THEOLOGY OF PREACHING

Rahner presents Revelation as embodiment of the God Himself through his own Incarnational Theology. The incarnation of Christ is the model and the basic structure of reality. Christ is the perfect realization of Spirit-in-the-World. Scripture is not only propositional but also symbolical. Language, employed by the Scripture is not just textual but contextual, not just logical but symbolical. Through language, a reality is concealed more so revealed. Rahner would even go as far as saying that man is not spirit against the world but a spirit in the world, using the reality as means of God to reveal Himself, to incarnate, make flesh Himself for Him to be known by man. Thus, through the sensible reality, the spiritual reality is experienced. 

Naming Spirit in the World; Naming Jesus; Naming grace can be the method used in order to reveal God. Man is tasked search for God and his presence in the midst of this world; in this very worldly phenomenon. If God is truly incarnated in this space, thus man have to search for Him in this reality, through his experiences. Man have to name, pinpoint the grace of God in the world events he experience.

The preacher thus names grace, points out the grace in the reality of this world. His preaching becomes an act of naming grace. 

For Schillibeeckx, language is the miniature replica of the world. Human language with all its weaknesses can become the servant of God in communicating Himself to man. The message of God, however, is not just to be heard but it is also meant to be experienced. Thus the message of God has to be transcended from symbol to reality, from our story to God's story. The stories or narratives behind the events man experiences embodies the message of God; God Himself. These stories expressed in Language present God in concrete and sensible manner, though He may be spiritual and intangible. 

The search for God in the language we hear and experience is transcended through the experience of contrast. The world may be filled with contradiction; bitter sweet; despair and hope, but it is through these contrasting and contradicting elements that one can see God present in the midst of pain and sorrow. 

The preacher is to bring his listeners to the experience of faith in the Lord and in the unfailing hope that God will fulfill his covenant. He is able to do this through his very own experience of the pain of contrast, in his own hope in the midst of contradictions in his life.

Gutierrez championed the Liberal Theology. It is a rethinking of theology from the base; grassroots experience of the subject; historical experience. It is a theology from the ground coming from the poverty and misery experienced by the destitute of the society. 

Knowing the experience of the listeners; their very life-experiences, one would be able to understand them and their needs. Thus, God and his message is made known by knowing the context in which the listeners are situated, and seeing these through the lens of the story of Jesus who though in the form of God did not deem equality with God.. 

Pedagogy of the Oppressed - interpreting the communal experience of the poor and allowing them to find hope in God who chose to be a poor Himself, and chose to liberates the poor form their misery. 

Pedagogy of the privileged - the privileged join the ranks of the poor and thereby partake of their poverty. 

The task of the preacher is to humanize the oppressed and concomitantly the oppressor by interpreting their misery through the Gospel message contained in the Beatitudes. The preacher is the main pedagogue of the oppressed, the bringer of hope because he acts as a catalyst of change. He brings to the realization of both the oppressed and the privileged that the beatitudes are not just a promise for the future but a covenant being fulfilled here and now.