Now an emeritus professor of preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Sidney Greidanus is one of the most important and influential authors today in the area of biblical preaching. His book The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text was Preaching’s 1989 Book of the Year, and in recent years he has turned his attention to the issue of preaching Christ from Old Testament texts. He visited recently with Preaching editor Michael Duduit.Preaching: One of your most recent books is Preaching Christ from the Old Testament. This is a topic that has generated much discussion over the years, as preachers wonder if every sermon must proclaim Christ no matter the text.Greidanus: That goes back about 30 years to when I preached a series of sermons on Ecclesiastes at my second charge in Delta, British Columbia. I thought I had a pretty good sermon. Afterward a retired preacher came up and said, “I liked your sermon, Sid, but could a rabbi have preached that in a synagogue?” I had never heard that question before. And in a way I thought it was a loaded question because, of course, we share with the Jews the Old Testament. So he could have preached it in the synagogue.
But at the same time that question set me to thinking: did I do enough? Did I really have a Christian sermon if a rabbi could preach it in a synagogue, or had I just preached an Old Testament sermon? I struggled with that issue, and as I did further research in the history of preaching for this book, I noticed very quickly that the church fathers tried to preach Christ in every sermon—unfortunately they used the allegorical method for that.
I came to the conclusion—on the basis of the New Testament and other studies in church history—that there are at least seven legitimate ways to move forward from the Old Testament to Christ in the New Testament rather than using the allegorical, which reads the New Testament Christ back into the Old Testament. That was basically
eisogesis, and I think most preachers are opposed to
eisogesis. So we want to do
exegesis and yet preach Christ from the Old Testament.
Preaching: What are some of those approaches to preaching Christ from the Old Testament?Greidanus: The foundational way, I think, is redemptive historical progression because the Scriptures reveal God’s activity in creating the world. That’s where it starts, of course, in Genesis 1. And it works its way through the coming of Christ in the New Testament to the new creation. So there is progression in Revelation to the Coming of Christ, and to the Second Coming of Christ. In terms of hermeneutics, every text has to be explained in its context; so the context of an Old Testament passage is first of all the Old Testament but also the New Testament. And so the context is always the Coming of the Christ and/or the Second Coming of Christ. So that would be the foundational way.
