Schreiner on Preaching and Biblical Theology
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Tom Schreiner has a helpful article on Preaching and Biblical Theology in the latest Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.
Here is his conclusion, which is a good summary of his article:
"Our task as preachers is to proclaim the whole counsel of God. We will not fulfill our calling if as preachers we fail to do biblical theology. We may get many compliments from our people for our moral lessons and our illustrations, but we are not faithfully serving our congregations if they do not understand how the whole of scripture points to Christ, and if they do not gain a better understanding from us of the storyline of the Bible. May God help us to be faithful teachers and preachers, so that every person under our charge will be presented perfect in Christ."
And here's a summary of the way in which Schreiner calls upon preachers to take up the task of preaching that is informed by "antecedent theology" and "canonical theology":
"The first task of every interpreter is to read the OT in its own right, discerning the meaning of the biblical author when it was written. Further, as we argued above, each OT book must be read in light of its antecedent theology, so that the storyline of scripture is grasped. But we also must read all of scripture canonically, so that the OT is read in light of the whole story—the fulfi llment that has come in Jesus Christ. We always consider the perspective of the whole, of the divine author in doing biblical theology and in the preaching of God’s word. We read the scriptures both from front to back and back to front. We always consider the developing story as well as the end of the story."
Read the whole thing.
(HT: Jim Hamilton)
Here is his conclusion, which is a good summary of his article:
"Our task as preachers is to proclaim the whole counsel of God. We will not fulfill our calling if as preachers we fail to do biblical theology. We may get many compliments from our people for our moral lessons and our illustrations, but we are not faithfully serving our congregations if they do not understand how the whole of scripture points to Christ, and if they do not gain a better understanding from us of the storyline of the Bible. May God help us to be faithful teachers and preachers, so that every person under our charge will be presented perfect in Christ."
And here's a summary of the way in which Schreiner calls upon preachers to take up the task of preaching that is informed by "antecedent theology" and "canonical theology":
"The first task of every interpreter is to read the OT in its own right, discerning the meaning of the biblical author when it was written. Further, as we argued above, each OT book must be read in light of its antecedent theology, so that the storyline of scripture is grasped. But we also must read all of scripture canonically, so that the OT is read in light of the whole story—the fulfi llment that has come in Jesus Christ. We always consider the perspective of the whole, of the divine author in doing biblical theology and in the preaching of God’s word. We read the scriptures both from front to back and back to front. We always consider the developing story as well as the end of the story."
Read the whole thing.
(HT: Jim Hamilton)
posted by JT at Tuesday, August 08, 2006
4 Comments:
I am glad that Tom has written about this topic. What he says needs to be heard and applied. We need more evangelical scholars and leaders in America bringing this to light.
Our evangelical friends in the UK and Australia can be a big help in learning how to apply Biblical Theology to hermeneutics and then to preaching. Guys like Graeme Goldsworthy, Vaughan Roberts, David Peterson and Phillip Jensen are excellent models in how to preach Christ from all the Scriptures.
America has a great heritage in systematic theology but we have lacked sound examples in Biblical theolgoy to couple with systematics in order to preach the whole counsel of God. Thus, most preaching tends to be doctrinaire or moralistic - even by the ones who claim to be preaching expositionally.
John Chapman wrote in the Forward to G. Goldsworthy's Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture:
"I had always known that the story of David and Goliath was not really about me facing the 'giant problems' in my life, but what it had to do with Jesus and salvation eluded me ... I also knew that if a Jew, or even a Muslim, was happy with my interpretation of some passage, then it could not be Christian."
What a challenge that is to the typical OT sermon that focuses on, for instance, David and Jonathan being a good exmample of friendship or Abraham being the model of faith. Nothing wrong with those points but they don't show the link to the rest of Scripture or point to Christ then were aren't saying anything distinctively Christian.
Though sometimes I'm not sure that I agree with marty that we need to always be saying something "distinctively Christian" in our sermons, I generally appreciate Schreiner's point, as it is something that I have been thinking about myself of late.
In an important sense, preaching is just systematic theology explicitly applied. It is for this reason that Schreiner's point should be seriously considered. If we are accurate in saying that the proper method to do systematic theology is to go through the steps of exegesis, followed by biblical theology, possibly followed by canonical theology, followed by systematic theology, then we probably are also accurate in arguing that we should go through those steps in our sermon preparation as well.
Besides the fact that this seems the best way to give our congregations accurate and full Bible exposition, it also can be a helpful example for them as they read their own Bible and do their own theology. I have said before on this blog and will say again: we are teaching people not only what to know, but we also ought to be teaching them how to learn it. Schreiner's ideas will help this.
The point about saying something distincitvely Christian is in the context of what Chappo said. That was his point. If I preach a sermon only (!) about being good or obeying God or being faithful to God's instruction then it isn't distinctively Christian because a) that is no different than the Jew or Muslim's teaching b)iIt doesn't point to Jesus.
Goldsworthy says in his book on Biblical Theology, "I know it will not always be a simple matter to show how every text in the Bible speaks of the Christ, but that does not altar the fact that he says it does ... When done properly, preaching Christ from every part of the Bible need never dgenerate into predictable platitudes about Jesus. The riches in Christ are inexhaustible, and biblical theology is the way to uncover them"
I posted the below on another blog about the relationship between systematic and biblical theology:
In one of his preaching workshops, I heard Dick Lucas give a great example of the problem with allowing doctrinal systems to control the text rather than vice versa. He used the book of Jude as his example.
The bookends of Jude (vv. 1 and 24-25) say that God will keep us in Him. Yet, the middle verses talk about the need to keep ourselves in Christ. If we allow the Calvinistic doctrine of the perseverence of the saints to control our preaching then the middle part of Jude won't be allowed to speak for itself as we will focus on the bookends (By the way, I am a Calvinist so I am not arguing against the doctrine).
If we allow the text to speak for itself then we will allow the fullness of God's Word to come through in that it is true that God will keep us but it is also true that we must keep ourselves in him (vs. 21). (End)
That is the problem with an improper understanding of the role of systematic theology. No one is denying that both ST and BT should serve together but the claim BT is ST's handmaid leads to what Dick was pointing out.
For the readers of this blog, let me point you to a sermon series recently completed by the Associate Pastor, Michael Lawrence, of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, of which I am a member. The series is titled "Biblical Theology" and consists of 5 sermons on 5 themes found throughout the Bible (Creation, Fall, Love, Sacrifice, and Promise). I think these sermons are a great example of what Dr. Schreiner is talking about in his article. They can be found for free mp3 download and CD purchase in the audio section at http://capbap.org
As a side note, since I help run the web site above, CHBC is hoping to provide podcasting by the end of september. I will let Mr. Taylor know, once it is completed.
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