Forty Reasons for Not Reinterpreting the OT by the NT: The Last Twenty

It is “reinterpreting” if one has already arrived at an interpretation which is altered upon the reception of additional information. I have done this with many OT texts, as I began to gradually question some of the interpretations of my DT training in the light of a more careful examination of the NT. Have I reinterpreted some OT passages? Yes. Guilty as charged, if indeed this is a chargeable offense.

There are many other OT passages of which I had no prior opinions. In this case, no reinterpretation is involved, simply interpreting. In the first case, I consider it honorable to be willing to change a previous interpretation in the light of additional understanding. Does anyone think this is dishonorable? I intend to continue this practice as long as I live. I pray that God will enable me to constantly refine my interpretations of Scripture.

For those who were not trained in Dispensationalism, no reinterpretation is involved. Unless, of course, they reinterpret their formerly non-dispensatioinal interpretations into a dispensational understanding. That would be reinterpretation that DTs would surely applaud. I think Dr. Henebury is making too much of the concept of “reinterpretation.” I fail to see the import of the term. Surely what we all desire is to be enabled by God to interpret all of Scripture as accurately as possible. If in the work of exegesis, we reinterpret something that we now believe was a formerly incorrect interpretation, that should be applauded. That is simply the work of “interpretation” to which all Bible teachers are called.

No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly…….., (ethnic or circumcised). But a Jew is one inwardly.” I don’t know how it can be clearer. A Jew is someone who has experienced circumcision of the heart whether they be ethnic Jews or ethnic Gentiles.

I don’t think that’s the point of the passage. The point of the passage here, as in Romans 9, is that a true Jew is separate from ethnic identity. It is more than ethnic identity. In other words, a true Jew is not a Gentile who has been inwardly or outwardly circumcised. It is a Jew who has been inwardly circumcised.

It could be clearer by using the word Greek or Gentile (as he often does) or church (as he often does). But instead he uses a word packed with theological meaning which never clearly means anything other than an ethnic Jew. Why does he do that?

Let’s ask the question differently: Suppose Paul wanted to say that it wasn’t enough to be a ethnic Jew who had been circumcised but rather each ethnic Jew with physical circumcision also needed heart circumcision. How would he say it? I suggest he would say exactly what he said in Romans 2.

Further, your understanding of “Jew” creates a problem when in the immediately following sentence (unfortunately separated by a big number 3 in our Bibles, though not separated by anything in Paul’s writing) he uses “Jew” to mean an ethnic Israelite. Such a change would be odd.

There may be a case to be made for understanding the church as the new Israel (I don’t think it is a good case, but I will admit that a case can be made), but Romans 2 is not the place that can make that case it seems to me.

21. Saying the NT must reinterpret the OT also devalues the OT as its own witness to God and His Plans.

27. Since interpreters in the OT (Psa. 105:6-12); NT (Acts 1:6); and the inter-testamental period (e.g. Tobit 14:4-7) took the covenant promises at face value (i.e. to correspond precisely to the people and things they explicitly refer to), this would mean God’s testimony to Himself and His works in those promises, which God knew would be interpreted that way, was calculated to deceive the saints.

In general terms, it asserts, “If interpreters interpret the Word in a certain way, saying they were wrong (or incomplete) means God wrote in a way He knew would be misinterpreted (or incompletely).”

This “Reason” also implies that IF the above is ever true, that is a bad thing. It isn’t. See:

Luke 8:9 And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, 10 he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’…”

It is ok for God to deliberately speak in such a way that some fail to understand.

I confess that I had merely perused Paul’s 40 Reasons before this. Many of them are much worse than I imagined – not the least because he claims that those with whom he disagrees attack the veracity and the character of God and his Word based on what he calls reinterpretation. He sets up “reinterpretation” as the problem in his first paragraph in his first article (“It seems to be almost an axiom within contemporary, evangelical Bible interpretation that the New Testament must be allowed to reinterpret the Old Testament”), and then proceeds to describe and ascribe all manner of imaginary problems. His interpretations are real interpretations. Others are only reinterpretations.

These are only representative from the second batch. My comments are bracketed.

“21. Saying the NT must reinterpret the OT also devalues the OT as its own witness to God and His Plans.”

(What he calls reinterpretation is simply interpretation. The NT sheds light those in the OT did not have. Neither Paul’s nor my interpretations are authoritative.)

“29. A God who would “expand” His promises in such an unanticipated way could never be trusted not to “transform” His promises to us in the Gospel.”

(If God gives OT saints through the covenants more than what they understood and gives through the gospel more than we understand, I fail to see the problem. Does Paul really imagine that we understand all that God will do for us in the future due tour union with Christ? To imagine that the God of those who differ with him on the fulfillment of OT prophecy cannot be trusted is a sign of desperation.)

“32. In addition, it makes the Creator of language the greatest rambler in all literature. Why did God not just tell the prophet, “When the Messiah comes He will be the Temple and all those in Him will be called the Temple”? That would have saved thousands of misleading words at the end of Ezekiel.”

(It does nothing of the sort except that’s what Paul imagines. Why does God have to tell people something in the way Paul thinks he should. So if one does not understand the temple prophecy as Paul does it’s as if they were saying that God is a rambler and gave misleading words? There must be a literal future temples and sacrifices. Because Paul says so in his interpretation and he understands the OT like those who heard it did.)

“33. It ignores the life-setting of the disciples’ question in Acts 1:6 in the context of their already having had forty days teaching about the very thing they asked about (“the kingdom” – see Acts 1:3). This reflects badly on the clarity of the Risen Lord’s teaching about the kingdom.”

(Once again if one does not understand the disciples question as Paul does then it reflects badly on the clarity of the Lord’s teaching (thus on the Lord himself) not on the disciples who after 40 days of teaching still clung to their idea of an politico-ethnic kingdom. It’s interesting to me that at the end of Acts Paul is “preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus.” Was Paul teaching about a future Israelite kingdom? I think not. Jesus did answer the disciples in Acts 1:8 but not in the way they expected. He told them “when.” It would begin with the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. What God fixed by his authority (v. 7) is now promised in the power they will have to witness. The disciples were still thinking small, a restored Israel with OT boundaries. just liked Paul and DT. Jesus was thinking of the ends of the earth.)

“35. It turns the admonition to “keep” the words of the prophecy in Revelation 1:3 into an absurdity, because the straight forward, non-symbolic understanding of the numbers (7, 42, 144000, 1260, 1000, etc) and persons and places (twelve tribes of Israel, the Two Witnesses, the Beast and False Prophet, Jerusalem, Babylon, New Jerusalem, etc.), which is in large part built upon the plain sense of the OT is rejected in favor of tentative symbolic/typological interpretations. But how many people can “keep” what they are uncertain is being “revealed”?

(How much is there in the numbers to “keep”? This one baffles me. Once again, Scripture becomes an absurdity unless you share Paul’s interpretation.)

“36. It makes the unwarranted assumption that there can only be one people of God. Since the OT speaks of Israel and the nations (e.g. Zech. 14:16f.);….”

(Read Ephesians 2 where Jews and Gentiles are “both one,” “one new man in place of the two,” “one body,” “access in one Spirit.” The two peoples theory is one of the worse features of DT although I don’t think all hold to it.)

“39. This view, which espouses a God who prevaricates in the promises and covenants He makes, also tempts its adherents to adopt equivocation themselves when they are asked to expound OT covenantal language in its original context.”

(The reinterpretation view is first made up and then those who hold it make God a liar. I’ll stop here because it’s clear Paul is so sure of his position that others make God a liar if they disagree with him. This is nonsense and unworthy of Paul even putting it out there except that he needs to defend his position at all costs, even attacking the integrity of others. I disagree with Paul on many things. I think he’s wrong but I would hope to have enough humility to not say that his views make God a liar.)

Finally, I predict that no one will be persuaded by Paul’s 40 inventions to embrace his form of DT. That can be interpreted any way one wants.

Steve Davis

I think Paul’s “40 reasons” are excellent, and this series serves as a reminder of the great interpretive divide. There are two completely different sets of interpretative glasses here, and everyone wears one of them. I believe it comes down to this:

1. Does God means what He says in His various covenants?
2. Was God’s revelation about His covenants clear and understandable to the original audience?

If you believe the answer is “yes,” then you’ll:

1. See Israel and the church as two peoples of God
2. See complementary plans and purposes for each people, culminating in the eschaton

This issue will likely always fascinate me, because the presuppositions really are that simple. For example, in 1 Peter 2:4-10, Peter quotes from or alludes to OT texts about Israel six times, and applies all of them to his audience’s contemporary situation. What should we do with this? One side sees the church fulfilling the OT Scripture, the other side sees Peter applying these principles to the “new people” God has revealed, without cancelling later fulfillment among the Israelites.

The fun never stops! To move the discussion forward, I really think the most profitable thing would be to have a written exchange on some texts.

[Paul Henebury]

The OT covenants are not parables.

My point was only that if God chooses to, He can write in such a way that even though it is misunderstood, He is not discredited as a writer.

Parables were for the purposes of hiding it “so that” those under judgment would not understand. To make that a parallel, it seems you would have to argue that God didn’t want those to whom he made covenant promises to understand because they were under judgment. I am not sure how far that argument will run, but I imagine not very far. The covenants were made, not to prevent faith, but to increase it.

Read Ephesians 2 where Jews and Gentiles are “both one,” “one new man in place of the two,” “one body,” “access in one Spirit.” The two peoples theory is one of the worse features of DT although I don’t think all hold to it.

This has always been a mind-boggling argument to me. In Ephesians 2, the “one new man” is the church. It is not the conflation of the OT people of God and the NT people of God. To the contrary, the NT consistently delineates the Jews and the Gentiles as in Romans 2, 3, 9, 11, Galatians, among others, all of which make no sense to me in a non-dispensational scheme of understanding.

Everyone acknowledges that in the NT church there is no distinction among ethnic identities. That’s all Eph 2 says. It says nothing about the OT people and the promises God made to them one way or the other. So indeed there might be “one people of God” throughout the Bible, but Ephesians 2 doesn’t address that question at all.

Larry, I see your point. And yet it depends on the idea that saints won’t make mistakes. And it assigns a present-for-them understanding or application to be a misunderstanding if it misses the full picture.

Paul talks about “mystery” teachings like the meaning of marriage. The full meaning was hidden from OT saints. I don’t take that to mean God has deceived. He just allowed people to marry without understanding the full meaning.

Tyler,

You introduced a good text for discussion. You correctly stated that Peter utilyzed a number of words and phrases used in the OT to describe Israel, and applied them to the Church. You noted the different ways DTs and CTs understand this passage. Here’s my perspective.

If we had only the OT, I doubt that anyone would have predicted that these terms would be applied to anyone but ethnic Israel, but here it is. Peter, under Divine inspiration applied them to the Church. Now there is no question that they apply accurately to the Church, for inspired NT revelation tells us so. The thing we do not know for certain is whether they still apply to ethnic Israel. Our interpretation of the OT now comes under scrutiny. To say that this changes nothing in our original perspective on Israel is to make a statement based upon interpretation. We are saying that our original understanding of the OT could not possibly be incorrect. But how do we know? We don’t. We affirm that based upon our original understanding, but we have no way to test that interpretation at this point. We ought to consider that possibility that these terms originally were intended to apply only to true spiritual Israel within ethnic Israel, and spiritual Israel now includes believing Gentiles. Is it possible that we missed some of the fullmess as originally intended? The only way to know for sure is to wait and see how this unfolds in the future. If at His second coming, Christ ushers in a Jewish millennial kingdom, our original interpretation will be confirmed. Until that happens, we really don’t know because we cannot be certain that our original interpretation is infallible.

What we know for certain at this point is that terms that we formerly assumed applied exclusively to ethnic Israel now apply to the Church. We don’t know if this demonstrates a newly revealed understanding of the meaning of “Israel,” or a newly introduced people of God in addition to the OT people of God. It seems audacious to insist on the latter based upon an OT interpretation which has now been altered by the application of Jewish termanology to the Church made up of believing Jews plus believing Gentiles. Our original interpretation might be correct, but at this point, there is no way to be certain. A large dose of humble caution is what the present situation requires, not dogmatic assertion.

Bro. Barkham stated:

A large dose of humble caution is what the present situation requires, not dogmatic assertion

I agree with this.

In this passage, Peter:

1. Applies the prophesy from Isa 28 directly to the congregations he’s writing to. In the OT context, this is referring to the Israelites.
2. Applies Ps 118:22 to all generic unbelievers. In the OT context, it is likely referring to David’s enemies in Israel (i.e. Saul’s followers) who did not want him to reign as King. In the synoptics (e.g. Mk 12:1-12), Jesus interpreted it the same, and said it referred to the apostate Jewish leadership. Peter agreed with this in Acts 4. However, in this passage, he generically applied it to all unbelievers. He may be drawing an analogy from Scripture, but he is clearly not sticking rigidly to the original context.
3. Applies Isa 8:14 to all unbelievers in a generic sense, even though Isaiah was referring to apostate Israelites.
4. Applies Ex 19:5f to the Christian congregations he’s writing to, a startling application. This lends enormous weight to the contention that there is really only “one people” of God. Of course, Peter doesn’t say it does not rule out blessings for Israel later. Still, this is a hard passage for DTs.
5. Applies Hosea 2 to the Christian congregations, a stunning application. In the original context, Hosea was clearly referring to the future exiles from the Northern Kingdom who God promised He’d gather back to the land, under one King.

I’d be lying if I said this isn’t compelling, and difficult for the DT position. Of course, CTs have their own problems, too … :)

Indeed they do, which is why I usually hesitate to identify myself with CT. It only seems that way when I am dealing with problematic DT interpretations. Being non DT does not automatically equate to CT. However, if I must choose between them, I find CT comes closer to my understanding of Scripture than DT. Perhaps “Modified CT” would be reasonably accurate.