Proclaimer Blog
Must there be a Big Idea?
Along with many others seeking to train in expository bible ministry, we at the PT Cornhill Training Course make “the Big Idea” one of the key pillars of our training strategy. For every bible passage, we ask our students to work hard to express the one central truth of the passage in a clear and concise sentence. If you come across one of our students on a bad day, you may well find them tearing their hair out trying to find the wretched Big Idea!
But are we right? OK, so it’s often a helpful exercise trying to find a Big Idea; but what if there isn’t one? Must there be a Big Idea for every bible passage? Or, to put it another way, is the whole “Big Idea” thing an arbitrary creation of Cornhill and other like-minded training methods?
It’s a fair question and a good one. What lies behind it is the whole business of coherence. If you, as a sane and rational person, say something to me, I will generally make the assumptions, first that you intend to say something coherent to me (rather than whimsical or random “Alice in Wonderland” speech) and that you succeed, at least approximately, in saying something coherent. Suppose I have had a ten minute ‘phone call with you, after which a mutual friend asks me what you said. She is not asking or expecting me to repeat what you said verbatim; what she wants is the main content of what you said, put more briefly (“I got the job,” “I have been promoted,” “She said yes” or whatever it may be). If this is so with fallible human beings, how much more ought we to make the assumption that God intends, and succeeds in conveying, a coherent message in his word. In which case I may reasonably expect to be able to find the main point of what he says.
We must be sensible about this. It does depend on wise divisions of passages in a bible book; some divisions fit better than others with the underlying structure. And some passages may have a tighter Big Idea than others. But it is a reasonable assumption that God is not making random disconnected statements, but rather speaking with coherence. That’s what the Big Idea idea is about.