How is the Old Testament Christian Scripture?

I. Introduction

Lane Tipton’s proposal of a thoroughly christological reading of the Old Testament, in christotelic, christocentric, and christomorphic senses, properly qualified and defined, (found in his article in Confident of Better Things and his interview on Christ the Center)¹ has incurred somewhat of a backlash.² Tipton articulates his view in contradistinction from a hermeneutic which separates the Old Testament into two meanings: one flowing from a first-reading, which utilizes the grammatical-historical method, and a second reading, which takes into account the claims of the New Testament authors. Dan McCartney is the first-reading/second-reading proponent par excellence, and he is the scholar whom Tipton interacts with most in his discussion of the christomorphic nature of Old Testament typology. Most who take issue with Tipton’s approach are those who posit that only christotelism is a properly biblical-theological category, while christocentrism is a properly systematic-theological category, and christomorphism inappropriate altogether. It is this idea of christomorphism that separates the camps. There is a spectrum among those uncomfortable with the idea of christomorphism, yet it will be helpful to note how Tipton defines it to better understand why some are so uncomfortable with such a hermeneutical notion.

Tipton defines christomorphism as this organizing hermeneutical principle: “Christ is already there—objectively foresignified and redemptively present as the content of the mystery in the Scripture of the Old Testament Itself. The first reading of the Old Testament must take this central theological reality into account and develop its implications for typology.”³ That is, the Christocentric nature of Old Testament soteriology, and the pneumatological nature of its eschatology, has biblical-theological implications for the very semantics of Old Testament typology. McCartney would respond, “…the Messiah will die and rise three days later. We can only see it after the fact. A genuine ‘first reading’ of the story allows for a surprise element.”⁴

II. Summary of and Response to General Criticisms of and Alternatives to Christomorphism

Now, those who dismiss Tipton’s approach appeal to the progressive nature of revelation, arguing that, since it would have been impossible for the Old Testament authors to have been conscious of New Testament christological realities, then there is no way that we can tie those realities to the text of the Old Testament without allegorizing. However, McCartney, rather than making this a point of contention, seeks to retain a notion of grammatical-historical exegesis that precludes the tenability of christomorphism, yet in so doing deems allegory as a legitimate hermeneutical option in an attempt to retain the Christian nature of the Old Testament. We may label the view of those in McCartney’s camp, whether rigidly or loosely, as pure christotelism,⁵ as distinct from christomorphism (which exists along a differently qualified and defined notion of christotelism and christocentrism).

One New Testament text that many suspicious of Tipton’s approach often bring up is Hebrews 1:1-2. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” “Therefore,” an advocate of pure christotelism will say, “we may produce a hermetically sealed study of the prophets in a way that does not have in mind any christological realities, even if it is limited and eschatological in focus.” Another way it is sometimes put is that the “proximate” concerns of the Old Testament (i.e. military campaigns, dietary laws, material inheritance, etc.) are discernable and comprehensible on their own terms, and the “ultimate” christological significance of any given Old Testament text, although it is the most important, is not the most hermeneutically immanent in our interpretative approach to the Old Testament.

This is, from the perspective of adherents to pure christotelism, a silver bullet in the heart of christomorphism. However, the appeal to Hebrews 1:1 as the structure of progressive revelation does not penetrate the heart of the issue. The argument works only if Tipton, throughout the entire articulation of his position, has failed to take into account the fact that time happens. Revelation in history occurs progressively – at the risk of sounding like a commonsense realist, “Duh.” The issue at hand is not that the historical process of revelation is a progressive one, but the nature and function of the content of revelation’s form as it pertains to the text of the Old Testament.

Hebrews 1:1-2 must be held next to Romans 1:1-3, which says, “Paul…set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son.” Therefore, given the progressive form of revelation which Hebrews 1:1-2 delineates, which Paul grants in Romans 1:1-3, the focus of the issue is the content which is revealed through the prophets before the incarnate Son was the immediate agent of divine revelation (Heb. 1:2). The prophets, who were the agents of God’s communication in the Old Testament (Heb. 1:1), were speaking about “the gospel of God…concerning his Son, who…was declared to be the Son of God…by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom. 1:1-4) Even though this is made clear most intensely and climactically in “these last days,” through the advent of Christ, the content which fills the progression from “the prophets” to “his Son” (Heb. 1:1-2) is “his Son.”⁶

Therefore, the “proximate” concern of the Old Testament is “his Son,” so that the Son (and his gospel) is present at both the “ultimate” and the “proximate” semantic level of the Old Testament text. What, then, of Joshua’s entering into the land (Josh. 6:27), or the witch of En-Dor (1 Sam. 28:25), or the military debate between Hezekiah and Sennacherib (Isa. 37)? These things are, to introduce a third category, peripheral concerns whose meaning is exhausted by their particular semantic tie to the self-consciously typological system that has been progressively revealed up to that point. In other words, “If Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.” (Heb. 4:8). The author of Hebrews says later on, “They serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’” (Heb. 8:5; citing Ex. 25:40) The heavenly things fills the copy. To put Romans 1:1-3 and Hebrews 1:1-2 together, “Long ago…God spoke to our fathers by the prophets…concerning his Son…Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Heb. 1:1; Rom. 1:3-4).

One more area of confusion in the discussion is the relationship between the divine and human meanings. It is said that the first reading is the meaning that the human intended, and the divine meaning is the meaning that God intended in light of how he knew history would play out in Christ. One could push the issue of putting too rigid a distinction between the two, but ultimately proponents of pure christotelism would admit that the human meaning is intended by the divine author, but that he has more in mind than the human does. It will therefore be helpful to push in the opposite direction: did the human author have access to the divine intention at that time? It may seem that I am simply restating the question at hand, but it is a different question entirely. Does the human author (and here we speak of all human authors of Scripture) know that he doesn’t know that the meaning of the text he is writing is greater than he can conceive? If he does know, then the human author himself rejects the enterprise of pure christotelism, insisting that the “pattern” (typos; c.f. Ex. 25:40; Acts 7:44; Rom. 5:12-21; Heb. 8:5) that contextually girds his words denotes, at the human level of Israel’s parochial setting, a heavenly significance which is neither merely ultimate, nor remote, but immanent and essential to the semantic function of all of the text of the Old Testament.

III. McCartney’s Understanding of Grammatical-Historical

Beyond the internal problems that accompany rejecting Tipton’s proposal, the matter of properly understanding the definition and role of “grammatical-historical” exegesis in the broader theological enterprise must be addressed. The term “grammatical-historical” has been taken as an interpretative axiom for biblical studies, both in definition and function, not least in McCartney’s work. It will therefore be helpful to consider McCartney’s own understanding of the definition and function of “grammatical-historical” in his hermeneutical approach, since one’s concept of both the gramme and the historia of the Old Testament determine what one allows it to say. McCartney concedes as much, for he says,

[T]ypology is not grammatical-historical exegesis. Typology is a theological construction based on a conviction that two events in history or an event in history and a (separate) event in a text are somehow actually related (not just comparable or similar, nor just literarily related) in that the meaning of the former event (or the written record of such) only becomes fully manifest in the later event. Such a construction cannot be derived purely from the events themselves. Historical meaning indeed provides a tethering point for typology, but what drives typology is the fulfillment in Christ, not the historical meaning itself.⁷

For McCartney, it seems, the very nature of grammatical-historical exegesis precludes the possibility of a kind of typology that arises from the historical meaning of a text or event because of the fact that it is a theological construction. To reword McCartney’s argument here, if an interpretation of a text is a theological construction, it cannot be the grammatical-historical meaning, which means that McCartney’s theological convictions prohibit the possibility of an eschatological typology to exist at a grammatical-historical level anywhere in history.⁸ Another aspect of the argument presented here is the rigidity of the definitions of “grammatical-historical” and “typology.” McCartney has defined the possibility of grammatical-historical typology in the Old Testament out of existence. He gives further insight into his understanding of “grammatical-historical,”

But Beale [who posits that typology arises out of a grammatical-historical approach] also concedes too much to modernism. Beale, and many others dealing with this issue, also feel the pressure of conforming to modern expectations regarding grammatical-historical meaning. In order for an interpretation to be true, it is assumed that it must be, on some level, grammatical-historical in nature.⁹

McCartney has already conceded that the grammatical-historical approach plays a role in his interpretation of Scripture, yet he has conceded here that his understanding of “grammatical-historical” is a product, at least in part, of modernism. This is how many Roman Catholics construct their epistemology; it is nature plus grace. For McCartney, it is modernistic conceptions of history plus a Christian conception of its meaning (Historie plus Christology). Again, he says, “if one thinks that all the promises of God…are yea and amen in Christ, one will be unsatisfied with grammatical-historical interpretation (unless one fudges).”¹⁰ This assumes that there is a valid understanding of history-in-general that may be evaluated in alienation from the interpretation given to it by the history of special revelation.

A Christian epistemology does not hand back to the biblical interpreters the gift of enlightenment rationality that the postmodern enterprise has stolen, in order that they may then add a Christian spin to a modernist notion of history. Rather, rejoicing with the postmodern critique of the enlightenment, the Christian position retains for itself a qualitatively unique notion of history, namely, one in which the controlling interpretive variable for all facts is the special revelation of God in word and deed. Therefore, in a consistent Christian epistemology, one does not impose enlightenment, post-enlightenment, and post-counter-enlightenment hermeneutical rules from Gadamer, Fish, Austin, and the like onto Scripture, as if it were appropriate to put Scripture under a secular conception of an axiomatic hermeneutical mechanism. Nor can the Christian draw from “common-sense” grammatical-historical “givens” which control one’s understanding of how God may or may not speak in history. Instead, a Christian notion of “grammatical-historical” begins with the system of truth laid out in the grammē and historia of Scripture by its single divine author.

The primary aspect of McCartney’s self-declaredly partially-modernist approach that is troublesome is not that his “first reading” seeks to construct an objective historical account of events, or find objective meaning in texts, but that he believes that before the interpreter arrives at the textual scene, there is an objective, self-interpreting, disembodied, non-theological semantic element which may be exegetically mined. Richard E. Burnett describes the historical-critical approach to Scripture, which resonates quite strongly with McCartney’s approach, “Instead of history being a predicate of revelation, revelation became for many a predicate of history.”¹¹ Likewise, for McCartney, there is a valid sense in which one must make an “objective” historical evaluation of the text of the Old Testament before it can be understood as part of the organic whole of this history of revelation.

Contrary to McCartney’s claim, it is the one who acknowledges the partial validity of the modernist approach to history who has conceded too much to modernism, not the one who holds his understanding of history-in-general in an open hand. This is the crux of the debate. The issue that Tipton and others take with McCartney is that he is the one who throws authority of the Old Testament to the modernist dogs by his integration of an admittedly modernist conception of “grammatical-historical.” The task at hand is not to add onto an enlightenment conception of a “grammatical-historical” approach – that is, divorced from theology – rather, the task is to change one’s conception of history altogether. More than that, the task at hand is to free one’s understanding of how the semantics of the Old Testament may function from the myth of the possibility of history qua history. That is the prescriptive imperative of the apostolic hermeneutic. McCartney’s understanding of “grammatical-historical” exegesis is therefore dissatisfying.

As well intentioned as McCartney may be to free the apostolic hermeneutic from enlightenment bonds, his integration of what he admits is a modernist agenda into his interpretative enterprise must result in a rejection of his consideration of the nature of typology wholesale. Any appeal to an unqualified notion of “grammatical-historical,” at best, stems from a naïve conception of the meaning of history-in-general, and at worst, stems from an ideological power play against the nature and function of the divine intention behind the text and types of the Old Testament. The myth of the brute heuristic potential of “objective historical data” must be extracted from a proper consideration of what “grammatical-historical” means at every point, especially in the consideration of the special revelation of Scripture, lest the redemptive-organic nature of revelation history be pruned by the enlightenment agenda. Tipton writes,

Paul would not recognize the notion of mystery McCartney advocates…in McCartney’s model the witness to Christ in the Old Testament is understood as a potential one that is actualized after and in light of the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ…Rather than finding Christ in the Old Testament only after Jesus’ resurrection by reading him back into the Old Testament using the idea of a surprise ending in a mystery novel, we must recognize that Christ is already there—objectively foresignified and redemptively present as the content of the mystery in the Scripture of the Old Testament Itself. The first reading of the Old Testament must take this central theological reality into account and develop its implications for typology.¹²

IV. Conclusion

At the end of the day, the issue of christomorphism comes down the doctrine of inerrancy. The true inerrantist must not only be able to demonstrate a lack of contradiction between the Old and New Testaments, but must take the intention of the New Testament authors at face value. Theological compatibility between the testaments does not account for an “About the Son he says” hermeneutic (Heb. 1:8). A mere knowledge of a generic messianic theme in the Old Testament is not compatible with the full-orbed christological conception of the semantics of the Old Testament, and the christomorphic nature of the proximate, typological Old testament realities (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:45-55).

Paul does not claim that Christ derives his Adamic identity from being like Adam; rather, his claim is that Adam is self-consciously typological, and eschatologically-oriented in that typological constitution (Rom. 5:14). Adam does not become the first Adam when the second Adam comes; rather, à la 1 Cor. 15:45 (and in light of Rom. 5:14), the first Adam was composed as the “first man,” (ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος) having a foresignifying function from the outset regarding “the last Adam” (ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδαμ). Tipton claims that this has prescriptive hermeneutical implications for our reading of the Old Testament, and it is difficult, with a strong commitment to a Pauline Old Testament biblical theology, to disagree.¹³

Notes

1. Lane G. Tipton, “The Gospel and Redemptive-Historical Hermeneutics,” Confident of Better Things, (ed. John R. Muether, Danny E. Olinger, Willow Grove, Pa.: The Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2011); “The Gospel and Redemptive-Historical Hermeneutics,” Christ the Center, published on July 22, 2011; interview conducted by Camden Bucey.
2. It would be imprudent to name names here, but there are many who flippantly dismiss Tipton’s proposal on the basis of various misconceptions of the issue at hand, the clarification of which is a goal of the present work.
3. Tipton, “The Gospel and Redemptive-Historical Hermeneutics,” 211. Emphasis original.
4. McCartney, “Should We Employ?” 7.
5. The notion of “pure” christotelism does not preclude room for any kind of christocentrism, but it does preclude the significance of the category of christocentrism for any first-reading of the Old Testament, which is precisely what Tipton wants to move away from with his category of christomorphism.
6. One might respond to this, “In their historically conditioned context, the prophets had no noetic access to the events of Christ’s advent,” to which one may reply, “They’re prophets. Their job is to prophesy about things outside of their historically conditioned contexts.” This, of course, applies not only to those who are properly considered prophets, but to all of the authors of Scripture. However, this is a critique of Tipton’s view that has been unofficially issued, and it is worth giving some kind of response. Furthermore, if this argument is unconvincing, then one’s commitment to the doctrine of inerrancy (in light of Paul’s words in Rom. 1:1-3) and, if they claim to adhere to the Westminster Confession of Faith, their confessionalism (WCF 1:9), may be called into question.
7. McCartney, “Should We Employ?” 5.
8. It is appropriate to wonder if McCartney is here implicitly writing off the entire history of the study of Old Testament typology in the broader academy, which, excluding Beale whom he interacts with at length, includes many scholars who find a typological reading of the Old Testament as entirely appropriate. Voices in this conversation include David L. Baker, “Typology and the Christian Use of the Old Testament,” Scottish Journal of Theology 29 (1976): 137-157, P. Joseph Cahill, “Hermeneutical Implications of Typology,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44 (April, 1982): 266-281, Davidson, Richard M. Typology in Scripture: A Study of Hermeneutical τύπος Structures (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1981), Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), W. Edward Glenny, “Typology: A Summary of the Present Evangelical Discussion,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Quarterly 40 (December 1997): 627-638, Leonard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New (trans. Donald Madvig. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), and Douglas Moo, “The Problem of Sensus Plenior,” Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon, ed. D. A. Carson and John Woodbridge, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 175-211; Gerhard von Rad, “Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament,” Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics ed. Claus Westermann (trans. James Luther Mayes, Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1971), 17-39. There is surely no consensus, but there is enough heat on both sides of the discussion to warrant an argument from McCartney which ventures beyond, to summarize, “Typology cannot be grammatical-historical because of what typology is and because of what grammatical-historical interpretation is.”
9. McCartney, “Should We Employ?” 4.
10. One might ask at this point, going along with McCartney’s enterprise, “If we are going to be consistent in our limitation of the grammatical-historical approach to the Old Testament, then in what sense is it hermeneutically appropriate to move beyond the grammatical-historical approach to the New Testament?” In other words, the if grammatical-historical exegesis should not be the only hermeneutical standard, then one must be consistent in applying it to both testaments. How would McCartney contain this opening of Pandora’s hermeneutical box? Although he cites John Walton’s “Inspired Subjectivity, Hermeneutical Objectivity,” as a point of partial agreement, he ultimately departs from Walton’s conclusion and says that they are conceivable “anti-Christian.” Therefore, McCartney himself rejects Walton’s solution as a plausible resolution to his own problem, and therefore as a plausible answer to the present question of how to be consistent with McCartney’s own method. John Walton, “Inspired Subjectivity and Hermeneutical Objectivity.”
11. Richard E. Burnett, “Historical Criticism,” Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible ed. Kevin Vanhoozer, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House Company, 2005), 291.
12. Tipton, “Redemptive-Historical Hermeneutics,” 210-211. Emphasis original.
13. It should also be noted that a first-reading/second-reading hermeneutic is not in accord with the theology of Geerhardus Vos. Drawing Vos’s two-age diagram for biblical theology on the board does not make one a Vossian any more than drawing two circles on the board makes on a Van Tilian. One cannot accept the progressive structure of Hebrews 1:1 without the hermeneutically Christocentric content of Romans 1:1-3. Vos explains, “A Biblical Theology is deeply concerned with the question of inspiration. All depends here on what we posit as the object with which our science deals. If its objects consist in the beliefs and practices of men in the past, then obviously it is of no importance whether the subject matter be considered as true in any other or higher sense than that of a reliable record of things once prevailing, no matter whether inherently true or not. A Biblical Theology thus conceived ought to classify itself with Historical Theology, not with Exegetical Theology. It professes to be a History of Doctrine for Biblical Times…Our conception of the discipline, on the other hand, considers its subject mater form the point of view of revelation from God.” Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 1948), 12-13.

Paul Maxwell graduated from Moody College in Chicago, IL and is currently an MDiv student at Westminster Theological Seminary. This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2012 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Biblical Theology, Geerhardus Vos, New Testament, Old Testament. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.