Clowney’s Diagram for Preaching From the Old Testament
- Author(s): Barry York
- Date published: August 13, 2018
- URL: https://gentlereformation.com/2018/08/13/clowneys/
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- Date accessed: November 19, 2019
This article discusses Edmund Clowney’s diagram for preaching from the Old Testament and the common pitfalls made while doing so. The diagram is in his book Preaching Christ in All of Scripture. Correct logical progression draws the symbolic meaning of an Old Testament text and shows its fulfillment in Christ through the redemption story. Then the significance of all of this to the church is shown.
There are different errors jumps in this progression that can be made, all of which lead to some mistake. The article uses the story of David and Goliath to illustrate the errors.
- Jumping straight from the text to the sermon tends to lead to allegorization. One may exaggerate David’s actions to draw a strong connection to Christ, or make connections that aren’t meant to be made, such as comparing David’s five stones to Jesus quoting from Deuteronomy (one of the five books of the Pentateuch). The text can be taken to mean whatever the preacher wants it to mean.
- Jumping from the symbolic meaning to the sermon without showing the fulfillment in Christ can moralize the text. We turn David and Goliath into a lesson on how we have to conquer our own giants.
- Skipping the symbolism in the Old Testament straight to how the text is fulfilled in Christ fails to explore the full typology in play. Not only is David’s defeat of Goliath similar to Christ’s defeat of Satan, both are also previously unknown kings from Bethlehem. In addition, it’s possible to miss that Goliath is described in serpent-like terms.