Finding something to say: reconsidering the rhetorical practice of invention in homiletics

Abstract

This project is concerned with the development of the scene of sermon invention in the field of homiletics. In this dissertation, I trace the development of the ways in which homiletic theory and pedagogy has treated the process of creating sermons. I then critique what becomes a hegemonic consensus that tends to promote an introspective understanding of invention that excludes embodied processes and spatial dynamics. This exclusion has curtailed sustained critical attention to the incarnational and eschatological potential of sermonic creation in both theory and pedagogy. I attempt to theologically reconsider the scene of sermonic invention with careful attention to these dynamics and then offer pedagogical practices that would bring consideration of the actual body of the preacher and the space in which the preacher creates a sermon into the homiletic classroom.