Abraham Kuruvilla

I actually ordered Abraham Kuruvilla’s book, Privilege the Text, in 2013 after reading a glowing recommendation for it in a preaching magazine I was given by a friend in the ministry. From cover to cover, Privilege the Text! offers 336 pages of robust teaching, primarily connecting the preacher from the text itself to its application with a faithful hermeneutic for preaching. Kuruvilla asserts his work will propose a “via media between the two extremes of systematization and atomization—a theological hermeneutic for the operation of moving from text to application” (24), which he attempts to do in four main chapters broken up in numerous sub-points. This book is far from an easy read, but I believe students will find a wealth of knowledge from Dr. Kuruvilla’s extensive work.

Biographical Sketch of the Author
Dr. Kuruvilla earned PhDs from both the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Aberdeen and is the associate professor of pastoral ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas, and also has his own medical practice. He also authored Text to Praxis and Mark: A Theological Commentary for Preachers and frequently posts at www.homiltex.com. With all of his works coming in widely acclaimed by academics from robust and diverse backgrounds, Dr. Kuruvilla clearly has earned a seat at the table in the field of exegesis and hermeneutics.

Summary of Contents
Privilege the Text! Is 336 pages of material broken up into an introduction, which includes four “précis” on the four chapters covering “General and Special Hermeneutics,” which is chapter one, “Pericopes, Theology, and Applications,” or chapter two, “Divine Demand and Faithful Obedience” in chapter three, and the final chapter on “The Aqedah and Christiconic,” before concluding with a summary and four afterwords, a bibliography, and a few indexes on subjects, sources, and Scriptures.

In chapter one, the reader will be introduced to two specific realms of hermeneutics; general and special. Each of the two realms is broken down in very, very specific subpoints which explain in great detail what makes up Biblically faithful general and special hermeneutics. As Kuruvilla does this, he is encouraging you to go deeper than the simple meaning of a Scripture, but to find how Scripture is read, studied, and applied in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is what the author calls “Centrality,” which is “the interpretation of canonical texts for application purposes upon the pre-eminent person of Christ and his redemptive work that fulfills the will of the Father in the power of the Spirit” (84).

Chapter two takes the reader along what Kuruvilla calls “pericopal theology,” or how we preach each unit of Scripture. As you read, you will discover the author does not believe modern preaching that calls itself expository is all that expository because many do not preach text, but merely to present truths in a doctrinal form. Instead, Kuruvilla asserts preachers should help their audience live out the Word of God by guiding them from the text to “praxis,” the “passage from pericope, through theology, to application” (149).

Chapter three continues exploring the application of which chapter two ended, by taking the reader to “what God, in every age, requires of his children in response to every part of Scripture, and every one of its pericopes” (150). This comes down to what Kuruvilla calls the “divine demand” and the responsibility of Christians to faithful obedience. Privilege the Text! offers a broad framework by looking at a few theological approaches to the Law such as Lutheran, reformed, dispensation, and the New Perspective on Paul. He is quick to note that while the Old Testament Law is meant to be obeyed and helpful for sanctification, it is “not criteria for salvation,” but fulfilled in Christ and through the Spirit’s help, Believers are to pursue the holiness of God (153).

Chapter four seeks to answer the question, “How do we preach Christ?” It really serves as an application for much of what he covered in chapter one on the rule of centrality mentioned before. After evaluating and critiquing what is commonly known as Christ-centered preaching, Kuruvilla offers an approach called “Christiconic Preaching,” which shows the various implications of Jesus’ life from the various pericopes of Scripture to help our listeners follow the divine demand covered extensively in chapter three to grow in Christ-likeness. He says, “Since only one Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, perfectly met all of God’s demands, being without sin, one may say that each pericope of the Bible is actually portraying a facet of Christlikeness.” Thus, if one studies with this in mind, one would seek to fulfill the divine demand by living like Christ.

Finally, Kuruvilla ends the book with an extensive conclusion and index to tie everything together. He begins with a summary of all of the chapters before offering an afterword in light of the histories of antiquity through our contemporary age. Before you come to the cursory acknowledgments, you will find an index of the subjects covered, ancient and modern sources, and Scriptures that were referenced throughout Privilege the Text!

Personal Interaction
Kuruvilla certainly put an extensive amount of work in writing Privilege the Text!, which is clear from the beginning and it never seems to drop off from the academic writing style all the way to the end. I think we have an author here that clearly wants preachers to succeed and for people to be saved and to grow in the likeness of Jesus, and for that, Dr. Kuruvilla at least deserves an audience of pastor-theologians looking to further hone their craft. It is clearly written, academically robust, and certainly, has the feel of a textbook.

Also, I was enthralled by how he explained Genesis 22 in the book, but only wish he had done that with others! Perhaps it would have made the book too long for the average pastor, but the step-by-step working through of the text offered me a new approach to my own studying. This alone places this book in the most accessible section of my library.

Further, his encouragement for Christiconic interpretation instead of Christocentric was intriguing to me and worth considering further, but I am not sure I am ready to let go of my redemptive-historical approach to preaching. I plan to go back to this section after our class to study it further and see what else I might be able to glean from or change from a better understanding therein. I do not find any reason a pastor-theologian should choose to argue with his approach to rightly handling the pericope of Scriptural texts. He might be a bit more specific than the reviewer, but I do not believe I can necessarily say there is a sharp disagreement here.

My most substantial disagreement with Privilege the Text! Was his response to the redemptive-historical approach to Scripture, particularly in his reply to another theologian’s belief that the purpose of the Old Testament was not merely moral lessons, “but to trace the word of God, the Savior of His people, whose redeeming presence among them reaches its climactic expression in Christ’s incarnation” (253). Kuruvilla believes to do so will not allow our hearers to know “what God wants of us, how God would have us live, and what it means to be Christlike” in our individual lives (253.). While the moral or Christlike implications and exhortations are important, I believe this is a gross over-simplification of the redemptive-historical approach of Scripture interpretation and preaching. If Scripture is God revealing Himself to us, we respond to things like His holiness by seeking to emulate His character in our daily lives. If preaches choose not to bear these things out from the pulpit, they do a disservice to the flock they are called to serve.

Conclusion
In conclusion, there are much more things to commend about Privilege the Text! than there are to criticize, so there is certainly some inherent value in simply weighing the positives and negatives about Kuruvilla’s work. However, it is undoubtedly a more academically directed with words that may send some pastors right to the dictionary. While that is not inherently a bad thing, the back cover alone may scare some readers away, which is, unfortunately. I spend a good amount of ink highlighting and underlining areas of the book for me to return to later, but I can honestly say I am thrilled to have read this book. Finally, while every book has strengths and weaknesses, I would love to have a follow up from Kuruvilla where he takes what he did with Genesis 22 to other styles of Scripture, such as the gospels or the minor prophets; I believe it would be a fascinating read. Therefore, I commend this book to any aspiring pastor theologian willing to take this book on with their Bible on the right and their dictionary on the left. I believe it will do a great service to their growth as preachers of the Word.… (mehr)