Book Review: Brian Stiller’s Preaching Parables to Postmoderns

I need to start this review with a confession: I have not finished the book. And I do not plan on doing so. I don’t think that’s a problem, though, because Stiller has been doing the same thing for the last 60 pages and leafing through the last 80, he’s going to continue on until the end. So if he denies the virgin birth in the last 15 pages and I don’t comment on that…my bad.

 

Stiller devotes the first section of his book to introduce postmodernism. The second part explains what parables are and how they function. The third section goes through ten parables with exegetical and expositional discussions. The final section consists of four sample sermon manuscripts. I stopped reading most of the way through section three because I think I get his point.

 

I picked up this book hoping to gain insight into preaching to postmoderns. What I got instead was an excellent exegetical introduction to parables. I read Craig Blomberg’s Preaching the Parables: From Responsible Interpretation to Powerful Proclamation a year ago and was sorely disappointed. First of all, Blomberg, in my opinion, failed to disprove the one-point interpretive approach to parables in favor of a “each main character gets his own point” approach. More importantly, Blomberg dealt with parables as sealed off units rather than parts of a greater narrative in the gospels. He dealt, for instance, with the Good Samaritan as a story unto itself without asking the most important question: Why does Luke include this parable? That is why Stiller’s work was so refreshing. Part of the interpretation of each one of his parables is the question of literary context. Thus, Luke’s account of a parable will have its own flavor and purpose while Matthew’s account of the very same one might be different. This aspect alone makes Stiller’s book a must-have when purchasing resources for parable-study. And it’s cheap, too!

 

The reason I bought the book, though, was because it had “postmodern” in its title. Nice marketing ploy. Unfortunately it doesn’t live up to that aspect of its title. Stiller’s 9 page introduction to postmodernism is VERY broad and VERY general. The basic concept is: Postmoderns like stories; parables are stories; postmoderns will like parables. He gives a “preaching window for postmoderns” for each of his parables. But that’s all he does. And even that seems forced at times and filled with generalities about postmodernism.

 

Bottom line: Buy the book if you want to study parables. It’s cheaper and much better than Blomberg’s. But don’t expect suddenly to be able to connect with postmoderns in your congregation because of it.

Book Review: Graeme Goldsorthy’s Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture

Let me say first of all: great book! It’s a must read for anybody who ever wants to preach from the OT, even if you disagree with him on several levels as I do. But it’s polite to say nice things first so here it goes.

Things I Loved

1. “Jesus says the Old Testament is a book about Him” (p. 20). That is basically Goldsworthy’s thesis throughout the book. Even if you don’t like the way he tries to make that statement work, you still have to deal with that statement.

2. “Let us by all means tap into the wealth of background information to the New Testament found in the dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic Judaism, but let us never forget that the testimony of the New Testament is that the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth forced a great gulf in biblical interpretation between Christians and Jews” (p. 46).

“In taking a wholly unexpected path, from the point of view of Judaism, [Jesus] laid claim to be the ultimate revelation that establishes for all time the correct way to interpret the Old Testament. He not only showed that contemporary Judaism was essentially on the wrong course but also demonstrated the radical point that the Old Testament simply cannot be understood apart from himself” (p. 50).

“The New Testament shows that it was certainly not self-evident to contemporary Jews that Jesus fulfilled the expectations of Israel. We might ask why this is. The answer lies in the fact that Jesus is God’s final and fullest word on the matter. That is, he is not simply fulfillment; he is also further and final revelation” (p. 79).

Here’s the gist: Jesus’ contemporaries had it all wrong! They were wrong about Him and (so Goldsworthy) His kingdom. They expected the wrong thing. And even in Paul’s day they still had that same veil over their hearts when Moses was read (2 Cor 3). This leads into #3.

3. I preach as if I had a veil over my heart if I don’t preach Christ form the OT. If I preach as if the cross had never happened, I am not doing my job. The OT is a book about Christ.Why, Graeme, Why?

I love the fact that Goldsworthy pounds home the point that the OT is a Christian book. However, I am not thrilled by the way he makes it a Christian book. His MO is salvation history—that is, you make the Hebrew Scriptures a Christian book by placing each event into its salvation historical grid. Thus, for instance, Athaliah’s failed attempt to kill off all of the royal heirs of Judah is “Christianized” though connecting it via salvation history to Jesus. Without a son of David there is no ultimate Son of David. There are two main problems with “Christianizing” the Hebrew Scriptures by means of salvation history.1. The link between the OT and Christ is not an exegetical one, but a post-exegetical one.
Goldsworthy readily admits this. When he gets to his steps on preparing a sermon (p. 127) he lists three steps: exegesis, hermeneutics, and homiletics. Exegesis is seeking to understand authorial intent. Hermeneutics is where he plugs in salvation history (biblical theology). This is the step that connects the OT event with Christ. Then the final step makes applications for the hearers. In one of his samples (Proverbs he puts this model into practice. He unequivocally states that this personified wisdom is not intended to be Christ in the mind of the OT author (p. 189). However, it “foreshadows the role of Christ as the wisdom of God in creation” (p. 189). He does the same thing commenting on Psalm 19 (p. 204).
Goldsworthy’s quotations of Christ and the apostles at the outset of his study were a lot stronger than these biblical theological applications would suggest. “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me” (John 5:46; quoted on p. 21), is a much stronger statement than “Moses himself wasn’t thinking about me but you can get to me by considering the events of the Exodus in light of the overall shape of salvation history.” Goldsworthy is short-changing himself. It seems like Jesus and the apostles are saying that the link between the OT and Christ is an exegetical one, but Goldsworthy has made it a post-exegetical one.

2. Relying solely on salvation history focuses too much on the events of Israel’s past rather than on the inspired record of those events—the Scriptures themselves.
It is certainly not illegitimate to preach the events in themselves to accomplish a homiletical purpose—after all, the apostles did that. When dealing with non-event based portions of the OT (the Writings), there is no salvation-historical connection between that portion and Christ. Goldsworthy has a hard time dealing with these sections (p. 190). Job does not fit into the Abraham-David-Jesus schema. Ecclesiastes belongs “somewhere between Solomon and the end of the Old Testament period” (p. 190). The only way he can make The Song of Solomon work is by means of allegory (p. 191). Salvation history is not the way to connect wisdom literature to Christ since there are no “events.” A canonical approach (Sailhamer’s OT Theology is the next book on my list) focusing on the literary purpose of each book of the OT would not have a problem with non-event filled literature.