If GHE can be shown to be an inadequate (though not entirely worthless) tool for interpreting the bible, what then is left? Are all interpretations equally valid? If the NT writers could take such extraordinary liberties with the OT text, are we free to do the same with their own books?

I think there are two answers to this question, two kinds of control.

First, there is the theological control. The NT writers interpreted the OT in particular ways to serve their hermeneutical goals. They interpreted it Christologically, ecclesiologically and eschatologically. Their understanding of the gospel determined their interpretation of the Scriptures which they believed preached the gospel. It's interesting that Christological interpretations are rare in the Pauline writings but common in Acts and the gospels. Since Paul was writing to believers, he had no need to prove that Jesus was the Christ - they knew that already. Rather, they needed to understand the nature of the church of which they were members. But Peter, for example, preaching at Pentecost, has quite a different aim. He does want his hearers to recognise their Messiah in the person of Jesus, and so he uses the OT for these ends.

Second, there is the community control. The bible is not an academic text intended for scrutiny by impartial observers. It is God's revelation for his people. So 'true' interpretation of the bible should be done by the people of God, for the edification of the people of God. I've touched on this before here. We shouldn't be surprised that interpretation of the bible done by unbelievers for their own self-promotion and career advancement, arrives at quite different conclusions.

Now, I'm not saying that Christians shouldn't think, or think hard, or take account of any academic research. Or that GHE has no value at all. But if we rely on method to get a reliable interpretation of scripture, we will immediately founder. And we will certainly never be able to show how 'all the Scriptures' speak of Christ.

McCartney again:

If our perception of larger divine intent in the OT is limited solely to those passages for which the apostles inspiredly spell it out for us, it seriously limits a Christian use of the OT.

and again:

We must... like Jesus and the apostles, go on to see and read the OT text in the context not just of the Bible as a whole, but in the context of redemptive history as a whole. In particular, we must read the OT with Christian eyes, with eyes that believe the OT as part of a gospel book, as a vital story that becomes our story because it is Christ's story. Should we employ the hermeneutic of the NT writers? Indeed we must.

Since I quoted Pete Enns in my last post, I feel that my other hermeneutics professor, Dan McCartney, should be given equal attention in this one.

One of the big problems that modern scholarship has when it approaches the NT use of the OT is its prior commitment to grammatical-historical exegesis. This supposedly 'scientific' method of studying texts aims to uncover what the original author intended to communicate to his original audience.

But as McCartney observes:

the conviction that the grammatical-historical meaning is the entire and exclusive meaning of the text seems to stem more from post-Enlightenment rationalistic presuppositions than from an analysis of the Bible’s understanding and interpretation of itself.

...the problems are not really generated by the New Testament’s use of the Old, but rather by our expectations as to what the New Testament’s use of the Old ought to be.

The NT authors had certainly not heard of and frequently did not operate according to the rules of GHE (despite the best efforts of Kaiser, Beale and others to show that they did). This is only a problem if we think that in some way they should interpret the OT in this way. But such a presupposition seems to me both arbitrary and arrogant. Why should we think we know better than ancient authors how to interpret ancient texts?

McCartney also observes that even if in some ways GHE can be thought of as a neutral, 'scientific' tool, this does not guarantee its results. One only has to consider briefly the breadth of diversity among biblical scholarship that all claims to be based on sound GHE. McCartney also cites the example of an Islamic handbook which suggests that the way to confound Christians is to apply the rules of GHE to the Old Testament! It can easily be demonstrated that the OT isn't about Christ, after all.

One of the inherent limitations of GHE when applied to the bible is its failure to account for the divine authorship of this text. McCartney uses the example of the detective novel to illustrate this. (See also Peter Leithart on David Steinmetz on this here and Steinmetz in 'The Art of Reading Scripture).

Since God, like Agatha Christie, knows the whole plot from the beginning, the story hangs together as a whole when interpreted in a certain way - in the light of the ending. But for the reader starting at the beginning without knowing this ending, it appears mysterious. (This is why I always read the end of books first.) What we find at the end is that details we first thought incidental become highly significant and that conversations we thought we'd understood take on a new light. Obviously the analogy is not perfect. God does not set out to mislead or trick the reader - there are no deliberate red herrings in the bible. But there are things that mean more than they first meant to the original author/readers. And GHE will never help us work these out.

Pete Enns in his Introduction to his Exodus commentary writes:

The book of Exodus is not waiting there for us to bring it into our world. Rather, it is standing there defining what our world should look like and then inviting us to enter that world.

He explains a bit more of what he means by this:

The story of Exodus... is designed to tell us what God is like, how he thinks of his people, the lengths to which he will go to deliver them, and the proper response of God's people to this great deed. Applying the book of Exodus begins with understanding what the story is supposed to do and then seeing how we, as God's people, fit into that story.

What Enns says of Exodus is all the more true of the bible as a whole. The proper question to ask is not 'What has the story to do with me?' but 'How should I fit into that story?' All the while remembering that the line comes not directly to us, but through Christ who is the fulfilment of the story in all its parts.

Rather than using blogging as a distraction, I'm now using it as a revision technique!

So this is from Moises Silva, in his article on the NT's use of the OT in Scripture and Truth:

...if God wished to reveal something of the significance of the Old Testament through His inspired apostles, would He do so through “scientific” methods that were to take twenty centuries to develop and would therefore have been totally incomprehensible to first-century readers? Might He not rather use those very associations and interpretive clues that would awaken the intended human response? Just as the use of imperfect human languages like Hebrew and Greek can prove an adequate channel for conveying divine truth unmixed with error, so does prescientific apostolic exegesis serve to communicate, infallibly, the teaching of the Old Testament.

If we refuse to pattern our exegesis after that of the apostles, we are in practice denying the authoritative character of their scriptural interpretation - and to do so is to strike at the very heart of the Christian faith.

You'll see he's basically arguing against Longenecker's position which I outlined briefly in an earlier post and will return to at length in a later one.

I'm about halfway through tagging all my entries. This serves the dual purpose of making it easier to find previous posts (of which there are some absolute corkers!) and helping me avoid revision.

So far, I notice that 'theology' is winning, just ahead of 'bible' and 'fun stuff'.