Baconian Method and Preaching in the Stone-Campbell Movement

The influence of Francis Bacon in the fields of rhetoric and philosophy parallels Isaac Newton’s achievements in the field of science. The Restoration Movement was greatly influenced by Bacon’s methodologies of inductive inquiry, yet maintained a deductive approach to rhetoric. A deductive rhetoric in a religious heritage that is strongly rooted in a Baconian methodology appears to be contradictory. Why is there a prolepsis? This article explores the incongruity between the homiletical and hermeneutical practices in the Restoration Movement.