"Just Words" - Book review

 

Preus, J. A. O. Just Words, Understanding the Fullness of the Gospel.

             Saint Louis: Concordia, 2000.

 

 

            I appreciate Dr. Preus’ work especially because of his treating of metaphor and its variety in the Bible. Daily life in ministry can be overwhelming when one has to preach every week. The search for refreshing ways of preaching the Gospel can be tiring. However, when one recognizes the value and the richness of what is found in the Words of Scripture things can change.

            Preus’ declared purpose as he wrote the book is: “The purpose of this book is to hold before God’s people the fullness of the biblical witness to the Gospel so the Scriptures may truly be fount and source not only to faith and life, but also of the language to glorify Christ and to serve His people.” (11). He wants to deliver preachers and Christians in general from the “flatness” of repeating the same old ways of saying things by sending them back into the Scripture to rediscover its richness of language. He says: “Christians often get the idea that to make the Gospel more palatable or exciting we must create new categories, new forms of language, new images that better reflect what's happening in the world. These new categories, insofar as they accurately reflect what Scripture says about God's saving action in Christ, may help to make the Gospel more intelligible. Yet the primary task is not to come up with new ways to say the Gospel, but to return to and revitalize the old ways to say it.” (Chapter 2)

            Preus’ book contains three major sections. The first reflects on the rich content of metaphors that God has used to communicate His Gospel to the World. In the second section, Preus utilizes six categories of metaphors:  Creation (birth, life, salvation, light, bread, water), commerce (ransom, redemption, property, forgiveness/remission), law (justification, intercession, adoption, inheritance), personal relations (reconciliation, peace, forgiveness, marriage), sacrifice (expiation/priestly mediation, sacrificial lamb, hallowing cleansing), and deliverance (salvation, liberation, victory). They are each concisely treated in light of their biblical significance and theological relevance.  The list is not exhaustive but illustrative of the rich imagery in which the Bible is written. The last part of it contains encouragement to work with this rich arsenal of biblical metaphors for preaching, evangelism and dialogue.

            I like Preus’s analogy of the two natures in Christ to illustrate how the Word of God is fully divine and fully human. The Gospel is divine, for it conveys God’s own words to His people. But it is also human, because it is historical, written by human beings utilizing human language. As with Law and Gospel managing these two categories well is fundamental in the preaching and sharing of the Word.

            Also very helpful is the way the author comments on the use of justification and ways in which it can become flat, deprived of its richness. Justification is one of the metaphors we use to talk about salvation we have in Christ, but it is not the only one. Over time however, this metaphor became metonymic, that is, the part became the whole. We talk about justification as if it was the only way to talk about it, while there are many other ways in which Christ’s work on the Cross for the World is way richer.

            “God is not a metaphor; he is very real” (Chapter 2). However, the Bible conveys metaphors to point to the One who is real and deals with the World through Words. This is why it is so important to explore the use of linguistic resources in the Bible so that in one hand we explore them in the best way possible, and at the same time we hold up the truth of the Gospel that the Bible is not only figurative language. It talks about the reality of faith in Christ and its effects on our daily life.

            My ministry has been marked by the binomial illustration + application. In different settings of my ministry, including radio, TV and video preaching, illustrative language was a core asset to convey the Gospel. Preus’ book re sends me into the Bible to explore the richness of illustrative language God himself has used to apply the Gospel to people’s ears.