CATCHING THE WAVE
Preaching the New Testament as Rhetoric
By Tim McBride
IVP. 200 pages. £11.99
ISBN 978 1 783 594 368
There are some interesting things in this book, but it’s not worth the money or the time it takes to read it.
The best things in it can be found in better books or blogposts on preaching. Here, they are submerged in a rather technical crash course in ancient rhetoric, which is hard to internalise and deploy, and the relevance of which the book overstates.
Classical rhetoric
The argument of the book goes like this: in interpreting a biblical text we need to understand what it says and what it does. So far, so good – this is an important correction to the view that interpretation is a matter of paraphrasing content. On this basis the author argues that, since the NT epistles were written according to the norms, methods and categories of classical rhetoric, preachers need to understand that rhetoric, consciously apply this understanding to NT letters and allow it to determine our primary moves in applying the text today.
Then we are introduced to the first set of categories: three kinds of speech [not letter-writing, speech]: forensic, epideictic and deliberative. Paul’s letters (and parts of his letters) are then identified in one or other of these categories. Later chapters introduce us to a set of Latin terms for different aspects of rhetorical form: exordium, narratio, propositio, probatio, refutatio, peroratio. There follow chapters on the Aristotelian categories of ethos, pathos and logos. There is some value in understanding this, but it is explained in the best books on preaching and/or in commentaries, with or without the Latin and Greek, and certainly without the feeling that one has to master the detail to preach Paul properly. One insight, which was new to me, is that NT writers often use a ‘shortened syllogism’ – i.e. with one premise missing. I pass that on because it is quite thought-provoking.
My problems with the book are:
1. The author takes the conventions of speech and applies them to letters. An appendix tries to justify this, but the argument seemed thin to me. For a fuller justification we are directed to the author’s published PhD thesis. There was little or no examination of ancient letter-writing conventions and how these might illuminate interpretation.
2. There is no consideration of the ways that OT/Hebrew rhetorical patterns and practices might have influenced the rhetoric of NT letters. But it is obvious that there is an influence, even to an amateur like me.
3. There is simply no agreement among NT scholars that these categories are helpful for interpreting the epistles (my thanks to Dr Simon Gathercole, Reader in NT, Cambridge University, for this).
4. Virtually all the insights which he claims have been generated by rhetorical criticism are there in commentators whose approach is much less controlled by ancient rhetoric. I have to say that in many cases the same insights have been found through the ages by attentive close reading and common sense. Does anybody really need to be told that, because Ephesians 1 is ‘epideictic rhetoric, the purpose of the text and our sermon is not primarily to explain the intricacies of election. It’s to encourage us to praise God that he has chosen us’?
5. I am just not sure that the best way to draw out the meaning and significance of the text today involves working out in such a technical way what kind of ancient rhetoric patterns it utilises. The author does supply examples of sermons deploying his approach, but I found myself wondering how much it really added. Generations of preachers and other Christians have got to the heart of Paul’s letters without ever knowing the word epideictic or the category it represents.
Unpersuaded
I have preached through several NT letters in part or whole: those sermon series could be greatly improved in many ways, but I am unpersuaded that a more technical knowledge of classical rhetoric would have made very much difference to my people at all.
