Continuing my little series. We've heard from Torrance and Reeves. I hope we'll hear from Calvin and Lewis as well shortly, but for now here is Gustaf Wingren:
In the Bible men, as hearers, are not additions to the naked Word spoken into empty space. That, however, is just the presupposition when division into objective and subjective is made [...]
The scarlet thread that runs through the Bible is God and his people. As A. Fridrichsen has expressed it, 'God is the one pole in the power circuit, his people are the other.' [...] To think of the Bible, and not to think at the same time of Israel and the Church, is to omit from the Bible its character as message. The Bible does not acquire that character because we preach its Word, but already possesses it as a historic fact, and having that character it preaches. Our preaching, then, is just the Bible's own preaching [...]
There are, of course, sermons were men are not present from the first because there are bad sermons, sermons which do not set forth the Word. The main point which must be driven home is that the weakness of such bad sermons lies in the fact that the passage is never given its rightful place; the weakness is not that while the passage is correctly expounded the exposition is 'lifeless', 'uninspiring', etc. etc. If the passage is clearly and fully expounded the preaching is good. When the Bible lies open on the preacher's desk and the preparation of the sermon is about to begin, the worshippers have already come in; the passage contains these people since it is God's Word to his people."
(pp.25-26, Gustaf Wingren, The Living Word)
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