human attempt to cross the qualitatively infinite gap between humans and God as ‘der ganz Andere’.54 As a devoted, yet critical interpreter of Barth, Jüngel argues that the radical claim is much quoted yet little understood. The theological use of analogy has been and still is a much disputed issue among European Protestants, and Jüngel is harsh in his critique of the contemporary evangelical theological handling of the concept. Although the use of analogy plays a fundamental role in many theological discussions, Jüngel claims that a proper theological use of analogy is not emerging. As a corrective to the traditional evangelical theological understanding of analogy, Jüngel insists that its use is indispensable if human speech is supposed to speak the Word of God: ‘Wenn menschliche Rede von Gott diesem entsprechen soll, muss sie Gott analog sein. Die Theologie hat deshalb der Analogie konzentrierteste Aufmerksamkeit zuzuwenden.’55 He claims that any talk of God is always restricted and enabled within the horizon of what analogy makes possible. Thus rejecting the understanding of identity and difference presupposed in traditional Protestant rejections of the analogia entis, What is of crucial importance when trying to understand Barth’s rejection of analogia entis is that he does not reject the use of analogy altogether. Instead it can be argued that the Barthian criticism is compatible with Jüngel’s emphasis on the indispensability of analogy. Barth’s use of analogy is expressed in his description of analogia fidei, which to him opens the 52 Cf. Jüngel’s early work (1965), Gottes Sein ist im Werden. Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth, eine Paraphrase (God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth). 53 Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik I/1, VIII – IX, qtd. in ibid., 385. 54 Ibid. 55 Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 383.

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possibility of truly speaking of God.56 Although Barth approved of the importance of analogy he held on to his fundamental rejection of analogia entis. The danger related to the human attempt to transcend God’s boundaries should, according to Jüngel’s interpretation of Barth, be that humans would thus get too close to God. Jüngel argues that when the rejection of analogia entis is motivated by its tendency to ignore the qualitative difference between God and humans, then the Protestant misunderstanding of the notion is complete. According to Jüngel the Protestant rejection of the use of analogia entis is thus based on a general misunderstanding of the Roman Catholic motives for using the analogy.57 The problem with analogies of being, from this perspective, is that they describe the conditions of the two relations without adding anything new to the related parts. When using analogia entis to describe God as creator, God remains God and the pottery maker remains the pottery maker. Although the comparison between God and the pottery maker might show a similarity, the dissimilarity between the two is still much greater and evident. The result of the analogia entis is thus that God remains wholly unknown.58 Against the traditional Protestant critique Jüngel claims that the use of analogies of being successfully prevents any attempt to force God, humans, and the world together into a closed system. However, this means that also the mediation between creator and creature to a reconciling third is excluded by the analogia entis. Jüngel designates the analogia entis as the ‘grail guardian’ of the mystery because analogies of being leave God utterly untouched.59 Jüngel thus opposes mainstream Protestant theology by arguing that if the point were to leave God to himself, as the Wholly Other, then nothing would be more effective than the use of analogia entis: Ginge es nur darum, Gott als den ganz Anderen zu respektieren—nichts wäre besser geeignet, dies denkend zu leisten, als die vielgeschmähte analogia entis. Aber eben darum kann es einer dem Evangelium entsprechenden Theologie letztlich nicht gehen.60

Jüngel’s correction of both the Protestant critique and the traditional Roman Catholic defense is that if the use of analogy is seen in the light of the gospel then it has to be used in a way so that in the midst of great dissimilarity it shows an even greater similarity. The analogy has to overcome the infinite qualitative difference between God and the world by virtue of an even greater qualitative 56 Jüngel documents his correction of the Barthian legacy by referring to Barth’s acknowledgement that: ‘“Wir brauchen sie, wir brauchen sie auf der ganzen Linie”—erklärte er später einmal mündlich im Blick auf die Analogie’ (ibid.). 57 Ibid., 386. 58 Thyssen, Eberhard Jüngel, 65. 59 Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 387 – 88. 60 Ibid.

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similarity. This can only happen, according to Jüngel, through the transformational change of character of the analogy so that it changes from being descriptive to functioning as an event. Instead of describing what God is to the world in analogue relations the analogy must proclaim how God comes to the world.61

‘Difference in the Midst of an even Greater Similarity’ Jüngel advocates the claim that the theological tradition can benefit from replacing analogia entis with a so-called ‘Analogie des Advent’. Crucial to this kind of analogy is that it is to be developed as an event where God (x) comes to the world (a) like b relates to c. The intention of the advent analogy is to verbalize God’s arrival among humans. Yet one of the benefits is that when one of the members of the advent analogy is God then the world relations also come to be seen in a new eschatological light. Thus the world relation, which of itself was not able to point to God, begins to speak for God.62 The analogy of advent thus enables the narration of a relation in the world in such a way that it comes to function as a predicate of God’s coming to the world. This is not to be understood as if a relationship in the world independently can explain God. On the contrary, the interpretation is that God explains himself by the means of specific relations in the world. The analogy of advent is founded upon the claim that God, in his coming to the world, makes use of what is evident in such a way that he reveals himself, as he who is even more evident. As an example we might think of the fact that one is willing to sell everything in order to buy the field where proof of a hidden treasure is evident. Yet this evidence manifests itself in a radically new light when it is being told as a parable of the kingdom of God, the basikeia, which lets itself be found. When the story is told as a parable of the kingdom of God the treasure in the field becomes one of the treasures over against which God, who is to be found or is found, is the surplus value. However, this can only be experienced when God, so to speak, conquers what is evident in the world and by its means comes through as that which is more evident, that is, when the relations in the world are narrated in such a way, that it corresponds to God’s relating to the world and God thereby ceases to be the unknown x.63 The advent analogy is thus characterized by the fact that it becomes analogy in the act of bringing together the related parts. It is not a mere illustration of a static situation like analogia entis. Rather it comes through as truth in the dynamic act of being told. Basically the intention is to understand the gospel as 61 Thyssen, Eberhard Jüngel, 65. 62 Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 389 – 90. 63 Ibid., 390.

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an analogy to the event: ‘Kurz: es gilt, das Evangelium als Ereignis der Entsprechung zu verstehen.’64 Jüngel summons up the particularity of Christian faith and criticizes his predecessors by claiming that the difference between God and human beings is not the difference of an immense dissimilarity. Instead it is a difference in midst of an even greater similarity between God and humans. This hermeneutical thesis, however, presupposes an event in which the so-called analogy of faith has been fulfilled. That event is the incarnation, the belief that God became flesh and lived among us.65 However, it is of utmost importance to notice that the similarity attained in the incarnational event is not a matter of an unconditional identity between divine and human. The essential mystery of God’s incarnation is tied to the fact that it is an event. In the christological identification-event a proximity between God and humans is expressed that supersedes the traditional notion of identity as a result of suspension of differences. From Jüngel’s point of view identity, in the sense of suspension of all differences, does not establish any kind of proximity. Rather it excludes any possibility of proximity.66 Radically different from the traditional understanding of identity is the mystery of God’s identification with humans in Jesus of Nazareth, ‘die mehr als nur Identität ist und gerade in Hinausgehen über das blosse Identischsein den konkreten Unterschied zwischen Gott und Mensch freigibt.’67 The incarnational event is more than mere identification between God and human beings because it happens in spite of and in acknowledgement of the differences. This is confirmed by the belief in Jesus Christ as both true God and true human being.

Comparison of Jüngel, Bakhtin and Other-Wise Homiletics Jüngel’s theological anthropology shares crucial elements with Bakhtin’s descriptions of the ‘unfinalizable’ person whose identity is a ‘being in becoming’ because identity is primarily something we receive when addressed by others. To illustrate Bakhtin refers to the fact that we do not name ourselves and we cannot forgive ourselves. Confession takes place in more or less explicit dialogue with others. In a similar vein, the Swedish homiletician Carina Sundberg summarizes her analysis of the ‘theocentric’ approach to preaching inherent in Jüngel’s theology by claiming that God is the one who defines us as human beings. This means that our humanness is defined from another position than the merely human. God’s address constitutes a reduction of 64 65 66 67

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 394. Ibid.

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complexity in that it sets humans free from the habitual attempts of human self-definition in light of one’s own achievements.68 Similar to Bakhtin’s descriptions of the alterity as constitutive for communication, Jüngel’s theology also accentuates the subversive tension in the preaching event in which, on the one hand, humans attempt to evoke the God, who is Wholly Other and concealed in the sense that we as humans cannot capture the divine with our definitions and achievements; while on the other hand, God is seen as the one who makes himself visible and comes even closer to humans than we can come to ourselves. This conception expresses simultaneously God’s presence pro nobis, yet also his alterity qua free and sovereign acts.69 In my interpretation, the homiletical implications of Jüngel’s reflections on identity and difference correspond well with the understanding, developed by Bakhtin as well as contemporary other-wise homileticians, that empathic identification is not a prerequisite for relationship and communication. In fact, the otherness is what constitutes dialogue and a temporary, dynamic ‘similarity in the midst of dissimilarity’ is the ground of a reciprocal relationship. Although Jüngel refines the dialectical thinking of Barth and although Lowe presents a way to perceive an analogous understanding of the difference between God and humans, on one hand, and inter-human differences, on the other, their systematic theological reflections do not make much of an effort to describe how these analogies might be performed, nor how the double otherness might become a conjoining difference, in homiletical practice. In order to compensate for this lack of practical theological consideration we will, in the following, explore whether the dialectics of inner reflection might be broken by a ‘healing disturbance and disruption’ in the encounter with real human bodies, situated at particular times and places.

The Potential of the ‘Breaking In’ of the Wholly Other on Contemporary Preaching Practices The descriptions of the de-centering, disrupting influence of other-wise listeners who become, more or less explicit conversation partners and coauthors in the ‘two-sided’ act of preaching70 confirm the thesis that the foreignness of God cannot be proclaimed as a one-way transfer or direct communication ‘senkrecht von oben’ to familiar, passively receiving listeners. Instead the premise for preaching appears to consist of a decentering double foreignness that breaks in on the apparent two-dimensional relationship 68 Carina Sundberg, Här är rymlig plats, 86. 69 Ibid. 70 Described in chaps. 6, 7, and 8.

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(whether that is perceived as a strictly inter-human or divine-human relationship). When the double foreignness breaks in upon the relationship it opens up the possibility of perceiving the contours of a three-dimensional plane in which the Wholly Other and the other-wise may meet. How this theological interruption may occur homiletically is, however, a rather delicate problem. In the following I will push further the Bakhtinian and homiletical positions I have presented71 in order to explore how the breaking in of the Other can be seen from these perspectives. In the case of Svend Bjerg’s homiletical works we face the problem that he emphasizes that these writings primarily are rhetorical exercises and so he does not unfold the inherent theology. Bjerg’s acknowledgement of and implicit association with Luther and Jüngel’s theological understanding of the ‘experience with the experience’, however, gives reasons for interpreting Bjerg’s theology of preaching in light of Jüngel’s descriptions of ‘difference in the midst of even greater similarity’ and advent analogy. Yet as described in chapter five, in Bjerg’s recent books the listener of preaching is supplanted by an ‘implicit reader’ whose othering influence is restricted to an imaginary dialogue. In the case of Bjerg the exposure to a fruitfully disturbing otherness, thus seems to be limited to the relationship between God and preacher, rather than a double otherness, as characteristic for the other three homiletical positions. By contrast, in the preaching and homiletical reflections of James Henry Harris, the sermonic interruption of the ‘other’ happens on two levels. This exposure is described via the intertextual dynamics between scripture and novels but first and foremost in the embodied oral/aural responsive event of preaching. The impact of these inter-human differences and embodied voices on the preacher’s proclamation is described as heteroglot, in the sense of socially embedded, and polyphonic, in the sense of many voices of equal authority. Harris also describes how a constructive relationship between disruption and stability has the potential of creating unity.72 This interpretation of a differencedriven, dynamic unity illuminates my interpretation of the potential of a ‘healing disruption’ of the double foreignness of God and neighbors breaking in on the thinking and practices of preachers. According to Harris:

71 A comparable proposal, was given by the German Professor of Homiletics at Leipzig University, Alexander Deeg, in a lecture held at the ‘Theology of Preaching’ seminar at Copenhagen University on 5 October, 2011. In this lecture Deeg describes different kinds of disruptions—or ‘break in perceptions’—which happen in aesthetic and liturgical contexts. Yet the task of finding fruitful sermonic disruptions proves harder ; ‘Disruption, Initiation and Staging the Theological Challenge of Christian Preaching’ in Homiletic 38, 1 (2013). Online access at: http://www. homiletic.net/index.php/homiletic/issue/view/189. 72 Harris, Word Made Plain, 18.

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Whenever there is history of homogeneity, there is a need to create disruption in order that the other may become a reality. This other may be an attenuated form of what is, or it may represent a cataclysmic metamorphosis or transformation of what is.73

It is important to note that the positive kind of unity that Harris describes is characterized by a dynamic process that oscillates between the other and the self, the congregation and God. Yet, in spite of the positive description of unity in the midst of differences, Harris describes the negative side of unity as a deadening homogenization of all differences in the sense that sameness and identity become the ideal.74 The potential of the breaking in of the Wholly Other looks slightly different in the other-wise homiletics of John McClure. In this context the preacher is seen as a witness, hosting and visiting other witnesses. Resembling Campbell’s focus on foolishness, however, the testimonial proclamation cannot rely on deductive reason but ‘requires this constant rupture, this being torn up and flushed out by testimony in order to bear witness to the glory of the Infinite.’75 The homiletical implications of this understanding is that preachers and their other-wise co-authors76 are encouraged to discern ‘traces’ of the Other in mutual speaking-listening processes such as Roundtable Preaching.77 Inherent in this practice is the potential of the ‘breaking in’ of the infinite Other, which is thus seen as taking place through the human others.78 Other-wise homileticians can, from this perspective, be described as representative of a contemporary kind of ‘crisis theology’ since they depart from traditional authorities, such as experience, tradition, scripture, and reason. Instead of the traditional theological spaces for divine revelation, the other-wise revelation is expected to take place in the de-centering encounter in-between people who are different and ‘other’. One of the questions still left to ponder is whether contemporary other-oriented homiletics allows the Infinite Other to have the same radically transforming impact on preaching as do the diverse other-wise conversation partners. In the homiletics of Charles Campbell the potential of a divine interruption of human proclamation is located in a continual movement within a liminal time-space. Incarnation and crucifixion are central topois, yet they are approached in light of the foolishness of the gospel.79 Resembling the Bakhtinian carnival, preaching does not necessarily communicate a message 73 Ibid., 18 – 19. 74 Ibid., 19. The negative side of the other-oriented theological anthropology inherent in these homiletical descriptions has been unfolded in chap. 6. 75 McClure, Other-wise Preaching, 128. 76 See chap. 7. 77 Roundtable Pulpit. 78 Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan has provided an insightful comparative analysis of the similarities and divergences of Bakhtin’s and L¦vinas’s perspectives on otherness. See Erdinast-Vulcan, ‘Between the face and the voice’, 56. 79 Described in chap. 8.

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but it serves to open up a threshold space within which a communal interaction and transformation of voices, bodies, perspectives and positions can take place. The preacher’s role in this sermonic carnival resembles that of a fool,80 whose role it is to keep open the liminal space of wonder and scandal in the hope that people may discover the good news within the offence, the truth within the foolishness. Crucial to Campbell’s descriptions of the foolishness of preaching, bodies play a central role. Yet in line with Bakhtin’s carnivalesque descriptions of the ‘grotesque’ body, Campbell’s descriptions of the ‘otherness’ of God seem to evoke a portrait that looks more like an incarnate, crucified fool than a transcendental being. In addition to his interpretations of the gospel and the practice of preaching, proclaiming the crucified God as a kind of foolishness, Campbell categorizes the theoretical attempt to teach this practice as ‘utter foolishness’.81 This perspective turns the academic discipline of homiletics into a three-fold foolishness. Yet, as indicated by Bakhtin, the role of the fool might cause the kind of disturbing ‘break-in’ that was called for in the Word of God theology.

Concluding Remarks My paramount concern here has been whether the homiletic emphasis on interhuman relations subsumes or accentuates the classical theological insistence on the qualitative difference between God and humans. Based on the preceding analyses I find there are convincing indications for the claim that homileticians and preachers can embrace the great qualitative difference between God and humans by recognizing the smaller, yet significant, differences within human relationships and proclamation. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that this fruitful comprehension cannot be obtained through a direct transfer but relies on the unpredictable breaking in of the Wholly Other.

80 Cf. I Cor 1 – 4 and the historical ‘holy fools’; also, Campbell and Cilliers, Preaching Fools. 81 Campbell, ‘Preacher as Ridiculous Person’, 106.

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Index of names

Adlam, Carol, 29n. Allen, Ronald J., 69n., 91n., 138n. Andersen, Nina Møller, 28n., 29, 50n., 51, 52n., 53n., 56n., 59–60, 66n., 111n., 113n., 144n. Asmussen, Jan Sievert, 71n. Austin, John. L., 46n., 51, 57, 70 Avram, Wesley D., 29n. Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, 13–16, 19–20, 22, 28–39, 41, 44, 46–53, 55–67, 72, 80, 82–84, 92–93, 95–113, 116–22, 126–28, 131–36, 142–44, 146, 152–153, 157, 159–62, 174–75 Barth, Karl.16, 19, 27n., 42n., 74n., 92, 145, 161, 163n., 165–72, 175 Bernstein, Richard J., 25n., 31n., 38n. Boer, Roland, 97n. Bond, L. Susan, 45, 87, 102n. Bourdieu, Pierre, 13 n., 22n., 23n., 25, 27n., 28, 35, 38, 54, 129n., 155n. Bruhn, Jørgen, 29n. Bruun, Lars Kjær, 98 Bruun, Søren Kjær, 49n. Buber, Martin, 47–48, 50–51, 91n. Bultmann, Rudolf, 26n., 166n., Buttrick, David, 14n., 17, 21n., 24n., 35n., 43n., 68, 69, 71–75, 84–87, 145, 167n., 169n. Børtnes, Jostein, 67n. Campbell, Charles L., 18, 24n., 27, 42n., 67n., 78, 84, 95n., 102n., 140n., 146–60, 168–69, 177–78 Cilliers, Johan, 95n., 102n., 149n., 178n. Clark, Katerina, 30n., 42n., 48, 93, 131

Craddock, Fred B., 14n., 17, 23n., 50n., 68, 69, 72, 75–85, 88, 89, 108, 125, 128n., 129, 145n. Crawford, Evans E., 78, 84n., 128–30, 134, 136–37 Csordas, Thomas J., 105 Cunliffe, Robert, 29n., 113n. Dahm, Karl Wilhelm, 21n., 43n., 69, Daiber, Karl-Fritz, 70 Dannowski, Hans Werner, 69n., 70 Davidson, Donald, 53–54 Davis, David Aubrey, 29n. Deeg, Alexander, 71n., 176n. DeHart, Paul J., 26n., 27n. Deleuze, Gilles, 38n. Demant, Jørgen, 120 Derrida, Jacques, 29n., 35n., 38n., 113n., 140n., 168 Dewey, John, 25, 30 Dostoevsky, Fjodor, 29, 48, 50, 63–66, 86, 103–04, 107, 110, 119, 129, 143, 146, 152, 154, 156, 159 Ebeling, Gerhard, 26n., 76, 148, 170 Emerson, Caryl, 44n., 58n., 104, 120, 159, 160n., 162n. Engemann, Wilfried, 70–71, 73n. Erdinast-Vulcan, Daphna, 110n., 177n. Evans, Joseph N, 136–37 Farley, Edward, 24n., 102n. Felch, Susan M, 107n. Felter, Kirsten Donskov, 24n. Flood, Gavin, 29n. Florence, Anna Carter, 134n., 138n.

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194

Index of names

Foucault, Michel, 35n., 38n., 90, 155n. Frei, Hans, 76n., 139, 147, 152 Friedman, Maurice, 47n., 48n. Fryszman, Alex, 50n., 66n. Gaarden, Marianne, 22n., 96n., 106n., 130n., 131n., 168n. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 53n. Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius, 56n. Gross, Nancy Lammers, 42–43 Grundtvig, Nikolaj Frederik Severin, 73, 77n. Hale, Dorothy J, 134 Hamann, Konrad, 166 Handelman, Susan, 90 Harbsmeier, Eberhard, 71n., 77n. Harbsmeier, Götz, 166n. Harris, James Henry, 18, 27, 55n., 65, 84, 127–137, 169, 176, 177 Hays, Richard B, 97n. Herrmann, Andrew F, 51n., 89n. Holm, Vidar, 135n. Holquist, Michael, 19n., 29, 30n., 33n., 37n., 38n., 46n., 48, 51n., 59n., 64n., 82, 83n., 93, 104, 109n., 112n., 113n., 131 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 32 Iversen, Hans Raun, 77n. Jakobson, Roman, 42n., 56, 57 James, William, 25, 26n., 30 Johnson, Mark, 45n. Jüngel, Eberhard, 16, 19, 25–27, 48 n., 58, 71, 72, 92, 122,123, 161, 168–176 Karlsson, Jonny, 14n., 29n., 66n., 70n., 72, 73, 114n., 166n. Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, 14, 16, 18, 19, 48–51, 58, 66, 68, 77–82, 84, 89–90, 92, 107, 108, 133, 153–55, 161, 163–165, 168 Kim, Eunjoo, 134n.

Knowles, Michael, 98n. Knudsen, Inger Lundager, 143n. Kristeva, Julia, 35n., 38n., 44, 90 Lacan, Jacques, 35n., 90 Lakoff, George, 45n., 160n. L¦vinas, Emmanuel, 29n., 90n., 110n., Lindbeck, George, 139, 148, 149 Linell, Per, 14n. Lock, Charles, 29n., 113n. Long, Thomas G., 24n., 43, 44, 75, 102n., 145 Lorensen, Marlene Ringgaard, 22n., 24n., 96n., 106n., 131n., 168n. Lose, David J., 170n. Lowe, Walter, 91n., 167n., 168, 175n. Lowry, Eugene L., 23n., 145. Lundquist, Jan, 29n., 31, 32, 50n., 111n. Luther, Martin, 21, 41, 74, 122, 148, 154, 176 Luhmann, Niklas, 43n. Lynglund, Sten, 116n., 119n., 127n. Macovski, Michael S., 52n., 162n. McClure, John S., 14n., 16n., 18, 21, 23n., 27, 34n., 42n., 43, 69n., 72n. 76n., 84, 87–89, 91–93, 96, 129n., 138–143, 145–149, 169,177 Medvedev, Pavel Nikolaevich, 20 Mihailovic, Alexandar, 81n. Morson, Gary Saul, 58n., 120, 162n. Murav, Harriet, 152, 153n., 159n. Müller, Paul, 79n., 81n. Nicol, Martin, 71 Nielsen, Kirsten Busch, 23n. Nielsen, Bent Flemming, 23n., 24n., 43n., 45n., 54, 71n., 73–74, 125n., 155n., 165n., 168n., Olson, Dennis, 97n. Ong, Walter J., 73–75, 78n., 83, 84, 128n. Ortner, Sherry B., 13n., 17n., 28n., 38n. Ottoni-Wilhelm, Dawn, 68n., 170n.

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Index of names Pattison, George, 50, 80n., 107, 108, 154 Paul, St., 97, 98, 150n., 152, 156, 167 Pechey, Graham, 107n. Peirce, Charles Sanders, 30 Pilario, Daniel Franklin, 13n., 23n., 25n., 28n., 45n., 54n. Pleizier, Theo, 21n. Poole, Brian, 95n. Powery, Luke A., 130n. Prenter, Regin, 173 Randolph, David J., 68n. Reed, Walter L., 97n. Ricoeur, Paul, 35n., 37, 57, 58, 98, 111, 112, 147, 160n. Rose, Lucy Atkinson, 43, 69n., 89, 93n., 138n. Saunders, Stanley P., 24n., 140n. Saussure, Ferdinand de, 32, 34, 38, 54, 151n., 153n., 156n. Schatzki, Theodore R., 13n., 28n. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 24, 165, 166 Searle, John R., 46n., 51–53, 57, 70 Sigurdson, Ola, 106n.

195

Sjöstrand, Lena, 24n., 45n. Sung, Baek-Yong, 97n. Søltoft, Pia, 51n., 81, 82, 91n. Taylor, Mark C., 96n. Teglbjærg, Johanne Stubbe, 23n. Theunissen, Michael, 90n. Thyssen, Peter, 26n., 170n., 172n., 173n. Thøisen, Sanne B., 74–75 Tisdale, Nora Tubbs, 97n. Todorov, Tzvetan, 30, 83n., 136n. Troeger, Thomas H., 78n., 129n. Tronier, Henrik, 156–57 Vejlgaard, Finn, 120 Voloshinov, Valentin, 20, 83, 84, 149 Westerkamp, Dirk, 95n. Westhelle, Vitor, 148n. Wilson, Paul Scott, 24n., 75 Wingren, Gustaf, 29n., 72, 114n. Yarbrough, Stephen R., 25n., 35, 38n., 53n., 58 Zimany, Roland Daniel, 170n.

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Subject index

Addressee, 22, 39, 43, 45, 56, 59, 83–84 Addressivity, 48, 58, 62, 170, 174–75 Aesthetic seeing, 133–35 Analogia entis/analogy of being, 171–173 Analogy of faith/advent analogy, 122, 172–74 Architectonics, 15, 59, 82, 131 Authoring, 20, 39, 63, 131–32, 135 Becoming (process of), 63, 105, 171, 174, 171 Biblical exegesis, 42–43, 97–98, 151, 156–57 Carnival/carnivalesque, 15–18, 44, 49, 64, 80, 95–119, 151–160, 164, 177–78 Centrifugal forces, 87, 95, 109, 113, 160 Centripetal forces, 95, 109, 113, 160 Chronotope, 64–65 Chirographic conditioning, 74, 128–29 Co-authorship, 13–15, 21–22, 57, 70, 72, 129–132, 142 Communication theories 15, 32, 35–36, 42–45, 55–57, 61–62, 75, 80–81, 89, 93, 96, 141 Communication theology, 46, 93, 138, 141 Crime and Punishment, 64, 103

Dialogue/dialogicity (3 senses of), 14–15, 31, 41–63, 68–72, 131–32 Dialectics, 161–65 Double-consciousness, 87, 132–36 Ecclesiology, 87, 169 Embodiment, 15, 24, 44–45, 63, 103–107, 139–40 Empirical studies, 14, 16, 21–22, 69, 86, 130–32 Epistemology, 26, 37–38, 46, 135, 148 Ethics, 46–47, 107, 138, 152–53, 167 Eucharist, 104–105, 156 Event ,16, 26, 49, 73, 76, 148–49, 170, 173 Exotopy/outsideness, 84, 135–37 Experience, 44, 73–74, 76, 79, 85, 87, 122–23, 139, 148–49 ’Experience with the experience’, 122–23 Extra-verbal, non-verbal, 41, 44, 55, 95, 101, 103–107 Faith, 21, 25–27, 148, 174 ‘Feel for the game’, 54–55, 129 Field, 27–28, 34, 38, 54 Foreign Word/word of the other, 52, 58–60 Fool, foolishness 149–59 Fusion of horizons, 53n., 63, 84

Dis-located exegesis, 18, 151–59 Disruption, 111,137, 151, 169, 175–77

Genre (of preaching, genre theory, genre mix) 15, 27, 34, 45, 57, 64, 80, 93, 96–103, 119–20 Grotesque body 15, 99, 104–107

Dialectical theology, 16, 27, 42, 74 Dialogical principle, 41, 75, 82–83

Habitus, 27, 38 Herald, 42–44, 143

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198

Subject index

Hermeneutics, 23, 26, 37, 111–12, 136, 147, 160 Heteroglosssia/heteroglot, 59, 65–66, 126–27, 135, 169, 176 Holy fools, 152–59 Homilein, homilos, homiletics, 42 Humanistic sciences, 33, 36

Musicality, 128–29 Mængden, the multitude, 84, 160, 163–64

Identity/identification, 22, 33, 72, 79, 83–84, 87–88, 91, 135, 169, 171, 174 Imagination 75, 83–84 Implied listener/reader 72, 83, 121–22, 165–66 Incarnation 63,174,177–78 Indirect message, 50, 78–79 Inductive method, 25, 50, 77–79, 145 Intersubjectivity, 33, 36, 63, 88, 91, 131 Intertextuality, 44–45 Intercorporeality, 104–105

Open artwork, 70 Orality 73–74, 111–13, 126–29 Otherness, 14, 31–33, 50, 87–91, 132–36 Other-wise, 14,16, 87–94, 96, 135–39, 141–44, 148,167–70, 175–77

Jesus of Nazareth/Christ, 49, 87, 122, 132, 150–58, 163–64,166–67, 174 Langue vs. parole, 32, 55, 140 Language theory, 59–60, 148–49, 170 Laughter, 49, 102 Liberal Theology, 16, 165–66 Liminality, 19, 33, 59, 64, 103–104, 135–36, 152, 155–56, 177 Linguistics, 29–30, 32, 35, 38 ‘Linguistic ability’, 53–54 ‘Linguistic turn’, 45 Listeners (of preaching), 21–22, 32, 57, 83, 122–25 Loophole, 19, 45, 109–11 Lutheran tradition, 21, 25, 74, 106, 116–17, 122,-23, 130 Masquerade, 102, 118–119 Metaphorical language, 58, 85, 86, 104, 106, 122, 170–71 Methodology, 27–28, 33, 36, 76–77 Monologue/monological, 32, 47, 56, 65–66, 117

New Hermeneutic, 68, 76, 170 New Homiletic, 14, 46, 170 Novel, novelness, 30, 119–20, 126

Parable, 76, 170, 173 Participant proclamation, 84, 129–30 Personhood, 31–32, 47–48, 50, 63 Perspective/point of view, 86, 135–36 Phenomenology, 29, 78, 85, 122–23 Polyphony, 63, 65–67, 104, 117–120, 127, 143–44, 146 Pragmatism/neo-pragmatism, 25, 28, 30–31, 35, 38–39, 53 Practical Theology (discipline of), 23–27, 36 Practice-theoretical method, 13, 21–23, 25, 28–30, 38, 52, 54, 128–29, 139, 167 ‘Preaching crisis’, 77 ‘Priesthood of all Believers’, 77–78, 125, 128 Prior vs. passing theories, 53–55 Production-aesthetics, 22, 70, 72, 157 Qualitative difference, 116, 119, 161–69, 172, 178 Reception-aesthetics, 22, 70, 72, 157 Reification, 32, 36, 47, 56, 129 Rhetoric, 21, 45, 72, 75, 85–86, 99 Ritual, ritualization, 15, 23, 49, 99, 101 Role-reversal, 15, 18, 53, 142–44, 163–64 Roles of preachers, 42, 54–55, 142–44

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Subject index Sameness/similarity, 88–91 Said (the), ‘already-said’, ‘not-yet-said’, 15, 34, 43, 58, 60 Scaffolding, 15, 59, 122, 142 Serious-smiling genres, 100 Situatedness, 25, 31, 33, 36–37, 44, 107, 114, 124, 127, 149, 154–60 Socratic dialogue, 99–100 Sola scriptura, 74, 122 Speech act theories, 46, 51 Speech genres, 41, 131 Sprach-Ereignis, 26, 170 Street preaching, 18, 152–55 Structuralism, 28, 33–35, 44, 146–47 Superaddressee, 108–110 Testimonial proclamation/witness, 44, 117, 153, 158, 177 Text, textuality, 21–22, 36–37, 39, 126–27, 148–49

199

Torgauer Formel, 41 Transfer model, 25, 32–35, 37, 42–45, 55–57, 69 Translinguistic/metalinguistic, 30, 32–34, 45, 61 Tree metaphor/model 24 Trio-logue, 96, 109–110, 132, 160 Truth (dialogical understanding of), 62–64, 66, 100, 104, 146 ‘Two-sided act’, 34, 36, 41, 57, 84 ‘Upbuilding, the’, 51, 80–82, 133 Unfinalizable, 62–63, 134, 171, 174 Utterance, 30, 32, 34, 56, 131n Wholly Other/ Ganz Andere, 16, 22, 172, 175 Word of God theology, 22, 74, 141, 144–45, 170–71 Worship, 16, 42, 101, 124

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