(Part 1)

JBTM Jeffrey G. Audirsch
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methods for interpreting written texts.” 83 In other words, with the first meaning identified,
the interpreter/preacher can now ask how the text points forward to the coming Messiah.
Allowing the first meaning to take precedence brings significant value to reading the Old
Testament as Christian Scripture, particularly by highlighting the Old Testament text’s
theological richness within its original context. In other words, interpreters/preachers of
the Old Testament must let the first meaning drive the sermon. 84 What this means is that
the interpreter/preacher is responsible for telling and retelling the history of God’s chosen
people—the Israelites—through proclaiming the salvation-history of God outlined in the
Old Testament. If this key step of pastoral shepherding is overlooked, the interpreter/
preacher runs the risk of the Old Testament “never becoming the Word of God.” Thus,
the preaching of the full counsel of God is foundational for all Christian proclamation.
This means the interpreter/preacher is responsible for unveiling and declaring what
God has done in the ancient past with the Israelites as well as the in the lives of the New
Testament church. By doing so, the interpreter/preacher can clearly “implant” in the minds
of his audience/congregation the history and theology of God’s people—first the ancient
Israelites and now the New Testament church. 85
The Christotelic approach, sometimes called “apostolic hermeneutics” or “eschatological
hermeneutic,” allows the Old Testament to become the foundation of the New.
This approach recognizes that the Old Testament is progressing to the Christ event
chronicled in the New Testament. 86 In other words, the Christotelic approach follows the
83
See John Goldingay, Key Questions about Biblical Interpretation: Old Testament Answers (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 219, emphasis added.
84
Walter Kaiser offered a poignant critique of the redemptive-historical Christocentric approach:
“Others championed a Christocentric interpretation (also known to some as the ‘Redemptive-Historical’
method of interpreting), in which the interpretation of all Biblical texts should be done in
such a way that the main theme should be explicitly and directly related to Jesus Christ. But in this
method the emphasis falls on a whole-Bible-focus on God’s work in redemption across the whole
canon. While this is beautiful and praiseworthy, it had the potential for substituting the specificity
and particularity of individual passages for what was the final work of God in Christ, by always going
for the one ‘big idea’ that embraced the whole canon. Much of Christocentric preaching tended to
depend on a strong Biblical Theology, but a Biblical Theology that often wove together some twenty
major biblical themes such as kingdom, temple, sacrifice, and the like, and one which then allowed
the preacher to leap from anywhere in the Biblical text to a call for a trust in the Lord Jesus who is the
author of so great a salvation, as recorded of course from one end of Scripture to the other.” See Walter
Kaiser, “Part 7 on Christ-Centered Preaching,” www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2013/
july/christ-centered-hermeneutics-walt-kaiser-jr-on-christ-cente.html.
85
Elizabeth R. Achtemeier, “The Relevance of the Old Testament for Christian Preaching,” in A
Light unto My Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers, edited by H. N. Bream, Ralph
Daniel Heim, and Carey A. Moore (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), 16.
86
Peter Enns popularized the Christotelic hermeneutical approach in his Inspiration and
Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, 2 nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
2015), 162–72.