Book Summary: "Preaching Jesus: New Directopms for Homiletics in Hans Frei's Postliberal Theology"
Title: Preaching Jesus: New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology
Author: Charles L. Campbell
Type of Work: Theological monograph in practical theology / homiletics
First Published (Date): 1997 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans), 289 pp.; later reprinted (2006). 
Principal Ideas Advanced:
- The crisis in preaching is fundamentally theological; homiletics must be re-grounded in sound christology and ecclesiology rather than technique. 
- Drawing on Hans Frei, preaching should render the unsubstitutable identity of Jesus as given in the Gospel narratives—the “realistic” literal sense—before moving to applications. 
- Scripture functions within a cultural-linguistic/ecclesial framework (Yale School): the church’s practices and language shape hearers to inhabit the biblical world (intratextual formation). 
- Figural interpretation (typology) responsibly relates Testaments and the church’s life without collapsing narrative into abstract ideas. 
- Critique of experiential-event homiletics (e.g., certain narrative approaches): sermons should not manufacture affective “events” detached from christological truth. 
- Reassessment of “between two worlds” models: the task is less to bridge Scripture and culture from outside than to induct hearers into the scriptural world that re-narrates their lives. 
- Preaching is an ecclesial practice aimed at building up the church—forming communal identity and witness. 
Narrative Summary:
Campbell’s project is to retrieve and translate Hans Frei’s postliberal theology into a concrete homiletic. He opens by diagnosing homiletics’ malaise as theological rather than merely methodological: attempts to revive preaching by adjusting delivery, structure, or “storytelling” technique leave untouched the more basic question of what sermons are for and about. The answer he advances, following Frei, is that preaching should render the unsubstitutable identity of Jesus Christ as the Gospels depict him and form a community whose life is ordered by that identity. 
Part I reconstructs Frei’s thought for preachers. Campbell highlights Frei’s claim that the Gospels are “realistic narratives” whose literal (plain) sense gives readers a world to inhabit—the world where Jesus’ identity is displayed in and through the story. Rather than extracting timeless propositions or correlating biblical “experiences” with contemporary ones, the sermon’s first task is to show forth Jesus—in Barth’s afterglow but with Frei’s distinctive focus on narrative shape. Campbell underscores three Frei-inflected moves: (1) begin with the literal sense of the Gospel story (not a “thin” literalism but attention to plot, character, and the way the narrative renders Jesus); (2) allow figural/typological relations to emerge as Scripture interprets Scripture; and (3) keep the focus on who Jesus is (christology) rather than on general religious ideas or moralism. Terms that index this section—“unsubstitutable identity,” “ascriptive logic,” “realistic narrative,” “figural interpretation”—signal a homiletic that resists replacing Jesus with concepts or experiences. 
Part II draws implications for preaching practice across a set of strategic chapters (as the table of contents indicates): “Scripture and Community,” “Narrative Preaching and Experiential Events,” “Between Two Worlds?,” and “Whose Story? Which Narrative?”. In “Scripture and Community,” Campbell expounds a cultural-linguistic account (Frei/Lindbeck/Hauerwas): Scripture is read within and for the church, whose practices (baptismal identity, Eucharistic thanksgiving, common prayer) constitute the interpretive “home” of the text. Preaching, therefore, is not primarily a bridge from an ancient world to a modern one; it is an act of communal formation in which hearers are inducted into the habits, language, and imagination of the biblical world. 
In “Narrative Preaching and Experiential Events,” Campbell offers a friendly yet firm critique of homiletical approaches that define a sermon as an “experiential event”—a crafted arc of feeling culminating in a moment of recognition. Such rhetoric can be pastorally effective, he concedes, but when decoupled from christological content it risks making experience the norm that governs the text. A Frei-shaped sermon, by contrast, aims at an “intratextual” event: the church is taken up into the scriptural world so that Jesus’ identity and work define what counts as real and what counts as transformative experience.
“Between Two Worlds?” (the title nods to classic “bridge” metaphors) debates the standard model that places the preacher at midpoint between the biblical and contemporary worlds. Campbell does not deny contextual wisdom or pastoral attentiveness; rather, he reorders the movement: the sermon begins inside the scriptural world, letting its logic and claims re-narrate our world. Only then are connections drawn outward, now governed by the Gospel’s depiction of Jesus rather than by cultural plausibility structures. This order guards against reducing Scripture to illustrative material for pre-determined concerns. 
“Whose Story? Which Narrative?” addresses questions of pluralism, public witness, and the politics of interpretation. If the sermon is unapologetically christological and ecclesial, is it condemned to sectarianism? Campbell argues no: figural and ecclesial readings can speak publicly by performing truthful practices—mercy, reconciliation, truthful speech—learned from the Gospel’s world. The sermon’s public force is less in universal arguments than in credible communal enactments that witness to Jesus’ reign. (Here Campbell’s alignment with Frei’s emphasis on Jesus’ identity helps him avoid both privatized piety and generic moralism.) 
Part III turns to practice. The contents list “Building Up the Church” and concludes with a preached example, Walter Brueggemann’s “Pain Turned to Newness,” allowing readers to see a sermon that, while not simply “Frei-ian,” embodies the kind of text-governed, world-rendering proclamation Campbell commends. By placing a working sermon alongside his theory, Campbell signals that homiletical judgment is practical wisdom: it concerns fittingness and formation in real congregations.
Throughout, Campbell’s constructive burden is twofold. First, he re-centers Jesus Christ—not as a detachable “topic,” but as the living subject whose identity is encountered in the Gospel narratives. Second, he locates preaching within the church’s communal life, where Scripture is read, prayed, and enacted. The strength of the proposal lies in its integration: christology, ecclesiology, and homiletics mutually inform one another. The sermon is neither a dramatic device engineered to produce experiences nor a delivery system for propositions; it is a scripture-shaped act that helps a people live truthfully before God.
Campbell’s reliance on Frei also clarifies his hermeneutical posture. Frei’s insistence on beginning with the literal, narrative rendering of Jesus and then moving to figural relations (rather than starting from external frameworks) guards preaching from both reductionistic historicism and free-floating symbolism. Related Frei scholarship (e.g., on Jesus’ identity and the role of Scripture in shaping belief) corroborates the contours Campbell traces and the homiletic he builds upon them.
In sum, Preaching Jesus proposes a Frei-informed homiletic: preach so that congregations inhabit the Gospel’s world and meet Jesus there; figure their lives by that story; and practice a communal witness that builds up the church for public faithfulness. The result is not a technique but a way—an ecclesial discipline of proclamation—that aims to renew the pulpit by letting Scripture, in the Spirit, render Jesus Christ before and for his people.
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