Book Review: Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture
Dec 31st, 2008 by Nathan White
| Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy Binding: Paperback Publisher: Eerdmans |
In Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, Graeme Goldworthy sets forth a very clear agenda, an agenda reflected in the title, and one that serves as the main thesis of the book from beginning to end:
“The aim of this book is to provide a handbook for preachers that will help them apply a consistently Christ-centered approach to their sermons.”
Very simply put about what Goldsworthy means when he says ‘Christ-centered approach’, Goldsworthy emphasizes that all of scripture and redemptive history testify and point to Jesus Christ, and therefore, “Jesus is the interpretive key to the Bible”.
In essence, this book is intended to assist the preacher to begin his sermon preparation with the question: “How does this passage of Scripture, and consequently my sermon, testify to Christ?” And I must say, Goldsworthy definitely accomplishes this goal on a very practical level.
A few personal thoughts on the thesis:
Part one of the book deals with various presuppositions that we might bring to the table when sitting down to interpret scripture. Goldsworthy here argues for what is called a “Redemptive-Historical” or “thematic” approach to interpreting scripture. Biblical Theology, as it is termed (Google this term if you are unfamiliar with its definition), and the approach of Goldsworthy in this book, is to help the preacher understand how each part of scripture ultimately points to fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. That is, how certain themes run throughout the Old Testament into the New, and how these themes point to and culminate in the Person and Work of Christ. We understand the Old Testament through the lens of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Biblical Theology traces ‘gospel’ themes throughout all of scripture. Very important to recognizing these themes and properly interpreting scripture is the solid understanding of the point in redemptive history in which the text is given.
With that being said, this book is not a full defense of the Redemptive Historical method. This book is certainly a good explanation and guideline to the RH method, but it is certainly not a defense or full treatment of the subject. In fact, I found the author to be very dogmatic at times, making statements all throughout that he does not fully support. The book is riddled with argumentation that presupposes the tenants of Biblical Theology/the Redemptive Historical method that some readers might disagree with. However, I do not consider this a bad thing, for I agree with most of what Goldsworthy sets forth, how he goes about interpreting the text of scripture, and thus I found his wisdom and logic to be very edifying. But considering this, I would first recommend this book to those who already agree with the basic tenants of Biblical Theology/Redemptive Historical interpretation, or to those who fairly new to this biblical science of interpretation.
The second half of the book covers “The Practical Application of Biblical Theology to Preaching”. Here Goldsworthy examines different ‘epochs’ in scripture, such as the Old Testament Law or the Wisdom Literature, and he demonstrates how we might go about examining themes/pinpointing how they point to Christ and the gospel/put the BT/RH method into practice. I found this section to be a very helpful and practical guide as to how to preach and put into practice the method of examining scripture in light of Jesus Christ and His accomplished work.
This section is very easy to follow, with many helpful charts and diagrams to help explain and understand redemptive history. It is specifically written to the one who will be teaching and preaching on this subject, though I imagine that any layman would have no trouble following what Goldsworthy sets forth.
A few concerns I had:
I approached this book from a layman’s perspective, as I have aimed this review. With this in mind, understanding that critiquing the theology and flow of argument was not my main objective, I must say that I did not find much wrong with this book. However, if I were to go a little deeper, I would like to further examine a few minor concerns:
-In the introduction Goldsworthy shares a little story highlighting how Christological preaching can easily become predictable, and that his goal in the book is to help keep us from being predictable/boring our audience with the exact same ‘Christ-centered’ message week after week. This book certainly helps us in that goal, but I do not believe he goes far enough in this work to fully flesh it out.
-Goldsworthy expresses much concern on the ‘moralistic’ preaching of our day and the emphasis on ethical imperatives divorced from the gospel, rightly so. He warns that exegetical, verse by verse preaching can sometimes separate the first part of an epistle (gospel) from the second part of an epistle (practical application). I highly applaud his concerns here, but without question he does not set forth a clear alternative to this problem to help preachers avoid this dichotomy. Are we to scrap verse by verse preaching and preach entire epistles instead (in one sermon)? Personally, I was left a little disheartened at times in that preparing to preach in Goldswothy’s system is something that will require immense preparation, or life-long practice in order to preach a simple text of scripture in its context.
-As others have pointed out in reviews of this book, Goldsworthy sees Redemptive History as beginning with Abraham rather than in Genesis 3 with the promise of the Seed. His charts and diagrams reflect this error all throughout. Fleshing out the implications and ramifications of this view is beyond the scope of this review, but this is definitely a sticking point with me, and should be noted with caution.
-Furthermore, Goldsworthy’s view on scripture division is Abraham to Solomon, Solomon to Exile, and Christ to Parousia. While I agree largely with his division, specifically in how he uses this to teach proper interpretation (properly considering the point in redemptive history which a text is given, and not jumping from that point directly to the modern reader while skipping how it ultimately points to Christ first), I believe Goldsworthy to be lacking in the area of traditional Reformed/Covenant theology and how the covenants provide the proper structure and support for biblical interpretation. I will have to read more of his works to form a full opinion, but I was uncomfortable at times with his divisions and neglect of traditional ways of understanding the divisions and covenants in scripture.
Conclusion:
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture is a must have for any student of scripture. Even if you do not agree with everything Goldsworthy says, you will undoubtedly view scripture in a different light, and will have an immediate desire to re-read your bible and trace the Messianic/Gospel themes littered throughout. I would label this a great introduction to the Biblical Theology/Redemptive Historical hermeneutic, not only for this presentation, but for his practical outworking of this method found in the second half of the book.
I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
A few choice quotes:
“Our operative gospel will be the thing that preoccupies us as the focus of our preaching and teaching. It may be a particular hobbyhorse or denominational distinctive. Baptism, a particular view of the second coming, social action, creationism, spiritual gifts, and the like are all easily raised to the status of gospel by becoming the main focus of our preaching. This is especially deplorable when these spurious gospels are made the basis of our acceptance of other Christians.”
“Our operative gospel will be the thing that preoccupies us as the focus of our preaching and teaching. It may be a particular hobbyhorse or denominational distinctive. Baptism, a particular view of the second coming, social action, creationism, spiritual gifts, and the like are all easily raised to the status of gospel by becoming the main focus of our preaching. This is especially deplorable when these spurious gospels are made the basis of our acceptance of other Christians.”
“We [often] recognize the existence of elements of discontinuity between us and the Old Testament, but we do not so readily recognize those that exist between us and the New Testament.”
“There is often a failure to think through how the link between the people and events of the Old Testament are to be made with us as, presumably, New Testament people. This failure leads to some major defects in preaching, not the least of which is the tendency to moralize on Old Testament events, or simply to find pious examples to imitate.”
“It is clear from the New Testament that the ethical example of Christ is secondary to and dependent upon the primary and unique work of Christ for us. Yet this does not seem to be clear to many when it comes to the Old Testament. The message of the Old Testament is too easily reduced to the imitation of godly example and the avoidance of the ungodly example.”
“My concern about evangelism is that sometimes there is a greater emphasis on the need for some kind of response than on the clear exposition of the gospel…Telling people the need for the gospel, both their felt need and the real need, is plainly important, but it is not itself the gospel. When we have explained what God has done for us in Christ –the gospel– then we may go on to explain the benefits of receiving the gospel and the perils of ignoring it.”
Other posts on this subject:
And I...
A very useful review Nathan, thanks. I think you have highlighted again the problems of many books which approach this subject – they fail to fully offer up an alternative, or give examples of an alternative, or present a methodology for week to week ministry, I think the one exception to my knowledge (that is the only one I have come across) is Edmund Clowney.
So someone needs to write a book that neither follows a Redemptive Historical method of preaching, nor the opposite pole of Moralistic preaching, but I think that will have to come from a practicising pastor, perhaps Dever or someone akin, which shows how they keep Christ at the centre of their preaching week by week. Maybe something like this already exists is so what is it?
As a guy who is committed to expository preaching, I am so glad to read this review.
I’m preaching through James right now. This has been where some of the weak-spots of the inflexible, ironclad expository method have been highlighted for me. If you’re going to confine the meat of your sermon to simply explaining what the text says, then your congregation is not going to hear much about Jesus Christ, nor will they hear the Gospel preached to them for many, many weeks at a time: these things simply do not appear in the text of James. Now, I’ll happily affirm that they are implied throughout; they are taken as a sort of background information which James assumes his listeners have firmly in their grasp.
This is the sort of thing, plus the desire to have every sermon be Christ-centered, that causes me to tend to be more “textual” than “expository” in many sermons. In fact, as I’ve listened around the ‘net to the famous exp preachers, very few of them are strictly so.
(Technical note: by “textual” vs. “expository” I mean this difference:
Expository preaching, strictly speaking, is a sermon that is focused on explaining the text at hand. What does this text mean? It gets the “fleshing-out” of its body chiefly from grammatical and linguistic research (diving into the Greek and Hebrew).
Textual preaching, while having the same overall goal–to explain what the text means–tends to be much more free in terms of gathering the bulk of the sermon information from other portions of the Bible, rather than keeping a strict focus on only relaying what is in the foundational text. So, for instance, in James 3, the textual preacher may well ask, “What makes the tongue untamable?” and thus explore the issue of man’s depravity and what Jesus said about the mouth speaking that which is in the heart, etc. It is then natural to present God’s remedy for man’s depravity.
Most expository sermons I’ve ever heard actually combine these two technical distinctions to greater or lesser extents.)
Paul–
You’re right. And although Goldsworthy’s second half of this book is very practical in how he shows us what the RH method looks like, let me reiterate how overwhelmed I felt preparing to preach after I read this book.
I’ve got Him We Proclaim lined up next, by Dennis Johnson, and I’m looking forward to it (hopefully) being more akin to what we’re discussing. It comes highly recommended, and judging from the size of it, it looks like the author goes into great detail.
Thanks for your comment,
Nathan
Gordan–
I agree with you completely. And especially so when preaching through a book like James. Also, Goldsworthy also demonstrates (somewhat convincingly) that preaching through the gospels can require much more ‘textual’ exegesis as well. He argues that we must be careful in automatically assuming that the text speaks directly to us, as opposed to it speaking of Christ and the Gospel, and then on to us, if you know what I mean.
I would also that even those who stress the overtly exegesis preaching (who would disagree with the RH method), like, for example, John MacArthur, do in fact practice the RH method in some manner. We must do so if we are Christians, otherwise we could just go to the local synagogue to hear a Rabbi preach on the OT.
But in listening to your comments, I would highly recommend this book to you particularly. Trust me; you need to get it. Even as a reference, it will open up a whole other world to you, and will certainly enrich the way you look at the text.
And BTW, you ever planning on blogging again? Or is Reformed Mafia it for you?
Nathan, yeah I do plan on it. I mean, it’s out there somewhere on the list of things I would like to do once the government adds another five hours to each day. Actually getting to that place is tough, though, as you surely know (family man and all that.)
I had gotten to a point about a year ago where blogging and reading blogs had achieved a status in my life it shouldn’t have had, simply in terms of time and effort. Scaling way, way down since early October has been a very healthy thing for me: so much so, I almost don’t want to go back. But I do plan on doing more.
On a completely unrelated note, I don’t suppose you’re planning on attending the Ligoneir Conference in March? I am (Lord willing) along with fellow Mafia don, Rhett. I’m already pretty stoked.