Simon Manchester’s third error – ‘System beats Text’:
Even more common than this manner-over-matter preaching is the system-beats-text preaching. This is the widespread danger of dragging every text through the grid of one doctrine that ignores the point of the original passage. For example, one overseas preacher seems to put every passage through the ‘justification by faith’ grid. He is clever and insightful and searching – you’re on the psychiatrist’s couch in no time! – but there is this sa/bad taste left in your mouth that the biblical book was in the service of an idea. ‘Bible-combing’ preaching also has its systematic strengths but often seems to neglect each biblical writer’s specific point in favour of the biblical overview. For example, if Jesus is teaching on people in prison (Matt 25:31-46), it is dangerous to start collecting ‘prison’ references and miss the point in the passage that Jesus will one day announce those who took his ‘brothers’ seriously. Much better to stay with the text in hand until the main point is clear.
My own view, for its worth, is that this is the single biggest problem in preaching in our ‘Reformed’ camp. I’ve often heard of it referred to as ‘the dreaded sack of knowledge’. The need to systematize everything just hinders us from seeing the point of each individual text. If God wanted us to have a systematics text book he would have given us one – but he didn’t, he gave us a story. We might find that certain doctrines would be better nuanced if we tried to avoid this trap even when we’re doing systematic theology. We need to preach the text, not our systems.
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