Mark S. Gignilliat - Reading Scripture Canonically: Theological Instincts for Old Testament Interpretation

I tell my students about an early preaching experience of mine. I was young, in my early twenties. I had taken several years of Greek and emerged from my undergraduate experience with misplaced confidence in my ability to teach and preach the Scriptures. Then my number was called for a preaching engagement. I was ready. I had done it before. Nothing new. With Greek text and commentaries spread around me, I entered the fray as I prepared a sermon series on Hebrews 11. What I wasnt prepared for was the small crisis awaiting me. As I studied, parsed verbs, and explored lexical threads, I realized that the sermons I was writing were primarily descriptive in nature. I was talking about Hebrews 11, providing lexical information on faith, and offering background material on various intertextual traditions. In effect, my sermons were learned (I tried) talks on Hebrews 11. They were not sermons crafted for the sake of an encounter with the living God. I felt stuck.

Im overstating the narrative a bit, Im sure. Even my younger self wanted sermons that were truly sermons and not lectures. But I do remember feeling troubled. I felt like I was struggling to put on a blazer that didnt fit right. Something was off. It was the living character of the biblical texts that escaped me. Or at the very least, I struggled to lean into this lived dynamic, the fuzzy line where teaching or description yields to preaching, theologizing, and arrestment. Of course, such an effect remains within the provenance of the Holy Spirits teaching office. Yet the posture, expectations, and (dreaded word) methods that one brings to Holy Scripture will either serve or obstruct Scriptures reason for existence.

I am writing this book with my younger self in mind. Im talking to him and students of all types who have some working knowledge of the historical-grammatical or historical-critical study of Scripture. I too had some exegetical tools at my disposal, and the target audience of this book is students, broadly conceived, who are not completely new to the scene of biblical studies. Yet, perhaps like me, they feel stuck. They are either searching for or in need of theological and hermeneutical instincts that will help them read and engage Holy Scripture as a living witness.

This book is not a be-all or end-all for this purpose. In fact, my primary, if not sole, focus is on reading the Old Testament. (As an aside: I remain on an exorcists quest to stamp out Marcions pestering presence in Christs church: Marcion, be gone!) Testament and trinitarian legacy of the early church would not exist without that interpretive impulse. All of this is to say that the scope of this book, with its focus on the Old Testament, is limited from a Christian canonical standpoint. Nevertheless the Old Testament is fertile soil for working out these Christian reading practices. Theological categories and instincts are requisite for engaging the Old Testaments theological subject matter. So this book should equip readers with a theological grammar and a set of interpretive instincts to aid in their reading of Scripture as an enduring canonical witness.