It’s been one of the hardest starts of a semester for me, because of sickness and things related. Instead of not posting today, I thought I’d copy a reply I wrote to an email yesterday. This was a response to a respected individual who I know only minimally from correspondence. He had suggested that dispensationalists had taken “clearly figurative descriptions” about Ezekiel’s temple in a “dishonest” hermeneutic. My reply, in part:
…as for how you interpret that temple, it is a very important point. I’ve read that passage (quite boring) many, many times, and I require it of my students whenever I get the chance. It’s one of the most detailed blueprints we have from the ancient world, and hermeneutically speaking only, there’s nothing symbolic about it at all. It reads like Leviticus, which no one claims is symbolic. There is clear symbolism in chapter 37 (dry bones) but the temple itself is described in very ordinary language and with precise human measurements. A guy I knew, an Israeli who speaks Hebrew from birth, had a fascination with it and did a number of architectural plans of it. He certainly didn’t find what the article you referred to found; he had some detailed stuff and it all made sense.
The bigger issue is of context – you have to read all of Ezekiel. The book is very literal. Ezekiel describes the people’s sins in the temple and God’s judgment of it as a result. The punishment was going to be devastating, and then it was. But without missing a breath, Ezekiel goes on to say that God is going to restore. A temple was destroyed, a temple will be rebuilt. The tribes were removed, they will be restored. The land was ruined, it would be revitalized. God’s Spirit departed, it would return. Everyone sitting there by the Chebar River that day believed that when Ezekiel said that God was going to tear down the temple, that he meant the actual building standing in Jerusalem. And when Ezekiel said that God would build a new one, well, they understood that in the same literal way. I think God’s “insurance” against a spiritualizing hermeneutic was the extensive details and measurements that he gave of this temple. Maybe there are some problems with it, but that’s not so surprising given our difficulties in understanding ancient language and culture (and we have plenty of problems with the descriptions of Solomon’s temple, which all agree was an actual building).
But the problem is on a very different order once you say that there was not nor will be such a temple (or tribes or land or city). In fact, I told my students this morning this: if the temple that Ezekiel describes is not a real building, then I will walk away from the faith. Because it means that God’s words are not true and that God cannot be trusted. If this temple is symbolic, even though there is no symbolic language used, then perhaps the resurrection too only happened symbolically. Perhaps prophecies of Jesus’ return are only symbolic. You know of course that many people believe this. I know that the Bible has lots of symbols and metaphors. These must be understood properly. But though I hear many charges to this effect, I don’t read any serious scholars who take symbols “literally” (that is, apart from the symbolic value), but I know many serious scholars who say the dishonest hermeneutic is the one that makes something a symbol only because it doesn’t fit into a pre-designed theological system. Personally I don’t care about eschatology and timelines or even temples. But I care with every fiber of my being about hermeneutics, because without an honest hermeneutic, the Bible becomes whatever we want to make it and not what God intended it to be.
**End of message** He replied to various things in my email, but to nothing said above. I think that the bottom line is that only external factors lead one to reject many prophecies in the Old Testament as literal.
Todd,
Excellent post. I think you are exactly right – especially the note in dealing with the context of Ezekiel at large. It is literal.
Furthermore, if it were figurative, then the interpretation would, of course, then be so subjective rather than one objective truth that is plain and clear!
Scripture is perspicuous. It is clear! Thanks for the help!
Geoff
Todd, what exactly do you mean when you say you “don’t care” about eschatology?
>”…only external factors lead one to reject many prophecies in the Old Testament as literal.”
I do think there are also NT considerations as well. For example, Ezekiel talks about the restoration of animal sacrifices in the temple with equal detail (Ezk 45:18-25). Does that mean in a millennial age we go back to animal sacrifice and ignore the sacrifice of Christ? That would certainly be a contradictions of what we read in Hebrews. Christians always view the OT with the events of the NT in mind.
I think even many people who use Ezekiel in their eschatology ‘s tend to be inconsistent in their views of what is literal and what is figurative. For instance:
Ezek 37:24-25 “”‘My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. {25} They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children will live there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever.”
OK, does that means the Jews will return and live in Palestine, physically, eternally with King David brought back as their king? I think everyone who interprets does not try to do so literally. So with Ezekiel you choose between literal, figurative, apocalyptic, and typico-symbolic depending on your view. I just don ‘t know any Christian scholar who see all of Ezekiel as literal.
I do think the least problematic view of Ezekiel ‘s temple is that he is talking about the building of the Second temple, after the exile. I think that ‘s what his listeners in Babylon would have thought about when they heard him talk. Yes, there are LOTS of problems with that reading, but fewer than with other readings by my reckoning.
No wonder the old Jews wouldn ‘t let anyone under age 30 read the book.
I would be tempted to go back to a fundamental level of asking what “dishonest” hermeneutic the critic is talking about. Is it a distinct method that only dispensationalists use? If it is described as “literal” hermeneutics, then how does the critic describe his hermeneutic?
It seems like we all use the literal/grammatica/historical method of interpretation. No one has exclusive rights to the literal hermeneutic. We are really talking about different issues than a hermeneutical method.
Happy – good question. I mean simply that I don’t come at this with any agendas. The first question is how to interpret a passage. After that, you decide what it means for the future. So, of course I care about things to come, but that’s a secondary question to how we understand what things are to come.
“…if the temple that Ezekiel describes is not a real building, then I will walk away from the faith.”
Don’t be silly. You’re saying that if your understanding of a single apocolyptic passage isn’t right, then the Bible contains no truth? This is a ridiculous slippery slope fallacy.
Danny
Danny – I meant that if God is a liar, I’m not going to waste my life trusting him. If 95% is true, but the other 5% is not, I am not smart enough to figure out which 5% is not, and I’m likely to end up placing my hope on foolishness. Of course, God is not a liar, so there’s no reason for concern.
Todd
??
We aren’t really talking about truth vs. lies – we’re talking about *the way in which* the Ezekiel passage is true. If it’s true in a way that you didn’t anticipate, I can understand your hermeneutic being undermined. But your *faith*? Don’t you think that’s a little over the top?
Danny
Thanks for the post. How would you respond to D. A. Carson’s comments about the land breakdown?
Here are Carson’s thoughts on the dispensational approach to Ezekiel’s vision of the temple (For the Love of God, Vol. 2, October 8):
(2) The mid – twentieth – century form of dispensationalism argued for a similar literalism, but held that the construction of the temple and the return of blood sacrifices and Levitical and Zadokite priesthood will take place in the millennium. The sacrifices would look back to the sacrifice of Christ in the same way that the Old Testament sacrifices looked forward. But it is very difficult to square this view with the theology of Hebrews. Moreover, there are many hints that these chapters should not be taken literally. The division of land (chaps. 47 — 48) is all but impossible for anyone who has seen the terrain. The impossible source and course of the river (47:1 – 12) strains credulity — and in any case both the temple and the river of life are given quite different interpretations in Revelation, the last book of the Bible. With the best will in the world it is difficult to see how the prescribed tribal purity of Levitical and Zadokite lines could be restored. Intervening records have been lost, so that no one could prove his descent from Aaron. Presumably a dispensationalist could argue that God could reveal the necessary information. But the point is that the tribes have been so mixed up across the centuries that they cannot be unscrambled. The problem is not one of information, but of mixed lines. Thus this interpretation, precisely because it deals with something at the end of time when the tribal lines are no longer differentiable, is even less credible than the previous one. How, then, shall we interpret these chapters?
I can send you the whole two pages on if you like. He surveys four major approaches (one paragraph each): (1) literal temple of Zerubbabel, (2) Dispensationalism, (3) Replacement theology, (4) typology and genre consideration, namely apocalyptic (this one’s Carson’s view).
Danny – is it possible that there is a *way in which* the Ezekiel passage is interpreted which makes it untrue? Are all possibilities valid? For instance, if someone says that Ezekiel’s prophecy was fulfilled in the establishment of the modern state of Japan, can we agree that the prophecy doesn’t say anything about this and therefore the prophecy was unfulfilled/untrue? In short, I think we recognize that there are boundaries to fulfillment, though we may disagree on where those boundaries lie. I would say, for instance, that if the promise of Ezekiel is fulfilled to another people than to whom it was given, than it is not fulfilled and was dishonest in its presentation to its original hearers.
Todd
Yes, I agree that there must be a boundary. Prophecies cannot be interpreted in any ‎possible way. But what you seem to be saying is that your particular interpretation IS the ‎boundary. There is only one possible way for the prophecy of Ezekiel’s temple to be ‎‎”true,” and that is your way in all of its particulars. If is not fulfilled the way that you think it will be, then God ‎is a liar. This is a false dichotomy; there are other reasonable options for fulfillment. ‎
D
Danny – that is the question – are there other reasonable options for fulfillment? I don’t think the issue here is particulars; those who differ aren’t squabbling about whether the border is slightly left or right. The issue is whether this prophecy is talking about a real building (yes or no), real descendants of Ezekiel’s audience (yes or no), real rivers and lakes and land parcels. So, it seems to me, that the alternatives are radically different views that cannot all be true. I have made the point that I don’t believe that a spiritualized fulfillment is a true fulfillment of this particular passage. Perhaps there are other reasonable options, but I am unaware of them.