Hi all.
I'm wanting to clarify for myself what I regard as extreme Christocentric hermeneutics, that is the need to find Jesus behind every rock of scripture, so to speak.
Firstly I am fully committed to a Christocentric reading of the bible, that is I believe all things point to Him when their place is realised in redemptive history. But I don't think that necessitates Jesus being ultimately in every verse or chapter. I'm all for redemptive historical preaching but it needs to be just that, redemptive AND historical...
For example: some preachers see Songs of Solomon as Christ as the church only. But I think that's just preaching at a macro level and doing complete injustice to the details of the relationship Solomon is writing about...we must balance the forest from the trees.
While much is to be admired for the esteem these extreme hermeneutics have for Christ and the gospel, aren't they really just allegorising Jesus into the text, thereby doing injustice to its plain and normal interpretation?
As I've been thinking about this I've come to see that many who preach this way don't see the bible as progressively revealed, but rather have a reinterpretive hermeneutic that reads the OT through the grid of the NT. (I think their advocacy of typology can be overstepped here, in that the NT antitype somehow means the OT type has no significance)
From what ive read some examples of this reinterpretive hermeneutic are G Ladd, G Goldsworthy, G Vos...
What do you all think?
Has anyone written on this that you can recommend?
I'm wanting to clarify for myself what I regard as extreme Christocentric hermeneutics, that is the need to find Jesus behind every rock of scripture, so to speak.
Firstly I am fully committed to a Christocentric reading of the bible, that is I believe all things point to Him when their place is realised in redemptive history. But I don't think that necessitates Jesus being ultimately in every verse or chapter. I'm all for redemptive historical preaching but it needs to be just that, redemptive AND historical...
For example: some preachers see Songs of Solomon as Christ as the church only. But I think that's just preaching at a macro level and doing complete injustice to the details of the relationship Solomon is writing about...we must balance the forest from the trees.
While much is to be admired for the esteem these extreme hermeneutics have for Christ and the gospel, aren't they really just allegorising Jesus into the text, thereby doing injustice to its plain and normal interpretation?
As I've been thinking about this I've come to see that many who preach this way don't see the bible as progressively revealed, but rather have a reinterpretive hermeneutic that reads the OT through the grid of the NT. (I think their advocacy of typology can be overstepped here, in that the NT antitype somehow means the OT type has no significance)
From what ive read some examples of this reinterpretive hermeneutic are G Ladd, G Goldsworthy, G Vos...
What do you all think?
Has anyone written on this that you can recommend?