Kenneth Langley’s Theocentric View of preaching is found in Scott M. Gibson’s and Matthew D. Kim’s Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four views on Preaching Today.
The Theocentric view is like the Christocentric view in some ways. Some who hold to the Christocentric view advocate preaching Christ from every text. The Theocentric view advocates preaching God from every text. Both are not using exclusively the historical/grammatical method of interpretation and preaching or teaching only what is in the text. This was the essence of my post “Text-Driven (Grammatical-Historical Hermeneutic) Preaching.”
There is a major difference between these methods of interpretation
There are four views in Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views in Preaching Today. These four scholars note the differences. I would add a fifth view which is the view I prefer which is the Grammatical-Historical view of hermeneutics. Most of the other views start with the Grammatical-Historical method but add another layer of hermeneutics, such as, looking for particular theology in the text whether it be Christology or Theology Proper.
The differences are not unimportant. Do we come to interpreting Scripture with a preconceived method of forcing on a text Christ, God, the Law, or the Gospel? Or do we come to Scripture seeking to understand what the original author intended on communicating to his original audience in that particular text which may or may not have been Christ, God the Father, the Law, or the Gospel?
Langley is correct when he asserts that Christ should not be preached from every text and some Christocentric advocates would also agree. But what Christocentric advocates do practice is adding another layer of hermeneutics to the historical/grammatical method. For example, Brian Chappel in his chapter describing the redemptive-historic view writes: “Just as historico-grammatical exegesis requires a preacher to consider a text’s terms in their historical and literary context, responsible theological interpretation [the redemptive-historic view that he holds to] requires an expositor to discern how a text’s ideas function in the wider redemptive context.” [1] In other words, the exegete does not stop with the historic-grammatical hermeneutic.
The expositor does not need to look through the redemptive-historic grid of creation, fall, redemption, and final consummation to find out how the text points to Jesus. These are two different hermeneutics that produce two dissimilar interpretations. Dr. Jerry Hullinger documents this difference when he refers to theologian Iain Diguid:
Iain Diguid distances himself from the approach that Christ is secretly alluded to in every verse; however, he goes on to say that “the central thrust of every passage leads us in some way to the central message of the gospel” (“Old Testament Hermeneutics” in Seeing Christ in all of Scripture: Hermeneutics at Westminster Theological Seminary [Philadelphia: Westminster Seminary Press, 2016] 19. accessed May 8, 2016. wts.edu/uploads/images/files/Seeing Christ eBook). Though an apparent improvement to seeing Christ in every verse, can this become essentially the same thing? For the Covenant Theologian, would this be the same as seeing the Bible through the grid of the Covenant of Redemption? As Gregory Beale illustrates in the next chapter of the same book, “in the light of corporate solidarity or representation, the New Testament writers view Christ the Messiah as representing the true Israel of the Old Testament (e.g. Isa 49:3) and the church as the true Israel of the New Testament (cf. Gal 3:16 and 3:29).”[2] Dr. Hullinger’s point is that the Christocentric method produces a very different interpretation of major texts and doctrines, such as the church replacing Israel in the New Testament in the case mentioned.
Examples of different interpretations from different methods
Langley referred to Augustine’s view of that every verse must be about Christ. Augustine’s interpretation of Noah’s Ark demonstrates where the wrong hermeneutic can lead. Augustine allegorizes the ark to find Christ in the Ark in The City of God:
Moreover, inasmuch as God commanded Noah, a just man, and, as the truthful Scripture says, a man perfect in his generation — not indeed with the perfection of the citizens of the city of God in that immortal condition in which they equal the angels but in so far as they can be perfect in their sojourn in this world — inasmuch as God commanded him, I say, to make an ark, in which he might be rescued from the destruction of the flood, along with his family, i.e., his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law, and along with the animals who, in obedience to God's command, came to him into the ark: this is certainly a figure of the city of God sojourning in this world; that is to say, of the church, which is rescued by the wood on which hung the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 2:5. For even its very dimensions, in length, breadth, and height, represent the human body in which He came, as it had been foretold. For the length of the human body, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is six times its breadth from side to side, and ten times its depth or thickness, measuring from back to front: that is to say, if you measure a man as he lies on his back or on his face, he is six times as long from head to foot as he is broad from side to side, and ten times as long as he is high from the ground. And therefore the ark was made 300 cubits in length, 50 in breadth, and 30 in height. And its having a door made in the side of it certainly signified the wound which was made when the side of the Crucified was pierced with the spear; for by this those who come to Him enter; for thence flowed the sacraments by which those who believe are initiated. And the fact that it was ordered to be made of squared timbers, signifies the immoveable steadiness of the life of the saints; for, however, you turn a cube, it still stands. And the other peculiarities of the ark's construction are signs of features of the church.[3]
Augustine illustrates that the sky is the limit when it comes to finding Jesus in a text. Tim Keller advocates “to preach the gospel every time is to preach Christ every time, from every passage.”[4] Keller provides another example of a different interpretation that results when another layer of hermeneutics is added to the Grammatical-Historical method:
Paul sees Christ as the key to understanding each biblical text. Sometimes, then, you can’t help but think about Christ even if the text you are looking at doesn’t seem to be specifically a messianic prophecy or a major figure foreshadowing Christ or an intercanonical theme or part of a key biblical image or metaphor. Yet you just can’t not see him. Here’s an obscure passage in the Bible where we see this played out. At the end of Judges, in chapters 19 through 21, we read a terrible story of a cowardly Israelite with a concubine, a second-class wife, as it were. He comes into a town where some ruffians from the tribe of Benjamin threaten him, and to save himself he offers this woman to them to have their way with. He goes to bed and all that night the men rape her and abuse her. In the morning the husband comes out of the house and finds her on the doorstep, dead. He is furious, and he takes her body home, cuts it into several pieces, and sends one to each of the other tribes of Israel, to inflame them to go to battle against the tribe of Benjamin over this outrage. The husband conveniently fails to tell everyone of his own cowardice. The resulting civil war is bloody and devastating. What a bleak and terrible passage! How in the world could you preach Christ here? Actually, there is more than one way to do it. Put this passage into the context of the whole book’s theme [the redemptive-historic view in contrast to the historical-grammatical method]. What is the theme of the whole book of Judges? The answer to that question is easier to find than in many other books, because the narrator ends his account of this event, and of the entire book of Judges, with this sentence: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 21:25). The social disorder and moral degradation revealed the desperate need for good governance… How can we not see, even in such a dark pool, a reflection of something beyond it? When we see a man who sacrifices his wife to save his own skin— a bad husband— how can we not think of a man who sacrificed himself to save his spouse— the true husband? Jesus gave himself for us, the church, his bride (Ephesians 5: 22– 33). Here is a true spouse who will never abuse people of their sin and rebellions. [5]
The preferred method of hermeneutics
My response to this interpretation: So the Levite who callously handed over his wife to the Benjaminite perverts to gang rape all night, who then cut her abused body into pieces and mailed those pieces to the other tribes of Israel is a type of Christ? This is not the authorial intent of the passage in Judges 19-21 nor is there any New Testament basis for this episode being an Old Testament type.
If Christ is in the text, we should preach Christ. If God is in the text, we should preach God. If Law or the Gospel is in the text, we should preach Law and the Gospel. We should not, however, impose either Christ, God, Law, or the Gospel into every text. I agree with Tony Merida: “We do not want to insert Jesus where He is not.” [6] The solution is text-driven preaching that uses the historical/grammatical method and does not press any other theology onto the text but exegetes the author’s intended meaning to his original audience.
1. Scott M. Gibson and Matthew D. Kim, Homiletics and Hermeneutics (Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition), 5.
2. “New Testament Hermeneutics,” in Seeing Christ in all of Scripture: Hermeneutics at Westminster Theological Seminary [Philadelphia: Westminster Seminary Press, 2016] 29. Accessed May 8, 2016. .wts.edu/uploads/images.files/seeing Christ ebook). Jerry Hullinger, From Ezra to Gnostic Devotions: The Importance of Interpretive Method, 101.
3. Augustine, The City of God, xv. xxvi, 312: (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120115.htm)
4. Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition), 56-57.
5. Ibid., 16.
6. Tony Merida, Faithful Preaching (B&H Publishing. Kindle Edition), 71.