Tag: christocentric

The Old Testament: All about Christ, or Not?

~ Bob Hayton ~ 21 Comments

Fascinating debate recently about how to read the OT. The first two statements below are from Professor Mark Snoeberger of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.

First:

But since I’ve spent almost all my study time in the OT during the last two months, it’s almost as though I’ve left the Gospel Carnival behind. Kind of like going for a drive in the country, but better. It’s been very refreshing, but the funny thing is that, despite the fact that I have been spending considerably more time than normal in my Bible for the past two months, I’ve read virtually nothing about Christ, the Cross, or the Gospel.

Now some of you are probably shaking your heads right now and saying, “This guy doesn’t know how to read his Bible–it’s ALL about Christ if you know how to successfully navigate between the lines!” And I’m not blind to the redemptive thread that winds through the Bible. But the thing is, when I stop reading between the lines and just start reading the lines, Christ and the Gospel do not emerge as major OT themes. In fact, they’re not themes at all.

and then in the first comment under this post:

Revelation concerning the common or civic sphere, on the other hand, begins with the dominion mandate, takes peculiar shape with the Noahic Covenant and the second table of the Law, and dominates the theocratic period.

Dispensationalism, I think, can be demonstrated to be a variation of this latter model (some would say a perversion) that offers multiple adminstrations–not just two. The various purposes of God are inter-connected, but what is key is that they are not limited to redemptive concerns. What binds them together is not so much the Gospel as it is the manifold glory of God. It’s BIGGER than the Gospel.

Let’s take one example: the OT sacrificial system. There are diverse understandings within dispensationalism on the OT sacrifices, but one that I have felt comfortable embracing is John Whitcomb’s theocratic understanding of the sacrifices, viz., that the sacrifices were only incidentally connected with being redemptively right with God; instead they were concerned with being theocratically right with the (K)ing and with the covenant community. That these sacrifices became a pattern for the redemptive arrangement in the death of Christ is not accidental, of course. And God certainly arranged history so that there is a continuity of form. However, it seems to me that rather than seeing the OT sacrifices as anticipating Christ, it is better to say that God modeled Christ’s sacrifice retrospectively after the theocratic system.

If this is the case, then the the Mosaic system has its own meaning, known plainly by the OT saint, without reference to Christ. It was not intrinsically anticipatory.

Over and against this, Brian McCrorie in the comments here shared my basic view on this matter:

Ben I don’t think I fundamentally disagree with you. However, I would only add that we should not only interpret the OT on it’s own terms, but also interpret it canonically (ie, the Bible as one book)

If we simply isolate the OT from the NT, and interpret it “on it’s own terms”, and not canonically, would we ever come to the conclusion that Jonah could be a picture of Christ? Furthermore, I don’t need an OT text to explicitly tell me the rock in the wilderness was Christ when Paul tells me as much in 1 Cor.

If we isolate the testaments we may not even (like some comments above) see how Adam prefigured Christ. But it blows my mind that someone who has the NT would even question the correlation of the first Adam to the second, or King David to his greater Son whom he calls “Lord”.

The bigger question in all of this I think is how or if we can do what the NT writers do. For instance, we don’t have explicitly or implicity (that I know of)in the NT that Joseph was a type of Christ. But the correlations are almost as clear as day. I agree with James that Keller’s references to Esther and others are much more of a stretch. However, that doesn’t make his hermeneutic “special”, he’s just trying to follow the pattern of intertextual canonical interpretation. How confidently we do that today without divine inspiration is the sticking point (at least for me).

Lastly, I wanted to comment on something Keith said:
“How could God, ‘retrospectively’ do anything when he decreed it all outside of time?”

Marriage from the perspective of Eph 5 is a perfect example of this. We know now, this side of the cross and through later revelation, that marriage was instituted to be a picture of Christ and the church. In other words, the cross and the church preexisted (in the purpose of God, not strictly in time) the marriage of man and woman. Why then would we be surprised to find the events and words of the OT orchestrated and inspired to point to Christ? We’re not necessarilty reading Christ and the NT back into the OT. It’s almost as if we’re going back before the OT, now with the knowledge of God’s ultimate plan climaxing in Christ. We have now what angels and prophets once only dreamed of seeing. Please don’t make me go back to that day.

and then:

Here [is an] illustration supporting canonical reading (or reading the NT back into the OT):

Black box: Imagine a FAA flight inspection team reviewing data and clues from the site of a plane crash. All their information is leading them down a path of understanding the cause of the crash. But when they find the black box they have the pilot’s definitive word on how and why the plane went down. Wouldn’t they then go back and look at all the collected data and see how all along it pointed to that particular failure. But without the black box it wasn’t clear. The recording didn’t change the data (NT revelation doesn’t alter the OT), but shed new light on its proper and full interpretation. Furthermore, without the box, the collected data could never have been fully understood. Why would any inspector then go back and disregard the recording, or separate it from the data, and try to interpret the two separately? Instead, he would interpret the (less clear) clues with the definitive recording….

By isolating the OT and having a hermeneutic based on original authorial intent instead of a wider canonical interpretation based on divine Authorial intent, we are severely limiting our understanding of the text. We can better locate, appreciate, and interpret the signs and symbols pointing to Christ in the OT only as we see them through the lens of the NT. Lastly, we must be very careful to isolate the OT from the NT because, in my opinion, the function of OT revelation (as well as parables, for example) is not simply to reveal, but also to conceal. We weren’t meant to get all the information on God’s redemptive plan from the OT. Throughout the OT God gives us clues which only later can be identified for what they were. My guess is that originally God intentionally concealed the whole story (like any good writer) from all people, but particularly from rulers and authorities, and ultimately Satan himself. How else can we explain Satan killing the King of the Jews only to realize the salvation of the world and his own defeat?

I encourage you to read the comments where Brian made these statements above. There is an in-depth discussion of this question and all participants are quite irenic and charitable. Makes for great reading. The comments at Snoeberger’s blog will just puzzle you more than anything. If that is the result of dispensationalist thinking, I say beware.

Makes me excited that I’ll be going to the Gospel Coalition Conference this year where the theme is preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Maybe that’s why the Conservative Evangelicals have such an appeal to young fundamentalists, they get what the message of the Bible is all about.

“Faith in the Face of Apostasy: The Gospel According to Elijah & Elisha” by Raymond B. Dillard

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

In today’s church, the Old Testament is often overlooked. When attention is drawn to it, the focus tends to be on creation science, Proverbs for daily living, Psalms for devotional nourishment, and character studies for us to emulate. The Christian church largely focuses on the New Testament for its teaching and preaching. In a sense this is natural, because the New Testament is so definitive for church life. Yet the NT spends a lot of time focusing on the Old Testament, and the early church’s Bible was primarily the OT. In fact, the more one understands and appreciates the message of the Old Testament, the better he or she will be prepared to really be impacted by the teaching of the New Testament.

Thankfully, the last twenty or thirty years have seen a revival of interest in the Old Testament and the recovery of preaching it as a Christian testament. Moralistic surveys of the characters of the Old Testament might have some use, but they are being set aside today in favor of a biblical theological approach that sees a unity in the Bible as a whole. The narrative of Scripture is being seen again as thoroughly Christocentric, and countless believers are being revitalized in their faith through finding the glory of God in the Old Testament afresh.

A big factor in the renaissance of the study of the OT has been the impact of good Christian books. P & R Publishing has produced a series of helpful books on OT themes called The Gospel According to the Old Testament series. The first book in that series is Faith in the Face of Apostasy: The Gospel According to Elijah and Elisha by Raymond B. Dillard.

Dillard’s book and the series as a whole, parts ways from a simple anthropocentric approach to the OT. Such an approach centers on people and their needs, and looks to the OT for examples to follow, and life-lessons to learn. Dillard’s approach, in contrast, focuses on what we can learn about God from the story, remembering that all OT stories have the unique quality of being divine revelation. The “first question” in this approach, “will not be ‘What’s here for me?’ but rather ‘What do I learn about God from this passage?'” Once we learn “about what God is like” from the passage, we are then prepared to ask “How we should I respond to this God?” Dillard then goes a bit further. “For Christian readers of the Old Testament”, he says, “there is yet another step to take…. We need to ask, How can we see God in Christ reconciling the world to himself in the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures? That is, in addition to anthropocentric and theocentric ways of reading the Bible, there is also a Christocentric approach.” (pg. 124-125)

With these goals in mind, the book begins with a historical overview of the time period of Elisha and Elijah and the likely time when Kings was written (the Babylonian exile period). It is interesting to note that Elijah and Elisha are singled out and given almost 1/3 of the space of the entire book of 1-2 Kings. Dillard also traces how later Scripture uses the account of Elijah and Elisha, focusing particularly on the parallels Matthew draws between Elijah and John the Baptist, and Jesus and Elisha.

The book moves on to a treatment of all the texts in 1 and 2 Kings where Elijah and Elisha have an important role. Each chapter contains, two or three passages (quoted entirely) which are discussed individually followed by questions for further reflection. Having the Biblical text included allows for the book’s easy use as a devotional guide. The study questions make it handy for a small group study, and the material covered is simple and direct enough to allow for several uses. The themes developed and traced often throughout Scripture, make this an accessible theological resource, and the brief nature of the thoughts shared make it a perfect tool for pastors, who could easily prepare a longer sermon using the material Dillard offers as their starting point.

Dillard’s exegesis is sound and the application he draws is challenging, relevant and helpful. I particularly enjoyed how he brought to bear a detailed understanding of the historic worship of Baal (from the Ugaritic texts) and how this highlights many of the points made in the stories of Elijah and Elisha. From crossing the Jordan, to the chariot of fire, from the rain being stopped and with fire coming from heaven, all of this relates to the alleged domain and limits of the god Baal. Dillard also excels at translating the concerns of the agrarian age of Elijah and Elisha to our own contemporary problems. Along the way he also develops a thoroughly God-centered approach.

The anticipatory function of Elijah and Elisha (e.g., the confrontation with Baal on the spot of the future battle of Armageddon, the feeding of a hundred men from 20 loaves with food “left over”, and etc.) is highlighted well in this book, even as parallels with Christ are carefully and judiciously drawn. Sometimes more explicit NT connections are left for the discussion questions, and I credit the author with stopping short of stretching too far in finding types and analogies of NT truths in the stories. I was intrigued too by the fascinating parallels drawn between Elijah and Moses when they went to Mount Horeb, and the discussion of the redemptive role of miracles — restoring creation to how it was intended to be.

The stories of Elijah and Elisha are breathtaking, and life-giving in themselves. Just as Elisha’s bones brought a man to life, so too will this book bring life to your spiritual soul as you see those stories in a fresh and faith-filled way. The book may open your eyes to a Christian understanding of the Old Testament that you were unaware of. At the very least it will thrill you to the wonderful, covenant keeping God we serve, and His Son Jesus Christ. I highly recommend this book and others like it in The Gospel According to the Old Testament series.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing for review. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

Pick up a copy of this book at Westminster Bookstore, Amazon.com, or through P & R direct.