Christian Preaching on the Old Testament #7

[This is the seventh in a serialisation and slight revision of an old essay of mine, in the hope of getting some interaction from others and also making it more accessible. Funnily enough this section was judged by its one time marker as being totally pointless, but although perhaps it could use a rewrite I think the basic point it makes is hugely important. (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)]

The issue of authority

Kasier argues forcefully that Christians need the OT for ‘doctrine, ethics, practical living, and preaching.’[1]  Because the NT presupposes the OT many important subjects that the OT covers are not dealt with by the NT.  Both Bright and Goldingay suggest that the NT focus on explaining Christ from the OT was a response to 1^st C. Jews struggling to understand the Christ who had come, rather than an exposition of the OT as a whole.[2]  But even if this is the case the NT does not provide us with a clear method for appropriating the OT for Christian interpretation.  The NT, with the gospels presenting Jesus as teacher and exemplar and the epistles giving pastoral and theological instruction to the early church, is the sort of literature that lends itself well to being authoritative.  With regard to authorial intent, it is clearly written with its own authority in mind.  But the literary forms of the OT cannot carry authority in the same way.  In what way are we to understand that aphoristic wisdom literature, strange narratives of incest or rape, erotic poetry, or ancient sacrificial rites, have authority over Christians?[3]  Even the legal passages are written to religious and national circumstances which no longer exist.

Peterson suggests that ‘The inspiration, unity and authority of Scripture are practically demonstrated and pastorally experienced as these ancient texts are expounded in the light of God’s ultimate purpose for us in Christ.’[4]  If this is true then authority is not a static characteristic of the text so much as the result of an experience with that text.  Not only so but Schleiermacher’s approach to texts that divides understanding from application is no longer useful, instead an approach like Hans-Georg Gadamer’s makes sense:

In both legal and theological hermeneutics there is an essential tension between the fixed text - the law or the gospel - on the one hand and, on the other, the sense arrived at by applying it at the concrete moment of interpretation, either in judgement or in preaching.  A Law does not exist in order to be understood historically, but to be concretized in its legal validity by being interpreted.  Similarly, the gospel does not exist in order to be understood as a merely historical document, but to be taken in such a way that it exercises its saving effect…  Understanding here is always application.[5] 

For a text to have authority over us it must also apply to us.   Although Kaiser and Mathewson intend to save the OT from being flattened out to only say what the NT says their approach using the bridge paradigm instead flattens out the OT into being an analogical vehicle carrying abstract theological principles.  The  inherent probloem with this is that by not relating the text first to Jesus Christ, they negate any connection the text has with the Christian audience.  The contradiction arises because their theology of scripture as divinely inspired is divorced from their hermeneutic which exegetes the OT as a purely human creation, only attributing authority to the principles discovered therein.

The Principlizing Bridge, while providing a method for relating the OT to Christians does not provide the authority for doing so.  We could equally well use it to relate Gilgamesh, Beowulf or any other ancient text to our congregations.  The contemporary Christian is most likely not a Jew, the OT is not their history.  Their commitment is to Christ, who we worship, not a collection of old books gathered by men.  Only if Christ is to be found in those books can those books claim authority over the Christian.[6]  The only way the OT can have authority over Christians is if it is a source of truth about Christ.  In this sense we can also argue that the only way the OT can be found to be relevant to modern life is through Christ.  Kaiser and Mathewson are rightly concerned to let each text speak with its own voice rather than allowing all texts to be seen purely as illustrations of the interpreter’s own theology.  But is their expectation that the voice of each text will speak, in principle, to today’s Christians valid?

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[1] Kaiser, Preaching and teaching from the Old Testament, 40

[2] Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament,  204; Goldingay, Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation, 113

[3] Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament,  18

[4] Peterson, Christ and His People in the Book of Isaiah,  25

[5] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans Garrett Barden and John Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 309-10.  Cited in John W. Wright, Telling God’s Story, 28-29.

[6] In this way we do not worship Christ because we find him in the Bible but we read the Bible because in it we find Christ.  To not make this distinction is idolatry.

Christian Preaching on the Old Testament #6

[This is the sixth in a serialisation and slight revision of an old essay of mine, in the hope of getting some interaction from others and also making it more accessible. (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The issue of exegesis

Beale and Carson write that the NT authors make use of the OT in an ‘astonishing variety of ways.’[1]  They also suggest a key difference between 1^st century Jewish and 1^st century Christian exegesis is the use of a ‘salvation-historical grid’ which gives interpretive significance to chronology.[2]   From all four authors under consideration in this series there is a fierce desire to root interpretation in exegesis that is historical and grammatical, true to the original linguistic sense in the relevant historical context.  But mirroring the 1^st C. situation one group see Jesus Christ clearly portrayed in the OT scripture and the other do not. 

Common sense dictates that neither perfect objectivity nor presupposition-less exegesis is possible.[3] Knowing this I would suggest that the homiletician’s role is not to attempt an objective OT reading but a Christian one.  Greidanus argues that the early Christians ‘read [the OT] from the perspective of their risen Lord and found it filled with promises of Christ, types of Christ, references and allusions to Jesus Christ.’[4]  However, this is not to advocate a descent into subjectivism.  The science of exegesis, using historical grammatical tools can never be wholly objective because the significance and meaning of each historical context and each grammatical, semantic or syntactical feature must be interpreted by the exegete.  Given the same historical and grammatical information two different exegetes can still arrive at different interpretations of the same passage.[5]  Value judgements must be made time and again, each one is a risk which could take the exegete closer to or farther from the author’s intention.  However, as Bright argues, ‘one can very well see retrospectively in past events a deeper significance than was apparent at the time, and that without in the least attributing to the actors in those events insights that they did not have.’[6]  But are we moving here beyond exegesis into interpretation?  Fitzmyer provides a clue, ‘A Christian interpreter of the Old Testament should be able to agree with a Jewish interpreter of the Hebrew Scripture on the literal meaning of a given passage, even one mentioning [messiah], or one related to such a concept, before the Christian invokes his or her canonical meaning.’[7]  The key question here is what exactly are we exegeting?  Are we exegeting a discrete text authored by a discreet individual, or the Old Testament – a collection of scriptures gathered by the post-exile Jewish community, or the Christian Bible – a canon of scripture including both the Old and New Testaments?   This also impacts upon a desire to respect authorial intent as we may have to take into account not only the intent of the actual writer but also of those who compiled the canon.

Exegesis depends on the question you ask the text.  Arguably the most important question is that of context.  For Kasier and Mathewson the context of any OT scripture is the OT, for Goldsworthy and Greidanus it is the whole Canon, OT and NT.  Ideas of Canon are inextricably bound up with concepts of authority, for Canon simply means ‘rule.’[8]  The way in which we understand a text to be authoritative determines what we expect to find in it, and therefore the sort of questions we will ask the text in our exegesis.  Mathewson explains, ‘preachers need to begin with the end in mind when they set out to study an Old Testament narrative text… the basic goal of studying the text is to determine the author’s intent and to describe this intent in a single sentence.’[9]  Mathewson expects to find some principle that can then be applied to the modern world.  Goldsworthy sets a different goal, ‘whether the sermon was a faithful exposition of the way the text testifies to Christ.’[10]  He expects to find that the text is about Jesus Christ.

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[1] Beale and Carson, Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old testament, xxvi

[2] Beale and Carson, Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old testament, xxvi (They give examples of Galatians 3, Romans 4 and Hebrews 4:1-13 and 7.)

[3] Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament,  45-6

[4] Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament 184-185

[5] Thiselton, Thiselton on hermeneutics, 379

[6] Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament,  203

[7] Fitzmyer, The One Who is to Come, ix

[8] Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 17-18

[9] Mathewson, The art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative,  34

[10] Goldsworthy, Preaching The Whole Bible as Christian Scripture,  21

Christian Preaching of the Old Testament #5

[This is the fifth in a serialisation and slight revision of an old essay of mine, in the hope of getting some interaction from others and also making it more accessible. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4)]

Relating the Testaments

Kaiser is emphatic that ‘The Old Testament can stand on its own,’[1] and Mathewson, as we have seen, does not see the need to necessarily influence his OT interpretation with the NT.  I would argue that their approach to the OT stems form a prior commitment to the Bridge Paradigm.  Put another way, Christians do not need a special hermeneutic to preach on the OT because the principles within the OT are the same whether you are a Christian or not.  Goldsworthy’s understanding of revelation as progressive provides a different perspective, ‘not all texts stand in the same relationship to the contemporary believer as others.’ And, ‘in the process of progressive revelation Abraham knew more than Noah, Moses knew more than Abraham, David knew more than Moses, Ezekiel knew more than David, and Paul knew more than all of them.’[2]  While Kaiser argues that OT authors knew everything about the messiah except the date of his appearing.[3]  Greidanus writes, ‘the Old Testament by itself is like an incomplete painting.  The revelation in and of Christ in the New Testament completes this painting, and we must now see every part of the Old Testament in the light of the whole painting.’[4] 

To critically judge between the two positions I would argue that Kaiser and Mathewson overestimate the perspicuity of the OT in regards to Jesus Christ.  Scholarship has shown both that it is a considerable interpretive leap from the OT texts to 1^st Century messianic Judaism,[5] and a further leap from that messianic hope to who the Christ is revealed to be in Jesus.[6]  Progressive revelation provides us with a model that can account for those leaps but progressive revelation also means that if we believe the NT is true we cannot get a true interpretation (i.e. "what it means" rather than "what it meant") of the OT without reference to the NT.  On the other hand, Kaiser's use of the Genesis 12:1-3 promise-plan as the interpretive key[7] results in a flat revelation incapable of accounting for the interpretive leaps that historical Christianity found necessary to make in comprehending that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Christ.[8]

Kaiser is right to say that ‘It is reductionistic to level out the Bible to say only what the New Testament has said!’[9]  Indeed if all the OT exists for is background to the NT we could probably dispense with it in our preaching.  However, neither Goldsworthy nor Greidanus are answerable to this charge.  They are both concerned that the revelation of the OT is essential to a full understanding of Christian truth.[10]  The crux of this debate is the respective authors’ understanding of the NT authors’ use of the OT.  As evangelicals they rightly desire to follow Jesus’ and the Apostles' example.  However, this in turn relies on their exegesis of the NT texts.  So the question of exegesis becomes vital not only for an objective reading of the OT but also for a correct Christian understanding of how Christians should interpret that meaning for their own situation.

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[1] Kaiser, Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament,  27

[2] Goldsworthy, Preaching The Whole Bible as Christian Scripture,   73-4

[3] Kaiser, Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament,  41

[4] Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament 52

[5] see Joachim Becker, Messianic Expectation in the Old Testament, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980)

[6] See Fitzmyer, The One Who is to Come, and Juel, Messianic Exegesis

[7] Kaiser, Preaching and teaching from the Old Testament,  30-34

[8] See N.T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God, 40-43

[9] Kaiser, Preaching and teaching from the Old Testament,  2

[10] Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 25; Goldsworthy, Preaching The Whole Bible as Christian Scripture,  34