Redemptive-Historical Method

OBJECTIONS TO THE APPROACH cont'd
by Tim Keller


Remembering the Two Authors
Rodney A. Whitney reiterates what we have just said about the two opposite errors in exegesis, but he bases each one in an incomplete doctrine of the Scripture. He writes that there have always been two basic emphases or approaches to Biblical interpretation. The first he calls this the 'Historic Approach" to Bible interpretation. This stresses the fact that each text has a very human author. This approach asks 'What did the human Biblical author intend to say? What did it mean to the original author and audience?" To discover this, the interpreter looks at the linguistic, literary. and historical evidence. But Whitacre also speaks of the 'Organic Approach" to Bible interpretation. This stresses the fact that all of Scripture has a divine author. This approach asks: 'What does the divine Biblical author intend for us to hear? Why did he put this in the Bible for us?" To discover this, the interpreter looks at all the Bible (especially texts that are most like and most unlike it) and at Jesus Christ, who (as we have seen) the overall message of the Bible is about.

a. The Extreme Forms.
At the extreme end of an 'Organic-Only" approach, we have wildly Allegorical Interpretation. Whitacre gives an example of this in a famous interpretation of Ps. 137:-9 by the medieval church. “0 daughter of Babylon..happy is he.. who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." The allegorical interpretation goes like this. Jesus is the Rock. Babylon represents evil and sin. So we are being told to take even our littlest sins and most embryonic sinful thoughts and dash them on Christ. This interpretation connects to other parts of the Bible (Christ as the Rock, the need for purity and holiness) but it makes no attempt to connect to the original historical meaning of the text.
(2) At the other extreme of a 'Historic-Only" approach. We have most scholarship in the world today--the Historical-Critical Interpretation. It makes no attempt to align or integrate what Paul says with what Isaiah says. There is no concept of any divine authorship or divine unity. Any attempt at harmonization is scorned and disdained. The meaning of the ancient texts is locked away, therefore, in a very ancient time and has nothing to do with us directly. Any normative or systematic theology is impossible.

b. Moderate Forms. Within the mainstream of the evangelical world these two extremes are rightly discarded. But two more moderate forms of the two poles creates real confusion among orthodox students of the Bible today.
(1) First, there is a moderate Historical-Critical approach which does allow for 'harmonization' with other texts for the purpose of Systematics, but is not comfortable with reading any meanings out of a text that the human author did not know of. Because this view believes in the divine authorship of the entire Bible it will accept that an OT author was talking unwittingly about Jesus, but onlv when a NT author tells us that he was.
(2) On the other hand, the Redemptive-Historical approach, which stresses more the organic unity of divine authorship, believes that many texts mean more than the human author intended. By the Holy Spirit's inspiration, an OT text may tell us about Jesus Christ and we may discover this, even if no NT author tells us so.

c. Criticisms. Of the 'Redemptive-Historical' approach:
First, there is a real danger of allegorizing. If you are not 'controlled' in your interpretation by first establishing the human author's intention, then your imagination can just run wild and you can get anything out of it.
Second, since you are always looking to 'find Christ' in the text, you may miss the very real practical applications and moral exhortations that are there. The people will get an inspiring picture of Jesus, but not get any real practical direction in how to live their lives.
Third, it could be hard for your lay people to learn how to interpret the Bible with this method. When you are done they’ll say: 'My! I could never get all that out of a text." And they'll be right.

(2) But the criticisms of the ‘Historical-Intent Only’ approach are, I believe, more trenchant.

First, as we mentioned above the New Testament writers continually interpret the Old Testament using the 'Organic' or "Redemptive-Historical" approach. They are constantly reading Psalms and other parts of the Bible as being about Christ, even when those texts have no clear 'Messianic Prophecy" in them. This was clearly a 'model' with which the NT writers were interpreting the OT. Why not use the model? The objection that 'they were inspired, we
are not' assumes that no one else in the early church was reading the Old Testament in a thoroughly Christological way. But all indications are that they were.

Second, the historical approach often speaks of the Christo-centric approach being 'arbitrary', but it's own method is much more speculative than it seems to realize. Of course it is somewhat speculative to answer the question "what does this text tell us about Jesus?" when we know that the author didn't intend to tell us overtly about Jesus. But on the other hand, it is somewhat speculative to try to reconstruct the original condition and historical setting as well. We are never sure we are right about the original audience. It takes a great deal of imagination and guess work to posit authorial intent. So the grammatico-historical exegesis is not as scientific and objective as it might first appear.

Third, we must be able to preach Christ from a text or we have the problem of 'synagogue' sermons. We are preaching the same sermon that could be preached in a synagogue-"Here is the righteous law. Do it and you will live." For example, how should we preach Jacob wrestling with the angel? There is no place where a New Testament writer sees this as a type of Christ. In the stricter view, then. We cannot preach this text as being about Christ at all. We must say that we learn here things like: a) life is filled with difficulty but we should persevere, or b) we need to wrestle with God in prayer. But that is what could have been preached centuries before Christ came. It is a sermon that would fit as well in a synagogue.

Fourth, the 'Historical-Intent Only' approach implies that the Church was not able to interpret the Bible properly until very recently we had the historical tools to discern original settings.

The Difference between an "Allegory" and a "Type"
If then we see that a Christological reading of the Bible is a wise and right way to go—the biggest practical issue that comes us in this discussion is-how can you tell the difference between a "type" and an "allegory"? The Redemptive-Historical approach finds types of Christ in OT texts even where a NT writer does not indicate that there is one. How can you be sure you are not allegorizing? Based on the writings of Clowney and Rod Whitacre's paper, here is a summary of the difference.

a. Typology: (1) Clowney - type is based on something in the text of symbolic significance and to the human author and in the Scriptures in general. There must be evidence that the author saw a feature or figure as having some significance of syrnbolism. For example, is the fact that the chord Rahab uses to mark and protect her home (Joshua 2) is scarlet significant to the author? Or does the color red symbolize blood or sacrifice in general in the Bible. If not (and I don't think we can demonstrate that it does), then we cannot preach that the chord- represents the blood of Christ protecting us from justice and wrath--as some people have done.' However, we can preach the blood on the doorposts of the Israelites that way (Exodus 12). Can ' we preach that God's choice of Leah as the mother of the Messianic seed is a type of God's salvation through weakness and rejection (Matt. 1 : 1 - 17; 1 Cor. 1 :26ff.)? We would have to demonstrate that the author of Genesis knew that Judah was the bearer of the Messianic strain and that therefore it's corning to Leah rather than Rachel was an act of grace. I believe we can (Gen.49: 10). Can we preach that Isaac represents Christ? Yes, because in the Old Testament the first-born had redemptive significance; Every first born belonged to God, etc. (Whitacre) A type is also based on connections between macro features and figures. It sees similarities between persons (prophets, priests, kings), events (Passover, exodus), and patterns of practice (saving through rejection, weakness). For example, in 2 Kings 5, we see a type of Christ’s revelation in the exclusivity of the prophet Elisha. Naaman must go to Israel, and he must wash in the Jordan. Because the Lord's salvation is a revealed salvation, we must submit to that revelation. On the other hand, we see a type of Christ's salvation in the prominence of the servants. Naarnan keeps going to kings, but God sends his salvation through the weak and marginal. He must go to a weaker country than Syria. He learns of his salvation through a servant girl who was victimized by his military, he only avoids disaster when his own servants reason with him to listen to Elisha. Because salvation comes through weakness and the powerless, we receive it by repentance/ faith alone and so refuse to worship worldly power and wealth. So types focus on 'macro-patterns' of revelation rather than descending to details.

b. Allegory: (1) Allegory, by contrast, seeks no basis in the author's original intent. Of course, it reads everything as symbolic, but it makes no attempt to show through linguistic or literary analysis that the feature it fixes on was of some symbolic significance to the human author. In other words, it ignores the human nature of the Bible and treats it as if it were simply a supernatural text. (2) Secondly, allegory focuses on microfeatures such as words or even numbers. It may take the two coins that the Good Samaritan left with the innkeeper
as the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper left by Jesus to sustain and heal us. It may take the 'little ones' of Ps.137:8-9 as our sinful thoughts or our 'little' white lies. Instead of seeking to identify broad patterns of salvation with Jesus' pattern, it fixes on details.