The eclectic grammatical-historical literary method and sensus plenior

In our last THREAD an “eclectic grammatical-historical literary method” (EGHM) was explored. This EGHM, as espoused by Dr. Beale and Dr. Carson, is the method that I personally hold much in common with—with one very important exception: I add elements of what is known as sensus plenior. What is sensus plenior? Dr. Raymond Brown provides a concise definition:

“The sensus plenior is that additional, deeper meaning, intended by God but not clearly intended by the human author, which is seen to exist in the words of a biblical text (or group of texts, or even a whole book) when they are studied in the light of further revelation or development in the understanding of revelation.” (Raymond E. Brown, The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture, p. 92.)

One fairly recent Evangelical author affirms sensus plenior as one of the methods of interpretation utilized in the Scriptures. Please take careful note of the following extracts:

When interpreting the Old Testament and NewTestament each in light of the single grammatical-historical meaning of each passage, two kinds of New Testament uses of the Old Testament surface, one in which the New Testament writer observes the grammatical-historical sense of the Old Testament passage and the other in which the New Testament writer goes beyond the grammatical-historical sense in using a passage. Inspired sensus plenior application (ISPA) designates the latter usage. Numerous passages illustrate each type of New Testament use of the Old Testament. The ISPA type of use does not grant contemporary interpreters a license to copy the method of the New Testament writers, nor does it violate the principle of single meaning. (Robert L. Thomas, Evangelical Hermeneutics, p. 241)

Clearly the New Testament sometimes applies Old Testament passages in a way that gives an additional dimension beyond their grammatical-historical meaning. This does not cancel the grammatical-historical meaning of the Old Testament passage; it is simply an application of the Old Testament passage beyond its original meaning, the authority for which application is the New Testament passage. Such an application is ISPA. (Ibid., page 251.)

The ISPA of Old Testament passages by New Testament writers raises several questions. First, can today’s interpreter imitate what New Testament writers did in assigning additional and different meanings in applying Old Testament passages? No, they cannot, because that would depart from grammatical-historical interpretation and violate the principle of single meaning. Current interpreters and preachers may apply the Old Testament passages to different situations, but their applications are not inspired, as are those of New Testament writers.

But someone will say, “Why can’t we imitate the principles used in the New Testament writings? Don’t we learn our hermeneutics from them?” The difference in qualifications is the answer. New Testament writers possessed the gift of apostleship and/or the gift of prophecy that enabled them to receive and transmit direct revelation from God. No contemporary interpreter possesses either of those gifts. Those gifts enabled the gifted ones to practice what is called “charismatic exegesis” of the Old Testament. That practice entailed finding hidden or symbolic meanings that could be revealed through an interpreter possessing divine insight. It was similar to the technique called midrash pesher that members of the Qumran community used, but neither did the members of that community possess such gifts as apostleship and prophecy.

Another way of expressing the differences in qualifications is to point out that New Testament writers were directly inspired by God, but today’s interpreters are not. That allowed New Testament authors prerogatives that readers of Scripture do no enjoy. Through direct revelation from God, they could assign applications based additional meanings to Old Testament passages. That rules out ISPA of Old Testament texts to new situations other than those applications that appear in the New Testament.

A second question relates to the principle of single meaning. Does not the New Testament’s assigning of an application based on a second meaning to an Old Testament passage violate that principle? That a passage has two meanings is obvious, but only one of those meanings derives from grammatical-historical interpretation of the Old Testament itself. The other comes from a grammatical-historical analysis of the New Testament passage that cites it. The authority for the second meaning of the Old Testament passage is the New Testament, not the Old Testament. The Old Testament produces only the literal meaning. The sensus plenior meaning emerges only after an ISPA of the Old Testament wording to a new situation. The New Testament could assign such new meanings authoritatively because of the inspiration of what they wrote.

A third question is, “Did God know from the beginning that the Old Testament passage had two meanings?” Obviously He did, but until the New Testament citation of that passage, the second or sensus plenior meaning did not exist as far as humans were concerned. Since hermeneutics is a human discipline, gleaning that second sense is an impossibility in an examination of the Old Testament source of the citation. The additional meaning is therefore not a grammatical-historical interpretation of the Old Testament passage. The additional meaning is the fruit of grammatical-historical interpretation of the companion New Testament passage. The Old Testament passage has only one meaning. (Ibid., pages 252, 253.) [All emphasis in the above quotes are in the original.]

Now, Dr. Thomas has made a very important distinction, he terms the sensus plenior method used in the Scriptures as the “inspired sensus plenior application” (ISPA)—I concur with his distinction. I would also add that there is an “inspired eclectic grammatical-historical literary method” used within the Scriptures. Dr. Thomas believes that post-Biblical interpretation must utilize an uninspired GHM (I would substitute this with EGHM), but emphatically states that one should NOT employ an uninspired SPA—it is here that I strongly differ with our esteemed author; and much more importantly, so does the Pontifical Biblical Commission document, “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” (April 15, 1993) [English translation available online HERE - see II.B.1-3.]

In ending, what I find particularly interesting is that among Evangelicals, the majority of those who believe that the Scriptures clearly utilize the ISPA, then go on to deny that apostolic hermeneutics should be employed by post-Biblical interpreters; however, the majority of those who deny that the Scriptures use the ISPA then proceed to affirm that post-Biblical interpreters should attempt to duplicate apostolic hermeneutics.

Anyone else have some thoughts on this?


Grace and peace,

David

Apostolic hermeneutics, the grammatical-historical method, and Beale/Carson

Before commenting any further on the numerous accusations and misrepresentations that have recently been leveled at yours truly by Steve Hays (and Gene Bridges) over at Triablogue, I thought it best to obtain the book that they have tauntingly been presenting as a must read, namely, the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (ed. G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson). I ordered the book a few days back using the slowest delivery method in order to get free shipping, so it was just yesterday afternoon that I finally received the tome. I have finished reading the Preface, main Introduction and many of the other introductions to the books/epistles of the NT corpus. The book a good resource for those who do not own and/or have access to a broad range of New Testament commentaries; it is also a useful reference for those that do, by putting the specific genre/topic into a single volume for easy access. However, as the editors point out in the Introduction, the volume does NOT “survey contemporary debates over the use of the OT in the NT” (p. xxiii).

Now to the content; more precisely, the editors prolegomenon, which provides some insights into how they understand the relationship between apostolic hermeneutic/s and the “grammatical-historical literary method”. Note the following extract:

…here and there within the pages of this commentary one finds brief discussion as to whether a NT writer is drawing out a teaching from the OT—i.e., basing the structure of his thought on the exegesis of the OT text—or appealing to an OT passage to confirm or justify what has in fact been established by the Christian’s experience of Christ and his death and resurrection. This distinction is more nuanced one than what was mentioned earlier, viz., the distinction between those who think that the citations bring with them the OT context and those who think that the NT writers resort to prooftexting. For the evidence is really quite striking that the first disciples are not presented as those who instantly understood what the Lord Jesus was teaching them or as those who even anticipated all that he would say because of their own insightful interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures. To the contrary, they are constantly presented as, on the one hand, being attached to Jesus, yet, on the other, being very slow to come to terms with the fact that the promised messianic king would also be the Suffering Servant, the atoning lamb of God, that he would be crucified, rejected by many of his own people, and would rise again utterly vindicated by God. Nevertheless, once they have come to accept this synthesis, they also insist, in the strongest terms, that this is what the OT Scriptures actually teach…Rather, they keep trying to prove from the Scriptures themselves that this Jesus of Nazareth really does fulfill the ancient texts even while they are forced to acknowledge that they themselves did not read the biblical texts this way until after the resurrection, Pentecost, and the gradual increase in understanding that came to them, however mediated by the Spirit, as the result of the expansion of the church, not least in Gentile circles. This tension between what they insist is actually there in the Scriptures and what they are forced to admit they did not see until fairly late in their experience forces them to think about the concept of “mystery”—revelation that is in some sense “there” in the Scriptures but hidden until the time of God-appointed disclosure…

A favorite illustration of some in explaining this phenomenon is the picture of a seed. An apple seed contains everything that will organically grow from it. No examination by the naked eye can distinguish what will grow from the seed, but once the seed has grown into the full apple tree, the eye can then see how the seed has been “fulfilled.” [BTW, I cannot not help but think of John Henry Newman and his theory of doctrinal development.] It is something like that with the way OT passages are developed in the NT. There are “organic links” to one degree or another, but those links may not have been clearly discernible to the eye of the OT author or reader. Accordingly, there is sometimes a creative development or extension of the meaning of the OT text that is still in some way anchored to that text. But it would take another sort of book to father the exegetical evidence gathered in this commentary and whip it into the kind of biblical-theological shape that might address these sorts of questions more acutely…

…contributors have been encouraged to deploy an eclectic grammatical-historical literary method in their attempts to relate the NT’s reading of the OT. But it would be amiss to point out (1) that such an approach is fairly “traditional” or “classical”; (2) that such an approach overlaps substantially with some recent postcritical methods that tend to read OT books as whole literary units and that take seriously such concepts as canon, Scripture, and salvation history (concepts that would not be entirely alien to the authors of the NT), though it allows for more extratextual referentiality than do most postcritical methods; (3) that we sometimes need reminding that the NT authors would not have understood the OT in terms of any of the dominant historical-critical orthodoxies of the last century and a half. (Pages xxvii, xxviii - bold emphasis mine.)

In an earlier work, G.K. Beale wrote:

Those texts with a low degree of correspondence with the Old Testament literary context can be referred to as semi-contextual, since they seem to fall between the poles of what we ordinarily call “contextual” and “non-contextual” usages. Indeed, there are instances where New Testament writers handle Old Testament texts in a diametrically opposite manner to that in which they appear to function in their original contexts. Often, upon closer examination such uses reveal an ironic or polemical intention. In such examples it would be wrong to conclude that an Old Testament refence has been interpreted non-contextually. Indeed, awareness of context must be presupposed in making such interpretations of Old Testament texts. On the other hand, non-contextual uses of the Old Testament may be expected to occur where there is unintentual or unconscious allusion. Caution should be exercised in labeling Old Testament usages merely either as contextual or non-contextual, since other more precisely descriptive interpretative categories may be better. (G.K. Beale, “Positive Answer To the Question”, in The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts, ed. G.K. Beale, Page 391 - bold emphasis mine.)

And in a online review, D.A. Carson stated:

First, the thrust of the approach Enns adopts is that the hermeneutics deployed by the New Testament writers is indifferentiable from the hermeneutics of other first-century Jewish writers. However alien such interpretive principles may be to those of us weaned on grammatical-historical exegesis, those are the realities, and we need to come to terms with them. With much of this I am in happy concurrence. Indeed, this argument has been made by many people in recent decades, not a few of them evangelicals. (ENTIRE TEXT HERE - bold emphasis mine.)


Conclusion: Beale and Carson (and I presume most, if not all, of the contributors) have adopted what they term “an eclectic grammatical-historical literary method in their attempts to relate the NT’s reading of the OT.” Now, what is the “eclectic grammatical-historical literary method”? It seems that I am not the only one asking this question, for it was posed by Collin Hansen to Beale and Carson in a Christianity Today interview (HERE). Dr. Beale responded with:


“Historical-grammatical exegesis traditionally has been used to exegete a Hebrew or Greek paragraph. You try to interpret it contextually in the book, using word studies, grammar, and syntax. You try to understand the logical development of thought within the paragraph, historical background, and theological or figurative problems. You check for parallel texts. It's a whole array of things you bring to bear on a particular paragraph
Eclectic and literary [method] extends grammatical-historical exegesis from just looking atomistically at the paragraph in the context of its book. In my view, part of exegetical method has to do with how the passage fits into the corpus of the author, how it fits in the New Testament, and how we relate it to the Old Testament. One would especially want to pay attention to Old Testament allusions and quotations, going back to see what's happening in the Old Testament. You might call that a biblical-theological perspective that really goes beyond the traditional understanding of grammatical-historical.”

Certainly, Dr. Beale’s “semi-contextual” understanding also needs to be noted when attempting to come to grips with his (and Carson’s) ‘method’.

Basically, what we have before us is a synthesized hermeneutic, a ‘neo’ hermeneutic if you will, with ties to the grammatical-historical method, but in reality, certainly not the same thing.

Now, contrast Beale’s and Carson’s own words with what Hays and Bridges have been saying within their recent threads (and comments) specifically directed at me (THREAD 1; THREAD 2; THREAD 3; THREAD 4; THREAD 5; THREAD 6; THREAD 7), and then come to your own conclusion as to which of us throughout the discussion/s has been the better representative of what Beale and Carson were attempting to convey concerning their approach to apostolic hermeneutic (BTW, though Hays links to the CT interview, one must wonder if he actually read the entire article.)


One last note before ending this thread: a working definition for the grammatical-historical method, for without out it, one will not be able to effectively contrast the GHM with the eclectic grammatical-historical literary method –

WE AFFIRM the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its literal, or normal, sense. The literal sense is the grammatical-historical sense, that is, the meaning which the writer expressed. Interpretation according to the literal sense will take account of all figures of speech and literary forms found in the text.

WE DENY the legitimacy of any approach to Scripture that attributes to it meaning which the literal sense does not support.

The literal sense of Scripture is strongly affirmed here. To be sure the English word literal carries some problematic connotations with it. Hence the words normal and grammatical-historical are used to explain what is meant. The literal sense is also designated by the more descriptive title grammatical-historical sense. This means the correct interpretation is the one which discovers the meaning of the text in its grammatical forms and in the historical, cultural context in which the text is expressed.

The Denial warns against attributing to Scripture any meaning not based in a literal understanding, such as mythological or allegorical interpretations. This should not be understood as eliminating typology or designated allegory or other literary forms which include figures of speech (see Articles X, XIII, and XIV). (Article XV from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics, with commentary by Norman L. Geisler - http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago2.html.)



Grace and peace,

David

Apostolic hermeneutics vs. Bridges and Hays

With little time during the extended Labor Day weekend to spend on the recent ‘blogging wars’, I would now like to return to apostolic exegesis and its relationship to post-apostolic interpretation. As a starting point for this thread, I shall begin by reviewing some comments made by Gene Bridges (in an apologia of sorts for Steve Hays) over at Triablogue (hopefully, they have been able to move past their Catholic serial killer mentality).

Gene Bridges posted (HERE):

>> Me: And the primary hermeneutic of Jesus and the Apostles was?

1. Notice that Waltz waltzes right past this one.

a. We are not God.
b. We are not Apostles.
c. Are we to exegete Scripture exactly like the Apostles? Which of us is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit?
d. The NT, among other things, is an infallible commentary on the OT. The way to understand the NT is by the GHM, thereby the GHM takes account of the "primary hermeneutic of Jesus and the Apostles." The issue isn't the way THEY exegeted the Scriptures, but how WE are to properly understand THEM when they did so.
e. Perhaps, David, you should take a gander at Carson and Beale. When you've done that, get back to Steve on this response of yours. It's been offered here a number of times by others already.>>

Bridges (and the same can be said of Hays) states the “issue isn't the way THEY exegeted the Scriptures, but how WE are to properly understand THEM when they did so.” Really? I totally disagree, for the “issue” IS HOW THEY EXEGETED THE SCRIPTURES. To take “account of the ‘primary hermeneutic of Jesus and the Apostles’”, and then conclude that their hermeneutic is not the “issue” is nonsensical. Bridges seems to justify his stance with the points made earlier in a., b., and c.; he then recommends that I “take a gander at Carson and Beale”. Fair enough, so this morning I turned to Beale, who wrote:

The conclusion of those who see the New Testament use of the Old Testament as non-contextual is that twentieth-century Christians should not attempt to reproduce the exegetical method of the New Testament writers, except when it corresponds to our grammitical-historical method…But it is not necessary to claim that we have to have such inspiration to reproduce their method or their conclusions. The fact that we don’t have the same “revelatory stance” as the New Testament writers only means that we cannot have the same epistemological certainty about our interpretative conclusions and applications as they did. Exegetical method should not be confused with certainty about the conclusions of such method, since the two are quite distinct. (G.K. Beale, “Positive Answer To the Question”, in The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts, ed. G.K. Beale, p. 399.)

Amen Dr. Beale! I am truly left wondering if Bridges and Hays have actually read one of the authors they recommended…


Grace and peace,

David

Apostolic hermeneutic.

Well, the Olympic Games are over…back to the blog. Actually, I re-entered the blog-sphere earlier this week, and this thread will be an addendum of sorts to an ongoing dialogue between Steve Hayes and myself at Triablogue (specifically, to date, in three threads: FIRST; SECOND; and THIRD).

In the first thread, Steve opens with:

"In a typical exchange between a Catholic and a Protestant, a Catholic will say that we need a Magisterium to rescue us from the vicissitudes of private judgment—to which a Protestant will counter that a Catholic must apply his own private judgment to the interpretation of Magisterial statements."

In my first response, I directed Steve to my two recent threads on private judgment (neither of which he engages), and the debate was on. Rather than duplicate any sizable content from those three threads, I shall direct interested readers to go to the original threads for themselves.

During the ongoing dialogue, it became readily apparent that Steve embraces nuda sciptura, rather than sola scriptura. Steve maintains that one does not need any tradition when approaching the Scriptures, but rather, one only needs a "sound" hermeneutic—but what is a "sound" hermeneutic? Steve embraces the "the grammatico-historical method" and maintains that the clarity of true doctrine/s will emerge if one is armed with this hermeneutic. I then posed a question: was this the hermeneutic of Jesus and His apostles? His answer: the hermeneutic of Jesus and the His apostles is irrelevant. I kid you not…

Steve’s approach has been criticised by an Evangelcial scholar, who wrote:

Any contemporary investigation of apostolic hermeneutics that does not treat the NT in the context of its hermeneutical environment will at best tell only part of the story, and at worst misrepresent the issue. There is no question that this continues to raise certain doctrinal issues concerning the role of the Apostles in defining "proper hermeneutics," but these concerns cannot drive the discussion. The New Testament authors give us ample opportunity to observe their hermeneutical behavior, and it is upon these facts—the facts of Scripture understood in their historical context—that doctrine must ultimately be based, particularly if what one is after is the articulation of a doctrine of Scripture.

I would like to draw an analogy with grammatical–historical exegesis. Grammatical–historical exegesis insists that the interpretation of texts must begin with the words in front of us understood in the context in which these words were written. Even with the caveats that pure objectivity is an illusion and that the author’s intention is essentially unrecoverable (or better, recoverable only on the basis of the words in front of us, which places the modern interpreter in a hermeneutical circle), it is nevertheless a fundamental notion that meaning must be "anchored" some how in something beyond the mere will of the interpreter. Any writer (including this one) who wishes to be understood will have a deep-rooted sympathy for such a hermeneutical principle.

A problem arises, however, when we observe how the Apostles handled the OT. Despite protestations to the contrary, grammatical-historical hermeneutics does not account for the New Testament’s use of the Old. However self-evident grammatical-historical hermeneutics may be to us, and whatever very important contributions it has made and continues to make to the field of biblical studies, it must be stated clearly that the Apostles did not seem overly concerned to put this principle into practice. (Peter Enns, "APOSTOLIC HERMENEUTICS AND AN EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE: MOVING BEYOND A MODERNIST IMPASSE", Westminster Theological Journal, 63.3 – Fall 2003, p. 268.)

[Note: entire essay available online HERE.]

I am looking forward to my continuing dialogue with Steve, and hope interested readers will jump into the fray either here at Articuli Fidei, and/or over at Triablogue.

Grace and peace,

David

Two same day events.

Today marks the opening of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, and the first anniversary of this blog. At 12:24pm on 08-08-07 I put up my first post. Since then, I have added another 44 threads; these 45 threads have receieved over 600 comments.

I would like to thank all who have participated. The level of dialogue has exceeded my expections; the charity exhibited has been outstanding, especially given the diversity of those posting; and I have had to impliment no moderation and/or editing of any of the comments. Once again, thanks to everyone.

I am looking forward to another year of blogging—the Lord willing. Hope to see your continued particaption here at Articuli Fidei !!!


Grace and peace,

David

Some Early Church Fathers On Private Judgment

In my previous thread on PRIVATE JUDGMENT we looked at certain LIMITS that confessional churches have placed on the notion of “private judgment”. Our present thread will continue to explore the concept of “private judgment”, this occasion via a few reflections from the early Church Fathers.

…Valtentinians and Basilidians and Saturnillians; each introduced/brought in privately and seperately its own/private opinion (ekastos idiōs kai etepoiōs idian doxan pareisēgagosan), and from them came false Christs and false prophets and false apostles who destroyed the unity of the Church by their poisonous doctrine against God and against his Christ. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, IV.22 – Greek from the Loeb Classical Library, Eusebius Ecclesiastical History, 1.376 – English trans. mine.)

But since they allege the divine oracles and force on them a misinterpretation, according to their private [ton idion] sense [noun – mind/understanding], it becomes necessary to meet them just so far as to vindicate these passages, and to shew that they bear an orthodox sense, and that our opponents are in error. (Athanasius, Discourses Against the Arians, I.XI.37 – NPNF 4. 327.)

For being forced from the conceptions or rather misconceptions of their own hearts, they fall back upon passages of divine Scripture, and here too from want of understanding, according to their wont, they discern not their meaning; but laying down their own [tēn idian - private] irreligion as a sort of canon [kanona - rule] of interpretation, they wrest the whole of the divine oracles into accordance with it…(Athanasius, Discourses Against the Arians, I.XII.52 – NPNF 4. 337.)

These passages they brought forward at every turn, mistaking their sense, under the idea that they proved that the Word of God was a creature and work and one of things originate; and thus they deceive the thoughtless, making the language of Scripture their pretense, but instead of the true sense sowing upon it the poison of their own [ton idion - private] heresy. (Athanasius, Discourses Against the Arians, I.XIII.53 – NPNF 4. 337.)

However here too they introduce their private [idiais] fictions, and contend that the Son and the Father are not in such wise ‘one,’ or ‘like,’ as the Church preaches, but, as they themselves would have it. (Athanasius, Discourses Against the Arians, III.XXV.10 – NPNF 4. 399.)

But here some one perhaps will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church’s interpretation? For this reason, — because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation. (Vincent of Lerins, A Commonitory, II.5 – NPNF 11.132.)


Grace and peace,

David

A Shocking Autobiography.

Upon the completion of my daily consigned readings (I am currently rereading Henri de Lubac’s, The Christian Faith), I thought I would catch up on my internet readings. While at James White’s AOMIN blog, I clicked on the 07-31-08 Dividing Line video broadcast. Not long into the broadcast, James pokes fun at a recently posted YouTube video that was reposted on Steve Ray’s and Dave Armsrtrong’s blogs. (FYI - The original posting on YouTube HERE.)

As I have now grown accustomed to, James did not provide any links to the original piece that provoked his somewhat whimsical critique; so, I enlisted Google and up came this SITE. The Google search brought the CELLEDOOR BIBLE blog to my attention for the first time. My ‘standard operating procedure’ for new sites is to try and obtain an overall ‘feel’ for the site, and while browsing through some of the other threads I came across THIS DISTURBING POST.

I WAS LITERALLY SHOCKED! Patty Bonds’ (James White’s older sister) ongoing autobiography via her Out of Darkness series is a heart-breaking one; yet thanks to God’s grace, there is healing and light. Patty shall be in my prayers, and I would like to request that she will be in yours as well…


Grace and peace,

David