Eslinger
Chapter 5: A Phenomenological Method: David Buttrick
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A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method by Richard L.
Eslinger
Richard L. Eslinger, at the writing of this book, was pastor of Wallingford United Methodist Church in Seattle. Prior to that he was associate professor of Christian worship at Duke University. This book was published in 1987 by Abingdon Press.
This material prepared for Religion Online by Paul Mobley.
Chapter 5: A Phenomenological
preacher began to seek ideas derived from personal/pastoral experience, prior to searching Scripture for textual support or reproof. Typically, the sermon form then continued by explicating the main idea through a series of points. "The result," Buttrick notes, "is that now we have a romantic concept of 'inspiration' coupled with rational method, a mix found in most homiletic texts today" (IP, p.47). During the twentieth century, Harry Emerson Fosdick would modify the model by beginning with a specific personal problem and by then relating it to some general religious truths often derived from Scripture. Predictably, the sermon would then conclude after an extended illustration (IP, p.48).
Whether the particular expression is post-Reformation scholastic or twentieth-century situational, rational homiletics has been marked by categorical development and a focus on "objective truth." Buttrick detects a strong kinship between the development of this rationalistic approach and early scientific method. The former "does seem to parody scientific procedure in which an object is isolated for study and a
general deduction is followed by descriptive statements" (IP, p.47).
What becomes problematic, however, is how the biblical Word is treated within a topical objective model of preaching. On one hand the very character of biblical language, filled as it is with story, image, and poetry, would seem to fight against the constraints of such a method. A conceptual scheme in fact will deal with such Scripture as "on-the-page inert language from which something may be removed and talked about" (PCF, p.54). Interpretation by means of distillation inevitably removes narrative or poetic meaning "and those traveling shifts in thought that animate the scriptures" (PCF, p. 54). The Bible is reduced to a source book for objective propositions, its stories viewed simply as illustrations of an ideational world of religious truths.
As a correlate of this method of distillation, a conceptual homiletic also assumes that single texts can serve as the containers for these themes. A preacher will mount the pulpit with the "text" of the day already printed in the bulletin or announce as an objective the "breaking open of the text."
Texts are transformed into thematics and developed propositionally. But this hermeneutic clearly results in the importation of otherwise derived truths into a scriptural setting since, as Buttrick observes, "single verses seldom mean anything out of context" (IP, p. 47). When these truths and principles are traced to their extra-biblical source, moreover, it is soon evident that they are derived from the more general cultural ethos within
which the preaching occurs. Evidence presents itself "that the habit of distilling 'truths' has flourished in eras when faith and culture are in synthesis, when there is a sense of vertical analogia alive in public mind" (IP, p.55). An obsolescence will necessarily infect this rational homiletic when it persists well into a time when such cultural stasis and integration are no longer prevalent. To preach fixed topics and eternal truths within the contemporary culture is to insist that the listeners become Victorian before they can hear the gospel. But, of course, such cultural repristination is not really possible.
So the question becomes for David Buttrick, "What is the matter with homiletic method?" (IP, p.46) The listeners are aware that preaching dwells on a level of language that is too general, rarely getting close enough to lived experience. And most hearers sense that "preaching" is synonymous with harmless, shallow declarations on virtues and feelings.
It is too often "moralistic or pietistic and without depth" (PCF, p. 54).
But the way out will not be through further modifications in the old topical approach, either by interjecting more elaborate story illustrations or heavier doses of "warm-fuzzy" subjectivity. Depth in preaching can be achieved, but the three-hundred-year-old tradition will need to come to an end, its forms and outlines the subject for study in the history of preaching, yet released from current praxis. The conditions necessary for a new homiletic have already come to pass, and the most significant of these factors, perhaps, is the new biblical studies.
The various expressions of rational homiletic method have all related to Scripture through what David Buttrick has labeled a "method of
distillation." The biblical passage is reduced to a single theme and, methodologically, that reduction/distillation needs to occur before the sermon can be preached. Through such an approach, the text (pericope) has been viewed as a static field from which an idea is to be taken, "a still-life picture in which something may be found, object-like, to preach on" (IP, p.49). Approaching Scripture with this distillation method is analogous to "explaining" Van Gogh's Starry Night by isolating and analyzing the church steeple, or one of the trees. What is by-passed is any attention to the composition of the work of art or its intention, to
"what the picture wants to do."(3) Thus, in approaching the Lukan story of the centurion's slave (Luke 7:2-10), for example, a preacher dealing objectively with the passage will either isolate a verse as a "text" —
"Say the word," "I am not worthy" — or distill a theme or general idea
— "true worthiness," "the compassion of Jesus" (FSH). What has been ignored, for Buttrick, are most of the elements which convey the
passage's significance:
The composition of the "picture," the narrative structure, the movement of the story, the whole question of what in fact the passage may want to preach. Above all, notice that the passage has been treated as a stopped, objective picture from which something may be taken out to preach on!
(IP. p. 49)
Homiletically, Scripture is treated as a "static construct" from which an idea is distilled or a "text" is extracted.(4)
Recent literary-critical insights, however, have convincingly established that Scripture is not susceptible to objective preaching's method of distillation. Biblical passages are more like films than still-lifes; they
"display movement of thought, event, or image" (IP, p. 53). This
scriptural movement, moreover, is episodic and embodies some kind of sequential logic. The issue for the interpreter is, therefore, not to ask first "What did the passage mean?" but to inquire as to the logic of its plotted language.
Does the pericope reflect a "visual" logic or one of a narrative system?
Or is there reversal or irony lurking in the passage's episodic movement?
Literary-critical methodology has detected in biblical language both
"mobile, plotted structures of meaning," and language that is
performative in purpose (PCF, p.54). Every pericope will have a moving structure of some sort which has both a logic and an intention. Of
particular interest to the biblical interpreter, therefore, are the related concerns as to the why and how of a pericope's form. "Why was a particular form chosen? How does the form function?" (IP, p. 50) The
"logic" of the passage will be evident through a structural analysis which will disclose the plotting of its episodes in sequence. These
"systems of structural telling" — which may be most evident in narrative — "can be analyzed with literary categories — time, space, character, 'point-of-view' " (IP, p.51). The form, story in this instance, will have a particular structure and movement expressed through a sequence of episodes of meaning. In the course of his analysis of the centurion's slave pericope, for example, Buttrick identifies the following episodes:
Introduction: Servant is ill
"He is worthy"
Merit: God and country
"I am not worthy"
"But, say the word"
Authority
"Not in Israel do I find faith."
"But here"
Conclusion : Servant is well (FSH)
By plotting what has all the appearances of a miracle story, a much deeper issue is revealed. The text wants to move the hearer from an assumed theology of merit to one of grace (FSH). But such plotting of the episodes of a scripture's structure is not limited to narrative material alone In fact, Buttrick insists, much of what is taken for "story" really consists solely of dialog. To the extent that all language "involves structured speaking, a sequence of ideas or images logically designed"
(IP, p. 51), non-narrative material can also be plotted and its logic identified.
When a biblical passage's episodic movement is plotted, it will be discovered that the structure is moving through a theological field. This underlying "field of concern" is discovered "by analyzing separate
episodes theologically" (IP, p. 52). Thus, the analysis of the plot of Luke 7:1-10 as well as an inquiry into the meaning of its respective episodes or movements reveals that the field of concern involves appeals to merit and grace. But that theological field will always remain the context for some plotted system of language and cannot be distilled into a static theme. As Buttrick notes, "we are still dealing with a theological field and a play — the play is crucial. . . . We mustn't lose it" (FSH). As these episodes of a pericope "play" within a field of concern, the interpreter notices that a hidden perspective begins to emerge. Texts embody something like a hermeneutical lens through which the writer views the subject and this perspective becomes "a submerged field in which the
structures of a text move" (IP, p. 57). There is a "theologic" by which the author chooses the sequences of the episodes in a plot and the focus within each episode which is significant for the meaning of each
structural element. Rather than asking the historical question, a preacher will need to ask questions of the logic of a pericope's structure and movement and of the hermeneutical focus of its underlying field of concern.
According to Buttrick, a further consideration for the preacher in
interpreting a text is the issue of its "addressed world." What is meant by this are the "world constructs" that are shared by the social
consciousness of the listeners (IP, p. 53). For example, "the parable of the workers and hours (Matt. 20:1-15) seems to presume that listeners have bought into a 'just' Deuteronomic world in which meritorious labors are rewarded by a record-keeping God; whereas the similitude of the mustard seed may address a mentality which anticipates the
salvation of the pagans through Israel's triumph" (IP, p.53). Both the speaker in the oral tradition and the redactor(s), then, will possess some focused sense of the "world" they are addressing.
Alongside David Buttrick's conviction that Scripture conveys meaning by moving plots of episodes within a field of concern, a further
assessment of biblical language is made. Not only will the language of Scripture say something (have a message), it will do something as well.
Buttrick is assuming that language is performative, "trying to do
something to an attendant listening consciousness" (FSH), and that this vital function of language pertains to almost all biblical language. He argues:
In the ancient world spoken language was employed in more
sophisticated ways than in our crumbling linear culture. First century folk grasped language like a tool, choosing form and style and structure to shape purpose. Thus biblical language is language designed to
function in consciousness (IP, p.54).
Biblical language is intentional; a pericope will want to function in the consciousness of the hearer in some way. Therefore, an interpreter is never finished with a text when a "message" has been found. For Buttrick, the central question becomes, What does the passage want to do?
The implications for preaching of this literary and phenomenological
approach to Scripture (Buttrick labels it "patchwork phenomenology") are evident and immediate. Obviously, it will no longer do for the preacher to seize a "message" and then somewhat arbitrarily exploit some method or other to preach it. There is an intent to the language of Scripture which will be reflected in the intent of the sermon. For
preaching to be biblical, it will seek faithfulness not only to the message of a text, but to its purpose expressed through its performative language.
Raising this latter question of intention "may well mark the beginning of homiletical obedience" (IP, p. 58). Such obedience will be evidenced by preaching's attentiveness to how a text functions in the consciousness of its hearers, both as to its mobility and its performative language.
Preaching deals not only with the language of Scripture, but necessarily with the expression of that text in the language of the contemporary audience. People live in language as fish swim in water, and preaching will need to express the Word through a specific community's speech.
What is problematic for preaching, however, is that the language is incredibly unstable at present, probably reflecting some fundamental reorientation in how language forms in human consciousness. Though not intended as an exhaustive symptomology of the crisis in language, Buttrick centers his attention on the following cultural and linguistic phenomena:
1. A dramatic shift is occurring in the amount of language in use. Over the past fifty years "we have sloughed off nearly half the vocabulary our forebears enjoyed. The trend, since 1960, is to multiply new words at a furious rate" (PCF, p.51). Regarding the loss of language, Buttrick reports that of the 450,000 words in the Webster's Dictionary of 1935, only 150,000 remained in use by 1978. On the other hand, another 200,000 words have come into the language since 1950.(5)
2. The current linguistic shift is not solely a quantitative matter of losses and gains. Particularly as regards oral communication in groups
(preaching), an equally dramatic qualitative shift has occurred as well.
The performative power of "third person conceptual language" (like Lowry's spatial talk) is what is not functioning in oral communication to groups. Generic, conceptual words (mankind, patriotism, sin) no longer
"form" in the group consciousness as well, if at all.(6) Preachers may lament this loss with even more feeling than the quantitative
diminishment of the language, since so much of preaching unfortunately remains at this third person conceptual level of discourse. Such
conceptual language may have functioned effectively during the era of
the "pulpit giants," Buttrick admits, but it is no longer potent in today's preaching.
What has emerged with great force, though, is a new, vigorous language centering on image, metaphor, and story. This language does form in consciousness today with immediacy and an awesome power (IS). Any new homiletic should of necessity incorporate these factors into its methodology of preaching.
3. Specifically with reference to research about oral rhetoric, language is also functioning differently in consciousness. In oral communication, an audience needs nearly three minutes to achieve clarity concerning a single idea. The other side of the coin involves the shorter attention span of the hearers — it is difficult for a group to focus on an idea for more than three minutes. The result, Buttrick observes, is that "preachers find themselves in a peculiar bind: congregations need time to comprehend ideas, but they will not attend any idea for long" (PCF, p. 51). The window of time within which a constitutive element of a sermon must be developed and completed has become "desperately narrow" (PCF, p.
51).
If the new biblical studies of literary criticism have rendered the old homiletic obsolete, this radical shift in language also signals the end of objective preaching's life span. Even if rationalist, propositional
preaching persists in some pulpits, that preaching will be devoid of linguistic potency. And since "faith comes from hearing" (Rom. 10:17 TEV), the old conceptual rhetoric will need to be jettisoned by a church intent on proclaiming God's Word. "Not since the collapse of the Greco- Roman world or the dissolution of the Medieval synthesis has there been such awesome reconstruction of language.(7)A faithful church will eagerly seek a new homiletic to accommodate such an upheaval in language and culture.
The kind of phenomenological analysis of language recommended by David Buttrick provides a mirror for social consciousness. Public language, in fact, may be one of the most important vehicles by which this shared consciousness is expressed and studied. To the extent, therefore, that language is undergoing such awesome shifts, the phenomenal world of consciousness is experiencing flux as well. Not only is rapid change occurring, however, it is also evident that social experience "at the ragged tag-end of the twentieth century is nothing if it is not complex, ambiguous, and full of shadowy mystery" (PCF, p. 54).
Preaching will need to be alert not only to these striking linguistic shifts, but also to the depths and complexities of human experience. A
conceptual approach to preaching, though, is unable to engage these profound experiences at the level where image and metaphor abound.
There is one other major implication drawn by Buttrick from this relationship of language to a "social world." Language's disclosure of the shared social world calls into question a central premise of modern preaching — that the object of the sermon is to address individuals as individuals. For thirty years, Buttrick asserts, "the American pulpit has addressed either the internal one-to-one self — the triumph of the therapeutic — or it has preached a one-to-one morality for
individuals."(8)The difficulty with this approach, however, is that the object of such preaching — the one-to-one self — does not exist.
Ironically, "in the name of relevance we have preached to an
abstraction."(9)If language reveals the room of consciousness to be papered with the slogans, images, values, and symbols of a shared social world, then preaching which assumes that either salvation or holiness can be strictly an individual matter is seriously misguided. Buttrick cautions, though, that this critique of the "personalism" of the American pulpit is by no means a vindication of the old social gospel. It, too, preached in the name of relevance, but also preached to an abstraction.
"The social gospeler preached to a world without a self, the pietist preached to a self without a world."(10)Biblical preaching needs to avoid both traps, by refusing to engage in static abstractions. In place of isolated selves and a fixed God, the biblical preacher will witness to "the relating of an on-the-move purposeful God with his lag-behind pilgrim people" (IP, p. 55).
The issue of homiletic method, for David Buttrick, begins with a question — "If pericopes are moving language, if they imply a 'world,' have structured significance and performative purpose, what will a
‘biblical' preaching be?" (IP, p. 55) The answer, he believes, does not lie in the direction of separating exegetical and homiletical method.
Labeling himself a "homiletic exegete," Buttrick now turns to a
homiletic theory which seeks to couple lived experience with structural understandings within hermeneutic consciousness.(11)A sermon needs to be formed to function in consciousness much as thoughts themselves form, hence a "phenomenological" method. The object for the
congregation is not so much to hear the sermon as to have it form in their consciousness (FTS). Hence, the preacher should be asking of the language of the sermon the same question asked of the biblical text —