Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 13:2 (Fall 2022)
Article: Interview With Jim Shaddix
Author: Anonymous

STR 13:2 (Fall 2022) p. 81

Interview With Jim Shaddix

Jim Shaddix is the W. A. Criswell Chair of Expository Preaching and Professor of Preaching at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC. He is the author of The Passion-Driven Sermon (B&H, 2003) and Decisional Preaching (Rainer, 2018), and is the coauthor, with Jerry Vines, of Power in the Pulpit (Moody Press, 1999/2017) and Progress in the Pulpit (Moody Press, 2017).

There are several contexts that affect our exposition of the Scriptures: literary, historical, canonical/theological, and cultural. Why is each context important and helpful to the expositor?

In my estimation, one of the coolest things about God’s Word—and one of the greatest testimonies to its supernatural nature—is that God gave us his Book through a variety of natural and understandable means. He didn’t just write a book and drop it out of the sky or hide it under a rock. He didn’t choose to use a cosmic microphone and broadcast it from the heavens. He didn’t make his revelation a mystery that couldn’t be solved or a puzzle that couldn’t be put together. The Bible isn’t a celestial version of “Where’s Waldo” where God is sitting up in heaven being entertained by mankind’s vain attempts to find his intended meaning in the Scriptures. He spoke—and continues to speak—through language and literature known to normal people, through historical events that happened to normal people, through cultures familiar to normal people, all by the pen of normal people. He used all these elements and more to inspire a supernatural account of his self-revelation through Jesus Christ to mankind. For me, that speaks of the astounding credibility and integrity of the supernatural nature of the Bible.

Consequently, preachers and teachers who are serious about discovering, embracing, and exposing God’s intended meaning of the biblical text adopt what’s commonly known as the historical-grammatical-theological approach to Bible interpretation. Normally, this approach assumes the consideration of not just history and grammar, but also literary genre, cultural background, and both biblical and systematic theology, not the least aspect of which is the Christological relationship between the text and the larger canon of Scripture. Such an approach reduces the human subjectivity in the interpretation process to the greatest degree. We don’t just look at our favorite quality of God’s revelation,

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whether we be language geeks, literature lovers, history buffs, cultural analysts, or scholarly theologians. We consider all the elements God sovereignly chose to use in inspiring Scripture to reduce the risk of biased and limited interpretation of the Bible.