Projection interpretation: toward a hermeneutic for homiletics

This thesis offers a new hermeneutic specific to biblical interpretation for preaching. “Hermeneutics” is, roughly speaking, the art and science of understanding. With reference to preaching, hermeneuts examine how preachers interpret the Bible in preparation for preaching from it.
This thesis surveys hermeneutics in contemporary North American mainline and evangelical homiletics texts and concludes that the field is fractured.
Homileticians commend incomplete and unclear hermeneutical methodologies which are unable to assess the value and accuracy of particular interpretations.
What is required instead is an approach to interpretation that is specific to the nature of homiletics. Using theological goals for preaching as a hermeneutical guide, this thesis adapts and appropriates the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff for homiletics. It constructs a new hermeneutic for biblical interpretation, “Projection Interpretation,” which comprises a solution to the homiletical problem of fragmentation and which represents an original contribution to the field.