Jesus
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47. See 1 Peter 1:10–12.
48. There is a significant difference between typology and allegory. Typological exegesis (of the “essential correspondence” school) is a legitimate interpretation of the text, and it was used profusely by the Second Testament authors. A type is an event, object, or person that finds a parallel and deeper realization in Jesus Christ, His people, or His work. Typology “is grounded in history, and does not lose sight of the actual historical character of the events with which it is concerned. Typology may be described as ’the theological interpretation of the Old Testament history.’ Allegory, on the other hand, has little concern with the historical character of the Old Testament words” (France, Jesus and the Old Testament, 40). Typology, unlike allegory, does not dehistoricize the text. Allegorical interpretations are highly subjective and are based on the interpreter’s imagination. Patristic allegorizing and post-Reformation spiritualizing both leapfrog over the historical realities of the First Testament text, acting as if the Hebrew Scriptures have no historical significance in their own context. To learn more about the legitimate use of typological interpretation and how it differs from allegorical exegesis, see Patrick Fairbaim, The Typology of Scripture: Two Volumes in One (Philadelphia: Smith & English, 1854); A. Berkeley Mickelsen’s Understanding Scripture: How to Read and Study the Bible (Hendrickson, 2005), where “essential correspondence” posits guidlines to keep the typology from slipping into allegorism; Leonhard Goppelt’s Typos; R. T. France’s Jesus and the Old Testament, 38–79; J. Danielou’s From Shadows to Reality; G. W. H. Lampe’s “Typological Exegesis,” Theology 56, 201–8; E. E. Ellis’s Paul’s Use of the Old Testament; “How the New Testament Uses the Old,” in New Testament Interpretation, ed. I. Howard Marshall (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977), 201–8, “Biblical Interpretation in the New Testament Church,” Compendia Rerum Judaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, eds. S. Safrai et al., and “How Jesus Interpreted the Old Testament,” Criswell Theological Review 3:2, 1989, 341–51; Richard M. Davidson’s Typology in Scripture (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Seminary Dissertation Series, 1981), 115–90; G. W. H. Lampe and K. J. Woollcombe’s Essays on Typology; Graeme Goldsworthy’s Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture and According to Plan; A. T. Hanson’s Jesus Christ in the Old Testament; F. Foulkes, The Acts of God; James Preus’s From Shadow to Promise; Paul Heinisch’s Christ in Prophecy; Richard Longenecker’s Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period; Sidney Greidanus’s Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 111–278; F. F. Bruce’s New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes and The Time Is Fulfilled; Nathan Pitchford’s Images of the Savior from the Pentateuch; Edmond Clowney’s Preaching and Biblical Theology and The Unfolding Mystery; H. Wheeler Robinson’s The Cross in the Old Testament; D. A. Carson’s “Current Issues in Biblical Theology,” Bulletin for Biblical Research (1995), 27; G. K. Beale’s The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 376ff., and A New Testament Biblical Theology; Sinclair Ferguson’s “Preaching Christ from the Old Testament”; Walter Wilson’s A Dictionary of Bible Types; Ada Habershon’s The Study of Types; E. W. Bullinger’s Numbers in Scripture; A. B. Simpson’s The Christ in the Bible (4 volumes) and Christ in the Tabernacle; Stephen Kaung’s God Has Spoken (8 volumes) and Seeing Christ in the New Testament (6 volumes); and InterVarsity Press’s Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. For older works, see C. H. Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch and C. H. Spurgeon’s Christ in the Old Testament. D. L. Moody once stated that if his entire library were to be burned and his Bible and C. H. Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch were to remain, those would be sufficient. See also “Index of Allusions and Verbal Parallels” printed in the corrected third edition of The Greek New Testament, ed. K. Aland et al. (United Bible Societies, 1983), 901–11; and Peter Enns’s “Apostolic Hermeneutics and an Evangelical Doctrine of Scripture: Moving Beyond a Modernist Impasse,” Westminster Theological Journal (Fall 2003). In the latter, Enns persuasively argues for a Christoletic hermeneutic for interpreting the Bible. Dave Moser is a blogger who has written a helpful book on Christ-centered Bible study that he offers at no charge in PDF: http://armchair-theology.net/Christ-Centered-Bible-Study.pdf.
49. Interpretations that stress only the historical-grammatical elements of the text miss the heart and spirit of Holy Scripture. They cause us to lose the grand narrative of the biblical canon. Interpretations that stress only the spiritual element of the text lead to “subjective hermeneutics” that spawn fanciful and erroneous interpretations. In this book, we are marrying the historical-grammatical approach with the theological/spiritual approach. The linchpin that brings them both together is the way in which the Second Testament authors consistently interpreted the First Testament. The mammoth volume Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), explores the different ways the Second Testament cites and alludes to the First Testament. (This commentary is 1,239 pages long.) The various ways that the Second Testament makes use of the First Testament can be understood using these different models: Promise and Fulfillment; Type and Antitype; Shadow and Reality; Beginning and Completion; History and Application; Part and Fullness. We believe each of these models is divinely intended. However, if taken by themselves, each could be misleading. But when we allow them all to be present, they complement one another and present us with a full-fledged portrait of Jesus. What we are doing in this book, in effect, is putting into action what C. H. Dodd and R. T. France have uncovered in their classic volumes According to the Scriptures and Jesus and the Old Testament (respectively). Dodd traces how the Second Testament authors interpreted the First Testament while France traces how Jesus interpreted it. As previously stated, both used the same method of interpretation. See also Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul and The Conversion of Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scriptures, as well as Darrell L. Bock’s Recovering the Real Lost Gospel: Reclaiming the Gospel as Good News (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2010), 7–21.
50. Because the historical-critical method has become so prominent today, the relationship between the First and Second Testaments has been largely lost. We agree with Henry Vander Goot’s observation: “It is not out of proportion to the reality of the situation to speak today of a crisis in Biblical theology that is owing to the fact that much Christian reflection fails to view the Scriptures as a single narrative whole. Modern Biblical theology seems unable to hold together in a positive, comprehensive, and coherent unity the Old and New Testaments” (Henry Vander Goot, “Tota Scriptura: The Old Testament in the Christian Faith and Tradition,” in Life Is Religion: Essays in Honor of H. Evan Runner, ed. Henry Vander Goot [St. Catherines, ON: Paideia, 1981], 97). In like manner, Walther Eichrodt says, “All the ever so brilliant results of historical research cannot seriously offer any substitute for a grasp of the essential connexion between the Old Testament and the New Testament” (Walther Eichrodt, Theologie des Alten Testament [Berlin, Germany: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1933], 1:4). We agree with Brevard Childs that historical and canonical criticism can live and work together. But priority must be accorded to the entire biblical canon.
51. “The Nature of the Christian Bible: One Book, Two Testaments,” in Radner and Sumner, The Rule of Faith, 120–21.
52. We, along with most Christian scholars, strongly disagree with Reinhold Niebuhr’s opinion that reading Jesus into the Hebrew canon is somehow anti-Semitic. The whole notion that Christianity is simply a second story built on Judaism is incorrect. Renowned Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner eloquently pointed this out. According to Neusner, Christianity is a Judaism. But it’s a different Judaism than rabbinic Judaism. Both Christians and Jews interpret the Tanakh from a certain interpretive lens. For the rabbinic Jew, the interpretative lens is the discussion among the rabbis through the centuries—the rabbinic line of interpreters. For the Christian, it is not the rabbinic tradition of interpreters but Jesus who gives meaning to the ancient H
ebrew text. So Jesus plays the role for Christians what the rabbinic tradition plays for the Jews.
53. The theological phrase for this is “grounded christologically.” The story of Jesus is the deep structure that lies underneath all of what Paul and the other Second Testament writers wrote. They were working from the Jesus story, presupposing it and basing everything on it. Yet they did not dehistoricize the First Testament.
54. Matt. 2:15.
55. Matt. 2:14–15. See also Matthew 4:15–16; 8:16–17; 12:18–21; 13:35 for some examples. “Matthew has shown us how the Old Testament tells the story which Jesus completed. Then he showed us how the Old Testament declares the promise which Jesus fulfilled. Now he opens up the Old Testament as a store house which provides images, precedents, patterns and ideas to help us understand who Jesus is” (Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995], 108). Craig Keener rightly points out that the context of Hosea 11:1 speaks of a new exodus and a new era of salvation (Craig Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009, 108–9). Like Matthew, all the writers of the Second Testament highlight the narrative patterns of the First Testament, which are larger than the individual books that make up the Hebrew canon but which ultimately point to the Author behind it all.
56. John 1:45.
57. John 12:38.
58. For instance, Jesus is the Lamb slain for the sins of the people (John 1). He is the reality of the tabernacle and the temple (John 2–3). He is the serpent in the wilderness who brings healing (John 3). He is the new Jacob (John 1 and 4). He is the manna sent from heaven (John 6), etc.
59. 2 Cor. 3:14–16. According to E. E. Ellis, Paul quoted the First Testament ninety-three times in his writings. See E. E. Ellis, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 11.
60. Rom. 5:14.
61. Col. 2:16–17.
62. 1 Cor. 10:1–4.
63. Heb. 7:21–24.
64. Heb. 10:1.
65. 1 Peter 1:10–11.
66. 1 Peter 2:4–7.
67. F. F. Bruce, New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), 21.
68. In his book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2011), sociologist Christian Smith compares what he calls “biblicism” with reading Scripture Christotelically. Smith makes a compelling case that the answer to interpretative pluralism, which discounts the approach of biblicism, is reading the Scripture through the lens of Jesus Christ. See especially p. 97ff.
69. YHWH (also Yahweh) is the ancient Israelite name for God, at least from the time of the exodus (Ex. 3:14). By Jesus’ day, it was considered unholy to speak this name out loud (except for the high priest once a year).
70. YHWH is the Hebrew word that is most frequently used for God in the First Testament. In chapter 5 of The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (2011), Wright argues at length that “the Old Testament portrait of YHWH fits Jesus like a glove” (121). Bonhoeffer argues that “the name of Jesus Christ is the name of the very One who in Genesis is named Yahweh” (Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 13 [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004], 173). Scot McKnight points out that the name “Jesus” translates the Hebrew Yeshua, which means “YHWH is salvation.” YHWH-is-salvation has become “God-in-flesh-salvation” and “Jesus-is-salvation” (Scot McKnight, The King Jesus, 87). See also Jeremiah 23:5–6, where the prophet declares that a righteous Branch and a prospering King will be raised up. And He shall be called “YHWH our righteousness.” This text is clearly a reference to Jesus. See also Richard Bauckham’s God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 1998.
71. Some may think that the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—is the subject of the Bible. But the reality is that both Father and the Spirit point to Jesus, and Jesus points to Himself as the content of all Scripture. Jesus, Paul tells us in Colossians 2:9, is “the fullness of the Godhead [in] bodily [form].” As Miroslav Volf once put it, “We worship one undivided, divine being who comes to us in three persons” (Mark Galli, “Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?” Christianity Today, April 15, 2011; available at Virtue Online, http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=14283). And we can only know this one undivided, divine being in and through Jesus Christ (John 1:18). For details, see Jesus Manifesto, 161–63; Erich Sauer’s From Eternity to Eternity: An Outline of the Divine Purposes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 14ff; David Fitch’s The End of Evangelicalism: Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission; Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), xxvff; and Fred Sanders’s The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 175ff.
72. See the important work by Mary Douglas, Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). This genre reached its height between the eighth and the fifth centuries BC.
73. To those who would question the reliability of the First Testament and the Gospel accounts therein, we recommend The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F. F. Bruce (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1960); The Canon of Scripture by F. F. Bruce (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988); The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1987); Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); The Historical Jesus of the Gospels by Craig Keener; Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels by James D. G. Dunn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011); Memory, Jesus, and Synoptic Gospels by Robert McIver (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011); Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition by Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy (see n. 3); Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage by Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Richard Hays; The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007) and The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998) by Lee Strobel; and Gospel Perspectives (6 volumes), eds. R. T. France, David Wenham, and Craig Blomberg (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1980–1986). See also The Art of Reading Scripture by Ellen David and Richard Hays (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, rev. and exp. ed. by N. T. Wright (New York: HarperOne, 2011); The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006); Inspiration and Authority: Nature and Function of Christian Scripture by Paul Achtemeir (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999); and The Bible Made Impossible (see intro., n. 68).
74. In Greek, the word used in 2 Timothy 3:16 is theopneustos—literally, “God-breathed.”
75. 2 Tim. 3:16.
76. 1 Cor. 2:14.
77. John 1:1. This passage climaxes by contrasting Jesus with the Torah given through Moses (John 1:17–18). Consequently, Jesus is the Word in the fullest ancient Jewish sense—the embodiment of God’s revelation in the Torah.
78. For an explanation of the “extended meaning” of a text, see G. K. Beale’s The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 376ff.
79. See Robert Mounce’s groundbreaking book Jesus, In His Own Words (Nashville: B & H Pub. Group, 2010).
80. Frank Viola has done the same with Acts and the Epistles, putting the story found therein in chronological order in his book The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2004).
81. Irenaeus called this principle “recapitulation.” See also Dodd, According to the Scriptures, 103. R. T. France wrote about God’s dealings, saying, “Thus his acts in the Old Testament will present a pattern which can be seen to be repeated in the New Testament events
. . . New Testament typology is thus essentially the tracing of constant principles of God’s working in history, revealing ’a recurring rhythm in past history which is taken up more fully and perfectly in the Gospel events’” (France, Jesus and the Old Testament, 39).
82. Edmund Clowney, Preaching Christ in All the Scriptures (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 31.
83. Also see John 21:25.
84. Robert Farrar Capon wrote a book, Genesis, the Movie (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), in which he argues that the Bible is best approached as a movie, one whole movie, with a main character named Jesus. “You have to see the Bible as one complete story, with redemption in Christ as the underlying theme and plot, the whole point of the story from the first scene. You know what’s fun? When you watch a movie, try to identify the Christ figure. I mean the figure who makes the plot work. It doesn’t even have to be a human character. It’s the one who does for the plot of that particular film what Jesus Christ does for the world.” See Tim Brassell, “Interview with Robert F. Capon,” Grace Communion International, http://www.gci.org /gospel/capon.
Chapter 1: Christ Before Time
1. G. C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, trans. and ed. Jack B. Rogers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 166.
2. There are two major views among Christians regarding time and eternity. Augustine’s view sees eternity to be timeless and nonlinear. Newton’s view sees eternity as being marked by linear time that never ends in either direction. In Augustine’s view, which was championed by C. S. Lewis and others, God is outside of and transcends time. In Newton’s view, which was championed by Oscar Cullmann and others, God’s actions are accomplished in real time before, during, and after creation. Time is infinite and never had a beginning. We agree with Augustine and Lewis that God is timeless. We agree with Einstein that time began with creation. God, therefore, is at the beginning and the end of creation at the same moment. He lives in the eternal now. Yet we also agree with the great theologian Karl Barth, who taught that God can move into time and act there, even though He stands outside of time as well (Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, part 1). Barth believed that eternity surrounds time on all sides. Eternity accompanies time and contains all of time’s fullness simultaneously. Because we are temporal beings, we experience events in bits and pieces in a linear fashion. So rather than seeing God’s eternity as a sort of lack of temporality, it’s more accurate to see that God is present in His fullness in all time. Does God know it’s today? Yes. He knows it’s today, but He also knows it is yesterday and tomorrow. C. S. Lewis put it this way: How can God be incarnate and the man who lives in time also be God who lives outside of time? The answer is that the incarnation is not something we work our way toward intellectually. As Bonheoffer said, you have to begin with the incarnation. We understand God and humanity in terms of the incarnation. If we begin with a set notion of God and man and time and eternity, and try to fit God into it, it becomes impossible to resolve all the paradoxes. We must always begin with the incarnate Christ. For more on the subject of time and eternity, see Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001); Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time by William Lane Craig (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Eternal God by Paul Helm; God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature, edited by Gregory Ganssle (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Time and Eternity by Brian Leftow; Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History by Oscar Cullmann (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1950); and Predestination & Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, edited by David Basinger and Randall Basinger (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), especially “Norman Geisler’s Response,” 132–33.