Here’s a quote from Barth on reading the Old Testament with a view to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Lord of time–past, present, and future:
. . . If there is a spiritual presence of Jesus the distance of Israel’s time on the regressive line of time makes no difference to the fact that its history was His pre-history, and that He was in it before He was, i.e., before this history reached its consummation, so that when He came, it was not only possible but necessary to recognize Him in this pre-history and its record. If His time is the real divine centre of all time, are we not forced to see it as the time which embraces and controls all time before and after Him? Consider the decisive place occupied by the Old Testament in the early Christian liturgy. Consider the ease with which the Church accepted the Canon of the Synagogue. Above all consider the degree to which the New Testament is impregnated with the Old. Such phenomena cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on secondary motives, or from accidents of history. We have here an intrinsic necessity of the highest order, an insight which the later Church may have done much to obscure, and which may even strike us as strange, but which for the apostles and their communities was a self-evident truth. They were forced to accept it because they knew from the very outset that the man Jesus was the fulfilment of the prophetic history of Israel, that its history was the beginning of His, and that its record in the Old Testament was the record of Him. The only way to Him was by reading, understanding and expounding Moses and the prophets, and therefore hearing His Word as the fulfilled and final Word of God, but the Word already proclaimed and attested. . . .
(CD, III.2 p 483.)
Elsewhere in his dogmatics, Barth makes the point that seeing Christ as the telos of the Old Testament is not merely a matter of scientific exegesis (i.e., simply quoting a handful of explicitly messianic proof-texts), but a matter of faith. It is to believe that Christ’s person and work was and is, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15, “according to the Scriptures”.
Filed under: Church History, Eschatology, Hermeneutics, Karl Barth, Quotes , Chistology, Church Dogmatics, Hermeneutics, Karl Barth
Here’s a nice quote from Barth on the Church’s relationship to “holy places” (i.e., Israel, the temple, tabernacle, etc.):
[. . .] Special places can no longer exist in this sense. If Christianity, for its part, tries to proclaim and accept holy places in this sense, it will mean always a relapse into Judaism, or more correctly, into a pagan self-misunderstanding of Judaism, or even ore accurately, a rejection of the true Judaism of Solomon and Jeremiah. Theologically, then, we cannot expect anything for the Jews from a return to Palestine as the holy land; and recent propaganda for the gathering of all Christian Jew to Palestine as the place of the promise which avails for all who are baptised out of Israel involves a twofold error. Now that Israel’s Messiah has appeared, and has been rejected by Israel, and manifested as the Saviour of believers from both Jews and Gentiles, there does not exist any more a holy mountain or holy city or holy land which can be marked on a map. The reason is not that God’s holiness in space has suddenly become unworthy of Him or has changed into a heathen ubiquity. The reason is that all prophecy is now fulfilled in Jesus, and God’s holiness in space, like all God’s holiness, is now called and is Jesus of Nazareth. This holiness is certainly to be encountered in the created space that can be represented on maps. But in this space it only where Jesus Himself, having entered heaven (in fulfilment of the entering of the high priest into the tabernacle, Heb. 9.24), is now present in the world from heaven and therefore from the throne of God in such a way that He calls and quickens men to faith in Him by His Word and His Spirit, and therefore calls and quickens them for worship in spirit and truth desired by the Father. In Him is Sinai and Zion, Bethel and Jerusalem.
(CD, II.1 p 482)
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Eschatology, Karl Barth, Quotes, Word and Sacraments , Eschatology, Dispensationalism, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Promised Land
Here’s Childs on one theological/hermeneutical implication of understanding the book of Daniel in its canonical context. It’s interesting to note that despite Childs’ less-than-conservative view of the authorship of Daniel, his reading of the text seems to be more faithful and certainly more sober than the interpretation of many conservatives who try to get under Daniel’s message to see what’s ‘really going on’:
The danger of misunderstanding the apocalyptic vision has been present from the beginning. The curious human mind has often sought to know ‘when shall these things be’ (12.6; cf. Matt. 24.3) in terms of a human timetable. However, the biblical writers pointed to the end of the world in order to call forth a faithful testimony from the people of God. They sought to evoke a commitment ‘even unto death’. The manner in which the book was shaped in the canonical process provides a critical check against the perennial danger of politicizing and trivializing its message. Unfortunately, the history of exegesis–both Jewish and Christian–offers a sobering record of the frequency with which the prophetic vision has been transformed into a mathematical game, or the call of faith converted into an esoteric mysticism which repudiated the agony accompanying the birth of God’s kingdom.
- Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), 622.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Eschatology, Quotes , Biblical Theology, Brevard, Brevard S. Childs, Can, Canonical Approach, Daniel
. . . the name Christ receives its content, not from a previously fixed Jewish concept of the Messiah, but rather from the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Never does Paul use the term as a predicate: Jesus is the Christ. For Paul the title ‘Christ’ has become virtually a proper name. Of course, this does not mean for a moment that Paul has forgotten the origin of the name. Even his custom of shifting the order to Christ Jesus reminds of its origin. But the term has become thoroughly christianized. Paul comes to the title from his encounter with the risen Christ; he did not start from an Old Testament, Jewish tradition. Rather, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s decisive eschatological event which set him free from the ‘law of sin and death’ (Rom. 8.2). Jesus Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10.4) which cuts off absolutely all of Jewish striving for righteousness based on works (Rom. 9.31). Even in those passages in which an original messianic connotation may still shine through (II Cor. 5.10; Eph. 1.10), a grasp of its original Jewish context is never necessary for its understanding (Dahl, ‘Messiahship’, 29). Paul’s understanding of Christ is further confirmed by the lack of his use of Old Testament prooftexts for the messiahship of Jesus. His christological prooftexts focus rather on the eschatological rule of Christ (Pss. 110.1; 8.7 ET 6). In contrast, the Old Testament serves Paul as a soteriological warrant for the ‘righteousness of God’ (Gal. 1.10ff.; Rom. 4.1ff.), and for the inclusion of the Gentiles (Rom. 15.9-12; cf. Vielhauer, ‘Paulus und das Alte Testament’, 42f.).
- Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis, MN: First Fortress Press, 1992), 457.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Eschatology, Quotes , Biblical Theology, Brevard S. Childs, Pauline Theology
February 28, 2009 • 9:48 pm
. . . Paul comes to the Jewish scriptures from the gospel. Scripture has become for him a testimony to this gospel because of its content. The event of Christ has provided him with a radically new starting point. Jesus Christ, who is the confirmation of the divine promise, is its centre rather than the torah. Paul did not exchange one God for another, rather he received a new revelation concerning God from the selfsame God of the scriptures. The gospel has been revealed by the Law and the prophets (Rom. 3.21), and this is what God has always been about.
However, to confirm that Paul comes to the scriptures from the perspective of Christ and that he did not derive his theology from an interpretation of the Old Testament can be easily misunderstood unless this statement is set within Paul’s hermeneutic of interpretation. U. Lus (Geschichtsverständnis, 90) is fully correct when he insists that Paul throughout his letters is seeking to offer a real interpretation of biblical texts. He is not offering an esoteric reading, a Gnostic construct, or a private rumination, but an interpretation of scripture which will convince his hearers, even opponents. Often it has been suggested that Paul is not even attempting to hear his biblical text, but he is drawing out only that which he had previously inserted. Paul’s interpretation is eisegesis, not exegesis! Such a caricature fails utterly to grasp that for Paul scripture (text) and reality belong together. One cannot understand scripture apart from the reality of which it speaks, namely Christ. Conversely, one cannot grasp this reality apart from scripture, whether by a direct appeal to the Spirit, or by some mystical experience. For a modern biblical critic it is axiomatic that genuine exegesis depends on recovering a text’s true historical context. For Paul genuine interpretation depends on its bearing witness to its true subject matter, who is Christ. In this sense, Paul is not interested in the Old Testament ‘for its own sake’, if what is understood thereby is the biblical text separated from its true christological referent. That Paul is not following modern exegetical rules is clear, but this acknowledgment is far from saying that he is wilful, inconsistent, or irrational. A characteristic feature of Paul’s interpretation of the Old Testament is his consistent referring of the biblical text to the present (Gegenwartsbezug). Because God acted in Jesus Christ, the reality revealed in the gospel is not something of the past, but a fully present word of grace. Paul is fully aware of a temporal differential between the past and the present. He knows that the gospel was promised ‘beforehand’ (Rom. 1.2; Gal. 3.8). Yet Paul is neither an existentialist nor a philosopher of history. He also does not deal with the relation of the past to the present in terms of a historical sequence spanning prophecy and fulfilment. Rather for Paul scripture has a voice which speaks. It is a living word which confronts its hearers now. It can speak invitingly to all the world (Rom. 10.18), from the heavens (10.18f.), or in direct accusations (3.4).
- Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis, MN: First Fortress Press, 1992), 240-41.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Eschatology, Quotes , Biblical Theology, Brevard S. Childs, Dispensationalism, Eisegesis, Exegesis, Hermeneutics, Pauline Theology
February 17, 2009 • 2:07 pm
God’s promises are not predictions or prognostications that cease to have relevance once they have come true. In that case part of the Old Testament would only be of historical significance to us! The church of Christ sees the coming of God to his people described in all of the Old Testament, and hears in it the announcement of salvation. Therefore the church still loves the Old Testament as the Word of God, just as it was the book of life and the book of prayer to the Son of Man. Passages from the Psalms became words from the cross. Jesus said of the Scriptures of the Old Testament: “They are they which testify of me” (John 5:39). “To him give all the prophets witness” (Acts 10:43). It says in the gospel “that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning [him]” (Luke 24:44). We must keep in mind that when God’s promises become true, this does not necessarily mean that they have been completely fulfilled. The Old Testament promises of salvation open mighty perspectives pertaining to consummation and God’s eternal kingdom. It says that “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9). This is not yet the case. We can indeed see more of it that could those who first heard the words of this prophecy. At one time the knowledge of the God of the covenant remained practically limited to a single nation, while today the Word of God reaches around the globe. But the full realization of these promises remains outstanding. Their realization in the new dispensation will be superseded by their ultimate fulfillment in the coming kingdom of God.
- J. van Genderen, W. H. Velema, Concise Reformed Dogmatics trans. Gerrits Bilkes and Ed M. van der Maas (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2008), 67.
Filed under: Church History, Ecclesiology, Eschatology, Quotes, Reformed Theology , Biblical Theology, Concise Reformed Dogmatics, Ecclesiology, Eschatology, Hermeneutics, J. van Genderen, W. H. Velema
February 10, 2009 • 7:00 pm
We may say that authorial intentions of Old Testament writers were not as comprehensive as the simultaneous divine intentions, which become progressively unpacked as the history of revelation progresses until they reach climax in Christ. The Old Testament writers prophesied events to occur not only distant in time from them but in another world, a new world, which Jesus inaugurated. These writers are comparable in a sense to people in a spaceship above the earth. They can see only the earth and its different shading, representing clouds, seas and land masses. When, however, they see magnified pictures of the earth from satellite cameras, they are able to make out mountains, rivers, forests, cities, buildings, houses and people. Both the distant and close-up views are ‘literal’. The close-up picture reveals details that someone with a distant view could never have guessed were there. The close-up even ‘looks’ like a different reality from the distant. Nevertheless, both are ‘literal’ depictions of what is actually there. Similarly, the literal picture of Old Testament prophecy is magnified by the lens of New Testament progressive revelation, which enlarges the details of fulfilment in the beginning new world that will be completed at Christ’s last advent.
With this illustration in mind, our contention is that Christ not only fulfils all that the Old Testament temple and its prophecies represent, but that he is the unpacked meaning for which the temple existed all along. His establishment of the temple at his first coming is a magnified view of the new creational temple, and Revelation 21 is the most ultimate highly magnified picture we will have this side of the consummated new cosmos. Like the distant and close-up photographs, such a view of the temple should not be misconceived as diminishing a literal fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies.
- G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 379.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Eschatology, Quotes, Reformed Theology , Amillennialism, Biblical Theology, Covenant Theology, Dispensationalism, Eschatology, G. K. Beale, Hermeneutics, Prophetic Idiom, Revelation 21, The Temple
February 9, 2009 • 8:59 pm
As is clear from the title of Beale’s book, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, his goal is not to disprove dispensationalism. Inevitably, however, he runs into dispensational opposition due to the nature of his thesis. Here’s the quotation:
Many affirm that the prophet Daniel surely had in mind a physical temple that will exist in latter-day Israel. Accordingly, to say that this prophecy is fulfilled in Christ and the church is to violate ‘a literal hermeneutical’ principle by which all Scripture is to be interpreted.
A number of responses are in order [. . .] First, a ‘literal hermeneutic’ is not the best way to describe a biblical hermeneutic. Perhaps a ‘literate hermeneutic’ that aspires to the broad literary meaning in the canonical context is a better way to put it [. . .] We should want to follow an interpretive method that aims to unravel the original intention of biblical authors, realizing that that intention may be multi-layered, without any of the layers contradicting others. Such original intentions may have meaning more correspondent to physical reality (hence so called ‘literal interpretation’) while other may refer to ‘literal’ spiritual realities.
Second, the progress of revelation certainly reveals expanded meanings of earlier biblical texts. Later biblical writers further interpret earlier biblical writings in ways that amplify earlier texts. These subsequent interpretations may formulate meanings that earlier authors may not have had in mind but which do not contravene their original, essential, organic meaning. This is to say that original meanings have ‘thick’ content and that original authors likely were not exhaustively aware of the full extent of that content. In this regard, fulfilment often ‘fleshes out’ prophecy with details of which even the prophet may not have been fully cognizant.
Third, our interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-7 indicates that Paul understood the Daniel 11 prophecy about the end-time opponent desecrating the temple as beginning fulfilment in his own time. Possibly, my interpretation is wrong. To say it is wrong, however, primarily on the basis that it does not ‘literally’ interpret the book of Daniel is not enough to overturn my analysis. Or, one could say Paul illegitimately ’spiritualizes’, though this is not an attractive option for those with a high view of Scripture. Such a conclusion could also reveal an over-confidence in the standards of modern interpretative methods as the ultimate arbiter of the correctness of ancient interpretative methods. (emphasis mine)
- G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 288-89.
Of course, Beale’s book runs much deeper than arguing over how to read Daniel’s prophecy (not that that, in itself, is not a big deal), but I thought the quotation above to be helpful.
Hopefully, in the near future (when I’m done with papers and midterms)I’ll be able to blog a bit on Beale’s main point. He does an excellent job showing the temple’s redemptive-historical role from creation to consummation, providing evidence from Scripture as well as Ancient Near Eastern literature. More on that later…
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Eschatology, Reformed Theology , 2 Thessalonians 2:1-7, Biblical Theology, Daniel 11, Dispensationalism, Eschatology, G. K. Beale, Literal Hermeneutic, Meredith G. Kline, Redemptive History
January 24, 2009 • 8:18 pm
. . . we are ashamed of the presence of unconverted persons in the Church. The adversary, the world, Christian brothers even, make it a reproach to us. In our weakness as arrogant men we are ashamed of the pitifully weak state of the Church. We wish it could have more effectiveness. We would be proud to belong to a Church composed entirely of true believers, of regenerate persons, a Church in which not only the power of the Word, but that of the kingdom of God were manifested. It is very tempting for us to proclaim that the Church will convert the world and that the world will no longer overwhelm us with insults. We should then be able to life up our heads once more! And it is very tempting for us to draw up plans for changing ecclesiastical disorder into order and an unhealthy Church into a healthy community. But what, then, is the practical import of these pious desires?
In the first place, to what New Testament definition of the sanctity or health of the Church are we to refer? Further, are we sure that if the Church were healthy we, the believers, the pastors, or the theologians, would today have a place in it? Would we not have been excluded completely since there was a time when we were unconverted and unregenerate? And if we had been excluded from it, would the Word of God have reached us to bring about our conversion and to declare our election? Being unable to be disciples, would we have been elect? If the Church today were healthy, are we really sure that we have the right to continue in it? Which men, which ecclesiastical institutions, should, according to the New Testament, guarantee the health of the Church?
Is this not, in certain respects, the business of God? . . . Let us explain our attitude by confessing in faith, in the name of the promises of the covenant, the necessity of this apparent weakness of the Church as a result of the love and patience of God. If contact is to be established with detractors, both without and within, will not the best proclamation be made in this sphere? Let us not blush because of the love and patience of God towards the children of the covenant, the benefits of which we ourselves have enjoyed.
- Pierre-Charles Marcel, The Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism: Sacrament of the Covenant of Grace, trans. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (Cambridge, England: James Clarke Co., Ltd, 2002), 129-31.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology, Quotes, Reformed Theology , Baptism, Covenant of Grace, Covenant Theology, Ecclesiology, Pierre-Charles Marcel, Reformed Theology
January 8, 2009 • 11:46 pm
It [chiliasm] cannot even stand before the tribunal of Old Testament prophecy, a court to which it loves to appeal. Aside from the fact that, as stated earlier, the Old Testament does not view the messianic kingdom as provisional and temporary but as the end result of world history, chiliasm is guilty of the greatest arbitrariness in interpreting prophecy. It doubles the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead, although the Old Testament does not give the slightest warrant for this. It is devoid of all rule and method and arbitrarily calls a halt, depending on the subjective opinion of the interpreter. With equal vigor and force, all the prophets announce not only the conversion of Israel and the nations but also the return to Palestine, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the restoration of the temple, the priesthood, and sacrificial worship, and so on. And it is nothing but caprice to take one feature of this picture literally and another “spiritually.” Prophecy pictures for us but one single image of the future. And either this image is to be taken literally as it presents itself–but then one breaks with Christianity and lapses back into Judaism–or this image calls for a very different interpretation that that attempted by chiliasm. Such an interpretation is furnished by Scripture itself, and we must take it from Scripture. (658)
The New Testament views itself–and there can no doubt about this–as the spiritual and therefore complete and authentic fulfillment of the Old Testament. The spiritualization of the Old Testament, rightly understood, is not an invention of Christian theology but has its beginning in the New Testament itself. The Old Testament in spiritualized form, that is, the Old Testament stripped of its temporal and sensuous form, is the New Testament. The peculiar nature of the old dispensation consisted precisely in the fact that the covenant of grace was presented in graphic images and clothed in national and sensuous forms. Sin was symbolized by levitical impurity. Atonement was effected by the sacrifice of a slain animal. Purification was adumbrated by physcial washings. Communion with God was connected with the journey to Jerusalem. The desire for God’s favor and closeness was expressed in the longing for his courts. Eternal life was conceived as a long life on earth, and so forth. In keeping with Israel’s level of understanding, placed as Israel was under the tutelage of the law, all that is spiritual, heavenly, and eternal was veiled in earthly shadows. Even though the grate majority of people frequently fixated on the external forms–just as many Christians in participating in the sacraments continue to cling to the external signs– and while devout Israelites with their hearts indeed penetrated to the spiritual core that was hidden in the shell, they nevertheless saw that spiritual core in no other way than in shadows and images.
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 660-61.
Filed under: Eschatology, Quotes, Reformed Theology , Reformed Dogmatics, Herman Bavinck, Amillenialism, Dispensationalism, Reformed Theology, Hermeneutic, Premillennialism, Chiliasm
