Does our preaching reveal an Over-realised Christology?

Just recently I heard my minister again refer to people who inadvertently hold to an over-realised eschatology. He made the point that this belief can often be seen in the view taken of the resurrection when preached at funerals. It seems that too often our beliefs are revealed when our humanness is laid bare.
It got me thinking that perhaps an over-realised eschatology is only a symptom of an over-realised Christology.
Now we need to tread carefully here. I am not at all minimizing or downplaying the significance and centrality of Christ. After all, 1 Peter 3 tells us to set apart Christ as Lord in every activity, whether it be in our thoughts or our speech or our behaviour. So let's carefully define the concept.
An over-realised eschatology is one where people think and believe that all the benefits and realities of heaven we have now. For example since there's no sin in heaven I am sinless now. But of course that is so obviously false. I may have positional righteousness before God now by being in Christ, but I do not have practical righteousness and that is made abundantly clear by Scripture itself, in all the commands and exhortations found throughout the New Testament.
Likewise, an over-realised Christology is one where Christ's death and resurrection are made all there is to happen in regard to Christ's work - with sometimes the added phrase that "all we do now is await the second coming." In the vernacular, it says it's all done and dusted, nothing awaits us except the return of Christ and then heaven.
But when we put it that way we start to see the inadequacy of that approach or belief or hermeneutic. Biblically we quickly get into hot water, one cannot have a over-realised Christology if only half of the prophecies regarding the Messiah have come to fulfilment so far. That itself would be a denial of the veracity of God, the God who does indeed keep His Promises.
So how does this belief work itself out in practice? Well the sermons of many Preachers today seem to assume this over-realised Christology.
It's seen when Preachers take a passage of the Word of God and see the application as a call to proclamation, to going and declaring to all people "the Gospel" namely of the death and resurrection of Jesus, totally ignoring what the point of the passage is actually about. I have witnessed Preachers do this, both Anglican brothers and Baptists and it leaves me bewildered. Jesus' ministry did not stop at his death and resurrection. He told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit. There is a progression to His Ministry, His work is ongoing. This is what the book of Acts lays out for us. To imply the Gospel is all there is, is to ignore Jesus' own words and the teachings of the New Testament.
I am certain some would not deny this truth, - that there is indeed more to come in the Plan of God. The problem is that the focus of their preaching actually teaches the opposite. It misguides their hearers and leaves the hearer taking on board an over-realised Christology. To call the hearer to repent and turn to Jesus, or to rejoice in the Gospel at that point when the passage before them doesn't teach this is to not "preach the whole council of God". We must remember that 'The Plan of God' is not some reductionistic gospel!
It is pretty difficult to put the focus on the Gospel message as such when preaching on the qualifications of an elder from 1 Timothy. That however is not to deny one can call upon their unbelieving listeners to repent and believe the gospel, for we need only remind them that one cannot exhibit that kind of character and behaviour without having been transformed by God when one turns to Jesus and becomes a disciple because of His death and Resurrection.  But that is quite different to ending a sermon on such a passage by referring to the Gospel or giving the impression that this is the meaning and application of the passage.


Is this over-realised Christology what motivates people when preaching from the Old Testament to quickly jump into the New Testament without having first explained how the original hearers would have understood it and applied it? Too often preaching the Old Testament is really preaching the New under the title of the Old Testament so we might assuage ourselves as having preached to our congregations both the Old and New Testament. Are we really only giving lip service to the Old Testament? the Scripture that Jesus loved.


Let's carefully expound the Scriptures, the whole Plan of God and not merely succumb to some overarching phrase we call "the Gospel."


In Christ,
Gary

Old Testament Hebrew Poetry, passion and meaning

I recently had a discussion with a friend after church about the meaning of Isaiah 65:17-25 and asked why he took this passage symbolically, and one of his statements was "all of the Old Testament is poetry". Now I can forgive a friend in the midst of a free flowing discussion to use generalities in the heat of the moment, after all, I have at times done this myself. Perhaps he was doing so to draw my attention to something he considered extremely important to deal with. Indeed it has been discussed in the commentaries that about half of the Old Testament is poetry, however to state that fact as many are prone to do doesn't address the point that the text has meaning and it is to some extent understood by the Jews. For the reader of the Old Testament and for the exegete, hermeneutics in relation to Hebrew poetry needs to be carefully addressed.

In this regard the book Biblical Hermeneutics by Milton Terry is extremely helpful as is the thesis by G Buchannan Gray 'Forms of Hebrew Poetry'. Hodder and Stroughton - London MCMXV.

Let me draw attention to what I consider extremely significant in the discussion about Biblical poetry.

Hebrew Poetry is not of the form of Western poetry.
What must first be stated about Hebrew poetry is that is is not of the same character as we find in the West, It does not have the distinguishing mark of word rhyme. Sadly much of Church history has lacked any in depth analysis of Hebrew Poetry. Gray is not wide of the mark when he declares there has been little agreement and little in the way of decisive conclusions regarding this subject. At least the two above authors remedy this to a large extent.
Early on, Origen pointed out that Hebrew meter was measured by the number of accented syllables. Philo likewise stated that Moses was taught rhyme, harmony and meter and yet clarification of these in regard to the Old Testament itself, was lacking. Nowhere did he refer to actual poems attributed to Moses in the Penteteuch as being metrical.
Josephus in speaking of meter at least referred to Biblical passages such as Exodus 15:2, Deut 32.
Speaking of Josephus, Gray points to how one's cultural predisposition effects how you approach a matter pointing out that Josephus was drawn to highlight meter because it was prevalent in Greek poetry, and yet he doesn't think of commenting on parallelism because that "feature" wasn't present in Greek poetry! (Gray pg 17).
Parallelism.
This focus on meter at the expense of ignoring parallelism results in a severe crippling of the early discussions on Hebrew poetry.

Later discussions, particularly by Lowth began to rectify this. What Gray and Milton do is help us to better grasp the nature of Hebrew poetry pointing out that parallelism is the significant mark to consider. Others have acknowledged that Hebrew poetry lacks the formal rules of Greek, Arabic and English poetry so we in the West need to carefully take this into account when determining verses to be poetry and determining its corresponding meaning.

Even today Gray says

I have no new theory of Hebrew metre to set forth; and I cannot accept in all its details any theory that others have elaborated. In my judgment some understanding of the laws of Hebrew rhythm has been gained; but much still remains uncertain. and both of these facts need to be constantly borne in mind in determining the text or interpreting the contents of Hebrew poetry.

( intro pg vi )
Passion:
Yet there is one other mark of Hebrew poetry that is also ignored and many preachers are yet to see the significance of it.
Milton Terry alludes to it when he says

untrammeled by metrical limitations, the Hebrew poet enjoyed a peculiar freedom, and could utter the moving sentiments of passion in a great variety of forms" Terry pg 92.

Another author makes the same point,

Authors wrote as they felt and because they felt, and their strong emotions dictated the forms their words took"

and it's this that adds to the distinction of Hebrew poetry compared to that of the West and Greek and English forms. One must understand the nature of the Hebrew to feel the impact of his form of poetry.

So reflect on this, the Hebrew author at times showed forth a passion that is reflected in the form of his writing.

Our question is does such passion make the text uninspired? No!
Does the form of Hebrew poetry that reflects the authors passion deter the meaning of the text? No
Does it mean that the authors at that point are not inspired? No! Since our Scriptures tell us that the authors of the Scriptures wrote as God moved them with the inference they wrote exactly what God wanted.

Just some reflections
In Christ
Gary