Putting the Truth to Work: The Theory and Practice of Biblical Application
Book Review • Daniel M. Doriani, Putting the Truth to Work: The Theory and Practice of Biblical Application (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), Kindle. 342 pp. $9.99.
Read time: 7 min
Introduction
Application is too often the forgotten stepchild of biblical exposition. By contrast, Daniel M. Doriani’s Putting the Truth to Work insists it is the heartbeat of faithful hermeneutics. What if application were treated not as a final step but as a unifying and guiding agenda in gospel proclamation? Such is the question the author eagerly takes up. Doriani serves as professor of biblical and systematic theology at Covenant Theological Seminary. With academic degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School and decades of experience training pastors and leading congregations, Doriani brings scholarly depth and pastoral realism to his treatment of biblical application. He calls for biblical teaching and preaching that forms character, promotes discernment, and moves God’s people toward Spirit-empowered obedience. In this review, I commend Doriani’s thorough work while also considering how his framework, though rich in principle, may sometimes fall short of fully leaning into the literary and redemptive textures of Scripture.
Summary
Putting the Truth to Work makes a compelling case for restoring application to its rightful place within the task of biblical interpretation. Doriani argues that “in an era of specialization, application falls through a crack separating exegesis, ethics, and homiletics” (viii). Rather than treating application as an optional appendix to exposition, he insists that it is intrinsic to faithful teaching and preaching, rooted in Scripture’s divine authority, and aimed at life transformation through grace. He draws on John Frame’s radical assertion that “the meaning of Scripture is its application,” in that knowledge of the truth is nothing if irrelevant for life (20).
The opening two chapters lay the theological groundwork for proper exegesis. Though application is the endgame, “skillful application rests upon skillful interpretation” (3). One must discover what a text means in its original context before applying it to today. Further, Doriani advocates for grace-based applications: “To be motivated by grace is to serve God through a love evoked by his prior love” (7). This point anchors application in gospel motivation rather than legalistic pressure. The interpreter, he argues, acts as a mediator—one who brings both the text’s message to the people and the questions of the people to the text (8).
In chapter three, Doriani likens the preacher to a “spiritual midwife,” skilled in both the word and the people, delivering spiritual truth with discernment (59). He explores how different genres of Scripture demand different modes of application. Regarding the preaching of narratives, for example, Doriani urges readers to recognize that the central character in every Bible story is God. For this reason, sermons should focus first on the redeeming work of God rather than human need (86). He warns that biblical narratives best show moral lessons rather than spelling them out. That is, expositors should infer ethical principles from narratival divine actions. He counterintuitively reminds readers that “few things are more practical than a good theory,” reinforcing the concept that correct theology should shape all of life (85).
Chapters four through six organize application around four foundational moral questions: “What should I do?” (i.e., duty), “Who should I be?” (i.e., character), “What goals should we pursue” (i.e., goals), and “How can we distinguish truth from error?” (i.e., discernment) (98). Doriani defines his terms carefully: “Duties are the moral obligations that provide structure for human relationships” (103); “Character is the distinguishing nature or essence of a person” (105); “Goals are the causes and aspirations that direct our choices” (110); and “Discernment is the insight, the understanding, the perception, to see things as they are from God’s perspective” (113). These questions drive valuable applications.
In his critique of law-based and therapeutic preaching, Doriani warns against distorted applications that imply that we retain God’s favor by law-keeping (101). Instead, he calls readers to view Scripture as redemptive speech that seeks to reconcile humanity to God and the blessings found in Christ. Overall, his work presents a practical vision of Christ-centered, genre-sensitive, and grace-saturated preaching—one that urges teachers and preachers to labor with doctrinal clarity and pastoral application.
Critical Evaluation
Stengths
Doriani’s Putting the Truth to Work is a thoughtful, theologically rich, and gospel-informed guide to making biblical applications. First, he successfully defines the problem that his book addresses the most: the neglect of application in modern biblical scholarship. He convincingly demonstrates how disciplinary divisions between exegesis, ethics, and homiletics have left a gap in pastoral practice, causing preachers either to avoid application altogether or to default to shallow moralism. His treatment of the four moral questions—duty, character, goals, and discernment—provides a helpful, multidimensional framework for faithful application. In the end, he offers not mainly a critique but a compelling vision for application as both theological reflection and pastoral care.
Second, Doriani constructs his method on sound theological foundations. He answers the ever-pressing question of biblical relevance by three foundational considerations: “exegesis, covenant, and grace” (3). His methodological link between exegesis and ethics strengthens the book’s credibility and usefulness. This link establishes why application is so essential to any teaching and preaching ministry.’ Doriani’s repeated emphasis on God’s covenant-keeping, redemptive initiative keeps the book firmly rooted in the gospel rather than moralism.
Third, Doriani enriches his thesis through helpful definitions. He builds his approach upon a triadic model: “The three principal elements in application are the text, the interpreter, and the audience” (8). This model ensures balance and contextual relevance, primarily as he advises that to exegete the congregation is to know its heart and status before God. “Application,” he argues, “articulates the significance, the implications, the relevance of biblical truth” (19). His definition of virtues as “moral skills or dispositions that suit people for life as a whole, not just obedience to a rule” bolsters his treatment of the character-forming aspect of application (107). By defining legalism as “the hope of attaining or retaining salvation by works,” Doriani safeguards application theology from inevitably falling into graceless moralism (127). In this line of thought, he introduces and defines casuistry as “the art of applying abstract moral principles to discover the correct course of action in concrete and—especially this—difficult ethical cases” (128). These definitions serve as anchors rooting the practice of application in gospel truth to guide hearers of the Word to move beyond mere rule-following toward transformed living.
Fourth, his taxonomy of seven modes of biblical application is a significant strength. Doriani contends, “Biblical texts instruct us seven ways: through rules, ideals, doctrines, redemptive acts in narratives, exemplary acts in narratives, biblical images, and songs and prayers” (82). This modal diversity protects preaching from monotony. He clarifies these modes, for instance: “Rules summon obedience to specific commands,” while “Ideals or principles guide a wide range of behavior without specifying particular deeds” (82–83). Expositors should plan to incorporate each of these modes into a balanced diet by which they nourish their congregations.
Weaknesses
Putting the Truth to Work also has a few potential weaknesses. First, while thorough and theologically informed, Doriani’s structure-driven model for application may sometimes become overly schematic, creating a system that risks overshadowing the redemptive narrative that undergirds all of Scripture. The seven sources of application his model outlines (i.e., “rules,” “ideals,” “doctrines,” etc.) may tend to treat these as discrete elements, potentially leading preachers to approach the text with a checklist rather than with a Spirit-directed lens. In the wrong hands, his emphasis on “duties” and ethical pathways runs the risk of inadvertently elevating hearers’ performance over God’s redemptive initiatives. When Doriani says that “people invite applications by asking four types of spiritual or ethical questions,” this framework, though exegetically useful, can read more like instructional “casuistry” than an encounter with God through the text (94). In the end, to avoid slipping into formulaic habits, Doriani’s readers will need to exercise Spirit-led caution when implementing his proposals.
A second potential weakness of Doriani’s approach centers on an insufficient integration of theology and application within each specific biblical text’s literary and theological flow. His interpretive process often requires importing application categories, which ostensibly risks imposing an external grid rather than allowing the application to emerge inductively from the unique passage itself. The danger is that application may become a separate homiletical step rather than the natural fruit of encountering the theology inherent in the text’s structure and voice. For instance, although well-explained, his approach to narrative application suggests a tendency to “focus on the redeeming work of God” while simultaneously drawing moral lessons from characters’ actions and potentially diluting the story’s literary shape in favor of broad ethical generalizations (295). His methodology gravitates toward extracting moral lessons that may flatten the unique theological textures of different texts. Taken together, these concerns suggest that while Doriani provides a valuable method for bridging Scripture and life, readers should not allow strategic application to overshadow the mind of the Spirit through unique biblical texts.
Conclusion
Putting the Truth to Work stands as a significant contribution to the field of biblical hermeneutics and homiletics. Doriani presents a theologically coherent, pastorally grounded framework that restores application to its rightful place in the interpretive process. At the same time, certain aspects of his method tend toward schematic rigidity, and his emphases on grace and pastoral wisdom temper some of these concerns.
This book has served me as a timely reminder that faithful preaching must do more than inform—it must form. Doriani’s applicatory processes offer practical handles for shaping lessons and sermons that both reflect Scripture’s theology and engage listeners’ real lives. Pastors, Bible teachers, and seminary students will find much to commend. However, those seeking a more narrative-integrated or inductive approach to application may need to supplement Doriani’s model with additional resources. Ultimately, Doriani reminds us that preaching is not merely about telling the truth but about putting the truth to work in lives shaped by God’s grace in Christ. ❖
Quote this Review
Footnote: Timothy J. Harris, “Putting the Truth to Work: The Theory and Practice of Biblical Application,” Practical Theologian, April 14, 2025, https://www.practicaltheologian.com/blog/bookreview-xh8z9.
Bibliography: Harris, Timothy J. “Putting the Truth to Work: The Theory and Practice of Biblical Application.” Practical Theologian, April 14, 2025. https://www.practicaltheologian.com/blog/bookreview-xh8z9.
