God's Grace and Christian Ethics in the Preached Sermon: Bringing Lutheran Proclamation of God's Grace together with Anabaptist-Mennonite Ethical Teaching

The contextual task at hand is that of moving God’s grace to the centre of North American Mennonite theology and preaching, where a strong theology of discipleship has left God’s grace and agency at the margins. Moving grace to the centre of the preached sermon requires the scholarly disciplines of New Testament studies, theology, and homiletics. An exploration of Paul’s “logic” used to weave God’s grace and Christian ethics, together with a spatial reading of Romans 5 and 6, reveals that believers are “in Christ” – a new territory or sphere where God’s superabundant grace gives rise to new behaviour. In an attempt to grapple theologically with the dynamics of God’s grace and Christian discipleship, the work of two theological ethicists is examined. John Howard Yoder, an Anabaptist-Mennonite scholar, assumes the grace of God but does not develop it in a fulsome way in his case for discipleship modeled on the nonviolent way of Jesus. Oswald Bayer, a Lutheran scholar, characterizes discipleship not as following Jesus but as a passive venture where the believer responds to God’s grace (God’s spoken promissio) and is thereby “opened up” and “uncurved” and thus able to recognize and respond in love to God, creation, and the needs of the neighbour. Paul Scott Wilson, together with other contributors to the law/gospel school of homiletics, brings the best of Mennonite discipleship and Lutheran grace together with his understanding of proclamation – a term that he defines in a particular way. Through the Holy Spirit, the preached sermon is both about the gospel (teaching) and an event of the gospel (proclamation), but the emphasis is on the latter. It is only in the context of the crucified and risen Christ who speaks a word of promise, that this same Jesus Christ can be appropriated as teacher and model for life. Finally, new possibilities in theology and preaching are explored with a view to integrating law/gospel homiletics and God’s spoken promissio with Anabaptist-Mennonite theology and preaching.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD