I never would have guessed that when lines would be drawn at the school where I’m studying that I would find myself firmly on the side of Zane Hodges. But I am.
Perhaps the memory that will stay with me most distinctly from my years of study here is the moment in one of my first classes when a student said that many professors at the school didn’t believe that most of the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament are about Jesus. I almost called him a liar. That was impossible, I thought.
Well, anyone who knows anything about the subject knows I am (was?) an idiot. Did I really come to this school and not know this? Yes. It just wasn’t on my radar, I guess. After living so long in Israel, I knew who saw Jesus in the Old Testament (believers) and who didn’t (non-believers).
I was wrong.
Today I’ve read a large portion of a book that I read previously in 1996. In a chapter written by Hodges (one-time professor at DTS), he names a couple of DTSers who denied that the OT predicted Jesus (for the most part). I read this statement once, so I have no excuse for not knowing. And I know I read it because I underlined the next sentence. Make sure you read to the end. He nails it.
Historically, liberal exegetes have denied direct Old Testament prophecy about the Lord Jesus Christ and have sought the meaning of such prophecies in the immediate historical context (i.e., the so-called sitz im leben) of the Old Testament. The wholesale abandonment of direct messianic prophecy by many evangelicals is a capitulation to this view, for which’typology ‘ is a fig leaf.
Source: Zane Hodges, “A Dispensational Understanding of Acts 2,” in Willis and Master, eds., Issues in Dispensationalism, page 180, note 12.
For my readers who are less up to date on this issue, I ‘ll explain briefly how this works. An OT passage that has always been understood as about Jesus is denied to be about Jesus by modern evangelicals. It’s not about Jesus, it’s about David, they say. But when you read Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 (for instance), he says that David said this about Jesus. So was Peter wrong? No, they say. Why not, you ask. Typology, they answer. No need to explain, no need to show how one is a type, no need to show the pattern or correlation. Usually they do offer up some words, but in my experience, they don’t answer the question. It just comes back to—well, Peter said it’s about Jesus, but clearly in the OT context it is not, so they must somehow be related. Let’s call it typology. Typology covers over a multitude of sins, so they think. The only ones who are deceived, however, are their evangelical students. The Jews aren’t deceived. They know. Peter and Paul made it up. There is no basis for believing that Jesus of Nazareth was the one predicted by the OT. We only believe that he is because we assume our conclusion.
I’m not buying it. There is a better way, no fig leaves required.
I’m pretty sure that if I ever found out I agreed with Zane Hodges on anything, I would change my view.
Really?
Zane Hodges believed in the deity of Christ.
He believed in the inerrancy of Scripture.
He believed in the substitutionary atonement of Christ and the need for man to trust in Christ alone for salvation.
I hope that you reconsider. I’m certainly not going to change my long thought-out view because I learn that he had the same conclusion.
I know, I was deliberately overstating. And I do agree with you (and Zane) on this issue. But I do find him to be one of the most troubling scholars in the dispensational tradition, as what the Bible actually says was constantly sacrificed to the theological system he invented. I hear he was a very kind and gracious man, but his disciples have done a lot of harm to a lot of people in churches around Dallas and other places.
I think the issue is more complicated that you state. There are lots of people who find references to Jesus under every rock in the OT and just because some verse could be construed to in some way apply to Jesus does not mean that it really does. I do believe that some of the passages in the OT people cite as ‘predicting ‘ something in Jesus ‘ life had nothing to do with him.
Second, I think we have to be careful in not making the OT authors into a form of ‘automatic writers ‘, who simply wrote down stuff they didn ‘t understand. Certainly, when you read scripture, you first and foremost try to understand it as the author would have understood it. Sitz im leben is a foundational tool, but not the only tool needed.
I do think that God can use a prophet and the resulting scripture in ways that are not always limited to what they might have understood in their own time and context. It is not beyond God ‘s ability to use a prophesy of Isaiah to both talk about Cyrus in the short term, but to have a deeper meaning ultimately resonate from that verse when Jesus comes and the Holy Spirit illuminates a new reading of the text.
As even a bad Calvinist, I would suggest that we can fully read and understand a text of Scripture outside the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit. I don ‘t expect a Jew to read the OT and find Jesus, unless the Spirit of God is leading them to that understanding.
Al – surely the issue is more complicated. I was essentially commending one conclusion (Hodges’) without giving a full course on the subject. I can’t reply to you in full, but I disagree with your position. In response to your final sentence, I would suggest these words of Jesus:
“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25)
If your view is correct, Jesus would have said something like:
“Of course you didn’t understand. But now that you have the magic lens, you can understand things that the prophets said that they didn’t intend to say. Nonetheless, I am going to hold those Jewish people responsible for rejecting me even though they understood exactly what the prophets said (but not what I “added” later).”
My view: the Spirit works with and not against the words that he inspired. No person, Jew or Gentile, will be able to say at the judgment that God misled him by using language in ways that everyone, in any other context, would consider illegitimate.
Mat 13:11-14 “He replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. {12} Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.
{13} This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
{14} In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”
Ah, the doctrine of Total Depravity!!
Al – I don’t think I’d want to use this verse to argue that everything in Scripture is written in such a way that a “spiritual hermeneutic” is required to understand. It’s better to see that God expects language to be understood according to normal conventions, but when the Jews in Jesus’ day reject, their calloused hearts cause their ears and eyes to close so that they cannot understand what God is saying (see verse 15). The problem isn’t the grammar; it’s their hearts. When their hearts are opened, they see what they should have seen in the first place.
The parables are a special case where the story could seem to be a simple story and the “moral” of the story not be obvious to those who did not receive an explanation. The nature of the “secrets of the kingdom” is truth that they didn’t deserve to hear because in fact it was their rejection that brought about the new reality (which I take is the delay before the kingdom is established).
I would observe that those who believe that a “spiritual hermeneutic” is required employ such very selectively. Most of the time they follow normal rules of language; when they get in a tough spot (or don’t like what a literal reading says), then they wave the “spiritual hermeneutic” wand and they make the text say whatever they want it to.
>When their hearts are opened, they see what they should have seen in the first place.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Such is the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
You know, there’s nothing more fun than a Calvinist picking on a Darbyist; except when we join forces to pick on a Pentecostalist.
It is very clear in Scripture that a spiritual hermeneutic is not required to comprehend the content. Every good Calvinist knows that certainly the H.S. provides illumination, but that effectual illumination is ultimately rooted in their reception of the divine truth that has been understood. Even the demons comprehend and “believe”, but do we say they have been illuminated by the H.S. because they know that Jesus is the fulfillment of the OT prophecies? Hardly. Jesus’ response about the secret things was an answer to their question of why He spoke in parables….(13:10) and it is clear contextually that He was referring to the group standing before Him…at the minimum… other times, He spoke clearly without hiding the meaning. “It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.” 2 Peter 2:21 reminds us Calvinists that there does exist illumination that can be based on human intelligence through elementary language that does not result ultimately in salvation.
I think specificity is really key in this discussion between Todd and Al. I had a prof who believed that Psalm 110 clearly referred to the 2nd Person, but he wasn’t convinced the other Psalms did. He essentially they may have captured a Davidic theme or a son of God theme that was fully expressed in the Messiah.
Although I am not well-versed enough to confirm that position, I think there is wisdom to it. I think that verse Todd cited in Luke 24 is really important. But you can still believe there were clear prophecies about Jesus in the NT/Messiah in OT language, (like, of course, Isaiah 53, Psalm 110, or Daniel 9) that would hold a 1st century Jew responsible for recognizing Him when he comes.
I think specificity helps a lot in this realm because it may uncover more agreement in particulars which would otherwise be veiled by disagreement in general things. But great conversation. Makes me think.
I meant “He essentially *thought* they may have captured…”
David – one brief comment. It is important to note that Luke wrote that “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] explained to them what was said in *all* the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). I think any approach that isolates a few verses would differ significantly from Jesus’ approach. I don’t see Jesus under every Old Testament bush, but I do think that the essence of the Story is about him.