I’m getting ready to deliver a lecture this Thursday at Heritage Seminary near Toronto on “Preaching Old Testament Stories to a Story-Driven Culture.” Old Testament narrative literature presents several challenges to preachers. I’d like to wrestle with a couple of them in my blog posts this week. The first is the challenge of preaching Christ.
Briefly, there are two extremes. The ‘human-centered’ approach simply looks at the characters in these stories as good examples or bad examples. A preacher simply holds up David or Abraham and says, “Be like them” or “Don’t fall into sin like they did.” Obviously, a preacher will present this with more sophistication, but the approach often misses the theological message of the story. Yes, Old Testament stories communicate theology!
A second extreme is a ‘Christ-centered’ approach which focuses almost exclusively on how Old Testament stories – including their characters – prefigure or portray Jesus Christ. In the process, such an approach often overlooks a story’s specific theological message and the legitimate ethical demands which flow from it. Also, dubious characters like Samson are sometimes pressed into service as ‘types’ of Christ. I have serious doubts about identifying Samson as a type of Christ. If anything, he’s an ‘anti-type’ who demonstrates the need for the gospel.
Let me sketch a better way which, I believe, is still Christ-centered. Preachers who delve into Old Testament stories must look for the ‘vision of God’ – that is, the attribute(s) of God which dominates the story. Then they must look at how the story advances or connects with the storyline of the Bible. The death and resurrection of Jesus is, of course, foundational to this storyline. Preachers must also view the theology of the story through the lens of Jesus’ teaching and apostolic teaching.
All of this gets a bit tricky because the theological message of the story sometimes aligns with the characters’ behavior, and sometimes it does not. I’ll provide an example of this in my next post. Whatever we “learn” from the characters must be located in what the story says about God and His relationship with His people.
What questions do you have about the approach I’ve sketched, or about the matter of preaching Christ from Old Testament stories in general? I’d love to hear them because I’m planning a full-length article on this issue in the near future. Wee need to think through this issue because our congregations need to hear Old Testament stories!
Posted by Steve Mathewson at 10:10 AM on October 2, 2007
Comments
For several years now I have tried to present Old Testament accounts of characters and events as "living parables." By that I am trying to say that more is being communicated than the description of the event and that often there is theological truth being communicated by the story. I chose the words "living parable" because the accounts are not fictional but that the events are teaching a truth that is larger than the surface event itself. It seems to me to avoid spiritualizing the passage but at the same time acknowledging the presence of such things as "mystery."
Posted by: Max Snook on October 3, 2007
MAX: Thanks for your intriguing idea. It reminds me of the need to teach people that the purpose of Old Testament narrative literature is not merely to record a history of Israel but to communicate theology.
Posted by: Steve Mathewson on October 9, 2007
I agree that it is very possible to over-spiritualise the OT stories and see a "type" in everything.
However, the NT writers themselves did a lot of this in their quoting of the psalms and other OT stories (For example, Methusaleh as a type of Christ in Hebrews. If that weren't in the NT I would not myself have thought of it!)
I believe a lot of the OT has two meanings: firstly as you explain, as a story to be interpreted morally in context, but secondly, spiritually. David's writing in the psalms with its immediate historical context is picked up by Jesus and applied to himself, particularly around the crucifiction. The whole Passover story as it occurred to Moses and his people has a historical context, but surely the sacrificial lamb killed to protect the people of God looks forward to the spotless Lamb of God, Jesus? Christian tradition has always treated the promised land as a type of Heaven. There are so many more examples of this sort!
I wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bath water - the OT narrative is to me a wonderful preshadowing of the gospel story, probably completely unimagined by the original writers.
Posted by: Simon Young on October 23, 2007