Slapped down by Bishop Willimon

Bishop Will Willimon writes a post that rejects out of hand the content of my last post.

That many of us preachers still preach using essentially secular (i.e. godless) means of persuasion borrowed uncritically from the world is yet another testimony to our failure to believe that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, thus radically changing everything. In so doing we act as if Jesus were still sealed securely in the tomb, as if he did not come back to us, did not speak to us and cannot, will not speak to us today, as if preaching is something that we do through our strategies rather than through the speaking of the risen Christ.

I wonder if I should take it personally.

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3 Responses

  1. It’s an open rejection of Meunierism.

  2. But wasn’t Paul a master of Greek Rhetoric and thus able to preach to the masses more effectively? And wasn’t that the language of the empire?

    1. I think this is where Willimon’s admiration for Barth most clearly emerges. (At least I think this is Barthian. I just read something Willimon wrote in a book of Barth sermons that sounds just like the quote above.)

      Willimon clearly sees such things in terms of either/or. Wesley – among others – was more of a both/and person. He wrote somewhere I cannot find right now that even though conversion was the work of the Holy Spirit we preachers need to work as if it all depended solely on us.