Question on Hermeneutics

[MilitaryBrat2007]

So I'm looking at these two main methods of Hermeneutics. I heard them somewhere, but I don't know what type they're called or the evidence supporting them.

Here are the two methods I'm talking about:

#1 The practices of the Old Testament does not apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it does.

#2 The practices of the Old Testament does apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it doesn't.

Any of you guys familiar with these? Resources would be appreciated.

 

[thegoadfather]

That sounds like a very simple way of speaking of the differences between Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

I don't find this shorthand useful. By itself, there are several interpretations that may be foisted on the phrasing. I don't think covenant theology vs. dispensational patterns of interpretation, or Presbyterian vs. Baptist are covered, just to name a couple.

 

[TylerRay]

So I'm looking at these two main methods of Hermeneutics. I heard them somewhere, but I don't know what type they're called or the evidence supporting them.

Here are the two methods I'm talking about:

#1 The practices of the Old Testament does not apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it does.

#2 The practices of the Old Testament does apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it doesn't.

Any of you guys familiar with these? Resources would be appreciated.

Both are mistaken. You'll find the correct approach in WCF Chapter 19, Of the Law of God, sections 1-4.

1. God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience; promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it; and endued him with power and ability to keep it.
2. This law, after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness; and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai in ten commandments, and written in two tables; the first four commandments containing our duty toward God, and the other six our duty to man.
3. Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the New Testament.
4. To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

The body of moral law in the Scriptures forever binds all, the body of OT ceremonial law has been abrogated, and the body of judicial law expired with the OT theocracy.

 

[Ploutos]

So I'm looking at these two main methods of Hermeneutics. I heard them somewhere, but I don't know what type they're called or the evidence supporting them.

Here are the two methods I'm talking about:

#1 The practices of the Old Testament does not apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it does.

#2 The practices of the Old Testament does apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it doesn't.

Any of you guys familiar with these? Resources would be appreciated.

@MilitaryBrat2007 - I'd word the two main methods of hermeneutics a bit differently, as follows:

1) Hermeneutics can be adequately summed up in one or two pithy and catchy sentences of less than 280 characters.

2) Hermeneutics canNOT be adequately summed up in one or two pithy sentences.

 

[Alexander Suarez]

#1 The practices of the Old Testament does not apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it does.

#2 The practices of the Old Testament does apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it doesn't.

Any of you guys familiar with these? Resources would be appreciated.

To add to what others have already said, another thing to take into account is that these statements tend towards a kind of biblicism. By biblicism, I mean the limitation of truth in Scripture only to that which is stated in so many words. This is not the hermeneutics presented to us by the Scriptures.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

So I'm looking at these two main methods of Hermeneutics. I heard them somewhere, but I don't know what type they're called or the evidence supporting them.

Here are the two methods I'm talking about:

#1 The practices of the Old Testament does not apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it does.

#2 The practices of the Old Testament does apply to the Church today unless the New Testament says it doesn't.

Any of you guys familiar with these? Resources would be appreciated.

If I was in your place, I might be feeling a little frustrated at this moment. You are presently in some confusion over the subject of "biblical interpretation," which topic falls more generally in the category of "hermeneutics," or the science of literary interpretation. When we (in Christian circles) use the word "hermenutics," we're almost always focused on the matter of interpreting our Bible, exclusively.

That much is uncontroversial, it might even seem a little pedantic, and you are still frustrated because--of course we're talking about getting to the meaning of the Bible--you have several responses to your post, and hardly anything in the way of useful information. Just some doubts as to the hermeneutical divide of which you wrote, concerning which you aimed to get you increase clarity. But now you have only more uncertainty, not less.

There are different approaches to biblical hermeneutics, and one of these might well appear to be quite the inverse from a second if they were paired (as some methods often are). Your attempt to represent what you have heard (faintly) on this subject, could actually be a pair of these contraries; although what you presented is probably not in literal terms one of the more common pairs. It may not even be true to the divide you have some recollection of hearing, about which you would like more clarity.

If you are frustrated, it's understandable and we can deal with it. But I wanted to lay out the above, so that I might offer you a different hermeneutical divide, completely different wording and new ideas that could actually be what you sought before (but might not be). In any case, the divide I present will be something more common to intramural debates inside the various church-circles most of us inhabit.

1) There is a measure (greater or lesser) of continuity between true religion as it is presented and practiced in the OT, and true religion as it is presented and practiced in the NT.
2) There is fundamental discontinuity between true religion as found in the OT, and true religion as found now under the New Covenant.

The question of continuity/discontinuity brings us closer (I think) to a live hermeneutical issue, one that creates a divide between serious Christians and enjoins debate. If the religions of OT and NT are actually one religion, this will bring about certain way of reading the OT that brings back into it things we are certain of in NT-religious terms. Likewise, our understanding of passages in the NT will be colored by our convictions about OT truth.

On the other hand, if the religions of OT and NT are very different things, if the New Covenant and the older covenants of earlier ages are quite different things, this will bring quite a different reading of each of the Bible's chief divisions. There may be some OT matters that have a light shed on them by our NT convictions, but that doesn't mean that there is or was essential unity between then and now; and likewise, there may be some NT interest that the OT--by way of sympathy or contrast--makes more interesting, but not to the point of unification.

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Your way of expressing some form of hermeneutical divide, if we take it literally, might seem like a simplified version of my substitute contrast and that be what you intended; but I suggest it is vastly different when the language is taken at face value. There are fringe-religionists today, who go back to the Torah as if it represented one God-revealed religion for all time and in the proper form for all time. They propose that this religion should be practiced now in the NT age in all ways possible right in accord with Moses and all revealed data come after him in the OT; and that the NT continues this basic pattern.

Hence, if religion can be done today that follows the Israelite manners (for example, feasts of Israel and the calendar of Israel) it should be done. Probably circumcision should be done at least by those identifying as Jewish extraction, since (even with a NT controversy) there is no "stop circumcising" command found in the NT. This is the logical outworking of the hermeneutical divide that you expressed, taken literally--and as I said, there is a fringe group at this time who actually advocates for this idea. And what these would like to do is represent themselves as hermeneutically contrasted (a straw-man, actually) with majority Christians who assume a zero-practice shift took place in the NT, unless the NT makes an explicit appeal to something in the OT.

Here in this portion of my response, I am assuming I could have been wrong about your request in the OP, and your representation of the divide that piqued your curiosity was accurate. If so, then this fringe Israelitism is something you may have encountered. Their way of interpreting the Bible is, indeed, an odd hermeneutic. And, they set themselves forth in a kind of strong contrast to more mainstream Christianity on the question of interpretation. They prosper to the degree they find various people who, perhaps by default, operate on the basis of radical discontinuity between the OT & NT without knowing why they do so.

It begins to bother these latter folk that they have 2/3 the Bible they largely don't know what to do with; so rather than commit themselves to a NT-exclusive Christianity characteristic of most modern evangelicals, they are taken in by the fringe. They never get to the place where they find a better understanding of the hermeneutical divide, and come over to another way of reading the whole Bible as Christians have historically. They leap, without even realizing, into one of the oldest heresies, found even in the NT itself: the Judaizing heresy. Modern Israelitism is in many ways nothing but a rehash of the interpretive paradigm and system of the enemies of Paul and the other apostles.