A Rhetorical Model for Homiletics. Rodney Kennedy Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1990 The piE stemic Power of Metaphor: A Rhetorical Model for Homiletics. Rodney Kennedy Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Kennedy, Rodney, "The pE istemic Power of Metaphor: A Rhetorical Model for Homiletics." (1990). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5063. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5063 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. 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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THE EPISTEMIC POWER OF METAPHOR: A RHETORICAL MODEL FOR HOMILETICS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Speech Communication, Theatre, and Communication Disorders by Rodney Kennedy B.A., Louisiana College, 1974 M.Div., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1978 December 1990 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Professor Kenneth Zagacki for his direction of my project. The time, attention, and encouragement he provided were of great value to me. I am grateful to the Messiah, Grand Chenier, Wakefield, Clear Creek, and Clinton United Methodist congregations for allowing me the time to complete this work. A special thanks is reserved for Doris Buerger, my loyal and persistent typist. Without her help, I could not have finished my research. Above all, I thank my wife, Johnelle. The completion of my work is the result of her constant support, genuine love, and gentle reminders of approaching deadlines. To JOHNELLE WALLACE KENNEDY iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page One. INTRODUCTION........... 1 Two. A DECONSTRUCTION OF CLASSSICAL HOMILETICS: A FOUCAULTIAN ANALYSIS ......... 50 Three. THE RHETORIC/HOMILETICS RELATIONSHIP .... 90 Four. A RHETORIC OF HOMILETICS OR A RHETORIC OF FOLLY ..................... 121 Five. TOWARD A METAPHORICAL HOMILETICS ........... 167 Six. THE CREATIVE POWER OF METAPHOR IN H O M I L E T I C S .............................. 225 Seven. CONCLUSION ................................... 275 iv ABSTRACT This study analyzes the symbiotic relationship between rhetoric and homiletics. The proposed interface between the two disciplines is metaphor. Contemporary research on metaphor in philosophy, rhetoric, sociology, and theology is employed to produce a rhetorical/metaphorical homiletics. A deconstruction of classical homiletics traces the basic preaching model to a Cartesian philosophical starting point. The nature of the Christian scriptures as metaphorical and of Christian liturgy as symbolic is alien to the rational, objective homiletics. An examination of Christian worship as a rhetorical event includes the elements of the theory of rhetoric developed by Michel Foucault: discursive practices, rules, roles, knowledge, and power. Through a new reading of classical sources, implicitly or explicitly impacting the homiletic tradition, a different, more positive role is suggested for rhetoric. Instead of viewing rhetoric as a tool of evil, the preacher is encouraged to accept the rhetorical nature of all preaching. On this reading homiletics is defined as a type of rhetoric and the preacher becomes a rhetor. Rhetoric is defined as contingency and probability in opposition to traditional Christian dogmas of certainty. v In an extension of the rhetorical theories of Ernesto Grassi and Richard H. Brown, a rhetoric of folly is developed. By juxtaposing the views of Grassi and St. Paul concerning folly, a common goal of Christians and secularists is discovered. Both, while despairing of the rational paradigm, suggest folly as a way of survival. The characteristics of a rhetoric of folly are: identification, semantic speech, empathic communication, dialectical irony, and metaphor. Metaphor, as a creative power, is presented as the major component in a rhetoric of folly. Rather than view metaphor as an element of style, this study resituates metaphor as an element of rhetorical invention. Metaphor is capable of redescribing reality, producing a new world, and creating credibility, community, and concepts by which Christians and secularists structure reality. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Christian preaching faces a perpetual crisis.1 According to Cardinal Newman2 and Matthew Arnold3 preaching can be seen as an attempted synthesis of two rival moral and intellectual traditions: the secular or "Hellenic" tradition, and the sacred or "Hebraic" tradition. Throughout the history of preaching the convergence of these two traditions has been almost impossible to accomplish. Tertullian prescribed the polarities in his blunt question: "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"4 Arnold complains that there ought to be a happy balance between the two, "though it never is."5 Perhaps the most significant response to the crisis of the rival cultures embedded in Christian preaching was that of St. Augustine. Floyd Anderson argues that Augustine produced a synthesis of sacred doctrine and pagan knowledge, representing "probably the most successful synthesis of Hebraism and Hellenism in Western history. 116 Augustine joins eloquence to religion and provides in De doctrina Christiana two texts for the present study. The first text would eliminate existing differences between the sacred and the secular: "Every good and worthy Christian should understand that wherever they may find truth, it emanates from their Lord."7 In the second text, Augustine urges preachers to "... despoil pagan thought of the gold of wisdom and the silver of eloquence, as by God's command the Hebrews despoiled the Egyptians."8 Unfortunately, the Augustinian synthesis has not survived into the twentieth century. The most notable reconstruction of Augustine's rhetorical homiletics was that of Fenelon. Subsequent homiletic theorists have attempted to combine disparate elements of Hebraism and Hellenism without achieving the "happy balance" that Matthew Arnold thought desirable. A partial result for contemporary preachers, saddled with the oral culture of the Hebrew prophets as well as the literate culture of Athens, is a crisis of rationality. I am using the term "rationality" in the sense that the autonomous consciousness of the thinker could account for any reality by the strict application of the methods of science and logic. The classical critiques of rationality have been expressed in the works of the "masters of suspicion," Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx. They called into serious question the naive rationalist claims of the Age of Enlightenment. Homiletic methodology, content in its own illusion of rationality, has failed to challenge or assimilate the charges made by the hermeneutics of suspicion. The most frequent and most damaging charge by Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud has been expressed in a variety of ways: in Marxist terms, by the bourgeois intellectual's refusal to struggle against oppressive economic conditions; in Freudian terms, by the disclosure of subterranean forces of the unconscious motivating our supposed rationality; in the charges of Nietzsche that our primary task is not the development of a sincere rationalism, but the becoming of individuals. A contemporary critique of the crisis of rationality by Richard J. Bernstein centers in what he calls "Cartesian anxiety." Cartesian anxiety is the assumption that only two options are available for those who inquire into matters of knowledge and action: either