ABSTRACT
The understanding of the proclamation of the grace of God in Christ occurs frequently under the mode of promise of divine action. In the philosophy of language speech-act theorists have identified promise as one of the clearest models of illocutionary action. The nature of promise in the biblical writings presuppose institutional facts, such as covenant, ratification by the blood of Christ, embodiments in such promissory signs of covenant as baptism and the Lord's Supper. A. Brown perceives the word of the gospel as transformative and trustworthy, and as temporally contingent on the circumstances of Paul's utterances, oral or written. Jurgen Moltmann explicitly alludes to the enlargement of horizons in Hans-Georg Gadamer and to temporal actualizations of traditions of expectation. An increasing number of writers are now viewing all texts, including all texts of the New Testament, as speech-acts. Hebrews 1:1–4 offers an outstanding example of multiple speech-acts as a dynamic model for the opening of a forceful and effective sermon.
