The Character of Christian Scripture (Studies in Theological Interpretation)

The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible

Christopher R. Seitz, Bartholomew, Craig G., Green, Joel, Seitz, Christopher, Craig G. Bartholomew, Joel Green, Christopher Seitz

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780801039485
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441234605
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The early church received the Scriptures of Israel as Christian Scriptures and did not change them. The older testament was received as a witness to God, and when a newer testament emerged, the older was not dismissed, harmonized, or edited. Rather, the church moved forward with a two-testament witness.

Christopher Seitz, an internationally renowned expert in canonical interpretation, illuminates the two-testament character of Scripture and its significance for the contemporary church. He interacts critically with current interest in the New Testament's use of the Old Testament and addresses an issue of perennial concern: how to hear both testaments as Christian witness.

Notes

[1]. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching, trans. John Behr (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997).

[2]. Richard B. Hays, “Can the Gospels Teach Us How to Read the Old Testament?” ProEccl 11 (2002): 402–18. Brevard S. Childs offers a brief critique in his new work on Paul (The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008], 32–42). Hays is seeking to redress a misunderstanding of the OT as Scripture (he gives a particularly unflattering modern example).

[3]. See recent essays by Kavin Rowe, Kendall Soulen, Nathan MacDonald, and Christine Helmer, cited below. I have also written an entry on “The Trinity in the Old Testament” for Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

[4]. Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970).

[5]. Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979); Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Childs, Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985); Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Childs, Isaiah, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster, 2001); Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).

[6]. James A. Sanders, Torah and Canon (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982); Sanders, Canon and Community (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Sanders, From Sacred Story to Sacred Text (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).

[7]. See, however, the analysis of Childs and Sanders (for whom the term “canonical criticism” is deemed appropriate) by Robert W. Wall, “Reading the New Testament in Canonical Context,” in Hearing the New Testament, ed. Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 370–93. See also Frank A. Spina, “Canonical Criticism: Childs Versus Sanders,” in Interpreting God’s Word for Today, ed. Wayne McCown and James E. Massey (Anderson, IN: Warner, 1982), 165–94.

[8]. Mention should also be made of the work of OT scholar Peter Enns (Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005]). Enns sees the exegesis of the OT in the NT as a species of Second Temple interpretation whose significance is registered by attending precisely to the peculiarities of reading strategies characteristic of the period. The ability of the OT to exert a specific kind of theological pressure due to the canonical authority of the Scriptures of Israel, over against rival modes of reading, forms no significant control in his evaluation. The NT’s distinction between “traditions of elders” and the letter of the text (“it is written”) is not a factor in his analysis. See also Enns, “Fuller Meaning, Single Goal,” in Three Views on the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament, ed. Kenneth Berding (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).

[9]. Neil B. MacDonald, Karl Barth and the Strange New World within the Bible: Barth, Wittgenstein, and the Metadilemmas of the Enlightenment (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000).

[10]. Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972).

[11]. Brevard S. Childs, The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

[12]. Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001); Brevard S. Childs, “Sensus Literalis of Scripture: An Ancient and Modern Problem,” in Beiträge zur alttestamentlichen Theologie: Festschrift für Walther Zimmerli zum 70 Geburtstag, ed. Herbert Donner, Robert Hanhart, and Rudolf Smend (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977): 80–93.

[13]. Frei, Eclipse, 75–104.

[14]. On the difficulty of disentangling types of senses (literal, figural, allegorical) and then relating these to history, as this had meaning in a different period, see Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); or David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). See also Christopher R. Seitz, “What Lesson Will History Teach? The Book of the Twelve as History,” in “Behind” the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation, Scripture and Hermeneutics Series 4, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 443–69; “History, Figural History, and Providence in the Dual Witness of Prophet and Apostle,” in Go Figure! Figuration in Biblical Interpretation, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 81, ed. Stanley D. Walters (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2008), 1–6.

[15]. Christopher R. Seitz, “The Changing Face of Old Testament Studies,” in Word without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 75–82; C. Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” ProEccl 11, no. 3 (2002): 295–312.

[16]. James Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (London: SCM, 1999), 401–38.

[17]. Mark G. Brett, Biblical Criticism in Crisis? The Impact of the Canonical Approach on Old Testament Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Paul R. Noble, The Canonical Approach: A Critical Reconstruction of the Hermeneutics of Brevard S. Childs (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Daniel R. Driver, Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church’s One Bible, Forschungen Zum Alten Testament 2 (Tübigen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).

[18]. Childs, “The Canon in Recent Biblical Studies: Reflections on an Era,” ProEccl 14 (2005): 26–45.

[19]. That Childs actually sought to present himself as a serious NT scholar was by no means undercut by his command of the field, which most conceded was impressive. The same control of secondary literature—especially, e.g., recent studies of the Pastorals—marks Church’s Guide.

[20]. David C. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” ThTo 37 (1980): 27–38; repr. in ExAud 1 (1985): 74–82; and in A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics: Major Trends in Biblical Interpretation, ed. Donald K. McKim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 65–77.

[21]. Walter Brueggemann is not keen on this. He characterizes Childs’s appeal to “canonical restraints” as “apodictic”; such “restraints” are personal and not text-immanent. See “Against the Stream: Brevard Childs’s Biblical Theology,” ThTo 50 (1993): 279–84.

[22]. Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah and the Search for a New Paradigm,” in Word without End, 113–29.

[23]. Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 209–19; Christopher R. Seitz, “Christological Interpretation of Texts and Trinitarian Claims to Truth,” SJT 52 (1999): 209–26.

[24]. One could associate the names of Brueggemann, Rendtorff, and Goldingay with concerns of this kind, and their publications are generally well known.

[25]. See appendix A in Childs’s New Testament as Canon.

[26]. B. S. Childs, “Critique of Recent Intertextual Canonical Interpretations,” ZAW 115 (2003): 173–84. Compare the concerns of M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).

[27]. “I fully agree with the literary-critical assessment of the passage as reflecting an old tradition of the tent of meeting which parallels the later Priestly account” (B. S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary, Old Testament Library [Louisville: Westminster, 1974], 591).

[28]. Childs: “In its present position, without being specifically altered, the section witnesses to the obedient and worshipful behavior over an extended period of time, thereby providing Moses with a warrant to intercede in vv. 12ff” (ibid., 592).

[29]. Timothy Ward, Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 248–50. Compare also the subtle critique by Childs of Francis Watson’s reading of the Exod. 34 account of Moses’s veil, which he judges to be limited in part because he reads the OT without sufficiently serious attention to the diachronic features that now make evaluation of the veil more complicated (Church’s Guide, 128–31). Second Corinthians 3 takes certain advantages of this uneven dimension of the literal sense in order to speak of life in the Spirit (enabling unveiled access as Moses had experienced ). Failure to attend to this diachronic reality could lead to such a simplification as the following: Paul laid hold of the genuine intention of Exodus and its referentiality (Moses was seeking to hide the fact of a fading glory from the Israelites), rather than seeing the exegesis as creative theological reading governed by other factors about which Paul is concerned (the life of the Spirit). Compare the reading of Rowe, “Pressure,” 202. A lengthy quote from Childs demonstrates the enduring role that proper assessment of the historical dimension plays in theological reading:

Some of the anomalies of Exodus 34 derive from compositional growth from diverse oral traditions and literary sources. . . . Although I do not suggest for a moment that a historical critical reconstruction replace the final canonical context when reading the biblical text, this historical dimension cannot be disregarded as done by Watson. The hermeneutical significance of my argument is that not every gap in the biblical narrative belongs a priori to its canonical shaping involving a theological intentionality. Attention to the historical critical dimension serves as a check against exegetical overinterpretation of 2 Corinthians 3. The canonical function of the mask as a hiding of the fading glory remains a Christian understanding of the text. Whether this reading deri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Preface
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1The Canonical Approach and Theological Interpretation
• 2Biblical Theology and Identification with Christian Scripture
• 3 An Illustration of the Challenge
• 4 Theological Use of the Old Testament
• 5 Old and New in Canonical Interpretation
• 6 “Be Ye Sure That the Lord He Is God”—Crisis in Interpretation and the Two-Testament Voice of Christian Scripture
• 7 The Rule of Faith, Hermeneutics, and the Character of Christian Scripture
• Epilogue
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes