Beeson Podcast, Episode 401
Dr. Osvaldo Padilla
July 17, 2018


Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson Podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.
Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. We're going to hear a lecture today by Dr. Osvaldo Padilla, From Text to Sermon: What is a Biblical Text? Dr. Osvaldo Padilla joined the faculty of Beeson Divinity School in 2008 coming to us from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He holds the Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen; he's written widely in the field of New Testament studies. One of his best-known books is the “Acts of the Apostles: Interpretation, History, and Theology.” And also the “Speeches of Outsiders in Acts.” He's a Luke-Acts scholar with the New Testament studies, and he begins this lecture today by taking us to Luke 24. 
	That great text where Jesus is speaking to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and invites them to listen along with him as the Psalms, and the prophets, the Old Testament speaks to us about the coming Messiah. Well this is a wonderful example of what we try to do at Beeson Divinity School on a regular basis. We do this in our courses from text, the biblical text, to the sermon. We try to teach students how to move with integrity from text to sermon. And so let's go and listen to Dr. Osvaldo Padilla. He's married to Kristin Padilla; she is the Executive Producer of this podcast you're listening to, and they have a beautiful little son named Philip, who is six years old. Osvaldo Padilla, From Text to Sermon: What is a Biblical Text.
Osvaldo Padilla:	I went back and I heard some of the previous lectures on this series from Text to  Sermon, and they were good, very practical. And given the fact that they were so practical I want to make mine a little bit more theoretical. Hopefully that won't put to sleep; so in some ways what I want to do is to problematize the whole of question of text to sermon by asking the question, What is a Biblical Text?
	So that's what I've entitled the talk from From Text to Sermon: But What is a Biblical Text? If you don't know what a biblical text is, well then we have some problems going from text to sermon. So consider the talk a complication of things, a problematizing of things that I hope lead to further reflection. Also most of my comments are going to be about the Old Testament, and going from text to sermon if you're preaching from the Old Testament, because I think this is where the crisis, where the challenge may be. 
	I want to read a text from Scripture to begin. You know the context, the highly ironic episode where Jesus is walking on the road to Emmaus and he hides himself from the disciples. They ask him, are you the only one who doesn't know what has happened in Jerusalem? The reader … then he explains the Scriptures to them, and then we have a couple of verses. The first one is verse, well the first set is verses 26-27.
	He says to them, was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? I'm beginning with Moses, and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Then he picks that up again, and develops it a little bit in verses 44, really just verse 44. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, and the prophets in the psalms must be fulfilled.” 
	The words of Jesus in Luke 24, render the Old Testament biblical text a complex entity, for if you like a multi-layer entity. How so? Consider just what it is that the evangelist is saying in verses 26, 27, and 44. The meaning of the particular Old Testament text cannot be arrived at unless it is simultaneously Christological. The meaning of the particular Old Testament text cannot be arrived at unless it is simultaneously Christological. The rendering of the Old Testament here as Moses, the prophets and the Psalms is done on purpose. 
	So remember he told them about everything that was written about him in Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Why would Luke put it in this way instead of simply saying the scriptures or the old covenant? Why does he mention Moses, the prophets and the Psalms? Well it wasn't just for curiosity's sake. He wants the reader to understand the power of the claim being made in this passage. And it is this: the Old Testament in its totality, that is both in its particularity and wholeness, is concerned to bear witness to Jesus Christ. 
	Whether the Old Testament text is Genesis 1 and 2 about creation, or Numbers and the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, or the construction of the temple, or Psalms, or Proverbs, or Jonah in the belly of a big fish, all these texts are simultaneously about Jesus Christ. By saying that the entire Old Testament is about him, Jesus is making the daring claim that these texts hang together and find their ultimate aim in their witness of him. 
	Their raison d'etre, their reason for existence, the reason why they exist, lies in their pointing beyond themselves to Jesus Christ. This means that the nature of the Old Testament is such that a thin reading, a reading that is solely concerned with what is directly in front of you, falls short of a Christian reading of the text. Rather to be a Christian reading of the Old Testament, it is necessary that the reading pay attention to the complexity, multi-layerness, and thickness which is present in the text because of its Christological nature. 
	An acceptance of the complex nature of the Old Testament as explained above, will naturally serve to destabilize, knock you down for a moment, destabilize the most basic aspect of reading, namely the necessity of a text. If there is no text to read, there is no reading. To put it in the context of preaching, if we cannot understand the nature of the biblical text then the operation cannot begin to get off the ground. 
	You can probably see where I am heading. Unless there is a robust theological apprehension of what a biblical text is, preaching is impossible. Or more realistically, the result is back-breaking. It is my contention that in an evangelical context the biggest challenge to biblical preaching is theological in nature. Concretely, concretely this challenge of biblical preaching is manifested in what strikes us as the abyss between text and sermon. 
	On the one hand it may be that you are a brilliant exegete and to the extent that exegesis consists of knowing the original languages, syntax, and grammatical classifications, then of course that's just part of exegesis. But to the extent that exegesis consists of knowing the original languages, syntax, and grammatical classifications, preparing a sermon from such exegesis is not at all difficult for you. 
	On the other hand, it may be that you're a clumsy exegete, but you're a clear communicator, an engaging speaker, and a virtuoso illustrator. And to the extent of this is what a sermon is, preparing one is not at all difficult for you. But since it has pleased the Lord, probably to help our humility, to give but a few in both departments, we find ourselves on either side of the chasm asking for help. 
	On the hand that we're asking for is a bridge. A bridge that connects the shore of exegesis with the shore of homiletics. It is a bridge that helps us go from text to sermon in a biblical way. Yet, I am suggesting in this talk, that our prayer for a bridge mistakes the symptoms for the real problem. To be sure, we certainly need help in how to go from text to sermon, that's why we have these talks. But it would be easier, or less difficult, to go from text to sermon if we paid more attention to a more fundamental problem in preaching. 
	The more fundamental problem I have been suggesting is how to preach from texts that are irreducibly complex and multi-layered. Texts whose subject matter is ultimately Jesus Christ, even if immediately they do not seem to be about Jesus Christ. This problem can be framed from the perspective of biblical theology. Whatever language and concepts we use to describe the discipline or whatever you fit in the neat, perhaps too neat spectrum of locket and clink, (those of you who have read that book know what I'm talking about) it would not be too controversial to say that at bottom, biblical theology is about the unity of the bible.
	In particular how the Old and New Testaments speak coherently and with one voice about Jesus Christ. To me that is really what biblical theology is getting at. How in light of the fact that we have two testaments that are so different can we say that they speak coherently and with one voice about Jesus Christ? In this respect Brevard Childs has nuanced the discussion further in his “Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments.” 
	He has indicated that the biggest problem facing biblical theology is the following. And here I have a quote from Childs. He says the following, "At the heart of the problem of biblical theology lies the issue of doing full justice to the subtle canonical relationship of the two testaments within the one Christian Bible. On the one hand the Christian canon asserts the continuing integrity of the Old Testament witness. It must be heard on its own terms. On the other hand the New Testament makes its own witness. The challenge of biblical theology is to engage in the continual activity of theological reflection, which studies the canonical text in detailed exegesis and sticks to the justice to the witness of both testaments in the light of its subject matter who is Jesus Christ." End of quote. 
	In other words, how can we attend to the discreet witness of each testament and at the same time the text going beyond itself to speak of Jesus Christ? Let me repeat the question. which I think is the core problem in biblical theology. How can we attend to the discreet witness of each testament, that is the text that you have in front of you, and at the same time the text going beyond itself to speak of Jesus Christ?
	I suggest that what is true in biblical theology is also true in the discipline of Christian preaching, and furthermore that the two are related. So the reason why this is the problem in biblical preaching is because previously it is a problem in biblical theology. Let us put the problem in the following way. On the one hand you can preach the Old Testament text with impeccable attention to the Hebrew, the Ancient Near Eastern context, and even the theology of the book itself. Maybe you can do all that in preaching from the Old Testament.
	However, if Jesus Christ is not the center of gravity of both the exegesis and the sermon, how does our preaching go beyond the synagogue? How is it better than what you would hear at a Jewish Synagogue on Sunday excuse me not Sunday, Saturday? After all it was it was not preaching the Old Testament that got Paul in trouble in the synagogue, it was preaching an Old Testament that did not make any sense without Jesus Christ that had earned him the lashes in the synagogue. 
	On the other hand, if you preach from the Old Testament text but overlook its discreet witness, what the Old Testament text actually says, and quickly move to Jesus Christ then we have made the heretic Marcion happy, who believed that the Old Testament was unnecessary. At the end, you are left with neither the Old Testament or Jesus Christ because for Jesus to be the Christ he must be the son of David of the Old Testament. But the son of David is unrecognizable and ineffective if he's not Jesus Christ the Lord. So that's the problem. How can you pay attention to the discreet witness of the Old Testament and at the same time notice that the nature of the text is such that the meaning of the text is multi-layered and goes beyond what is in front of you to its subject Jesus Christ?
	So what's at hand? Is there anything out there that can help us in trying to answer the question, what is a biblical text, and then moving to text to sermon, or from text to sermon. It is in this context that some comments are appropriate on expository preaching. More specifically, how expository preaching envisions the move from text to sermon. 
	Now I'm going to get a little controversial here, because for a lot of people, expository preaching is the magic phrase, right? If you do expository preaching, I haven’t defined what I mean by that, but if you do expository preaching that is the biblical way of doing it. Can expository preaching as it is often practiced today help us in this issue that I have been speaking about? To the extent that expository preaching is an attempt to do justice to the text at hand, it is worth following. 
	As Craig Bartholomew has said, "The desire to preserve the objectivity of the biblical text is admirable. Scripture does have a determined shape, and resists being treated like a wax nose." Or as one author has put it in his title, a very intelligent book on expository preaching, the title is, “Privilege the Texts” But what is the text? Where does the meaning of the text reside? Unfortunately much expository preaching understands the meaning of the text as the intention of the human author to the original audience period. The goal of the preacher in preparation, therefore, is to dig out what the text meant to the original audience. During this operation the rest of the biblical canon is placed on hold lest the meaning of the text at hand be compromised by other biblical texts.
	This is what I was taught or at least what I perceive to have been taught. My teachers might have been trying to teach me the right way, but this is the way I perceived it. Okay. Or we are told to be careful when we do exegesis of the text lest systematic theology distort the plain meaning of the text. While I certainly appreciate being careful with the biblical text at hand, this approach to interpretation works with a thin definition of biblical textuality. Because we are working with this flat understanding of the biblical text, we're often shocked at the use of the Old Testament of Jesus and the apostles.
	We're also totally disoriented when we read church fathers like Irenaeus or Athanasius, and the reformers too. The other day in our mentoring group we were reading Luther on two types of righteousness, and he pulls in a passage from the Song of Songs. “I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine.” How many expository preachers would use that when preaching a sermon on Christology or righteousness? But you see Luther read the Bible differently. He understood along with the reformers and the church fathers that the text by nature is a thick, multi-layer reality that has a subject matter who is Jesus Christ, but also has a discreet message for the Old and the New  Testament.
	They understood that the meaning of the biblical text is thick and multi-layer since the authorship of the Bible is dual. It does while in Deuteronomy 8 Moses has in mind Israel, the son of God with a lower case s, the Holy Spirit simultaneously means the Son of God with a capital S who will one day be tested in the desert and be victorious where the former son failed. So if you read Deuteronomy 8 without Christological lens, and where would you take it? But because the biblical writers understood the thickness of the biblical text, that ultimately they were pointing to Jesus Christ, if immediately they were pointing in another direction, they were able to write the way they did.
	Because the subject matter of the Bible is Jesus Christ the evangelist when retelling the story of Jesus in the desert, can draw on the Old Testament to give it meaning. To sum up, and I really am summing up, this is not like Paul sometimes says, Finally, and then he does three more chapters. To sum up, if the subject matter of the Bible really is Jesus Christ then our move from text to sermon must at every step be Christologically-oriented. Christology is not an after dinner mint that we add to conclude the sermon with a nice ending. 
	Rather the very logic of moving from exegesis to exposition must be Christologically-governed. Unfortunately, this tends to be a short coming of much expository preaching, which is the result, I suggest, of a thin understanding of the nature of the biblical text. Ironically by insisting on sticking with the text, a lot of contemporary evangelical preaching ends up losing its way precisely because there is a deficiency in understanding what the Bible is. 
	This deficiency, I have argued, is essentially a theological one. So what I'm arguing is that the biggest ... well I shouldn't say that, the biggest, but one fundamental problem, let's put it that way, of going from text to sermon is that many times we don't grasp the thickness is the best way that I can put it. The multi-layeredness of the biblical text, both the New Testament, but in this case the Old Testament. And the result is that we don't know how to preach Jesus Christ from the Old Testament, especially from the Old Testament. And so what we do is we do moral examplers from the Old Testament, many other things, but preaching Jesus Christ. But if we follow Jesus Christ, he's clear that all those texts are about him, which is amazing. It's a daring claim. He says all of this was spoken about me in Torah, in the Prophets, and in the Writings. That is Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and so on. So what he's saying is that if you don't read the Bible with Jesus Christ as the subject, you're not reading the Bible Christianly. 
	To read it Christianly, Christologically, you must believe, you must believe that he is the subject matter of the Scriptures. Without at the same time giving up on the discreet passage of the Old Testament that you may be preaching on. Now how you do that dance, that beautiful combination, ask Dr. Smith and Dr. Webster, I can't give you. No I can give you some ideas, but how to move forward? How do we move forward?
	Well somebody asked Brevard Childs, how can I become a better preacher and a better exegete? And he said, become a deeper thinker, a deeper theologian. So in some ways, how do I get better from text to sermon? Well number one if the fundamental problem is theological as I have suggested, then we become better by becoming better biblical theologians. And I'm not advocating ... well I am advocating for one particular view of biblical theology, but that's not the only one that can take you there. There are many on offer that are helpful, but you have to become a better biblical theologian. You have to understand how it is that the Bible fits together, and how it fits together on the subject of Jesus Christ. 
	If you're a thin biblical theologian, you will preach thin sermons. They may be practical, and helpful, and all of that stuff, but are they really Christian? That's the first thing I would say.
	Number two, not only becoming better biblical theologians, but two, listen to preachers who embody both the Christological subject matter of the Bible with the simultaneous commitment to explaining the text at hand. Those are rare to find. May I boast here, briefly, of my church, The Advent, our Dean Pearson does such a great job of studying the text that is in front of him, also Deborah Leighton one of our pastors, so good at explaining the text that is in front of you. But at the same time explaining that text in such a way that it is Christologically rich. So I suggest find those kinds of preachers, again, hard to find, who embody the Christological subject matter and the commitment to explaining the text at hand. 
	Number three, don't be afraid to be too Christological in the logic of your exegesis and sermon preparation. This is what I often hear. A lot of people say, look I like this idea of the subject matter of the Bible of Jesus Christ. I hope you like it because that's what Jesus said. But I like this idea that Jesus Christ is the subject matter of the Bible, but how do I know that I'm not just doing allegory?
	How do I know that I'm not going beyond what the New Testament authors are doing? Well sure the New Testament authors could do that, but can we do it? O that is a complete misunderstanding of what the New Testament authors are doing when they write the Gospels and the Letters. When they write the Gospels and the Letters, they are teaching us as Christians how the Bible is to be interpreted. They're asking us to follow them. One of the reasons why you have so many recorded sermons in the book of Acts, you look at the book of Acts, and it's mostly sermons. Why, Luke, did you leave so many sermons recorded?
	Well because they preach a lot, but why did you leave ... he left those sermons in which you do have a paying attention this to the Christological subject matter, and the discreet witness of the Old Testament. Those sermons are there because he wants to remind his churches, this is how the apostles and their companions did it, and this is the way that you should do it. So those sermons are there not to intimidate us and to put a fence around us, but rather to teach us how we're to do theological exegesis of the Bible. 
	See but a lot of people say, well you know, I can't do that because the Bible doesn't say that. Well that's a flat understanding of what it means to be a theologian. I like what Kevin Vanhoozer has to say about this, where he talks about the work of a pastor as someone who is like a drama, right? You have a script, but while you're performing the drama, you also have to improvise on the basis of the Spirit of what the script says. That's when you're doing a drama. He's saying that what we have to do as pastors and theologians. We have a script as the Bible. And we follow the Bible, but by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we also have to improvise. And I suggest that some of that improvisation happens in sermons that are Christologically-centered and also pay attention to the discreet witness of the Old and the New Testament.
Announcer:	You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.