Alastair's Adversaria - Advent Hermeneutics

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

The following was first published over on The Anchored Argosy Substack: https://argosy.substack.com/p/42-an-obituary-and-advent. Follow my Substack, the Anchored Argosy at https://argosy.substack.com/. See my latest podcasts at https://adversariapodcast.com/. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/3…3O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035.

The following reflection entitled Advent Hermeneutics was published in our latest substack post on the anchored Argosy. The link to that will be in the show notes below. I have been revisiting the subject of Hermeneutics recently. A few days ago we recorded our penultimate episode of mere fidelity before our forthcoming hiatus. Kevin Van Hooser joining us to talk about his superb new book, Mere Christian Hermeneutics, transfiguring what it means to read the Bible theologically. The quote from the Pentecostal New Testament scholar Gordon Fee was also circulating on social media around the same time. He wrote,

A text cannot mean what it could never have meant for its original readers or hearers. These two things both provoke the following thoughts, which were also considerably coloured by just having begun the Advent season. Fee's statement seems to be designed to defend something important. It is evident that there are interpretations of scripture that seem to impose alien meanings upon texts, meanings that cannot be sustained by the actual sense the words have in any proper context, which do not arise organically from them, and which rest the words away from the original historical context within which they were given. Those of us who take the meaning

of the scriptures seriously do not want to do violence to it, nor to impose our own meanings upon it. Statements like fees are often provoked by concerns that the text retain the integrity of its voice over against us, that people not ventriloquized their own favoured or fancied meanings into the word of God. Yet, despite fees clear good intentions and the necessity of addressing such errors, to my mind his statement misses the mark in various ways. At the outset, it should be noted that I am focusing upon a single and isolated claim of fees, which is far from the entirety of his extensive thought on such matters. Elsewhere in his work one finds evidence of a more nuanced and sophisticated account of hermeneutics, which addresses some of the issues that I raise in what

follows. My purpose here is not to engage with Fee in particular, but rather to take his statement, a statement that represents a commonly held judgment, as a springboard for a consideration of some principles of Biblical Hermeneutics more generally. In many respects, the quoted statement of Fee is representative of the sort of statement one would expect from interpreters committed to a grammatical historical hermeneutic, concerned to read texts in their original literary and historical contexts. While such an approach seems commonsensical to many, it is not without its problems. The Apostle Paul, for instance, throws something of a spanner in the works in places like 1st Corinthians 10 verse 11, when he writes,

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Such a claim unsettles the presumed primacy of the original audience. It suggests that the narrative of the exodus, while serving a purpose for its first hearers, was written chiefly with a future audience in mind. Indeed, Paul suggests that even the recorded events of the exodus themselves occurred in anticipation of a later community who would undergo a homologous yet greater deliverance, the historical account exemplary and instructive for them. Understood in such a manner, the original audience should have perceived

the historical narrative of the Exodus to have something of a prophetic character, its greater import yet veiled. When the anticipated greater Exodus occurred, the historical account of the first Exodus would be read in a new light, its meaning unfolding in dramatic ways, the deliverance would not merely be in awaited redemption but an event of hermeneutic disclosure the apostle peter makes a similar point to paul's in first peter chapter one verses ten to twelve concerning this salvation the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours

searched and inquired carefully inquiring what person or time the spirit of christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of christ and the subsequent glories it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the holy spirit sent from heaven things into which angels long to look of course while the words of the prophets may principally have been recorded to serve the church they served to encourage the faithful of old to strain forward in hope, longing and expectation for the awaited redemption, diligently investigating and considering the anticipatory revelation they had received. In a previous post, I commented upon the importance of time in Christian interpretation, and the degree to which it is commonly neglected. This is doubtless true when it comes to hermeneutics, for which implicitly or explicitly spatialized metaphors can often be dominant. the meaning of a text is spoken of as something that is not conditioned by or changed over the passage of time perhaps there are different later applications or maybe a new layer of meaning is built upon the original but the notion of the meaning of a text itself undergoing changes can give conservative christians the collie-wobbles now as i have noted their concerns here are understandable and to a large extent justified if the meaning of a text were to develop in ways that

undermined or radically subverted their original sense, there would certainly be grounds for legitimate concern. I hope that as we think more carefully about what is in view here, its character will seem much less unsettling. What I am discussing should not actually be overly difficult to understand, as the principles here are much the same as those that apply to a host of other texts and situations, even if we are dealing with a special case. The Holy Scriptures may be a more pronounced example of certain dynamics, but the dynamics themselves really are familiar. Let us consider a few illustrative cases. First, reading, or perhaps better hearing, poetry, one will often find that the meaning of a poem arrives over the course of its performance. There will be phrases or expressions that hang

unresolved in the air, ambiguous until later lines disclose their true sense. Sometime a poem wrong foots you, a word you instinctively took with one sense is revealed to have a different, unexpected one, forcing you to reinterpret. Yet the meaning of such expressions is not merely their final resolved sense, but includes the earlier unresolved ambiguities. People talk about the importance of considering context in order to discern meaning, yet often failed to appreciate its temporal character, conceptualising it in a more spatialised fashion. Contextualizing, however, is something that often unfolds through time, and we will appropriately read or interpret that which comes earlier in terms of that which follows, or that which is anticipated to follow.

Likewise, because of the nature of time, we can significantly re-evaluate something if a text, a narrative, or events move in a different direction from that which we anticipated. This is little more than a common species of reading in context, and the way in which the meaning of something is in large measure contingent upon what sort of. surrounds it, both spatially and temporally. Second, we might consider the experience of listening to a truly sublime symphony or opera composed by someone of surpassing genius or goodness. The meaning of the music is constantly arriving, never fully present. Throughout, while delighting in the glory of what has arrived, you are anticipating more. You probably do not know how the composer

will resolve everything, but even in the most difficult passages, you can become confident in the composers achieving a resolution that will be both surprising and moving in its effectiveness. The meaning of such a piece can only truly be known by submitting oneself fully and participating in a process of disclosure. Third, when reading a novel, perhaps especially something like a detective novel, second and later readings of it, will be shaped by our knowledge of its final denouement. When we know where the narrative is going, it rightly shapes our reading of earlier passages. and provides a rule for reading them. The earlier passages must be read in light of and towards the ending. They are not brute textual realities, but are ordered towards the resolution.

Likewise, in our first read of a novel, our reading will constantly be shaped by anticipation and speculation. We know that the novel is working towards a conclusion, and that details that initially seem insignificant or confusing to us will likely make sense by the end. We might say that we do not yet know what. what they mean, although we also recognise that they are purposeful in their more immediate context in the narrative where we first encountered them. There might be intentional clues or misdirection on the part of the author, for instance. The meaning is not merely what they are in light of the

whole. Holy Scripture operates in much the same way. Its meaning unfolds through time in a way that is beautiful. We should revisit earlier parts of Scripture in the light of what follows, and read or read-read them accordingly. This approach to reading naturally gives rise to the quadrigger or fourfold sense of scripture. As we take the process of unfolding seriously, we take the literal and historical sense seriously. Among other things, this involves concern to preserve some sense and integrity of the meaning to the original audience,

even as we might recognize a primacy to the meaning as it appears to the final audience, to those who perceive earlier events in the light of the whole narrative. For instance, following the example of Rabbi David Foreman, I often encourage people to read certain texts while presuming that they did not know what happened next, asking them what they would have expected to follow. Such a practice makes us more attentive to the process

of progressive unfolding in ways that prevent the vantage point provided by the final conclusion from blinding us to the actual movement of showing. Readings like this, however, are never the final readings, but are always provisional readings on the way. As the story climaxes in the coming, of Christ, allegorical reading is necessary. It is all somehow about him and must be read towards him. Taking this seriously, and along with a robust doctrine of divine inspiration, we will not satisfy

ourselves with treating Old Testament scripture as a mere historical record, but will be searching for the ways Christ is revealed and anticipated throughout. As the stories about the formation of a new holy people, ultimately formed in Christ, it must all be read tropologically. As Paul read the narrative of the Exodus as a narrative of Christ, he also read it as a narrative designed to lead the church into holiness of life. As the story ultimately is resolved in the new heavens and new earth, with the descent of heavenly realities, it must also be read analogically. In this regard, the full sense of the scriptures is still awaited, even if truly seen afar off, especially. as a foretaste has been granted us in Christ's first advent and the gift of his spirit. We recognise

that heavenly future and spiritual realities are prefigured in this age, in earthly and fleshly ones. There remains an element of mystery here, and much as the saints of old might have reflected upon the words of the prophets, pondering what form of fulfilment they might have. So we read much of scripture uncertain about what the age to come will involve, yet confident that it will bring with it a sense of profound disclosure, recognition, and resolution. Understood in such a manner, the fourfold sense of scripture is not some weird or alien hermeneutical imposition upon the text, but the application of relatively commonsensical principles of interpretation to a text whose unity is found in the Lord of History who inspired

it and orchestrated the events recorded within it. It might be worth thinking about what this means when applied more specifically. For instance, the book of Joshua, the account of the conquest of Canaan, if it is to be read as part of the canon of scripture, must be read as ordered towards the end of the scripture and its narrative. An emphasis upon the literal sense of the book ensures, among other things, that its initial force be taken seriously, to some degree carried forward and not retrospectively overwhelmed, fundamentally subverted, or merely discounted. Yet we know that it must be read as part of a profoundly unified story that leads to Christ. The literal sense of the text cannot be held as profane and secular, merely a religious account of late Bronze Age wars in the ancient Near East, even if part of a history into which Christ might come at some later point. It must bow to Christ. Truly to understand the book of Joshua, we must interpret it as being about Christ. Typology is a recognition that history is prophetic

and that events such as the conquest of Canaan find their principal referent in later events as New Testament texts such as Acts, Hebrews or Revelation all evidence in different ways the events of Joshua were interpreted by the earliest church as being about Jesus and his deliverance the very name Jesus harkens back to the leader of the conquest the narrative of Joshua also needs to be read

as something ordered towards the holiness of the people of God, written for their moral instruction, and in some manner exemplary for them. Again, it is not enough merely to maintain that it is not fundamentally at odds with our moral formation, to be able to defend Christian ethics from the Book of Joshua as if from a threat. In some manner, the text must serve and be about our holiness.

Likewise, it must also be a narrative ordered towards and consistent with the final denouement of the scriptures in the new heavens and the new earth, the promised land anticipates a greater promise of new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Read superficially, the Book of Joshua may not seem to invite such readings.

However, such readings are not merely permissible, but required of us, if indeed we are to read Joshua's Holy Scripture and take its unity and the unity of divine purpose seriously. Were we to detach Joshua from Holy Scripture, one could perhaps imagine it being the first phase in the story of a rise of a militaristic empire. Read in light of such a story,

we would accentuate facets of Joshua that reading it in light of Christ will tend to downplay. Considering these neglected dimensions of hermeneutics, part of what our hearing of scripture needs to recapture is a posture of longing and expectancy and a practice of alertness to the distant horizons of the text. We need to hear scripture in the season of Advent, as it were,

Seeking the meaning of any passage of scripture requires us to have a sense that the meaning has not yet fully been revealed, even if we already see something of the final form of it in Jesus and the holiness of life imparted by the work of the spirit. This should yield a longing maranatha as a natural hermeneutical impulse. Thank you very much for listening. If you are interested in reading this and other such reflections, you can do so over on the anchored argosy. and I will give the link to that in the show notes below. The substack and my videos and podcasts are all freely available to any who are interest in them, but they are made possible by people's generous support and donations.

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