THE RUSH TO RELEVANCE: POST MODERN HOMILETICAL REVOLUTION
What is Post Modernism? "The controversy over Post Modernism is one example of class struggle at the cultural and political level. On the political level Post Modernism is an attack on Marxism. On the cultural level it is a repudiation of the Modem Movement: abstract expressionism in painting, the international style in architecture, and existentialism in philosophy. Most Post Modernists reject the following models: the existential model of authenticity and inauthenticity, the semiotic opposition between signifier and signified, the Freudian model of latent and manifest, and the Marxist one of appearance and essence. . . these depth models have been replaced by a conception of practices, discourse and textual play." (Madon Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post Structuralism and Post Modernism (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press), 1989: 144)
How is Post Modernism related to Post Modem Homiletics? The term "New Homiletic" in Richard Eslinger's collective phrase is used to describe the work of recent homileticians whose theory represents a move away from rationalistic presuppositions that give rise to the propositional model of preaching. (Richard L. Eslinger, A New Hearing: Living Options in Homiletical Method (Abingdon. 1989): 13-14)
Post Modem Homiletics did not appear in the 1980's/l 990's without a history of developmental replacement from the classical, Christendom, Modem and finally the Post Modem mode. Every language, culture and private interest group has either an implicit or explicit World View. Every world view gives explanatory power to at least six crucial issues: (1) Ways of perceiving the world; (2) Ways of thinking; (3) Ways of expressing ideas; (4) Ways of acting; (5) Ways of channeling the message and (6) Ways of deciding (see esp. D. J. Hesselgrave's Communicating Christ Cross Culturally (Zondervan, 1978). Of course all world views legitimization structures, integration structures, and theory hypothesis, etc., are repudiated by Post Modem epistemology. For our more limited and specific area of Post Modem Homiletics we propose a brief trek from classical communication theories (esp. Aristotle, Cicero, Quintillian) to Gutenberg, McLuhan, Lyotard, Heidegger, Gadamer and the later influence on Post Modem homiletics as expressed in the works ofLoren Mead, Thomas Kuhn, R. L. Eslinger, Fred Craddock, Eugene Lowry, and David Buttrick.
Three classical communication theories are (1) Aristotle's Rhetoric Phaedrus (persuasion, proof, argument); (2) Cicero's On Intention and Partitions of Oratory: and (3) Quintillian's On The Education of the Orator. There are at least five factors involved in classical Rhetoric: (1) Invention (planning, discourse, argument); (2) Arrangement (parts, effective whole), (3) Style (choice of words and sentences, figures), (4) Memory, and (5) Preparation for delivery of the truthfulness of the context of the communication. There are three universal factors in any rhetorical or persuasive situation: (1) Speaker/Writer; these factors are found in speech of all cultures; (2) Audience (compare with Post Modem audience analysis). Each communication context has at least three features—SOURCE - primary, secondary tertiary Encode - verbal and non verbal. MESSAGE - method, feedback, context, and RESPONDENT or Decoding. Three features to relate only to individual not group or community of incoders and decoders. In any form of communication there are three cultural models - Bible - SMR. Missionary culture - SMR and Respondent culture SMR (see especially Hesselgrave, Communicating Christ Cross Culturally (Zondervan, 1978); Charles Kraft, Christianity in Culture (Orbis, 1960); and Eugene Nida, Message and Mission (Harper & Row, 1956). (3) Discourse or message (see my paper "Hermeneutics and Discourse Analysis") What message is being proposed and in what way(s) is the message related to the audience, e.g.. "needs" of Generation X or any species of post modem audiences. This is a crucial issue in Post Modem Homiletics. There are three categories:
(Aristotle, 1.2, 1356a) (1) Ethos, character, credibility of the communicator; (2) Pathos, inherent in the audience's emotional reactions, e.g.. judgment, promise, threat, hope. This category is crucial in communicating to any form of Seeker Friendly audience. (3) Logos, logical argument and within the discourse. This category is completely rejected by Post Modem homiletics. Rational discourse has supposedly fallen to the blade of Post Modem's anti foundationalism. (4) Context - contextualization was added in the 18th century rhetorical theory. In our postmodern Homiletics Wars the post Kantian development is surely the most demanding challenge for any form of community of communication (see my "Contextualization in Context"). From Kant's First Critique to the Historicism/Positivism controversy in the 19th century the exclusive claims of the Christian gospel have been under attack. This issue drives us beyond mere diversity to meta-narrative, which is totally rejected by post modem homiletics.
Since the Scriptures are "Word" oriented, this presents Christians with a demanding situation. The classical work of Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of The Word and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death provide us with tools to engage the communication revolution. This revolution has progressively developed from Gutenberg to McLuhan. The three building blocks of our communication/information revolution are (1) Oral - present, (2) Print - past, and (3) Electronic - future (see Groothuis' brilliant critique. The Soul in Cyber Space). We must take note that computers are digital, i.e., structured-programmed and Post Modem Homiletics rejects all forms of theory, hypothesis, paradigm, world view presuppositional approach to "induction."
Fred Craddock is surely the guru of post modem homiletics (Overhearing The Gospel: Inductive Preaching (Abingdon, 1990). But his work shows a total misunderstanding of the "Logic of Induction" in scientific investigation. It is also grounded in a dubious Kierkeggardian phenomenology. Truth is completely psychologized/subjectivized by the Kierkeggardian method. His cultural critique is important against the dominate 19th century positivistic mode of scientific knowledge/truth claims, but is no foundation for what science actually does when it generates verification and is capable of predictive phenomena. In fact, the positivistic model of science now was defeated by the advancements from Einstein, Plank, Heisenberg, et.al. We certainly do not need Kierkeggard's phenomenology to save Christian truth claims from a false view of scientific knowledge claims.
COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE GUTENBERG GALAXY: FROM AUDIBILITY TO VISIBILITY
In Gutenberg's Galaxy, McLuhan divides human history into several periods. These periods are characterized by him according to the senses (sight, taste, sound, touch, smell) which dominate and stimulate life and learning. Earliest human life was life in a world dominated by the sense of hearing. It was a world in which the ear was the paramount sense for accumulating the knowledge and wisdom necessary in order to function in life. McLuhan characterizes this early culture as a magical world of sound—sounds which were absolutely indispensable for human life and existence (e.g.. Jewish teaching, cf. reading scripture aloud requires both sound and sight).
Pre-Post Gutenberg Galaxial World — Some of the characteristics of the Gutenberg Galaxy world that we have inherited are (1) it put accent on the individual. Print is the technology of individualism; (2) Learning becomes visual, the world of sound becomes superfluous, indeed intrusive, for the acquisition of knowledge (e.g.. library sign "Be Quite"); (3) Grammar and dictionaries become indispensable—no one ever made a grammatical mistake or misspelled a word in an ear oriented culture. (3) Grammar and dictionaries fix and freeze the meaning of words (note the linguistic controversy over the Kittel enterprise) (4) That which is logical is that which is linear. "I don't follow you.", "where are you going with that idea?" A linear progression of thought obviously makes sense to us. (e.g.. Jay Leno and David Letterman and the film, "Air Force One") These three media events represent modern communication, post modern communication and the last example of revisionist history, i.e., trying to present the President as a national hero and savior of the world—there could be nothing farther from the truth!!! (4) The printed text assumes that the "meaning" is in the text. This claim is precisely what is denied after the influence of Fish, Lyotard, Foccault, and Gadamer reached the academic arena. Their influence is at the heart of Post Modem Homiletics. (6) Text of Scriptures understood as light on phenomenon that the readers of the text are to fix attention with a high degree of intensity. This perception of communication changes when we orbit out of the Gutenberg Galaxy and into the world of electronic media.
THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE
What comes after Gutenberg? We now live in an electronic world which massages all of our senses at once. From the telegraph to the telephone to the radio (1939), The War of the Worlds, to the movies to television, we have lived through a period of human culture that has electrically stimulated our entire nervous system with all its sense (e.g.. negative political advertising, all forms of information control, propaganda, advertisement, etc.. When the senses are stimulated (massaged) change, humanity and cultural changes. A culture in which the eye is predominately massaged is different from a culture in which the ear is predominantly massaged. A culture is which all our senses are massaged by electronic media is different from the world of Gutenberg and the ear. In other words, the Medium (method) is the massage? No method is not and cannot be neutral. Herein is the Post Modem Churches greatest challenge. Media's power fused by pragmatic epistemology (whatever works is true) is death to True Truth! (e.g.. Dewey, Peirce and James, Church Growth and the Magna Church Model: see my paper, "Whatever Happened to True Truth?")
McLuhan uses two metaphors—"Hot" and 'Cold' to summarize his view of communication. "A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in high definition. High definition is the state of being well filled with data. . . . Hot media is therefore low in participation and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience." By this use of the words "hot" and "cold" McLuhan is trying to say that electronic media has revitalized our senses; e.g.. Israel and the Arabs; Bush and Hussein, Liberia, etc. The teenager enmeshed in his or her stereophonic world is certainly caught up in an auditory environment! Gutenberg parents, please, "Please turn that down! It hurts my ears!" Life should approximate a library.
MCLUHAN'S SOUNDINGS IN THEOLOGY AND PREACHING
There are at least three factors within McLuhan's soundings: (1) Verbal inspiration and prepositional revelation are positions at home in the Gutenberg world of thought. Is biblical preaching "Hot" or "Cold" communication? (2) The task of preaching under the cultural impact of The Gutenberg press is, necessarily, "Hot" "linear" and "Didactic" (cf. Left/Right hemisphere of the brain). (3) Hot literary bores "Cool People" (Protestant/Catholic liturgy is 'hot.' We have bulletins to "order the services." Preaching controlled by Gutenberg Hermeneutics is predisposed to a "Didactic form of Homiletics: Gutenberg homiletics would have the following characteristics: (1) The goal of preaching is to teach the lesson of the text; (2) In order to teach the lessons or meanings of the text the points to be made are usually abstracted from the text; (3) The sermon aims is primarily at the "hearer's" mind; (4) The sermon is developed in a logical, sequential and linear manner; (5) The sermon is prepared under the criteria for written materials: and (6) Faith engendered in the hearer is 'faith' that the ideas are true. God forbid that the True ideas are references to True Truth deriving from the outside of the auditory listener or reader.
Major players in our communication revolution are Cooley, Innis and McLuhan. These communication specialists trace our civilization from Oral to Literate to Electronic culture. Any structural analysis of the thought of the three previously mentioned gurus of communication will entail their position regarding: (1) Time, (2) Space, (3) Thought, (4) Diffusion, (5) Expressiveness, (6) Social Organization, (7) Authority, (8) Sensorium, (9) Truth, (10) Information Storage. In McLuhan's perspective — (1) Time - future - impermanence; (2) Space -globalism; (3) Thought - visual - visceral - sensorial; (4) Diffusion - equipment - ownership -access; (5) Expressiveness - Immanence; (6) Social organization - chance - being there - mass society; (&) Authority - photogenic - heroes - media baron; (8) Sensorum - nervous system; (9) Truth - cult of disbelief - there is no true truth in our multicultural pluralism; (10) Information -computers - Groothuis' Soul in Cyber Space (Baker, 1997).
James D. Strauss
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