The doctrine of inspiration speaks of the Bible’s dual authorship. The key issue in inspiration is the roles that God and the human authors play. The proper view of biblical inspiration has been labeled the verbal-plenary view of inspiration. In this post we will take a quick look at what verbal-plenary inspiration means and how it is evident in intertextuality.
Hermeneutics
A bit about intertextuality (Matt. 2:15)
Intertextuality is key to ensuring that the Bible student is doing nothing “to” or “with” the text, but rather deriving that which is already “within” the text. The proper method for interpreting the Scriptures is the grammatical-historical method, which analyzes the text for grammatical and structural implications as well as its historical context. The result is that any given text only has one singular meaning, but could have multiple implications. This is not only how we should read the text; it is also how the biblical authors read the biblical texts that came before them. Some who reject grammatical-historicism would propose that the NT authors were repurposing the OT texts noncontextually for their own purposes, so that texts have more meanings than can be extracted contextually.
Michael Vlach advocates the consistent grammatical-historical approach to intertextuality. He has calculated 355 to 360 OT references in the NT, most which are clearly contextual uses of the OT with only about 14 hard cases.[1] Theologians who disagree and say that the NT authors were flexible with their application of OT texts typically defend their views from the hard cases, but a better approach is to use the easy to understand the hard.
An example of a hard text could be Matthew’s quotation of Hosea 11:1 (Matt. 2:15). The fluctuating assumption is that Hosea 11:1 does not reference the coming Messiah, and so Matthew is changing Hosea to fit his narrative. A conservative view could be that God revealed a hidden meaning of Hosea to Matthew, while a liberal view could be that Matthew was wrong about Hosea. Either way, Matthew would be doing something “to” the text. However, if the reader allows the OT to have its own say, then perhaps Hosea was also doing intertextuality. Balaam spoke centuries before Hosea, and in his oracles, he recognized that God brought Israel out of Egypt in the past (Num. 23:22) and that in the future, a king of Israel would come out of Egypt (Num. 24:7, 8). Even Balaam’s mention of a future king was intertextual to Jacob’s blessing of Judah (Gen. 49:10). Moreover, Jacob’s blessing is the beginning of a Lion of Judah motif (Gen. 49:9) that Balaam picks up on (Num. 23:24; 24:9) as does Hosea (Hos. 11:1). The lion motif through these texts serves as an ancient hashtag that weaves the thoughts together.
When the Holy Spirit moved men to write the text of the Bible, He did so in a way that gives the modern reader an example of how to study. It is not for the reader to do anything “to” the text, but rather to follow in the footsteps of Matthew, Hosea, and Moses by analyzing that which is already “within” the text.
[1] Michael Vlach, The Old in the New: Understanding How the New Testament Authors Quoted the Old Testament (The Woodlands, TX: Kress Biblical Resources, 2021), vi, 61–63.
How James quoted Amos
At the Jerusalem Council (Acts 19:6–21), James quotes Amos in a way that some have interpreted in a way that sees him spiritualizing promises that God made to Israel and applying them to the church. I do not think that this is what he was doing, though. James was using the plain grammatical-historical method of interpretation, which includes Amos’s original context as well as James’ context in Acts.
[Read More]
Dispensationalism: What It Is And Why It Matters
Dispensationalism is the school of thought that results from a plain grammatical-historical reading of Scriptures. Ryrie’s threefold sine qua non of dispensationalism includes grammatical-historical hermeneutics, doxological centrality of Scripture, and the distinction between Israel and the church,[1] but these latter two points are merely the result of the first. The doctrine that dispensationalism is most famous for is the pre-tribulational rapture, but this too is just the result of the consistent literal reading of Scripture. Even critics of dispensationalism recognize that grammatical-historicism results in dispensationalist conclusions. Since the legitimacy of dispensationalism stands or falls on the legitimacy of grammatical-historical hermeneutics, a discussion of dispensationalism’s strengths should focus on its hermeneutics.[Read More]
What is the Kingdom compared to in the parable of the leaven?
The following is an excerpt from a paper for an upcoming volume on Bible difficulties related to eschatology. This particular paper deals with the parables of the mustard seed and leaven. I take the view that these two parables depict the current evil age rather than the future Messianic kingdom. Part of this reasoning is that leaven typically represents corruption in the Bible. The most common response that I’m hearing is “But the Bible says that the kingdom is like leaven, so leaven must be the good kingdom here.” Here’s my response to that:
Thoughts on Russia, Ukraine, and the Bible
Russophobia is emerging around the world. There are individuals in the Russian government who are making evil decisions that affect Russia and other countries—Putin comes to mind, as do others who may not be as familiar to Western readers—but these are not grounds to resent Russian people. Within the Russian population are plenty of believers who are doing excellent work in a dark place. They are to be commended (if not now, then they will certainly be rewarded later).[Read More]
You must be logged in to post a comment.