Page 84 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

clear demarcation between preaching and teaching in earliest Christian preaching and he

maintains that the writers of the New Testament maintained this distinction between kerygma

and didache. Dodd notes that “[t]eaching is in a large majority of cases ethical instruction….

Preaching, on the other hand, is the public proclamation of Christianity to the non-Christian

47
world.”
Dodd also attempts to identify the content of the kerygma. By an analysis of the sermons

of the New Testament, he locates a “general scheme” of the kerygma that has typical and

48
virtually uniform content. He summarizes as follows:

It begins by proclaiming that “this is that which was spoken by the prophets”; the age of

fulfillment has dawned, and Christ is its Lord; it then proceeds to recall the historical facts,

leading up to the resurrection and exaltation of Christ and the promise of His coming in glory;

and it ends with the call to repentance and the offer of forgiveness.49

Dodd’s presentation provides parameters for open debates on the nature of preaching and

teaching in the New Testament.50 Expectedly, this distinct categorization between kerygma and

didache invokes both warm welcome51 and cynical criticism.52

47
C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Development (London: Hodder &
Stoughton Limited, 1936), 7. For supporting passages of this are Matt. 11:1; Eph. 4:11; 1 Tim.
2:7; 4:2-4; and Matt. 4:23, that speak of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee as teaching, preaching, and
healing.

48
Ibid., 47.
49
Ibid.
50
James I. H. McDonald, Kerygma and Didache: The Articulation and Structure of the
Earliest Christian Message (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 3.

51 Robert C. Worley, Preaching and Teaching in the Earliest Church (Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press, 1967), 29.