The Self-Donation of God: A Contemporary Lutheran approach to Christ and His Benefits

Foreword

Looking for a Unifying Principle

A theologian’s task is developing a theology around a unifying theme that is descriptive of the entire theological enterprise and permeates all its parts. This is not unique to theology, but is required of particular philosophies and with most every other scholarly discipline. Without a discoverable unity any system disintegrates and becomes inaccessible to those attempting to come to terms with it. Before going any further, we can say that Dr. Jack Kilcrease is a theologian in every sense of the word. In the current state of theological affairs, no one idea or principle comes close to providing an umbrella under which what theologians do can be placed. In former days systematic theologians, who were simply known as theologians without further description of their special interest, pursued their tasks around traditional and widely held and known principles. Such was the case in the Reformation and post-Reformation era, when particular theologies, that later formed basis for the mainline denominations, arose and could be identified by one or two prominent themes. Each church tradition had a principle making it distinct from others and by which each one recognized itself as unique. One could not be confused with another. Lutheran theology was not Reformed and vice versa and so it was. The unifying principle of each tradition permeated every article of the faith and provided unity to the theological system. Lutherans saw justification as the core principle that surfaced in such doctrines as the sacraments and the ministry which existed for the sake of declaring the sinner righteous. So accepting the law’s condemnation, they heard and believed the gospel and were relieved from the impending judgment of God and the fear it created. Reformed, Presbyterians, Congregationalist, and other groups rooted in the teachings of Ulirch Zwingli and John Calvin saw the center of theology in divine sovereignty, a doctrine that played itself out in what they said about the covenant as a contract between God and the believer that dare not be broken, providence and election. Methodism, not strictly a Reformation era phenomenon, was an eighteenth century reaction to Reformed doctrine of election and saw the impetus for salvation not in God’s sovereignty but in the will of each human being, a precursor of the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Later holiness groups and today much of American Evangelicalism follows in what is commonly called the Arminian tradition enveloped in Methodism. Before the Reformation, Catholicism was a covering for various theological approaches, but the Council of Trent in reaction to the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith insisted that works had a place alongside of faith. Some of these works that contributed to one’s salvation were specifically religious ones like doing penance, making pilgrimages, and participating in the Mass. In resolving theological differences, the bishop of Rome had the last word. Around these doctrines Roman Catholicism took shape. For Protestant heirs of the Reformation the scriptures exercised this role, but the sola scriptura principle as it came to be known, multiplied differences and did not provide the hope from principle of unity. This would have to be found elsewhere.

The survival of classical principles that determined the faith of the churches emerging from the Reformation are heading towards extinction in identifying what mainline denominations confessed. Their confessions or more properly statements of what they believed have been gradually disintegrated by a centrifugal diffusion that has emptied the core of these older theological traditions. Some Lutherans and the Reformed remain steeped in their Reformation heritages and continue to be at odds with each other, just as Luther and Zwingli were, on such essential issues as God, the person and work of Christ, and the sacraments, but they are in an ever decreasing minority. Dr. Kilcrease reassesses these differences and finds that they are still valid in how Lutherans and Reformed differ from each other. Interest in historical differences does not consume the interest of theologians in the mainline churches, who are willing to let bygones be bygones. Similarly those who sit in the pews are unlikely to know or be concerned about the distinctive beliefs of their churches and how these churches came to believe what they do. Identifying a principle holding the church and its beliefs together is no longer a concern and in many, perhaps most, cases impossible. This has opened the door to an endless round of ecumenical alliances with each church selling its birthright. The ecumenical movement in bringing together churches that were historically opposed to each other is like a tire that has gradually lost air and has gone flat. Into this situation syncretism has found an entrance. A Shinto altar can be found in a prominent New York City cathedral and sacred symbols of non-Christian religions often adorn the walls of Christian sanctuaries. An annual Reformation Day celebration once served the purpose of saying that one’s church was really different from those of others. This is less important today. Religious diffusion and diversity of principles are exacerbated by the rise and proliferation of churches that claim no denominational affiliation. More conservative churches may go under the banner of Bible churches and make a point of not being bound to one set of beliefs, life confessions, or official statements of any kind. Only the Bible demands their allegiance, so they say. On the other side of the ledger, community churches may not even make believing in the Bible a requirement. Membership is open to all those who reside in geographical proximity to their houses of worship. Both types of churches agree that the members can believe what they want. Locating a central theological core holding together these free standing congregations together is impossible, simply because there is none. What is believed in one year may not be believed in the next year and its members are not required to subscribe to any article of faith. Adherence to the Apostles’ Creed is off limits even to Evangelicals who are committed to the Bible’s inspiration and more likely to be open about their faith. They account for a good segment of the Protestant population. Congregations in mainline denominations with roots in the Reformation may not be able to identify the core of their belief. Allegiance to statements of faith is more a formality than theologically determinative. These churches have no constitutional-like documents to be referenced in cases of dispute.

Another factor in the disintegration of theological cores in churches and their theologies is the division of study of theology into the sub-disciplines of biblical, systematic, historical and practical theologies. There is hardly a seminary, if any at all, that does not have its faculty divided into departments for each of these subdisciplines. A seminary or a university school of religion instructor is less likely to see him/herself as a theologian competent to handle the full range of theology. So one professor is a systematic theologian, another a biblical scholar, still another an historian and finally the practical theologian teaches how to get things done, a feature attractive to the American mind. Each of these specialties can be further fragmented. One is not simply a New Testament scholar, but a specialist in the Pauline epistles, the gospels, or even just one gospel. Rarely does a scholar at a seminary or in a college’s department of religion see him/herself as competent to participate in the full entire range of the theological curriculum. Rarely is one professor accredited to more than one department. Each one is a specialist in one of the subdisciplines and finds kindred spirits not in his church tradition but in the scholarly guild of his expertise. Faculty specializations are mirrored in curriculums. A course of study is never simply theology, but biblical, systematic, historical, or practical theology. Deeper fragmentation is found in nondenominational and freestanding seminaries where the professors represent different and contradictory traditions and confessions. Even denominational owned or controlled colleges and seminaries engage professors from theological traditions other than their own. Commitment to the beliefs of the church supporting the school is not required of the faculty. In this virtually universally segmented theological environment, students in the seminary and those undertaking a general study of theology of religion are often left to themselves to provide or identify a unifying principle from among the various options presented to them. Pastors coming out of any of these environments, even those with deep Reformation era roots, are more likely to see themselves as preachers and practitioners of religion equipping their congregations to do ministry. They see themselves as professionals and do not see themselves as theologians prepared to teach even a minimum of the faith contained in the creeds that in spite of the diversity in Western Christianity since the Reformation has remained a unifying factor in offering a common Christian faith. A church’s historical traditions are no longer a factor to what the pastor preaches and how he interacts with his parishioners. This segmenting of theology in mainline church seminaries is accelerated by removing the study of religion from church controlled and supported colleges and universities and giving it to state colleges and schools with self-perpetuating boards of regents each accountable only to itself. In these instances historic positions of the churches formulated in the Reformation and post-Reformation eras are no longer factors in the theological enterprise. Theological studies have seen further fractionalization by the special interests of each scholar with the result that theology and religion faculties of seminaries and universities have come to accept the wide diversity of views existing among themselves and they make no attempt to articulate a unified understanding of a common theological task and goal. Diversity is not new. After the Reformation the classical forms of Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Catholicism were represented in German theological faculties, as they still are, and a general type of Protestantism once prevailed in most American colleges and universities. Today throughout the Western world Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism have been given a place at the table where only the classical Christian view could once be found. One only has to go to the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature to encounter these continuously multiplying possibilities of what presents itself as theology. For the sake of clarity, when the study of non-Christian options is placed on an equal plane with Christian ones, it would be better to speak of these scholarly endeavors as religious studies and thus reserving and restricting the word theology for the study of Christianity. In this definition of theology as a Christian enterprise, Kilcrease more than qualifies as a theologian.

Kilcrease does not see his task in proposing a unifying principle into the religious marketplace where ever newer options are continually being offered. Rather he sets forth for himself the task of locating a unifying principle for Christian theology. In The Self-Donation of God: A Contemporary Lutheran Approach to Christ and Benefits, he proposes that this unifying principle is Christology, specifically in the person of Jesus as prophesied in the Old Testament as the Christ and realized in the New. By providing a revelation of himself in the biblical narrative, God gives of himself and makes a commitment to its hearers. Revelation is a self-giving of God reflecting what he is in himself. As the title indicates Kilcrease is unabashedly Lutheran and thus not surprisingly he sees justification as the core doctrine; however, he expands his understanding of justification to include Christology as a prior, necessary, and fundamental corollary to justification. Strictly speaking, Christology is the chief doctrine and serves as the unifying principle of the entire biblical narrative from Genesis though Revelation. He writes from within the perspective of historic, confessional Lutheran theology, but he goes beyond setting forth the views of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lutheran Orthodox and first offers a thoroughly biblical theology. Where required, he takes issue with the Lutheran fathers, but is convinced that they understood Christology as a unifying principle of the scriptures around which they developed their own theologies. A confessional theology that attempts to be at the same time biblical and confessional is caught between the Charybdis in being limited to long held historical positions that seemingly are not open to adjustment and the Scylla of biblical theological proposals that is practiced without confessional restrictions and cannot propose for itself definite goals. To the outside observer biblical studies can appear without purpose and so are more likely to create skepticism rather than engender faith. Let’s put it another way. If some biblical studies are open ended with no prior intention of coming to once and for all conclusions, denominational studies begin and end with predetermined conclusions. Theological studies of the historic Reformation churches, including the Roman Catholicism ones, come to predictable outcomes. Methods of biblical studies are so varied, that with their multiple and varied conclusions, they are rarely, if ever, in agreement with one another. For Kilcrease Christology is the lodestone that allows biblical theology to be presented in the service of historical, confessional Lutheran theology and so he presents a principle that provides order to the theological task and a governing principle to biblical studies. Christology drawn from the biblical narrative is the unifying principle for the entire task of theology and so theological and confessional studies constitute one discipline.

Kilcrease sees the divine narrative as it holds the history of salvation together. Adam distances himself from the word by which he was created. He and his wife owe their creation and continued existence to God’s gracious word, but Eve is not content to accept God’s gracious offer and speculates about this word. By so doing this, she seeks to acquire divinity for herself and her husband and so nullifies the first narrative. To salvage the situation God offers himself in the history of redemption that then constitutes the content of the biblical narrative. Adam’s role as prophet, priest, and king is inherited by Israel and comes to a climax in Jesus who is twice anointed, first in taking upon himself and the fulfilling the Old Testament offices of prophet, priest, and king, and more profoundly in being God’s Son through the hypostatic union. God’s self-giving of himself in the Old Testament in the glory residing in the tabernacle advances to the presence of the glory found in Jesus who as God’s final temple replaces the one in Jerusalem. All of the New Testament shows Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament, but each gospel and epistle does it in its own way. Rather than seeing Christ’s atoning work as something in addition to the Old Testament, Kilcrease locates it in the Genesis creation narrative. Humanity’s rejection of God as the giver of all good things leaves each human being in the predicament of having to rely on him/herself. In spite of its alienation from God, humanity continues to receive good things from God but does not recognize him as the giver. Since the old narrative that brought forth creation was rejected, God sets in place a new narrative, one of redemption; that is, the narrative of the new creation. Placed alongside of the old narrative that man rejected and brought death is the new narrative that was first given to Israel and then could be found completely in Jesus. Throughout the new narrative God is the speaker and the content. Jesus is assumed into the old narrative in which God’s promise was transformed into condemnation. By being assumed into the old, Jesus transforms it into a new narrative promising salvation. In believing in this narrative the believer is not only justified, but is included in the narrative itself and receives Christ’s righteousness. In the last chapters Kilcrease discusses Christology along traditional dogmatical lines that defined Lutheran theology from the Reformed kind. Mary’s role in Christology is presented and contemporary understandings of her are analyzed for their acceptability. Kilcrease readdresses Reformed and Lutheran differences over the person and work of Christ, showing that the Lutheran understandings are the right ones. Not at issue is the genus idiomaticum between the two major Protestant traditions in assigning divine attributes to Christ’s divine nature and the human ones to his human nature. Remaining in contention is whether all of Christ’s actions can be assigned to the total person, so that the man Jesus can be regarded and worshiped as the world’s creator, a doctrine to which the Reformed take strong exception. Also in contention is the genus majestaticum, the Lutheran belief that the human nature shares in all of the divine attributes. Since Christ is not two persons, but one divine person, the human nature is anhypostasis, that is, the man Jesus does not have a separate personality. This doctrine takes on meaning in the face of the critical biblical studies in their quests for the historical Jesus that ignore his claims to deity. Christ’s full possession of who and what God is including his righteousness does not allow for either the Catholic and or the Reformed concepts of grace as a substance that can be quantitatively distributed. In hearing and listening to the narrative, believers are given all of what Christ is and has done. Grace, like justification, is declared. Kilcrease understands the role of Jesus as prophet, priest, and king as reflecting God’s Trinitarian existence, an item not previously found in theology.

Since Christian theology is Christology, ideally any Christian dogmatics, especially one that offers itself as Lutheran, also should be thoroughly christological. In engaging Catholic and especially Reformed dogmatics, and adopting their outlines, Lutheran dogmatics has tended to deviate from their christological content and goal. Kilcrease works to overcome christological deficits in theology by presenting a truly biblical theology that is thoroughly christological. This is rarely done. He has done it and in so doing set a standard in showing how biblical and systematical theology should be one theology—Christology.

David P. Scaer

Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank a number of people and institutions for contributing to the publication of this book. I would like to thank John Pless and Mark Mattes for reading and endorsing this manuscript. I would like to thank David Scaer for agreeing to write the foreword of this work. Troy Neujahr also deserves special mention for having helped me with editing the work. I would also like to thank my wife and other family members for their encouragement and support that made it possible for me to write this book. Lastly, I would like to thank Luther Seminary and Calvin College library for providing me with the research materials necessary for the completion of this book.

Abbreviations

AE Luther, Martin. American Edition of Luther’s Works. 55 vols. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann. Philadelphia and St. Louis: Fortress and Concordia, 1957–86.

ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers. 10 vols. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004.

Ap Apology to the Augsburg Confession

BF Summa Theologiae. 60 vols. Blackfriars Edition. New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1964–1973.

CA Unaltered Augsburg Confession

CD Church Dogmatics. Karl Barth. 4 vols. Translated by G. T. Thomason et al. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–77.

CT Concordia Triglotta: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, German-Latin-English. Translated and Edited by W. H. T. Dau et al. St. Louis: Concordia, 1921.

Ep Epitome of the Formula of Concord

FC Formula of Concord

ICR Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) of John Calvin.

LC Large Catechism of Martin Luther

NPNFa Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. 14 vols. Edited by Philip Schaff. First Series. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004.

NPNFb Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. 14 vols. Edited by Philip Schaff and William Wace. Second Series. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004.

SA Smalcald Articles of Martin Luther

SC Small Catechism of Martin Luther

SD Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord

ST Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas

TR D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesammtausgabe. Tischrede. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau and H. Böhlaus Nachfolg, 1883–2009.

WA D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesammtausgabe. Martin Luther. 120 vols. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau and H. Böhlaus Nachfolg, 1883–2009.

Chapter 1: Mediation in the Old Testament, Part 1

Approach to Scripture, Prophetic Mediation

Approach to Scripture

The Bible is the Word of God (Rom 3:2; 2 Tim 3:16; 1 Pet 1:11; 2 Pet 1:21, v. 25).¹ It is absolutely truthful because of its inspiration by God the Holy Spirit.² For this reason, the orthodox Lutheran dogmaticians rightly called the prophets and apostles amanuenses of the Spirit.³ By proceeding in this manner, we stand firmly with one of the foundational documents of the Lutheran Reformation, the Formula of Concord in its affirmation that We believe, teach, and confess that the sole rule and standard to which all dogmas together with all teachers should be estimated and judged are the prophetic and apostolic scriptures of the Old and New Testament.⁴ Indeed, we can have no other starting point. Through God’s election of Israel, he has chosen to make its life and traditions the medium of his law and promise. Just as Jesus Christ is the true and perfect Word of God from all eternity, so too he is present and active communicating himself infallibly to the people of God through the Word of the prophets and apostles. Indeed, the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10).⁵

In light of the fact that scripture centers on the promise of the gospel, we must insist on the reality of its truthful historicity. Although literal religion is frequently maligned as childish by our culture, the truth of the gospel presupposes the truthful historicity of the Bible. The nonliteral and therefore more mature reading of the Bible insisted upon by much of contemporary culture in fact denigrates Christianity into an incipit religion of the law. It is infrequently acknowledged that Liberal Protestantism’s legalism automatically follows from its antiliteralism. If the Bible only presents us with fanciful allegorical stories, then these narratives are capable of doing nothing other than giving us general moral truths. But, if scripture centers on God’s promises which culminate in Christ, it must be the case that God has literally been faithful to his promises in the actual history of the world. To suggest that God’s activities of promise making and fulfillment in scripture are mere allegories or legendary sagas⁶ makes such promises about some other realm and not about the real, literal, historical world. If the scriptural world is not the real, literal, historical world, then what freedom can it give to sinners living in the real historical world? This means that the gospel-centered message of the Bible is inherently tied up with the truth of its history in which God makes his trustworthiness known.

Similarly, to admit that scripture could be untruthful in historical matters would also be to suggest that God’s ultimate promise in the gospel could be an error. Even if we have considerable evidence of the central events of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ, admitting that scripture can error downgrades the certainty of these events to the level of probable. Saying that the biblical documents can be untruthful is to say that their historical claims are to be believed with the same degrees of greater and lesser probability that all secular history possesses. Nevertheless, if we have full assurance of our salvation (as scripture tells us we do, Heb 10:19–20), then the events that underline those promises cannot merely be probable, but absolutely true. Indeed the nature of the faith does not allow Christians to confess that Christ probably died for their sins and probably rose for their justification. If that were the case, my assurance through Word and sacrament is also merely probable. But these things are not probable, but as Luther repeatedly states in the Catechisms, they are most certainly true. They are most certainly true because God makes them known and guarantees them in his truthful written Word. Indeed, as Luther aptly states in the Large Catechism: Because we know that God does not lie. I and my neighbor and, in short, all men, may err and deceive, but the Word of God cannot err.⁷

One could of course claim that only the essential facts of scripture need be true.⁸ But this leaves open the question: how does one decide upon what is essential? Where does one draw the line between the essential and inessential? Furthermore, as we will argue below, if any fact is only meaningful and understandable within an entire narrative framework (in this case, the whole of the history of salvation centering on Jesus) how then can any facts be inessential to the truth of the gospel?⁹ Indeed, all individual facts contribute to this narrative and for that reason none can be deemed inessential.

In light of this, our method of dealing with scripture in the following work will grow out of the claim that the Old and New Testaments are the utterly truthful, inspired Word of God centering on Jesus Christ as the incarnate eternal Word of God. Because God is the author of scripture, God cannot be thought to contradict himself. Nor does he err.¹⁰ Whereas modern liberal biblical scholars break the unity of scripture apart into contradictory traditions, we will read the scripture in a manner consummate with its own claims about itself and with the history of Christian interpretation prior to the Enlightenment.

Because God inspired the scriptures to speak his eternal Word Jesus through human words, we should not in our exposition of scripture shy away from the fact that the Old Testament is to be expounded christologically. This means that typological readings of the Old Testament are therefore completely appropriate. God’s authorial intention expressed through the Old Testament authors was always to point ahead to Jesus Christ.¹¹ In keeping with this, we must also positively assert that the Old Testament is a book of predictive prophecy truly fulfilled in the manifestation of the Savior. Indeed, if Christ were not present in the Old Testament, it would be difficult to say Marcion was not correct after all.¹²

This does not mean that exegesis should hover somewhere above its concrete historical context. Rather, as we will argue below, it is a question of what contextualizes the history of salvation itself. Just as Jesus Christ is incarnate in the flesh of a particular people and within a particular historical situation, so too the Word of God as it is incarnate in the scriptures is mediated through the thought forms, history, and cultural structures common to the Ancient Near East and the Hellenistic world. If anything, this has been the main contribution of modern critical scholarship. Certain words, for example, mean different things within the context of different historical periods and are frequently used differently by various authors. At the same time, different biblical authors have unique emphases in their theology. Ecclesiastes is not Romans after all! The interpreter of scripture must be sensitive to this, and although some proof-texting is not entirely illegitimate, theologians must use it with care to the context of the overall book of scripture.

This means that we will expound the scriptures according to the sensus literalis, that is, the literal sense. This is by no means identical with the literalism or, perhaps even better, letterism as the Wittenberg Reformers were well aware. In his definition of the literal sense, Thomas Aquinas claimed that the literal sense was the meaning that God intended when he communicated the content of the Bible through the inspired authors.¹³ Doubtless, the Reformers would not have disagreed with such a sentiment.¹⁴

To show how the Reformers understood this intended meaning, we should turn to Luther’s concept of scriptural clarity. Luther spoke about two kinds of clarity, external clarity and inner clarity.¹⁵ The external clarity, claimed Luther, was the grammatical and hence historically accessible meaning of the text. Such a meaning was open to anyone. The inner clarity was the meaning of the Bible as it centered on Christ. Since one cannot understand Christ or see the unity of the Bible in him without the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 3) those who read the scripture without faith fail to grasp its true meaning. Conversely, it is also true that one will not understand the scriptures if one does not understand their mode of speaking and grammar, which are of course, historically conditioned.

We can therefore see what the sensus literalis is for Luther in light of Christ.¹⁶ On the one hand God communicated himself in the concrete, contextual meaning of the text for the people to whom he addressed it through the prophets and apostles. At the same time, he intended that that meaning might also bear witness to Christ and ultimately drive people to him. Therefore the literal sense is the coming together of the external and internal clarity of the Bible, just as when we refer to the person of Christ in the concrete we speak about the unity of his two natures. The literal sense is not, as modern interpreters have often thought, the meaning of the text as we might want to construe it based on the limited circumstances of certain historical authors.¹⁷ Rather, it is the harmony of the literal, grammatical meaning of the words of the Bible, together with the larger narrative of the history of salvation, culminating in and centering in Jesus Christ. This conception of the Bible is consummate with the Lutheran doctrine of the genus majestaticum,¹⁸ wherein the divine nature (in analogy to the internal clarity) is not something separate from the human nature (in analogy to the external clarity), but rather communicates the fullness of itself through the external form of the human nature.

Modern liberal biblical scholars have failed to understand this and will doubtless protest that this does violence to the original intention of the authors. Of course, extreme versions of Christian exegesis (beginning with Origen and moving on into the Middle Ages) did do violence to the original meaning of the text by burying it under imaginative and often times fanciful Christian allegory.¹⁹ The problem with all this was not that it attempted to read the Bible as a book about Jesus, but that it understood Jesus incorrectly. Allegorical reading tries to strip away the external meaning to find the Spirit hidden within. It gives us a Docetic Bible, in the same way that Protestant Liberalism gives us a Nestorian Bible. In this framework, the Bible effectively becomes a mere steppingstone to God hidden in his majesty, rather than God hidden in concrete written Word of the scripture.

The younger Luther recognized this and, beginning with his early commentaries on the Psalms (1513–1515) moved away from allegorical exegesis, insisting instead on the primacy of the sensus literalis. Nevertheless, he still interpreted the Psalms as having their ultimate reference in Christ.²⁰ Holding these two aspects of the text of scripture together, Luther grasped what Wolfhart Pannenberg has in our present situation emphasized, that any study of any historical event must occur within an overall framework. In a similar vein, Pannenberg has noted, events take on meaning in light of what they later give rise to.²¹ For example, the meaning of the French Revolution can be more acutely realized in light of Soviet and Chinese revolutions than can be recognized merely by studying France in the late eighteenth century.²² N. T. Wright has similarly noted that a Roman citizen who heard about the resurrection of Jesus and was unfamiliar with the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures would doubtless have regarded him as being something like a Nero Redivivus.²³ Not interpreting scripture in light of Christ ultimately leads to the application of an alien framework and context. It represents merely the imposition of a different framework on scripture, and not a neutral and scientific interpretation of scripture.

In point of fact, this is precisely what we are proposing that modern biblical scholars have done and continue to do. They impose an alien framework on scripture and thereby distort individual texts by interpreting them within that framework. One steeped in the history of modern biblical scholarship is bound to find this unsurprising in light of the fact that this tradition of interpretation begins with Baruch Spinoza and the revival of Epicurean thought in the early modern period.²⁴ Part of Epicureanism was the denial of divine design within the world (Epicurus followed the atomism of Democritus) and the rejection of supernatural revelation (the gods, claimed Epicurus do not interact with the world).²⁵

For this reason, scripture is seen as the patchwork of the different writings of those involved in priestcraft (as later Rationalists frequently called it) cut and pasted together and edited by one great imposter as the final redactor. Since different writing styles can obviously be used by the same author and because none of the intermediate or ur-documents that supposedly made up whole biblical books have ever been found, the supposition of modern liberal biblical scholars that the Bible was produced in this way is almost entirely based on discerning the power-play present in the rhetorical violence of the various invented authors of the theoretical documents (Q, JEDP, etc.). By reading the Bible this way, liberal critics of the Bible seek to free themselves from the heteronomous claims of these ancient authors and assert their autonomy against the text.²⁶ This kind of freedom of course (as we shall see later) is not real freedom. It is a defensive action of a creature bent by sin. Such phony autonomy seeks a defense against the accusation of the law present in the supposedly heteronomous claims of the text. The only freedom that can be real freedom is in Christ. By accepting that the Bible is truthful and centers on Christ, believers gain the true freedom that modern liberal biblical scholars seek through the destruction of biblical authority.

Epicureanism also automatically rules out the supernatural. This again is merely an a prior hermeneutical decision, and not something necessitated by the material itself. Rather than offer any hard evidence that the Hebrew prophets did not predict Jesus, they merely interpret the scriptures within a framework that does not view reality as centering on the christological. Indeed, not only is predictive prophecy ruled out of court, but there can be no divinely designed melody of salvation history. Any subtle connection between one event in scripture and another must be manufactured afterwards out of thin air. Any fulfillment of predictive prophecy must have been redacted after the event to fit the prophecy.²⁷ In reading modern biblical scholarship what one is amazed by time and again is how commentators get away with so much conjecture without offering a slightest bit of evidence. They also frequently present weak evidence or dismiss evidence devastating to their position.²⁸ Since their audience has been acculturated into the Epicurean assumptions about divine agency, they can simply build conjecture on conjecture. Those who challenge such practices (within and outside the academic world) are dismissed as Fundamentalists who worship a Paper Pope. All this suggests that many exegetes are engaged in a covert theological agenda and not in neutral historical investigation as they attempt to claim. As was suggested at the beginning of this section, the theology they propose is one that needs scripture to be errant in order to bolster their religion of allegory (so that they might maintain their precious bourgeois autonomy against the peril of divine providence and miracle) and moralizing (so that in their autonomy they might continue their project of self-justification).

This being the case, we can observe that modern biblical scholarship with its supposed objectivity is simply another exegetical tradition with no more claims to neutral interpretation than that of traditional orthodox Christianity.²⁹ In fact, as we have seen, it has less of a claim than traditional Reformation hermeneutics. Though it insists on a privileged status as more neutral and rational, there is no evidence to demonstrate this. Recent scholars (none of whom can be characterized as Fundamentalists) have argued that there is in fact a great deal of data that calls major aspects of the critical tradition into question.³⁰ Ultimately, much of the critical tradition has accomplished little but to rip the biblical texts away from their proper framework of divine inspiration and centeredness on Christ, and imposed an alien, Epicurean framework upon them.

This being the case, Christian interpreters of scripture should feel no obligation to adopt this framework. The fact that so many creedally orthodox Christians (mainly in mainline Protestant institutions) think that they are under this obligation at the present time demonstrates not the wealth of data contradicting traditional christological interpretation, but rather a loss of nerve on the part of Christianity faced with the rather paltry challenge of modern and postmodern Epicureanism.

This does not mean that they should reject insights from all scholars who use such critical methods. Many modern techniques of biblical scholarship (most notably biblical archaeology) have yielded a great deal of information about the original context of scripture. In fact, as the late Kurt Marquart has helpfully noted, no modern form of biblical criticism is in itself morally wrong or anti-Christian, rather it is how the technique is used.³¹ When evaluating scholarship one should not ask whether the scholar uses these modern techniques, rather one should ask whether the scholar proceeds from orthodox Christian assumptions (truthfulness and Christ-centeredness of scripture) or from another framework (Epicurean, etc.).

To summarize our method and approach: Because this study works from the perspective of what the Bible says about itself (namely, that it is divinely inspired and centers on Jesus Christ) we will expound the whole Bible on the basis of its chief article, Jesus Christ and his redeeming work. This does not mean to ignore or smooth over the historical context of scripture, its variety of genres, or its diversity of theological vocabulary. What it means is to recognize the harmony and unity of the historical and theological meaning of scripture. Discovering and expounding the sensus literalis means correlating the historical, contextual, and grammatical meaning of texts with their overall center found in Christ. This is possible because God himself is the author of scripture and his intended meaning throughout his narration of the Bible is Jesus.

In terms of actual practice, our treatment of the Old Testament will recognize the analogical similitude between God’s saving acts within Israel and his final saving act in Jesus in the form of typology. Since the same God is the agent of both, then both bare an irresistible relationship to one another and exist within a common framework of meaning and history. Similarly, we will not hesitate to assert that predictive prophecy does exist and that the prophets of the Old Testament did quite literally predict Jesus. If we accept God’s power and providence, as well as the witness of the New Testament, we should not have any intellectual difficulty with this concept.

Furthermore, in order to respect both the diversity and unity of the scriptures, our method will be essentially synthetic. We will examine the content of the different books and strains of tradition in the Old Testament, and correlate their meaning with one another. Isaiah, for example, speaks of the Messiah using different terminology than does Jeremiah. He also describes different aspects of the Messiah’s career. Nevertheless, both speak of the same Messiah and both have some commonalities in their predictions (a new covenant, forgiveness, etc.). Hence, both should be treated separately, while the results of exegesis for both can be correlated with one another in order to reveal a common witness to the truth.

In two opening chapters, our goal will be to expound common themes of mediatorship that emerged in the history of the Old Testament. This makes sense because the works of the Old Testament are addressed to a common audience (ancient Israel) over a long period of time. For this common audience there is a shared history, with a generally (though not completely) similar theological vocabulary. In discussing the New Testament in later chapters, we will divide our work up according to books or groups of books (i.e., Paul’s epistles, Johannine literature, etc.). The New Testament writings are occasional writings to different audiences (i.e., Gentile and Jewish, etc.), with different shared histories (think Hebrews vs. 1 Corinthians vs. the Johannine epistles, etc.). Hence, although there is a unity of witness, there is a greater diversity of theological terminology (Paul vs. John, John vs. the Synoptic Gospels, etc.). For this reason, we will divide up the New Testament by groups of books and correlate their common witness to Jesus with one another.

Exile and Return

In order to understand Christ and his coming, we must first understand the history of salvation in the Old Testament that his advent presupposes. In the twentieth century, there were a number of attempts to posit a central theme or concept of the Old Testament. This has tended to take the form of the identification of an abstract concept or idea as a central theme. Notably, this identification of the organizing principle of the Old Testament with an abstract concept has been the method of both Walther Eichrodt and Gerhard von Rad. In Eichrodt’s case, this was the covenant, whereas for von Rad it was the significantly more fluid, yet equally problematic concept of recitation.³²

Instead of an abstract concept, we will choose a historical pattern. The pattern that we will identify as residing at the very heart of the history of salvation in the Old Testament is the theme exile and return. This theme is not an arbitrary decision of one historical pattern among many, but rather stands as the very contours of the history of salvation as it is presented to us in the scriptures. The foundational events in Israel’s story as recounted in both the historical and prophetic writings are in fact the redemption from Egypt and the settlement of Palestine. In the same way also, the preaching of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, the pre-exilic prophets, and the later experiences of the Babylonian exile certainly must also be viewed as reinforcing this historical and theological pattern of existence upon Israel’s psyche. As we will observe, such a pattern prefigures the narrative of Christ’s death and resurrection. From the perspective of confessional Lutheran theology this way of understanding the Old Testament is particularly important in light of the fact that both exile and return are the temporal manifestations of God’s law and grace.

Moreover, Israel did not merely view exile and return as being a quirk of their particular national history, but the pattern of cosmic and human existence. The account of Genesis 2 begins with the creation of human beings (Gen 2:15–25) and their subsequent placement in the garden of Eden. Although we will later return to the wider significance of Eden for the Israelite cult, here it is sufficient to say that Eden is described as a place where humanity works the soil (Gen 2:15) and where the fertility of the earth is guaranteed. Furthermore, YHWH is directly present to the first humans and guarantees his favor to them by his glorious presence (Gen 3:8). Humanity sins by disobeying the divine command and by listening to the serpent, a false mediator of God’s will (Did God actually say . . . ? Gen 3:10). This leads to the exile of Adam and Eve from the garden, which brings with it their removal from God’s gracious presence and the guarantee of the fertility of the soil (cursed is the ground because of you Gen 3:17). They are also denied immortality (v. 19). As many interpreters have recognized, such a narrative is echoed in Israel’s own story. G. K. Beale correctly observes the parallels between Adamic humanity and Israel in Genesis 2–3: Israel, as representative of God’s true humanity, also separated themselves from the divine presence and failed to carry the commission . . . Israel failed even as had Adam. And like Adam, Israel was also cast out of the ‘garden land’ into exile.³³

If Genesis’s primal history suggests that humanity exists in a state of universal exile, the Pentateuchal narrative of the election of the patriarchs suggests that Israel itself is the beginning of the restoration of the Adamic humanity. In describing the structure of the Genesis narrative, N. T. Wright observes:

Thus, at major turning-points in the story [the Pentateuchal narrative] Abraham’s call, his circumcision, the offering of Isaac, the transition from Abraham to Isaac and from Isaac to Jacob, and the sojourn in Egypt—the narrative quietly insists that Abraham and his progeny inherit the role of Adam and Eve.³⁴

Throughout Genesis, YHWH’s promise to the patriarchs, (realized in the exodus and the conquest), is that he will multiply their descendants and give them dominion in the land of Canaan.³⁵ As Wright goes on to demonstrate, this status of Israel as the restoration of Adam and Eve comes across most strongly throughout the story because the dual promise of dominion in the land and of having many descendants directly parallels the promise made to the first man and woman at the end of the account of creation in Genesis 1: And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’ (Gen 1:28).

The Pentateuchal narrative also reinforces the identification of Israel as the restoration of Adamic humanity in a number of other ways. The land that YHWH promises Israel is in some measure represented as a restoration of the pre-lapsarian blessing on the soil: "And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord" (Gen 13:10, emphasis added). For Israel, the restoration of the presence of God enjoyed before the Fall also occurs. We are told that YHWH’s glory (kavod) traveled with Israel during the entire period of the exodus under the form of a cloud (Exod 40:36–38). When the tabernacle’s construction was completed, a thick cloud filled the camp and the glory of YHWH descended into the tabernacle (Exod 40:34–35).

These descriptions of Israel’s early history suggest several things. First, the narrative strongly implies that the tabernacle and the later temple are in a sense the restoration of Eden, wherein humans dwelled directly in God’s gracious presence. In the same manner the promises to the patriarchs and the fecundity of creation are portrayed as a restoration of the true humanity. Secondly, these accounts imply that through entering into a covenant with the patriarchs, YHWH has pledged his own being to Israel as a pledge of his faithfulness. Indeed, to give an unconditional promise means always to give the self, because a promiser is logically tied to the enactment and fulfillment of the promise. The presence and the activity of the divine self now must conform to the situation of the one to whom the promise was made.

If then Edenic harmony and its restoration in the election of Israel means the renewal of creation and the self-donating presence of YHWH, then sin and its consequence of exile mean the very opposite of these goods. YHWH speaks to the Israelites through Moses and tells them that if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant . . . I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it (Lev 26:15–16). Indeed, I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins. In the exile, I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze (vv. 18–19). The curses that we discover in Leviticus also suggest that there will be a loss of Israel’s restored dominion in the land: I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you (v. 17). These curses are also well attested by the threats of the later prophets. Ezekiel, who was a priest, also places an emphasis on the loss of the divine presence. According to Ezekiel 10, the prophet fully realized the completeness of the judgment of the exile only when he had a vision of the divine glory leaving the temple (Ezek 10:18).

Nevertheless, in spite of the situation of exile and human sin, YHWH promises his continuing faithfulness to Israel. After the passages threatening judgment, we find passages in the same texts assuring Israel of God’s continuing faithfulness to his promises made to the patriarchs. In spite of human sin, there would be eschatological renewal and the return from exile: I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham (Lev 26:42). St. Paul observes in Galatians 3:13–25, the Mosaic record demonstrates that the Abrahamic covenant of grace (or more properly, his testament, as Paul puts it) precedes and in fact stands as separate from the Sinaitic covenant of law. In contrast to the Abrahamic testament of unilateral promise and blessings, the Sinaitic covenant entails a long list of demands and curses. The reception of the two covenants is different as well. Von Rad notes that Abraham is passive and asleep as he receives the unilateral covenant of grace (Gen 15). By contrast, we are told that the Israelites were called upon to actively receive and to perform the works of the Sinaitic covenant: Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do’ (Exod 24:3).³⁶

Therefore, YHWH’s dealing with Israel takes on a paradoxically dual character. On the one hand, God has pledged himself to Israel and will fulfill his promises to it in spite of every obstacle. On the other hand, the covenant of Sinai is equally valid and demands on the part of Israel a real heartfelt obedience to God’s commandments. Both words from God are valid and therefore the unconditional nature of the former continuously comes into conflict with the conditional nature of the latter throughout the history of salvation. In the book of Hosea, the prophet enacts the sign of this paradoxical situation by marrying a prostitute (Hos 1, 3). As a sign of Israel’s state of affairs, Hosea’s marriage presupposes the validity of the covenant of the law, as well as God’s unilateral and unconditional faithfulness to Israel. Israel is rightly imputed with sin for having broken the law by prostituting itself to the nations, but YHWH must remain true to his promise and remains married to Israel in spite of its apostasy.

The promise of YHWH to Israel throughout the prophetic literature is that ultimately God’s own faithfulness will triumph over the impediments of human sin and divine wrath. Therefore, as early as the book of Deuteronomy (chapters 28–32), we have a promise of a second exodus and renewal of the divine-human relationship. Similar to the prophetic writings of Hosea, we have the promise of a second exodus wherein God will reestablish Israel’s status (Hos 11–14).³⁷

Isaiah 40–66 goes further and envisions a universal end to exile. God, who due to Israel’s sin has withdrawn his personal presence from his people and his dwelling place Zion, is said to be returning through a miraculous desert highway (40:3–6). He will do this because he will forgive Israel’s sin (40:2). Not only will Israel return to Zion, the city of YHWH’s presence (Isa 44–45), but the Gentiles who also suffer the universal exile from God’s presence will stream from the whole expanse of creation to worship the true God (Isa 45:23).

In the case of Ezekiel, God promises the prophet that he himself will follow the Jews into the exile he has enacted upon them and thereby stand in solidarity with them: "Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Though I removed them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone’ (Ezek 11:16, emphasis added). Later in the book, when there is a prophecy of the return from exile, restoration takes the form of a metaphorical resurrection from the dead (i.e., the restoration of the life and fecundity of creation, Ezek 37:1–14), the rebuilding of an elaborate eschatological temple (40–48), and return of the presence of God (37:27, 43:1–12). This time though, the presence of the divine glory is not just restricted to the holy of holies, but permeates the entire nation: My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever" (37:27). Beale in his study on chapters 40–48 of Ezekiel has demonstrated that the restored Jerusalem is itself not only a temple-city (i.e., a perpetual arena of the self-donating presence of God), but displays significant features that make it similar to the garden of Eden.³⁸

The apocalyptic tradition, as embodied in the book of Daniel (though also in Isa 26 and a number of other Old Testament texts), continues this line of thought in seeing a restoration of creation through a resurrection of the dead: And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Dan 12:2).³⁹ Here we may observe that Daniel posits a final restoration for some, (an eternal return from exile and reversal of the effects of the Fall as we have it in Genesis 3) and for others an infinite and eternal eschatological judgment (who will stay in an eternal state of exile). In this sense, God’s promises of life and freedom to Israel are fulfilled and expanded.

This restoration does not merely extend to new and eternal bodily life. The presence of God will not just return to resurrected Israel, but the resurrected will share the glory of YHWH: And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever (12:3). Walther Eichrodt makes a similar connection and observes: "The Daniel passage is unique in laying stress on the share in the divine light-glory, an image which is in any case entirely in keeping with the conception of God’s new world as a revelation of the divine kavod [glory]."⁴⁰ Daniel 2 and 7 also envision the restoration of Edenic harmony and the return from cosmic exile in the form of the destruction of the idolater’s demonic kingdoms, and their replacement by God’s own kingdom. Much like in Genesis 1, where the humans made in God’s image are given dominion on the earth, the Messiah is described in Daniel 7 as one like a son of man (v. 13) being given dominion and glory and a kingdom (v. 14). Moreover, as Beale has also noted concerning Daniel 2, the vision of the growing mountain which fills the entire creation is suggestive of the universalization of the Temple Mount and therefore the donation of divine presence to the whole creation.⁴¹

In summary, we therefore may observe throughout the Old Testament a pattern of exile and return, both in the understanding of Israel’s own history, but also forming the background for creation and the eschton. This pattern of divine activity as we can observe is rooted in YHWH’s dual relation with Israel as recorded in the historical accounts of the establishment of the law and gospel.

Mediators of the Promise: An Introduction

The first mediatorial figure