Homiletics and Hermeneutics

Four Views on Preaching Today

Gibson, Scott M., Kim, Matthew D.

• Verlag: Baker Academic
• Jahr: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781493415601
• Thema: Theologie & Religion
• Thema: Christlicher Dienst

Scott Gibson and Matthew Kim, both experienced preachers and teachers, have brought together four preaching experts--Bryan Chapell, Kenneth Langley, Abraham Kuruvilla, and Paul Scott Wilson--to present and defend their approaches to homiletics. Reflecting current streams of thought in homiletics, the book offers a robust discussion of theological and hermeneutical approaches to preaching and encourages pastors and ministry students to learn about preaching from other theological traditions. It also includes discussion questions for direct application to one's preaching.

1
Redemptive-Historic View

BRYAN CHAPELL

Historical Background

Fifty years ago, there would have been little demand for the discussions of this book among evangelical preaching instructors or pastors. Few expected or desired the discipline of biblical theology to cause a major rethinking of our approaches to preaching. Though that discipline’s approach to unifying all of Scripture around the message of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ had once inspired church fathers, energized Reformation preaching, and empowered great awakenings of the gospel in this country, the redemptive train was off the tracks. Liberal theologians had hijacked key aspects of biblical theology, making evangelicals skeptical or opposed to its use.

Then, the pioneering work of preaching instructors such as Sidney Greidanus, Edmund Clowney, and John Sanderson reminded late-twentieth-century preachers that the unity of Scripture could not be dismissed without harming our understanding of its particulars. They pointed to early church fathers who took seriously what the gospels say about “all the Scriptures” disclosing the ministry of Christ (e.g., Luke 24:27; John 5:39). This insight had been abused, in ways that are now obvious to us, by ancient allegorism that sought to make Jesus “magically” appear in every Bible passage through exegetical acrobatics that stretched logic, imagination, and credulity. But Luther and Calvin, among others, recognized the abuses and attempted to offer corrections.

Luther’s law-gospel distinctions and Calvin’s forays into unifying the Testaments were imperfect but important excursions into unveiling the redemptive message culminating in Scripture. The writings of Bullinger, Oecolampadius, and Beza in surrounding decades helped refine and systematize a scriptural perspective that should have set the standard for redemptive interpretation in following eras. Sadly, Counter-Reformation battles regarding the nature of the church, justification, and the sacraments eclipsed the discussion of how the unity of Scripture’s redemptive message should guide our preaching.

Later Dutch Reformers would revisit biblical theology and influence the Puritans, who took up the discussion again through key thinkers such as Jonathan Edwards. His quest for understanding how religious “affections” were stirred by the grace of the gospel led to a proposal to write a history of redemption that unified the whole Bible—a project short-circuited by his premature death.

The dormant discipline stirred again through the writings of Geerhardus Vos but declined quickly in evangelical favor as liberal theologians used select aspects of biblical theology to undermine the veracity of Scripture. They argued that just as the “trajectory” of Old Testament scriptures pointed to a Christ beyond ancient expectations, so modern preachers could point beyond the canon of Scripture to disclose the “spirit of Jesus” for new concepts of faith and ethics. As a consequence, biblical theology was used to dispense with the clear teaching of the Scriptures and to advocate novel ideas beyond canonical boundaries. In essence, biblical theology became a weapon of “Liberalism” in the early twentieth century’s modernist/fundamentalist “Battle for the Bible,” and it became a perceived enemy of conservative Christianity.

Only after evangelicalism gained firmer ground in the 1960s and 1970s did key voices begin to remind the Bible-believing church of the far-reaching implications of our conviction that the proper interpretation of any text requires regard for its context. That context includes not only its literary and historical setting but also its place in God’s redemptive plan. Exegetical and doctrinal disciplines began to register the importance of the organic unity of Scripture for sound interpretation, and these insights inevitably affected our approach to preaching.

In the homiletics field, biblical theology proponents who had been crying in the wilderness for decades found fresh advocacy in the sermons of preachers such as Don Carson, Joel Nederhood, Sinclair Ferguson, John Piper, Steve Brown, James Montgomery Boice, Skip Ryan, Tony Merida, Jerry Bridges, Ray Ortlund, Joe Novenson, David Calhoun, Danny Akin, Ray Cortese, and most notably, Timothy Keller. Some preached out of an instinct for infusing grace into their messages; others had more systematized approaches. Some were consistent advocates; others felt their way forward more haltingly. But all contributed to a movement that has now swept beyond any anticipated academic, denominational, or generational boundaries.

Homiletics movements have since converged with currents in exegetical and theological disciplines, so that it is almost unthinkable that a new commentary on any portion of Scripture would fail to contextualize its contents within the redemptive flow of biblical history. Now, even if elementary preachers are unsure how to preach a particular passage redemptively, they have sensitive antennae to detect sermons that are mere moralistic challenges to straighten up, fly right, and do better.

Biblical Rationale

Perspective

The biblical theology movement in preaching has been driven by the core understanding that a message that merely advocates morality and compassion can remain sub-Christian even if the preacher proves that the Bible demands such behaviors. By ignoring the fallenness of our world and works that necessitate God’s rescue (Isa. 64:6; Luke 17:10; Rom. 8:20), and by neglecting the grace of God that makes obedience possible and acceptable (1 Cor. 15:10; Eph. 2:8–9), such messages subvert the essence of the Christian gospel.

All other faiths teach that humans reach God by some measure of effort or mental state, but Christianity’s unique claim is that God graciously reaches to us because of our inadequacy. The Bible teaches that our relationship with God is not based on what we do, but on what Christ has done—our faith is in his work, not ours (Gal. 2:20). Thus, a textually accurate description of biblical commands and ethical conduct does not guarantee Christian orthodoxy. Exhortations for moral behavior apart from the work of the Savior degenerate into mere Pharisaism, even if preachers advocate the actions with selected biblical evidence and good intent. Spirituality solely based on personal conduct cannot escape its human-centered orbit though it aspires to lift one to the divine.

Process

But how do expository preachers infuse gospel essentials (i.e., how God is rescuing us from our fallenness) into every sermon without superimposing ideas foreign to many texts? Many Old Testament passages make no explicit reference to Christ’s substitutionary, penal death or bodily resurrection. New Testament texts abound that commend moral behaviors with no mention of the cross, the resurrection, the Holy Spirit, or God’s enabling grace. Can we really be “expositors” and bring out of a text what it does not seem to mention? The answer lies in an old preaching axiom: Context is part of text.

By identifying where a passage fits in the overall revelation of God’s redemptive plan, a preacher relates the text to Christ by performing the standard and necessary exegetical task of establishing its context. Following the creation passages at the outset of Genesis, all of Scripture unfolds a record of God’s dealings with a corrupted world and its creatures (Gen. 3:15). But the record does not merely recite historical facts. It reveals an ongoing drama whereby God systematically, personally, and progressively discloses the necessity and the detail of his plan to use his Son to redeem and restore fallen humanity and creation itself (Rom. 15:4).1

The big story of Scripture moves through the stages of creation, fall, redemption, and final consummation—God made everything good, everything went bad, and, in God’s time, everything will be made perfect. But until that time, all human history subsequent to the fall (including our own history) unfolds within the context of God’s redemptive plan. The Bible is the revelation of that plan, and no scripture can be fully interpreted without considering that context.

Just as historico-grammatical exegesis requires a preacher to consider a text’s terms in their historical and literary context, responsible theological interpretation requires an expositor to discern how a text’s ideas function in the wider redemptive context. Some meanings we discern by taking out our exegetical magnifying glass and studying a text’s particulars in close detail. Other meanings we discern by examining a text with a theological fish-eye lens to see how the immediate text relates to texts, messages, events, and developments around it. Accurate expositors use both a magnifying glass and a fish-eye lens, knowing that a magnifying glass can unravel mysteries in a raindrop but can fail to expose a storm gathering on the horizon.

Theological Rationale

Principles

In the introduction to his seminal volume Biblical Theology, Geerhardus Vos outlined the principles that will keep preaching on track. He began with the simple observation that “revelation is a noun of action relating to divine activity.”2 All scriptural revelation discloses God. In its proper context, every verse in the Bible in some sense points to his nature and work. Yet because God is God, no single verse, no single passage, no single book contains all we need to know about him. In fact, had God totally revealed himself to our earliest faith ancestors, they would not have had the theological background or the biblical prepara...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Redemptive-Historic View
• 2. Christiconic View
• 3. Theocentric View
• 4. Law-Gospel View
• Conclusion
• Contributors
• Scripture and Ancient Sources Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover