The Soul in Preaching

Abstract

What happened to the human soul in contemporary theories of preaching? The field of homiletics shows a wide variety of themes, approaches, perspectives, and theologies. Somewhere between the social critique, in postcolonial and post-human approaches, and sense-making, in cultural and experiential approaches, the issue of humanity re-emerges. This essay inquires whether and how it might be possible to re-envision preaching as a practice of care for the soul. The essay closes with a homiletical agenda in the form of three conditions for retrieving the soul in homiletics, a hermeneutical, a rhetorical, and a theological condition.