THE JESUS HERMENEUTIC: ALLEGORIZE BABY, JUST ALLEGORIZE! So many people today resent the Old Testament as a dark and wrathful document of hate which paints God as a bipolar monster. And its understandable when we consider it only on its literal terms. I agree that a literal reading of the Old Testament is often dangerous and can be counterproductive to understanding the love of Jesus Christ. So, I totally sympathize with the concerns about where literal Bible reading takes us. But, on the other hand, I think there IS a way to read the Old Testament which avoids the killing letter by embracing the life-giving Spirit which underflows the subtext of all Scripture. 2 Corinthians 3:6. The Old Testament just needs TWO ALLEGORICAL ADJUSTMENTS to become relevant again to New Testament believers. Both adjustments form what I like to call the Jesus Hermeneutic. Simply put, this hermeneutic holds that all Scripture must be interpreted according TO and BY the revealed nature of Jesus. The revelation of Jesus IS the revelation of the nature of God. When reading the Old Testament, ALLEGORY is the key. Allegory is language that says one thing and means either something MORE than what it says or something OTHER than what it says. --- Theologian R.A. Norris, in his article on Allegory in THE WESTMINSTER HANDBOOK TO ORIGEN. In other words, sometimes the Old Testament means MORE than what it literally says or OTHER than what it literally says. The outpoured and indwelling Jesus is the SOLE plum-line of Biblical interpretation. Here, we allow the character of God to interpret Scripture RATHER than allowing the bare letter of Scripture to interpret Gods character. The early Alexandrian Church believed that the primary way to read Scripture was non-literal. The greatest Biblical scholar of these Church Fathers was the 3rd Century martyr Origen. He, following the Apostle Pauls lead, wrote that the key to rightly understanding the Old Testament was to read it ALLEGORICALLY rather than LITERALLY. Other church fathers who advocated this way of reading include Ignatius, Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose and Augustine. In fact, Allegorical way of reading the Old Testament was the predominant hermeneutic used by the Church up until the 17th-18th centuries, at which time Literal Exegesis came to the forefront. These church fathers would no doubt agree with Karl Barths sentiment that he loved the Old Testament far too much to read it literally. What’s most interesting today is that, while a host of scholars after Barth, and especially over the last twenty years, have been arguing for a return to the Church’s traditional way of reading Scripture, evangelicals have by and large been the most resistant to this. Greg Boyd. These Church Fathers and their progeny believed that the key is to read Scripture by the Spirit and not by the dead letter, for the letter kills (and makes God out to be a killer), but the Spirit gives life to the Scriptures. 2 Corinthians 3:6. The early Church Fathers did NOT read the Old Testament by the bare letter, nor should we. Ignorant assertions about God appear to be nothing else but this: that Scripture is not understood in its spiritual sense, but is interpreted according to the bare letter. Origen, On First Principles 4:2.1-2, 4. So to avoid making ignorant assertions about Gods character, we need to make TWO ALLEGORICAL ADJUSTMENTS to make the Old Testament sing with New Testament glory. First, we need to realize that the Old Testament had a largely undifferentiated view of God and Satan, which caused them to often wrongly attribute the works of Satan to God. And second, we need to re-imagine the Old Testament as a treasure trove of imbedded types which ALL point to Christ. 1) The FIRST ALLEGORICAL ADJUSTMENT we need to make when reading the Old Testament is to recognize that its authors had a largely undifferentiated view of God. We must use the JESUS HERMENEUTIC to reverse-engineer any and all passages which misattribute the works and directives OF Satan TO God. This is the type of allegory that says something OTHER than what the text says. It is well documented by both Jewish and Christian scholars that the Old Testament saints did not have a fully differentiated view of God and Satan. They wrongly thought Satan was Gods left hand, His official minister of wrath, an obedient angel just doing Gods dirty work. Jesus cleared that up as totally wrong when He came and revealed Satan as a cosmic rebel who was the author of all death and destruction. Jesus came to reveal and destroy the devils works, not commit them, and to show us to be mistaken if we ever thought otherwise. The major misconception the OT saints had about Satan was that he worked FOR God instead of AGAINST Him. This caused occasionally errant descriptions of where destruction came as from the Lord rather than from Satan. Jesus cleared that misconception up in the New Testament. John 10:10. Under this tragic view, God is BOTH dark and light, BOTH good and evil, BOTH loving and wrathful, and BOTH forgiving and vengeful. Satan is wrongly seen as the minister of Gods wrath, the enforcer of Gods curses, and the executioner of Gods judgments. Satan is NOT seen by the Old Testament Jews as a disobedient angel, or a cosmic rebel hostile to God on every level, but rather just an obedient servant angel with a tough job to do. Jewish literature has always considered Satan to be the obedient death angel of the Old Testament. So, for the Old Testament saint to say, The Lord called down fire from the sky, or The Lord brought down curses on a person, or The Lord struck someone down with pestilence, sword, famine or death ----- all simply meant that they believed Satan did the destructive act at the Lords command. So, when God is quoted in the Old Testament, it could EITHER refer to Yahweh OR to Satan. The Old Testament saints wrongly thought Satan speaking WAS Gods angry voice. Since they assumed Satan was Gods official minister of wrath, they attributed EVERYTHING that worked death and destruction as coming from God. BUT, since we NOW know from Jesus teachings that Satan operates NOT as an obedient minister OF God, but rather as a vile enemy rebel AGAINST God, then we know their voices and actions need to be redivided and wholly separated from each other whenever we read the Old Testament. Jesus came to forever slice, sunder and separate our image of God from the image of Satan. But, to do this, Jesus had to reveal the YE-KNOW-NOT-WHAT-SPIRIT-YE-ARE- OF SYNDROME. Luke 9:51-56. This is the Jesus Hermeneutic at its best. When James and John wanted to call down fire on the Samaritan village for rejecting them, Jesus had to show the disciples these two disciples that Old Testament saints frequently did not know WHICH spirit they were operating out of. Jesus showed them that not everything in the Old Testament that is called Gods fire, or Gods wrath, or Gods judgment IS in fact OF Gods Spirit. There are only TWO SPIRITS--- the Satanic SPIRIT of the world, and the Holy Spirit which is of God. 1 Corinthians 2:12; Ephesians 2:2. Jesus said in John 10:10 that Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy while Jesus comes that they might have life, and have it in abundance. The Jesus Hermeneutic calls us to route all death passages to Satans spirit and all life passages to Jesus Spirit, no matter what they literally say. Really, the goodness of God is based on this foundational truth-- God never kills--- EVER. He warns us not to kill, either physically or even within our hearts imagination, and that by so doing, we will be perfect like our Heavenly Father. Matthew 5:38-48. The Holy Spirit doesnt test us on Bible knowledge, but the Bible certainly tests us on Holy Spirit knowledge. 2) The SECOND ALLEGORICAL ADJUSTMENT is reimagining the Old Testament as a treasure trove of imbedded shadows, symbols, metaphors, enigmas and and types which all point to some facet of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Jesus frequently allegorized the Old Testament. Using key imagery from Old Testament passages which were ONLY seen as literal, He would then usurp their literal meaning into an allegorical application toward Himself. He referred to Himself as the Temple of God (John 2:19-22), the true manna from heaven (John 6:50), Jacobs supernatural ladder (John 1:51), the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:38-40), the IAM burning bush of Exodus 3 (John 8:58), the great shepherd of Psalm 23 (John 10:11), etc. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus told the two disciples And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, He (Christ) INTERPRETED to them in ALL THE SCRIPTURES the things concerning himself....And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Was not our heart burning within us, while he spake to us in the way, while he opened to us the scriptures? Luke 24:26-27, 31-32. Now, we know that Jesus is LITERALLY nowhere explictly to be found by name in the Old Testament. But, ALLEGORICALLY, He is everywhere to be found. Do you see? Jesus allegorized the Scriptures to these two highly blessed disciples. And their hearts burned within them as they finally understood the true import of the Old Testament. Paul was clear that the Old Testament literal events were prophetic pre-figures, or types, of a later New Testament reality revealed in and through Jesus Christ who fills all things. Paul frequently established this divine dynamic. He wrote that Biblical revelations occur FIRST in the natural (the Old Testament), the truer and deeper meanings of which are THEN unveiled in the Spiritual (the New Testament). 1 Corinthians 15:46. Lets look at some examples. Literal foreskin-circumcision in the Old becomes spiritual heart-circumcision in the New (Romans 2:29). Keeping the literal-Sabbath in the Old becomes instead a spiritual-Sabbath of abiding in divine rest in the New (Hebrews 4:4-11). The Law written on literal-tablets of stone in the Old becomes the Law of Christs love written on the spiritual-tablets of our heart in the New (2 Corinthians 3:3-9). The Israelites literal-baptism of walking through the waters of the Red Sea in the Old becomes a type of our spiritual-baptism in the Red Sea of Jesus saving blood in the New (1 Corinthians 10:1-6). The literal-temple in the Old becomes the spiritual-temple of our living bodies in the New (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). And the list goes on and on. Do you see? First in the natural, then in the spiritual. FIRST in the Old Testament figure, THEN in the New Testament fulfillment. FIRST in the externalized Law and the Prophets, THEN in the internalized in the Kingdom of God within us. FIRST the shadow in the Old, THEN the substance in the New. FIRST the type in the Old, THEN the anti-type (or real deal) in the New. The Jesus Hermeneutic says that there is something to be gleaned in every Old Testament passage about Jesus, His victory over Satan and/or His Kingdom of light, love and learning. Sometimes the passages even expose what they didnt know about God, negative examples for us NOT to follow in other words. 1 Corinthians 10:6-11. Even the violent passages in the Old Testament can reveal truths about spiritual warfare NEVER to be taken literally against flesh and blood enemies, but rather they instruct us on how to better battle and vanquish our inner enemies-- our Goliaths of fear, our personal Philistines of affliction, and our demonic Egyptian enemies seeking to enslave our souls, etc. The Jesus Hermeneutic makes all things new, even the Old Testament! Enjoy it in good health!
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 17:20:26 +0000