Toward an Exegetical Theology

Biblical Exegesis for Preaching and Teaching

Kaiser, Walter C.,Jr.

• Editorial: Baker Academic
• Año: 1998
• ISBN:
  9781441210678
• Categoría: Théologie et religion
• Categoría: Critique et interprétation bibliques

Proposes a method of biblical interpretation consisting of contexual, syntactical, verbal, theological, and homiletical analysis.

PART I

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Introduction

Chapter 1

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Current Crises in Exegetical Theology

In a world that has been treated almost daily to one crisis after another in almost every aspect of its life, it will come as no shock to have another crisis announced: a crisis in exegetical theology. Already we have been warned about crises in systematic theology and Biblical theology, and about ignorance of the contents of Scripture.[1]

But we cannot help agreeing with Professor George M. Landes that the most “basic crisis in biblical studies” must be placed in the discipline of exegesis.[2] In many ways, it is this crisis that has precipitated the other theological crises.

The Crisis in Exegetical Theology

A gap of crisis proportions exists between the steps generally outlined in most seminary or Biblical training classes in exegesis and the hard realities most pastors face every week as they prepare their sermons. Nowhere in the total curriculum of theological studies has the student been more deserted and left to his own devices than in bridging the yawning chasm between understanding the content of Scripture as it was given in the past and proclaiming it with such relevance in the present as to produce faith, life, and bona fide works. Both ends of this bridge have at various times received detailed and even exhaustive treatments: (1) the historical, grammatical, cultural, and critical analysis of the text forms one end of the spectrum; and (2) the practical, devotional, homiletical, and pastoral theology (along with various techniques of delivery, organization, and persuasion) reflected in collections of sermonic outlines for all occasions forms the other. But who has mapped out the route between these two points?[3] The number of books and articles worth mentioning which provide both faithfulness to the text of Scripture and spiritual nourishment to contemporary men and women is so sparse and hidden in such remote journals or languages as to be of very little aid for our needs today. To the best of my knowledge, no one has even produced in English or in any modern European language what we would call an exegetical theology that maps out this most difficult route of moving from the text of Scripture over into the proclamation of that text.

To be sure, the Church has had more than her rightful share of “meditations” or “topical sermons” which are more or less loosely connected with a Biblical phrase, clause, sentence, verse, or scattered assortment thereof. But where are the textbooks or articles that have attempted to seriously treat a legitimate unit of the Scriptures (e.g., a paragraph or group of paragraphs) in its present canonical shape and to instruct the aspiring or present proclaimer of God’s Word how to move from the text to the sermon without losing sight of either the Biblical shape of his source or the crying needs of modern men who await a meaningful word for their lives?

Those sermons whose alleged strength is that they speak to contemporary issues, needs, and aspirations often exhibit the weakness of a subjective approach. In the hands of many practitioners, the Biblical text has been of no real help either in clarifying the questions posed by modern man or in offering solutions. The listener is often not sure whether the word of hope being proclaimed is precisely that same Biblical word which should be connected with the modern situation or issue being addressed in the sermon since the Biblical text often is no more than a slogan or refrain in the message. What is so lacking in this case is exactly what needs to be kept in mind with respect to every sermon which aspires to be at once both Biblical and practical: it must be derived from an honest exegesis of the text and it must constantly be kept close to the text.

So strong is this writer’s aversion to the methodological abuse he has repeatedly witnessed—especially in topical messages—that he has been advising his students for some years now to preach a topical sermon only once every five years—and then immediately to repent and ask God’s forgiveness! In case the reader does not recognize the hyperbole in that statement, then let me plainly acknowledge it as such. However, the serious note that lies behind this playfulness is a loud call for preaching that is totally Biblical in that it is guided by God’s Word in its origins, production, and proclamation.

On the other hand, let it also be acknowledged just as quickly that nothing can be more dreary and grind the soul and spirit of the Church more than can a dry, lifeless recounting of Biblical episodes apparently unrelated to the present. The pastor who delivers this type of sermon, reflecting his seminary exegesis class, bombards his bewildered audience with a maze of historical, philological, and critical detail so that the text drops lifeless in front of the listener. The message is so centered on a mere description of detail that it remains basically a B.C. or first-century A.D. word far removed from the interests and needs of twentieth-century men and women.

Therein lies the dilemma. The strength of one method tends to be totally lacking in the other. Both approaches exhibit serious problems. And the tragedy is that, more often than not, this situation has been the chief cause for the current famine of the Word of God which, in the view of many contemporary observers, continues to exist among the Lord’s people. The proof of this blanket charge can be found among scores of American parishioners who continue to travel all over the land searching for a seminar, a Bible conference, a church or a home Bible study that will fill their famished spiritual needs. Alas, however, they are often rewarded with more or less of the same treatment: repetitious arrangements of the most elementary truths of the faith, constant harangues which are popular with local audiences, or witty and clever messages on the widest-ranging topics interspersed with catchy and humorous anecdotes geared to cater to the interests of those who are spiritually lazy and do not wish to be stirred beyond the pleasantries of hearing another good joke or story. Where has the prophetic note in preaching gone? Where is that sense of authority and mission previously associated with the Biblical Word?

No one element has been so responsible for this whole process of deterioration in Biblical preaching as has been the discipline of Biblical exegesis. Certainly, it has taught its students how to parse the verbs; to identify grammatical forms in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek; to translate the text into idiomatic English; and to analyze the passage historically and critically according to the legitimate canons of lower and higher criticism. But has its job been completed at this point?

In our view, the very discipline that should have mapped out the route from exegesis to proclamation has traditionally narrowed its concerns too severely. As a result, exegesis has been the one subject most quickly jettisoned by pastors in the pulpit. They have found the discipline, as currently practiced by most departments of theology, to be too deadening, dry, irrelevant to contemporary needs, and therefore otiose. This is not to impose a pragmatic test for truth, but it is to observe that exegetical theology has not found its proper niche in the divinity curriculum in that, with its imposition of strictures and limitations, it has failed to serve the needs of the Church.

One cannot help strongly concurring with Landes’s analysis of this problem. It was his opinion that “the seminary Bible teacher does a gross injustice to the biblical documents if he interprets them only in their historical setting. Though that is indeed where he must begin, if he does not go on to articulate their theology and the way they continue to address him theologically in the present, he ignores not only an important part of their intentionality for being preserved but also their role and function. . . .”[4]

Likewise, Professor James D. Smart offered the identical assessment in his 1970 book significantly entitled The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church: “The predicament of the preacher has been created to a large extent by the hiatus between the biblical and the practical departments in our theological seminaries.”[5] He continued by charging that “the Biblical departments in [the] seminary rightly make the student labor with care to discern what the text meant when it was first written or spoken. But frequently the assumption is made that, without any further research or assistance or extension of his methodology, he can move from the original meaning to the contemporary meaning, as though there were no serious problems in making that transition.”[6]

Published sermons and sermon outlines can show only the final product, but the route which has been traversed from the start in exegesis to the result in a sermon has not been laid out. These steps are the ingredients that many have sensed are missing. But whose job is it to map out this route: the Biblical department of exegesis or the homiletical department of practical and pastoral theology?

In a real sense, neither department can be completely absolved from filling this hiatus. Yet, if primary and preliminary responsibility for preparing a Biblical text for preaching is to be assigned, then we believe Biblical exegesis must take the initiative in developing such extensions of its methodology that the interpreter can move safely and confidently from the original meaning of the Biblical author to the contemporaneous significances of that text for modern listeners. This is but a consistent extension and furthering of exegesis. Surely in the act of proclamation all the various preliminary preparations in working with the text—including specifying the focal point or central point of reference; the theology that “informed” that text; the historical, cultural, and theological context of the text; and its application—are brought to their most condensed and intended form. In the other direction, preaching will not only reflect the results of exegesis, but it will also assess the validity of the content and focus of its proclamation in terms of the Biblical text it proposes to exegete. Competence in the technical aspects of homiletics and the art of persuasion is not enough. In effect, the proclaimer must exhibit in his own person the professional unity of the exegetical professor and the practical preacher. Whether this professional person ever has been or ever will be exposed to such modeling in the classroom should now be beside the main point. It is current practice that should receive immediate attention.

It is hoped, then, that this volume will be useful to those who are already in the pastorate and who are struggling week after week to resolve just this problem. But the main object of our work must be the scores of those men and women who are currently enrolled in Biblical and theological studies at the collegiate or seminary level. It is for them and their professors that we have ventured to break new ground and tread where no one else has labored. As we do so, we are especially aware of incompleteness and built-in traps in attempting an exegetical theology.

But let this work serve as a kind of offering of a type of firstfruits to the Church at large with the express wish and hope that many others will join in a conversation with this author so that we can help each other to complete one of the central aims of Biblical and theological education. We have tolerated various forms of mediocrity in preaching and exegesis for too long now. It is time either to rectify the situation with a good theory of exegesis and a corresponding announcement of a series of valid steps in the route of moving from exegesis to preaching or to drop all professional pretensions from our Biblical and theological departments and offer only research-oriented degrees leading to teaching and writing posts in academia. Already an underground movement has arisen in the form of what I would call “house- seminaries” (where various local churches offer a two- or three- year course of studies and a practical internship for two to twenty students at a time, taught by the professional staffs of those same local churches). These house-seminaries are often a protest against the lack of professional integration with the courses of study. Seldom are these schools a revolt against the requirement of learning Greek and Hebrew. Instead they almost always require at least Greek and often both languages, but they work most diligently at attempting to relate language studies to developing what are often called truly expository or textual sermons. Alas, they too, on this point, struggle along with the existing seminaries to cut the Gordian knot. Therefore, in the bonds of Christian compassion toward and fellowship with many of these house-seminaries, we pass on our results for their inspection and interaction as well.

The Crisis in Hermeneutics

How ironical it is that just as our generation is beginning to show signs of facing up to the hiatus between the departments of exegesis and homiletics that the whole area of general hermeneutics should also suddenly show such tremendous convulsions that the old landmarks cannot be lightly assumed any more. Yet, on a closer inspection, even this crisis is not unrelated to the root crisis in exegetical theology presented above. For at the heart of much of the debate here is (to use the popular words now in use) the problem of how the interpreter can relate “what the text meant in its historical context” to “what that same text means to me.” When the issue is put in these terms, there can be no denying the fact that this is the very hiatus which is troubling interpreters in all the humanities; it is not an issue unique to the Biblical interpreter.

The Single Meaning of the Text

The issue must be put bluntly: Is the meaning of a text to be defined solely in terms of the verbal meaning of that text as those words were used by the Scriptural author? Or should the meaning of a text be partly understood in terms of “what it now means to me,” the reader and interpreter? There hangs one of the great dilemmas of our age. And there also hang the fortunes of the authority of Scripture.

William Ames. Perhaps the best place to begin is with the view of William Ames (1576–1633), whose book served as the standard text at Harvard for decades after the founding of that institution in the seventeenth century. The answer to our question was clear and unequivocal for Ames’s day: “. . . there is only one meaning for every place in Scripture. Otherwise the meaning of Scripture would not only be unclear and uncertain, but there would be no meaning at all—for anything which does not mean one thing surely means nothing.”[7]

But the question would not rest there. Did that one meaning also include the ...

Índice

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: The Syntactical-Theological Method
• Part III: Special Issues
• Part IV: Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes
• About the Author
• Back Cover