"Biblical Hermeneutics and Some of its Technical Terms" | Dr. Richard Barcellos (Lecture 1)

we are here to discuss hermeneutics and we're going to be here today and also next saturday well saturday for people around our parts friday night for people around um in the u.s and where pastor rich is and as we think about the issue of hermeneutics this week pastor rich is going to talk to us a bit about more on the foundational principles and concepts of hermeneutics and he's actually going to show us how that all works out when it comes to interpreting a specific passage or expositing specific passages of scripture now before anything else i'm gonna turn it over to pastor rich and have him introduce himself pastor richard marcelos yes thank you thank you josh um richard barcelos i'm the pastor of grace reform baptist church palmdale california which is in southern california northern southern california or southern central california and uh i married five children three grandchildren and if you hear my grandchild granddaughter crying it's because she got up early this morning he was a little cranky um i also teach for irbs theological seminary and covenant baptist theological seminary and steve gonzalez is a good friend yes thanks for that pastor richard uh pastor rich has written several books as well i think about um the lord's supper as a means of grace um recently he came out with a book called trinity and creation i think i got that right yes and um i got that on ebook and i've been working my way through that i really appreciate it and i think a lot of the books that he has written um although he he hasn't written a hermeneutics textbook and that might be in the works i don't know you tell us but as i read his books a lot of them definitely uh touch on the issues of biblical interpretation what scripture says about how we must interpret scripture and then the history of interpretation as well and i think as i look at the notes that master rich has prepared we we're going to get into a lot of what people have said about biblical interpretation and what the biblical authors themselves have said about that so without further delay i'm going to turn it over to pastor rich now so that he can begin with part one out of our two-part series as he speaks about biblical hermeneutics and some of its technical terms okay thank you josh um i want to thank you for putting this together as well as uh stephen kind of behind the scenes i should thank sean sancolo from our church because i'm just here he pulls the string i talk he sets all the technical stuff up i don't do that but it is a privilege it's an honor to be asked to do this and i'm not taking it lightly i spent some time thinking about how to approach it and boston turned several nights and hopefully what i'm going to present will be helpful this week will be more theory principles you can get it somebody's at our door and then next week i'll apply some of the things some of the principles um we discuss this week so that's what i'm hoping to do so uh technical terms this week and then um i'll expound a text of scripture uh actually just part of a verse next week but i think it'll illustrate just about everything we're discussing this week so i would like to pray before i begin and then we'll start lord we thank you for this opportunity we pray for help for all of us for our minds to be keen sharp to be able to understand especially for me to simply and clearly articulate the matters before us and especially when we go to text subscription make things become clear by your gracious work in our hearts we pray in jesus name amen so i have entitled the first session biblical hermeneutics and some of its technical terms so i have a question actually a two-fold question what does the word hermeneutics mean that's pretty important and why is the study of biblical hermeneutics important so what is hermeneutics first and then why is the study of biblical hermeneutics important so simply put the term hermeneutics refers to principles of interpretation utilized while interpreting verbal or written communications in our case uh written communication by biblical hermeneutics i mean the following the identification the explanation and the utilization of theories or principles of interpretation which best assist us in understanding the holy scriptures i'll read it again the identification explanation and utilization i'm going to do all three of those this week identify and explain next week utilize various theories or principles of interpretation which best assist us in understanding the holy scriptures it is very important to recognize that the principles necessary to interpret for example the front page of the newspaper does anybody know what a newspaper is today yeah sean says what's a newspaper uh the principles necessary to interpret the front page of the newspaper and the principles necessary to interpret the written word of god though there's some overlap they're not necessarily one in the same i was trained in such a way at least my brain my memory remembers you interpret the bible just like you do any other book there's a small problem with that namely the bible is like uh no other book there's no other book that compare with it one divine author and a various human um uh authors and uh the unity of the whole depended upon the fact that god is its ultimate author so i think we'll see this what i'm trying to distinguish here general hermeneutics principles of interpretation that we use for any and all types of literature versus what some people call sacred hermeneutics or the principles we use sometimes mined out of the bible itself to interpret the bible in other words when we read the bible we see that the bible interprets the bible places and in various ways and that becomes a model an infallible model for us to emulate so in these two sessions i'll be using uh technical terms i think we have four four or five today uh i'll define them illustrate them and since i'm using technical terms it's only right for me to do so not just use the technical terms but to define it uh sometimes i can't eat one person at one time a long time said i don't like the pastor's sunday school classes because he uses technical terms he makes me use my brain too much i think all week i just want to come to church and uh might come back to that now then i've got you know probably sinfully bad scented all that stuff but now my comeback would be have you ever listened to rc spro one of the reasons why people like rc sprole is he uses a term and he stops and then he usually does you know this history of the word and it's a compound word he talks about the preposition that's connected you know he does all that stuff and by the time he's finished you get it you get the concept embodied by the term and then he when he uses it in a context boom the lights go on well i'm certainly not rc sprole but i found that helpful and hopefully this will be helpful for you as well as we define these uh terms uh hermeneutics requires uh us to think about theories and or methods of interpretation that's what this session will be concentrating on it'll be theory heavy principle heavy i'll illustrate them as well but next week will be more of a practical application so uh this evening some technical terms connected to biblical hermeneutics now uh this is not going to be typical at least for a lot of people i'm not sure about my audience but a lot of people where i'm from when you study basic principles of hermeneutics you know one principle would be um understand the context which i think is important understand what goes before understand what goes after i get it authorial context uh you know a section context uh is it a paragraph uh chapter context book context author context testamental context you know canonical context there are various layers of context i'm assuming you already believe do that okay um so what i'm doing is looking at principles some of them are embedded in scripture itself others some of these are not unique to scripture but i think they help us interpret scripture so the first one is called intertextuality and if you've never heard that word you know the concept once i read a definition here's a definition from the uh what's called the pocket dictionary of biblical studies a little tiny thing published by intervarsity press i think i bought a bunch of those little pocket dictionaries used 10 or 15 years ago they're very helpful so here's how they define intertextuality ask yourself have i ever seen this before in writings the phenomenon that all texts are involved in an interplay with other texts which results in the interpretive principle that no text can be viewed as isolated and independent in other words you can't do this you have to do this at some level all texts are related to every other text this interplay is particularly true of biblical literature ah intertextuality is not unique to the bible but it's particularly true of biblical literature since each document or text you can say book is self-consciously part of a stream of tradition of a canonical tradition either a prophetic tradition or an apostolic tradition the study of intertextuality pays attention to the fragments or echoes of earlier texts that appear in later texts examining texts that share words and themes now i realize that's a mouthful so let me try to unpack it a little so the basic thought here is that biblical texts are at some level involved with all other biblical texts in revealing a cohesive story and the reason this is the case is uh these prophets and apostles and the apostolic men the non-apostles that wrote new testament books are agents of god and god is the ultimate unifier of all that they say so this can be illustrated for instance in the sharing of words uh phrases concepts and themes from earlier texts by later texts you read through especially the old testament by the time you get to the psalms and then you get to the prophets they're picking up earlier words phrases concepts they might use different words sometimes but you know what they mean we'll look at that in a second so with reference to the bible and in its uniqueness intertextuality is assured by the fact of inspiration divine inspiration and this is due to its divine author this is very important uh we believe that god is the sovereign creator he makes the everything not god he sustains and he also acts in the world he creates and one of the actions of god one of the works of god one of the effects of god in his creation is the production of scripture uh so that we believe in divine providence and that ensures the unity of scripture and that gives the biblical intertextuality an added element to it that other uh other works of literature go have by the way if you've ever read john owen there's intertextuality going on in john owen's writings as well and the same goes for anything you write or i write but again the bible is unique the unique aspect then of intertextuality in holy scripture is not to be found in the human author's products even assuming they were they wrote with the canonical consciousness which i think they did but the unique aspect of scriptural intertextuality is find found in divine inspiration divine inspiration endows or gives the word of god written a type of intertextuality unknown in any other written documents the holy scripture has various human authors we grant their writings display an intertextual relationship with one another they borrow terms and phrases later writers from earlier writers and concepts but it is not the human character of the scriptures that ensure a distinct type of intertextuality among the writings of the various human authors of scripture the distinct type of intertextuality is due to the divine inspiration concerning the final written product of scripture we could say this scriptural intertextuality is divinely inspired god did this god picks up terms phrases sometimes verses concepts from previous revelation or antecedent revelation or earlier texts he picks them up in later texts god's doing this through the prophets and the apostles it's ultimately then god doing this and not merely men making use of the written word to further explain its meaning we'll see that this happens uh subsequent scripture sometimes makes explicit what is implicit in antecedent scripture if by the way if you memorize that you understand what i mean by that you got it you can actually go um i hope i'll illustrate this uh further in our discussion so let's look at the second term inner biblical exegesis inner biblical exegesis the same dictionary defines inner biblical exegesis as follows an approach to the text that seeks to address the reinterpretation any students of mine know i hate that word i'll talk about it in a minute an approach to the text that that seeks to address the reinterpretation and reapplication of earlier biblical texts by later texts direct quotations are the most obvious application of this method this approach to texts shares features with scripture with interpreting scripture in light of scripture so the basic thought here is this the bible sometimes interprets and applies the bible wow that's pretty important though if you think about it because it's god um it's god interpreting god's word by virtue of a new word from god i said i didn't like the word reinterpretation uh in that definition to me it seems to allow for later texts casting new meanings back on earlier texts you have a text over here in the new testament that quotes a text from the old testament and a re-interpretation could mean and it does for some people in light of jesus coming old texts now have new meanings uh if you and put that on a test i would give you an f on that one the writers in the new testament didn't reinterpret didn't cast uh new meanings back on old tests they interpreted christ in light of what the texts already meant and christ himself interpreted himself in light of what the texts already uh already meant so we must admit that inner biblical exegesis uh at least we ought to it's no small phenomenon of holy scripture uh assuming it exists which it obviously does so given the divine inspiration of the final product the word of god written if and when inner biblical exegesis occurs the sense derived from an earlier text why a later text is infallible since inspired that's pretty important let me say that again if and when it occurs the sense derived from an earlier texts by a later text it is infallible since it's inspired in other words sometimes we have the word of god on the word of god and inspired and therefore infallible interpretation of the word of god given to us by the spirit of god in the word of god itself i've said this before when you have the word of god on the word of god you've got the word of god on the word of god that's pretty important god is through agents through revelatory agents the apostles interpreting ancient texts and applying them to a new situation brought in by the great redemptive act of god christ now here's one example for instance matthew cites hosea 11 1 in matthew 2 15. so let's uh let me read matthew 2 13-15 and make some observations here now when they had appeared had departed behold an angel of the lord appeared to joseph in a dream saying arise and take the child and his mother flee to egypt and remain there until i tell you for herod is going to search for the child to destroy him and he arose i almost said and pharaoh is going to search for the child to destroy him we've heard that this story is as reverberations echoes from the old testament and he arose and took the child and his mother by night and departed from egypt and was there until the death of herod that what was spoken and watch these words by the lord through the agent through the prophet might be fulfilled saying and here's the quotation of out of egypt did i call my son now we're not going to get into all the details of what's going on here all the different views that scholars might have but i will say this i think at least three things ought to be agreed upon first the word of god in this case matthew 2 15 cites the word of god right that's pretty simple jose 11 1 second the word of god matthew 2 15 is interpreting and applying the word of god hosea 11 1. there's an interpretation of an ancient text going and an application of it going on here and third the word of god's interpretation that is matthew 2 15's interpretation of the word of god that is hosea 11 1 is inspired therefore infallible that's pretty important that is the case and i think it is every time a scripture author not merely cites a text but in the context you can tell he's interpreting and applying a text okay so because it's one thing to cite a text as an ethical principle or a proof for an ethical principle that he's trying to deal with it's another thing to say something like this this happened in order that what the prophet said would take place would occur you know has happened so that's called the this is that motif that's all over the gospel of matthew in the book of acts let's keep going here hopefully this is making sense if it's not i guess you can blame pastor josh and stephen gonzalez illusion illusion uh gk bill who's an american presbyterian reformed uh theologian he defines illusion as a brief expression consciously intended by an author to be dependent on an old testament passage so he's talking about illusions in the new testament now differentiating between quotation and illusion biel says illusions are in direct references okay so it's not a quotation we just saw a quotation jose 11 1 was quoted in matthew 2 15. one thing that illusions teach us is that the writers of scripture possessed uh what i'm calling a canonical consciousness uh new testament authors allude to old the old testament matter of fact old testament authors allude to books in the old testament as well there's illusion uh within the old testament to itself there's illusion uh within the new testament to the old testament there's also i think several places in the new testament that alludes to itself if uh if we have time i'll show you something but all of this shows that there's this there's this canonical consciousness uh through the agents the organs of revelation the agents of revelation the prophets and the apostles they realized they were part of a tradition of writing down things that had authority so the old testament by the way is full of allusions to itself i you know what i don't think i've ever found a scholar i'm sure they have though give a number how many illusions are in the old testament to itself but you know this it frequently gives an indirect reference to antecedent events uh institutions places and or persons and to illustrate that i think one of the more frequent illusions in the old testament is to the exodus from egyptian bondage especially toward the end of the old testament by the time you get we get to the prophets they can refer to the exodus by just saying when god bore his arm right sean smiled at that because immediately what comes up in a scripturally saturated mind is i know when that happened it happened in that great event we call the exodus that's just an allusion to an event uh triggered by the use of two or three words not necessarily a quotation now let's consider illusions to the old testament in the new testament so what is meant by illusion is to be clear is a passing or a casual reference or an incidental mention this will be illustrated below you might ask the question if you're not asking at all ask it how many allusions to the old testament are contained in the new testament if there was a live audience i'd ask for a number there isn't but i'll tell you this roger cole who was a scholar from the last century reformed scholar go so far as to claim over 3 500 illusions in the new testament to the old testament let's drill down a little farther into the fact of scripture illusions before looking at the new testament let's think about this the presence of illusions in either testament teach us that the writers of scripture had a revelational and canonical consciousness they realized that god had revealed himself to us in the scriptures that predated them we could put it this way text of scripture often assume previous texts of scripture and enter into conversations with them without quoting them so let's consider the first verse of the new testament matthew 1 1. believe it or not i think there are at least five examples of illusion in the first verse of the new testament let's go through them the book of the genealogy i think is the first one it's an allusion to or echo of old testament genealogies the book of genesis which is the foundational book of the old testament upon which the rest is based contains several genealogies now we could add to it the purpose of matthew's genealogy is to show the connection between old testament redemptive history and an individual agent of redemption our lord jesus christ the new testament then assumes the old testament and builds upon it fulfilling its promises and pursuing its expectations the very first words of the new testament illustrate this a second the word jesus is this an illustration uh is this an allusion to the old testament well in hebrew uh the language of the old testament yeshua is joshua in english and it means the lord saves and joshua if we think through old testament chronology is a key figure in the history of old testament people of god and is the title of the sixth book of the old testament remember joshua took the people of god into the promised land because moses failed moses sinned joshua took the people of god into the promised land and conquered many of her enemies they crossed the jordan with joshua by virtue of his leadership he was the leader of god's people just after moses led them out of egyptian bondage the exodus now i just have a question you'll know my answer but it's just the question could it be that joshua was a type finding as his antitype for the fulfillment uh in a greater joshua who would take the people of god into the eternal state emmanuel's land that to which the rest of canaan pointed and if you read older writers they'll all say of course well how about the messiahs that allusion to the old testament i think it is it's an old testament concept that refers to the lord's anointed suffering servant now the servant oracles especially in the prophet of isaiah might come to your mind with a suffering servant by the way they're suffering servants who do suffer for doing what is right all over the old testament but they're all sinners this is the suffering servant anointed by the lord did not sin the messiah he was promised in many places in the old testament and matthew later argues that jesus is the promised messiah of the old testament so this illusion brings to springs to our mind the promised fulfillment motif found in many places in matthew's gospel and other books of the new testament so there are three illusions i think the son of david is another illusion this is not a quotation of the old testament but if you know the old testament you're reading matthew 1 1 i think this would be your fourth illusion you go yeah son of dave that comes from the old testament it's a phrase which finds its literary taproots this is scripturally literary tap roots or it's canonical tab roots and ii samuel 7 and 12 and following and psalm 89 the davidic covenant the new testament clearly sees a promise fulfillment motif functioning with reference to david and david's greater son and then i think the fifth uh illusion here is the son of abraham if again if you're saturated with the old testament and then you start the first verse of the new testament you're going to you're going to your mind's going to be triggered your mind's going to hear connections c and then c connections here connect however that so i think this is safe to say the very first verse of the new testament alerts us to uh to its literary and theological association with and dependence upon the old testament through illusion this is not quotation the new testament also contains dilutions to itself there are several i am going to skip that section let's go to the last one and that is typology by the way all of these are i purposely grabbed these four principles because i want to illustrate these four especially next week but let's think through typology a bit typology is very important i want to offer some brief thoughts on typology as an introduction and then i'm going to give a few introductory principles uh regulating typology first of all typology is not allegory typology is not allegory allegory properly understood is actually first of all a genre a genre sometimes people say genre a style a way of writing and that is indicated by the use of metaphor or extensive metaphor a lot of metaphors are extended metaphor and allegories don't require the text to be presenting a historical person or a historical place historical institution or historical event uh we might say according to the letter some people see for instance the song of solomon as an extended metaphor an allegory uh some people will see and i uh lean this direction i do the song of solomon as well many of the the parables of our lord they're it's an ali it's in their allegories now that scares a lot of us but if you just understand it as the use of metaphor and extending those metaphors to tell a story then you say oh well that's what it is okay well it is the particular baptist benjamin t has a big two volume set on the on the parables and he has some good wonderful uh comments on the genre at times jesus used allegory jesus used metaphor jesus used words and phrases that depict one thing but they were he was depicting another thing by a another word uh sheep are are christians sheep yes but that's a metaphor that is a figure of speech for a human being sinner saved by grace who's united to christ so typology unlike allegory assumes his the historical reality of the person the place the institution or the event of the text and typology as well assumes that god intended to typify or prefigure something by the person place institution or event revealed in the text and the reason why it does that is because once a type is revealed in the old testament we're not necessarily told it's a type but when we read the rest of the bible there are analogies of that thing that we haven't called a type that convince us that was a type sometimes the scripture itself identifies those things as a type which they were with the word two pause or type um not always as we'll see next week especially so for instance the type adam is not a type because uh the word of god written makes it such that's weird but in romans 5 14 it says that adam was the type of him who has to come but hold on did adam become a type when paul wrote romans 5 14. the answer is so prior to the title being written about as a type it was instituted by god to be a type in other words types are not made by god telling us they are types but by god instituting them as such via a divine act prior to the inscripturation of the act itself or the type god makes types by virtue of his providential acts not by virtue of his word written that might blow your mind let's keep going let me give you a few introductory principles regulating um typology first a type is a historical person place institution or event that was designed by god to point to a future historical person place institution or event we have something back there that points to something over here something in the old that points to something in an example would be the sacrificial system revealed to us in the old testament that's pretty clear that institution was designed by god to point to christ's once for all sacrifice by the way what came first the sacrificial sacrifices uh actually offered or the writing down of the pentateuch did you realize that some when i talk about the sacrificial system i said of the old testament it's not just the mosaic covenant on top there were sacrifices prior to the mosaic covenant right and those predate the written word of god so um which is very interesting which means that they were instituted by god designed by god to point to christ's once for all sacrifice at their institution not at their end scripturation john got it so i'll keep going second that to which types point is always greater than the type itself okay so you have the type over here and that to which it points this thing's always greater something greater than solomon is here something greater than jonah is here remember jesus saying that that's typology we'll look at one of those statements next week so in other words there is some sort of uh what they call it is escalation in the antitype in the fulfillment for example the blood of bulls and goats could point to christ but they could not and do could not and did not do what christ's sacrifice did take away sins third types are both like and unlike their anti-types there is both correspondence and escalation for example the blood of animals was shed the blood of christ was shed there's correspondence the blood of animals did not take away sins the blood of christ takes away sins there's escalation fourth antitypes tell us more about how their types function as types that's a mouthful of the blood of christ takes away sins the blood and of animals pointed to that you know once the fulfillment comes it's almost like the old testament uh is illuminated uh the old testament isn't changed it's illuminated it's a it's uh in the language of bb warfield it's like a dark room with just a little lit candle but when fulfillment of all of that to which the old testament comes then the light shines back and things become clearer and fifth and finally types are not their anti-types types bulls and goats are not christ nor are types as types of the essence or substance of their anti-types and both the animals the bulls and goats couldn't do what christ did if they were if they could they would be they would be their anti-types or make their anti-types redundant the blood of bulls and goats could expiate guilt could take away sins we don't need christ so there would be no escalation in the anti-type and thus would negate the type as a type uh this gets a little technical here but we'll just keep going though types may also be symbolic of some present and real spiritual reality for believers in other words they can function sacramentally this does not mean that they are of the essence or substance of that to which they point for example the blood of bulls and goats is not christ's blood though the blood of bulls and goats may function as symbols of the blood to be shed by christ which is efficacious for believers of all ages i know that was a little technical but what we're going to do is explore typology in more detail next week from a text of scripture to try to illustrate all this now i have to draw a conclusion because this is supposed to go between 40 and 45 minutes i'm not even sure when i started so here's my conclusion from the terms and concepts we've studied thus far it should be should be clear that in order to read and understand the bible as god intended not only will we see things like intertextuality inner biblical exegesis illusion and typology we need to find the best way to account properly for such things okay i just showed you that it's there but we have to account for why this is happening and how they did what they did so by accounting properly for these things i do not mean acknowledging their mere presence that's one thing i just showed you their mere presence i mean we need to acknowledge both their presence and account for the way or the manner in which these things appear that's way different than saying oh intertextuality oh and a biblical exegesis oh illusion oh typology that's good but we have to go farther we have to say well how does all that work now to whet your appetite um hopefully consider first corinthians 15 3 and 4. let me just read this passage for i delivered to you as of first importance what i also received that christ died for our sins according to the scriptures let me just stop there it's hard for me to next question are there any illusions to other scripture there christ died for our sins according to the scriptures christ messiah died a lot of animals died for our sins the lamb of god takes away the sins of the world according to the scriptures and then verse 4 and that he was buried i think it's implied 40 good scriptures and then and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures now here are my questions to ponder mostly tonight and to prepare you for next week when we're going to look at uh verse 4 be and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures so here's the wetting of the appetite hopefully first question is this to what is paul referring when he says the scriptures i'll put sean on the spot what do you think he's referring to there the old testament sean says if i had a bell i i bring it for you correct to what is paul referring when he says the scriptures and that he was raised on the third day according to the scripture second question does paul quote the scriptures here the answer is no he's not quoting the scriptures third question does paul allude to the scriptures yes fourth question does paul assume meaning from the illusion to the scriptures and that he was raised on the third day and this being raised on the third day was in accordance with the scriptures paul's not citing a scripture text from the old testament paul is alluding to the scriptures plural not one text but the i think the entirety of the old testament uh teaches this but what specifically is the meaning that paul seems to be alluding to in terms of the old testament it is this that the old testament teaches the third day resurrection of the messiah of course we have to then ask the question does it really because if not paul was wrong of course we're gonna answer it really does and then we have to ask the question well how does it do that paul's just alluding to the fact that it does he's very confident here his death is according to the scriptures he's deaf for our sins his burial is according to scripture and his resurrection is according to the scriptures of the old testament so what we're going to do next week is uh delve into those questions a little more probably other questions a little uh other questions as well and uh that will be our next session where i try to illustrate all this stuff in the exposition of the last part of first corinthians 15 4. so with that josh i'll i'll give it over to you okay well we'll move on to our q a now thank you again pastor rich for uh for the presentation and um you definitely i think wet our appetites for uh for next saturday or next friday night for you and we do have quite a few questions coming in now so i'm just i'm just going to go ahead and throw them at you um we'll have a few people who we have a few people raising their hands so i can let them speak but i want to ask firstly on behalf of my wife she typed in a question uh and this is my wife's question um she asks several times you mentioned older authors positively why is that what was what was the negative shift which seemed to have happened uh that you you might be alluding to something's exploding uh that is an excellent question tell your wife that's an excellent question i will so um let me make sure i understand this i mentioned older authors that assumes a shift at some point what's the shift the shift we call uh in the western world is the was the enlightenment uh john gerstner who was rc sprole's mentor called it the endarkantment naturalistic worldview came in creation was no longer a creature it became nature on its own independent of a creator god was only not creator god was obviously been not providential ruler so that scripture became a religious book about ancient people jews and then first century christians and so a denial of divine inspiration one of the things that actually came out uh as a result of the enlightenment was um this this attempt to interpret documents um where the interpreter tries to um well this is one of the things that came out tries to rid himself of presuppositions and just be alone with the text and um that's impossible so what happened was uh people started to assume they could come to texts without assumptions and um just read it naturally and get uh you know the plain sense of the text you're going into the interpretive laboratory of for of scripture on the way in you rid yourself of all assumptions you're now a blank slate it's just now you in the bible uh that's impossible we all have assumptions we all have presuppositions that we can't shake the older writers that i'm talking about uh live prior to the enlightenment and so they had more of what we now call a christian worldview and they believed that we have to come not only do should we come to texts with presuppositions we need to come to the text of scripture with the right ones and they got primarily the right ones from scripture itself so that um they did kind of the sum some of the things i'm doing they're looking at this these these uh phenomenon going all these happenings going on with the text of scripture itself uh intertextuality uh inner biblical jesus illusion typology and they're going god did this god put this book together and so i have to read it assuming one divine author ultimately using you know the agents the apost prophets and the apostles so they had more of a theocentric view of interpreting scripture it's a god thing the the pre-modern the pre-enlightenment authors they i i don't think i can i've ever read a pre-modern author going i wonder what the original historically conditioned minds of the original recipients of paul's letters believe this to me that's a very modern question you got to get into the mind of the human author how do you do that they're dead yeah all you have is their text well but we have secondary literature this is enlightenment we have secondary literature literature behind the scriptures that fills in the gaps for us that's true but a lot of the historical data we have that fills in the gaps for us is very has very slim uh very slim textual basis and none of the secondary literature we have whether it's old or relatively new is in inspired therefore not infallible and a lot of the secondary literature that we have you know a little fragment off of a rock and a cave from the second century was could have been copied down wrong by somebody was interpreted probably by a non non-christian archaeologist at some point and then it's passed on from one author to another and just a lot of stuff falls through the cracks so those kind of questions are very modern that's why i want to say the older writers uh they were more theocentric the unity of scripture because of the one divine author they assumed a certain metaphysic of reality uh it's called philosophical realism we're not going to get into that but anyway i'm going too long that's that's that's my answer to that excellent question by your wife your wife's the obviously the theologian in the family right yeah well she really is she really is all right next question is from one of our church members and he has his hand raised so ilya i'm going to allow you to talk now so you can ask your question um thank you very much for um the conference dr barcelos and for teaching at cbts i've benefited greatly from it i've got a question that you seem to have assumed in your presentation um for clarification so um the question is can we interpret the old testament in the same way as the apostles did so at times you would say oh well paul is interpreting um uh you know things here matthew's interpreting things here uh but how do we counter the objection that the apostles could make exegetical leaps due to their inspiration that is that are unavailable to us and then how does the reformed doctrine of inspiration figure into this yeah that's a good question too so um some of this i might cover next week i'm not sure so the you know there's an issue with the old testament uh in the new and the issue is this when you study some of these passages for instance like matthew chapter 2 and then you go read hosea 11 1 even if you read it in its context you might scratch your head going what this is about jesus and so some people view matthew's use of hosea 11 1 as under uh you know an inspired penman whose product was inspired therefore infallible so he can make these exegetical and interpretive moves because you know god is with him in this unique way but we can't make the same moves we shouldn't interpret scripture uh the way the apostles came now the way the apostles did now we can't interpret scriptures the way the apostles did in their written documents in one sense because they're written documents the final products are uh inspired therefore infallible but if we can determine how they got to their conclusion how could matthew die back in the old testament and use hosea 11 1 to uh to say that you know this was god in the old testament actually predicting what he would do with reference to his incarnate son if we can figure out what needs to be in place for matthew to do that i think we can we should and we ought and everybody before the enlightenment thought the same thing uh that we ought to utilize the principles that the apostles did because the principles basically that the apostles used i think they learned from jesus um i'm i i have a friend we're kidding about writing books on hermeneutics sometimes and i would call mine lordship hermeneutics because if you follow jesus the way jesus interpreted the old testament jesus interpreted himself in light of the old testament and its meaning as it stood before he came on the scene jesus doesn't reinterpret the old testament make it mean something it never meant the apostles don't reinterpret the old testament make it mean something god never intended it to mean the christological and the apostolic interpretations of the old testament are the divine intent of the text of the old testament prior to the writing of the new testament uh and if you hold that view and that's my view this is a long answer then of course the next question is what has to be in place for to for the apostles to jesus to interpret the old testament the way they did one of the things has to be that god designed the old testament to prepare the world for the messiah and it's full of types i've said this before to students there's probably more types in the old testament than we feel comfortable with by the way an excellent book to help on this is 40 questions on typology and allegory by mitch chase um and i will argue next week that a type can be a type without the bible telling us it's a type and i'll use three illustrations next week of that thing that very thing so that's that's kind of my muddled answer sorry it wasn't as clear as it could be well we might as well do next week's lecture right now no no we'll have to wait thanks for that oh the thing about the thing about this thing about typology is just mentioning is uh for instance i was trained that a type is a type when god tells us it's a type in his written word the only types that are types are types identified as types with the word type in the bible okay something like that um and i used to hold it i i just don't think it works and next week's uh session um i'll you know i'll challenge that way of thinking not the rude way it's not trying to fight anybody but in a positive way i think that what we look at next week we'll have to conclude you know what there are some things in the old testament that are types of christ that aren't identified with the word type so next question thank you and i second the um recommendation for 40 questions about typology and allegory by mitch chase great book next question you read that book yeah i'm uh on the second of the last chapter man you know when i first read it when he uh well he sent me the pre-pub manuscript because he asked me to endorse it and i'm reading it i read it fast and i read about i don't know two three chapters and i'm going he reads the same books i read i said this in my lectures in a different way so that was cool to do that and we even become friends so i highly recommend that book yes great book next question is from reuben thomas i'll read it for you um are all antitypes christological meaning do all types point to the person life or work of christ well that's a good question uh let me ask this do you do you think reuben uh that the promised land is a type of the eschatological state the new heavens and the new earth if you answer you don't have to answer i don't want to put you on the spot but if you would answer yes to that then you have a place that's the type of a better place now how do we get from the place with all its faults to the better place by virtue of the sufferings and glory of christ so the antitype is still dependent upon christ that's a good question i don't think i've ever had that question answered asked before is there anything else uh yeah israel was the type of if you take this view if israel in some sense was typological of the church under the new covenant era then you have a non-uh christ person of christ anti-type but again that antitype doesn't become what it is without the virtue of the work of christ so i i bet you if we just kept teasing these things out with ourselves but again without christ you don't get the antitype even though he himself and his own person uh uh might not be the anti-type but so that's it by the way just just you know some people believe jesus himself and his person is the is the fulfillment of the land promise of abraham isn't that now it's weird to us okay but i have a i think a good friend who actually holds that i'm sure he has good reason for it next question thank you next question is just as good it's from someone named alexander what does hmm mean well that is an excellent question uh alexander must see that on twitter and or facebook it means whatever i want it to mean in the context in which it's met it's used so sometimes somebody'll say what does that mean i'll say let the reader understand i used for just about you know everything i tried to pull a trademark off on it somebody already had it sometimes it means i agree sometimes i'm astonished it just depends it all depends on authorial intent yes and i don't always uh let the secret out in terms of what i intend by it all right um from our good friend stephen gonzalez he asks dr barcelos can you give us some good resources that will allow us to dig a little deeper into our studies of hermeneutics thank you so you've already given the 40 questions on typology and allegory you might have some other resources you'd recommend yeah um the the 40 questions on typology and allegory does a lot now uh if you're like me when my background the word allegory was scary to me it's still scary because it's easily abused but mitch chase did a good job he does a lot in that book and you know correct me if i'm wrong josh but i think it's a pretty readable book right it is yeah very readable um a more technical book that's had an impact on a lot of people including myself is craig carter's book interpreting scripture with the great tradition um that's a challenging read uh but it's an excellent read uh a simpler book simpler book a smaller an older book that messes up a little with the post-reformation reformed orthodox guys is i still like uh luis burkhoff's interpretation of scripture or whatever it's called biblical interpretation does anybody know the title good book i have students read it uh it's very well written it's very well outlined it has study questions and it's not very long i don't read i just got tired of reading more contemporary books on hermeneutics not all of them but in my reading many if not most of them i hope nobody's listening we're boring and got into all sorts of um speech theories that oh there it goes um speech theories and all kinds of stuff uh going toe-to-toe with the liberals and philosophers and that has its place in academia but just for you know pastor and especially for churchmen i i just got tired of it and then a lot of the contemporary uh in books on hermeneutics um it's very they don't realize it was very modern and um they had they believe in the modern very modern theory that in terms of scripture meaning the meaning of the text exhausted by the human author's intent of the meaning which again i can't know his intentions i can know you know what he wrote that's very modern god is the author of scripture god's ultimate meaning is uh is the meaning of the text it doesn't go against the human author's text at all but uh so i don't read the contemporary ones let me just illustrate what i was just trying to say is god free to do something creation say raise up a prophet moses to write about it and then later tell us more about that act of creation recorded by moses to tell us more about it and even quoting moses own writing can god tell us more about a divine act subsequent to not only the act but subsequent to the first writing of the act and the answer is whether you like it or not of course he can he does it all the time subsequent revelation often makes explicit what is implicit in antecedent revelation god acts god records an act and sometimes god tells us more about the theology embedded in the act then he did in the first text that he told us about the act so um that's kind of a pretty modern way to think and i think that's the way we need to think by the way if you have an older hymnal they all write hymns that way your favorite m's can't use a modern hermeneutic the older hermeneutic not only brought to birth the great hymns of the christian faith subsequent to the revelation as the reformation but the the older hermeneutic and theological method also gave birth to the creeds the great confessions and uh and catechisms of the christian church throughout its history you can't get there with um with the modern herminator so excellent question i i have a follow-up that's actually related to what you just said um yep hold it you can't ask questions it's the future i'm here to serve the people not you i'm people you're in charge you can do what you want yeah i will do what i want now so um i'm going to ask my question uh related to that the the issue of the difference in hermeneutics there there are many conversations that kind of go this way regarding hermeneutics there's the literal historical grammatical method and that's great because you know say something like martin luther uh rediscovered that and helped him interpret scripture properly once more and then it's it's what a lot of people are doing that they call uh christo-centric or christ standard or whatever it is kind of hermeneutic and they kind of dichotomize the two and they would say well what what those christ-centered guys are doing is they're inserting jesus in the old testament where where he's not supposed to be there or where he's not actually there is there a dichotomy between historical grammatical and and reading the old testament in light of christ um well i like the way you put it because the way you put it was you acknowledge that some people do pit the two against each other i don't think there is necessarily uh what i think and this is what i do in my lectures is i cover the principles of grammatical historical hermeneutics and i argue that those are good as far as they can go but if you don't include along with that a larger canonical scope to shine on the text and you haven't gone far enough so um so i i teach both and you know this christo-centric thing um i think it was virgin that said i'd rather find christ where he isn't than not find him where he is or something like that you know it can be abused obviously every red thing in the old testament's the blood of christ and all that which by the way a lot of the older writers didn't have a problem with that you know um but if you think about the bible let's think about the bible why did god give us a bible well to to uh instruct us on how to have a better marriage john's making faces it's only because he's singing uh why did god give us the bible so that we could have good ethics for businesses and civil magistrates and churches and you know all those things why did god give us a bible well to create christian dentists god gave us the bible because sin is it exists in the theater of man's experience and god has a plan of redemption and god's plan is to recapitulate all things bring all things under a new head because the first head the first creation adam failed and that is christ so if god's purpose is macro purpose is the recapitu this is ephesians 1 10. is the recapitulation of all things in christ under him friend and foe go into glory go into judgment then what would the bible's purpose be in light of what we know from the bible itself about this recapitulation the bible's purpose would be to tell us how god is going to go about to do that in the sufferings and glory of the son of god we have a bible because sin is and god has a plan of redemption it's the story of redemption it's not the story of israel stop they messed up then the church they get raptured then israel again it's a story about the redemption of sinners for the glory of god through the inca the work of the incarnate son of god and bringing many sons of god to glory against all odds and all enemies if that's what the big scope of scripture is or actually the target the goal the into which it points redemption through christ for the glory of god then all its parts somehow some way serve it and if that's the case we're going to be more christological uh in our understanding of things for instance you know uh the the three offices threefold office of christ prophet priest and king where did that start i think it started in the garden with the first act if it did adam's the first prophet the first priest the first king and he failed his threefold officers three offices he failed um that is going to condition the way you look at subsequent prophetic office priestly office and kingly office you're going to connect it to adam and they're all going to be failures by the way and then when you start reading the prophecies about prophet priesthood king coming and see it in its fulfillment it it all makes sense so uh if we know that god's ultimate purpose uh with this creation given the presence of sin is the recapitulation of all things under his son then we already know what the bible is going to be about it's going to be about how god goes about to do that i think that's the best way to look at scripture otherwise you get uh on all these detours and you know you feel the old the old testament's judeo-centric you know i heard a contemporary man great man a very great man god has used him greatly say that in in the last five or ten or fifteen years the old testament's judeo-centric it's like have you read the new testament it's pretty jesus uh centric uh and the apostles wrote in light of that as well so i'm rambling because it's getting late so go ahead next question thank you for that um there's an interesting conversation happening um in the chat actually regarding one of the one of the anecdotes you gave i believe it was from spurgeon i'd rather find christ where he isn't than miss christ where he is and that's i guess that's that um is a little bit connected to our next question which is from our friend brett lee price and if you're in australia um you should know that our friend brett is with tulip publishing a great publishing house so if you're within australia you should be supporting these guys they're doing some great stuff and his question is how far do you think we can legitimately take typologies and potential christophanies how far is too far and i guess to connect that to um there's people making comments they love that quote from spurgeon what what do you think of that um is that a good sentiment to hold or holding that sentiment could it possibly lead you to a bad direction is there a demarcation and we should we just can't go further than that when it comes to seeing christ yeah i personally i i don't i laugh when i quote that i'm not even sure if spurgeon said that if he did i i i wouldn't say that i don't teach my students that well this is the issue of controls you know how do we control our bipolar i tried to give five principles there uh in in the lecture earlier um we have to see some sort of correspondence some sort of analogy in subsequent scripture you can't i i think it's unwarranted just to go someplace and say this is necessarily a type however i think there's more types than i i realize in the old testament uh you know some people don't want to call make joseph a type by the way you can't make joseph either god made him a type or god didn't is joseph typological of christ well there's a lot of parallels there joseph david the same thing when they're young uh and their family doesn't like them and all that kind of stuff so it's the controls is the issue and in the courses i teach i try to teach the controls and the other thing is um the history of interpretation should help to should lean on it as well read john gill when you're doing uh passages and you're wondering about well whatever you're preaching i i try to read john gill all the time especially in the old testament because gill has an encyclopedic mind and he quotes jews and he quotes armenians not arminian what goats are minions stupid armenians and he writes in syriac and in you know inter-testamental judaism he's doing what beale does now owen and and and rita owen too but owen and and bill already did that and and just to see how they went about interpreting texts uh is fascinating sometimes and i think we can learn a lot from that so uh you know controls is always the issue that people are going to fight over so but i i don't want to fight with brett lee price i'm supposed to actually go see him sometime so whatever you want to believe it's fine brother yeah we hope that happens and then we hope you can we can steal you for a while and make you go down over here all right so we've got a couple more questions um and then and then we'll we'll cap it off we don't want you to stay up late what time is it there it's 4 30 in the morning no it's not 7 29 7 29 4 30 whatever yeah that's not that's not too late um so there's a whole bunch more questions about typology but you know what i will we'll we'll leave that aside because i think we've talked a lot about typology and uh you might be you're gonna do that next week yeah so there you go you're going to do more typology next week um so there there's another question by brett and i don't know if you want to um tackle this head on but his question is how would you personally contrast the main hermeneutical grids between the he's he's referring to it as the christotellic versus christocentric positions and he's he's getting really specific as epitomized by the master seminary versus the general reform tradition respectively uh i know that you have insight to that so that's something you want to speak into i'd be happy to answer that next summer when i'm at brett's house wise i'm kidding okay now he's making a distinction i think it's a an important one between christo centric and christo telling he can correct me if i'm wrong but i have come to understand that this term christotalek which i actually know that gk bill used it positively approvingly uh i think ten years ago or so i don't think he would now christotelic has now been uh is now in my thinking a school uh which includes some reformed guys too that view the old testament as upon a second read wreath of the old testament read through the new it now points to christ because you know the end of the story the texts on their own prior to the incarnation sufferings and glory of christ the raising up of the apostles and apostolic men to write the new testament the texts of the old testament on their own without all that might have meant that to god but nobody else would have figured it out didn't mean that to men a more of a historic uh christ as the scope of scripture or christocentric view views the old testament as god's intention all along to reveal the promise of the messiah through the written word and by the spirit bringing that effectually to the souls of people so that texts that we are told in the new testament uh texts from the old testament that we're told the new testament are about christ were always about christ they didn't become about christ after christ came they're already about christ i think if you read the new testament especially the gospel of matthew in the book of acts you'll you'll realize the christotellic thing doesn't work because the way they're interpreting the text of the old testament is that this current event not the writing of not that which is written in the book of acts but that which the book of acts wrote about this event this historical event or that which the gospel writers wrote about not their writings but who they wrote about christ this is that which the prophet said would take place so that this is that motif is true uh irrespective of the new testament being ever being written but of course we know it's been written so christ was the fulfillment of the text of the new testament tells us he was prior to the new testament telling us he was which means the texts meant that before this text the new testament said they meant that so i don't know if that helps brett lee sean seemed to like it and um i should probably stop talking about that it's a good question yeah i think it was helpful um since all the rest of the questions are related to typology we're capable of that and i get to do what i want and ask my last question um since since we we assert you assert that the the apostles would have learned their hermeneutics from jesus himself and basically what we're seeing is is the way jesus himself sees scripture and handles scripture it it has to be true then that the the first generation christians or even the second generation christians that followed in the footsteps of the apostles would have would have caught that would have taken that on board and would have approached interpreting scripture in a very similar way and i want to end just by asking you is that from from your understanding of early church history is that what we see uh is that indeed reflected in the first few centuries of the church and if it if it is then it means that we can learn so much about how they did that did you read that quote i put up of keith sandlin or i don't forgot his name on twitter yeah i i did you want me to pull it up okay yeah no you don't need to pull you can pull it up if you want but here here's the that's a great question and the answer is uh yes you can see a continuous stream of interpreting the old testament as pointing to christ apart from the new testament telling us to read on the apostolic preaching by irenaeus it's fascinating and read other apologists are trying to convince the jews that jesus is the messiah you know what they don't quote or they rarely quote the new testament they try to do it on the basis of the old testament uh itself they are arguing for jesus of nazareth as the suffering servant promised on the old testament on the grounds of the old testament itself so yeah you see the same thing you see uh the same basic hermeneutic that the old testament on its own taught both the divine unity or the monotheism and also uh the incarnate suffering servant who would suffer for our sins so yeah the answer is yes you see continuity there the discontinuity and of course you know and subsequent church history you got something like origen who who goes way off at times and even there are others you know people really love chrysostom sometimes i think it's also boring i love uh cyril of alexandria he's great uh augustine's really good too on the gospel of john but but you know you see different just because there are abuses doesn't mean uh the use of the thing is wrong you know a good thing overdone gets undone it doesn't make the good thing ungood it means somebody misused it so we need to be careful throwing the baby out with the bath water and uh if you want to read that quote you can sure do what you want no do what you want i i posted the quote in the in the chat group and people can see it okay just i wanted to mention that he he makes a very strong statement which is that he he was referring to keith stanglin was referring to what many um in the modern day say which is that the apostles were unique in the way they interpreted scripture and were not supposed to model that they did exegetical leaps because they were inspired authors and we we are not so we can't copy that and then he makes this statement he says no one in the early church understood exegesis this way so he actually says that yeah yeah that's probably that's one reason why i posted i was going through oh i was preparing for this and culling through my lectures trying to gather material and i found that i thought that's good i need to put that remind people on twitter so i'm glad you saw it glad

Channel: Christ Covenant Church

Views: 768

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Reformed Theology, Christ Covenant Church, Melbourne, Joshua Gurango

Id: ED9VV81S01s

Length: 83min 21sec (5001 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020