Bibliotheca
Sacra 142 (July, 1985) 209-23
Copyright © 1985 by
Evangelicals and the Use
of the
Old Testament in the New
Part 1
Darrell
L. Bock
For evangelicals, whose distinctive
characteristic is their com-
mitment to a high view of
Scripture, perhaps no hermeneutical
area engenders more discussion than the relationship
between the
Testaments. Within this discussion, a particularly
important issue
is the use made of the Old Testament by the New
Testament. For
evangelicals this issue is of high
importance since both
Christological
claims and theories of biblical inspiration are tied to
the conclusions made about how the phenomena of
these passages
are related to one another. The hermeneutics of the
New Testa-
ment's use of the Old is a
live topic for discussion within evan-
gelicalism. In fact one could
characterize the discussion as one of
the major issues of debate in current
evangelicalism. In short, the
subject of the use of the Old Testament in the
New Testament is a
"hot" issue in evangelical circles, as many recent works
in the area
suggest.1
Despite all the discussion, no
consensus has emerged. The
main reason for the absence of consensus is the
complex nature of
the discussion both hermeneutically and
historically. Major theo-
logical issues often involve multifaceted
questions and this area is
no exception. The goal of this article is to
discuss the hermeneutical
issues that are raised in the debate. The article
seeks to
describe four schools of approach that have
emerged recently in
evangelicalism, letting each view
define its perspective on these
complex issues. A second article will discuss
four major her-
meneutical issues which each
school is attempting to handle in
210 Bibliotheca Sacra - July-September 1985
dealing with the phenomena of certain passages.
The merits and
weaknesses of each hermeneutical area will be
evaluated briefly.
Also
a framework for dealing with the Old Testament in the New will
be presented that reflects consideration of these
key hermeneutical
issues and draws from the contributions of each of
these schools.
Hopefully
this two-part discussion will lead to a better understand-
ing of the debate in this
complex area and will provide a basis for
better dialogue.2 It is also hoped that the
proposed framework in
the second article can serve as a functional
working model for a way
to approach the subject of the Old Testament in
the New.
Four
Schools within Evangelicalism
The following outline of the four
approaches to the use of the
Old
Testament in the New is an attempt to group together the
various evangelical approaches to this area.
None of these groups
has consciously attempted to form a
"school"; but the term is used
simply for convenience. The titles given to each
school represent an
attempt to summarize their distinctive
qualities. All the
approaches have one thing in common: they all
recognize that the
way to discuss the use of the Old Testament in the
New is not on a
"pure prophetic" model, in which one takes the Old
Testament
passage in its context and simply joins it
directly to its New Testament
fulfillment without any consideration of the
historical situation
of the Old Testament passage. In fact Kaiser
explicitly makes
the point that the best term to summarize the
prophetic connection
between the Old Testament and the New is not
"prediction" but
"promise.” 3 This point is well taken.
The relationship between certain Old
Testament texts and
their New Testament fulfillments is often more than
just a mere
linear relationship between the Old Testament text and
New Testa-
ment fulfillment. As helpful
as charts are which simply lay Old and
New
Testament passages beside one another, the hermeneutics of
how the passages are tied together is often more
complex than a
direct line-exclusive fulfillment. All the schools
mentioned in this
article agree on that fundamental point. 4
THE
The basic premise of this school is
that if hermeneutics is to
have validity then all that is asserted in the Old Testament
passage
must have been a part of the human author's intended meaning.
Thus
the Old Testament prophets are portrayed as having a fairly
Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament
in the New 211
comprehensive understanding of what
it is they are declaring
about the ultimate consummation of God's promise.5
So Kaiser
a rejects sensus plenior, dual sense, double fulfillment, or double
meaning. He rejects any bifurcation between the
divine author's
intended meaning and the human author's intended
meaning,
though he recognizes that God has a better recognition
of the fuller
significance of a promise. He
believes that to portray the
relationship between the human and
divine author as in some way
divided is to create hidden secret meanings,
something that is not
a disclosure, something that cannot be called a
revelation. Kaiser
does have a place for typology, which he sees as
having four
elements: historical correspondence, escalation,
divine intent,
and prefigurement.
Typology, however, is not prophetic nor
does it deal with issues of meaning; rather it is
merely
applicational.
The key point of Kaiser's view is
his appeal to "generic prom-
ise," drawn from
this way:
A generic prediction is one which
regards an event as occurring in a
series of
parts, separated by intervals, and expresses itself in lan-
guage that may apply indifferently to the nearest
part, or to the
remoter
parts or to the whole--in other words, a prediction which,
in applying
to the whole of a complex event, also applies to some of its
parts.7
Kaiser
comments,
The fundamental idea here is that
many prophecies begin with a
word that
ushers in not just a climactic fulfillment, but a series of
events, all
of which participate in and lead up to that climactic or
ultimate
event in a protracted series that belong together as a unit
because of
their corporate or collective solidarity. In this way, the
whole set
of events makes up one collective totality and constitutes
only one
idea even though the events may be spread over a large
segment of
history by the deliberate plan of God.8
Kaiser's key point is that in
generic prediction only one mean-
ing is
expressed and also that the human author
is aware of all the
stages in the sequence from
the first event to the last. The only
factor the prophet does not know is the time when
those events will
occur, especially
the time of the final fulfillment. Kaiser does
identify features by which one can spot a generic
promise. These
textual features include: (1) collective
singular nouns (e.g., "seed,"
"servant"); (2) shifts between singular and plural
pronominal suf-
fixes in an Old Testament passage (e.g., Servant as
212 Bibliotheca Sacra - July-September 1985
44:1
and as an individual, the Messiah, in Isa.
52:13-53:12; refer-
ence to the monarchy and to
the Davidic ruler through a pronoun
shift in Amos 9:11-12); and (3) analogies that are
expressed on the
basis of antecedent
(italics his) theology (e.g., either a use of
technical terms already revealed like
"kingdom," "seed," "rest," or a
quotation or allusion to an earlier Old Testament
text, event, or
promise). Thus the human author can intend in
one message to
address two or more audiences at once and have
in view two or
more events at once. It is important to recognize
that for Kaiser
generic promise does not equal typology, a
distinction which others
might not make. Kaiser sees typology as a nonprophetic. analo-
gous phenomenon.
His view may be diagramed as
follows:
Intention of
prophet in
God's revelation:
One sense,
many events.
final fulfillment
(events) A B C -----------> Z
Time
1 sense, meaning (generic promise)
Again
the point of Kaiser's model is that "the truth-intention of the
present was always singular and never double or
multiple in
sense. "9 The key distinctive of this
view is that the human author
had the whole picture in view as part of his own
intention and
understanding, with the one exception
of the time frame.
THE
(S.
LEWIS JOHNSON, JAMES I. PACKER, ELLIOTT E. JOHNSON)
The key emphasis of this school of
thought is that prophetic
passages all draw on the human author's words but
that the
Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament
in the New 213
human author did not always fully intend or
comprehend the
prophetic reference, while God did intend the full
reference. 10 In a
real sense, according to this view, God speaks
through the
prophet's words. The terminology used to describe
how this dis-
tinction is made and maintained
differs between the adherents in
the school even though they express basically the
same view S.
Lewis
Johnson and James I. Packer refer to sensus plenior, while
Elliott
E. Johnson prefers the term references plenior. The mean-
ing of these terms is
disputed and will be discussed later. In making
s the distinction between the human author's
intention and God's
intention, all three proponents seek to maintain a
connection
between the human author's words and meaning and
God's inten-
tion and meaning in order to
avoid the appearance of arbitrary
fulfillment. Thus the fulfillment does not give the
Old Testament
text a meaning foreign to its wording and conceptual
sense.11
Both Johnsons
allude to the work of E. D. Hirsch for sup-
port. 12 S. Lewis Johnson says directly
that "we may agree with
Hirsch"--by
which he means he can agree with Hirsch's thesis
that meaning is to be located in the author’s willed meaning--
provided "that it is understood that the ‘authorial
will’ we are
seeking as interpreters is God's intended
sense." He continues, "we
should not be surprised to find that the authorial
will of God goes
beyond human authorial will, particularly in those
sections of the
Word
of God that belong to the earlier states in the historical
process of special revelation. "13
This introduces a key issue,
namely, how the progress of revelation affects the
understanding of
these passages and their relationship to one another.
(More will be
said about this factor later.)
One objection that could be leveled
against this school is the
charge of the arbitrariness of a fulfillment that
distinguishes
between what God knows and what the human author
does not
know. How does this school deal with this problem?
S. Lewis
Johnson
cites Packer as follows in defining their concept of sensus
plenior:
If, as in one sense is invariably
the case, God's meaning and message
through
each passage, when set in its total biblical context, exceeds
what the
human author had in mind, that further meaning is only
an
extension and development of his [i.e., of the human author's
meaning], a
drawing out of implications and an establishing of
relationships
between his words and the other, perhaps later, biblical
declarations
in a way that the writer himself, in the nature of the case
[i.e., because of the limits of the
progress of revelation to that point]
214 Bibliotheca Sacra - July-September 1985
could not
do. Think, for example, how messianic prophecy is
declared to
have been fulfilled in the New Testament, or how the
sacrificial
system of Leviticus is explained as typical in Hebrews. The
point here
is that the sensus plenior
which texts acquire in their
wider
biblical context remains an extrapolation on thegrammatico-
historical
plane, not a new projection onto the plane of allegory.
And, though God may have more to say
to us from each text than its
human
author had in mind, God's meaning is never less than his.
What he means, God means.14
Packer
stresses the role of the progress of revelation and the con-
nection between the human
author's meaning and God's meaning.
Elliott E. Johnson emphasizes some
important semantic
issues in his article which among other things
discusses his con-
cept of references plenior.15 In defining meaning he notes the
distinction between sense and reference.16
"Sense" refers to the
verbal meaning of language expressed in the text
regardless of the
reference, that is, "sense" involves the
definition of a term, not what
the term refers to. "Reference" indicates
what specifically is referred
to through the sense meaning. There is a
difference between what
is described and meant (sense) and to whom or what
it refers
(reference). For example, the word "Paraclete"
is defined as "com-
forter" (the sense), but
in John 14-16 it refers to the Holy
Spirit
(reference). The human and the divine authors share the sense
of a
prophetic passage but God may have more referents
in mind than
the human author had. Thus Johnson's designation of
references
plenior is to him a more
accurate term than sensus plenior. For
Johnson,
there is always a fundamental connection between the
sense the human author intends and what God intends.
He writes,
What we are therefore proposing is
that the author's intention
expresses a
single, defining textual sense of the whole. This single
sense is
capable of implying a fullness of reference. This is not sensus
plenior but sensus singular
as expressed in the affirmation of the
text. But
it also recognizes the characteristic of references plenior.
In
Psalm 16 ... the words of verse 10
apply to both David and Christ in
their
proper sense, yet in a fuller sense to Christ who rose from the
dead, while
David's body knew corruption but will not be subject to
eternal
corruption.17
Johnson's
illustration of Psalm 16 argues that the idea of the
passage, the "sense" of the author, is
this: "Rejoicing in God, His
portion brings His Holy One hope for
resurrection." The passage
applies both to David (at the final
resurrection) and to Christ (at His
resurrection). Thus the term
"Holy One" has two referents: David
and Christ. Though David spoke of his own hope, his
language
Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament
in the New 215
prophetically pointed to Christ. This
Psalm 16 passage illustrates
how this school sees these kinds of texts.18
The point of the previous discussion
is that within the divine
intent-human words school two sets
of terms are used to protect
the connection between the human author's intention
and Gods
intention. Appeal is made either to senses plenior
(Packer and S.
L. Johnson) or to references plenior (E. Johnson). There is a small
but potentially significant difference in nuance
between the two
terms. Packer's senses
plenior sees the limitation that prevents an
arbitrary fulfillment as residing in "the implications of the words"
in the light of the progress of revelation. While
Elliott Johnson's
limitation is found in the non-alteration of the "defining sense" of
the human author's words. Thus Packer's limitation
is slightly
more open-ended than Johnson's. In other words
Packer has more
room for the amount of extension of meaning between
the Old and
New Testaments than does Elliott Johnson. This school, despite
this internal distinction, has many other nuances
hermeneutically,
but the preceding paragraphs have surfaced its
basic
characteristic.
The view of this school may be
diagramed as follows:
Intention of
human author: A (Possibly
Z)
\
Intention of \
Divine Author in \
human author's \
words: \
final fulfillment
(events) A B C→ Z
time
1 sense, multiple reference with extension
For this school, typology is
prophetic because the pattern of
God's
activity is designed by God to be repetitive and the correspon-
dences are identifiable from
details in the Old Testament text. In
216 Bibliotheca Sacra - July-September 1985
identifying typology as prophetic, this school
differs from Kaiser's
view. This
represents a second divergence, the first being its refusal
to identify human intent with divine intent
totally, as Kaiser does.
The
key distinctive of this school is its defense of a distinction
between the human author's intent and God's
intent, while trying
to maintain a connection between the meaning which
both
express in the words of the text.
THE
HISTORICAL PROGRESS OF REVELATION
AND
JEWISH HERMENEUTIC SCHOOL
(EARLE
E. ELLIS, RICHARD LONGENECKER, WALTER DUNNETT)
The main characteristic of this
school of thought is its utiliza-
tion of historical factors
in assessing the hermeneutics of the
relationship of the two Testaments.
As the title of Longenecker's
work suggests, Biblical
Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, this
school attempts to present the New Testament use of
the Old as a
reflection of the progress of revelation in Jesus
Christ ("the
Christological
glasses" of the New Testament writers) and as
especially making use of methods of first-century
Jewish inter-
pretation and exegesis (concepts
such as midrash, pesher,
and
Hillel's rules
of interpretation). 19 Longenecker speaks of the
"Christocentric
exegesis" that permeates the New Testament. He
argues that the "Jewish roots of Christianity
make it a priori likely
that the exegetical procedures of the New Testament
would resem-
ble to some extent those of
then contemporary Judaism."20 He
argues that New Testament writers neither (a)
mechanically "proof-
texted" the Old Testament
nor (b) illegitimately twisted or distorted
the ancient text. The New Testament writers got
their perspective
from Jewish exegetical techniques and from Jesus.
Their exegesis
could be characterized as "charismatic" in
the sense that they saw
events and declared them to fulfill the Old Testament
in the "this is
that" language reminiscent of pesher exegesis at
these pesher treatments of
the text may not conform to historical-
grammatical exegesis as it is practiced today; but
it was the basic
way in which the Bible was read in the first
century and therefore
was a legitimate way to read the Old Testament.
Often an important
element in the pesher
handling of the text is the rewording of the
Old
Testament passage so that it more nearly conforms to the New
Testament
situation in light of larger biblical and theological
understanding. 21 One can
readily see the historical stress in the
argument of this school. Also appeal is often
made to sensus
plenior as a way to describe
this phenomena. 22
Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament
in the New 217
This view also emphasizes that when
the New Testament writ-
ers read the Old Testament,
they did so out of a developed theologi-
cal picture both of messianic expectation and
salvation history. 23
Thus
the theology of the Old Testament and in some cases that
theology's development in intertestamental
Judaism affect these
writers.24 Proponents of this view
argue that one's understanding
of the New Testament writers' hermeneutic should
be less con-
cerned with abstract issues of
legitimacy and be more sensitive to
the historical factors that can explain this type
of exegesis.
A few citations from Longenecker serve to summarize the
approach of this school.
It is hardly surprising to find that
the exegesis of the New Testament
is heavily
dependent upon Jewish procedural precedents, for, the-
oretically, one would expect a divine redemption that
is worked out in
the
categories of a particular history ... [and] to express itself in
terms of
the concepts and methods of that particular people and day.
And this is, as we have tried to
show, what was in fact done--the
appreciation
of which throws a great deal of light upon the exegetical
methodology
of the New Testament. But the Jewish context in which
the New
Testament came to birth, significant though it was, is not
what was
distinctive or formative in the exegesis of the earliest
believers.
At the heart of their biblical interpretation is a Christology
and a
Christological perspective.25
Longenecker also writes:
Thus it was that Jesus became the
direct historical source for much
of the
early church's understanding of the Old Testament. But in
addition,
the early Christians continued to explicate Scripture along
the lines
laid out by Him and under the direction of the Spirit....
But the Christocentric
perspective of the earliest Christians not only
caused them
to take Jesus' own employment of Scripture as nor-
mative and to look to Him for guidance in the ongoing
exegetical
tasks, it
also gave them a new understanding of the course of
redemptive
history and of their own place in it.... From such a
perspective,
therefore, and employing concepts of corporate soli-
darity and correspondences in history [i.e.,
typology], all the Old
Testament became part-and-parcel of
God's preparation for the
Messiah.26
While this view will be evaluated
later, two potentially negative
responses to it are addressed now: (1) This view
seems too open to
historical parallels from outside Christianity, and
(2) this approach
seems to lessen the
concept of prophecy by setting its recognition
largely in the fulfillment period, rather than
at the time of the
original revelation. The view, however, need not
seem as unusual or
negative as it may appear at first. For example,
any New Testament
218 Bibliotheca Sacra - July-September 1985
passage where Yahweh in the Old Testament
becomes Christ in the
New
Testament (e.g., Rom. 10:13 and its use of Joel 2:32) follows
this principle of reading the Old Testament in light
of New Testa-
ment realizations about the
nature of the Messiah (where Jesus as
Messiah
is recognized as Lord and God Himself). Even Chris-
tianity's interpretation of a gap
in Isaiah 61:1-2 - in which part of
the passage refers to Jesus' first coming (Luke
4:18) and the other
part refers to Jesus' return - is possible only
because of the New
Testament teaching about Jesus' two comings. This
"refractory"
and reflective use of the New Testament on the Old
is a key factor
that must be evaluated in the use of the Old
Testament by the New
As
new revelation was given (in the life of Jesus and in the teaching
from Him), the Old Testament was elucidated with
greater detail.27
Again the distinctive of this school
is its attempt to be histor-
ically sensitive to factors
operating in the interpretation of Scrip-
ture in the first century.
It could be diagramed as follows:
Jewish Hermeneutic School
O.T. PERIOD INTERTESTMENTAL N.T. PERIOD
PERIOD
passage O.T. -------> Judaism Jesus final
| | | hope | | | event
| | | | | |
| |
|
|_________| |
| | |
| |
| | progress
of revelation --------------------------> Z |
| A |
|
________________ refraction <---------------------------------------------
Time
Obviously the diagram for this
school is more complicated
than the other diagrams. Advocates of this view
still see a "pro-
phetic" element in the
fulfillment, even though it is realized mainly
with the event itself. Their appeal for a prophetic
meaning is
grounded in (a) the sovereign design of God in
which the patterns
of salvation history reoccur and aim for
fulfillment and in (b) the
Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament
in the New 219
appeal to the wording of the text in conjunction with
God's revela-
tion in Christ. However, it
is also crucial to note that the event is the
key dynamic that leads to the realization of the
prophetic meaning.
Most
realization of fulfillment works toward and from the New
Testament event.
THE
CANONICAL APPROACH AND NEW TESTAMENT
The discussion of this fourth
approach will be brief since the
writings propounding this point of view are not
so numerous.28
Waltke defines his approach as follows:
By the canonical process approach I mean the
recognition that the
text's
intention became deeper and clearer as the parameters of the
canon were
expanded. Just as redemption itself has progressive
history, so
also older texts in the canon underwent a correlative
progressive
perception of meaning as they became part of a growing
canonical
literature. 29
While noting his indebtedness to
Brevard Childs's work, Intro-
duction to the Old Testament as Scripture, Waltke
distances him-
self from all the details of Childs's approach. Waltke also states that
his approach, though similar to sensus plenior, is distinct from it
in that he asserts the unity between the Old Testament writers'
ideal language and God's intention. This agreement of
intention
is possible because the human authors spoke in
ideal language.
For
him, progressive revelation made more clear the exact shape of
the ideal, which was always pregnant in the vision.
What is unclear
from Waltke's writing is
what the human authors understood of
their