Theological Interpretation

Pneumatological Method

/ Matt Emerson / 9 Comments

The second foundational aspect of a Christian approach to Scripture is that method ought to be pneumatological in character. That is, it should be driven and empowered by the Holy Spirit. From the first post:

This means it will recognize the role of the Spirit in both inspiration and interpretation, and will note the Spirit-generated ecclesial context (both historically and contemporaneously) in which interpretation occurs. It also recognizes both the contextual and presuppositional nature of all interpretation and the Spirit’s ability to confront our context and presuppositions.

Although an emphasis on the Christocentric nature of Scripture is sometimes controversial in the field of hermeneutics, I think this aspect of a Christian theological method hits against many of our interpretive presupposition. We as 21st century interpreters have, in my opinion, been pre-conditioned to focus on an “objective” reading of the biblical material that privileges the human author over the divine, even to the point where the divine author is ignored or consciously set aside. What I am calling a pneumatological method pushes against this entire stance towards biblical interpretation.

First, a pneumatological method recognizes both the divine and human authorship of Scripture. In my articulation of this foundation, I would further say that the divine author holds the privileged position in terms of whose intent we are seeking to understand. This does not mean the human author’s intent is no longer important; on the contrary, genre, literary devices, and historical background – all facets related most directly to the human author – each still play an important role in interpreting the text. The divine author, the Holy Spirit, though, has the privileged position. Connections between different passages, the intent of the passage, and especially the Christocentric nature of individual sections are all ultimately tied to divine intent. Again, the human author can and does make intertextual connections and point to Christ, but recognizing the Spirit’s superintending authorship of Scripture allows us to more boldly recognize these intertextual and Christological connections.

Second, a pneumatological method recognizes that the context of interpretation is the church. Often in modern exegesis the exercise is isolated and individualistic. The Spirit, though, has birthed the interpretive community in its work of regeneration, and it is in this Spirit-born and Spirit-led community that a properly Spirit-illuminated interpretation can and should take place. We should further say that this community transcends time and space, and so a properly pneumatological method will recognize that the Spirit has guided interpreters in different parts of the world and in different times than our own. The tradition and global nature of the church can help us in the third facet of a pneumatological method – confronting our own preconceptions.

Finally, a pneumatological method recognizes that it is the Spirit-inspired text that should master the interpreter and not the other way around. We cannot simply put the text through our hermeneutics machine and expect to grind out objective interpretations like some kind of Bible sausage. God confronts us through his Word, and a Spirit-led interpretation will recognize the confrontational and transformational nature of Scripture. The goal of God’s revelation is to point to Jesus, not only to help us understand propositions about God but so that through understanding God we might be changed into the image of his Son (2 Cor. 3:17-18). A theological method that does not recognize that the text is meant to transform us is not reading Scripture as it is intended to be read. To say it in contemporary terms, the text ought to apply to us. The Spirit does this through the text on its own, by the way – we don’t have to “find the application.” Additionally, understanding that the text confronts us helps us to own up to our own cultural presuppositions. Everyone comes to the text with baggage, and we should expect for that baggage – presuppositions – to be confronted in the text by the Spirit.

Christocentric Method

/ Matt Emerson / 12 Comments

Last week I posted on theological method and outlined five foundations for Christian interpretation of the Bible. In the next week (or weeks depending on how busy I get), I hope to expand on each of those five in separate posts. Today I’ll expand on the first, which is that,

A Christian theological method ought to be Christocentric, but within a properly Trinitarian framework. That is, it recognizes that God the Father reveals himself to his people in God the Son and by God the Spirit.

When Christians say that God has given us revelation, we mean that God has communicated to us who he is through certain means. God has “at many times and many ways” spoken to us  (Heb. 1:1 – here namely through the OT prophets). These ways include general revelation, through which we can see that God is eternal and all powerful (Rom. 1:20); special revelation of himself in history, such as the burning bush episode (Exodus 3); special revelation of himself particularly in the incarnation (John 1:14; Heb. 1:2); and special revelation of himself through Scripture (2 Tim. 3:14-17).

Of these many ways of revealing himself, we should say first that general revelation does not communicate all that is needed for salvation or about God, but only that he exists and is powerful. Only special revelation communicates what is sufficient for faith. Of the three means of special revelation, only one of those is still accessible to the people of God – Scripture. Although Christians commune with the risen Christ through the power and indwelling of the Spirit, we cannot see, touch, hear, taste, or smell the incarnate Jesus (and the latter two would be weird anyway). In other words, there were only 30ish years when people on the earth could interact with the person of Jesus on a material/bodily level. Scripture is what the people of God are given, both before and after Christ, in order to know God and who he is.

The second and more fundamental truth we need to understand about revelation is that it is always Christocentric. That is, God the Father is known and perceived and understood by his creatures through seeing God the Son in the power of God the Spirit. God the Father “dwells in unapproachable light” and “no one has ever seen or can see” him. God the Son, though, is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3), and the one who allows us to see the Father through seeing him (John 12:45; 14:9). To know, see, and understand God, then, is accomplished through knowing, seeing, and understanding the Son.

This puts a Christocentric reading on a Trinitarian path, but that Trinitarian nature of revelation is made even more clear through understanding the role of the Spirit. The Spirit’s role is to testify to the Son, both through convicting unbelievers of sin and to guide believers into all truth about the Son (John 16:4-15). In all things he glorifies the Son (John 16:14-15). To summarize, then, God the Spirit testifies to God the Son who makes God the Father known to his people.

This makes the call to a Christological reading of Scripture, including the ones by Jesus (John 5:46; Luke 24:27, 44, etc.) all the more intelligible. We as Christians confess that “the holy writings are able to make you wise unto salvation in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:14-15; notice he’s referring to the OT here and Christ) because it is through Christ’s death and resurrection and indeed his entire person and work that we can gain access to God the Father. To know God the Father is accomplished by knowing God the Son, to whom the Spirit testifies in Scripture. Thus special revelation, and particularly the form to which Christians now have access, holy Scripture, is Christocentric because God is made known by his Spirit through Christ.

Additionally, general revelation is also Christocentric, as the cosmos is patterned after divine Wisdom (Prov. 8:22-31), the Logos, who is also the one by, through, and to which creation is made (Col. 1:16-18). Thus to say that “only some verses talk about the person of Jesus” is to miss the point of Christian Scripture. The nature of revelation is such that all Scripture speaks of Christ, because it is the inspiring Spirit’s job to make it so, since it is through the Son that we know the Father.

One final note: this claim of Christocentrism is not Christomonic; rather, as noted above, it is Trinitarian. Further, I am not here claiming that every verse of the entire Bible is prophetically pointing forwards or mimetically pointing backwards to specific events in the life of Christ. In other words, I’m not arguing for bad allegory, where we make every detail of a narrative mirror the events of Christ’s life. I am saying, however, that the message of every book in the Bible, both individually and collectively, is ultimately about Christ.

Method

/ Matt Emerson / 18 Comments

Yesterday I posted a quote from Gordon Spykman on biblical exegesis. I’ve been asked to expand on that, especially in terms of what it means for a Christian theological method. In the first chapter of my book (excited that it came out today!), I outline tenets of a proper Christian theological method, and Spykman’s quote bolsters my claims there. I hope to expand on each of these tenets in future posts, but for now they are as follows:

  1. A Christian theological method ought to be Christocentric, but within a properly Trinitarian framework. That is, it recognizes that God the Father reveals himself to his people in God the Son and by God the Spirit.
  2. A Christian theological method ought to be pneumatological. This means it will recognize the role of the Spirit in both inspiration and interpretation, and notes the Spirit-generated ecclesial context (both historically and contemporaneously) in which interpretation occurs. It also recognizes both the contextual and presuppositional nature of all interpretation and the Spirit’s ability to confront our context and presuppositions.
  3. A Christian theological method ought to be canonical, in that it recognizes the Spirit’s inspiration of all of Christian Scripture and therefore the intertextual interrelatedness of it. This aspect also calls us to recognize the structure of the canon and its influence on interpretation of particular books and passages.
  4. A Christian theological method ought to be narrative, in that it frames interpretation of particular passages within the broader framework of the biblical storyline – Creation, Fall, Redemption, and New Creation. This aspect also recognizes that Christ stands as the goal of that story and that our lives need to be re-oriented within it.
  5. Finally, a Christian theological method, ought to be textual. This means that Christian interpretation ought to place primacy in hermeneutics on the text itself and not on reconstruction of a provisional, incomplete, finite, and uninspired historical framework.
  6. Although not on my official list in my chapter, I should also note here that each of these tenets is historically rooted in the history of interpretation.The previous five points have been the dominant stance of interpreters throughout church history until the Enlightenment. To privilege Enlightenment approaches to biblical interpretation, which are embedded in a serious mistrust of tradition, an elevation of human autonomy, a belief in the Bible’s lack of overall coherence, a desire for presupposition-less “scientific” objectivity, and a desire to break free from religious constraints, is, in my opinion, completely wrong headed. As a side note, in evangelical circles we have continued to affirm the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures while at the same time capitulating to Enlightenment-fueled methods of interpretation. We want to “be right”, focus on one passage without recognizing its place among the others, and jettison any sense of an appreciation of tradition when we interpret. As a result we have cut ourselves off from church history and the interplay of the Spirit-inspired canon and made interpretation into an exercise in which we crank the text through our method machine in order to “be right.”

Spykman’s quote primarily relates to #s 3 and 4 on this list. Christian interpretation must pay attention to the context of a passage. Ultimately this means giving priority to the context of the canon, and this context includes both the intertextual connections generated by the authorship of the Spirit (and the human authors’ use of previous Scripture) and the narrative context of the biblical storyline. Spykman also alludes to the Christocentric nature of the narrative, and this is key as well. Paying attention to the canonical context ultimately means giving credence to a Christocentric approach, since the canon as a whole and the narrative embedded in it are testimonies to Christ.

NOTE: my articulation of a theological method in my book is heavily reliant on Todd Billings, The Word of God for the People of God. If you haven’t read it, go buy it.

Biblical Exegesis

/ Matt Emerson / 1 Comment

The true meaning of Scripture can only be disclosed contextually. The basic rule for biblical interpretation is therefore this: first, last, and always consider the context – the immediate context, the extended context, ultimately the context of God’s Word in its fullness. Piecemeal, fragmentary, proof-textish exegesis of loosely dangling bits of biblical information does violence to the narrative flow in the history of redemption. Those who choose to engage in such malpractice forfeit all claim to biblical support in their hermeneutic undertakings. For the authority of any given passage of Scripture is bound up intimately with its creationally based, covenantally focused, kingdom-oriented, Christ-centered thrust. Woven into the fabric of its many stories is its single story. And that biblical message must define our biblical method.

Gordon Spykman, Reformational Theology, 127

In Defense of the Fourfold Method

/ Matt Emerson / 7 Comments

Allegory gets a bad wrap these days. If you want to charge someone with bad exegesis, just call them an allegorizer. Compare them to Philo or the worst excesses of Augustine and Origen, slap an “allegory” sticker on their essay, and throw them to the wolves or carry them off with pitchforks (ok that’s a bit melodramatic, but you get the point).

Here’s the problem: I like allegory. And Paul does too, at least in one instance (Gal. 4:21-31). Further, even when the NT authors aren’t using the term “allegory”, I think they’re still doing it in lots of places. Now, that might get me kicked out of some evangelical hermeneutics classes. But I don’t think it should. I think allegory actually helps evangelicals understand the most difficult of questions concerning inerrancy, the New Testament’s use of the Old. I think allegory actually helps evangelicals understand how it is literarily (as in, literature) true that their (our) claim that Scripture speaks about Christ in all its parts. And I think it helps that we, you know, give Paul credit where credit’s due as an interpreter of the OT and in his use of the term allegoroumena.

I can only do so much in a blog post, so I just want to give two reasons why I like the fourfold method of interpretation. First, I think it helps us understand and interpret the Bible in a way that acknowledges its historical and literary detail without missing its bigger theological purpose. Second, and because of this, I think it helps us understand how the NT authors interpreted the OT (and copy their method!!).

In terms of the big picture of Scripture, evangelicals recognize that Scripture is primarily for two things: revelation and transformation. Through the inspiration of the Spirit it reveals who God is in Christ and through the application by the Spirit it transforms us into the image of God in Christ. The fourfold sense recognizes this. The spiritual sense, which can be broadened out into the latter three senses of the allegorical, the anagogical, and the tropological, understands that the Bible has these two purposes of revelation and transformation. The allegorical sense demands that interpreters recognize the Bible’s purpose of revealing Christ who reveals the Father; the tropological (or moral) sense demands that interpreters recognize the Bible’s purpose of transforming believers into Christ’s image; and the anagogical (or future sense) recognizes that a) the Bible is written as a metanarrative with a telos and b) that the tropological sense has a telos as well (to be completely like Christ; 1 John 3:2).

Second, at least in the theories of the Fathers and Medieval theologians, the spiritual sense MUST be tied to the literal sense. For this reason, the literal sense – historical background information, literary context, intertextuality, and literary features – ought to always be done very carefully and be the foundation for understanding the spiritual sense. This is where people get tripped up, because so often in practice the Fathers and Medieval theologians did not apply this theory evenly. But that doesn’t mean the theory is bad, it just means that we as practitioners mess up its application.

Further, this helps us to understand how the NT authors read the OT. They saw the intertextual connections between OT passages, how the OT authors themselves used other OT passages, and how that entire scriptural web has one primary goal – to reveal Christ and to make us like him. They are seeing the literal sense, but are also doing what the literal sense is supposed to do – reading the details as pointing to and as a part of the larger picture of Christ.

So don’t give allegory such a bad wrap – at least not in theory.

Christocentric Interpretation and Practical Application

/ Matt Emerson / 9 Comments

One objection to Christ centered hermeneutics I often hear is that it negates or lessens the applicational force of the text. What seems to be assumed in this objection is that a) a text can only speak of one thing at a time, e.g. application or Christ in this case, and that, therefore, b) Christocentric interpretation can only be doctrinal and not practical. It appears to me, though, that this objection fails to consider the fact that proper application must come through a proper understanding of Christ. Without knowing who Christ is, what he has done, and how he has empowered us through his Spirit, we cannot properly apply a text at all. Without approaching Christ in the power of his Spirit, we cannot be transformed by him. Without seeing him, we cannot be like him.

Todd Billings makes this point eloquently in his The Word of God for the People of God:

. . . the basic assumption is that knowledge of God is an abstract affair that has little to do with our practical lives. Since direct talk about God is impractical (if not presumptuous), we read Scripture and write songs in a way that focuses on what is under our control – our own will, our own decisions. God has given us a revelation in Scripture, and that may include abstract things about God, the nature of who Christ is, and so on. But functionally speaking, God has given us messages about how to succeed, how to make good decisions, how to have a happy future, and so forth. The error of this approach is not that it sees the Christian faith as having practical outcomes; that is true of a living faith. The problem is that it sees Scripture’s witness to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as incidental to these outcomes rather than central to how we are changed and who we are called to be. This pragmatic form of Christianity, which writes off Trinitarian language as “abstract,” fails to recognize that all true Christian transformation takes place through the power of God, in Jesus Christ, enabled by the Holy Spirit” (87, emphasis mine).

Intersections Between Biblical and Systematic Theology

/ Matt Emerson / 2 Comments

My field is technically biblical theology, but I’ve found that the most helpful scholars are well-rounded and able to connect the disciplines. Additionally, in my PhD studies I came to the rather outlandish idea (*sarcasm*) that biblical studies, biblical theology, systematic theology (including historical and philosophical sub-disciplines), practical theology, and homiletics ought to form an interconnected whole. This of course is not an idea original to me, but SEBTS helped me to understand it and practice it. Recently I’ve been thinking specifically about the intersection between biblical and systematic theology. I wonder if specific biblical theological themes, such as the Temple, can help us not only connect BT and ST but also categories within ST?

For instance, as the Temple is the place where God meets man, so it is also may be a place where Christology meets eschatology.

Within the doctrine of Christology, one of the most important Old Testament identity markers for the person of Christ is that of Temple. Jesus’ identification of himself with the Temple of God helps theologians to develop a robust Christological identity that includes Christ’s rule over all things, his priestly office of reconciliation, his function as the restored image of God, and his communication of the real presence of God with humankind.

Not only does this help theologians identify and characterize the person of Christ, though, but it also aids them in connecting Christology with eschatology. The doctrine of eschatology is rooted in God’s promises to Israel in the Old Testament, and they can be summed up in the expectation that Yahweh will return to rule over his enemies, reconcile Israel to himself, restore Israel to be the image bearers of God, and dwell with them through his real presence.

These expectations are all realized in Jesus’ identification of himself as the Temple, and thus the Christological identity of Jesus as Temple functions also to define the eschatological reality of the inaugurated last days.

Read the Fathers: Beginning in Advent

/ Luke Wisley / 3 Comments

 

I just came across this blog that is set up to as a reading guide for the Church Fathers.

By reading seven pages a day for seven years, you can study a vast library of theology, history, liturgy, apologetics, biblical commentary, and devotion written in the first seven centuries of the Christian church.

The first reading begins on 2 December.

Hosea 4 and Doctrine of Sin

/ Luke Wisley / Leave a comment

            The book of Hosea is a prime example of an entire book in the Hebrew Bible that contributes to a doctrine of sin . Like other doctrines, Hosea does not give an exhaustive account of sin, but describes sin from the perspective of Israel’s covenant unfaithfulness to YHWH.[1]

Hosea 4 proves to be a good example for theological reflection on sin because of the variety of  terms and concepts used.  YHWH charges Israel with faithlessness (4:1), no love (4:1), no knowledge (4:1), forgetting the law of God (4:6), rejecting knowledge (4:6), sinning (4:7-8), and abandoning YHWH (4:10).[2]

Hosea 4:1-3 begins as an introduction to YHWH’s accusation of Israel’s unfaithfulness that takes place in 4:4-5:7. YHWH first accuses Israel of not having faithfulness, steadfast love, or knowledge of God in the land (4:1). Because Israel lacks these elements sin takes form in the land through swearing, lying, murder, stealing, adultery, and bloodshed (4:2). The consequence is then that the land itself suffers (4:3). Vv. 1-3 describe that sins consequences not only affects individual persons, families, and communities’ relationship with YHWH (v. 1) and one another (v. 2). But sin also has affects on the created order (v. 3).

Hosea 4:4 also contributes an interesting perspective to a doctrine of sin because the sin of Israel’s leaders has effects on the rest of the people of Israel.  In v. 4 YHWH makes it clear that his primary dispute is with Israel’s leaders.[3] Because the prophets and priesthood have rejected knowledge of God and his law (vv. 6b-7), YHWH’s people are destroyed for their lack of knowledge (v. 6a). The people are judged for their lack of knowledge of God due to its leadership’s rejection of that knowledge. The result is that just as God’s law has been forgotten, so YHWH will forget the children of Israel (v. 6).

Two areas that need further exploration: sins effect on the created order, sin as a lack of knowledge of YHWH, the responsibility of godly leadership has in passing along knowledge of YHWH, and the affects this has on those under that leadership. Any thoughts?

Bibliography

Boda, Mark J. A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the Old Testament. Vol. 1 of Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009.

Dumbrell, William. The Faith of Israel: A Theological Survey of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002.

Garrett, Duane A. Hosea, Joel. The New American Commentary. Vol. 19. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997.

[1]          William Dumbrell, The Faith of Israel: A Theological Survey of the Old Testament, (Grand Rapids Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002).: 171.

[2]          Mark J. Boda, A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the Old Testament, Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures, vol. 1, (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009).: 297.

[3]          Duane A. Garrett, vol. 19A, Hosea, Joel, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 118.

Jonathan Pennington–Reading the Gospels Wisely

/ Luke Wisley / 2 Comments

Here is a promo for Jonathan Pennington’s new book. A great 2 min. way to start out your day.