Redemptive-historical preaching

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Redemptive-historical preaching" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Redemptive-historical preaching is a method of preaching that emerged from the Reformed churches of the Netherlands in the early 1940s. The debate concerned itself with the question: "How are we to preach the historical narratives of the Bible?"

On one side of the question were the proponents of "exemplaristic" preaching. This method of preaching taught that the biblical narratives in general, and the Old Testament stories in particular, were to be preached as examples of how Christians today should (or should not) live their lives. Old Testament believers were held up as examples (or anti-examples, as the case may be, see for example anti-Judaism) of how we should conduct ourselves.

On the other side of the debate were the advocates of preaching that was "redemptive-historical" (the term used to translate the Dutch heilshistorisch). These included Klaas Schilder and Benne Holwerda.^[1] They argued that Old Testament narratives are not primarily to be moral examples, but as revelations of the coming Messiah. The narratives of the Old Testament served as types and shadows pointing forward in history to the time when Israel's messiah would be revealed in the person and work of Jesus. In support of this view, the advocates of redemptive-historical preaching drew heavily upon the text of Luke 24:27, where Jesus is teaching the disciples on the road to Emmaus: "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (English Standard Version). Further support was taken from verse 44 of the same chapter, where Jesus says, "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 and the Psalms must be fulfilled."