Preaching: the blog smackdown

I love finding dueling bloggers who don't know they are blogging. In the left corner, David Fitch who is a guest at the
Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: The Myth of Expository Preaching (part 2): proclamation that inspires the imagination:

FROM TEXTBOOK TO DRAMA
Preachers must resist all modernist temptations to see the Scriptures as a propositional textbook of religious facts. Scripture is real accounts, testimonies, and witnesses of God’s people. It is alive. So let’s read and speak as ones invited to participate in the continuation of all this story! This means seeing the Bible as a Narrative Recently, von Balthazar, Sam Wells, and Kevin Vanhoozer have all taught us to think of Scripture as Theo Drama where we become the participants. This is the metaphor I believe we must follow in our preaching.

If this is true, then we need to put historical exegesis in its proper place. It a tool grounded in history that must be submitted to the traditions and history of God's work in the church. We need not spend countless hours translating each text thinking we have reached the original meaning by our own brilliance. Instead, we stand in a long line of preachers and the vast theological realities that have been interpreted and shown out of Scripture down through the ages.

Authorial intent is not the main issue although it may be of importance for understanding the text at certain times. What is important is the reality being unfurled about God in Christ and how we can best respond so as to live into it until He returns. The hubris of pastors thinking they can exegete a text better and more accurately than the thousands that have gone before gets in the way of the Main Thing, the glory of his majestic work and what he is working for in history. This is where our imaginations will be fed. This is where we will be formed as missional people.

my comment...i don't understand why people feel the need to turn things into a dichotomy, either-or. yes the Word is narrative and testimony and didactive, but it is assuming supernatural things and making supernatural assumptions. Those who accept its testimony can enjoy the narrative, but those who doubt its testimony, who sit in judgement of the testimony, the evidence needs to be weighed publically, for the benefit of all. It is helpful for some people to examine it line by line. The book of Mormon is narrative and testimony and it makes historical and supernatural claims, but before one should sit back and enjoy the narrative, its claims need to be weighed and tested. As far as discarding authorial intent, i have a one word response, "yikes!"

In the right corner sits Doug Groothius who practically shouts,

The root problem with much preaching today is a deficient of truth and sobriety. There is not enough truth radiating from the pulpit; it is not a truth zone. There is not enough zeal, not enough desperation for the reception and impartation of "truths that transform" (as D. James Kennedy puts it). The very resources of heaven reside in the sacred texts, but we fail to seize upon them...We should preach Christ, not ourselves, as Paul affirmed. Yet in our postmodern culture, the self is endlessly flattered in every way and from every angle: "Have it your way." "You deserve the best." And on it goes. (On this phenomenon, see the book, Mediated by Thomas Zengotita.) People promote themselves shamelessly, pose shamelessly (see an earlier post on that) when Scripture says to never pose (the way of the hypocrite) and to let others speak well of you (and rebuke you). But the preacher should neither flatter himself nor his audience. As A. W. Tozer said, we should not console people in their sins, but disquiet them, disturb them, disorient them (and ourselves). We should not entertain, but edify. We should gain and hold people's attention through the truth of the message and the integrity of our character, principally our humility and love for God's truth.

Not that Doug is opposing David but there is a both/and here. Doug's earlier post is tough, perhaps an attack on some strawmen, but it's so tough i can't even comment.