Simultaneously Challenging and Cherishing My Theological Heritage
All our individual doing of theology is autobiographical, reflecting changes, development, and progress. I was reared in a Christian home where I was taught to think for myself, to pose questions, to seek understanding, and to ground my faith in Scripture. I learned to cherish my Christian heritage even as I came to challenge aspects of it, particularly a somewhat modified dispensationalism.
Given my upbringing in the church, when I was a college student, I tended to assume a dispensational pattern of reading Scripture, which I regularly found necessary to suspend because of accumulating and unremitting questions prompted by the biblical text. I also noticed that I was encountering non-dispensationalists using “dispensation” to speak of different time periods within the Bible. I was curious, wondering why and how their theology differed from Dispensationalism. As a young seminarian, reading George Ladd’s A Theology of the New Testament, incited greater curiosity with questions. Concerning Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Ladd argues, that “the new redemptive events” of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension
compelled Peter to reinterpret the Old Testament. Because of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, Peter transfers the messianic Davidic throne from Jerusalem to God’s right hand in heaven. Jesus has now been enthroned as the Davidic Messiah on the throne of David, and is awaiting the final consummation of his messianic reign. . . . [I]n his exaltation Jesus becomes the Messiah in a new sense: he has begun his messianic reign as the Davidic king. . . . This involves a rather radical reinterpretation of the Old Testament prophecies, but no more so than the entire reinterpretation of God’s redemptive plan by the early church. In fact, it is an essential part of the reinterpretation demanded by the events of redemptive history.[1]
In his smaller, more accessible, The Last Things, Ladd reiterates his claim “that the Old Testament prophets must be interpreted in light of their fulfillment in the person and mission of Jesus. We have seen that this involves reinterpretation. Sometimes the fulfillment is different from what we would expect from the Old Testament.”[2]
I agreed with Ladd that the Messiah has already begun to reign. However, what he calls his “basic hermeneutic,” namely, “that the Old Testament must be interpreted (and often reinterpreted) by the new revelation given in the person and mission of Jesus,” did not sit well with me.[3] Why? His use of “reinterpret,” distinguished from “interpret,” means “to give a new or different interpretation” or meaning. Thus, I understand why not only Ladd’s wording but his explanation of the New Testament’s use of the Old is off-putting to Dispensationalists.
Though Ladd’s use of “reinterpret,” “reinterpretation,” and “radical reinterpretation” left me quite unsettled, when I was introduced to Richard Longenecker’s Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, I noticed a kind of dovetailing of their approaches.[4] Initially, Longenecker’s explanation of some difficult New Testament uses of the Old somewhat appealed to me when I grappled with what authorized the apostles to interpret Scripture as they did. Two examples must suffice: (1) the use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15—“This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’”—and (2) Paul’s alleged “allegorical interpretation” of the Abraham narrative in Genesis (Galatians 4:21-31).[5] Longenecker’s explanation of such passages is that the New Testament writers occasionally interpreted the Old Testament creatively from a “revelatory stance” of “privileged apostolic insight” unique to them, which we cannot reproduce.[6] Though Ladd and others, especially Geerhardus Vos, fully persuaded me that Christ’s advent “already” fulfilled much of the Old Testament, many aspects were “not yet” fulfilled, I held in dubious suspension his and Longenecker’s explanations of the more difficult passages.
Pastoral Ministry Requires Theological Clarity
When I entered church ministry, preaching and teaching obligated clarity of conviction. So, I devoted considerable time to studying the New Testament uses of the Old. Under scrutiny, Ladd’s claim of apostolic “reinterpretation” and Longenecker’s “privileged apostolic insight” explanation of the more difficult passages fizzled because such interpretive nimbleness and legerdemain leave Christians in stymied silence, incapable of tracing and explaining the New Testament writers’ exegetical logic.[7] Hence, such “secret knowledge” uses of the Old Testament hardly ground Christian faith in the Scriptures. Against such an excessive claim, every indication within the New Testament is that first-century Christians fully expected they could reproduce the biblical exegesis of the apostles to confirm their belief in the truthfulness of their teachings. Certainly believers in Berea were so convinced (cf. Acts 17:10). I came to realize that both “reinterpretation” and not being able to “reproduce” the apostles’ interpretation of some portions of the Old Testament invariably lead to impasses that misdirect concerning the revelation of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament. Scripture convinced me to affirm that the Old Testament progressively disclosed the coming Messiah prophetically and typologically through numerous prefiguring foreshadows, revealing while at the same time concealing aspects that awaited fuller and clearer disclosure in the fullness of time when Messiah arrives. The notion that the apostles engaged in special exegesis that others cannot reproduce is an unacceptable attempt to explain the uses of the Old Testament that are not as readily evident as others.
Mystery Novelists Imitate God’s Grand Mystery, the Scriptures
I came to realize that mystery novelists, even if not consciously aware, imitate God’s grand storyline of the Bible. The mystery of the Christ is akin to how a mystery novel is written to be read, proceeding from the beginning to the end. As readers trace the storyline’s progression, the drama builds toward a climax when the mystery is finally revealed. Throughout the mystery’s storyline, embedded within characters, settings, events, and plotted conflict are hints, foreshadows, prefigurements, and harbingers written to incite expectation of full and final resolution, revealed with surprises that beckon deep reflection. Upon reaching the end of the story and apprehending the resolution’s climax, readers reflectively retrace the storyline with the end now known. Then, they ponder how earlier episodes, settings, characters, and conflicts provided clues to or distractions from the drama’s resolution.
Divinely plotted mystery is how the Old and New Testaments connect. Yet, as Bible readers, we must always keep in mind that we are not reading fiction. Rather, the characters in this story lived within the unfolding drama concerning God’s promised redeemer, seeing only the episodes of their own lifetimes while recounting those that preceded them but not the whole as we do, possessing the entire biblical record. Yet, they were called on to believe in God, who promises, like Abraham believed and God reckoned righteous (Gen. 15:6). As the story unfolds through covenants, hope that the promised Seed of the woman will bring salvation builds. Expectation escalates and suspends as male child after male child is born, but fulfillment is not yet. The promised redeemer yet lingers. This hope builds around earthly events, characters, settings, and conflicts, all suffused with representational heavenly significances, posing puzzling enigmas, riddles, prefigurements, conundrums, and foreshadows of what is to come that enliven and add to the anticipation that escalates toward the plotline’s climax.
So, when the time is fulfilled, and the Coming One emerges from the shadows, born in Bethlehem and reared in Nazareth, he sustains the Old Testament’s pattern of revelation, simultaneously revealing and concealing himself with parables, with signs and wonders, and riddle-filled teaching. All this angered the religious officials who, seeking to be rid of him, they crucified him, failing to realize their prophesied act pushed the mystery of God’s plan toward its denouement, Messiah’s resurrection.
Highly instructive is Jesus’s post-resurrection conversation with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, disciples from whom he concealed his identity while he showed them how the Messiah is revealed in the Scriptures—the Pentateuch and the Prophets. Jesus deliberately kept their eyes from recognizing him to ground their faith not in the experience of seeing him but in his fulfillment of the Scriptures. What Jesus reveals to them by expounding the Scriptures was always there in Scripture, in plain sight to be seen by anyone who has eyes to see. Only then did Jesus open their eyes and he left them.
Conclusion
Coming to terms with how the Old Testament foreshadows Christ Jesus calls for patience and spiritual insight to trace the apostolic reasoning from the Scriptures. It also requires diligence like the Bereans show as they eagerly welcome the Word but also examine the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul teaches is true (Acts 17:10). Like the Bereans, we should expect nothing less than convincing proof from Christ’s apostles when they appeal to the Old Testament to argue that Jesus Christ is God’s promised one who fulfills the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44). Indeed, we need to be able to reproduce the apostles’ exegesis.
[1] George E. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, reprint 1991, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 336. Emphasis added.
[2] George E. Ladd, The Last Things, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 18. Emphasis added.
[3] Ibid., 18, 10.
[4] Richard Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975).
[5] Richard N. Longenecker, “Can We Reproduce the Exegesis of the New Testament?”, Tyndale Bulletin 21 (1970) 3-38.
[6] Longenecker, “Can We Reproduce the Exegesis of the New Testament?”, 38.
[7] Against Galatians 4:21-31 being a privileged apostolic revelatory insight, see A. B. Caneday, “Covenant Lineage Allegorically Prefigured: “Which Things Are Written Allegorically” (Galatians 4:21–31),” SBJT 14.3 (2010): 50-77.