Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Thoughts on an Interview with Tom Schreiner on the Millennium

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In this interview with Tom Schreiner on his forthcoming Revelation commentary in the Baker Exegetical series, he discusses his current view of the Millennium.

Schreiner has famously shifted between premillennial and amillennial views of Revelation 20. In his forthcoming commentary he argues that Revelation 20 is the first stage of the new creation. He agrees with premillennialists that Satan is entirely bound during this time and that the bodily resurrection of believers is the “first resurrection” mentioned in Revelation 20. He notes that if the “first resurrection” is not the bodily resurrection, Revelation would have no mention of the ultimate vindication of the saints.  However, because he sees this period as part of the new creation, he does not see any non-glorified saints in Revelation 20. All the wicked are judged and all the saints are glorified. He also understands all of the “famous so-called millennial passages” in the OT are fulfilled in the new creation; he observes that they are copiously quoted in Revelation 21-22.

He notes that the big problem with his new creation view is the final battle in 20:7-10 . Who joins Satan in this final battle against the saints? His solution: these are those who were raised from the dead before the final judgment.

In many ways Schreiner’s view is similar to my own (and to that of Robert Duncan Culver in Daniel and the Latter Days). I too see the Revelation 20 as the first stage of the new creation. I too think that this helps make sense of OT millennial passages being referenced in Revelation 21-22. However, I would differ with Schreiner on a few points. (1) I don’t interpret the OT millennial passages symbolically the way that Schreiner does. I think those passages actually blend the millennial stage of the new creation with the consummate stage. That is why they can be alluded to in Revelation 21-22 while also containing material that cannot be true of the consummate new creation. (2) Because I hold to a pre-Day of the Lord rapture, my view doesn’t have a problem with non-glorified saints entering the Millennial period. Thus, I don’t have the difficulty with who joins with Satan in the final battle against the saints. (3) In the interview Schreiner does not elaborate on the purpose for a millennial first stage for the new creation. In my view this period is when Jesus Christ, the second Man, leads all mankind to fulfill the blessed mandate of subduing the earth.

In the interview Schreiner notes that his overall interpretation of Revelation is symbolic. If his ESV Expository Commentary is a guide, to the forthcoming BECNT volume, it will be consistent with Beale’s modified idealism. In the intreview Schriener notes his concern is with newspaper eschatology: Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, or those who were finding Iraq in Revelation during the early 2000s. I too am concerned with such eisegesis. I don’t think those views can rightly be called futurist. They are a kind of presentism, a historicist approach focused on the present, just as preterism is a historicist approach focused on the first century. A true futurist approach would see Revelation 6 and following taking place during the final Day of the Lord, the timing of which is completely unknown to us.

Schreiner also made some helpful comments about dispensationalism at the end of the interview. He notes that the trend today is away from dispensationalism. However, he warns against having a “superior, supercilious spirit” toward dispensationalists. I think this is precisely right. I find that dispensational positions, or even positions thought to be dispensational (even if they have been held by a wide variety of interpreters throughout church history), are often dismissed, without actual engagement with the arguments or perhaps with a passing reference to a proof text here (as though the interpretation of that text is beyond debate). Schreiner does not have that spirit and rightly warns against it.

Abraham Believed in the Resurrection of the Body: A Meditation on Genesis 23

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Genesis 23 focuses on Abraham’s first acquisition of property in the promised land. The Hittites seem to want to deprive Abraham from owning any land by offering Abraham permission to bury Sarah in one of their tombs. Abraham, however, insists on purchasing a tomb for Sarah.

It is striking that the first piece of land that Abraham obtained in the promised land is the tomb. Notably the covenant promise is that Abraham will himself possess the land (Gen 15:7-8; 17:8). And yet, God also indicated that the nation will not be possessed by Abraham’s seed until after Abraham is buried (Gen. 15:15). If Abraham had meditated on the specifics of God’s covenant promises, he would have recognized that they entailed resurrection from the dead. Thus, the purchase of a tomb as a down payment land promise looked forward to the hope of the resurrection.

Confirmation of this eschatological hope is found in Hebrews 11:13-16. Hebrews mentions that the patriarchs and Sarah died in faith, “having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (NASB), a refence back to Genesis 23:4. The author of Hebrews understands this to mean that Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob were looking for a heavenly homeland and country.  Hebrews is not teaching Abraham was looking forward to going to heaven when he died. That was not the covenant promise. Instead, he was looking forward to the land that was promised to him being characterized as heavenly rather than as Canaanite. The land will be heavenly (and the prepared city will descend from heaven to the renewed earth) after the resurrection. Notably, in the very next paragraph the author of Hebrews affirms that Abraham believed in the resurrection from the dead (Heb. 11:19).

Jesus also appealed to the Abrahamic covenant when defending the resurrection of the dead. When Jesus quoted Exodus 3:6, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” the import is that God had made covenant promises to the patriarchs that entailed them living again. My argument here is that the truth of the resurrection was not only deduced by Jesus from the Abrahamic covenant; it was deduced by Abraham himself.

“The Covenant of Grace: A Critique of the Concept in Stephen Myers’s God to Us: Covenant Theology in Scripture.”

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Stephen Myers has produced the best recent exegetical and theological argument for covenant theology, and this paper, published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Biblical Theology & Worldview critiques his argument for an overarching covenant of grace, of which the post-Fall biblical covenants are administrations.

John Owen on Union with Christ as the First and Principal Grace

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“Thirdly, It is the first and principal grace, in respect of causality and efficacy. It is the cause of all other graces that we are made partakers of; they are all communicated unto us by virtue of our union with Christ. Hence is our adoption, our justification, our sanctification, our fruitfulness, our perseverance, our resurrection, our glory. Hence is our adoption; for it is upon our receiving of him that this right and privilege is granted unto us of becoming the sons of God, John 1:12. No man can be made the adopted son of God but by an implantation into him who is the natural Son of God, John 15:1–6, 20:17. And thence also are the consequent privileges that attend that estate; for “because we are sons, God sends forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father,” Gal. 4:6,—that is, to own God, and address ourselves unto him under the consideration of the authority and love of a father. And hence is our justification: for,—1. Being united unto Christ, we are interested in that acquitment from the condemning sentence of the law which was granted unto himself when he satisfied it to the utmost, Rom. 1:3, 4; Isa. 50:8, 9. For he was acquitted as the head and surety of the church, and not on his own personal account, for whereas he did no sin, he owed no suffering nor satisfaction to the law; but as “he suffered for us, the just for the unjust,” so he was acquitted as the representative of his whole church. By our union, therefore, unto him, we fall under the sentence of acquitment, which was given out towards whole Christ mystical, head and members. 2. Our union with him is the ground of the actual imputation of his righteousness unto us; for he covers only the members of his own body with his own garments, nor will cast a skirt over any who is not “bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh.” And so he is “of God made unto us righteousness,” 1 Cor. 1:30. Hence also is our sanctification, and that both as to its principle in a new spiritual nature, and as unto its progress in fruitfulness and holiness. The principle of it is the Spirit itself of life, holiness, and power. This God sheds on us through Jesus Christ, Tit. 3:6, or on the account of our interest in him, according to his promise, John 7:38, 39. And for this cause is he said to be “our life,” Col. 3:4, because in him lie the springs of our spiritual life, which in and by our regeneration, renovation, and sanctification is communicated unto us. And its progress in fruitfulness is from thence alone. To teach this, is the design of the parable used by our Saviour concerning the vine and its branches, John 15; for as he showeth our abiding in him to be as necessary unto us, that we may bear fruit, as it is unto a branch to abide in the vine to the same purpose; so without our so doing we are of no more use, in the ways of God, than a branch that is cut off and withered, and cast aside to burn. And men do but labour in the fire, who, in the pursuit of their convictions, endeavour after holiness or the due performance of good works, without deriving strength for them from their relation unto Christ; for all that they do is either nothing in itself, or nothing as unto acceptation with God. “We are the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,” Eph. 2:10. Becoming new creatures by our inbeing in him, 2 Cor. 5:17, we are thereby enabled unto those good works, or fruits of holiness, which God hath ordained that we should walk and abound in. And hence on many accounts is our perseverance; for, 1. By virtue hereof we are interested in the covenant, which is the great means of our preservation, God having engaged therein so to write his law in our hearts as that we shall not depart from him, Jer. 31:33. Now, this covenant is made with us under this formal consideration, that we are the children and seed of Abraham, which we are not but by our union with Christ, the one seed, to whom the promises of it were originally made, as our apostle declares, Gal. 3:16. 2. His care is peculiar for the members of his body: for as “no man hateth his own flesh, but loveth and cherisheth it,” nor will suffer any of his members to perish, if by any means he can prevent it; so is the heart of Christ towards those that are united to him, and therein are “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones,” Eph. 5:29, 30. And therefore, 3. The care of giving out supplies unto us for assistance against opposition and strength for duties, which is the grace of perseverance is incumbent on him. Our resurrection also depends on this union,—I mean, a blessed resurrection in joy and glory unto light and life eternal; for this resurrection is nothing but the entire gathering up together of the whole body of Christ unto himself, whereof he gave us a pledge, example, and assurance, in his own person. So the apostle assures us, Rom. 8:11, “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you” (which, as hath been showed, is the means of our union with him), “he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” And this he expressly proveth at large, 1 Cor. 15. And this lands us in eternal glory; which, as was observed before, is nothing but the consummation and perfection of this union with Christ. And hence it appears on how many accounts it is the principle and measure of all other graces and privileges whatever.

And we may see hence how great our concernment is to inquire diligently into this foundation of all grace, mercy, and glory. If we fail here, as too many seem to do, we do but run in vain, and build in vain, and boast in vain, for all will be lost and perish. We may do well to remember what became of the house that was built on the sand, when its trial came: it fell, and its fall was great and irreparable. Such will be the end of the profession of men that doth not spring and arise from union with Christ.

John Owen, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. W. H. Goold, vol. 21, Works of John Owen (Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1854), 149–151.

Christ Over All and the Importance of Understanding Our Situation

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Christ Over All is a new online venture that attempts to teach Christians about how the Bible applies to all of life. This is an important and necessary venture. However, it is also a difficult venture. Ideally Christian discipleship involves training Christians for vocations in a myriad of fields. Christians with exegetical and theological expertise should partner with Christians with expertise in the various aspects of life to which the Bible is being applied. However, there is a danger when Christians with exegetical and theological expertise wrongly diagnose the situation to which they are applying Scripture.

Stephen Wellum’s article, “Thou Shalt Be Vaccinated: When “Love Thy Neighbor” Does Not Fulfill the Law,” in an example of this. Wellum argues against the claim that persons should vaccinate themselves against Covid-19 on the basis of the love command. He claims:

For what we now know about the truth of this vaccine (which doesn’t necessarily apply to other vaccines) is that it causes more harm than good, as I’ll show below. As such, if we truly love our neighbor, Christians should lovingly warn others of its serious consequences.

Wellum rightly understands that in order to apply the Bible to a situation, we have to understand that situation. Because he thinks that Covid-19 vaccines are harmful, he thinks the way to live out the love commandment is to warn people of their danger. Hence, he charges those who exhort people to receive the Covid-19 vaccines on the basis of the love command of a misuse of the command.

The question is whether Wellum rightly understands the situation to which he is applying the love command. Are the vaccines in question are helpful or harmful? Wellum cites left-leaning organizations like BioLogos as supporting vaccination, but conservative organizations like Creation Ministries International also support vaccination. He notes that left-leaning organizations like BioLogos appeal to the love command, but so do theologically conservative ones like CMI. See CMI’s lengthy article, “Should Christians Vaccinate?” The CMI article is more detailed, makes use of more reliable sources, and represents its sources more accurately than Wellum’s article does.

Ironically, by linking the name of Christ to warning Christians against the vaccine (“if we truly love our neighbor, Christians should lovingly warn others of its serious consequences”; “we can make a strong case that to truly love our neighbor would be to abstain from taking it any further”) Wellum may be guilty of the very charge he makes against those who claimed that to take the vaccine was to love their neighbor.

There are at least two lessons here for those who desire rightly seek for the Bible to rule over all of life.

1. Distinguish between applications are clear and necessary and applications that require a great deal of additional research or inference. Moving from the Bible to real world biblical application on some issues requires right understanding the situation to which the Bible is being applied.

A few qualifications:

a. This is not an argument against making such applications. It is an argument for awareness of the necessary work involved in making such applications—and a spirit of charity towards Christians who interpret the situation differently.

b. Nor is this to say that in complicated situations any Christian interpretation of the situation is acceptable. The Christian must still seek for a true understanding of the situation. Misdiagnosing the situation can result in misapplying the Scripture, and that is not of minor concern.

2. Christians seeking to develop a biblical view of life cannot work in isolation but must work with other mature Christians who together have a deep and wide understanding of both God’s Word and God’s world.

Matthew Rose, A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right

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Rose, Matthew. A World after Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right. Yale University Press, 2021.

Rose treats the philosophers of the radical right with seriousness, not dismissing them out of hand or claiming that they are wrong in every respect. He also recognizes that liberalism contains serious flaws. Nonetheless, his account makes abundantly clear that the radical right is hostile to Christianity. Furthermore, he elucidates how much of what the radical right is reacting against in contemporary liberal culture are perversions of Christianity. The radical right seeks not merely to undo these perversions but to attack their Christian roots.

Rose writes:

The alt-right is anti-Christian. Not by implication or insinuation, but by confession. Its leading thinkers flaunt their rejection of Christianity and their desire to convert believers away from it. Greg Johnson, an influential theorist with a doctorate in philosophy from Catholic University of America, argues that “Christianity is one of the main causes of white decline” and a “necessary condition of white racial suicide.” Johnson edits a website that publishes footnoted essays on topics that range from H. P. Lovecraft to Martin Heidegger, where a common feature is its subject’s criticisms of Christian doctrine. “Like acid, Christianity burns through ties of kinship and blood,” writes Gregory Hood, one of the website’s most talented essayists. It is “the essential religious step in paving the way for decadent modernity and its toxic creeds.”

Alt-right thinkers are overwhelmingly atheists, but their worldview is not rooted in the secular Enlightenment, nor is it irreligious. Far from it. Read deeply in their sources—and make no mistake, the alt-right has an intellectual tradition—and you will discover a movement that takes Christian thought and culture seriously. It is a conflicted tribute paid to their chief adversary. Against Christianity it makes two related charges. Beginning with the claim that Europe effectively created Christianity—not the other way around—it argues that Christian teachings have become socially and morally poisonous to the West. A major work of alt-right history opens with a widely echoed claim: “The introduction of Christianity has to count as the single greatest ideological catastrophe to ever strike Europe.”

The Anti-Christian Alt-Right by Matthew Rose | Articles | First Things

Rose’s contribution is vitally important because many Christian ministries are now focused threats to the Christian faith from the left. These are real threats, and Christians must address them. These threats are culturally influential, and Christians unprepared to meet these threats will simply absorb unbiblical ideas from the culture.

On the other hand, many of these ministries seem averse to any criticism of the right. At the least damaging, they critique Democrats while never mentioning the problems of their political allies. For instance, the most recent “Christ Over All” podcast critiqued Bill Clinton and Barack Obama for espousing the sexual revolution. But there was no mention that Donald Trump had done the same—not only in his personal life but also in the policies of his administration (see here and here). More seriously, some critics of the left have embraced some of the ideas from the radical right (e.g., Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism; cf. page 7 of Kevin DeYoung’s “The Rise of Right-Wing Wokeism“).

Faithful Christians must be aware of threats to the faith from both the political right and the left. Some will charge this concern as a compromising third wayism. To be sure, when one way is true and the other false, proposing a third way is to compromise. But if there are two false options on the table, the Christian must argue for a third way, a biblical way.

In all this, Scripture must be the standard and guide—not just in rhetoric but in truth. Otherwise, Christians run the risk of fleeing from one error into the arms of another error.

Excerpts from Rose’s book are available on the First Things website:

The Anti-Christian Alt-Right

The Outsider (on Samuel Francis)

Typology, Escalation, and Revelation: A Problem with the Idealist Approach to Revelation

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I’ve recently been reading various commentaries on the trumpet judgments in Revelation 8-9. Everybody acknowledges that these judgments are modeled on the Egyptian plagues. Further, John’s description of the trumpet judgments are intensifications of the plagues.

The idealist interpreter must argue that the referent of these judgments are the normal kinds of events that characterize the entire inter-advent period. Further, it is not clear how the famines, diseases, etc. of the inter-advent period differ from those that preceded Christ.

The Egyptian plagues are the type, John’s description of antitype properly escalates the type, but the idealist interpreter must then deescalate the type to something less than the original type.

Notes on Leithart’s Deep Exegesis

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In my post on Mitchell Chase’s 40 Questions about Typology and Allegory, I noted that Peter Leithart is an unhelpful mentor in the area of hermeneutics. A number of years ago I read Leithart’s Deep Exegesis and jotted down these notes.

Leithart, Peter J. Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009.

1. The Text Is a Husk: Modern Hermeneutics

In general, I found this chapter helpful.

  • His critique of paraphrastic translations was on point.
  • He rightly identified Spinoza as the turning point who ushered in modern hermeneutics.
  • His discussion of Kant’s influence on modern religion, including evangelical religion was on point.
  • I think Leithart’s goal of allowing the NT authors to shape our hermeneutic is correct.

Caveat for chapter 1:

  • Leithart clearly likes the four-fold hermeneutic; he even tries to connect Calvin with it. I don’t think Calvin is easily connected to the four-fold hermeneutic. Calvin completely rejected the division of senses into literal and spiritual. He even identified the hermeneutical turn to allegory in the previous era as Satanic (cf. Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, trans. King, 1:114; Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, trans. Pringle, 135). Calvin did have a richer literal sense that was attuned to analogy, typology, theology, and moral issues. But this richer literal sense is fundamentally different from the fourfold sense approach.
  • By linking Calvin to the quadriga, I fear that Leithart will present us with a false option in this book: modern hermeneutics or the quadriga. But I think Calvin shows us that this is a false choice. The argument in my dissertation is that we can look to the Reformers and Post-Reformation exegetes—standing as they do between the medieval and modern periods—for a pre-critical exegesis that avoids the problems of both modern and medieval hermeneutics.

2. Texts Are Events: Typology

Helpful:

  • The observation that placing texts within various contexts (original historical context, canonical context, personal life context) affects meaning.
  • The analogy drawn between the meaning of historical events and the meaning of texts

Weaknesses:

  • Leithart does not provide definitions for meaning or for typology. Part of what makes this chapter work is the slipperiness of the terms. They mean (!) slightly different things, I think, in different parts of the chapter. If E.D. Hirsch has drawn too stark a line between meaning and significance, Leithart keeps things fuzzy where it would be helpful to make some distinctions.
  • It would have been helpful for Leithart to make use of the categories of author, text, and reader.
  • Surely the author has an intended meaning. A merely human author can write in such a way as to fail to communicate his meaning, but the divinely superintended authors of Scripture do communicate divinely intended meaning. We do need to assert the stability of that meaning or else we participate in what Carson calls the gagging of God. These author-intended meanings are not found outside the text but within the text.
  • These texts are found within the canon of Scripture. While that means that when we read earlier texts in light of the whole canon, we can see a fuller meaning than we would if the text were isolated, I would want to insist that this fuller meaning is always tethered to the original meaning of the text. The fuller meaning is seen because of God’s progressive acting in history and because progressive revelation.
  • I agree with Leithart that readers have a role to play in interpretation. Leithart brings out that texts may mean different things to the same person at different points in their life due to differing life experience. But here it is important to note that we are not talking about the meaning of but the meaning for. If the connection between the meaning of and the meaning for is utterly broken, we would say that the reader has misunderstood the text. On the other hand, if the connection is close, we would be willing to say that a reader better understands a text after having greater life experience. With certain non-inspired texts I would even be willing to say that some readers can better understand the meaning of a text than the author—if the meaning of the text concerned some aspect of reality that the reader understood better than the author. This, of course, could not apply to the divine Author of Scripture since the Bible since God is omniscient (though it may describe a difference between the human writers of Scripture and Christians readings of Scripture today).
  • It is unhelpful to collapse the difference between meaning as it relates to author, text, and reader. For instance, I dealt in the dissertation with Paul’s use of Genesis 16 in Galatians and found that Paul was not allegorizing as the Fathers conceived of allegory. Leithart’s proposal regarding parallels between Ishmael, Isaac, and Israel are interesting, but I don’t think that is what Paul had in mind in Galatians 4. Paul’s reading was something that could be derived from a theological reading of the literal sense of Genesis 16. I think Leithart’s explanation for the rock following the people in the wilderness is on point. Regarding Hosea 11, it seems that Leithart opts for simple typology, which is fine. But Leithart is misleading when he says this changes the meaning of Hosea’s text.

3. Words Are Players: Semantics

Helpful

  • I think the opening critique of dynamic equivalence is correct. I have long thought that common arguments regarding translation and interpretation that are narrowly informed by linguistics are too often lacking in literary sensitivity—texts and their words are interpreted almost mathematically rather than literarily. Leithart is sensitive to the literary nature of biblical interpretation. 

Weaknesses

  • Characteristically, Leithart takes a good thing and presses it to the point where it is no longer valid. I seriously doubt that the name Nicodemus is meant to be a play on the words nike and demos in connection with his being called a ruler of the people.
  • I am also unconvinced of Leithart’s argument that the diachronic meanings of words are routinely significant for exegesis. Leithart’s point only works with certain, selected words, but no one is aware of the history of most words. Thus, writers do not bring a historical awareness of most words to their writing. (I am indebted to Mark Ward for this observation)

4. The Text Is a Joke: Intertextuality

In this chapter Leithart again elides certain key distinctions. He makes the valid point that good readers bring information with them to the text. So, a good reader of Matthew 1:1 will bring a knowledge that “book of the genealogy” is making a Genesis allusion, that “Christ” is a messianic term, that “son of David” and “son of Abraham” carry covenantal connotations, etc. But Leithart then labels this eisegesis because this information is not explicitly stated in the text. He links his Matthew 1:1 example to the fathers who compare Moses’s outstretched arms to the cross or Rahab’s red cord to the blood of Christ.

The problem is that Matthew intended the allusions in Matthew 1:1 (likewise with Leithart’s bartender, Shrek, Virgil, Eliot, Wind in the Willows, Watership Down, and Lion King illustrations).  It is exegesis, not eisegesis, to notice allusions that the author has put into his text. The fathers were operating from different principles in which harmony with the rule of faith was more decisive than authorial intention (though the latter was not irrelevant to them) (see Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 3.2.2; 3.2.5; 3.27.38; 3.28.39).

5. Texts Are Music: Structure

Helpful

  • I’m not opposed to the idea that texts can have multiple structures.

Weaknesses

  • But Leithart’s example from John 9 falls flat. In part, I’m not convinced that the biblical writers regularly structured narratives (as opposed to poems, proverbs, etc.) as chiasms. Narratives outlined chiastically always seem to be forced, and the chiastic structure regularly stands in tension with the normal flow of the plot: rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, resolution. Often the chiastic center does not align with the crisis or the climax, and yet it is taken to be central or most important according to the chiastic structure.
  • In the next chapter Leithart admits, with reference to his John 9 example, “As we saw in the previous chapter, the narrative of John 9 is constructed, rather oddly, so as to put the Pharisees’ interrogation of the blind man’s parents at the chiastic center. This is not obviously the main episode in the story, and its presence in the center of the text’s labyrinth is something of a disappointment” (177-78). I think this shows the flaw in the proposed chiastic structure.

6. Texts Are about Christ: Application

Helpful

  • Leithart wants to see Christ-centered application that does not stand over against or in tension with the personal lives of Christians.
  • He rightly bemoans: “If the Bible is about Christ, some preachers and interpreters conclude, then any direct application of Scripture to the life of the believer introduces works and threatens to collapse into moralism. Other preachers insist that the Bible be made practical, so that the stories of David are read not as foreshadowings of Christ but as stories that teach us courage, faith, and tricks (e.g., spittle on the beard) for dealing with oppressive fathers-in-law and kings” (174).

Weaknesses

  • Leithart’s solution is itself problematic. He wishes to revert to the fourfold hermeneutic. As he says in the epilogue, “the hermeneutical method offered here is very similar to the fourfold method developed by medieval Bible teachers. For the medievals, the literal sense of the text opened out into a christological allegory, which, because Christ is the head of his body, opened out into tropological instruction and, because Christ is the King of a kingdom here yet also coming, into anagogical hope” (207).
  • Leithart thus opts for a patristic and medieval solution to modernist hermeneutics without reckoning with why the fourfold sense was on the wane in the latter part of the Middle Ages. Early on the spiritual senses had precedence for medieval interpreters because the spiritual senses seemed to solve apologetical difficulties and because that is how certain texts seemed to become relevant. But as the Middle Ages progressed, the literal sense became more and more important. The rise of Aristotle gave interpreters are greater appreciation for the theological significance of the material world. In addition, teachers outside the church’s mainstream could make use of allegory in ways that exposed it as a two-edged sword. Though the spiritual senses were not abandoned in the Middle Ages, the literal sense gained more prominence. In the Reformation, hermeneutical skill had developed to the point where interpreters could address apologetical challenges and make applications from texts without leaving the literal sense. Leithart hasn’t demonstrated why a pre-critical Calvinian or Bucerian approach would not provide the proper corrective to modernist hermeneutics.
  • Leithart demonstrates by his multivalent reading of John 9 the problems of the fourfold hermeneutic. Leithart’s argument that John 9 supports infant baptism (because the blind man washes his eyes before he knows who Jesus is and confesses him as Lord) shows that those operating with this hermeneutic end up imposing their rule of faith on Scripture rather than attentively hearing the voice of God from Scripture.

Mitchell Chase, 40 Questions about Typology and Allegory

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There are numerous strengths to this book. Chase clearly holds a high view of the Scripture’s authority and inerrancy. He desires to have a hermeneutic derived from the Bible. Chase also has a healthy respect for the history of interpretation within the church.

The historical surveys of typological and allegorical exegesis are the weakest part of the book. For instance, in surveying patristic examples of typology, Chase notes that the flood and the ark are frequently referred to in patristic typology, but he only provides two references to patristic typological use of these passages. Furthermore, Chase does not provide an evaluation. Does he think that the eight people symbolize the eighth day, the day of resurrection? Does he think that the wood of the ark signifies the wood of the cross? (And does he think this is typology or allegory?)

When he moves into the Middle Ages, Chase doesn’t adequately account for (though he does acknowledge) the move away from allegorical interpretation to a focus on the literal sense. There are four reasons that the literal sense gained ground in the medieval period: First, heretical groups were able to exploit allegorical interpretation to further their theological agendas, and a focus on the grounding role of the literal sense became key to responding to these groups. Second, the greater appreciation for Aristotle led to a greater appreciation for the present world; there was a greater appreciation for the value of the literal sense and less of a need for it to point beyond this world to have value. Third, there was a greater interest in the history of salvation that increased appreciation for the literal sense. Fourth, a dialectical method of raising questions about the text and using logic to provide the answers began to supplant older methods of spiritual interpretation (see Healey, “Introduction,” in Weinandy, et al., Aquinas on Scripture, 8; Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 284-85). Chase often justifies typological and allegorical exegesis by an appeal to the “Great Tradition,” but this “Great Tradition” is not a static thing. A defense of the recovery of allegorical interpretation must take into account the reasons that medieval interpreters began to move away from it and why many of the Reformers were hostile to it.

I think the weaknesses in this book can be attributed, in part, to the fact that the mentors Chase chose (as indicated by the footnotes) are not reliable guides. Peter Leithart, Craig Carter, and Han Boersma recur frequently in the footnotes. Carter, however, seems sloppy in his historical work, often making broad, unwarranted claims and indefensible antitheses. Peter Leithart, aside from his doctrinal errors regarding justification, has an exegetical imagination that is too often creative rather than textually rooted. He exemplifies the problem with allegorical interpretation, even if there are some exegetical gems that can be found in the mass of unwarranted claims. Carlton Wynne insightfully critiques both Carter and Boersma: “upon careful review, it must be concluded that the metaphysical project underpinning each of these works and, therefore, the views these works espouse, conflict with the best of Reformed theology at central points…. Unfortunately, rather than elucidate these tenets of Reformed theology, Boersma and Carter’s retrievals of patristic and medieval concepts too often obscure and even deny them. As a result, for those who seek to follow the “deeper Protestant conception” (to use the language of Geerhardus Vos), their books should prompt Christians to shun, rather than to embrace, Christian Platonism as harboring unbiblical Neoplatonic influences and to hold firmly to biblical theism as expounded in Reformed confessionalism” (Themelios 44, no. 1 [2019]: 171).