A study of Biblical interpretation in the Warrack Lectures on preaching : from 1940 to 1975

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the developments in Biblical interpretation discovered within the Warrack Lectures on preaching from 1940 to 1975. Essentially, the first part presents the information about interpreting the Scriptures found within the various lectures chronologically, and then, by comparison and contrast, shows how that information changes and points in certain developmental directions over the course of this thirty-five year period. To place these particular changes within a context, the second part of the thesis presents relevant information and developmental directions found within Scottish academic Biblical and theological scholarship over the period from 1881 until the early 1960's. Employing primary and secondary sources and data discovered within The Expository Times, this survey reveals trends which are remarkably similar to those discovered within the Warrack Lectures. The final chapter then correlates and examines these similar trends and shows how both follow developmental directions toward the greater valuation of the more objective aspects of Biblical interpretation, a consequential devaluation of the more subjective ones, and an overall change in theological approach to interpreting Biblical subject-matter. The thesis concludes by drawing some implications from this correlation for the work of both contemporary preachers and scholars.