Notes on Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old

Testament and Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of

the Bible

Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old
Testament (Baker Academic, 2005)
John J. O'Keefe and R. R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early
Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005)

"The problems many of us feel regarding the Bible may have less to do with the
Bible itself and more to do with our own preconceptions." Peter Enns, Inspiration and
Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament
"Once one thinks that the scriptures are divinely inspired, then the primary project is
not to assess them. . . . The church fathers sought to explain how the vast heterogeneity
and diversity of scriptural data might be brought into an intellectually satisfying form.
This was the basic project of interpretation, as they understood it." John J. O'Keefe and R.
R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible

Two guests on previous editions of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal have written
recently about how to read scripture. Susan Wise Bauer, a guest on Volume 66, reviewed
a book in the May/June 2006 issue of Books & Culture that attends to difficulties readers
face when studying the Old Testament and trying to submit to its authority. As Bauer
explains, Peter Enns's Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the
Old Testament discusses how the apostles read the Old Testament. R. R. Reno, a guest on
Volume 67, is co-author of a book whose subject matter is also biblical exegesis, but
which focuses on the methods of the early Church fathers.
In the first of these two books, Inspiration and Incarnation, Enns encourages
evangelical Christians to read the Bible on its terms. He notes that biblical scholarship in
the last century contains claims that are difficult to reconcile with scripture, especially if
readers are clinging to modern notions of how to read the Bible while also trying to
respect its authority. Enns explores how readers can account for these claims while still
keeping scripture as an authority at the center of their lives. In doing so he proposes an
adjusted framework for thinking about Holy Writ, writing: "[Trust in God as the author
and giver of scripture] encourages us to look to the Bible not as a timeless rule book or
owner's manual for the Christian life—so that we can lift verses here and there and apply
them. It helps us to see that the Bible has a dynamic quality to it, for God himself is
dynamic, active, and alive in our lives and in the life of his church." Enns also studies
three issues from the Old Testament that are in particular need of a fresh reading. He
explains that once readers understand that the Incarnate Christ is the fulfillment of the
Old Testament, issues that are difficult to understand make much more sense. "Finally,"
writes Enns, "with respect to the New Testament's use of the Old Testament, what is
modeled for us is that Christ is the goal of the Old Testament story, meaning that he is the
ultimate focus of Christian interpretation. Not every verse or passage is about him in a
superficial sense. Rather, Christ is the deeper sense of the Old Testament—at times more
obvious than others—in whom the Old Testament drama as a whole finds its ultimate
goal or telos. It is in the person and work of Christ that Christians seek to read the Old
Testament, to search out how it is in Christ that the Old Testament has integrity, how it is
worthy of trust, how the parts cohere. Such coherence is not found by superficially
putting isolated pieces of the Old Testament together to make them fit somehow, but by
allowing the tensions to remain and asking how our fuller knowledge of God's
incarnational pattern can add to our reading of Scripture."
In Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible,
professors John J. O'Keefe and Reno study how the early Church fathers thought about,
read, and interpreted scripture. O'Keefe and Reno distinguish pre-modern hermeneutics
from modern reading methods, working to dispel the unfair biases of the latter toward the
former. The professors explain that the early fathers understood scripture not as referring
to something other than itself, but as the subject matter of interpretation. The early fathers
focused their attention on the text itself because they believed it to be the language of
God and the source of wisdom about God's order and plan and its fulfillment in the
Incarnate Christ. They also believed that through pursuit and study of the text, they would
be conformed to its shape. The rule of faith and the authority of the Church guided their
reading, which was disciplined and focused, rigorous yet creative; they sought, in their
exegesis, to illuminate both the words and the work of the Logos of God. The fathers
were convinced that "[t]he sacred texts do not just provide good data; they are fragrant
with the aroma of the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ."
O'Keefe and Reno arrange their book in six chapters. The first chapter, "Scriptural
Meaning Modern to Ancient," outlines the modern notion of scripture as significant
because it refers to something beyond itself, a notion which is different from the pre-
modern understanding of scripture as significant because "it is divine revelation," not
because "of its connection to an x." Chapter two, "Christ Is the End of the Law and the
Prophets," discusses the "cross, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ" as "the
interpretive key" of scripture. It also describes three concepts from classical rhetoric the
fathers used in their study of scripture: hypothesis, economy, and recapitulation, which
refer, respectively, to the gist of a work, its plan or order, and its "point" or summary
statement. Chapter three, "Intensive Reading," defines lexical, dialectical, and associative
methods of reading. Lexical reading involves the strategies used for assigning reliable
meanings to words and elements in texts; dialectical considers two seemingly
contradictory elements of a text and looks for the deeper coherence; and associative pays
attention to verbal echoes across a text. In chapter four, "Typological Interpretation,"
O'Keefe and Reno explain that, for the fathers, Jesus Christ is the type, or pattern, that
"unlocks" all the stories in scripture, Old and New Testaments both. They write: "The
text tells of events in the divine economy, [and the example under discussion] in this case
[is] Joshua's leadership. The import of these events is not clear until they are
typologically linked to another set of events that occurs later in the divine economy. Just
as importantly, the later events are themselves not fully clear until the illuminating
typological link is established. More succinctly, one learns about Jesus by reading about
Joshua. The typology casts light forward as well as backward." Chapter five, "Allegorical
Interpretation," discusses how allegory enabled the fathers to explore the full meaning of
the scriptures, the meaning embedded in both its content and form. Chapter six, "The
Rule of Faith and the Holy Life," states that early exegesis was tethered to the authority
of the church, and that right reading of scripture was bound to righteousness, to holy
living. "The goal of patristic exegesis," write O'Keefe and Reno, "was to pass through the
narrow opening that led to thoughts that participated in the unspeakable mysteries, and
only a person whose vision has been refined by prayer, fasting, and self-control could
hope to effect such a passage. Therefore, the fathers identified interpretive skill with the
ambitious regimes of ascetic practice that defined the spiritual endeavor of the ancient
church."
Sanctified Vision concludes with notes, a bibliography, and an index. Inspiration
and Incarnation comprises a preface and abbreviations section, five chapters, a glossary,
and two indices. The chapter titles are, respectively: "Getting Our Bearings"; "The Old
Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Literature"; "The Old Testament and Theological
Diversity"; "The Old Testament and Its Interpretation in the New Testament"; and "The
Big Picture." [Posted May 2006, ALG]

MARS HILL AUDIO Journal