Overflowing and Intermingling: Augustine, Preaching, Relationality, and the Spirit

Abstract

Some recent trends in homiletics have begun to move beyond postmodern questions to postcolonial questions. One primary concern shared among many contemporary homileticians, and especially articulated by postcolonial homileticians, is “relationality.” How can diverse peoples with diverse histories interacting through a variety of power dynamics truly relate to one another? How can those people relate to God and God’s word, especially as God’s word is proclaimed through preaching by a human being who is caught up in those power dynamics? These questions touch on the relationality of bodies, minds, and teaching; they explore anthropology, epistemology, and practical theology. However, the issues at the heart of relationality are not new. This thesis explores the homiletical theory and practice of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), with a view toward how Augustine anticipates some of the core questions of relationality raised in the 21st century. The first chapter synthesizes contemporary questions of relationality and suggests why Augustine is an apt conversation partner for these questions. The body of the thesis (chs. 2—4) focuses on a close reading of Augustine’s treatise, De Doctrina Christiana, and select sermons, through the lenses of the questions synthesized in ch. 1. The final chapter brings the insights gained from chs. 2—4 back into conversation with three contemporary sermons, each preached by a postcolonial homiletician. By setting Augustine’s sermons alongside contemporary sermons, this thesis seeks to show that there is much to draw on in the historic Christian tradition to help answer contemporary homiletical questions. Ultimately, it will be argued that Augustine’s way of interweaving various characteristics of bodies, minds, and teaching and his crucial reliance on the Holy Spirit to hold together the overflowing and intermingling relational dynamics of the preaching event outline a way of preaching relationally in both the 5th and the 21st centuries.