Upon reading the New Testament, it is quickly apparent to any careful reader that the apostles’ hermeneutic was anything but grammatical-historical. Does this mean that the apostles were lousy exegetes? Maybe. But before we dismiss the apostles for their supposedly arbitrary interpretation of the OT, it is important that we first examine our own modern assumptions in light of Scripture. If we fail to do so we run the risk of telling the Scriptures what to say and how to say it, rather than hearing the voice of God:
Apostolic hermeneutics was driven by a Spirit-initiated intimacy with the crucified and risen Christ. It was their [the apostles'] conviction that Christ was God’s deliverer–a conviction that can come only by God’s gift of illumination–as demonstrated in his crucifixion and resurrection, that drove the apostles to see all of the Old Testament as finding its culmination in Christ. The apostles did not arrive at the conclusion that Jesus is Lord from a dispassionate, objective reading of the Old Testament. Rather, they began with what they knew to be true–the historical death and resurrection of the Son of God–and on the basis of that fact reread their Scripture in a fresh way.
There is no question that such a thing can be counterintuitive for a more traditional evangelical doctrine of Scripture, since this is eisgesis (reading meaning into Scripture) rather than exegesis (getting meaning from Scripture). It is precisely a dispassionate, unbiased, objective reading that is normally considered to constitute valid reading. But what may be considered valid today cannot be the determining factor for understanding what the apostles did.
Another way of putting the problem is that apostolic hermeneutics violates what is considered to be a fundamental interpretive principle: don’t take things out of context. So, it is thought, we cannot have New Testament writers taking the Old Testament out of context. But we must learn to look at it differently. It is not that the Old Testament words are taken out of context and tossed into the air to fall where they may. Rather, the New Testament authors take the Old Testament out of one context, that of the original human author, and place it into another context, the one that represents the final goal to which Israel’s story has been moving.
- Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 152-53.
Tags: Biblical Theology, Eisogesis, Exegesis, Hermeneutics, Peter Enns
April 29, 2009 at 7:44 am
“Rather, the New Testament authors take the Old Testament out of one context, that of the original human author, and place it into another context, the one that represents the final goal to which Israel’s story has been moving.”
Very great quote. I’ve become more and more aware of just how important it is to situate the interpretive layer that one is referring to when discussing aspects of biblical interpretation. I think this is why at times I sound very higher-critical in my conclusions and at other times, I sound very traditional-conservative. It isn’t so much that I’m equivocating, but that I’m engaging the text at different levels of its meaning and in different spheres of inquiry which subscribe to different sets of criteria for defining meaning.
This quote is the epitome of what I’ve been trying to do – namely be sensitive to the original meaning(s) of the OT text (as it has been received and reworked prior to canonical stabilization) while also going beyond the academy’s interest in the history of ideas and into redemptive-history and the canonical context which is so beneficial there.
You’ve probably done it already, but make sure you get a chance to read the dialogue b/t Waltke and Enns in WTJ when you get a chance. I linked to it over on the RR. I love Waltke’s work, but I was *really* wowed by Enns’ clarity in this dialogue!
April 29, 2009 at 10:52 am
I think that Enns and Childs overlap on that point. That is, they both want to hear the OT’s per se voice and link the two testaments by their respective relation to a single subject matter, namely, Christ. I don’t think Childs would agree with Enns, however, that the NT authors were practicing pesher exegesis. Childs talks about how we are neither apostles nor prophets so there is a limit to our own application of the apostles’ hermeneutic, but the job of understanding all of Scripture as pointing and finding fulfillment in Christ (I like the term that Enns uses: “Christotelic”) is something we should all do.
I just read Waltke’s review. And I’m about to go read Enns’ response.
There is a greater sense of purpose, I think, in the way Childs views the shape/shaping of Scripture, which seems to be lacking in Enns. I would have liked it if Enns would have gone a step further in recognizing that the jagged edges and seams in Scripture function to reveal the intentional shaping of the Canon, rather than simply being accidents or mere reflections of a culture’s understanding of reality that we simply need to sort through. That’s just my opinion though. (I seem to be stuck on reading Enns through Childs–I need to snap out of it!)
April 30, 2009 at 9:37 am
That’s a good way of looking at it – jagged edges indicate canonical shaping. It doesn’t do away with the fact that they are, in fact, “jagged” (i.e., we don’t have to load the stuff full of intentional authorial story telling nuance a la Robert Alter) but it isn’t satisfied with the idea that the messiness points to nothing other than human error. Even if it is sloppy editing by a redactor, it still performs that canonical role of testifying to the organic nature of the text’s development. I’ve gotta reread some Enns again. Perhaps he’ll write another book along these same lines one day . . .