The NT use of the OT is alway tough. Thanks for the review. I haven’t read Chou yet but I want to get to it when I can. He lectured on this at DBTS and I’ve been wanting to watch those as well. I also found Thomas compelling.
He’s a conservative guy who has two goals; (1) to rescue difficult passages by way of intertextuality, and (2) to thereby exhort Christians to model this exegetical approach and “do it like they did” when we interpret the bible. I just think he’s trying way too hard, in a way that seems to unwittingly leave God out of it. Thomas’ view on inspired sensus plenior application has always seemed commonsense and reasonable.
I’m surprised Chou didn’t directly confront the elephant in the room and repudiate Thomas’ views, but perhaps it was because Thomas was still alive at the time and was a force to be reckoned with and was a colleague at Masters Seminary! Thomas strikes me as a real fundamentalist, in a bad way. In his hermeneutics text, Thomas damns Dan Wallace’s grammar with faint praise as “useful,” then dismisses it as “extremely dangerous” because one comment of his acknowledged “double-meaning” as a possibility!
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Tyler, your characterization of Chou makes me wonder if we even read the same book. He argues that the biblical writers were not ignorant of the Scriptures, but that they were steeped in them, and that informed their own writing. That’s a far cry from excluding the Spirit’s role in inspiration or turning hermeneutics into a mechanistic enterprise.
I do not say Chou explicitly or consciously denies the Spirit’s role. I do say his model is implicitly rationalistic. The review explains my perspective, and there are 20 footnotes along with in-text citations in support. Feel free to disagree.
Generically, Chou is correct. He errs by attempting to rescue difficult passages (Mt 2:15 cp. Hoses 11:1) by appeal to this same intertextuality. His rejection of inspired sensus plenior application (a la Thomas) forces him to find intertextual links that seem occasionally desperate. His alleged solutions are rationalistic, I believe, in that Chou is unwilling to attribute their new application to the Spirit’s intent. Instead, Chou must always find an exegetical warrant … because, to him, biblical authors are master exegetes who do word studies and genre and literary analysis. Thus my tongue-in-cheek title.
I’ve updated my article to better express my reservations.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Discussion
NewThe NT use of the OT is alway
NewChou
He’s a conservative guy who has two goals; (1) to rescue difficult passages by way of intertextuality, and (2) to thereby exhort Christians to model this exegetical approach and “do it like they did” when we interpret the bible. I just think he’s trying way too hard, in a way that seems to unwittingly leave God out of it. Thomas’ view on inspired sensus plenior application has always seemed commonsense and reasonable.
I’m surprised Chou didn’t directly confront the elephant in the room and repudiate Thomas’ views, but perhaps it was because Thomas was still alive at the time and was a force to be reckoned with and was a colleague at Masters Seminary! Thomas strikes me as a real fundamentalist, in a bad way. In his hermeneutics text, Thomas damns Dan Wallace’s grammar with faint praise as “useful,” then dismisses it as “extremely dangerous” because one comment of his acknowledged “double-meaning” as a possibility!
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
NewTyler, your characterization
Tyler, your characterization of Chou makes me wonder if we even read the same book. He argues that the biblical writers were not ignorant of the Scriptures, but that they were steeped in them, and that informed their own writing. That’s a far cry from excluding the Spirit’s role in inspiration or turning hermeneutics into a mechanistic enterprise.
NewDefacto
I do not say Chou explicitly or consciously denies the Spirit’s role. I do say his model is implicitly rationalistic. The review explains my perspective, and there are 20 footnotes along with in-text citations in support. Feel free to disagree.
Generically, Chou is correct. He errs by attempting to rescue difficult passages (Mt 2:15 cp. Hoses 11:1) by appeal to this same intertextuality. His rejection of inspired sensus plenior application (a la Thomas) forces him to find intertextual links that seem occasionally desperate. His alleged solutions are rationalistic, I believe, in that Chou is unwilling to attribute their new application to the Spirit’s intent. Instead, Chou must always find an exegetical warrant … because, to him, biblical authors are master exegetes who do word studies and genre and literary analysis. Thus my tongue-in-cheek title.
I’ve updated my article to better express my reservations.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Newjosh p wrote:
I also appreciate Thomas’ 2 vol. Revelation commentary.
Thomas Overmiller
Pastor | StudyGodsWord.com
Blog | ShepherdThoughts.com
NewTOvermiller wrote:
Yes it’s excellent. Beyond me in places but I still love it.