The Role of the Holy Spirit in the Protestant Preaching

Abstract

Within Protestantism preaching is regarded as the main task of the Church. Lutheran theology sees in the sermon the presence of Christ and the source of the justifying faith born of hearing and accepting the word proclaimed, as well as the place of the Holy Spirit who promotes faith in those who hear the Gospel. For the father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, the work of the Holy Spirit is closely related to the Gospel which was inspired by Him and thanks to His support can be preached and heard at all. And according to John Calvin, the Holy Spirit is a true teacher (magister) and perpetrator (effector) who, as the proper author of the sermon, makes it a saving event.

Assigning the Third Person of God a vital role in proclaiming the word of God gave birth to a question about what is the work of God in the sermon and what is the work of man. The search for such Protestant theologians in the 20th century as Rudolf Bohren, Manfred Josuttis and (late) Karl Barth led to the creation of the theory of preaching based on the pneumatological paradigm. It is an attempt to theologically justify the connection of the divine and human elementsin the sermon. It is in the Holy Spirit who wants to act in us and through us (the principle of the theonomical reciprocity), preaching, seen as completely lying in God’s possibilities, becomes the preacher’s thing and the thing of the listener, lies entirely in the possibilities of man (both skills and technique) – provided that both the preacher and the listener are openfor His actions. The pneumatological homiletics gave not only an answer to the question about the level of God’s and man’s activity in the process of preaching, but also even more insightfully described the overwhelming role of the Holy Spirit in preaching.