Modern redemptive-historical preaching makes Christ the end-point of the Old Testament. It sees all of history leading to Christ. As we have seen (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), this is true, but also somewhat limited. The Puritan version of redemptive-historical preaching sees Christ not just at the end of redemptive history, but in it and throughout it. For the Puritans, Christ was not just the last chapter that all the others were setting the scene for, but rather Christ was present from the very first chapter, and in every chapter of redemptive history.
Modern redemptive-historical preaching tends to invest significance in Old Testament people and events, only insofar as they relate to Christ’s incarnation. It tends to see little significance in the people and events in and of themselves. Rather, they are but stepping-stones to be quickly skipped over in order to reach the summits of Christ’s first and second comings. Passages and verses are but springboards to spectacular retrospective and prospective surveys of the Bible. Blossom, bud, and fruitThe Puritans, on the other hand, preached Christ from Old Testament events and people without consciously and deliberately relating them to Christ’s first and second comings. They did not underestimate the climactic nature of Christ’s incarnation. They did not deny that Christ’s person and work at His first coming was necessary to give redemptive significance to the Old Testament. They agreed that no Old Testament saint could ever have been saved without Christ’s coming to this earth. However, they freely preached Christ from the Old Testament historical narratives without seeing the constant need to whisk everything and everyone backwards to the Fall and forwards to Bethlehem and Calvary. They did not view the Old Testament events as only stepping-stones to Christ. They saw Christ in the stepping-stones themselves. They did not see the need to relate everything to “the big picture,” as they could find the “big picture” even in the “small pictures.” They could appreciate the beauty of the blossom without having to relate it backwards to the bud and forwards to the fruit. Jonathan Edwards is perhaps the most obvious exponent of Puritan redemptive-historical preaching. In 1739 Edwards began preaching a series of 30 sermons on the history of redemption to his congregation in Northampton. Later in life, he began, but never completed, work on shaping this material into a book entitled A History of the Work of Redemption. When Princeton invited Edwards to become its third president in 1753, one of the reasons he gave for postponing acceptance was that he wanted to complete the “great work… which I call a History of the Work of Redemption, a body of divinity in an entire new method, being thrown into the form of an history; considering the affair of Christian theology, as the whole of it, in each part, stands in reference to the great work of redemption by Jesus Christ….”[1] Today we shall briefly consider the hermeneutical principles revealed in Edwards History of the Work of Redemption. Tomorrow we wrap up with some examples of his Puritan “redemptive-historical preaching.”
1. God, and not man, is the author, Lord, and end of history. 2. “The work of redemption is a work that God carries on from the fall of man to the end of the world.”[2] 3. The work of redemption includes “not only the purchasing of redemption, but also all God’s works that were properly preparatory to the purchase, or as applying the purchase.”[3] 4. The work of redemption covers all that was done by the Father, and the Spirit, and Christ as mediator before, during, and after his time in this world.[4] Like modern redemptive-historical preachers Edwards sees Christ’s coming as climactic. However, Edwards also highlights Christ as present and active in history before His first coming. Christ is not just the end, the terminus of redemptive history, but is an active participant throughout it. 5. The redemptive work of God is carried on from the Fall to the End in two inter-related ways:
- Repetition: Individual souls are redeemed – converted, justified, sanctified and glorified – from the Fall to the End.
- Progress: The grand plan of redemption is advanced and progressed, much as a building proceeds in successive phases from foundation to capstone.
Like modern redemptive-historical preachers, Edwards focuses on the progression of redemptive history. However, Edwards also emphasizes the redemption of individual souls along the way, as the “one necessarily supposes the other.”[5]
6. From the Fall of man until “the incarnation of Christ God was doing those things that were preparatory to Christ’s coming and working out redemption and were forerunners and earnests of it.”[6] Like modern redemptive-historical preachers, Edwards sees the “lesser salvations and deliverances for his Church and people” as “images and forerunners of the great salvation Christ was to work out when he should come.”[7] However, Edwards also sees true Christian salvation in the “lesser salvations.”7. From the Fall of man onwards, God poured out His Holy Spirit in a series of decisive spiritual revivals and awakenings.[8] Like modern redemptive-historical preachers, Edwards sees Pentecost as the ultimate outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But Edwards also sees redemptive history as dotted with regular periods of spiritual refreshings and renewals. These comparisons and contrasts highlight our previous conclusion about redemptive-historical preaching. It reflects and discovers a lot of the truth, but it is not the whole truth. In his History, Edwards presents the whole truth, the stepping stones as well as the summit; the blossom, as well as the bud and the fruit. Tomorrow I’ll wrap up this series by giving some examples of that from his writings.
[1] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 16, Letters and Personal Writings (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 727-728.
[2] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 9, A History of the Work of Redemption (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 116.
[3] Ibid.,117.
[4] Ibid., 117-118
[5] Ibid., 122.
[6] Ibid., 128.
[7] Ibid., 129.
[8] Ibid., 143.
“Like modern redemptive-historical preachers Edwards sees Christ’s coming as climactic. However, Edwards also highlights Christ as present and active in history before His first coming. Christ is not just the end, the terminus of redemptive history, but is an active participant throughout it.”Would it be therefore fair to say that Edwards sees Christ as the means as well as the ends of redemptive history? (I don’t mean that Christ is the means to the exclusion of the work of the Father or the Holy Spirit).