ABSTRACT WORLDVIEW PREACHING IN THE CHURCH: THE PREACHING MINISTRIES OF J. GRESHAM MACHAN AND TIMOTHY J. KELLER Michael Raymond Galdamez, Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2012 Chair: Dr. Robert A. Vogel The thesis of this dissertation is that J. Gresham Machen and Timothy J. Keller provide contemporary pulpits with two examples of preachers who present a consistent worldview. This thesis is demonstrated through a description and evaluation of their preaching based on four elements of a worldview in James Sire's book The Universe Next Door. By presenting Machen and Keller as examples of worldview preaching, this dissertation provides a study on the use of the worldview concept in evangelical preaching, in order to discover what these two preachers consistently do in their preaching so as to be categorized as worldview preachers. Thus the study provides homiletic students with two examples of how the worldview concept might be applied to contemporary preaching. Chapter 2 presents a brief biographical sketch of Machen and Keller in order to set their writings and preaching in their distinct historical and cultural contexts. Specific focus is upon Machen's battle with theological modernism and Keller's ministry to skeptical New Yorkers through Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Chapter 3 provides descriptions of Machen's and Keller's worldviews. These descriptions are organized around Sire's four worldview elements. A number of their popular writings are examined and summarized in order to construct their worldviews from Sire's paradigm. This chapter provides the basis for the evaluation of their preaching in chapter 4. Chapter 4 evaluates Machen's and Keller's preaching based on their consistency with their constructed worldviews of chapter 3. This evaluation provides enough description to demonstrate the level of consistency between their stated worldviews and what they in fact preach in the pulpit. Chapter 5 compares and contrasts Machen's and Keller's worldview preaching in order to specify areas of strengths and weaknesses in their worldview preaching. This comparison of their preaching also provides some reflection on the application of Machen's and Keller's approach for contemporary preachers. Chapter 6 provides a summary and conclusion of this dissertation. Worldview preaching is essential in the preaching ministry of the evangelical church. Machen's and Keller's preaching provides a clear understanding of the application of the worldview concept to preaching.

Thesis (S.T.B.)--Biblical Seminary in New York, 1948. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 57).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-100).

Thesis (M.A.)--Lancaster Bible College, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-68).

Thesis (M.A.)--Lancaster Bible College, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-68).

Thesis (M.A.)--Lancaster Bible College, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-68).

Hallucination was always the ghost story's elephant in the room. Even before the vogue for psychical research and spiritualism began to influence writers at the end of the nineteenth century, tales of horror and the supernatural, of ghosts and demons, had been haunted by the possibility of some grand deception by the senses. Edgar Allan Poe's stories were full of mad narrators, conscience-stricken criminals and sinners, and protagonists who doubted their very eyes and ears. Writers such as Dickens and Le Fanu continued this idea of the cheat of the senses. But what is certainly true is that, towards the end of the century, hallucination took on a new force and significance in ghostly and horror fiction. Now, its presence was not the dominion of a handful of experimental thinkers but the province of popular authors writing very different kinds of stories. The approaches had become many and diverse, from Arthur Machen's ambivalent interest in occultism to Vernon Lee's passion for art and antiquity. Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898) is the most famous text to pose a question that was, in fact, being asked by many writers of the time: reality or delusion? Other writers, too, were forcing their readers to assess whether the ghostly had its origins in some supernatural phenomenon from beyond the grave, or from some deception within our own minds. This thesis explores the many factors which contributed to this rise in the interest in hallucination and visionary experience, during the period 1880-1914. From the time when psychical research became hugely popular, up until the First World War often considered a watershed in the history of the ghost story and literature in general something happened to the ghost story and related fiction. Through a close analysis of stories and novels written by Robert Louis Stevenson, Vernon Lee, Henry James, Arthur Machen, and Oliver Onions, I attempt to find out what happened, and even more importantly why it happened at all.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.(Church History))--University of Pretoria, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

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