Is preaching itself the Word of God?

The following are some notes on Peter Adam's book Speaking God's Words - The Art of Biblical Preaching. I have been asking lately about how the practice of 'preaching' in evangelical circles came to be what it is. A crucial question is: how does preaching relate to the notion of the Word of God? Is it itself the word of God?

Peter Adam addresses this very question on pp. 112ff. He notes how the issue was raised in the 2nd Helvetic Confession of 1566 which states that 'The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God'. Adam notes that this statement - which is actually in the marginalia of the Confession - has been taken as a Reformation axiom by Runia and Bloesch and others. However, Adam suggests that it needs more careful theological treatment. He looks at Bullinger's sermons - since Bullinger was the author the aforemention confession it seems worth asking what Bullinger might have thought he meant. Adam asserts that Bullinger was arguing that 'sermons are the means by which the Word of God is applied to people, not that the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God' (p. 115) in the baldest sense. In the verse usually used to support a closer identification of preaching and the word of God - 1 Thess 2:13 - Paul seems to be speaking about his particular authority as an apostle rather than his more general role as a preacher. (He doesn't discuss 1 Peter 4:11: 'If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God' I note). Adam deduces: 'it may be fair to infer that when we preach Paul's words we are preaching the Word of God, but it does not necessarily follow that our preaching is in itself the Word of God' (p. 115).

For Adam, too high a view of preaching as the Word of God may cause problems because it may herald the beginning of a Protestant papacy. Too close an identification of the preacher's human words with 'the Word of God' gives the preaching itself unwarranted and apparently underived authority. Preaching is authoritative and divinely inspired (we might say) and ought to be received as such inasmuch as it is derived from and faithful to the divinely inspired text. (Should we speak of 'preaching the Word of God' - with Scripture remaining the Word of God that is so preached - rather than preaching being the Word of God?)

Adam writes:
Perhaps the best way of describing it is to say that when human beings explain the Word of God, preach it, teach it, and urge people to accept it, then the Word of God achieves its purpose and this is on eof the normal ways in which God brings his Word to human beings. It is perhaps helpful to describe this in terms of the work of the Spirit. ... The Scripture itself is a product of the Spirit, and when the Spirit works in the preacher and in the hearers, the words of God are mediated and bear fruit in the lives of those who hear. (p. 118)

If our preaching is true to Scripture it will be the means by which God brings the Word of God to those who hear us. (p. 120) .... and thus, we can speak, I think, of preaching as the Word of God when it is preaching of the Word of God.