Alastair's Adversaria - Q&A: How Creative Can We Be In Our Interpretation?

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

I am answering questions that my supporters have left for me on my Discord group. This one concerns how far we can go in relating biblical texts when there may not be a clear exegetical connection between them. 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 (https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=4WX77P4F8S7WL), 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.

From time to time I answer questions that have been asked by people on my supporters' discord. The following concerns questions of interpretation. Is there any worth considering two texts of scripture together simply for their loose thematic or imagistic resonances without necessarily asserting a more definite interpretive connection? If there is, in what ways can this be done well or badly? This is a great question. We might begin by thinking about some of the ways that we bring text.

in scripture together. Sometimes it's very clear that two texts belong together, as a text is cited quite explicitly within another text. An example of a citation would be a text in the Gospels that says this was done to fulfill what was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet. Following that introductory formula, you have a text from Isaiah quoted and that text connects with the events that are being described in the gospel narrative. Important though explicit citation can be, most intertextual phenomena within scripture have a more elusive form to them. In an allusion, if you have the ears to hear, you can hear one text in the background of another, or a story in the background of another. If you're reading, for instance, the Book of Revelation, there are very few explicit citations of the Old Testament, but it's filled with allusions to Old Testament passages and prophecies and characters.

To read such a text very well, you need to bring a deep knowledge of the rest of the scriptures in order to hear what's within the text, but not explicitly stated. Such allusions are very clearly intended by the authors. And one of the effects that they have is to bring texts into correspondence with each other. The author who alludes to another text of scripture is not just taking up some fortuitous turn of phrase. He typically wants you to read his text in relationship to that other text, in relationship to its themes and characters and events, and holding those two things in juxtaposition,

you will see things in his text that you would not otherwise have done. Echoes are a further intertextual phenomenon in scripture. Like allusions and citations, they evoke the broader text that is echoed. Where echoes might contrast with illusions and certainly with citations is in the fact that they are a lot subtler and sometimes so soft as to be barely perceptive, There are occasions on which it's not entirely clear whether the author intended them. And so when we're dealing with echoes, we tend to put a lot less weight upon them, and we tend to look for clusters of echoes that very distinctively point to another text.

Where this is lacking, there may be genuine resonance between two texts, but it's not entirely clear that the author intended it. To this point, my focus has very much been an exegetical one. How do we interpret this text? what is the meaning to be found in this text? However, when we're dealing with Scripture, we're dealing not just with the text, but also with the realities to which the text witnesses.

And so even when something is not an explicit intentional feature of the text itself, we can nonetheless relate it by way of the reality. In other words, we're not merely engaged in a literary exercise. There's also a theological exercise. For instance, when reading the story of Samson in Scripture, I can relate it to the story of Christ, not because there are some explicit textual or literary features that suggest a reference to Christ,

but because there is a theological reality that connects the two. Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures, and so I believe when I'm reading those scriptures, that they all ultimately point towards him, that I can read them faithfully in a way that finds Christ within these stories, even if there are not literary grounds within the text themselves to do so. There is a clear homology between the story of Samson and his death and the story of Christ. Samson wins his greatest victory within his death, and Christ wins his great

victory in his death. I might find analogies in the way that he's marked by his enemies, and they presume he is at his weakest, he's blindfolded and ridiculed. And yet that connection is not primarily resting upon some claim that this is the meaning of the text, considered on a literary level. It is legitimate to read that Christological meaning in the text, but the meaning in question responds to the events that are described, not to the textual form that they have. This means that a faithful interpretation is not utterly beholden to the literary form and meaning of the text.

You can read a Christological meaning in a text where that is not clearly present on a literary level. This does not mean that all such reading is good and that we just have a free-for-all when it comes to interpretation. We must be attentive readers of the text on its literary level. However, if all we do is read the text on the literary level, even including its typology and symbolism, we're missing something important. We're reading texts as if there were self-contained literary artifacts, rather than stained glass windows through which the light of Christ shines,

openings to a light beyond them. Ultimately, we read the scripture not to engage in clever literary analysis, but to encounter Christ. And so when we read the text of Scripture, we need to think about the deeper reality that is born witness to within it. Our reading of the text needs to us into deeper participation in that reality, not just leave us pursuing exegetical rabbit holes. To do this well, we will necessarily be moving beyond strict exegesis of the text. In some cases, like the reading of the story of Samson, the move that we're making is not a particularly tendentious one, Read within the context of the wider canon, a relationship between Jesus and Samson is a very natural one to draw, particularly when we consider the analogies between the manners of their deaths.

However, there will be many occasions when faithful reading takes us far beyond the literary meaning of the text, guided by a sense of the realities that are described by Scripture, we will draw far more imaginative and creative connections. The Apostle Paul could read the story of Israel in the wilderness, and find the Lord's Supper in the manor and the water that came from the rock. The temple is connected with the higher reality of heaven. It's connected with the human body and it's connected with the body of Christ. And following the lines set out by these symbolic associations,

we can read Old Testament stories of the tabernacle and temple and find our bodies within it, or find the experience of the Church of God, find the story of Christ within it, or relate it to the higher realities of heaven. This allows for a fecundity of interpretation. We are not merely reading the text in its initial literary sense. We're recognising deep, reality-grounded resonances with other things.

Doing this well, of course, requires that we are deeply acquainted with those greater realities, and also that we have been attentive enough to the literary level of the text in order to recognise where the resonances in fact exist. Such reading of scripture is a lot more poetic in character, And it's the sort of thing that we find throughout our hymnody. Our hymnody is often exploring these loose, thematic or imagistic resonances. It's helping us to move beyond the surface literary meaning of a text, to inhabit the reality that it witnesses.

We might here consider the way that we use the language of interpretation. Typically, when we use the language of interpretation, we're referring to the literary sense that a text has. Such interpretation is very much an act of receptivity, where we are attentive to the text, we receive its meaning, and then we represent that in a way that is accurate, that does not embellish or change the meaning of the text as we have received it. And yet interpretation is often a far more creative task. The person who's performing a Shakespearean part interprets the character, and those performing the play are interpreting the play in a particular way. Often it will involve

a resituation of the events of the play in a different context or a different time. Such an interpretation is not to be dismissed merely as unfaithful to Shakespeare's work. Sometimes such interpretations are reading against the text, seeking to resist it, but often they are receptive creations, ways in which the meaning of the text

can be explored and developed creatively and brought into relation with new realities with which they have surprising resonances that serve to provoke insight. At its best, good preaching achieves something like this. The word of scripture is opened up and it's not just some exegetical discourse.

The word is creatively and imaginatively related to the issues facing the people in the congregation. They are supposed to discover loose thematic or imagistic resonances with their own experience. These connections are not direct interpretive ones, at least not as we typically use that language. nonetheless they are real. Faithful teachers within the life of the church have a creative task to perform, wherein they attentively observe the literary resonances between texts of scripture,

or the deeper realities and the resonances that pertain to them. As they develop deep acquaintance with these resonances, they are able to bring those resonances to bear upon the experience of the people of God more broadly, to recognize the scriptures that can be best applied to specific circumstances. The word of scripture is a living voice within the life of the church, and the experience of the living voice of scripture is as often as not as we experience it being addressed to our circumstances, as the stories of scripture and the words of scripture resonate with our experience here and now. Encouraging the hearing of such resonances that bring us under the power of the Word of God is one of the primary tasks of preaching. This has been an answer to a question asked by one of my supporters. I'm able to offer my work for free as a result of the generous support of such people. If you have found my work helpful, please consider supporting it using the Patreon or PayPal links below.

God bless and thank you for listening.