Comments on: Definitions Without Jesus – Christian Preaching?

By: pastoralan

pastoralan — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:04:29 +0000

Christian, expository preaching must have Christ at some point. It may not be the sermon. It may be immediately after it. In Black traditions, the pastor preaches and then another minister may give a gospel invitation.

By: pastoralan

pastoralan — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:01:36 +0000

I happen to see validity in both anthropocentric and theocentric approaches. I don’t think the answer is found in holimiletical technique. I think it’s found in purpose and setting.

I recently went to the Billy Graham School of Evangelism for some refreshing. It was an awesome time to say the least. At the school, I was reminded of the priority of the cross. It’s central to all we do. I actually realized how my seminary, homiletical training made me lean over to a theocentric approach. This is good until I think of eternity and peoples’ souls.

My purpose as a preacher is to first proclaim the gospel. That’s the purpose I mentioned.

The setting I think deals with where I preach. I understand not every message is evangelistic in nature. But in evangelical forms it is.

My advice: always give an invitation of some sort whenever I preach, whereever I preach.

By: Peter Mead

Peter Mead — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:50:03 +0000

Thanks Charles, I appreciate your helpful input to the site. I was offering two positions to ponder, but by no means an exhaustive list. There are other positions worthy of consideration. The Christotelic position sounds very close to the redemptive-historical approach of Clowney, Chappell, Keller, et al. In some ways this is not a massively dividing issue since many who hold a “theocentric” approach (as opposed to “christocentric”) will often take the sermon through to the person and work of Christ anyway. From my perspective at least, it is primarily a resistance to the notion that a sermon must come to Christ in order to be expository. Probably the bigger issue is whether the Old Testament can be understood in its own right, at its particular stage of the progression of revelation and yet relevant by appropriate application for today. Or whether the Old Testament has to be interpreted through the lens of the New Testament. At this level the theological camps diverge more forcefully.

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:29:28 +0000

Peter,

You might want to consider adding a third position that has recently been advocated by Peter Enns and others, namely, “Christotelic.” According to Enns, “The OT is a story that is going somewhere, which is what the Apostles are at great pains to show. It is the OT as a whole, particularly in its grand themes, that finds its telos, its completion, in Christ. This is not to say that the vibrancy of the OT witness now comes to an end, but that—on the basis of apostolic authority—it finds its proper goal, purpose, telos, in that event by which God himself determined to punctuate his covenant: Christ” (“Apostolic Hermeneutics And An Evangelical Doctrine Of Scripture: Moving Beyond A Modernist Impasse,” Westminster Theological Journal 65 [2003], 277. I am not sure that I agree with this approach, but I am hearing and seeing it mentioned more and more.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:06:58 +0000

Technically, probably not… but Jesus did say in John 5:39 that the Scriptures were about Him. Much, if not all, of the preaching in the New Testament did get back around to Jesus–both to Jewish and Gentile audiences.

I wouldn’t say that an expository message was “non-Christian” if it didn’t include Jesus, but since Jesus is the centerpiece of Scripture, we should ask the question in our preparation, “How does this relate to Jesus?”