Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method Paperback – July 13, 1999

Greidanus, a professor emeritus (retired) of preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary, has written a comprehensive textbook on preaching Christ from the Old Testament from a Reformed perspective. When I say comprehensive, I mean that this book is an academic resource filled with insightful information; it's one of those books that you find yourself consulting throughout the lifetime of your preaching ministry. Greidanus begins by arguing for the need to preach Christ from the O.T. and from all of Scripture because of the nature of progressive revelation. The first 60 pages of this work provides a mini-biblical theology which includes the inter-textual relationship between the O.T. and N.T. He then pours out almost 100 pages of ink providing a history of preaching Christ from the O.T. He explains the different methods used by the Apostolic Fathers, all the way through to Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Spurgeon among others. What I appreciated was his critic of the abuse of allegorical and typological forms of preaching and he rightly argues for the combination of literary-historical interpretation of O.T. passages with canonical, redemptive-historical, and Christ-centered interpretation. He presents seven ways of preaching Christ from the O.T.: redemptive-historical progression, promise-fulfillment, typology, analogy, longitudinal themes, New Testament references, and contrast. He then explains and demonstrates the hermeneutical process he calls the "Christo-centric method." What I appreciate most is that this book is laced with example after example of the right and wrong ways to preach various passages from the O.T.One example is the famous story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis 22. Greidanus warns against the dangers of ignoring Genesis 22 as written for Israel and it's ramifications for Israel. The author warns against the dangers of biographical preaching which tends to look for attitudes and actions of the biblical characters and drawing contemporary applications based on these attitudes and actions, rather than focusing on the biblical author's intent of Israel. He warns against generalizing and universalizing the text, where God's testing of Abraham is applied to every Believer. God does not test all of his saints the way Abraham was tested; God does not call us to lay down our Isaac's as an atonement, and God does not reward our obedience by rescuing us. These are not unbiblical points, but it's not the point of the text. God putting for his Son for us was not contingent on our obedience. And God did not reward our obedience by putting forth Christ. God put forth Christ, and as a result we are able to obey God by trusting in Christ. The story of Abraham and Isaac in Gen. 22 was originally written to Israel to: 1) Teach Israel that it lives only by the grace of the Lord's covenant 2) move Israel to gratitude for the Lord's grace in providing a substitute offering 3) encourage Israel to fully trust their faithful covenant Lord to provide redemptionThese three points can easily be applied through the New Covenant. There are many example such as this one throughout the text of this book.The only critique I have is that Gredianus seems to press the necessity of preaching Christ in every single sermon. This is evident in his critique of John Calvin's preaching.Gredianus writes: "According to John Leith, Calvin's purpose in preaching was to render transparent the text of Scripture itself. Although this goal is admirable in itself, from our perspective Calvin did not sufficiently focus on producing Christ-centered sermons in the context of the whole of Scripture."Calvin probably did not always focus on producing Christ-centered sermons, because the scriptural text does not always produce a Christ-centered sermon. Yes, all Scripture eventually points towards Christ, but on this point Calvin was right to focus more readily on the immediate context of Scripture rather than forcing every passage into the grid of redemptive history.Due to the text-book nature of this work, as well as it's length, I recommend this book as a resource for preachers.

In search of a richer hermeneutic, I bought this along with Dennis Johnson's "Him We Proclaim."The best part of the book is Greidanus' survey of Hermeneutical history. It is very well researched, identifies the major schools and methods, and approaches them from a truly fresh angle, that you will not typically find in a hermeneutics textbook. For example, rather than spend extensive energy in discussing higher critics of the 19th century he deals with Spurgeon's interpretive method -- certainly much more relevant and interesting for the average reader of the book, and surprisingly a ground rarely covered. Therefore, I found actual research here strong and provocative Here we have a story of hermeneutics with more explanatory power.I found a great deal of irony in the analysis of this material, however. This was because the emphasis of the book is to let the (Biblical) text speak for itself so that we may learn from it. Yet, when reading through his evaluations of the church tradition, they were not allowed to speak for themselves! The history that he finds, actually demonstrates fairly conclusively that the earliest interpreters relied heavily on typology, and that even the giants such as Augustine, Luther and Calvin all used it as well as allegory. In each evaluation they are praised for obeying the 20th century evangelical rules of interpretation, and criticized when they deviate. The history was thus marred by a foregone conclusion. His criticism of Spurgeon for example begins with "even the most generous reviewers will admit that Spurgeon makes numerous errors in his interpretation of Scripture." A quick dismissal for the "Prince of Preachers." If every major interpreter since Clement of Rome in 96 AD used allegory, should we pause to re-evaluate its significance at least, or examine it more carefully? Rather than just rank people on how much they did or didn't do?To his credit Greidanus tells this story so in order to make an opening for himself to demonstrate how we can use the OT in broader ways than have been recently popular. The approach he ultimately builds off of this history does succeed in that, but Johnson's work was much bolder and really set a high bar. Johnson suggests that we follow the Apostolic method of interpretation and demonstrates in numerous ways how we can do just that. Some of the same kinds of interpretations that Greidanus dismisses as allegory, Johnson demonstrates to actually have textual warrant.Bottom line, the history section in this book was really an education and worth the book if money is not a concern, but if your real concern is hermeneutics and how to preach Christ in continuity with that history, buy Johnson.

Children's Sunday School classes are often filled with people and stories from the Old Testament, and yet in worship services this portion of God's word is often neglected or marginalized. Wanting to proclaim the gospel, many preachers will stick with New Testament texts and forget that the Old Testament also testifies to Christ. From the law to the prophets to the wisdom literature, the grand subject of all of scripture is Jesus.Within his book, Sidney Greidanus challenges pastors to take up the Old Testament and show their congregations Christ. He spends multiple chapters answering the question of how to accomplish this task with a sound hermeneutic. In his review of Christian history, he points out the shortcomings and strengths of those who preceeded this generation. By examining the New Testament he extracts principles for preaching Christ, and then develops a method that keeps the expositor faithful to the text.Where many books on this subject have fallen short, Greidanus succeeds. He writes in a scholarly and yet easy to read manner. The depth and breadth of the subject is covered in a clear outline, and the book is constantly centered in the authority of God's word. If you are seeking to grow in preaching Christ from all of the Bible, then this book is worth your time.

This book showed the history, errors, necessity and practical ways to preach Christ from the OT. Faithful pastors who are expositors of God’s word will benefit greatly from this book.

In this book, Sidney Greidanus answers a difficult, but important question, ‘How should one preach (and by implication, read and understand) the Old Testament?’ I will first summarise the flow of the book and consider some of the content:1. He presents the case for the necessity of preaching Christ from the Old Testament (chapters 1-2).2. He traces the history of preaching Christ from the Old Testament (chapters 3-4).3. He studies how the New Testament preaches Christ from the Old Testament (chapter 5).4. He presents his ‘Christocentric’ method for preaching Christ from the Old Testament (chapter 6).5. He gives some practical steps and examples to preach Christ from the Old Testament (chapters 7-8).I appreciate how he is sensitive to the objections to and challenges of preaching Christ from the Old Testament. He does not dismiss these oppositions, instead he gives justice to these concerns whilst arguing for his own position. Thus, his assertions do not come across as dogmatic or narrow-minded.I particularly like his chapters on the history of preaching Christ from the Old Testament. They are excellent in providing a basic overview of how the church has grappled with this issue since the Apostolic fathers. However, he often has to generalise and highlight certain aspects of the preaching of individuals and he can be accused of over-simplification. Nevertheless, he is critiques with grace and acknowledges the contributions of these preachers while exposing the fault in their methodology. The first half of the book might seem to be superfluous, but that shows how deeply and widely Greidanus has studied and thought about this topic. And it is like a starter which whets our appetite for the later section where he present his own position.The subtitle of the book tells us that he will be putting forward a hermeneutical method. And I must say that I am quite satisfied with the method he proposes. He proposes ‘7 ways’ which lead us from the Old Testament to Christ and explores each in detail:1. The way of redemptive-historical progression2. The way of promise-fulfilment3. The way of typology4. The way of analogy5. The way of longitudinal themes6. The way of New Testament references7. The way of contrastHe derives these 7 ways from the how the New Testament preached Christ from the Old Testament. He is also aware of pitfalls and the need for guidelines, which he duly suggests.However I should mention that some of these ways overlap and he does not give examples of ‘difficult cases.’ For example, I don’t think he mentions interpreting Ecclesiastes, Esther or Job. So the reader has more work to do after reading this book. Also chapter 7: Steps from Old Testament text to Christocentric sermon presupposes the reader is a preacher and familiar with how to interpret a Biblical passage.Greidanus’ writing style is easy-to-read, it is scholarly in content, but not in tone or presentation. This is not a book merely for the erudite. Kudos to him for managing to make difficult concepts understandable and relevant. I definitely think Greidanus is a must-read for a better understanding of the Old Testament – not just for the preacher – but for any Christian wanting to read the Old Testament and to understand it’s relevance for today. This book is a call to Christocentric gospel reading (hence, preaching) of the Old Testament.

ideal

Very good

Fantastic

Well, if you love hermeneutics, this book is awesome. If that is not your first love, well then just read it because it is a textbook you need to read for Pentateuch. But the book is in perfect (new) shape and it came in great time so here we go. I'd recommend this seller. Great service and the product is what they advertise.