Something that’s been on my mind quite a bit has been the whole issue regarding the utilization of a strict grammatical-historical hermeneutic. Namely, ought we utilize a strict grammatical-historical hermeneutic at all times? Or should we seek other approaches as well, seeing that many times the New Testament writers did not follow such a hermeneutic. This is important since one’s hermeneutic is the lens through which Scripture is viewed. For instance, a strictly literal hermeneutic will render a Premillenial eschatology. Even Berkhof grants this. But Berkhof, for this reason does not join the Premillenial camp. On the other hand, a redemptive historical understanding of Scripture will produce a different view of Israel and its relation to the Church. The question is not whether a literal hermeneutic will constitute a separation between physical Israel and the Church, the question is, rather, whether a strictly grammatical-historical hermeneutic should be applied to Scripture through and through.
In regards to the apostolic usage of the Old Testament it is quite clear that they did not employ a strictly literal hermeneutic. Read through any book of the New Testament and this will become plain. And this is a fact that is, for the most part, accepted all around. Thus various solutions have been presented. Since those who follow a strict grammatical-historical hermeneutic will not utilize the apostles’ hermeneutic, their response might be that the apostles’ were inspired in their usage of the Old Testament. Still others, such as Richard Longnecker, recognize the utilization of a different hermeneutic, but do not think that we should seek to imitate.
The main question regarding this whole issue, which Dan McCartney poses is this: “If we do not get our hermeneutic from the apostles, then where do we get them?”
Here are some quotes from his article. (You can read the whole thing here):
Hence there is a sense in which we must emulate the exegetical practice of the New Testament writers. If we do not adopt the viewpoint of Jesus and the apostles that Christ’s death and resurrection is the key focus of the Old Testament, that Christ is himself the centerpiece of all God’s promises, that Christ is the true Israel, true Son of God, that the meaning of the biblical texts for the present-day people of God has to do with our relation to God in Christ, then how can our interpretation be deemed in any sense Christian?
Just as a good mystery writer knows the solution to the puzzle even as he lays out the material, so the Bible’s divine Author knew the end of the story before he set out the process of revealing the story in time. I vigorously and whole-heartedly believe that Jesus was absolutely correct when he told the disciples in Luke 24 that the Old Testament was about him, his death and resurrection, and the offer of the gospel to the nations. And from our post-resurrection perspective, we can see it. But I have difficulty in seeing how one can aver that an ordinary time-bound human, believer though he be, could have seen it prior to the event. Where, in a strictly grammatical-historically understood Old Testament, is the death and resurrection of Messiah? Jesus and Paul and Peter all say that Jesus’ death and resurrection is not just predicted but lies at the core of the meaning of the Old Testament, yet not a single Old Testament passage, when viewed strictly from its ostensive grammatical-historically determinable meaning, unambiguously states that the messiah will die and rise three days later. We can only see it after the fact. A genuine “first reading” of the story allows for a surprise element. Or as Paul calls it, a mystery which is now revealed.
If all one expects of an Old Testament text is to tell us something about Israel’s past, or on occasion what a prophet thought about the future, then grammatical-historical interpretation gives the appearance of working just fine. But if one expects, along with the apostles, Jesus, the Jews of the first century, and the Christians of all ages (even the Antiochenes) until the Enlightenment, that the Old Testament text speaks to what for its writers were future generations, and if one thinks that all the promises of God, not just those the New Testament specifically interprets, are yea and amen in Christ, one will be unsatisfied with grammatical-historical interpretation (unless one fudges).
The fact that controls are personal does not mean they are purely subjective. The New Testament writers were not doing grammatical-historical exegesis, but neither were their interpretations arbitrary. Neither, I hope, is what I advocate arbitrary. The real “control” for the apostles and for us comes from at least three directions:
1. An assumption of coherency of God’s story.
2. The conviction that Christ is the endpoint of the story.
3. The promise of the Holy Spirit’s involvement.
Vern Poythress also wrote an interesting article on the Divine meaning of Scripture, which can be found here. Here is his conclusion:
In conclusion, let us ask what implications we may draw concerning scholarly grammatical-historical exegesis. By grammatical-historical exegesis I mean an approach like approach (a), which self-consciously focuses on each biblical book as a product of a human author, in a particular historical setting. On the positive side, we have seen that grammatical-historical exegesis has an important illumining role. Several points can be mentioned.
(1) In writing the Bible God spoke to people in human language, in human situations, through human authors. God himself in the Bible indicates that we should pay attention to these human factors in order to understand what he is saying and doing.
(2) On a practical level, grammatical-historical exegesis serves to warn the church against being swallowed up by traditionalism, in which people merely read in a system of understanding which afterwards is read out. It alerts us to nuances in meaning that we otherwise overlook or even misread.
(3) It serves to sensitize us to the genuinely progressive character of revelation. God did not say everything all at once. We understand him better the more we appreciate the wisdom involved in the partial and preliminary character of what came earlier (Heb 1:1).
On the other hand, grammatical-historical exegesis is not all that there is to responsible biblical interpretation. Again, we can summarize the results in several points.
(1) If grammatical-historical exegesis pretends to pay attention to the human author alone, it distorts the nature of the human author’s intention. Whether or not they were perfectly self-conscious about it, the human authors intended that their words should be received as words of the Spirit.
(2) God’s meets us and speaks to us in power as we read the Bible. God’s power and presence must be taken into account from the beginning, just as we take into account all that characterizes a human author of any human text. We cannot, with perfect precision, analytically isolate God’s propositional content from his personal communion. To attempt to perform grammatical-historical exegesis by such an isolating procedure is impious.
(3) It is legitimate to explore the relations between what God says in all the parts of the Bible. When we perform such a synthesis, what we conclude may go beyond what we could derive from any one text in isolation. Yet it should not be in tension with the results of a narrow grammatical-historical exegesis. (Of course, sometimes because of the limitations of our knowledge we may find no way to resolve all tensions.)
(4) We are not to despise laypeople’s understanding of the Bible. We are not to reject it just because on the surface it appears to “read in” too much. Of course, laypeople may sometimes have overworked imaginations. But sometimes their conclusions may be the result of a synthesis of Bible knowledge due to the work of the Holy Spirit. Scholars cannot reject such a possibility without having achieved a profound synthetic and even practical knowledge of the Bible for themselves.
(5) When later human writers of Scripture interpret earlier parts of Scripture, they typically do so without making fine scholarly distinctions concerning the basis of their knowledge. Hence we ought not to require them to confine themselves to a narrow grammatical-historical exegesis. In many respects their interpretations may be similar to valid uses of Scripture by nonscholars today.
(6) God intends that the Bible’s words should be applied in people’s lives today. In complex personal, social and political situations, we may not always be sure what the correct applications are. But applications genuinely in accord with God’s word are part of God’s intention. Hence, in a broad sense, they are part of what God is saying to us through the Bible as a whole. God continues to speak today. When we read the Bible aware that it is God’s word, we understand that he is speaking to us now. We are constrained to obey, to rejoice in him, and to worship.