Alastair's Adversaria - New Davenant Hall Course: Cross and Resurrection in the Old Testament

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

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A central and startling claim of the New Testament is that the death and resurrection of Christ was witnessed to by the Scriptures. This radical claim challenges its heroes to revisit the Scriptures to see whether such a reading can be sustained and what it entails. Many contemporary Christian readers identify a handful of prophecies and proof texts while struggling to make sense both of the way the New Testament itself uses earlier scripture to make its case, and of the far bolder nature of its claims. The New Testament presents the death and resurrection of Christ as more than the fulfillment of a few isolated prophecies and types.

They are the satisfying climax of the scriptures as a whole. This is what it was all leading to, and the New Testament claims the signs were there all long. It really seems reading the scriptures, this way does violence to the scriptures since when read in their original literary and historical context. For many, while accepting the New Testament authors' readings as inspired, one must definitely not attempt the same thing at home. From January to March, 2006, I will be teaching a course for the Davenant Institute, in which I investigate these

questions in detail across the entire scope of the biblical text. I hope to demonstrate the legitimacy and the strength of such a reading of the scriptures and of the hermeneutical principles followed by our Lord and the New Testament authors. It holds up and we will see how. Exploring the scriptures both extensively and intensively, both the Old and the New Testament, we will see that they sustain and reward such reading and that the deep consistency of the entire canon can be discovered in such a manner. Our study will take us through the entirety of the Old Testament, so this is the class for you if you want a firm a grasp upon how the whole of the scripture fits together. It will be a crash course on the whole Bible. As we will be thinking about

hermeneutical questions and doing actual interpretation of texts, this is a great course for those who want to hone their skills in reading scripture Christologically. During the course, we will also be interacting with a range of stimulating voices, biblical, historical and contemporary, representing several different, yet often surprisingly complementary approaches to such reading of the scripture. The 10-week course will have two hours of teaching every week, and I typically offer an extra optional weekly office hour, within which those who are interested can explore issues related to the course and more depth. The regular classes also offer lots of opportunity for interaction and discussion,

so you should not struggle to get answers to any questions you might have. The course is open to both auditors and full-credit students. All classes are recorded, and the recordings are made available to registered students. So if you cannot manage the class time, you can still access the material. The recordings, which amount to 20 to 30 hours of material, are exclusive to students who are registered for the course.

So if you do not sign up for, the course, there is no way to access it. I wanted to teach such a course over the period of Lent, in order to encourage myself and students taking the course to marry scholarly reflection upon with spiritual preparation for Holy Week. This course should fire your love for and confidence in scripture. If you want to register to take this course, you can find the link to do so in the notes below. I highly recommend that you do so. It would be wonderful to see some of you there. Perhaps taking this course could be part of your New Year's resolution to read the Bible in more detail and to discover some of the treasures that you may not have known about before.