This book’s title may not sound like the most exciting (unlike Hell, politics, etc.) but the issue touches on areas many Christians take for granted.
The key questions are:
a) did the Old Testament ‘point to’ Jesus as Messiah or merely imply it or not at all, or what?
b) did the OT authors have Jesus in mind when they wrote? what about “divine authorial intention”?
c) does the existence of the New Testament change the way we read the OT? Can Christians read the OT independently of the NT?
So who are the authors slugging it out and what are their POVs?
1. John Goldingay (First Testament approach) — big gun in OT studies who basically says the OT should stand by itself, the OT does NOT talk about Jesus (nor should or need it), we know everything we need to know about God from the OT and Jesus (and the NT) don’t add much substantially. He declares that the NT doesn’t tell us anything new about God’s character and the OT essentially lacks nothing.
Wow. Incredible. Lol.
Also, more than a few times he just writes, “No, Christ isn’t in this text”, “Nope, he’s not here too”, “Nope, nothing about the Messiah here”, etc.
Maybe a bit deservingly, he got shot down by the rest (esp DeRouchie and Carter) and was forced to back-track a bit.
I mean, ok I get it. Goldingay is in love with the OT (or, the First Testament, as he calls it) and he wants ppl to appreciate it for all its worth without importing Christological categories.
I’m guessing this is absolutely perfect and fine if you’re not Christian and wish to study this amazing document revered by both Jews and Christians (and I thoroughly enjoyed Vol 1 of his Old Testament Theology). His views will also resonate with folks who believe in letting one document ‘speak’ for itself without having another document ‘control’ its reading.
A huuuuuge problem, of course, where Jesus and His messiahship fits into such an OT hermeneutic, cos the NT, you know, kinda says that he does? (Luke 22:37, Matt 13:17, John 8.56, etc.)
2. Tremper Longman III (Christotelic approach) — he’s also another big gun in OT but (I think? in general?) his works include more devotional-type material; he’s a “softer” giant than Goldingay haha
Okay, so, he agrees with Goldingay that the OT should be read in its original context, etc. (what he calls the 1st reading) but then he also says that the NT ‘unifies’ and completes the understanding of the OT (what he calls the 2nd reading). He says that we can “recognise Christ in the OT”.
This approach, surprisingly enough, pisses off the rest haha!
Golding doesn’t like it because Longman is bringing in the NT; DeRouchie doesn’t like it because Longman doesn’t and refuses to ‘see’ Jesus inside the OT’s author’s intentions; Carter doesn’t like it bcos Longman isn’t allowing the NT to control the reading of the OT; and Dharamraj just complains about how Longman (and everyone else) ignores the reader-response aspect.
3. Havilah Dharamraj (Reception-Centered, Intertextual approach)— you know how in some parties all the children are playing some game but there could be this one kid who’s playing by herself?
This is what Dharamraj’s chapter gives me the impression of. All credit to her, she tries the hardest to find value in every one else’s views, she’s the least confrontational and her chapter is brilliant if anyone wants to preach about socio-political freedom, existential liberation and urban dynamics from Genesis 22, Proverbs 8 and Isaiah 42.
But, as I read it, her chapter doesn’t help to answer the key questions the book seeks to tackle (on whether the NT ‘controls’ the reading of the OT, etc.).
She appears much more suitable for homiletics (preaching, exhortation, “application” of texts to life, etc.) than hermeneutic (interpretation, exegesis, etc.).
4. Jason DeRouchie and Craig Carter (Christocentric and Pre-Modern approach)— I’ve never heard of these two before but their chapters are well-written and their critiques are very sharp (in contrast, both Goldingay and Longman sound a little tired and, as mentioned, Dharamraj writes like the academic version “Can’t we all just get along?”).
Both of them argue that one cannot validly read the OT “on its own” and it must be informed by the NT, especially the revelation of Jesus Christ and his Messiahship. They (rightly, in my view) point to texts like 1 Peter 1:10–12, Col 1:26, Ephesians 3:4–6 which more or less states that there is something inadequate, unfulfilled, incomplete about the OT which only the Christ-event has made fully known i.e. Jesus living, suffering and dying served as a ‘great reveal’ which showed the world something about God that the previous prophets didn’t quite “get”.
Coupled with Jesus own remarks about how (a lot of?) the OT referred to him or was about him (Luke 24:25–27), I think their chapters show conclusively that Goldingay’s views on the relation of the NT to the OT cannot pass muster (see note 1) and that Dharamraj’s post-modernist approach is kinda orbiting another planet. I think their critique of Longman isn’t really a big deal (as Longman explicitly says that Christ is ‘hidden’ in the OT, which resembles what Carter says).
The one sticking point between DeRouchie and Carter is that the former believes that the OT can be originally interpreted to refer to Jesus (or else what was Paul doing by debating in the synagogue with the Jews? and what were the Bereans doing checking up the OT?) whereas the latter says No (or else why everyone missed the point when Jesus arrived?).
Put simply, DeRouchie believes that the OT by itself can be shown to ‘prove’ that Christ is the Messiah, but Carter believes that hermeneutics must include divine authorial intention (or what God intended to say over and above the explicit intentions of the authors) because no way the OT writers could’ve foreseen Jesus’ incarnation in a full sense.
Note 1: To be fair, Goldingay does endorse the God-breathed-ness of the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16) and how this means that the NT writers were ‘reading in’ to the OT. If he accepts this hermeneutic, he would at least be on the same page as DeRouchie but, I dunno la, methinks his passion to defend the OT qua OT made him stick to his guns in this book.
