A R T Y K U Ł Y

ROCZNIKI TEOLOGICZNE
Tom LXV, zeszyt 12 – 2018
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18290/rt.2018.65.12-1

LECH BEKESZA

RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING.

THE NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS
OF BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING

A b s t r a c t . The desired outcome of biblical communication is application – the process of the

listener relating his or her life to the truth of God’s word. Consequently, the goal of biblical commu-
nication is relevance – the process of relating truth of God’s word to the listener. At the heart of the
biblical equation of communication stands the question of the necessary and sufficient conditions
which must obtain for a sermon to count as being biblically relevant. The article analyzes the con-
tent and form of biblical communication seeking to determine its relationship to the consciousness
of the listener (intellect, affection and will). The paper contends for an objective foundation of
biblical relevance found in the biblical content always aiming at the will of the listener and the bibli-
cal form framing the content for the intellect of the hearer. The sermon is biblically relevant to the
extent to which the above relationships obtain in the process of communication.

Key words: biblical relevance; preaching; content; form; intellect; will.

1. THE DILEMMA OF BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN COMMUNICATION

Relevance is the heart of preaching. Relevance pumps the life-giving blood of

God’s word through the arteries of our souls. When the heart of relevance pul-
sates with life in the pulpit, our pews teem with life. When the heart of preaching

Dr LECH BEKESZA – Pastor w Cobble Hill Christian Church w Kanadzie; członek The Evangelical
Homiletics Society oraz założyciel i dyrektor The Biblical Preaching Society. Był wykładowcą
homiletyki i teologii systematycznej w seminariach w Polsce, Kanadzie i USA; adres do korespon-
dencji: 3791 Cobble Hill Road Cobble Hill, British Columbia, V0R 1L5; e-mail: [email protected]
LECH BEKESZA PhD – the pastor of the Cobble Hill Baptist Church on Vancouver Island. He is
a member of the Evangelical Homiletics Society and also the founder and director of the Biblical Preach-
ing Society. He taught Systematic Theology and Homiletics in many colleges in USA, Canada and Po-
land; address: 3791 Cobble Hill Road Cobble Hill, British Columbia, V0R 1L5; e-mail: [email protected]
6 LECH BEKESZA

loses its pulse, the life of the church flat-lines. Biblical relevance stands at the
very core of biblical preaching.
The desired outcome of preaching is application. Application, in its broad
sense, is the process of relating life to truth. In the context of homiletics, applica-
tion is the process of the listener conforming his or her life to the truth of God’s
word. We preach to change lives. If the desired outcome of preaching is applica-
tion then the goal of preaching is relevance. Relevance is the flip side of
application. It is the process of relating truth to life. More precisely, relevance in
preaching refers to the process of forming the truth of God’s word to the lives of
the listeners. Before people are able to apply their lives to the truth, the truth has
to be properly related to their lives.
The field of homiletics sits on a fault line of relevance, where the plate of
God’s truth overlaps the plate of life. Preaching is taking God’s truth spelled out
in yesterday’s book and applying it to the lives of today’s audience. Timothy
Warren points to the heart of the homiletic dilemma when he observes that “The
challenge of Christian ministry is to proclaim changeless eternal truth while
applying it to ever-changing temporal situation.”1 The preacher stands between
two worlds: the world of the Bible and the world of today. Those once-intersect-
ing worlds have drifted apart pushed by the winds of history. Time and change,
accelerated by the rapid growth in technology, social transformation, political
transition, and religious diversification eroded the initial splinter into a grand
canyon. The demand for relevance in communicating God’s word increases as the
distance between the world of the Scriptures and the world of today expands. That
distance is measured in terms that define culture in all its complexity. The process
of relevance then is the process of trying to bridge the gap between the culture of
the Bible and the culture of today.
Preaching “in the gap” has demanded that relevance build a bridge from the
side of the Scriptures to the side of our contemporary culture. What the process
required from a preacher was to transfer the message of the Bible to the other side
of the canyon, with the hope of finding a solid ground. However, the endeavour of
bridging the cultural chasm has been wrought with frustration and difficulty.
The greatest challenge comes from our inability to build a bridge to an ever-
moving mass of cultural landscape. Culture is in a constant state of flux. It chang-
es perpetually, often without warnings or signs along the road. Consequently, any
attempt to build a homiletic bridge is akin to shooting short of target. If one

1
Timothy WARREN, “A Paradigm for Preaching”, Bibliotheca Sacra 1991, October-December: 463.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 7

generation builds a bridge of relevance that reaches across the span, the next
generation finds that same bridge reaching only part way over the abyss. This
frustrating task of pursuing culture has left us spent and dejected. In our repeated
attempts to scratch the cultural itch we have found ourselves chasing our homi-
letic tails to exhaustion. In summary, “Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to under-
stand and respond, preachers have failed the challenge, capitulating to culture and
offering mere fragments of meaning, personhood, and fraternity.”2 One gene-
ration’s bridge of relevance becomes the next generation’s pier of irrelevance.
The growing futility of trying to build relevance from the bank of biblical
revelation to the bank of contemporary culture has swung the homiletic pendulum
to our side of the gulf. The dogma of relevance today has reversed its course by
attempting to construct the bridge of relevance from the side of today’s world
over to the world of the Bible. The great reversal grows out of a new perspective
in communication placing the domain of relevance under the listener’s authority.
In this view, since relevance is a conditional concept prompting a question, “rele-
vant to whom?” The listeners determine the relevance of a sermon. Bibby puts his
finger on this general trend by noting that, “Rather than saying to culture, “This is
what religion is,” [the churches] have been much more inclined to say to culture,
“What do you want religion to be?”.3
The project of trying to start with today’s culture and end on the shore of
God’s word has been riddled with quandaries. Relevance erected on the quick-
sand of people’s felt needs tends to drown the truth of God’s word in a sea of
subjectivities. The desire to speak to people’s perceived needs results in the Word
of God becoming a kind of a quick fix manual or a recipe book for all pallets and
tastes. The chorus clamouring for the satisfaction of our insatiable appetites tends
to turn the word of God into a mere echo of the culture’s predominant voice. The
Bible is made to speak to issues it often has no interest in addressing and to an-
swer questions it deems irrelevant. Preaching becomes relevant only at the price
of agreeing with the latest opinion poll.
What lies at the core of this growing hostility is the question of the nature of
biblical relevance in preaching. Both sides view relevance as the goal of preach-
ing. And yet they do not see eye to eye on what it means to create and to preach
relevant sermons. The danger of the former view, where God’s Word is declared
inherently relevant, is that its preaching is nothing short of a dull recitation of

2
Ibid.
3
Reginald BIBBY, Fragmented Gods: The Property and Potential of Religion in Canada (To-
ronto: Irwin Publishing, 1987), 111.
8 LECH BEKESZA

clichés. This kind of preaching evokes “amens” from the crowd of the faithful
few but it often goes only skin deep. Preaching is reduced to restating platitudes
that fall on deaf ears, being unable to penetrate the soul. Preaching may engage
the intellect but it leaves the heart cold. The hazard of the latter view of preach-
ing, beginning with people’s felt needs, is that it aims at evoking an emotional
response often at the expense of truth. The felt needs are often met by making the
Word of God echo the collective voice of the audience.
This impasse stands us before the question of what is the nature of biblical
relevance in preaching. Stated more precisely, the question at the heart of this
inquiry is “What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of biblical rele-
vance?” The conditions in question refer to relations that hold between the Word
of God and the listener. In causal relations, a necessary condition for the occur-
rence of an event is a state of affairs without which the event cannot happen.
A sufficient condition is a state of affairs that guarantees that it will happen. What
we are after is a determination of the essential elements that account for the re-
levance of God’s word to a human audience.
It is important to distinguish the question guiding this inquiry from other
relevance-related questions. The question before us is the question of the essential
components of biblical relevance. Most works devoted to relevance in preaching
skim over the foundational question, “What is biblical relevance in preaching?” in
favour of the question, “How can we make the message more relevant to today’s
audience?” The question of relevance in the first instance deals with the condi-
tions that hold true under any and all circumstances. The inquiry following the
second question assumes the prior answer. It presupposes a “right” relationship of
the message to the audience. It affirms that God’s word is inherently relevant to
people’s deepest needs. It then moves to the subsequent inquiry of the contingent
conditions of relevance.
Contingent conditions of biblical relevance depend for their validity on factors
rooted in the variables of audience analysis. As a result, most treatments of rele-
vance affirm the authority of Scripture as a given without prior analysis, leaping
across the chasm to exegete the culture. The result is an exhaustive study of the
nuances of today’s culture without an adequate reflection on the conditions that
must hold a priori for something to count as biblically relevant. In the majority of
works on relevance, there is a glaring absence of genuine inquiry as to the condi-
tions that guard the biblical concept of relevance. Relevance is affirmed but left
unexplained. The majority of books and articles dealing with relevance in preach-
ing focus on examining the contingent conditions of relevance rooted in culture.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 9

The distinction between the necessary/sufficient conditions of biblical rele-

vance and the contingent conditions can be framed in the context of the
distinction between relevance and persuasion. Relevance is concerned with the
adequate relationship of God’s message to the listener. Persuasion focuses on the
process of application, the relationship between the listener and his response to
the message. In this sense, a sermon may be relevant without being persuasive
and vice versa, a message may be persuasive without being relevant. The effec-
tiveness of our preaching is dependent but not exhausted by the conditions of
relevance. In order for our sermons to be effective we must augment our commu-
nication by engaging the listener’s affection along with her cognition and will.
However, what makes a sermon effective is a related but distinct question from
the query of what makes a sermon biblically relevant. It is the second question
that is the object of our inquiry.
The priority of the former question is evident in the gravity of the dilemma of
relevance. Unless there are some objective grounds for our claim of biblical rele-
vance, independent of the changing cultural milieu, we cannot claim the Bible’s
relevance for people either today or yesterday. Trying to bring God’s word to
today’s audience in the absence of a tie that lies beyond time and change is futile.
It is like trying to bring two magnets together by attempting to join the two
negative or two positive poles. We can bring them quite close together. But essen-
tially, it is impossible to join two identical polarities together. The same dilemma
stands at the heart of the question of biblical relevance. Unless we can establish
that relevance in preaching is not a sole function of cultural adaptation but is an
innate function of God’s communication with people, our attempts at being
relevant may leave us with the illusion of making contact while all along remain-
ing infinitely apart. Extracting the essence of biblical relevance requires the
identification of its necessary and sufficient conditions. Finding these conditions
for relevance will supply us with the sinews of a skeleton on which we can subse-
quently hang the flesh of trans-cultural communication.
The question of relevance in preaching then pertains to the domain of the
preacher’s responsibility in the process of God communicating with his creation.
God is the author of this process in revelation recorded on the pages of his word.
The audience is given the challenge of response to the Word. The preacher is
caught in the middle, hearing from God and speaking to the people. The extent of
the preacher’s liability in preaching reaches from God’s lips to the listener’s ears.
That distance, from the heart of God to the heart of people, is the canyon bridged
by relevance.
10 LECH BEKESZA

2. THE EQUATION OF BIBLICAL RELEVANCE

“Relevance” is a conditional term. It derives from the Latin word, relevare,

which means “to bear upon something.” For something to count as relevant it
must have a significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand. The term
“relevance” is not only conditional but relational. It cannot stand on its own. In
order to function according to its semantic design it must stand between other
terms. In this sense, relevance is a glue that holds two sides of the equation of
communication together.
When we talk about relevance in the context of biblical preaching, we are
placing relevance as the two-sided tape holding God’s word on the one side and
the listening audience on the other. To claim that the Bible is relevant to today’s
audience is to assert that God’s word has a bearing upon the lives of the listeners.
When God speaks in his word, the words are meant to impact the listeners. The
two components which relevance holds together are the word of God and the life
of the listener. In order to understand the relationship between these two concepts,
we must make some necessary distinctions by analyzing the term on each side of
the equation.
It will be helpful for our discussion to recognize that any piece of written or
verbal communication, intending to convey meaning, is made up of two essential
elements: content and form. Content refers to that which is asserted. All intelligi-
ble communication is predicated on people asserting something about something
else. Communication trades in concepts expressing ideas. The content of a con-
cept can be determined by analysis of the two essential parts that make up an idea,
namely the subject and the complement. The subject, in communication is the
answer to the question, “What is the author talking about?” The complement
completes the subject by answering the question, “What is the author saying about
the subject?” Every complete idea is made up of these two elements. “In order to
have a complete idea we must assert or predicate something about something else.
As long as we have merely a “something” (a subject), we do not yet have an idea.
It is only the assertion of “another thing” (a complement) about the subject that
gives birth to a complete idea.”4 Content is made up of ideas comprised of sub-
jects and complements.
Every idea comes wrapped in a certain form. Form pertains to how assertions
are framed. Few ideas in communication ever come to us in a neatly distilled
subject and complement framed into a single sentence or proposition. Instead,

4
Duane LITFIN, Public Speaking. Second Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), 85.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 11

ideas come in a variety of shapes, patterns and moods. The forms usually make up
patterns that comprise literary genres. Each genre of literature has some distin-
guishable features intended to frame the ideas into a recognizable pattern. The
genres serve the purpose of shaping our communication according to the design
of the author. Understanding the distinguishing marks of each literary genus are
indispensable to our understanding of the content. Understanding of both content
and form is indispensable to the act of communication.
The Bible is God’s communication with people. More concretely, when we
speak of “God’s word,” we refer to God’s communication with people enscrip-
tured in the Bible. Since the Bible is God’s communication with people it com-
prises of both content and form. The content of the Bible comes to us in ideas.
The ideas express notions of sin, salvation, redemption, holiness and others. The
ideas come wrapped in a variety of forms ranging from narrative, prophecy,
wisdom literature, epistles, and apocalyptic among others. This vast diversity is
often lost on us in referring to God’s word by a singular word, “Bible.” This
singular was originally a plural Latin word, “Biblia” indicating a plurality of
books that comprised it. The Scriptures come in books of various length that com-
prise what we traditionally come to call the Old and the New Testament. What is
particularly remarkable about the Bible is that while it demonstrates a remarkable
unity, it is made up of a myriad of forms encasing the message. There is prose and
poetry. There is a narrative discourse and prophetic pronouncement. Parables
intersect with sections of didactic teaching and deductive argumentation. God’s
communication comes wrapped in a diversity of literary forms.
The recognition of the diversity in form amidst the unity of the message is
pertinent to the question of relevance. God’s word does not come in “one size fits
all.” The diversity of genres poses a question as to the role of biblical forms in
relation to biblical relevance. If the message can be extracted in an idea, why so
many diverse forms framing those ideas? In short, what we need to evaluate in the
context of biblical communication is what is the relationship between the word of
God – content wrapped in form – and the intended audience.
The analysis of the term, “God’s Word,” at its core, yields two essential
components, content and form. While God’s word, made up of content and form,
stands on one side of the equation of relevance, we must also define the notion of
the “listener’s life” standing opposite to it. “Life” is an all encompassing term that
is just about as easy to grasp as is the breath from which life originated. It will
serve us well to break “life” into its constituent parts – the most likely bearers of
God’s word in the equation of relevance. The notion of “life” can be sliced into
innumerable parts. However, for our purpose “listener’s life” can be divided into
12 LECH BEKESZA

parts defined by the ancient rhetoric. Aristotle’s classic rhetorical can be of help
to us at this juncture. Aristotle argued for a tripartite composition of every persua-
sive message: logos, pathos and ethos. Logos referred to the verbal content of the
message. Pathos comprised the emotive features of the message including the
passion, fervor, and feeling that the speaker arouses. Ethos related to the per-
ceived character of the speaker determined by the concern expressed for the lis-
tener’s welfare.
The analysis of the term “listener” or a “listener’s life” unveiled a tripartite
division of intellect, affection and volition. We must now return to our examina-
tion of “relevance.” In the context of our analysis of “relevance” as a relationship
where God’s word is claimed to bear on the life of the listener, what we need to
determine is the relationship between the content and form of God’s word on the
one side and the intellect, affection and will of the listener on the other side. If
God’s word has any bearing on the life of the listeners, we must first answer the
question, “What is the relationship of the content of God’s word to the life of the
listener?” Then, we will follow that question with the subsequent inquiry, “What
is the relationship between the form of God’s word to the listener’s makeup?”
What we are trying to identify are the necessary and sufficient conditions that
hold between the divine and the human side in the equation of biblical relevance.

In order to determine the relationship between the biblical content on the

scriptural side of the equation and the personal dimensions of intellect, emotions
and will we will analyze sample texts from the Old Testament and the New Testa-
ment. In the first part, we will focus on the relationship between the biblical
content and the human constitution. In the second part, we will examine the rela-
tionship of the biblical form to the personal dimensions of being.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 13

3. THE FUNCTION OF BIBLICAL CONTENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

The first act of communication between God and man is recorded in Genesis
2:16-17. There God outlines the condition of his relationship with the man, “And
the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the
garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for
when you eat of it you will surely die.” After creating man in his own image, God
placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and care for it (Gen. 2:15). The
invitation to the garden came with a condition attached to it. Man was allowed to
eat from any tree of the garden. However God commanded Adam not to eat “[…]
from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” The consequence of human diso-
bedience would be death. What is significant is that the command prohibiting man
from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil come prior to the
original act of disobedience. The image of God in man is still untarnished. God
still holds the view that the creation was “very good,” without any blemish of sin.
The main idea of God’s prohibition is not difficult to determine. The subject
can be framed in the question, “Why should man not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil?” The complement supplies the answer: “Man must
not eat from the tree because if he eats from it he will surely die.” The idea ex-
presses a prohibition, a moral imperative based on God’s command. It is stated in
a declarative sentence. The imperative of God’s prohibition is established on the
indicative of the grim reality of death. Instead of simply forbidding man to eat,
God provides a rationale for the prohibition by appealing to the grim conse-
quences of man’s adverse choice. The consequence of a wrongful choice is the
loss of life, loss marked by a separation from God.
With the content of God’s idea in hand, we can now proceed to determine
what is the aim of that idea on the other side of the equation of relevance. What
becomes readily apparent is that the idea expressed in the imperative of prohibi-
tion bears on man’s volition. The command is aimed at the human will. It can
hardly be denied that the content of the prohibition must first be understood, fil-
tered through the intellect. However, the intellect is not the final destination of the
command. What God requires is not mere understanding but obedience. The
“what” of what God says is related to the “how” of how people choose to live.
The line of relevance originating in the content of God’s prohibition leads directly
to the will of the recipient.
The aim of God’s word expressed in an idea and applied to the will is under-
scored by the paradox embedded in the command itself. An attempt at sidestep-
14 LECH BEKESZA

ping God’s command would result in gaining knowledge of right and wrong only
at the expense of first making a morally culpable decision. The moral input of
God’s communication is critical to our understanding of the grounds of our
relationship with God. It is also decisive for our understanding of the overarching
character of God’s communication with people. Our relationship with God is only
partly based on our knowledge of what God demands from us. Instead, it is made
complete by our commitment to choose what he commands. Our relationship with
God is always conditional upon our commitment to doing what God tells us to do.
This commitment is evoked by our volitional response to God’s word.
In the context of man’s relationship with God, the idea of God’s communica-
tion relates directly to the human will. The relational context of God’s communi-
cation with people is paramount. God does not address people with a set of
instructions or rules framed in abstraction. Instead, what God says is predicated
on his desire to have a relationship with people who are made in his image. The
prohibition points to a built-in dependence of people on their Creator. The
knowledge of good and evil, prior to the first people’s act of disobedience, lies
exquisitely in God’s realm of authority. People depend on God for that knowledge.
Our dependence on God for our knowledge of good and evil is essentially the
ground of our trust in God. Knowing what is right must be predicated on the
willingness to do it. It is that willingness to trust God’s judgment that underlies our
relationship with him. The focus of God’s relationship with us marks the boundary
for the context of all of God’s communication. In other words, God speaks to us out
of his desire to have a relationship with us. All of God’s word will be spoken in the
context of the interpersonal relationship with his creation. All of God’s commu-
nication with us functions primarily on the moral level predicated on our response
to God’s commands.
In the context of God’s unmediated communication, the emerging pattern of rele-
vance connects the truth of God’s word with the human will. The content of God’s
truth addresses the human volition. God speaks with the explicit purpose of evoking
our response in obedience to his word.
While the special limitations of this paper do not permit us to include a com-
prehensive survey of all literary genres of the Old Testament, the contention of
this paper is that the above analysis is exemplary of all kinds of the Hebrew lite-
rature in the Bible. There a number of conclusions that could be drawn from the
textual analysis.
First, it is evident that biblical content of the Old Testament expresses
theological ideas. In both poetry and prose, we are able to extract the subject and
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 15

the predicate that jointly comprise a dominant idea intended by the biblical au-
thor. Biblical authors speak the truth in making claims about some subject or
another. Each genre must be handled in a unique way. Some biblical literature
lends itself more readily to the determination of what the author is talking about
and what he is saying about it. However, the common thread of biblical commu-
nication is its ideational character. Biblical ideas, couched in biblical concepts are
conveyed through complements impregnating subjects with meaning.
Second, the pattern of Old Testament exposition is that the content of biblical
ideas is always aimed at the human will. The biblical ideas never convey sterile
thoughts intended to satisfy our intellectual curiosity. Neither are they merely
intended to evoke a feeling or stir an emotion. Instead, biblical ideas always speak
ultimately to human volition. They aim at mastering people’s hearts – engaging
them on the level of the will. God’s word addresses our need for a renewed
relationship with God. It prods us to subjugate our wills to his will. The context of
the biblical imperative is the context of our dependence on God. The need of our
heart is the need of God, and that need is exposed throughout the biblical narra-
tive in people’s repeated rejection of God.
What is surprising about this inexorable connection between the biblical ideas
and the human will is that the connection seems counterintuitive. Ideas, by their
very nature, are the stock of the intellect. When we trade in ideas, we do it in a kind
of an intellectual gambit, where truth claims are expected to be exchanged between
people as the currency of the mind. Therefore, in opening the biblical text we
expect from it, much like other pieces of literature, to relate predominantly to our
minds, and stir our emotions. The revelation in the Old Testament comes with
predominantly volitional thrust, expressing ideas whose content aims at changing
not only our minds, but first and foremost, changing our attitudes and actions.

4. THE FUNCTION OF BIBLICAL CONTENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Since this pattern of relationship between the biblical content and human will
is exemplified in the Old Testament, we must turn our attention to the New Testa-
ment with the hope of discovering an identical relationship between biblical ideas
and human will. In the New Testament context, I would like to focus on Jesus’
greatest sermon, the Sermon on the Mount.
The shock of the Good News derives from the claim that the “Word of God,”
in the vernacular of our day, “moved into our neighbourhood.” The word acquired
16 LECH BEKESZA

hands and feet. It came with eyes, ears and tongue. The word became flesh in the
incarnation of Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews grasps the radical nature of
God’s final word embodied in Jesus when he summarizes, “In the past God spoke
to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in
these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…” (Heb. 1:1-2a). Jesus is the living
word of God. In this sense, Jesus’ life speaks to us in his birth, his suffering on
the cross, and his resurrection. In being “God-in-the-flesh” whatever Jesus says
counts as God’s direct address to us.
It is no accident then, that the Gospel of Matthew opens with Jesus caught in
the act of preaching. Jesus’ own conviction bears witness to his mission finding
its essence in preaching (Mark 1:38). In what has become known as The Sermon
on the Mount, Jesus engages in a form of direct divine communication with his
disciples and the crowd of hearers. Stott claims that “The Sermon on the Mount is
probably the best-known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the
least understood, and certainly it is the least obeyed.”5 Whether there exists a ca-
usal connection between the sluggishness of our hearts and the laziness of our
intellect implied by Stott must be left to further inquiry. One thing is certain that
there has been no shortage of attempts to understand the meaning of the sermon.
Historically, several major strands in the interpretation of the Sermon surfaced in
the course of history grappling with the relationship of Jesus’ words to each sub-
sequent era. These can be conveniently divided into the pre-Reformation, the Re-
formation and the post-Reformation.
In the pre-Reformation period, the first extensive commentary on the Sermon
on the Mount comes from the pen of Augustine (The Sermone Domini in Monte).
In his view, the sermon is “the perfect measure of the Christian life,” being filled
with “all the precepts by which the Christian life is formed.” The difference
between the Law of Moses and the “Law of Jesus” is found in the latter consisting
of “the greater precepts of righteousness.” Since Jesus is the fulfillment of the
Law, the Old and the New are integrally related. Aquinas, in Summa (part 2.1,
quest. 108, art. 4) distinguishes between “precepts” and “evangelical counsels.”
The former denote obligation, while the latter are optional to those who choose to
follow it. The commands of the Sermon come as necessary conditions for the
attainment of the “eternal bliss.” The counsels give direction to a more “assured
and expeditious” attainment of that goal.

5
John R.W. STOTT, Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount
(Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1978), 15.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 17

The Reformation views were formed largely through the work of Luther,
Calvin and the Anabaptists. Luther, in a series of sermons compiled into a com-
mentary, departed from any notion that established the obedience to the sermon’s
commands as necessary for salvation. Luther recognized the necessity of making
a distinction between “the kingdom of Christ” and “the kingdom of the world,”
where the “Sermon’s demands are to be carried out continually within the Chris-
tian’s heart even if the ‘office’ demands conduct to the contrary.” “For him the
Sermon did not instruct one on becoming a Christian through “works of right-
eousness” but on being a Christian whose life produced by God’s grace the
corresponding works and fruit.”6 Calvin’s view emerges from his Institutes as
well as his Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Mathew, Mark and
Luke. Calvin’s position is framed in reference to the question of the relationship
between the Law of Moses and Christ. Calvin vindicates the view that the Ser-
mon, in its entirety, applies to all believers. However, the Sermon must be under-
stood within the larger context of Scriptures and judged by the rule of analogia
fidei. What is needed for a correct understanding of the Sermon’s demands is
a prior understanding of the intent underlying the rules. Finally, the Anabaptists
embraced the view that the Sermon must be followed rigorously and literally.
This stance led to a withdrawal from the social and political aspects of life, and
a separation of church and state.
Guelich summarizes the essence of the three interpretations emerging during
the Reformation: “Thus we have three approaches to the Sermon, with their vari-
ous theological implications, each seeking in a distinctive manner to apply the
Sermon to life. For some, this meant perceiving life as being divided into two
compartments, in only one of which could and must one carry out the Sermon’s
demands. This alternative runs the risk of “compartmentalization” and cultural
compromise. For others, the secular and the sacred were continuous, and the
Sermon’s demands understood against the whole of Scripture applied to all be-
lievers and for all areas of life. This alternative runs the risk of casuistry and
avoidance of the “impractical.” For still others, the secular and the sacred were
separate because of the radical nature of discipleship and the evil character of the
world…This alternative runs the risk of “isolationism” and utopian irrelevancy.”7
The post-Reformation trends in interpretation diverge into two extreme views.
On the one extreme, the Sermon’s radical demands have become a manifesto for

6
Robert A. GUELICH, The Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding (Waco,
Texas: Word Books, 1982), 16.
7
Ibid., 16-17.
18 LECH BEKESZA

revolutionary living best expressed in the convictions of Christian Marxists and

elucidated by Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy held the conviction that “governments needed
to submit to the guidance of Jesus. Courts should stop administering oaths to
witnesses because of Christ’s teaching about not swearing. Since a line in the
sermon says that we are not to resist evil, Tolstoy wanted to do away with police
forces and armies.” The other extreme was expressed in the views of American
Dispensationalism, opening a chasm between the present and the future much like
Luther’s dichotomy between the secular and the spiritual. Between the two ex-
tremes, “At various points of the spectrum fall the numerous other interpretations
such as a “Gesinnungsethik, an interim ethic,” and idealized ideal, a call to repen-
tance, and the “cost of discipleship.”8
This brief historical survey of interpretations of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount
reveals some common threads. First, the ideas conveyed in the sermon are readily
accessible. Stott divides the sermon into seven sections, each relating to a facet of
the Christian life: character, influence, righteousness, piety, ambition, relation-
ships and commitment. Each section deals with some aspect of a Christian
relationship with God and people. The demands of the sermon are clearly spelled
out. Beginning with a depiction of the spiritual stance before God, the sermon
moves through our stance with relation to others. In conclusion, our response to
Jesus’ words bring us to a question of our relationship with him. Each chapter of
the sermon identifies for us some new reality of the Christian life.
Secondly, the ideas expressed in Jesus’ Sermon aim at the will of his audience.
The demands are meant to infringe on the volition of the listeners. The sermon
demands a change of lifestyle predicated on the change of attitude – an implosion
of the heart that brings about a change from the inside-out. That the will is the
object of Jesus’ sermon is most evident from the closing words. What is particu-
larly instructive about these words is not only their content but also their form.
Jesus’ challenge to his listeners is couched in Jesus’ favourite form of address,
a parable.
In the closing parable Jesus distinguishes between two possible responses to
his Sermon. In Matthew 7:24-27 Jesus concludes: “Therefore everyone who hears
these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his
house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and
beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the
rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into
8
Ibid., 19.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 19

practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down,
the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with
a great crash.”
Jesus insists that an intellectual knowledge of him can never be a substitute for
obedience. The question that Jesus’ preaching poses to us is not whether we have
heard it, but rather, whether we will listen to it – do it. The only evidence of our
hearing the message is in our willingness to incarnate it. The sermon presents us
with a choice of whether we will shrug our shoulders and walk by the challenge
of Jesus’ sermon, or whether we will make a decision to stake our lives on Jesus’
word. What ought to be evident in the context of Jesus’ concluding challenge, is
that truth aims primarily at the will of the listener.
In the context of the question of relevance, the ideas of God’s word find their
complete and final embodiment in God’s Word-in-the-Flesh. Jesus is the
revelation of God’s will and the only means to a new relationship with God. In
the context of the New Testament, the will is prompted to respond to Jesus. The
Word of God demands that we submit our wills to his Living Word. The response
of the will is measured by its willingness to acknowledge Jesus as both the Lord
and the Messiah. It is this conviction that informs the theology of the New
Testament church in its unequivocal assurance that, “It is by the name of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that
this man stands before you healed. He is 'the stone you builders rejected, which
has become the capstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other
name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:10-12).
Jesus, in a paraphrase of John’s Gospel, becomes the Idea aimed at the volition
of the human heart. What we discover about Jesus in the Gospels cannot be re-
duced to a mere biographical collection meant to satisfy our curiosity. Jesus’ life
is not intended for our intellectual or emotive sampling. Instead, Jesus’ life be-
come The Truth of God that demands our response. John echoes this conviction at
the end of his Gospel when he discloses the purpose of giving us the story of
Jesus’ life. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
The pattern of relevance remains consistent from the Old Testament through the
preaching of Jesus. What changes in the New Testament is that now God’s reve-
lation, “the Word,” finds its full embodiment in the person of Jesus the Messiah.
The purpose of our brief analysis of the New Testament of Jesus’ preaching
was to determine whether there is a necessary connection between the content of
God’s word and the will of the listeners. The essential connection between the
truth of God’s word and the human volition was the constant theme of the Old
20 LECH BEKESZA

Testament. That same pattern continues throughout the New Testament. Biblical
ideas consistently aim at the response of the human will. However, the pattern
under the new covenant is augmented by the word of God acquiring flesh and
blood in Jesus. As a result, the Living Word becomes the focal point of the human
response. Preaching is reshaped into the contours of the cross, and humanity is
faced with the choice of what to do with the man on the cross of Calvary. How-
ever, the christological focus of preaching finding its focus in Jesus retains the
original pattern of the content of preaching aiming at the will.
In our analysis, it becomes evident that the truth of God’s Word is intended to
address human volition. The primary target of biblical ideas is human will. This
relationship emerges time and again in a variety of genres in the Old Testament
and from the study of sermons in the New Testament. The pattern of ideas stand-
ing the will at the crossroads of choice can now be restated in the context of
relevance. If relevance in preaching is the act of relating God’s word to the lives
of the listeners, the content of God’s word must always primarily relate to the will
of the receivers. A necessary condition of relevance is that the biblical content
must relate to the human will. In the sphere of preaching, a sermon is relevant to
the audience to the extent to which the biblical idea of the text aims at the re-
sponse of the listener’s will.

5. THE FUNCTION OF FORM IN THE BIBLE

In the following section, we will turn our attention to the analysis of the second
element in our equation. We will endeavour to determine the nature of the relation-
ship between the form of the biblical content and the listener. The process of
analysis comprises two interrelated parts. In the first part, we must determine
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 21

whether the form of the biblical content, expressed in various genres, has some
distinguishing common elements. There is an ambiguity in the use of “form” in the
discussion of Scriptures. The Bible contains many literary “forms,” (i.e. law, dream,
parable, exhortation, report, etc). The way I intend to use “form” is to refer to an
abstract entity, an all-encompassing category for any content-framing device. In
other words, what we want to discover is whether there is a common denominator
or are there any common elements that are essential to all biblical forms. To put it
differently, is there a form of biblical forms? And if so, what are its essential
features? Unless we can extract some universal features shared by all biblical forms,
we may be unable to determine the relationship of the biblical form to the human
side of our equation. In the second step, pending our success at mining the essential
features of biblical form, we must determine the specific relationship between the
form and either the intellect, emotion, or will.
The discussion of the previous section revealed a multiplicity of literary forms in
the Bible. Besides the most general division of biblical text into prose and poetry,
the word of God teems with literary types. The debate of literary genres and types is
far from over. Collins provides a workable definition of literary genre defining it as
“a group of written texts marked by distinctive recurring characteristics which
constitute recognizable and coherent type of writing.”9 The difficulty with de-
termining the exact category for each biblical text lies in the often blurred lines of
delineation. However, there are several postulates that have been put forth by
various scholars. Walter Kaiser in the context of his Old Testament studies proposes
five basic literary forms employed by the biblical authors: a. prose, b. poetry,
c. narrative, d. wisdom, and e. apocalyptic. “Each of these,” according to Kaiser,
“has a distinct shape and style.”10 Fee and Stuart, looking at the entire Bible, divide
its literature into ten distinct units: “Epistles, Old Testament narratives, Acts,
Gospels, Parables, Law(s), Prophets, Psalms, Wisdom, and Revelation.11 The
problem of biblical genres is the problem of how many ways can we slice the Bible.
A helpful way of viewing the biblical literature is to identify genres as “cate-
gories for classifying literary works as a whole,” (i.e. narrative, wisdom, epistle),
and forms as “relatively small, individual units of literary material,”12 (i.e. lament,
pronouncement, miracle). In this sense, a collection of smaller units of biblical

9
John J. KOLLINS, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre”, Semeia 1979, 14: 1.
10
Walter Jr. KAISER, Toward An Exegetical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1981), 91.
11
Gordon FEE, Douglas STUART, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth: A Guide to Under-
standing the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).
12
Sidney GREIDANUS, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text (Grand Rapids: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988), 22.
22 LECH BEKESZA

forms will constitute a larger biblical genre. The biblical forms frame individual
units of biblical text, expressing biblical ideas. What we seek to determine are the
common elements in the biblical literary forms. These elements would become
the defining features of the more abstract category of form as a general counter-
part to the biblical content.

6. UNITY

What will be helpful to us at this juncture is to recall the argument of the

previous section. In the context of the study of Old Testament literature, I tried to
demonstrate that biblical content expressed biblical concepts. A similar strategy
applied to the New Testament’s sermons yielded similar results. The concepts
were determined by identifying a subject and a complement. The conjunction of
those two elements made up a biblical idea. Each biblical genre contained literary
forms framing biblical content. The content was the bearer of ideas the biblical
authors intended to convey.
Since biblical content conveys ideas, one of the framing functions of biblical
forms is to impose unity on the thought of the author. Unity is the function of the
Bible’s ideational content. In order to convey an idea, an author must frame it in
a way that will unify its development. Biblical communication, much like other
common forms of communication, does not come in the form of sterile proposi-
tions listed on a page. Instead, biblical ideas come to us through stories and po-
ems, parables and psalms. The ideas are build out of multiple blocks of supporting
material and sub-ideas that shore up the main thought of the author. Ideas have to
be extracted from stanzas and paragraphs of text where they lay buried beneath
the layers of words, fragmented by commas and periods. The claim that the Bible
conveys ideas presupposes a unifying framing device. In the absence of such
a frame, we would be at a loss in our quest for biblical ideas. The characteristic of
unity as an essential quality of the biblical form is a necessary feature of biblical
communication.
The demand for unity is primarily the demand of our cognitive apparatus. “The
human mind craves unity,”13 argues Litfin. One of the most fascinating features of
our mental make-up is our intolerance for chaos. “The human mind is constantly
seeking to discover unity in the stimuli it receives, to separate those items that are
related to one another.”14 We witness that in our explanations of life’s events, as

13
D. LITFIN, Public Speaking, 80.
14
Ibid., 81.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 23

we try to either find a single cause or learn a lesson from the events of life swirl-
ing all around us. The entire scientific enterprise is predicated on the conviction
that the universe is guided by some grand, unified theory that eventually will
enable us to tie all the loose strands together.
The question of the unity of biblical text then is a question that goes way be-
yond the covers of the Bible, encompassing our view of the entire sphere of
communication. Unless thoughts can be framed into units, we cannot communi-
cate ideas successfully. We can express things in words by forming long strings
of sentences, forming these into paragraphs. However, unless we can determine
what the author is talking about and what he is saying about it, we cannot claim to
understand the author’s thought.
A helpful way to identify the unifying character of biblical forms is to recog-
nize a distinction between how the idea is structured and how it is developed. The
structure of an idea is always the same, consisting of a subject and complement.
However, ideas are developed in four distinct ways. To be sure, “When we make
a declarative statement, we can do only four things with it: we can restate it,
explain it, prove it, or apply it.”15 The biblical forms, by the nature of their fram-
ing, lend themselves to one or more ways in which the ideas are developed.
The biblical genres develop ideas in distinct ways. However, each one frames
the idea toward a unity of thought designed for the listener’s mind. Hebrew poetry
conveys ideas in a way in which “the system of versification as a whole definitely
encourages dynamic interplay between versets in which feelings get stronger,
images sharper, actions more powerful or more extreme.” The narrative discloses
idea by framing it into a plot where actions, dialogue and narration allow us to see
the idea as it emerges within the interaction of the characters. Epistles contain
explanations, proofs and application of ideas depending on the intent of the
author. Each one frames the idea in a different fashion. However, all of them
synchronize the authors’ thoughts by framing ideas toward unity. One of the
essential elements of form is unity.

7. ORDER

The second function of biblical forms is to impose order on the biblical

content. Order is the necessary prerequisite of unity. In order to discover unity it
is necessary to discover not only how the parts relate to the whole, but also how
15
Haddon ROBINSON, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository
Messages. Second Edition (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2001), 75.
24 LECH BEKESZA

the parts relate to one another. “Thus, to grasp the unity of diverse parts, to dis-
cover e pluribus unum (out of many, one), we must also discover the proper
relationships or order among the many parts.”16 Unless we can determine the
correct relationship between the various elements in the arrangement of the
author’s thought, we will not be able to arrive at the determination of the concept
he intends to convey. There are three basic ways in which the biblical authors
order their material: logical, temporal or causal.
Logic builds order by arranging elements according to the valid laws of
reason, i.e. law of non-contradiction, laws of inference, etc. A logical develop-
ment is often framed in an argument where premises infer a conclusion. Accept-
ing the premises necessitates the acceptance of the conclusion. A good example of
a logical ordering is Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 8:1-7. Paul, in the context
of answering the question about eating food sacrificed to idols writes, “So then,
about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the
world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods,
whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many
“lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came
and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all
things came and through whom we live. But not everyone knows this…”
The thrust of Paul’s argument comes from the correct definition of “God.” If
“God” refers to an infinite and perfect being, then there can be only one such a be-
ing. If we accept the definition of God, we must concede the argument, granting its
conclusion asserting that there cannot be another god or other gods. If there were
another God equally perfect, he would have to be identical with the God of the
Bible. Paul’s idea develops through logic.
A temporal development follows a time sequence. It develops the idea
according to some chronology of events. Most of the biblical narrative develops
in sequence with the passing of time. David’s life story follows the story of Saul’s
rise and demise. The story of Solomon develops in a sequence that follows the
story of David’s life. The Bible as a whole could be viewed as a temporal se-
quence of God’s growing revelation, where at different stages of history God
reveals more of himself to his people. That revelation culminates in the incarna-
tion of Jesus Christ. A time sequence gives us a reference points along the line of
the story or revelation.

16
D. LITFIN, Public Speaking, 81.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 25

Closely related to that is the causal ordering of events. Temporal sequence is

the skeleton for the ordering of causal relationships. The passing of time allows us
to determine what comes first and what follows. As a result, the temporal frame-
work aids us in determination of what are the causes and what are the results of
events and actions. The biblical authors establish numerous causal relationships
that frame their ideas. The Book of Kings, for instance, establishes a relationship
of cause and effect between the sins of the Kings of Israel and Judah and the con-
sequences of their sins for the nation of Israel. The prophets relish the disclosure
of the causal relationship between the people’s commitment to God and the
quality of their lives. A causal sequence frames the relationship between causes
and effects.
What ought to become evident is that the ordering of material is a function of
our minds. Our minds tend toward unity. As a result, we arrange pieces of infor-
mation in a way that establishes that unity. We arrange the elements either
according to logic, time sequence or a relationship of cause and effect. Since this
is the way our intellect functions, in communication we both frame and seek to
discover one of those framing devices in our pursuit of the content’s meaning. In
the absence of order, we stand in danger of either imposing our own order or
failing to grasp the unity of the author’s idea.

8. PROGRESS

The third function of biblical forms is to impose progress on the biblical

content. Progress presupposes both unity and order. What it adds to the other two
dimensions are the elements of beginning and end. Ideas, in oral communication
are developed and expressed in time. They are built on a continuum that has
a starting point and a finish line. A failure of progress in developing an idea
stands in danger of rendering only a part of the idea, or failing to render it alto-
gether. A lack of progress is akin to a skipping record of a musical composition
that prevents the listener from appreciating the entire masterpiece. As we try to
sort out the pieces we are perceiving, to discover the relationships, we are looking
for an order consisting largely of some progression, one thing following another
in an appropriate chronological relationship.
The biblical authors do not always arrange their ideas in chronological order.
However, they arrange the parts to give the whole a sense of theological progress.
Changes in the expected progress of ideas is often a way of alerting the reader
26 LECH BEKESZA

about an important theological idea the author is trying to convey. For instance, in
1 Corinthians 11: 3, Paul gives us a sequence that appears to be out of order from
a hierarchical vantage point. In describing the distinctions in worship between
men and women, Paul prefaces his argument with the description of the
interrelationships between God, Jesus, men and a woman. He writes, “Now I want
you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is
man, and the head of Christ is God.” Paul’s starting point seems out of sequence
in the view of importance. The sequence of hierarchy we would expect would
begin with God – Jesus – Man – Woman. Paul’s ordering, however, changes the
sequence to Jesus – Man – Woman – God. The subtle change in order is meant to
alert us to the fact that Paul is not building a sequence based on the progress of
authority but rather progress of origin. Paul establishes relationships on the basis
of cause and effect sequence in the chronology of creation.
All that is to say that progress allows the biblical authors to develop ideas from
the beginning to the end, according to some desired sequence. The notion of
progress in framing ideas derives from the structure of our minds. In order to
apprehend ideas we must see their development in a sequence of progression that
takes us from an introduction to a conclusion.
Progress in developing ideas is best captured by the inductive-deductive
distinction. “Induction […] is a process of drawing inferences about the unknown
from the known. In the case of induction, the known consists of a limited number
of specifics, all of which share membership in some broader category.”17 The idea
is developed inductively to the extent to which the reasoning progresses from the
specific to the general. An inductive progress is marked by a progressive devel-
opment where the statement of an idea comes at the conclusion.
Deduction is the inverse of induction. We also draw conclusions about what is
unknown on the basis of what is known. “In deduction, however, what is known
is some general observation, from which we draw hitherto unknown conclusions
about specifics or particulars.”18 A deductive progress is defined by the complete
statement of an idea at the outset. What follows is a development of that idea.
Progress can be marked by some combination of the inductive-deductive
reasoning. In this development scheme, the idea emerges at some juncture
between its building blocks. The statement of an idea shifts development from
inductive to deductive.

17
Ibid., 162.
18
Ibid., 164.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 27

Finally, a scriptural passage can develop by stating the subject question at the
beginning with the following ideas completing it.
Progress in framing an idea then is not simply a way of getting from the
beginning to the end, from the start to the finish line. Progress takes a specific
form. A correct identification of the pattern of progress in the development of an
idea can be critical to our determination of that idea. A deductive progress will
state the idea in the introduction, while the inductive progress will emerge the
idea at end of the argument. The inductive-deductive progress serves the purpose
of imposing a framework on biblical content in order to render it intelligible. The
progress in the development of an idea alerts us to the rational steps in establish-
ing the validity of an idea. The nature of progress allows us to frame both the
order and unity into a coherent sequence.

9. A CONCLUSION: THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS

OF BIBLICAL RELEVANCE

Biblical forms frame biblical ideas. Content is inseparable from form, in that an
idea always comes wrapped in a form. The Bible contains a multitude of forms that
give shape to the biblical material. The framing is a combination of three essential
and interdependent elements: unity, order and progress. The function of the
elements derives primarily from the operations of our minds. For communication to
succeed, our intellect must be able to process the data of communication to extract
its main proposition from its parts in the course of the process that has a point of
beginning and ending. Conversely, any communication lacking in these three
28 LECH BEKESZA

essential elements will be incoherent. In the absence of these elements the substance
of communication will remain unintelligible to the receiver.
In a broad sense, abstracting from the multitude of biblical forms, we can draw
an all-encompassing conclusion for our broader division of the biblical word,
namely, its content and form. Since biblical forms share the three elements of
unity, order and progress in common, these elements must be essential to the form
of God’s word. What follows is that the form framing biblical content functions
primarily in the context of the intellect. The biblical form aims at the intellect in
that it provides coherence for the biblical content.
It is also important to notice that while the two conditions are interrelated,
there is a functional sequence in their relationship. The condition of the form ap-
pealing to the intellect precedes the conditions of the content relating to the will.
In other words, before the listener can respond to the content of God’s imperative,
he or she must comprehend the command. It is impossible to get at the content of
God’s word, the idea in abstraction from the form. For that reason the analysis of
form must precede the analysis of content.
Relevance in the Bible functions at the crossroads of form and content aimed
at the distinct aspects of the human makeup. If relevance is defined as the process
of relating God’s Word to the life of the listener, we can now spell out the precise
nature of that relationship. Relevance in Scripture consists of the interplay of the
two necessary conditions. Jointly these conditions are both necessary and suffi-
cient for the claim of relevance in biblical context. These conditions can now be
spelled out more precisely. For God’s word to count as relevant to the audience
two necessary conditions must hold:

That the biblical content, expressing a biblical idea, asserts an imperative

aimed at the will calling it to a response in the context of our relationship with
God.

And

That the biblical form, framing the idea, gives it coherence aimed at the
intellect with the goal of making the idea intelligible to the listener.

Biblical relevance functions at the crossroads of the idea aimed at the will and
the form framing shaping the content for the intellect. The dogma of biblical
relevance asserts that a sermon cannot be biblically relevant in the absence of one
or both of these conditions.
 RECLAIMING BIBLICAL RELEVANCE IN PREACHING 29

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBBY, Reginald. Fragmented Gods: The Property and Potential of Religion in Canada. Toronto:
Irwin Publishing, 1987.
COLLINS, John J. “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre.” Semeia 1979, 14: 1-20.
FEE, Gordon and STUART, Douglas. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth: A Guide to Under-
standing the Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982.
GREIDANUS, Sidney. The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerd-
mans Publishing Company, 1988.
GUELICH, Robert A. The Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding. Waco: Word
Books, 1982.
KAISER, Walter Jr. Toward An Exegetical Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981.
LITFIN, Duane. Public Speaking. Second Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992.
ROBINSON, Haddon. Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages.
Second Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.
STOTT, John R.W. Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount. Downers
Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1978.
WARREN, Timothy. “A Paradigm for Preaching”. Bibliotheca Sacra 1991, October-December, 463-486.

PRZYWRACANIE RELEWANCJI BIBLIJNEJ W PRZEPOWIADANIU.

WARUNKI KONIECZNE I WYSTARCZAJĄCE RELEWANCJI BIBLIJNEJ
W GŁOSZENIU SŁOWA BOŻEGO

Streszczenie

Pożądanym rezultatem komunikacji biblijnej jest aplikacja – proces, w którym słuchacz odnosi
do swojego życia prawdę zawartą w słowie Bożym. Wskutek tego celem komunikacji biblijnej jest
relewancja – proces odnoszenia prawdy Bożego słowa do słuchacza. W sercu tego równania komu-
nikacji biblijnej znajduje się pytanie o warunki konieczne i wystarczające, które musi spełniać kazanie,
aby być uznanym za relewantne biblijnie. Artykuł ten analizuje materię i formę komunikacji biblijnej
starając się określić ich relację do świadomości słuchacza (rozumu, uczuć i woli). Stwierdza się w nim,
że obiektywna podstawa relewancji biblijnej zawarta jest w treści biblijnej zawsze nakierowanej na
wolę słuchacza oraz w formie biblijnej ujmującej treść w pewne ramy na potrzeby rozumu słuchacza.
Kazanie jest relewantne biblijnie w takim zakresie, w jakim powyższe relacje występują w procesie
komunikacji.

Słowa kluczowe: biblijna relewancja, przepowiadanie, treść, forma, intelekt, wola.