Preaching and Theology

In thinking about what to write my dissertation on, I've been drawn to thinking about the intersection between preaching, doctrine, and catechesis. I'm drawn to this question because the theologians that I've probably spent the most time reading - Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and my favorite Baptist theologian, James McClendon - all wrote around the intersection of these three fields. Preaching, particularly, plays a major role in the work of all four (the role of preaching in Aquinas is just beginning to be explored). Preaching is also a major, if not the central, aspect of Baptist life and worship.

One of the ideas they drilled into us at Duke Divinity School that I'm most thankful for is their emphasis on Preaching as a theological event. This idea, which was usually taught to us through Barth or Bonhoeffer, was that a congregation that hears sermons based on scripture is hearing the Word of God, however weak and human the sermon might be. Bonhoeffer famously said to his preaching students before he read their work, "let's see what God is telling us today in your sermon." Karl Barth has a very strong emphasis on preaching throughout the Church Dogmatics, and he regards the common Sunday sermon as a theological miracle with its basis in the work of Jesus Christ. Barth says, for instance, "humanly speaking, it is a stark impossibility that men should speak what God speaks, but it is one which in Jesus Christ is already overcome" (CD 1/2-22).

This emphasis on the theological event of preaching was taught to me through largely Protestant sources. Yet as an "ecumenical Baptist" studying at a Catholic university, I'd like to have an "ecumenical eye" in these issues. I'm interested to learn more about theologies of preaching being developed by Catholic theologians, and to learn how they connect preaching and doctrine.