Old Testament Cherry Picking
Hermeneutical Bridges For New Covenant Believers
I’m in a comments section recently and a guy with Sola Scriptura in his bio tells me that he needs a hermeneutical bridge for some Old Testament concepts I’m importing into New Testament modes of worship.
In plain English?
Why does that Old Testament idea work, and not others?
I remember reading Tom Wright’s Surprised By Hope, probably his best book, an accessible reader on the Return of Christ. In the book he explains his methodological approach with simplicity: give priority to where the Apostles teach on issues.
If there is “clear Apostolic teaching” on a given topic, take that seriously and work around that. And that was kind of the whole work of the Apostles — to fill in many of the process blanks that the Gospels left us.
No doubt, Jesus was a brilliant teacher of doctrine — everything these guys taught they learned from Jesus. But the Gospels aren’t designed to be doctrinally. And the Deconstructionists can’t seem to wrap their heads around that.
The main play of all Deconstructionists is to prioritize the Gospels and their general doctrinal ambiguity, and hold the story of Jesus over the commentary of Paul.
Jesus is like the World Cup that you just watched — pure action. Paul is the unending hours of recap that nobody is interested in watching, except the hardcore fans. But this is probably worth noting: imagine that the recap is authoritative — the official commentary of FIFA — and cannot be debated. That’s Paul.
And that’s Wright’s point: narrative doesn’t function like prose, and it’s not meant to. And teaching actually brings more meaning to the narrative. It tells you motives and inner dialogue and tiny details that add a ton more weight. So when you go back to the narrative, having read Harold Bloom’s commentary on Romeo and Juliet, you’re watching the play with a deeper understanding. Every soliloquy commands more attention, because now you catch the drift.
There are few major theological concepts than what Peter and John inform the Church in their books. They announce these concepts so matter of factly that most people miss them. Peter spends more time developing the concepts. The author of the book of Hebrews writes an entire book devoted to the idea. Yet still people are hazy.
Here is a major theme that will help every reader understand how to import Old Testament principles into New Covenant contexts:
