# Sola Scriptura: Problems and Principles in Preaching Historical Texts



## RamistThomist (Dec 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.

Reactions: Informative 2


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## greenbaggins (Dec 15, 2022)

All too often, RH preachers lack in imagination when it comes to application (and I speak as a thorough-going RH preacher). It is not terribly difficult to show Christ from the text usually (since we do have Luke 24 and John 5). What is needed is the recognition that Christ has what we need all the time, and in an infinite variety of ways. It is as if the light of revelation meets Christ and Christ is a prism, and what comes out is every single applicational color known to man. If we preach application without Christ, then we are missing the engine that gives application its strength and teeth (for how can we carry out any imperative without the grace of Christ?). If we go to Christ, but don't apply it, then we are tacitly saying that Christ does not apply to certain aspects of the Christian walk.

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## RamistThomist (Dec 15, 2022)

greenbaggins said:


> All too often, RH preachers lack in imagination when it comes to application (and I speak as a thorough-going RH preacher). It is not terribly difficult to show Christ from the text usually (since we do have Luke 24 and John 5). What is needed is the recognition that Christ has what we need all the time, and in an infinite variety of ways. It is as if the light of revelation meets Christ and Christ is a prism, and what comes out is every single applicational color known to man. If we preach application without Christ, then we are missing the engine that gives application its strength and teeth (for how can we carry out any imperative without the grace of Christ?). If we go to Christ, but don't apply it, then we are tacitly saying that Christ does not apply to certain aspects of the Christian walk.



Very true. That's one of the reasons I ultimately had to break with Schilder. While I appreciate his criticisms of Kuyperianism, I started to see problems in his own camp.


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## Taylor (Dec 15, 2022)

I just read John Carrick’s _The Imperative of Preaching_, and he does an excellent job showing that the biblical pattern for preaching is explication of the indicative that leads to application through imperative. He criticizes both redemptive-historical preaching and exemplaristic preaching. He also shows that many redemptive-historical advocates present a false dichotomy, as if the only two options we have are redemptive-historical preaching on the one side, or legal/pietist/moral preaching on the other. It’s just not true.

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## RamistThomist (Dec 15, 2022)

Taylor said:


> I just read John Carrick’s _The Imperative of Preaching_, and he does an excellent job showing that the biblical pattern for preaching is explication of the indicative that leads to application through imperative. He criticizes both redemptive-historical preaching and exemplaristic preaching. He also shows that many redemptive-historical advocates present a false dichotomy, as if the only two options we have are redemptive-historical preaching on the one side, or legal/pietist/moral preaching on the other. It’s just not true.



That's a good point. I think some of the earlier RH guys noticed that exemplarist preaching preached the imperative without the indicative.

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## Taylor (Dec 15, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> That's a good point. I think some of the earlier RH guys noticed that exemplarist preaching preached the imperative without the indicative.


Yes, Carrick points out a spectrum in redemptive-historical thought. Greidanus is on the same page as Carrick when he says, “Moralistic preaching is legalistic; it issues imperatives without the divine indicative.”

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## RamistThomist (Dec 15, 2022)

Taylor said:


> Yes, Carrick points out a spectrum in redemptive-historical thought. Greidanus is on the same page as Carrick when he says, “Moralistic preaching is legalistic; it issues imperatives without the divine indicative.”



And the issue is much messier than we make it out to be. Many of the RH guys are big into typology, yet Greidanus is critical of typological preaching. And then there is the issue of "finding Christ in the OT.' We all believe he is there, but it is kind of hard to make a Christo-centric sermon outline of " At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar." The "two" obviously refers to the two natures of Christ, or maybe law and gospel. "Four at the causeway" no doubt refers to the four points on the cross.

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## RamistThomist (Dec 17, 2022)

The RH discussion reminds me of "narrative theology" and "narrative preaching." There is a place for it, and I think narrative epistemology is an underdeveloped subject with a lot of promise. I just don't think you can make every sermon a narrative event.


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## Polanus1561 (Dec 17, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> Very true. That's one of the reasons I ultimately had to break with Schilder. While I appreciate his criticisms of Kuyperianism, I started to see problems in his own camp.


Could you give me a concise summary of the distinctive of Schilder? Too much objectivity without subjectivity?


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## RamistThomist (Dec 17, 2022)

Polanus1561 said:


> Could you give me a concise summary of the distinctive of Schilder? Too much objectivity without subjectivity?



The lack of subjectivity does not bother me. My issues with Schilder:
1) Denied the internal/external distinction of the covenant of grace.
2) Had a tendency to read biblical history as a series of deductions from the Pactum Salutis and eternal mind of God. To make that work, one has to sort of already determine what the text has to say before you get to the text.


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## Polanus1561 (Dec 17, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> The lack of subjectivity does not bother me. My issues with Schilder:
> 1) Denied the internal/external distinction of the covenant of grace.
> 2) Had a tendency to read biblical history as a series of deductions from the Pactum Salutis and eternal mind of God. To make that work, one has to sort of already determine what the text has to say before you get to the text.


1) How does he explain unelect covenant children? Simply outside the covenant like any other unbeliever?
2) Does that mean election is emphasized over covenantal language set it in time?


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## RamistThomist (Dec 17, 2022)

Polanus1561 said:


> 1) How does he explain unelect covenant children? Simply outside the covenant like any other unbeliever?



The short answer is they must "own the covenant." It's problematic, but it is infinitely better than Kuyper on this point, against whom he was reacting. Kuyper posited a shadow covenant for a shadow baptism for kids who were not elect. Find David Engelsma's (no friend of Schilder's) comments on modern-day Kuyperians on baptism and assurance. Against that, Schilder rightly told parents that they could believe in God's covenant promises to be a God to their children. Kuyperian parents had no such promise.









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Polanus1561 said:


> 2) Does that mean election is emphasized over covenantal language set it in time?



I really don't know. He's been accused of emphasizing both over the other.


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