The sense that there is one paradigm for exegesis of the Fourth Gospel is gone for good, a phrase with a deliberately Johannine double meaning.

In Galatians, Paul points to a God who reaches out to all of humankind in Jesus Christ. It is not what we work but what God works in us that shapes faithful Christian living.

Without question, preaching can profit immensely from the literary and imaginative construal of biblical texts. To affirm this, however, is not to say that preachers can therefore dispense with doing their historical-critical homework.