Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - A. Carter Craig

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216 pages

English

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The rise of modernity, especially the European Enlightenment and its aftermath, has negatively impacted the way we understand the nature and interpretation of Christian Scripture. In this introduction to biblical interpretation, Craig Carter evaluates the problems of post-Enlightenment hermeneutics and offers an alternative approach: exegesis in harmony with the Great Tradition. Carter argues for the validity of patristic christological exegesis, showing that we must recover the Nicene theological tradition as the context for contemporary exegesis, and seeks to root both the nature and interpretation of Scripture firmly in trinitarian orthodoxy.

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Lettres et linguistique

Christian theology

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	17 avril 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493413294
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0806€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2018 by Craig A. Carter
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1329-4
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
Endorsements
“Every academic in the fields of Bible and theology needs to read this book. So many books attempt too little and say even less. This one swings for the fences and hits a home run.”
— James M. Hamilton Jr. , Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
“This book is both highly relevant and disturbing, as prophetic words often are. Carter gives a critical assessment of the problems beset ting hermeneutics in the twenty-first century in biblical studies departments, including the seminary. He argues that such study has left the father’s home of rich exegetical tradition (the fathers, the creeds, the Reformers), where it had feasted on the banquet of Scripture, and has wandered off into a barren wasteland of historical criticism, where it dines on the bones, fragments, and husks of the ‘assured results’ of scholarly study. Carter warns that the recent discipline of theological interpretation will not accomplish a return to the father’s house unless it has the right metaphysical equipment. This book is brilliant, incisive, prophetic, witty, extremely well written (I could hardly put it down), and desperately needed. I heartily recommend it!”
— Stephen Dempster , Crandall University
Dedication
To the blessed memory of
John Bainbridge Webster (1955–2016)
beloved mentor and teacher, who spoke and wrote so profoundly about our God and who now beholds him face to face
“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.” (Phil. 1:3 KJV)
Contents
Cover i
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xix
Abbreviations xxiii
Introduction 1
1. Who Is the Suffering Servant? The Crisis in Contemporary Hermeneutics 3
The Gulf between Academic Hermeneutics and Church Preaching
How Such a Gulf Developed between Church and Academy
Can This Gulf Be Overcome? Promising Developments in Recent Scholarship
The Argument of This Book
Part 1: Theological Hermeneutics 29
2. Toward a Theology of Scripture 31
The Inspiration of Scripture
The God Who Speaks
The Word in the Words
3. The Theological Metaphysics of the Great Tradition 61
What Is Theological Metaphysics?
Why Christian Platonism?
How Is Christian Platonism Related to Platonism in General?
The Modern Rejection of Christian Platonism
4. The History of Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered 93
The Orthodox Consensus: Exegesis of Scripture in the Great Tradition
The Great Disruption: Exegesis of Scripture in Modernity
How the Narrative Needs to Be Revised
Part 2: Recovering Premodern Exegesis 127
5. Reading the Bible as a Unity Centered on Jesus Christ 129
Biblical Interpretation Is a Spiritual Discipline: Ambrose of Milan
The Apostles Are Our Models: Justin Martyr
The Rule of Faith Is Our Guide: Irenaeus
Summary and Conclusions
6. Letting the Literal Sense Control All Meaning 161
The Spiritual Meaning Grows out of the Literal Sense: Augustine
All Meaning Is Contained in the Plain Sense: The Tradition from Origen to John Calvin
Summary and Conclusions
7. Seeing and Hearing Christ in the Old Testament 191
Prosopological Exegesis: A Primer
Augustine’s Christological Interpretation of the Psalms
The Christological Literalism of the Great Tradition as Scientific Exegesis
Conclusion 225
8. The Identity of the Suffering Servant Revisited 227
Three Treatments of Isaiah 53: Goldingay and Payne, Motyer, and Childs
A Sermon on Isaiah 53 and Some Reflections on It
The “Evangelicals and Evangelicals Together” Project: The Perils and Promise of Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Appendix: Criteria for Limiting the Spiritual Sense 253
Bibliography 255
Index of Scripture 265
Index of Persons 269
Index of Subjects 273
Back Cover 280
Preface
T he conventional wisdom concerning biblical hermeneutics among the vast majority of evangelical biblical scholars today goes something like this:
We should interpret the Bible like any other book. The sole purpose of exegesis is to try to understand what the original author meant to communicate to the original audience in the original situation. The text has only one meaning—namely, what the original, human author meant to say. Allegorical interpretation is dangerous because it allows people to read any meaning whatsoever into the text. Maintaining a commitment to the authority of the Bible depends on not departing from the single meaning of the text discovered by historical study. The purpose of a college or seminary education is to train future preachers and teachers in the historical method. It is not the responsibility of the scholar to determine the meaning of the text for today. It is the job of the preacher, teacher, or individual reader to decide how the gap between the ancient meaning and the contemporary situation should be bridged. This is called “application,” and it is not the job of the biblical scholar qua biblical scholar to do it, although as a Christian, a biblical scholar must figure out how to apply the text to the present just like everyone else. A scholar’s expertise as a scholar, however, is an advantage only insofar as it enables a clear determination of the original, historical meaning of the text.
In this book, I argue that every single component of the conventional wisdom described in the above paragraph is wrong or, at the very least, highly misleading. I argue that we must interpret the Bible in a unique manner because it is uniquely inspired. The purpose of exegesis is to understand what God is saying to us today through the inspired text. The text may have one or several meanings because of the complexity of God the Holy Spirit inspiring the text through a human author. The authority of the Bible is God’s self-authenticating Word speaking through it, and in order to hear God’s Word, it is crucial that we interpret it as a unified book with Jesus Christ at its center. The interdisciplinary practice of biblical studies as found in academic settings today is an agent of secularization in the church and needs to be reformed so that it becomes a servant of Christian theology and spirituality rather than a confusing amalgam of history, philology, archaeology, literary theory, sociological theory, and philosophy operating with unacknowledged metaphysical assumptions and without any material center. The meaning of the text for today is what we seek to hear as we study the text carefully, intensively, and reverently. Biblical exegesis is a spiritual discipline by which we are gradually made into the kind of readers who can receive with gladness the Word of God. Ancient reading practices, which have never died out completely in the church, can help us hear God’s Word in less subjective and more ruled ways than modern hermeneutics makes available to us.
Ironically, many preachers and laypeople who read this book will find in it a more accurate description of what they actually do in day-to-day biblical interpretation than what is found in many hermeneutics textbooks today. That is because the theory taught in those hermeneutics textbooks is not practiced in the church in any kind of consistent manner. This gap between theory and practice occurs because the neopagan philosophical naturalism of the Enlightenment has had a much greater influence on academia and hermeneutical theory than it has had on the actual practice of teaching and preaching in the local church. In many cases, the type of biblical interpretation practiced in evangelical churches today is in substantial continuity with the way the church has read Scripture throughout church history, even though readers in various eras have made use of different reading techniques and employed widely varying terminology to describe what they were doing. The way the church reads Scripture is rooted in a reading culture that nourishes good readers through a tradition handed on from generation to generation through practices and patterns of exegesis that are consistent with one another. Brevard Childs demonstrated a “family resemblance” in exegetical practices that can be seen from the church fathers to the modern period in certain interpreters. 1 The Enlightenment has exercised more influence on scholars who wish to make an impression on the secular academy than it has on faithful pastors who wish to cultivate a love of the Bible in their congregations. Many books seek to bring church practice into line with academic theory; this one seeks to do the opposite. It is my conviction that academic theory needs to be reformed according to church practice when it comes to biblical interpretation.
This book has grown out of a decade of reading, research, and reflection on the Christian doctrine of God. I have become increasingly disillusioned with modern theology in general and with the twentieth century’s so-called revival of trinitarian theology in particular. The post-Kantian, Hegelian, trinitarian theology that has dominated the twentieth century is actually not a revival of the trinitarian classical theism of the fourth-century pro-Nicene fathers or of creedal orthodoxy as it has been understood throughout church