The Christian Tradition Book

Review of Preaching Christ from the Old Testament by Sidney Greidanus

In 2 Ti. 4:2, Paul tells Timothy to preach the Word, in season and out. Of course, right before this verse in 3:16-17, almost in the same breath, Paul has told Timothy, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." So, we know that the Word Timothy is to preach is Scripture. Many years earlier, recorded in Lk. 24:27, we see Christ Himself showing His disciples how "all the Scriptures" witness to Him. What conclusion are we to draw? That we must preach the Word and to preach the Word, whether Old or New Testament, means to preach Christ. The question is, then, how do we preach Christ from Scripture? This question is much more acute when it comes to preaching Christ from the Old Testament (OT), where Christ is not mentioned by name. Some have simply rejected the idea of preaching Christ from the OT, but that cannot be valid since Jesus Himself showed that the OT is about Him. How do we properly, faithfully preach Christ from the OT? That is the question that Sidney Greidanus has set out to answer in his book, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament. In it, Greidanus examines the necessity of preaching Christ, the history of preaching Christ, and the method for preaching Christ from the OT.

Right from the table of contents, one can see that this is a well organized book. Greidanus lays out a specific, logical path for discussing this important issue. In chapter one, he lays out the issues and the necessity of preaching Christ from the OT. In chapter two, he further expands and elaborates on the necessity of preaching Christ from the OT, covering many reasons why pastors do not preach Christ from the OT and presuppositions that are necessary for this endeavor. In chapters three and four, he looks at the history of attempts to preach Christ from the OT, covering church history from the early Church fathers to the 20th century and giving the pros and cons of various methods. In chapter five, Greidanus looks to the NT and the apostles for principles of preaching Christ from the OT. The book climaxes in chapters six and seven, where Greidanus applies the principles derived from the apostles' examples to his "Christocentric method" and gives ten clear steps to preparing a faithful, Christocentric sermon from the OT. Finally, in chapter eight, he concludes the book with several examples of preaching Christ with the Christocentric method. In this review, we will summarize each chapter and then give some concluding thoughts about the value of this work.

In chapter one, Greidanus introduces this topic. He first tackles the overarching idea of preaching Christ in general, showing that it is absolutely necessary to preach Christ in every sermon and the general agreement on this assertion. However, he also shows that there is much confusion about how this is to be accomplished. Does preaching Christ mean that every sermon has to somehow connect to Christ's death and resurrection? Does it mean "drawing lines to Christ" or finding allegorical interpretations of texts that we can apply to Christ? Greidanus holds that preaching Christ is much larger than these questions. Preaching Christ is as broad as preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and "to preach Christ is to proclaim some facet of the person, work, or teaching of Jesus of Nazareth so that people may believe him, trust him, love him, and obey him." He later states, "we can define 'preaching Christ' as preaching sermons which authentically integrate the message of the text with the climax of God's revelation in the person, work, and/or teaching of Jesus Christ as revealed in the New Testament." Greidanus shows that preaching Christ means preaching the whole Christ and not just one aspect of His work, as important or crucial as that aspect may be, and preaching the whole Christ in a way that is faithful to the message of the text. After establishing the necessity and a general definition, Greidanus then focuses in on the necessity of preaching Christ from the OT. He shows various reasons and presuppositions for why some do not even attempt to preach Christ from the OT and gives some general reasons why preachers must preach Christ from the OT. He further expands this subject in the next chapter.

As stated above, Greidanus expands on the necessity of preaching Christ from the OT in chapter two. He elaborates on the reasons for why people do not preach Christ from the OT, which he touched on in the previous chapter. He covers issues of man-centered teaching, concern for/because of invalid attempts at preaching Christ from the OT, and theological systems that drive a wedge between the Old and New Testaments. He expands on the latter, showing that the OT is not non-, sub-, or pre-Christian but is actually Christian. He points out that the OT is only "pre-Christian" chronologically and shows that "'Christian' describes the character of the Old Testament, its nature." He then provides his explanation for how the two testaments relate, highlighting the redemptive history that underlies them both, their promise-fulfillment nature linked by Christ, the apostles' use of the OT, and that one cannot really understand the OT without the light of Christ or understand Christ without the OT (what he calls the "hermeneutical circle"). A brief survey of the NT preaching of Christ from the OT follows. He looks at Christ's own teaching and how the NT writers used the OT to preach Christ, whether it be in the gospels, Acts, or the epistles. He concludes by saying, "The point for contemporary preachers is this: if the Old Testament indeed witnesses to Christ, then we are faithful preachers only when we do justice to this dimension in our interpretation and preaching of the Old Testament."

In chapters three and four, Greidanus looks at the history of preaching Christ from the OT. He covers both the famous preachers from the early Church fathers to the 20th century and the major methods for preaching Christ that have prevailed throughout Church history'allegorical, typological, fourfold, Christological, and theocentric. In his explanation of each he gives background, examples, and then evaluates the pros and cons of each method. It is obvious that Greidanus is attempting to be charitable to past Christian preachers for he always finds something good to say about the person or the method before he gives its shortcomings. One realizes quickly that he is particularly worried about allegorical interpretations of the OT. He is not opposed to it completely but is very worried about it because it is often applied to any text (especially the difficult ones) without taking genre into account. Greidanus comments, "[T]o use allegorical interpretations for other genres of literature, say historical narrative, is to make a genre mistake and to read alien ideas into the text." He cites many examples of how this has been done throughout Church history, showing how this method must be used with great care only when the genre or text demands it.

In chapter five, Greidanus starts to move from general principles and history to the foundation for a method. He analyzes the NT looking for principles for preaching Christ from the OT. At the outset, he cautions that preaching Christ can lead to "Christomonism" ignoring the Triune God. He shows that preaching the whole Christ means preaching the Triune God, though it does not mean that "every sermon give more or less equal time to each person in the Godhead." God planned and sent. Christ came and accomplished. The Spirit empowered, sustained, and applied. When we preach Christ properly and fully we will always have the opportunity to show the glory of the Triune God. After this caution, Greidanus goes on to look at the NT use of the OT. Here, he shows the depth of OT saturation of the NT (32% of the NT is OT quotation or allusion!) and derives presuppositions behind the NT use of the OT: God acts uniformly but progressively in history, Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom age, Jesus is truly God, the Hebrew use of corporate personality, and that the OT must be read from the perspective of the reality of Christ. He ends this chapter with the foundation of the next'the "roads" that lead from the OT to Christ. He names six roads: redemptive-historical progression, promise-fulfillment, typology, analogy, longitudinal themes (OT themes reinterpreted in the light of Christ), and contrast.

Chapters six and seven form the heart of this book. Here Greidanus gives his (redemptive-historical) "Christocentric method" and ten steps to preaching Christ from the OT. Greidanus advises that Christocentricity must be redemptive-historical, i.e. "Only after we have heard a passage the way Israel heard it can we move on to understand this message in the broad contexts of the whole canon and the whole of redemptive history." This is incredibly important because "it offers the only objective point of control against deriving from the text all kinds of subjective and arbitrary messages." Once we know where they are in the redemptive-historical context, we can step out on the appropriate "road" towards preaching Christ from the OT. Greidanus shows this by elaborating on the "roads" mentioned in the previous chapter and adding a seventh'NT references to the OT passage. He looks at each method ("road") by establishing rules for each and giving examples of how to apply each method properly. He spends the most time on the typological method because there is so much misunderstanding of typology. After establishing his method in chapter six, he moves on to chapter seven to give ten practical steps for preaching Christ from the OT properly and give an extended example from Genesis 22. His ten steps are the following: 1) select a text considering the needs of the congregation, 2) read in its literary context, 3) outline the text, 4) interpret the text in its historical setting, 5) determine the text's theme and goal, 6) expand in the interpretation to the context of redemptive history, 7) formulate the theme and goal of your sermon, 8) select a form for your sermon that follows the form of the text (e.g. narrative, didactic, etc.), 9) write an outline, and, finally, 10) write out the sermon in oral style.

Finally, in chapter eight, Greidanus practices this method. Using several texts he compares his method with popular allegorical interpretations of the texts. He then gives some exercises for the reader to follow to get the hang of preaching Christ from the OT. After having read and digested a lot of material in this book, it is very helpful for the reader to practice some of what he has just learned. This will solidify the method in his mind.

In the final analysis, this book is an incredible resource for pastors and should be in every pastor's library. Greidanus evaluates the issues, establishes the presuppositions, looks at the history, and derives from the NT a method for preaching Christ for the OT that is faithful to the text. He follows a very logical and clear path throughout the book, it is written in many short sections for quick reference, he gives a very clear method preaching Christ, and then he gives practical steps for writing a sermon. This book is also full of useful examples that one can turn to for each "road" to preaching Christ.

It is difficult for me to find anything to criticize in this book. I image that pastors who are not from a Reformed background might struggle with some of what Greidanus has to say because much of his method is dependent on covenant theology presuppositions. He, of course, is presuming what he believes to be a proper, biblical hermeneutic and does not have the space to justify it in this already-large work. I completely agree with him, but I imagine someone from a dispensational background would have a hard time with his views of the OT since they do not share his presupposition. Another minor criticism might be his treatment of some of the previous attempts to preach Christ from the OT in Church history. Near the beginning of the book he says, "If contemporary hearers were living in a culture saturated with Christian thinking and action, one might perhaps take for granted that people hearing a sermon would sense how it is related to Christ" but then criticizes pastors for preaching with such an assumption in such an environment. Take Calvin, for example, who he criticizes for not "producing explicitly Christ-centered sermons in the context of the whole of Scripture." He says, "[H]e may have assumed that his hearers would make the connections to Christ" because he "preached in Christian Geneva," but concludes, "this still leaves us with an inadequate model for preaching in our post-Christian culture." He seems to be implying that for Calvin's method to be right it must be transferable to our setting, but that is not a fair appraisal of Calvin's preaching. Just because his method cannot be applied to our context does not mean Calvin should be criticized. He was in the type of "culture saturated with Christian thinking" that Greidanus mentions early in the book and should not be criticized because his method cannot be transferred to our context. This, however, is only a minor blot on an otherwise excellent work.