Salvation history is a theological history of God saving fallen humanity that includes creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. The Redemptive-Historical Method converts that view of biblical theology into a method of interpretation, which requires each text be interpreted through the hermeneutic grid of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.
Salvation History
D. A. Carson defines Salvation history as “the history of salvation — i.e., the history of events that focus on the salvation of human beings ... it is the account of what God has done, of the events and explanations he has brought about in order to save lost human beings.” Then Carson adds that “one might summarize salvation history in four words: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation ... That is the entire story, painted with the broadest brush.”[1] Carson numerous times equates “the history of redemption” with the “history of salvation.”
Salvation history is a way to view the history of the Bible as the history of God’s involvement to save fallen sinners. This view includes four major theological events in God’s Wore: creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.
A hermeneutical problem arises when salvation history becomes a method of interpreting the Bible. This is what the Redemptive-historical method does. The Redemptive-historical method takes creation, fall, redemption, and consummation as an added layer of hermeneutics on top of the historical-grammatical method.
The Redemptive-historical method of interpretation
Bryan Chapell helps us understand the Redemptive-Historic hermeneutic. In Scott M. Gibson’s and Matthew D. Kim’s Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views on Preaching Today, Chapell writes the chapter entitled Redemptive-Historic View.[2]
Chapell expresses the need to go beyond the text-driven method of the historical-grammatical approach: “Historico-grammatical exegesis requires a preacher to consider a text’s terms in their historical and literary context” but then Chapell adds that “the responsible theological interpretation requires an expositor to discern how a text’s ideas function in the wider redemptive context.”[3] So, if you have not gone beyond the historical-grammatical hermeneutic and adopted the redemptive-historic view of hermeneutics then you are not a responsible theologian. You are still an elementary preacher.[4]
Chapell further explains this step that goes beyond the historical-grammatical method: “The big story of Scripture moves through the stages of creation, fall, redemption, and final consummation—God made everything good, everything went bad, and, in God’s time, everything will be made perfect. But until that time, all human history subsequent to the fall (including our own history) unfolds within the context of God’s redemptive plan.” All texts are to be viewed through the hermeneutical grid of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. How does this view affect preaching: “The Bible is the revelation of that plan, and no scripture can be fully interpreted without considering that context.”[5] Consequently, once the preacher interprets a text in its context (historical) and with hermeneutical principles, such as each text has only one interpretation according to authorial intent (grammatical), once the historical-grammatical method provides that interpretation, then, according to the redemptive-historical method, that same text must be viewed through the “gospel glasses” of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation and another interpretation is given in addition to the historical-grammatical method.
For example, Chapell writes: “A sermon from Isaiah 40 that offers comfort to God’s people without mention of Christ’s coming plainly misses the future source of comfort the passage identifies in its context.”[6] God the Father is the focus of Isaiah 40, not Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 53, Christ’s substitutionary atonement is predicted, and Christ should be the focus. Christ is not the focus of all of Isaiah.
Another advocate of the redemptive-historical interpretation is Daniel M. Doriani. He writes of his method that “holds through creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.”[7] Dorinai agrees with Chapell that redemptive-historical interpretation goes beyond historical-grammatical hermeneutics: “This is not standard grammatical-historical interpretation, but it’s plausible redemptive-historical exegesis that goes beyond the sacred page.”[8] Dorinai provides the example of viewing the interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:8 through the grid of redemptive-historical interpretation. Deuteronomy 22:8 gives this safety requirement for houses with flat roofs: “When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on our house if someone falls from the roof.”[9] The redemptive-historical interpretation “gladly notices the law’s hints of God’s redeeming grace. The law’s concern to preserve life echoes the character of the life-giving, life-preserving Lord.”[10] Through this extra layer of interpretation a safety regulation has become an example of “God’s redeeming grace.”
Walter Kaiser who does not view Scripture through these gospel glasses sees the instruction in Deuteronomy 22:8 as “about making sure that there is a parapet or railing around a flat roof to avoid an accidental death or injury. We apply the same principles in our day when we put a fence around a backyard swimming pool, as well as banisters on staircases.”[11] This is truer to the authorial intent of Moses.
[1] D. A. Carson, What is Salvation History? at Crosswalk.com, September 7, 2018.
[2]Scott M. Gibson and Matthew D. Kim. Homiletics and Hermeneutics (p. 2). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[3] Ibid., 5.
[4] Ibid., 3.
[5] Ibid., 5.
[6] Ibid., 12.
[7] Daniel M. Doriani, “A Redemptive-Historical Model” in Four Views on Moving Beyond The Bible to Theology, eds. Stanley N. Gundry and Gary T. Meadows (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 91.
[8] Ibid., 92.
[9] Ibid., 105.
[10] Ibid., 106.
[11] Ibid., 123.