[Vision2020] Old vs. New Covenant IV

[Taro Tanaka]

nickgier at adelphia.net wrote:

[[ The Princess' school of biblical hermeneutics is well known. It proposes 
an intricate web of Bible verses in which each verse is cleverly but loosely 
connected to hundreds of other verses, regardless of their historical or 
authorial context, violating one of the first rules of general hermeneutics. 
The Princess' school of biblical interpretation is one whose sole goal is to 
support a specific theological agenda, which turns into a desperate search 
to validate one passage of scripture by another passage. The New Testament 
writers did this as well, and Matthew gets the grand prize for stretching 
many passages from the Hebrew Bible into allusions to Christ. The Princess 
simply continues the mistakes of Matthew. ]]

On Jan. 9, 2006, a wise man wrote, "What's needed is not a general 
hermeneutics developed from some philosophy of language or metaphysics. 
Rather, what's needed is a general hermeneutics developed from the premise 
that NT readings of the OT do not represent some bizarre exception to the 
normal way of reading but provide a model for all reading. Hence, for 
instance, the NT readings of the OT raise (and perhaps help to resolve) 
questions about how meanings change with changed circumstances. Does Genesis 
1:1 mean something different (something more?) now that John 1:1 has been 
written? How does the end of the story affect the meaning of its beginning 
and middle? Or, to take another instance, can the logic of Paul's use of 
Torah in the changed cultural and redemptive-historical circumstances of the 
first century provide a model for legal interpretation in general?" (Peter 
Leithart)

Well, I don't know what else to say to Nick on hermeneutics except that no 
Christian is ever going to ask forgiveness for following the example of 
Matthew. It should be noted that not only do the gospel writers do this sort 
of thing, they quote Jesus as doing the exact same thing too. And 
furthermore, more than a few examples of this can be found in the Hebrew 
scriptures as well. Judges refers to Joshua; 1 Kings refers to Exodus, 
Numbers, and Deuteronomy; 1 Chronicles refers to Genesis and Ruth; 2 
Chronicles refers to Joshua; 2 Chronicles and Jeremiah refer to Exodus; 
Daniel and Zechariah both refer to Jeremiah; Ezekiel has repeated references 
to Leviticus; Nehemiah refers to Leviticus and Deuteronomy; Isaiah, Hosea, 
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel have repeated references to Genesis; Jeremiah refers 
to Micah, and so on. Some of the references are direct quotes, some are 
allusions, and some are mentions of the earlier writings by name. What is 
important for our purposes here is that some of these later writings modify 
the earlier texts in much the same way that the Greek scriptures modify the 
Hebrew. In other words, the "New Testament" was not the first "new" 
testament. The Jews received new testaments repeatedly throughout their 
history prior to the birth of Jesus. The later writers sometimes amplified 
the meaning of earlier texts and used them in ways the original writers 
could not have anticipated. For Nick to say that this is a totally 
illegitimate practice is simply Nick trying to impose his preconceptions and 
prejudices onto the Bible. Nick says I have an agenda; I say Nick has an 
agenda. Agenda, agenda, who's got the agenda? My agenda comes from the Bible 
itself (as Nick himself acknowledges). Where does Nick's agenda come from?

One other thing needs to be remembered: God is adept at accomplishing 
multiple purposes simultaneously. I have trouble patting my head with one 
hand while rubbing my tummy with the other. But God, as the omnipotent Lord 
of history, doesn't find it difficult in the least to throw a Hail Mary pass 
from the book of Isaiah and then catch His own pass in the gospel according 
to Matthew. Why do we find that so unbelievable? If God is God, then it's 
not hard for him to do that. God's special revelation can, and frequently 
does, have multiple layers of meaning, simultaneously pointing to numerous 
other events at different times and in different places.

Part of this is due to repetition and development of themes and symbolism 
over time in the different books of the Bible. We must never forget that a 
house is simultaneously capable of being both large AND white. The same 
house can be home to more than one person, either simultaneously or 
sequentially. Not a few inept scholars of biblical literature seem to have a 
real hard time dealing with the fact that the "large" house is described by 
later writers as "white," or that it was home to more than one person. "Hey, 
that text can't possibly be referring to Jesus! It refers to David." "That 
text can't possibly be referring to Jesus! It refers to Israel." And so 
forth. Why can't the same text simultaneously have multiple referents?

And then there is the related problem -- at least, it is a problem for 
unbelievers -- that the books of the Bible, especially the Greek scriptures, 
repeatedly claim the fulfillment of things that were prophesied earlier. To 
the unbelieving scholar, all these claims that prophesies were fulfilled 
must be dismissed out of hand; otherwise it would mean that God is who and 
what the Bible says He is, and we had better submit to Him as such. So the 
unbelieving scholar can acknowledge at most that perhaps some "prophesies" 
were fulfilled out of something akin to "sheer dumb luck" but that most such 
claims in the biblical text are lies and distortions by conspiratorial 
"redactors" with "agendas." By the nonbeliever's logic, for example, the 
Book of Daniel simply must have been written at a very late date since it 
clearly predicts the rise of the Persian and Roman empires, and even goes so 
far as to refer to certain individuals by name. It could not possibly have 
been written by Daniel, or so the logic goes. And likewise all the claims in 
the Greek scriptures that various prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures were 
fulfilled by Christ are dismissed as fabrications aimed at hyping the Jesus 
myth. I don't know if this paragraph describes where Nick is coming from to 
a T, but it can't be far from the basic hermeneutical perspective that he 
brings to the biblical text. A person who reads the Bible through 
unbelieving glasses is not going to come away from the text as a believer . 
.. . not unless God gives him an entirely new set of glasses through which to 
read.

[[ The Princess and other orthodox Christians have trapped themselves in a 
view of radical divine transcendence (left over Greek philosophy!) that 
makes it impossible for them to explain how God can relate to the world at 
all. ]]

The transcendence of the biblical God is not a Wittgensteinian 
"unsayability," but is rather God's Lordship -- His sovereign control and 
authority over the universe. Similarly the immanence of the biblical God is 
not a tendency for Him to become indistinguishable from man or anything else 
in the universe; rather it is His sovereign freedom to enter man's life and 
to reveal Himself clearly and distinctly. Can I get my mind comfortably 
around God's absolute transcendence and His total immanence? No, I cannot; 
my mind is boggled by it -- but it is the consistent testimony of both the 
Hebrew and the Greek scriptures.

[[ The theory of Progressive Revelation is just that, a theory, an ad hoc 
hypothesis that allows biblical harmonizers such as the Princess to explain 
the fact that the Jews did not know about all these Christian doctrines. 
Like most ad hoc hypotheses, this is just too convenient and too sneaky, so 
we should reject this view if we have any respect for these marvelous texts, 
each with its own author(s) and cultural, religious provenance. Assuming a 
theological unity among all these texts is simply not possible. ]]

Well, besides the list of cross-references within the Hebrew scriptures that 
I gave above, the Pentateuch announces that God will be sending prophets to 
Israel in the future, so the Pentateuch itself assumes that it is not the 
final word in God's special revelation. The Pentateuch is assuming that 
subsequent revelation will be added and that this will have theological 
unity with what came before. To look at the 66 books of the Bible and say 
"Assuming a theological unity among all these texts is simply not possible" 
can only be described as willful blindness.

In a broader sense as well, even when they don't mention other books of the 
Bible explicitly, from a literary perspective the repetition of themes and 
symbols throughout the 66 books of the Bible is strong evidence of their 
unity. The Book of Revelation is simply incomprehensible if someone tries to 
read it in isolation from the Hebrew Scriptures.

[[ The Princess can't say that Robert Grant is only half right because his 
one-sentence conclusion is a logical unity and limits his analysis to the 
first 200 years. The first known Greek text of the Apostle's Creed is from 
Marcellus of Ancyra in 341CE. The New Testament allusions to threeness 
(there is no NT Greek word for "trinity") simply don't count as a doctrine. 
]]

Formal creedal texts extremely similar to the Apostle's Creed are extant 
from A.D. 200, and both Iranaeus (around 125-202) and Tertullian (around 
160-220) use similar forms of expression. All these are in agreement 
concerning the multiplicity of Persons in the Godhead. So Grant's claim does 
not stand. Iranaeus is not simply making things up as he goes along.

[[ The Princess should know that before the Council of Nicea, the early 
Christian church contained a great many different beliefs. For example, many 
scholars believe that a majority of Christian bishops were Arians and only 
by great political maneuvers (by a early incarnation of Karl Rove?) was the 
Trinity as we know it was affirmed. ]]

The final commentary on Arius and his damnable heresy was his going to meet 
his Maker face-down in a privy. It was Arius who was in cahoots with Karl 
Rove, not Athanasius: Roman emperors would have loved nothing more than for 
Arius to be right. The defeat of Arius and Arianism laid the foundation for 
individual rights and personal freedom in Western civilization by putting 
permanently off limits any possibility of divinizing the State.

[[ I simply don't accept the Princess' "concatenation of verses" to prove 
that the Serpent is Satan. It is precisely those later New Testament 
interpretations that I'm disputing! I note with great satisfaction that the 
Princess could not produce a single reference in the Hebrew Bible to the 
Fall of Adam and Eve. Of course, there are references to sinners in the 
Hebrew Bible, but not an Original Sin in which all humans participate 
because of the sin of Adam. ]]

It is all right there in the opening chapters of Genesis. Last time I 
checked, Genesis was part of the Hebrew Bible. I note "with great 
satisfaction" (NOT!) that Nick simply ignores the undeniable testimony to 
the truth of original sin provided by David in Psalm 51.

[[ Finally, when Yahweh asks "who will entice Ahab?" in 1 Kgs. 22:20, it is 
"lying spirit" (=the Satan) from among the heavenly hosts who does the 
dastardly deed (v. 22). ]]

That comports with the view that Satan is God's servant, albeit one whose 
heart is rebellious and unwilling. The Bible shows that Satan can do nothing 
that God does not allow. That makes sense; after all, Satan is a creature 
dependent upon God just like every other creature. Satan cannot lay a finger 
on Job, Ahab, Judas or anyone else without God's permission. The notion that 
Satan is God's "dark side" cannot be read from the text, although it can 
(with great violence) be read into it.

[[ Nick Gier, Intolerista Par Excellence
“Intolerance is a virtue only when one is intolerant of intolerance." ]]

Translated: Nick Gier thinks intolerance towards orthodox Christianity is a 
good thing. If Nick had been signing all his posts thusly, he could have 
saved me the trouble of writing about him in the first place, because my 
main purpose in writing has been to expose his hypocrisy and his 
anti-Christian agenda, rather than simply arguing with him about Christian 
doctrines per se. (After all, as a non-Christian, he can hardly be expected 
to acknowledge the various doctrinal claims put forth by orthodox 
Christianity.)

-- Princess Sushitushi

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