Understanding the Old Testament
Scriptures
Is it true that the Bible is like
any other book and as a result can be understood like any other book? While the
intention of this view is good, its claim is based on a presupposition that
simply cannot work. The Bible is a book but it is not the sort of book that is
like anything human beings encounter elsewhere in “book-experience.” The claim
suggests that human beings encounter and experience the Bible in exactly the
same way they do any other book. And that is simply not true. Christian
doctrine denies this top to bottom if one actually pays attention to Christian
doctrine about the Bible, about the nature of divine revelation, and about the
nature of human beings.
Understanding the Bible requires
faith.
“By faith we understand” says the
author of the book of Hebrews (11:3). “By faith” is a dative of means. In
other words, the means by which understanding is achieved is faith! Paul gives
Timothy wonderful encouragement when he writes to him, telling him that the Lord
will give him understanding in everything. (2 Tim. 2:7) John tells us that the
Son of God has given us understanding. (1 Jn. 5:20) As Helm puts it, Not to
understand is not to believe. One cannot understand and not believe.[1]
Jesus utters this truth in John 6:45: “Everyone who has heard and learned from
the Father comes to me.” Now, faith is not simply a degree of belief or
certainty in something. Faith is a gift of God. Without God gifting faith, man
is without it. Eph. 2:8-10 clearly teaches that faith is a gift. Men do not
possess it as a natural part of their faculties. Faith is not merely a cognitive
activity. It is much more than that. Critical reflection on faith does have a
positive side, though it cannot compensate for lost faith. The nature of
religion requires of theology its own epistemology.[2]
Understanding Christian doctrine requires the activity of a Christian mind.
Faith requires regeneration
How does one receive the gift of
faith? The answer is very simple according to Scripture: he must be born of
God. Only those who have been born of God are given the ability to believe. Jesus
was adamant in John 6:64-65 that only the Father could grant someone the
ability to believe. And no one is ever granted such ability in an unregenerate
condition. Otherwise, what exactly does it mean to be unregenerate? Faith then,
requires regeneration.
So then, the argument proceeds as
follows: if understanding, then faith, and if faith then regeneration,
therefore, if understanding, then regeneration. This is a hypothetical
syllogism. There are nineteen rules of inference for constructing formal proofs
of validity. This is one of the elementary valid argument forms. Since the
argument is valid, and the premises are true, one can conclude that the
argument is sound.
The NT claims that the OT truth
is hidden, it has been kept secret, it is a mystery.
Now to him who is able to
strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long
ages. (Rom. 16:25) Paul’s gospel is according to the revelation of the
mystery that was kept secret for a long period of time. How would such a thing
be possible if GHM were the silver bullet that dispensationalists claim. The
word secret here is straightforward: to keep something from becoming known. Jesus
told his disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the
kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” (Matt. 13:11) The
ability to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven must be given. Paul told
the Corinthians that the kind of wisdom they received as Christians was a
secret wisdom: But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which
God decreed before the ages for our glory. (1 Cor. 2:7) Even Christian wisdom
is a secret, hidden kind of wisdom. For this reason, we can take nothing for granted.
The implications for hermeneutics are significant. To ignore these passages is
at least an overly simple approach, almost naïve, on the one hand, and could be
considered a hasty neglect of obligation on the other.
Paul told the Ephesian believers
that God has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his
purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time,
to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph. 1:9-10)
BDAG defines it here as the unmanifested or private counsel of God,
(God’s) secret. Paul was given charge to bring to light for everyone this
mystery. (Eph. 3:9) What is the mystery? It is simply this: This mystery
is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers
of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Paul said that this mystery
was hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to the saints. (Col. 1:26)
In his paper on Progressive
Revelation, Dr. Henebury uses the analogy of following bear tracks only to
find a leopard at the end of the trail. Apparently, God plainly has promised a
physical kingdom to physical Israel unconditionally and that is what we should
expect. He says, concerning the Bible, “It should be read from front to back,
not in reverse.”[3]
It seems to me that this only begs the question. If it is the case that the
Bible is one book revealing God from front to back and back to front, why
should we need to read it in only one direction. Why is a chronological
approach superior to say, a thematic one or a theological one? We do no
experience a progressive revelation. What we experience is a completed
revelation. The truth is, the structure of the Bible as a whole, as we have it,
is purely the product of man. While I agree that it makes sense that letters
should be read from front to back given their genre, and some history too, it
seems to me that this rule is arbitrary at best. Imagine what would happen,
however, if we tried to make sense of Ezra using this logic. It wouldn’t work,
and it can lead to much confusion. Now, I realize Henebury means that the
earlier revelation is the building blocks of the later one. But even when we
build a house, we know that the foundation is not the goal. And when the house
is complete, the foundation, remaining ever important and vital to the
structure, nevertheless, remains out of sight to the inhabitants.
Dr. Henebury
states, “When we apply this basic theory to the Bible as the Word of God things
can start to become problematical, although they really shouldn’t! If we take
for granted that God as a Communicator: indeed, the Supreme Communicator, wants
to be
understood
by His creatures, then we can assume that He has said what He means to say in
such a way that human beings can understand.”[4]
However, we know that it really
isn’t this simple. Yes, the essential components of divine revelation are
clear. That the Bible is divine revelation is clear. But not all things
revealed in Scripture are equally clear. The starting point is how one views
Scripture. If Scripture is special revelation, then all bets are off where
natural communication concerned. There is a new element in interpreting divine
communication that is not present in any other form of communication:
supernatural regeneration. The GHM does not adequately account for regeneration
and faith in its model. Language is more than semantics, syntax, and linguistics.
GHM then does not address the necessary and sufficient conditions for
understanding divine communication. From the start, the work of exegesis and
goal of hermeneutics is a work of fides quarens intellectum, faith
seeking understanding. Kevin Vanhoozer writes, “Evangelical theology deals not
with disparate bits of ideas and information but with divine doings – with the
all-embracing cosmic drama that displays the entrances and exoduses of God.”[5]
The every individual pericope of the Bible must be understood within the
context of the whole Bible as one literary unit, one book, one revelation of
the one Triune God.
The sense of meaning is far more
complex than I have time for in this post. It is an aspect of communication that,
if overlooked, can create insurmountable barriers to understanding. Even in
natural communication, one has to consider the natural sense of meaning in
expressions versus a non-natural sense. That car is hot, said in a parking lot
of an amusement park in North Carolina in the month of August could mean
something very different than if it were uttered by someone sitting in front of
the television watching the spring auto show. The argument that says we should
take a sentence at face value only begs the question. It is an argument that
naively dismisses the complexities of human language. Moreover, to
take a sentence at face value isn't really saying much. A sentence is intended
by the author to do something. And the question is, what was
God intending to do when he promise Abraham that his offspring would be the
recipient of such blessings? Paul has told us as clearly as he could what God
intended. For some reason, the dispensational approach seems to not want to
listen.
I have argued that reading the
text of the Bible from the whole context of the Bible involves not only reading
the Bible in one direction, it involves reading the Bible in every possible
direction. This means reading it backwards as my good friend says. And reading
it backwards is just something he says he cannot do, as if reading the Bible in
that way is a violation of some rule, or perhaps, it could be somehow deemed
hermeneutically unethical. However, I have argued that the nature of the Bible actually
would merit such an approach and I have argued that this is precisely how the
NT writers intended to be understood. The way the NT writers used the OT was
both new and not new. But the newness of the manner in which they handled the
OT would indicate that it makes sense to start with the NT if I wanted to make
better sense of the Old. Can I understand the Old Testament without reading the
New? Of course I could understand some portions of the Old Testament without
reading the New. But that is not the point. The Old Testament was never
intended by God, its primary author, to be read in isolation from itself or
from the New Testament that was always to follow. To claim that it is
hermeneutically chaste to let the Old speak for itself apart from the New
ignores the divine purpose and plan for special revelation from the start. To
read the Old apart from the New is to read it out of context. The only way to
place the Old in its proper context is to place it in right relationship with
the New and to read it within its larger context as part of one message, one
revelation, one book.
Clearly, regeneration is required
in order to understand the Old Testament. Christ has to open the mind. True
knowledge of divine truth comes through revelation applies by faith in the illumined
mind. Grammar, syntax, linguistics are all necessary conditions for
understanding the covenants, the promises, and the prophecies of Scripture. But
they are not, in and of themselves sufficient. God must act supernaturally and
therefore, a biblical hermeneutic is one that involves not just the GHM, but
the GHM + something more. That something more is seen more clearly in how the
New interprets the Old. Not only do we have a glimpse into the Old in a much
brighter light, but also have a sense of method to go with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment