This week I have the opportunity to study expository preaching with D.A. Carson, research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.
Today was our first class and it was great! Now, I don’t agree with everything D.A. Carson says, but I do think he is an amazingly gifted scholar who I can learn an incredible amount from.
We started out talking about how preaching needs to be defined functionally and theologically. Meaning, preaching is defined by what is happening and why and not by where and when. With this in mind preaching is verbal/oral communication in which the following are true:
* It is God’s gracious self-disclosure. The Bible is our content and Jesus is our focus.
* It is biblical truth mediated through human personality
* It is to perused, encourage, rebuke instruct in righteousness, evoke a human response to the God who is its content.
* It goal is the glory of God and the calling forth, as well as the edification of the church.
* It has a “heraldic” emphasis.
It is at this point Carson tipped his hand in that he is firm believer that the best form of preaching is monologue preaching. “God has ordained that men and women are saved by the things we preach, not by the things we talk about, discuss or share.” Here is one of our disagreements.
After lunch we spent our time discussing preaching viewed through the lens of biblical theology. Biblical Theology is the foundational starting point of expository preaching. This does not exclude systematic, historical or pastoral theology, but biblical theology, Carson argues, comes first.
Biblical theology asks two questions what does a particular book of the Bible contribute to Scripture’s over all understanding of the subject at hand. It does not ask what is the nature and character of God (this would be systematic theology), but what does, for example, Isaiah say about the nature and character of God? The second question biblical theology asks is, “How does this information play into the canonical frame work of Scripture or into redemptive history as a whole?”
It is interesting taking a preaching class from a New Testament theologian, as opposed to a homiletician. Today we spent the majority of our time learning to interpret Scripture (hermeneutics) and less time figuring out how to preach Scripture (homiletics). This backs up what I have said for while; preaching can be divided into to tasks: knowing what to say and knowing how to say it. I believe preaching should concentrate more on (even if only 51%) on what to say, than how we say it. Both are vitally important, but I would rather deliver a true and boring message than creatively preach what is inaccurate and false.
More tomorrow…
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