Preaching and Biblical, Systematic, Historical, and Pastoral Theology (Part 2c)

Don Carson emphasizes the critical importance of historical theology in preaching. He argues for a thorough understanding of the theological interpretations over time, showing how this historical perspective enriches the preacher’s approach and addresses contemporary theological challenges.

The discipline of historical theology overlaps with systematic theology. Often when we are studying historical theology we are, in fact, studying the systematic theology of some particular age. That’s all we are doing. In other words, historical theology from this perspective is merely the study of systematic theology as it morphs across time.

Or to put it the other way around, which I mentioned yesterday, this is why academics who study what they call systematic theology are not really doing systematic theology, as I understand it. They are really doing historical theology. Do you see when they compare what Calvin says with what Butzer says and calls systematic theology it’s really an historical theology discipline?

Now what I am going to do now is, instead of talking about historical theology and its relevance to preaching (I’m coming to that; that’s what this session is about), I’m going to use the next few minutes to say something about history and the importance of history in the Christian faith.

1. Biblical Christianity has a unique relationship to history.

It is unique in its particular claim to be an historical revelation. Now that needs unpacking, but it is very important. You go to Thailand and you learn Thai, fluently. Then you converse with a devout Thai Buddhist monk. You ask the question, “Supposing I could prove (I don’t know how; that doesn’t make a lot of sense) beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Gautama the Buddha never lived. Would that destroy Buddhism?” “Nope.”

It would be massively disappointing from some who feel a certain kind of affection, but Buddha isn’t God. There are different strands of Buddhism, but essentially it’s a philosophical frame of reference at the street level that takes on all kinds of animistic overtones and things like that. At the end of the day, there is nothing in Buddhism that depends on historical claims about Gautama. Nothing. Its attractiveness is bound up with a certain philosophical way of looking at reality.

Now you get on your magic carpet, and you go to India. You pick up Hindi or Malayalam or one of the other languages and you speak with devout Hindu priests. “Supposing you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt (I don’t know how) that the great god Krishna never lived, would that destroy Hinduism?” “Well, no.”

Ancient Greeks had thousands of gods. Hindus have millions of them. Nobody knows them all. If you give up Krishna, you can always go down the street to a Shiva temple instead. In any case, the whole structure of Hinduism turns on a certain view of truth and all of reality connected to it such that you’re not moving in a direct line through history.

The whole notion of history is really quite different. Things are going in a cycle. You spiral up or spiral down according to your activities in this life to come back in a reincarnated form. Hopefully, you’ll eventually get up high enough to get to an upper level. If you pull Krishna out of that, you haven’t destroyed Hinduism. You destroy certain kinds of sanctuaries and disappoint a few people, but you don’t jeopardize the whole structure.

Now you go to the Arabian Peninsula or you just talk to your friendly neighborhood imam. You ask this question. “Could Allah, in your understanding of things, had he wanted to, could Allah have given his final revelation to somebody other than Muhammad?” He’ll probably reply, “No, no, no, you don’t understand. Allah gave a revelation to Abraham, a great prophet. He gave a revelation to Moses, a great prophet. He gave a revelation to Jesus, a great prophet, but his final, greatest revelation he gave to Muhammad.”

You reply, “With all respect, you know that I am a Christian. You know that I don’t see things that way. That’s not really my question. I know that’s what you believe. I’m happy to talk about that with you, but that’s not really my question. My question is, ‘Could Allah, had he wanted to, given his final revelation to somebody other than Muhammad?’ ”

Once the imam has understood your question, then he would likely respond, “Well, it’s a bit of an impertinent question. It’s asking ‘what if’ when we know what Allah has done, but, of course, Allah could have given it to anybody he likes. Allah is Allah. Muhammad is not Allah. We don’t worship Muhammad. At the end of the day, the revelation is not Muhammad. The revelation has been given by Allah to Muhammad, and he could have given it to anybody else.”

In fact what Muslims require that you believe about Muhammad is really quite small. You have to believe that Muhammad is Allah’s prophet and that what Muhammad said on several fronts is true. Apart from that, you don’t have to believe an awful lot about Muhammad himself.

Now you come to your local Presbyterian pastor or Anglican vicar, whatever, I’m not too fussy. You ask the question, “Could God have given his revelation to somebody other than Jesus Christ?” The answer from a Christian perspective is, “The question is incoherent. The revelation is Jesus Christ. In other words, it’s not a chunk of revelation that’s been given to a human being. It’s this God-man who came in space-time history is the locus of the revelation.”

In the past God spoke to the fathers by the prophets. In these last days he has spoken unto us en huio. If you could prove (I don’t know how) somehow that Jesus never lived you have absolutely and utterly and totally destroyed Christianity. It’s not just that he came and lived. If you can prove absolutely, irrefutably that Jesus did not rise from the dead in space-time history, despite the former primate Peter Carnley, you’ve destroyed Christianity.

Did you hear him four Easters ago, when he was asked that very question, “Suppose we found the tomb of Jesus and it was definitely shown that this was the tomb of Jesus. The body was still there. It was the body of Jesus, and we’re all convinced of that. Would this destroy your faith?” He replied very piously, “No, no, no. Jesus has risen in my heart.”

Well, that’s not exactly what the apostle Paul says, somehow. Do you see? At the end of the day the biblical revelation, though it includes some revelation of truth that is extra-historical, that is some revelation of truth that is propositional, that we know by propositions and so on.… There are some nonnegotiable elements of the Christian faith that depend absolutely on history. If you can show by historical means they did not take place, Christianity is forever and utterly and totally destroyed. In other words, biblical Christianity has a peculiar interest in history. Because not all of it, but so much of it, turning points in it, actually depend on historical claims. It’s an historical revelation.

2. It follows, therefore, that history and historical awareness must be part of a preacher’s focus.

Not only part, but a nonnegotiable, irreducible part. A number of years ago at Trinity, where I teach, we are budgeted to be an eight-person New Testament department and we were down one. We’d been interviewing people and so on. We brought in this character to interview. A nice guy, he had pastoral experience, did his PhD somewhere in Europe. He had done two theological degrees in North American confessional schools. He could certainly sign our statement of faith.

He looked like a very good candidate. He was bright. His dissertation was being published. The combination of pastoral and academic we really liked and he could sign on in good conscious to our statement of faith. What was there not to like? But as we were interviewing him I got more and more nervous. I couldn’t quite figure out why I was nervous. As the Germans say, Es klingt falsch. It just didn’t ring true, somehow.

Eventually it dawned on me what the problem was. He had done his work on the Gospels. I started asking questions along these lines, “So, you’re at Trinity now. You have a teaching post here and you’re teaching from the Gospels. One of your MDiv students comes to you and says, ‘Mark says this and this and this, but in the corresponding passage Matthew says that.’ How would you respond?”

He said, “Well, you’ve got to understand that Mark and Matthew are separate gospels. They look at things a bit differently. You’re not supposed to preach a synopsis. You’re supposed to preach the individual books. So it’s a perspectival thing.”

“Supposing,” I said, “the student presses you, ‘Yes, but this looks like a flat-out contradiction. There it says one man; there it says two men.’ ” “Well, you’ve got to understand that, you know, if you look at Matthew from a literary rhetorical point of view then this is the cohesion of his particular argument and this is the cohesion of Mark’s particular argument.”

I listed more and more examples that were difficult just to see what he would say, and he would never get beyond that point. Finally, I confess, I said in probably less gentle terms than I might have chosen, “You will never teach on this faculty as long as I have life in this body if you hold those views. Because at the end of the day, you’re acting as if people are saved by the Word and not by the extratextual referent that the Word makes. That is, you are acting as if we are saved by ideas about Jesus and not by the historical Jesus. You are ducking history.”

You have to answer questions like that with some sort of response to what you think takes place in space-time history. You cannot teach the gospel of Mark merely as a rhetorical literary construct. It’s not the literary rhetorical construct of Mark that saves you; it’s the Jesus to whom Mark refers that saves you.

In other words, what we know of this Jesus is from Mark or from Matthew or from John or whatever, but it’s not the theology of Matthew or Mark or John that saves you. It’s Jesus that saves you. By refusing to deal with history you are ducking the extratextual referent, Jesus himself. That you cannot do. Do you see?

When we hear every Easter, as we do, about the Gospel of Judas or the Gospel of Thomas, or whatever, from the secular press.… You know, originally there were more gospels, and all that, those are actually getting you involved in history questions. If the people in your congregation are troubled by them, you can’t duck them. They’re historical questions. They’re truth claims about history. In all of these domains, there are excellent books available and so on, but you cannot duck these sorts of questions.

You see, another way of saying this is if the heart of the Christian revelation is historical, what Jesus does in space-time history, the God-man is actually there in space-time history, the resurrection did take place in space-time history, it’s not just ideas about these things, but it took place, then the access we have to history is through witnesses.

You have no access to the resurrection of Jesus except through the witnesses of history. None. That’s why the theme of witness is so important in the New Testament. So in the book of Acts, “We are witnesses of these things.” “We cannot say anything else. We are witnesses.” Do you see?

Thus the credibility of the witnesses does become a part of the Christian apologetic. You cannot duck this issue. If the witnesses are all shown to be false, as Paul understood with respect to the resurrection, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then the witnesses are liars. You cannot duck this issue. That’s the access we have to history.

God has made his saving redeeming messages about Christ who appeared in history dependent on historical witnesses whom he inspires and protects and leads to write and so on. Thus the Bible is not simply a literary rhetorical construct. It is, amongst many other things, a book of the records of witnesses. It’s an historical revelation. Inevitably it follows that history and historical awareness must be part of the preacher’s arsenal.

3. This view, then, of the truth of historical events has a peculiar relationship to Christian understanding of faith.

Now I mentioned this already in another context. Let me spell it out again. In 1 Corinthians 15, when Paul teases out the implications of what must follow if Christ is not risen from the dead he says, “Then the witnesses are liars. You’re dead in your trespasses and sins,” and then he says, “Your faith is in vain.”

As we saw yesterday one of the tests for the validity of faith is the truthfulness of faith’s object. Part of saving faith in the New Testament is believing certain things are true. There’s more than that. The Devil can believe certain things are true and not be saved. There’s more than just believing that certain things are true, but there’s never less.

Some of the things that we must believe to be true to be saved are historical things. In the New Testament you don’t build up faith by saying, “Believe, believe, believe, believe. Just shut your gob and believe.” The way you build up faith in New Testament is by articulating and defending the truth. That’s how you build faith. The Bible never asks you to believe something that isn’t true. It encourages you to believe what is true, and it expounds the truth, including some truth of historical data.

Now then, that’s background on history, but all of that history is history within the Canon. When we speak of historical theology, then we’re asking the question, “What is the relationship between preaching and the history of the church since the end of the Canon, that is in the experience of the church across the centuries?” That’s what we will come to the next day. We’ll do that one and pastoral theology together.