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Sola Scriptura: Problems and Principles in Preaching Historical Texts

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This book deals with a key question every pastor faces nearly every week in preparing sermons. That question concerns the appropriate manner of treating the historical material of the Scriptures. In the history of the Christian Church this material has often served as the basis for moral lessons" or intellectual truths." This study presents a careful analysis of the way in which this age-old controversy surfaced in the revival of redemptive-historical theology in the Reformed churches in Holland between the two world wars. It also presents the basis for a fresh approach and is thus exceedingly helpful for both pastors and students.

260 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2001

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About the author

Sidney Greidanus

30 books11 followers
Sidney Greidanus (born 1935) is an American pastor and biblical scholar.

Greidanus studied at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary before obtaining a Th.D. from the Free University in Amsterdam. He served as pastor in the Christian Reformed Church and taught at Calvin College and The King’s College before becoming professor of preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in 1990.

Greidanus is best known for his emphasis on preaching Christ from Old Testament texts. He has been described as one of the most important and influential authors today in the area of biblical preaching.

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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Profile Image for Jacob Aitken.
1,682 reviews413 followers
December 15, 2022
Greidanus, Sidney. Sola Scriptura: Problems and Principles in Preaching Historical Texts. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2001.

“Dare to be a Daniel!” What is the purpose of preaching? Is it to tell the story of redemption or to preach a moralistic sermon that will give me a burning in the bosom? Given the way I phrased that question, you might expect me to side with the former. True, I intend nothing but the harshest criticism of pietistic preaching. I agreed with every single criticism raised by the Schilderite school (or Redemptive-Historical [RH] school). Unfortunately, the Schilderite school does not give us any realistic alternatives.

The RH’s challenge is quite simple: if the point of preaching is to give us moralistic advice, then you do not need the bible to do it. Quite so. The target is not just moralistic preaching. Overly-subjective preaching or pietism is just as guilty. In pietism, the attention is on man and not on God’s finished work in Christ.

The exemplary approach sees the bible, particularly the Old Testament, as a source for illustrations (Greidanus 57). We will list a number of problems with moralistic/exemplar preaching:

* “Moralistic preaching is legalistic; it issues imperatives without the divine indicative” (79).
* Often the text itself does not tell us whether an action is good or bad (81). A good example is David’s marrying Abigail. David is clearly the hero of that story and the marriage, minus the dead husband, is quite beautiful. The problem is that David already has a wife. Such facts strain the “Go and do likewise” moment.

Problems with Subjectivist Preaching

* “The sad phenomenon of the scarcity in certitude also in our Gereformeerde Kerken is in no small measure due to the fact that these people have been taught to search for certitude where it cannot be found” (quoted in Greidanus 97).

Given the fatal problems with exemplarist preaching, do they have a comeback? They have several, but only one of them is any good. On a surface level reading it seems that the apostles appealed to Old Testament history as a model for today. 1 Corinthians 10 is such an example. Paul writes, “Now all these things happened unto them for examples.” Greidanus points out, however, that examples is tupoi/tupikos, types. This is closer to redemptive-historical than moralistic preaching.

No matter, is not Hebrews 11 such a text? It looks like it, but it might not help the moralist as much as one expects. No one seriously preaches a “roll-call” text like Hebrews 11. Maybe the author means something else. On one hand, I do not find the RH rebuttals very persuasive. On the other hand, this is not exactly what we would call a sermon today (yes, I know Hebrews was probably read aloud as a sermon).

The strongest text is James 5:16-18. James clearly appeals to Elijah as a model for us today.

The RH have a ready solution to individualism: the covenant and covenant history. This seems right enough, and I do think the answer is in this direction, but there are some problems, which we shall note below.

Redemptive history is “the successive realization in time of God’s thoughts of peace for us according to his fixed plan, and the fulfillment in time of this work-program which Father, Son, and Spirit decided upon before time” (123). This approach points to Christ and not in a haphazard way. It gives unity to history. It allows one to point to Christ without forcing Jesus into every river and house.

While such an approach is obviously superior to legalistic moralism, it has problems.

1) Schilder and other RH guys use the eternal decree in a different way than Scripture does. Schilder makes deductions from the decree concerning the course of history (174-175). Where Schilder might reason from the decree to history, sometimes Scripture moves in the opposite direction.

2) Schilder sometimes has to look for the “new phase” in RH. In some ways this is easy: Mt Sinai, Davidic covenant, and Pentecost. In other areas it is not obvious and the preacher is thrown back upon the same speculation criticized in the moralistic preachers. Even worse, this means the meaning is decided before the text is heard (179).

3) While progressive revelation is a legitimate category, Schilder more often uses it not to elucidate history, but eternal truths in God’s mind (182).

4) Scripture contains teaching (didache). It is not clear how RH can include that within its narrative of redemptive history.

5) RH sermons run the risk of being lectures on redemptive history, and since there is only one redemptive history, the lectures start to sound the same.

Conclusion

As with many surveys of 20th century Dutch theological controversies, it is not always clear what the main point is. Moreover, the book raises more questions than it answers. To be sure, Greidanus has written several volumes explaining how to preach in such a way. In any case, this was a valuable text that serves as a cautious reminder to both sides of the debate. It reminds us that neither moralistic legalism nor redemptive history fully exhausts the demands laid upon the preacher.
Profile Image for Luke Schmeltzer .
231 reviews6 followers
May 25, 2022
I am a bit conflicted about this book because of its strengths and weaknesses. The book recounts the history of an argument in the Dutch Reformed Churches in the 1930's and onward between the exemplary camp and the redemptive-historical camp. The historical recounting seemed a bit dry and circular at times, but that may be a weakness in my own disinterest rather than in the book itself. I did find a number of places where the author seemed to imbibe higher critical assumptions about the nature of historical passages in the Scripture and the nature of "biblical inerrancy." The criticism and comparison between the two schools and tips for a way forward were helpful to a degree, but I think you could find better in another book (such as Greidanus' own work, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament).
Profile Image for Justin.
195 reviews6 followers
April 14, 2022
This was a moderately readable reconstruction of the redemptive-historical versus the exemplary debate of how to interpret texts in order to preach them. It focuses on the intramural debate between Reformed camps. I don't know that there is a very clearly articulated way forward, although I think Greidanus is pointing to it.

I found myself alternatively siding with both redemptive historical arguments and exemplary, which I guess is why the argument went on for so long. It seems difficult for this debate to happen without people talking past each other because it centers around a pretty fine point - how do you take the intent of a Scriptural author writing a Scriptural text. Both sides believe they are taking the author at his intent, and honoring Divine inspiration, but come out at different places.
Profile Image for Vaughn Ohlman.
Author 7 books5 followers
June 15, 2014
I was given this book and I found it fascinating, important, and problematic.

Fascinating because I had never heard of this debate. If someone had mentioned 'redemptive-historical' before I was given this book I would probably have confused it with 'historical linguistic' and 'christocentric'.

Important because, even as I had never heard of this debate, I believe it raises important issues. Whether you end up believing in the 'redemptive historical' the 'exemplary', the authors own hermeneutic, or something else, it is good to at least know that the debate exists, and the issues involved.

Problematic because, in my opinion, the author tried to combine two things that, while not literally contradictory are, at least, almost impossible to combine: namely an objective overview of the historical debate; and a subjective look at the issues involved. He tried to not only say 'here are what the two sides believed' but 'here is where the one side was right, and the other wrong'.

The end result left me confused, at several points, as to what the authors opinion was and, at several more points, in doubt as to whether the author was treating fairly opinions which seemed to diverge from his own. This diminished, for me, the power of both the books history and argument.

My own conclusion was more 'exemplary' than either of the other two, but I would love to be able to converse with the preachers he referenced (or read Dutch) to ask many questions about issues that the book didn't raise, or where it didn't go into the depth I would like to see.

All in all, a good book, though, one I can recommend.
Profile Image for Jon Sherwood.
40 reviews6 followers
February 4, 2015
Challenges my thinking about how to handle the bible from the pulpit, especially in regard to the "historical text". Are the characters of Joshua, Abraham, Moses, etc. really there on the pages primarily to show me how to live and not to live? Very valuable, and dare I say necessary paradigms for anyone who finds themselves preaching the word of God.
Profile Image for Russ.
385 reviews14 followers
February 17, 2024
In the early part of the 20th century the battle between redemptive-historical and exemplary preaching was waged in the Netherlands. Greidanus went on to write a series of books helping preachers trace the redemptive-historical themes in the Old Testament.
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