If Dennis E. Johnson's Him We Proclaim convinced me that we must preach Christ in every sermon, then Greidanus taught me how to do it.

Professor emeritus of preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Sidney Greidanus delivers a masterpiece in his 1999 release of Preaching Christ From the Old Testament. This volume’s balanced critique of the numerous positions floating around on this sensitive but important topic makes this book a gem among granite. Kaiser’s prediction that, “This will be one of those volumes talked about and referred to for many years to come” (cover page) is not an exaggeration.

Greidanus' theme...

Sydney Greidanus writes first to, “…provide seminary students and preachers with a responsible, contemporary method for preaching Christ from the Old Testament,” and secondly to, “…challenge Old Testament scholars to broaden their focus and to understand the Old Testament not only in its own historical context but also in the context of the New Testament” (preface, xii). Greidanus’ thesis proposes what he calls a "redemptive-historical christocentric" approach to preaching Christ from the Old Testament, a term he accrued from both church history and the example of the New Testament itself.

“[O]ur concern,” he writes, “is not to preach Christ to the exclusion of the ‘whole counsel of God’ but rather to view the whole counsel of God, with all its teachings, laws, prophecies, and visions, in the light of Jesus Christ” (228). With more hermeneutical caution than Dennis E. Johnson’s Him We Proclaim (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), Greidanus shows the dangers of letting every New Testament author use of the Old Testament set a tone for us to seek Christ under hidden rocks and inconspicuous leaves which can lead to wild allegorization of the Old Testament. Unlike Walter C. Kaiser’s Toward an Exegetical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1981), Greidanus does not let his commitment to the grammatico-historical method diminish the importance of proclaiming Christ from the Old Testament, but instead shows how it predicts and foreshadows His coming (John 5:39). Unlike Graeme Goldsworthy’s Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), Greidanus shows the preacher how to preach Christ from the Old Testament. He refuses to stay camped in the forest of theory, and moves straight to practice!

Compared to all of the works mentioned above, Greidanus writes the most clearly and smoothly, making his book far more enjoyable to study and the most practical for the layman. Perhaps the credit for his clarity and practicality goes to his past career as a professor of preaching.

Greidanus' content...

Greidanus proves his position in the first five chapters, then shows the preacher how to put it into action in the last three. In chapter one shows he shows why preaching Christ and preaching from the Old Testament are important. In chapter two he puts the two together and proves the necessity of preaching Christ from the Old Testament and closes this chapter with a load of the benefits.

Greidanus surveys preaching Christ from the Old Testament through history in chapters three and four, and then delivers helpful guides for preaching Christ from the Old Testament in chapter five. Moving to the practical side, in chapter six Greidanus shows New Testament ways of preaching Christ from the Old Testament in light of contemporary hermeneutics, placing priority on first understanding the passage in light of its historical context, then understanding its place in the contexts of canon and redemptive history. In chapter seven he offers ten steps for preparing a sermon, from the Old Testament text all the way to the christocentric message, and then gives an example of how this works from Genesis 22.

In the final chapter, Greidanus sets the redemptive-historical christocentric method against the allegorical method in five classic passages that typically receive wild allegorism from ancient scholarship to today.

The incredible balance and practical wisdom of this book...

Greidanus lays a strong foundation for his thesis in the first chapter by letting the apostle’s example set up the definition of what it means to preach Christ. Greidanus writes, “In short, ‘preaching Christ’ meant preaching Christ incarnate in the context of the full sweep of redemptive history” (4). But Greidanus refuses to be strangled by a narrow view of preaching Jesus. He writes that preaching Christ is as broad as preaching the kingdom of God (8). He drives this point home by proving its importance through the person, work, and teaching of Christ. Greidanus backs his entire first chapter with Scripture, showing from both Old and New Testaments that Christ was the pinnacle of God’s revelation to man, and to miss this is to miss everything that matters.

But Greidanus’ book is more than a Bible study. He quotes far and wide from scholars both ancient and contemporary, revealing a tremendous familiarity with their viewpoints and then critiques or commends them with the light of Scripture. For example, Greidanus shows how Marcion from the first century influenced many to reject the Old Testament, and even after his influenced seemed to disappear, the spirit of his teaching took on new life years later through the writings of scholars like Friedrich Schleiermacher, Adolf von Harnack, Rudolf Bultmann (19-21) and especially the Nazi regime of the early 1900’s. Greidanus strips Marcion’s position of all weight by showing that without the Old Testament, Christianity would be meaningless, for it was through the prophecies, types, and covenants of the Old Testament that the apostles recognized the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth.

For another example of balanced critique, Greidanus notes the benefits of Spurgeon’s method of preaching Christ, but also takes a hard look at the allegorizing done by Spurgeon, especially when this 19th century preacher completely bypassed a text’s original meaning to arrive at an allegory he had forced into it.

Greidanus shows a tremendous sensitivity to cheap biographical preaching that “imposes an interpretive grid on the story [and] equates biblical characters with the people in the pew” (36). Yet instead of damning every form of drawing practical lessons drawn from the Old Testament, Greidanus exhorts the reader to find what the author was trying to say through his writing and then see how this message fits in the redemptive plan of history and how it may be a type or prophecy of Jesus Christ. Even though Greidanus is a fan of grammatico-historical interpretation so powerfully penned by Walter C. Kaiser in his Toward an Exegetical Theology, Greidanus shows a tremendous balance by refusing to throw out redemptive historical preaching simply because some preachers and scholars abuse it:

The point for contemporary preachers is this: if the Old Testament indeed witnesses to Christ, then we are faithful preachers only when we do justice to this dimension in our interpretation and preaching of the Old Testament. The tragedy is that contemporary historical-critical exegesis, which tries so hard to recover the original meaning of the Old Testament, usually ignores this dimension. Although Christ is pictured in the Old Testament, contemporary Christian preachers frequently fail to notice it. This blind spot of ours makes it crucial that we, after establishing the original message of our text, view it again in light of the New Testament, raising questions as to how this message connects with Jesus Christ (62).

This is the heart of Greidanus’ book. He takes the best of the grammatico-historical method, weds it to redemptive historical hermeneutics that refuse to allegorize, and comes up with a plan on how to bring it into the preached message.

In his survey of Christ-centered preaching through history (chapters 3-4), Greidanus sides mostly with Calvin’s theocentric preaching but ends up standing somewhere between Calvin’s approach and Luther’s christocentric hermeneutic (see 227). Greidanus’ knowledge of church history aides the reader greatly in showing why in spite of Luther’s and Calvin’s commitment to not allegorize the Old Testament, they still frequently slipped into this fallacy because of the medieval background of fourfold interpretation and Augustine’s long scholarly shadow from which they were emerging. Greidanus treats every historical Christ-preaching position in his survey—the apostolic fathers, the school of Alexandria, the school of Antioch, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, and Wilhelm Vischer—with fair critique, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each without mindlessly endorsing any one man, nor black-sheeping those he disagrees with the most. It seems this approach to this crucial topic would win the respect of any objective reader who simply wants the truth, so the reader can sort through the details and decide where he stands.

In his fifth chapter, Greidanus warns against christomonism, a position that will even bend the text to make Christ central to everything, and he warns against preaching Christ to the exclusion of God’s glory, something John Calvin’s example gives us something to admire and learn from. He then presents a simple but thorough breakdown of six major ways to preach Christ from the Old Testament:

1. Redemptive-historical progression
2. Promise-fulfillment
3. Typology
4. Analogy
5. Longitudinal themes
6. Contrast

Although each of these positions are admittedly not directly listed in Scripture, Greidanus backs each with clear examples from the Old Testament, and the entire lists gives the reader an excellent guide to follow when trying to do the text justice by not missing any element that points to Christ, nor putting Jesus in the text where He never was meant to be. In chapter six, Greidanus examines each of these New Testament ways of preaching Christ from the Old Testament “in the light of contemporary hermeneutical discussions” (225), again, letting Scripture be his authority, but refusing to arrogantly ignore the voice of contemporary scholarship.

Why every preacher should read it...

From the beginning, Greidanus makes his thesis clear, and never sways from this objective. By the end of the last chapter, he has more than accomplished his goal and provided the reader with exact steps on how to implement preaching Christ from the Old Testament.

The size of Greidanus’ book would make it difficult to digest into usability, were it not for his table of contents and Appendix I that break the steps down. Dennis E. Johnson’s Him We Proclaim stretched me towards Christ-centered preaching and Walter C. Kaiser’s Toward an Exegetical Theology re-grounded me in grammatico-historical hermeneutics. Greidanus brings the best of both into one volume and makes it work. This book is readable, practical, scholarly-informed, historically intriguing, and one that every preacher should read at least once.

Sidney Greidanus. Preaching Christ From the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999. 373 pp. $26.00.