From James K.A. Smith’s review of Pete Enns, The Evolution of Adam (thanks to our Florida co-editor):
The meaning of Scripture is not limited to what human authors intended—which is precisely why the meaning of prophetic texts outstrips what human authors might have had in mind. As Richard Hays puts it, in some ways Christians read the Bible back to front. But the dominant methodology that Enns reflects has no functional room for appreciating this point, which is why he seems to think that defining what the “authors of Genesis” had in mind settles the matter. It doesn’t.
This sort of a-canonical approach also explains why Enns sees such a strange relationship between Genesis and the apostle Paul as a reader of Genesis. “Paul’s reading of Genesis,” he comments, “is driven by factors external to Genesis. Paul’s use of the Old Testament, here or elsewhere, does not determine how that passage functions in its original setting” (87, emphasis added). Well, that might be true; and Enns is exactly right to offer a corrective to irresponsibile habits of Bible reading that are little more than baptized eisegesis, reading into the Scriptures what we want to find there. But is the “original meaning” the determinative factor for the meaning of Genesis for us? We receive a canon of Scripture that recontextualizes each book—situating every book in relation to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which is why the “location” from which we read the Bible needs to be the practices of Christian worship. Worship is the primary “home” of the Bible and it is in worship that we cultivate those habits and virtues we need to read Scripture holistically.[8] That will certainly generate meanings of Old Testament books that could never have been intended by their human authors; but that doesn’t mean they were not intended as meanings to be unfolded “in front of the text” by the divine Author.
Enns’ approach leaves little room to recognize such recontextualization within the canon—nor does he accord any positive, constructive role to tradition (cf. 114). In fact, if it becomes a contest between “the authors of Genesis” and Paul, Enns sides with “the original meaning” of Genesis as the determinative meaning: “what Genesis says about Adam and the consequences of his actions does not seem to line up with the universal picture that Paul paints in Romans and 1 Corinthians […]. I do not think the gospel stands on whether we can read Paul’s Adam in the pages of Genesis” (92). To use Enns’ language, Paul attributes something to Genesis that the “authors of Genesis” are not trying to give us. Again, this account is entirely “from below,” as if it is Paul alone who “invests Adam with capital he does not have either in the Genesis story, the Old Testament as a whole, or the interpretations of his contemporary Jews” (135).
But now the problem above comes home to roost: what if there is an Author who is the author of both Genesis and 1 Corinthians? What did he intend? And could he intend meanings in Genesis that outstrip what the “authors of Genesis” intended? The church has always staked its reading of the Bible on the conviction that Scripture’s meaning exceeds what the original human authors could have intended. So we can’t neatly and tidily settle the cross-pressures we feel at the intersection of Genesis and contemporary science by simply limiting the meaning of Genesis to what was intended by its Ancient Near Eastern authors.
It seems to this average historian, this point is one that all of the discussion surrounding Christocentric vs. Christotelic readings misses. And Smith points to the importance of reading the Bible as a whole and as a book that may be best understood within the church rather than the Society of Biblical Literature.
Old Life 
DGH – I as looking for your response to Bill Evans’ latest post. I don’t think the primary issue is about what the human authors thought or intended, but it’s about what & how God reveals in Scripture.
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He sure is. Some ideologues who come through and antagonize this place could benefit from a few words…
http://online.wsj.com/articles/james-smith-has-anyone-seen-last-years-promising-freshmen-1408141362
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On the topic of the first link in the final paragraph, it strikes me as very bizarre that the WTS board declares Green to be out of the pale of the confessions and forces him to retire, but then is allowing him to teach there this year. I know the likely answer is they wanted to avoid a potential lawsuit, but what does it say about WTS’s commitment to the confessions that they are allowing someone to teach there whom they have publicly declared is out of line with those confessions? And why isn’t there more concern over this WTS board decision among NAPARC churches that receive WTS grads as ministerial candidates?
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Step 1: Decide what texts mean, not by exegeting them, but by overlaying them with a hermeneutic called canonicity.
Step 2: Realize that it is the theological claim of Roman Catholicism.
Step 3: Follow Jason and the Callers to Rome so Scripture can be overlayed with Tradition.
Step 4: Lose your soul.
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DGH: ” And Smith points to the importance of reading the Bible as a whole and as a book that may be best understood within the church rather than the Society of Biblical Literature.”
As I read James Kugel, Enns’ doktorvater, he would agree with you, though since Kugel is an Orthodox Jew and he would substitute synagogue for church. Interpretation of scripture in a faith community simply isn’t the same thing as modern text criticism, as interesting as that might be as an academic discipline.
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JKAS wrote:
“The meaning of Scripture is not limited to what human authors intended—which is precisely why the meaning of prophetic texts outstrips what human authors might have had in mind. As Richard Hays puts it, in some ways Christians read the Bible back to front.”
“That will certainly generate meanings of Old Testament books that could never have been intended by their human authors; but that doesn’t mean they were not intended as meanings to be unfolded “in front of the text” by the divine Author.”
“But now the problem above comes home to roost: what if there is an Author who is the author of both Genesis and 1 Corinthians? What did he intend? And could he intend meanings in Genesis that outstrip what the “authors of Genesis” intended? The church has always staked its reading of the Bible on the conviction that Scripture’s meaning exceeds what the original human authors could have intended.”
Exactly right!
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Mark G, how is it not about how the human authors thought. Were they thinking of Christ? Did God use them to reveal Christ even if they weren’t thinking of him?
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Dan, Pete seems to think that evangelicalism is/was his faith community. Have I got a book for him.
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“As I read James Kugel, Enns’ doktorvater, he would agree with you, though since Kugel is an Orthodox Jew and he would substitute synagogue for church.”
Well, I’m not entirely sure that you would be completely happy with the conclusions that Kugel draws – as they are much closer to the RC than the Protestant view, in some parts:
http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/interview-with-james-kugel-round-3-the-kingly-sanctuary/
“For Jews, I went on to say, the solution to this problem is clear, since it has always been in place: our Torah is not about “what really happened” and is not limited to the words on the page alone. Rather, ours is the Torah as it was explained and expounded by the rabbis of Talmud and midrash, a great, multiform text that combines the written words, the torah she-bikhtav, with the oral traditions explaining their meaning, the torah she-be‘al peh. It is as concerned with “what really happened” as Hamlet is with “Amleth.””
See also his answer to question 5.
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“But is the “original meaning” the determinative factor for the meaning of Genesis for us? We receive a canon of Scripture that recontextualizes each book—situating every book in relation to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which is why the “location” from which we read the Bible needs to be the practices of Christian worship.”
The issue is what happens when the means of recontextualising the meaning of the OT appear to have origins from general second temple thought – especially when truth claims are involved.
For instance; 1Cor 10:4 refers to the Midrashic tradition that a particular rock followed the Israelites through the desert (presumably by rolling after them). Is a belief in a moving rock now necessary for orthodoxy?
[See Kugel here: http://jhom.com/topics/stones/traveling.html%5D
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ChrisE, Kugel’s book “How to Read the Bible” is one of the most challenging books I’ve (a layman) read. Somewhere on the interweb, perhaps in the interviews you linked to which I have read before but have not re-read today, he says that he considers the book to have failed in part because of the title– he wanted to call it “The Bible and It’s Ancient Interpreters.” Read with that in mind, I think his overall thesis, at least as I understand it and as I stated it as best I could above, works. Whether that is the end of the inquiry is a whole different question. As far as whether something looks Catholic or Protestant, I’m a Baptist and in no danger at my advanced age of becoming Catholic, Reformed, Pentecostal or anything else. (Emoticon).
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Dan –
I’ve read the book, and am familiar with the comment you refer to. The point is that in Kugel view (and arguably Smith’s in the passage above), the synagogue (or the church) ends up functioning more along the lines that Tradition does in an RC setting. After all when he says it should have been called ‘The Bible and It’s Ancient Interpreters’ he is intending to contrast Modern Biblical Scholarship with Ancient Midrashic/Talmudic interpretations – and from a perspective of faith finds himself significantly in sympathy with the latter.
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Chris-
Understood. Too bad the RC has given tradition a bad name.
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Chris-
I thought I was about to get tied up for the rest of the day, but not so. (Retirement has played hell with my leisure time.) My main gripe with modern biblical scholarship is the exclusivity it claims for itself. I have read it with pleasure and several grains of salt for decades, ever since I first read an article on the Documentary Hypothesis in the Encyclopedia Britanica when I was a teenager. A very wise interim pastor at our church explained to me that God could use what would later appear to be mundane historical developments for His purposes of communicating with us– and that Satan would try to convince us that the Bible was only a rag tag collection of ancient myths. I find the early Christian interpreters to be fascinating though sometimes difficult to understand and very much over used for apologetic purposes. I would not suggest that they should have the final word, but neither should they be ignored.
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Dr. Hart- So, did one of the human authors have to have had Christ in mind when he wrote a particular part of Scripture in order for us to see Christ in it?
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If the debate is only about author intent that’s no hill to die for. If the concern is about the nature of divine revelation in Scripture, how Scripture sees it self if you will, that’s a different matter.
“Were they thinking of Christ? Did God use them to reveal Christ even if they weren’t thinking of him”?
Were they looking for Messiah, or was that a notion that only came later limited to second temple Judaism for example? Did the Israelites have any understanding that the cloud that went before them was messianic or did they think God was just telling them to listen to water vapor and smoke?
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Alexander, why ask? We have at least a half-dozen who did have Christ in mind.
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…or, maybe I could clarify by saying it is not important what the authors thought if one’s starting point is that they were autonomous thinkers and thereby reducing the OT to a history of religions study; even if we do then fix it by going back and imposing NT divine revelation on them from the surprise ending. It is important what the authors intended from the perspective that God condescended and revealed himself to them in a manner appropriate to His intent and their situation within redemptive history.
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“So, did one of the human authors have to have had Christ in mind when he wrote a particular part of Scripture in order for us to see Christ in it?”
According to the present day WTS the answer is ‘Yes’.
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Why not answer the question?
I ask because when we see Joseph as a type of Christ; when we see Elisha as a type of Christ, and, for example, his healing of Naaman as a type of Christ’s healing of the leprosy of sin; when we see Hannah as a type of the believer, Elkinah as a type of Christ and Penninah as a type of the adversary, do we need to know that the writers of these accounts were themselves thinking of Christ and the types, or is it enough to say the Holy Spirit intended these as types, as well as teaching practial lessons to Christians?
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Alexander, I don’t know what you win or lose by coming down on something we just don’t know — namely, what the biblical authors knew. But if you want types, I’m all since republication asserts that Moses’ covenant was a type of the covenant of works.
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But that’s why I’m asking the question, since WTS on the one side and people like Green on the other seem to have decided we can answer that question. WTS seems to be saying that we can’t read Christ- or other types- into the OT unless the original human author pretty much said this or that was a type. Is that correct? But then that would mean that much of Reformed preaching exegesis since the Refodmation was ruled as outwith the bounds.
But then the first and second reading approach does seem like it violates the Confession, essentially ascribing two different meanings. My understanding is that with OT history, especially, we see in the lives of the people practical lessons that can be drawn but there’s also the spiritual dimension to what’s happening. So in David’s pardoning of Mephibosheth we see an act if mercy on David’s part, but we also see an expression of the Gospel where David is Christ and Mephibosheth is the sinner.
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Alexander – But as I pointed out above, how much does WTS REALLY disagree with Green when they’re allowing him to continue teaching there this academic year? They don’t think he’s confessional yet they continue to have him teach their students whom WTS will send to NAPARC churches to be ministers of the gospel? Something smells like fish and chips.
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