Chris, would you lead us in prayer? Father, we thank you for the opportunity we've had this past week and a half to learn how to be more faithful in handling your word and our futures in our private as well as public capacities as we have opportunities to teach and preach and minister to other people. Help us to rightly divide the word of truth and help us to be able to take what we've learned here to be faithful to the text as it is before us. We pray that you would use our ministries in the various places you put it to advance your kingdom, to lead many people to you, and to confirm those who do know you, that we may all grow together and become a more faithful church. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you, Chris. We have a little bit to finish up from last night's lecture. I was looking at the way in which McCartney responds to the position of Kaiser that you shouldn't use canonical or theological interpretation when you exegete a particular passage. And we noted a number of difficulties in his way of responding to Kaiser. I said last night I'd also like to look at McCartney's related view that the goal of interpretation dictates the method of interpretation. He says this, for instance, on page 67. Now the reason we're taking this up here is that he claims that the goal dictates the method of interpretation because the Bible is its own best interpreter. Because the Bible is its own best interpreter on page 67, McCartney tells us that the goal of interpretation must dictate the method. He seems to bewail the fact that, and I quote, method of interpretation does not really determine the end result of interpretation. That seems to bother him. He says on page 65, as tools, hermeneutical methods do not themselves determine what meaning will be found in a text. Now I'm pointing out that he's bewailing this because it seems to me that's good, not bad. But he seems to think that hermeneutical method has this deficiency, that it doesn't really determine the outcome. That it's just a tool, doesn't determine the meaning. And so on page 65 he says, quote unquote, hermeneutical goal is more important than and antecedent to method. Get that. The goal that you have in mind is not only more important, but it's also antecedent to the method you choose. And he seems on page 66 to accept the common practice of starting with the verdict first. He notes many times over on pages 69 and 70 that the goal actually determined the method for this person or that person, including you know, such notables as Luther. He says methods were determined by what he was looking for. And then this amazing claim on page 70, this caps it off. He claims, quote, the New Testament writers used methods which obtained the results which they knew already to be true. They did indeed adopt the method which produced the results Jesus had told them. Their hermeneutical goals certainly determined their method. And by this he means their method of interpreting the Old Testament was dictated by the goal they had in mind of making the Old Testament speak of Jesus. Well, I'm utterly unhappy with this. And I want to warn my students, both here and by tape and anywhere I can and everybody else, that this is not what we in the Christian Church and the Reformed Churches in particular want to adopt. This is in fact nothing short of what we can define as rationalizing in our methodology. You know what a rationalization is? A rationalization is giving reasons for a conclusion after you've chosen to believe the conclusion. Or as I like to put it in my logic class in a somewhat coy way, rationalization is the attitude, there must be some reason why I'm right, and now I'm going to find one. I've chosen a conclusion and now I'll find a reason for it. And it seems to me McCartney has left himself open to that very charge when he tells us that our methods of interpretation should be dictated by the outcome or conclusion that we want to reach. Now because McCartney is a presuppositionalist of a Bantilian sort, and my guess is he feels that he is being faithful to that in his hermeneutical exposition. That is, he's bringing to bear his presuppositionalism on his hermeneutics. I would like to kind of point out to you where I think he's right and where he gets it wrong, how the mistake comes about. McCartney works with an accurate presuppositional insight about epistemology in general. So let me start there. Here's an accurate insight about epistemology in general. He says on page 70, methods are chosen according to what produces results in line with what is already known. Methods are chosen according to what produces results in line with what is already known. In this, short sentence, he is repudiating what we call Methodism in epistemology or in philosophy. Methodism. Methodism maintains that before you believe anything about the world or about metaphysics, whatever you're talking about, you should first determine what the proper method is for knowing and justifying claims. And only after you've determined your method do you then go about trying to find out what is true of the world or true of metaphysics or what have you. And it's been pointed out, I think persuasively, in modern philosophical discussions that Methodism is in fact impossible. You wouldn't know which method is the one to endorse if you didn't already have some specimen cases of truth in front of you by which you can say, since this method leads to those specimen cases and other methods don't, so I choose this method. You must know something before you choose a method for knowing, is another way of putting it. You must already know something before you can choose a method for knowing. And McCartney, therefore, has reflected nicely on this in this one sentence. Methods are chosen according to what produce results in line with what is already known. He notes that grammatical historical exegesis cannot be, quote, a pure method. cannot be a pure method or be grounded on the adequacy of unaided human reason. He says that on page 71. And again, that's a good Vantillian presuppositional observation. There is no unaided human reason that follows a pure, if you will, neutral methodology. Doesn't exist, can't exist. So that's something he has right. Methods, in general, Already presupposed knowledge and choosing of methods already presupposes knowledge. No method is neutral Secondly he works with an accurate presupposition that the New Testament is normative for how we should treat the Bible That is as he says on page 70. It gives us the proper interpretation of the Old Testament and that's a presupposition for us Absolutely right about that. We presuppose that whatever the New Testament says about the Old is proper, accurate interpretation. You notice that the relevant question for him on page 71 is, what are the methods characteristic of the New Testament's use of the Old Testament? And thus on the previous page he asks, If we do not operate on the inspired biblical writer's methods, then whose interpretive methods shall we use? So he assumes that we're supposed to go to the Bible to find out how to interpret the Bible. The New Testament is normative for interpreting the Old. That's all very good. So, I'm going to make very clear, these are two things he started out with that are correct, and then I want to show how it goes haywire. He has an accurate insight about epistemology that the choice of methods already presupposes some truth or beliefs, some knowledge or conclusions. However, however, McCartney does not take into account the prescriptiveness of presuppositions in the selection of method. He does not recognize the prescriptiveness of presuppositions in the selection of method, but only their de facto influence on the ways of thinking of people. See, presuppositionalism is not simply the description that presuppositions affect your outcome in thinking. Presuppositionalism also maintains that certain presuppositions are prescribed, they're normative, they're necessary. And others, though they botch up your thinking because they do influence, others are not acceptable. He says on the bottom of page 66, method is chosen according to two criteria. First, the degree to which it corresponds to one's overall view of text, language, and the world. Second, it's fruitfulness and the degree to which it produces results in harmony with previous results. The second is what we've already acknowledged. But notice this first. He says, method is chosen according to the degree it corresponds to one's overall view of the world. Just to summarize. Method is chosen according to your presuppositions about the world in general. Well, yes, it is. That's a descriptive truth. What he doesn't add here is, not all presuppositions about the world are acceptable. And only those which are delivered to us by God, through His self-revelation, are prescriptive, or if you will, are the normative and correct presuppositions that should guide our thinking. And so since McCartney is thinking here only of the descriptive influence of presuppositions and not the prescriptive necessity of the proper presuppositions, it doesn't surprise me that on page 66 he confuses the need for an internal change by the work of the Spirit with a lack of objectivity. He says, only repentance and trust in Christ, as Paul knew from personal experience, can enable a person to understand the Old Testament truly, because humans are dependent on the Holy Spirit to unveil the meaning of Scripture. Well, that's true. But that has nothing to do with the objectivity of the proper presupposition for interpreting the Old Testament. Okay? If there are proper presuppositions for interpretation, and people are not born again, yeah, they won't buy into them. They won't buy the conclusion of the Old Testament, whether it's interpreted properly or improperly. The Holy Spirit's work is necessary. But that has nothing to do with the objectivity of the method. And you can see here that by this remark, he is assuming presuppositionalism only of the descriptive, influential sort, not presuppositionalism, of the transcendental, necessary sort. That's another part of what Bantill taught us, and I don't see it coming through here, unfortunately. You see it also in his questioning on page 68, the trans-, quote-unquote, what is the transcendent authority of historical grammatical methods of exegesis? What's the transcendent authority? Well, it's what God requires us to do in the treatment of his word, or more broadly, to be honest, in the treatment of any literature. And so the very fact that he can ask, can there be transcendent authority? This method is, you know, one of many, but why should we think it has transcendent authority, also tips me off that he's not thinking in terms of prescriptive or normative presuppositions, but just presuppositions as they influence or impact other lines of thinking for a person. On page 72 he says, the much more important matter is the interpretive framework or presuppositional goals for which we are aiming. Once again, the much more important matter is the interpretive framework or presuppositional goals for which we are aiming. In this one sentence, we see the confusion that I think is deadly. Here, McCartney is confusing our presuppositions. Now, by that I mean our transcendentals, the most fundamental assumptions in terms of which we can make sense of anything. He confuses our presuppositions with our interpretive goal in treating the text of the Bible. He confuses our presuppositions which are available from general revelation, certainly are cleaned up, corrected, confirmed, clarified by special revelation for sinners, but he confuses our presuppositions which we come to the text of the Bible with from general revelation, confuses that with the interpretive aim. Now if the aim is, in his case he wants to make sure that however you look at the Old Testament it's referring to Jesus. That's the aim, to interpret the Old Testament as referring to Jesus. But that interpretive aim, that goal, is the redemptive message of special revelation. We don't come to the text of the Bible understanding its redemptive message. To put it very simply, we do come to the Bible with presuppositions. Well, two kinds. The necessary kind, which no one can avoid, and in terms of which we make sense out of anything, including a book like the Bible. And they come to us from general revelation. We also bring our own personal beliefs. If you're an unbeliever, you have presuppositions that try to suppress and thwart the objective and normative presuppositions of general revelation. So we come to the text with presuppositions, but it's whether suppressed or acknowledged, the general revelation presuppositions, if you will, that enable us to read the text properly. But we do not come to the text knowing what it's going to tell us. Because no one apart from reading the whole Bible, no one apart from reading the scriptures, knows God's redemptive intentions. So you do have to stop and reflect on this and do some fine tuning and sharp analysis. But here I think you see the problem with McCartney is that he's confused our presuppositions that we have in the normative transcendental sense with the redemptive conclusions or the interpretive conclusions we have about redemption once we've read the Bible. Now if you run those two together, then you start saying things like, well you know what you want to prove when you go to the Bible, this redemptive message. And we know presuppositions and that kind of goal dictate method. he'll tell us that our goal is more important than our hermeneutical method. No, no, no, no, no. The hermeneutical method has got to be kept, pardon me, pure. It's got to be kept objective. I trust no one's going to accuse me of not understanding Van Tiller presuppositionalism. Maybe, you know, I'm whacked out or on drugs and I don't know what I'm talking about at this moment, but trust me, given my background, even though I'm speaking of a pure method of hermeneutics, I'm not at all denying the insights of presuppositional epistemology. The point is, what is necessary to understand anything is given to us in general revelation. And general revelation teaches us, I'm not going to go through all the steps, but teaches us how we are to, in all honesty, handle any piece of literature. And that's how we go to the Bible. And when we go to the Bible, we pick it up, treat it like any other book, and find out it's not like any other book. And in the process, find out how to be saved. But you can't go to the Bible with a presupposition about its meaning, and then say, now I'll choose an interpreted method that will help me get to that conclusion about its meaning. Totally illegitimate. And as I said earlier, what we call rationalization. looking for reasons after you've chosen your conclusion. But that's not the only problem here in what McCartney said. He also takes the normative New Testament method of interpretation to be a departure from legitimate historical grammatical exegesis. See, he's right to say the way the New Testament treats the Old is normative. That is a presupposition that we should take because we hold to the infallibility of the Bible, its consistency, and so forth. So, yes, we let the New Testament be a model, if you will, for us. However, McCartney then says, and the model we find is that the New Testament writers don't limit themselves to philological or literal exegesis of the Old Testament. You go, oh no, what are you saying? Notice this. Against Richard Longnecker's claim that New Testament writers use cultural-bound methods of interpretation which departed from historical grammatical exegesis, McCartney grants that premise And then swallowing hard, because he holds the New Testament to be normative, he's willing to depart from historical grammatical controls himself. And so on page 68 he says, rhetorically, rhetorically, he asks this question, what transcendent authority rests exclusively upon the grammatical historical method of exegesis? Wow. My guess is he's going to take it hard in the reviews for that kind of sentence, and he deserves it. As good as his book is, this is a real lapse in his thinking. In answering a question about what method we should use, he challenges with these words on page 70. He says, strictly grammatical historical exegesis, some say, but on what ground? As though it's questionable, you see. And so, and now listen to this as the conclusion, page 71. He says, nor can we limit the meaning of a text to what could demonstrably have been understood from it by its original readers. For the New Testament writers are not so restricted in their approach to the Old Testament. There it's stated straight out, he says the New Testament writers didn't restrict their approach to the Old Testament to the meaning that is demonstrably understood by its original readers. And so since the New Testament is normative, we're not so restricted. But first of all, notice this trivializing qualifier in the sentence. You have to watch scholars. They tend to be weasels sometimes. I'm not talking about his general character, but I mean, this is a weasel word, we call it. He says, nor can we limit the meaning of a text to what could demonstrably have been understood from it by its original readers. Does he mean by that what we're able to demonstrate they actually understood? Well, no one can demonstrate that because they're not here to cross-examine or to open up their craniums and explore the innards of their head, whatever it would be. Notice, moreover, how what he has just said, unwittingly, I really think that he means much better than this, But notice how what he's just said undermines the authority of the Old Testament to which the New Testament appeals for support. If it's true that the New Testament appeals to things, appeals to the Old Testament, giving it a meaning which is not understood by its original readers, then what good does it do to appeal to the Old Testament there? You don't get any support because it wasn't there in the first place. And note the insidious consequences of throwing the door open to read things back into the Old Testament that could not have been understood by the original writer or the original recipients. The insidious consequences of being able to read things back there that could not be demonstrated in the text of the Old Testament itself. So I'm going to draw a conclusion now to my discussion of the debate between McCartney and Kaiser, representatives of two schools of thought here, over the whole issue of the Bible interpreting itself, or what we have called the analogy of faith. It's been a long time coming around, but I've been trying to show you the different issues that are taken up in this whole matter of whether the Bible interprets itself. You have Kaiser on the one hand, who was very nervous about canonical context being used to exegete particular passages. And then you have McCartney's, I think, muddled response to that sort of thing. where he says it's impossible to read things as the ancient reader did, and the modern interpretation is necessarily different from any ancient interpretation. And then related to this, when he discusses how the Bible interprets itself as its own best interpreter, he tells us that the goal of our interpretation dictates the method by which we interpret. And I think that is really open to Pandora's box difficulties. Here's my conclusion. We must not give up the control factor of philological and contextual exegesis. This is what Kaiser has right, and I think McCartney has fudged on. We must not give up underlying the control factor of philological and contextual exegesis. McCartney sometimes speaks about the human meaning being the basis for going on to find more meaning. But he doesn't really treat it as a control factor. He allows for a greater sense, which we'll get to in a few moments in our lecture. So my conclusion, first, we must not give up the control factor of philological and contextual exegesis. And secondly, nor should we exaggerate that control factor by excluding canonical context from the process of exegesis and hermeneutical understanding. This is said against Kaiser in favor of what McCartney is doing. Nor should we exaggerate, underline the word exaggerate, that control factor by excluding canonical context from the process of exegesis and hermeneutical understanding. All right, we're going to move on to Roman numeral 12 now. Roman numeral 12 is principalization. Principalization and expository preaching. Let me review for you. Roman numeral 10, general hermeneutical principles that we can handle without a lot of discussion and dialogue. And then beginning with 11, we're looking at special issues that are a little more complicated and controversial. The first of which was the analogy of faith and historical grammatical exegesis. The analogy of faith. Now we come to Roman numeral 12 and the topic is principalization and expository preaching. Expository preaching annotates the text according to its own syntactical structure. When people talk about preaching in an expository way, they're basically talking about the preacher going through the text according to its syntax, according to its own structure, and stopping for annotation on this, annotation on that. And I've had the experience of growing up in the evangelical and reformed community and hearing people who are just dead set, absolutely firm that expository preaching is the biblical way of preaching and also hearing people and studying other people who are absolutely certain that expository preaching is not the way you should preach. You should preach in a redemptive and historical way. So what do we do with this? Expository preaching annotates the text according to its own syntactical structure. As Kaiser says on page 160, the whole objective of what we are here calling textual expository preaching is to let the scriptures have the major, if not the only, role in determining the shape, logic, and development of our message. And so the way in which the Bible lays out the message is the way in which you must preach that message. It's not just having the same meaning of the text, but it's the very shape of the text that dictates the expository sermon. Page 150 says, every exegetical step has a matching function in homiletics. And on pages 157, 159, and 160, he tells us that the theme sentences of each paragraph in our syntactical display provide the main points of the sermon or lesson and provide them in the same order. And this applies to the main points and the sub points. So if you outline the passage, give it syntactical display, that also provides for you the outline for your message. So you get what we're getting at here? Textual expository preaching imitates the shape, the logic and development of the message. Kaiser tells us that he wants to save the exegete, this is page 156, from the perils of subjectivism by relying on the text's own pattern of emphasis. And so he argues that the proper method of homiletical analysis, the proper method of preparing for preaching, is that of principalization. Principalization. A word that, as far as I know, he's made up. We need to take a few moments to get straight on what Kaiser means by principalization. Pages 120 and 21, he says, principalizing is universalizing particular instances or illustrations. When you principalize, when you take a specific instance and you make a principle out of it, all right? Principalization points out the abiding meaning and the continuing significance for all believers of all times, page 197. It seeks the principles that are expressed by the author by the way in which he selected details, and by the way he arranged his presentation, and then restates those principles unrestricted by time, persons, places, or culture, and inviting a response. So you take the particulars of the text and turn it into universals, if you will, principles, so that you no longer are restricted by time, persons, places, and culture. He tells us that this process is not as much needed in didactic passages because didactic passages are already principlized. This is a very telling remark. In other words, some parts of the Bible are almost ready to be preached because they're didactic. And you take the other ones that aren't didactic and you do what? You turn them into didactic passages by principalizing their details. He says it's not to be a purely descriptive narration or expressed simply in the past tense, and it's certainly not to be an allegorizing or spiritualizing by the importing of later theology into the text. Rather, it's the attempt to restate the author's paragraph themes without amending them, in light of the purpose of the section in which they are found, and to state them as a timeless truth the timeless truth the author intended to convey, and indicating what response he expected from his audience. Pages 150-152 give you that layout. Take the author's paragraph themes without amendment, in light of the purpose of the section, express it as a timeless truth as he intended to convey it, and indicate what response he expected from his audience. Or if you will, let me just quote page 152. to principalize is to state the author's propositions, arguments, narrations, and illustrations in timeless abiding truths with special focus on the application of those truths to current needs of the church." Kaiser says this is to make a contemporary analogous application of the particulars that you're reading in the text. He lays out four steps in doing this. First of all, you determine the subject of the passage. Then you find the emphasis of that particular passage. And then the structure of the passage should be reflected in the syntactical display. The structure of your message will be reflected in the syntactical display or diagram. And in this you express fourthly the permanent, abiding, and doctrinal part of the passage. Express the permanent, abiding, and doctrinal part of the passage. Okay, so let me come back to my main point. Kaiser says that we have to be saved from the perils of subjectivism by relying on the text's own pattern of emphasis, and that homiletical preparation therefore should be, according to the method we're talking about here, that he has dubbed principalization. So, insistence on expository preaching, expository preaching, you know, comes about through this method of principalization. What do we say about that? Well, I'm going to say, first of all, that this method has great usefulness and value, not to mention its safeguards against hobby horses and taking a text as a pretext for a preconceived idea, even if the idea is an orthodox one. One thing that's very appealing about what Kaiser is teaching here is the safeguard against the preacher riding a hobby horse or taking a text as a pretext. If you force yourself to stick to what the author has said in the structure and way that he said it, that has great safeguards, but it also has great value. It's very useful as a preaching technique. instructors and homiletics that I had in seminary, I do not believe that it's wrong to preach that way. I think you can go to a text. One of the teaching styles you can use is to exposit the text. Go through line by line, annotating and explaining, trying to get your outline as close to the author's outline as you can. I've said that, and I don't want to make it just like a passing note. It's very important. I preach in an expository way myself at times, and so I'm not against it. I think it's valuable, and it has real safeguards that are built into it that would be helpful in many churches. A pastor should preach more in an expository rather than topical way. But what Kaiser has said and written, I think, my own humble opinion, does not take into account, does not take into adequate account the factors of audience variation and background. It doesn't take into account specific historical and cultural circumstances into which you are preaching. It doesn't take into account the weighting of specific needs. There's nothing to say that the specific needs of my congregation are exactly the specific needs of the Corinthian congregation, after all. And it doesn't take into account, as you already know, the whole canonical context, which Kaiser stringently rejects as a factor on pages 161 and 162. He says that it's an abuse of systematic theology, quote-unquote. to use the whole canonical context and he insists that we stick to the previous emerging theology, wending its way through the history of redemption. But I think that would be as mistaken as trying to understand a chapter in the Gospel of John outside of the whole teaching of the Gospel of John. We were talking about that a little bit before class. When we exegete what John wrote in chapter 6. Should we take into account what John at the time of writing understood? Or only what John would have understood at the time he heard Jesus say those words? Well, I think you're going to have to let the author be the determiner of the meaning. And so you're going to have to take John when he wrote those words, which is going to be what? After the fact. So he's got a greater understanding than he had as the John he describes, or the disciples he describes, hearing Jesus utter certain words. Likewise, the whole Bible is that way. And Kaiser, I think, is just too quick to cut off the canonical context. Sure, I appreciate the fact he doesn't want anachronistic readings, you know, dumping things back. into earlier texts from later ones and so forth. But the whole context of the Bible is God's context for the book he gave us, after all. So, in terms of expository preaching and the use of principalization, as valuable as it is, it doesn't take adequate account of the variation in audiences and their background, the specific historical and cultural circumstances, the weighting of specific needs that a preacher must do when he preaches, and the whole canonical context. Now interestingly, some people would accuse Kaiser's principalization of being mere moralism, if you will, taking specifics and universalizing them, and would insist on a redemptive historical presentation of the biblical message focusing on the particularity of Jesus and his historical saving work. Let's go to the other end of the, you know, extremist extremes. And you have certain redemptive historical advocates saying that every sermon you preach must focus on the particularity of Jesus and his historical saving work. Everything points to Jesus. And rather than principalizing anything so that it might be made a matter of response in the current church, as Kaiser has endorsed, many redemptive historical advocates say that applicatory preaching should be eschewed altogether. I've even heard one of these fellows in my circles say that you shouldn't apply the New Testament to the church today. We don't want any applicatory preaching. We preach the mighty acts of God. We focus on the history of redemption. We look at Jesus and his specific saving work. What is it about Christians that is love going to extremes? I'm sorry, you know, I think Kaiser's got something very good here, but it's a little unbalanced. Redemptive historical people are even more unbalanced. They've got something very good. The Bible does take Jesus as its center. That's true. Redemption is, you know, from cover to cover. The theme of the Bible. That doesn't mean every particular text has to be looking at the historical particularity of Jesus and his saving work and eschewing any application to our lives. You see, I think this view is unbiblical and reductionistic. Let's let the New Testament be normative for us here. How does the New Testament use references to the past history of God's people? I think you'll notice a variety of aims. I'm just going to give you four here, but jump right out at me. The New Testament shows us how to use the Old Testament, and the New Testament does what with the Old Testament? Well, sometimes it uses the Old Testament to offer new life. John 3 verses 14 and 15 Example where Jesus goes to the Old Testament incident of the serpent on the pole that people had to look to to be saved Why does he go to the Old Testament there because he's offering what new life to Nicodemus Or in Luke 24 verses 26 and 27 this of course our redemptive historical brothers appreciate, and I do too, the Old Testament is used to point to Jesus as the Messiah. And the Bible tells us that starting with Moses and through all the prophets he expounded to them and all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Didn't it behoove the Christ, the Messiah, to suffer and then enter into his glory? And so a second use of the Old Testament is to point to Jesus as the Messiah. But then thirdly, the Old Testament is pointed to, and alluded to, to doctrinally explain redemption. Now because of my lectures on speech acts, I'm hoping that you're all able to draw these distinctions. There's a nuanced difference between offering new life and explaining redemption. Yes. To have new life you have to have redemption explained and to want it explained you probably have to have new life. No one is denying that these things all come together in living experience. But there is a difference between Jesus appealing to the Old Testament basically to confront Nicodemus with the need for a savior to have new life. And what the author of Hebrews is doing in chapter 10 verse 1 where he says that the law presented a shadow of the good things to come. So he's explaining from the Old Testament the redemption that has come. Then another text that tends to make our redemptive historical friends shake just a bit is found in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 6. There's another use, a different use of the Old Testament scriptures. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 6, Paul discusses certain events in the wilderness wanderings of the Old Testament and he says in verse 6, now these things were our examples to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. Verse 11, now these things happened unto them by way of example and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Paul explicitly tells us that it's appropriate to go to the Old Testament to get moral exhortation to find examples of how we should and shouldn't live. He says these things were written for that purpose. for us who live at the end of the ages. It was written as an example that we not lust after evil things. So when redemptive historical people say we shouldn't have applicatory preaching, well, Paul did. Paul went to the Old Testament and he made mortal application from it. We should too. So my first response showing the reductionistic nature of the redemptive historical school is to point out that the New Testament itself uses past historical incidents to do more than just present the redemptive historical message. Sometimes it's presented to offer new life to people, sometimes to point to Jesus as the Messiah, sometimes to expound redemption, to explain it doctrinally, sometimes to show the kind of new lifestyle that redeemed people should have. But let me go back and do this again, not just focusing on historical allusions. Scripture as a wider whole serves a variety of purposes by its utterances. Scripture imparts wisdom for salvation. John 5.39 and Acts 10.36-43 say that Scripture serves the purpose of testifying of Jesus. The first is imparting the wisdom for salvation. The other, more specifically, is testifying of Jesus. Thirdly, the scripture Is used to bring about saving transformation 1st Peter 1 verses 23 and 25 Peter says the gospel is the word by which we are begotten again That change in us comes about through the scripture So the scripture shows us the way of life. It shows us Jesus to be the Savior within the way of life It's used to savingly transform us John 8 31 the scripture serves the purpose of enabling and directing discipleship enabling and directing discipleship 1 Peter 2 verse 2 scripture serves the purpose of helping us grow up in salvation to stop being children but to grow up in salvation John 17, 17, Scripture serves the purpose of setting believers apart from the world, sanctifying us. 2 Timothy 3, 16, Scripture serves the purpose of instructing in doctrine. And then that same text along with Hebrews 4, 12, Scripture serves another beneficial purpose to reprove us, correct us, and discern the very intents of our hearts. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. Scripture serves to instruct in righteousness, equipping us for every good work. Once again you see the embarrassment to redemptive historical restrictions. The Bible is an ethical book and it pushes ethics. It instructs in righteousness, it equips for every good work. It sets us apart from the world, sanctifies us, instructs us in righteousness, reproves us, corrects us, discerns the intents of our hearts, shows us how to be disciples of Jesus. It also teaches us doctrine. And of course, it testifies of Jesus and imparts wisdom for the sake of salvation and even brings about saving transformation. The point here is that scripture does a lot of things. by its utterances, by its sentences. And for anybody to say we shouldn't preach applicatory sermons or everything's got to be about Jesus and the historical particularity of his saving work, is just not doing justice to this glorious book God has given us, of all of its fullness and its many intentions. Now you know what the comeback's going to be for people who just don't get the point and are going to be stubborn about it. They're going to say, but all of that's related to redemption. Well, I'm not going to get into quibbles over words. You know, here the Apostle Paul, he says, it's just not worth it to argue about that. Yes, it's all related to redemption. That doesn't mean, however, that it's only redemption in some narrow sense that we can preach. like the historical acts of God redeeming it. To declare, quote, the meaning of a text, to declare the meaning of a text, which is what the preacher does, should not be thought of in an artificially reduced sense as somehow delivering substitute sentences with synonymous value. I sometimes have the impression that whether you're on the Kaiser side or the McCartney side of this matter, the principalization people and the redemptive historical people, that they really forget the diversity of kinds of meaning that we discussed in our general hermeneutical lectures. And it's like, well, preaching's got to come down to substitute sentences, you know, with synonymous value. depending on what you think the original was all about. Kaiser says on page 151 and elsewhere in his book, the interpreter must make sure that his focus is identical with the author's truth intention. Is that right? The interpreter, the preacher, must make sure his focus is identical with the author's truth intention? Well, in one sense it's right. We certainly don't want a different truth to be arrived at than the author's. See, that's what's beguiling about a sentence like that. Of course, we want the author's truth intention. But our focus should not be restricted or be restrictively identical with the propositions communicated by the author. should not be restrictively identical with the propositions communicated by the author because the speech acts that are performed, the Elohutionary speech acts performed by the original author are not restricted to communicating propositions. Remember, we looked at all the ways in which biblical language is used to question us, to direct us, to cheer us to excite us, to lead us to praise, and so forth and so on. And many of these crisscross and overlap in one sentence to be sure. But I don't want the idea to be communicated that the preacher or interpreter has his focus identical with the propositions of the original author. It should be identical with what? The illocutionary acts of the original author. And in this regard, Kaiser speaks better than when he directs us to consider the question, I like it better when he puts it on 152 this way, what did the first speaker, the author, of these words expect from his audience when they first heard these words? And that's better. Not just truth intention, propositional, but what did he expect from his audience? Part of which is, of course, the propositions they should believe. Page 163. Kaiser asked where the author thought God was leading the original audience who first heard this message. This is even better because he recognizes it's not just what Paul expected from his original audience, but it's what Paul thought God expected from his original audience because God is the original or the ultimate author of scripture. And so let me give you my conclusion in terms of this principalization, redemptive historical tension and debate. I believe the goal of the preacher ought to be to drive home the meaning of the biblical text to the heart of the hearer in a covenantal fashion. His goal should be to drive home the meaning of the biblical text to the heart of the hearer in a covenantal fashion. And I've qualified it as covenantal because that includes, if you remember what a covenant is like in the Bible, historical foundation. This is not divorced from what God has done in history for us. It includes promises and stipulations. or to use Luther's way of putting it, law and gospel. Stipulations as well as promises. And always with a view to blessing or cursing. We should drive home the meaning of the biblical text to the heart of the hearer in a covenantal fashion. That is looking for it to bless or to curse in light of God's history, promise, stipulation. That is to say, the goal should be to reproduce for the contemporary audience the original illocutionary speech acts of the human and divine authors. To reproduce for the contemporary audience the original illocutionary speech acts of the human and divine authors. And so when I preach, what I'm aiming to do is to accomplish in speech the same things that were accomplished in speech by Paul or Isaiah or Moses. And on top of it, to accomplish what God was doing in their speaking. If God was informing them, if God was threatening them, if God was encouraging them, If God was directing them, if God was questioning them, that's what I need to do as the preacher. Now, to accomplish these functions or jobs can call for various formats and styles of public communication. To accomplish these jobs or functions can call for various formats and styles of public communication. Now we move into a whole new field, and that is, how should we communicate with different audiences in order to accomplish those ends, those elocutionary speech acts of the original human and divine authors? And there are different ways of doing that. The way in which a sermon is put together is a matter of communication theory. It's not a matter of the syntax of the original text that you're trying to ape or imitate. Nor is it a matter of some restricted focus to the history of Jesus and his saving deeds. The structure of your sermon is going to be determined by what? Audience? Setting? The time you have? Sometimes a preacher might preach topically. Sometimes he might preach an expository sermon. Sometimes he might preach a more redemptive historical sermon. Sometimes it might be more a meditational thing. Sometimes it's more a lesson. Sometimes it's more an exhortation. And all of that variety, I think we have to leave the door open to as different ways of dealing with the contemporary audience. But what I'm trying to do with my contemporary audience must match what the original author did with his audience. Sometimes I'll do it just the way he did it or very close to it, but there's no reason to think that in every case it's going to parallel it or could parallel it. Moreover, notice as well that not everything intended by a text has to be reproduced at once. It may be that I go to a text and I abstract from it one of the speech acts or two or three of the speech acts that are involved in it. There's nothing to say that we are able or under necessity to reproduce everything in a text every time we preach that text. What will be determined by my emphasis and selection are the needs of my audience. If my audience has just gone through a devastating earthquake and they need comfort, and I go to a text that offers that comfort, but it also offers other things, I can't say anything that would contradict those other speech acts, but there's no reason why I've got to do everything the text does because these people right now need comfort. You see my point? I have an audience that I think needs to hear their gospel pushed very hard. Not just a doctrinal explanation, but they need to come and encounter Jesus. They need to make a decision. Then I may preach a text that is doctrinal in its original setting and not as much confrontational or the offer of eternal life. So you have to look at your audience on the one hand, And then the intentions of the author, authors, on the other hand, and these things determine the size, the length, the methodology, the structure of your sermon. The needs and background, as well as the preparation of the audience, must be factored into your choice of method, outline, and homiletical devices. I'm not embarrassed by the fact that when I preach to high school audiences, I have more humor in my sermons than I do when I give an exposition to, say, seminary students. Although maybe that distinction is not as great as I had hoped. Nevertheless, you get my point, that you have to take communication type things into account when you talk about how you structure your sermon. I just don't buy into these people who say there's one and only one way of preaching. There's one and only one message to preach, and that is the speech acts of the original authors. But the way in which you accomplish that may not look a lot like what they were doing in its original setting. in terms of form or methodology. Listen in conclusion to this section of my lecture, 2 Timothy 4 verses 1-5. I charge you in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus who shall judge the living and the dead and by his appearing in his kingdom. Preach the word, be urgent, in season, out of season. review, exhort, with all love, suffering, and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn unto fables. But you be sober in all things, suffer hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. Well, what would you take from this text? What are you supposed to do? Are all sermons to be evangelistic? No, because he talks about people giving up sound doctrines. Some sermons should be doctrinal sermons. Should all sermons be redemptive historical? Well, he says that we're supposed to be reproving, rebuking, and exhorting as well. The point here, as Paul puts it to Timothy, and the one that I'll leave you with, is preach the word. He doesn't focus on only one of the various functions of preaching or one style of preaching. The important thing is that it's the word that you preach. That will be evangelistic, that will be doctrinal, that will be ethical. It all depends on what the audience needs in your situation. Alright, do you have any questions? about section 12, Roman numeral 12, principalization and expository preaching. If you're in a text where the author's original intention was to communicate doctrine, you're to do that too. You can't, like you said, contradict that. But you can't contradict the doctrine taught. The doctrine taught, but then you come to a... I'm sorry. I was looking to say there may be other things in that text as well as the teaching of doctrine. Okay. And those things can be done in your preaching as well, even though you don't take the time to give the treatise on doctrine that Paul did say. Okay, but say you've got an audience that you know well has consistently been stubborn with a bowing down knee to that truth at times. I mean, maybe a pastor is very well acquainted with a congregation that, you know, resists the idea of whatever. Some doctrinal truth is being resisted. In that text that's intended, let's say, and maybe I'm being too hypothetical, but to instruct, is it appropriate for the preacher to not only instruct, but to give exhortation and a rebuke or a caution about a continual resistance to taking that truth? Sure, because look at the speech act performed by Paul instructing us in, let's just say, the predestination, something that's not all that controversial, I guess. Now, if you have a congregation that's just really chafing against that and you're preaching from a text where Paul is instructing in predestination, part of the speech act is what? To get the audience to believe certain things. And if the preacher, you know, we'll just take for granted he knows that the congregation in general is resisting it, if the preacher knows that that speech act is not, you know, how can I put it, not being followed by the congregation, then he should exhort them, believe these things. That's what Paul's doing here. He wants you to believe these things. And you're wrong not to. Can I add to that? Not add to that, add another scenario? Yeah. Say the preacher knows his congregation is resistant to predestination, and instead of teaching that text and what it teaches about predestination, he skips to the exhortation and reads his passage and then begins to do nothing more than rebuke his congregation for a resistance to the doctrine. I don't understand what you're describing. He hasn't instructed. He hasn't done what that text says. That would be like a parent that spanks the child but never tells the child what the ring spanked for, right? That doesn't make much sense. I don't want to name names, but I know a preacher on the radio who seems to often skip the instructional value of the text given to go right to rebuking and exhorting and challenging and doesn't build, you know, build into the conclusion of that. So we would say that he's unbalanced, that he's unwise. Now, there's a moral problem with that though, isn't it? Is that... All mishandling of the Word of God is a moral problem. Sure. I mean, you could point out to that, I mean, that preacher I mean, is he sinning against that text? Well, if you take it in abstract, that it's isolated from all these qualifying circumstances, if he goes to the applicatory aspect of it, he's not sinning in and of itself. But if that's all he ever does, or if he unwisely tries to make people live a certain way without giving them the instruction that helps them to live that way, then you would say he's not handling the Word of God properly, yeah. and not excusing the history of redemption school of thinking here approach, they are reacting oftentimes against that kind of preaching, where there's such just constant exhortation, you know, moral prescription, without the background of the instruction and other accompanying doctrines that, you know, the law and gospel. And it's an overreaction, but I can see that I'm just getting beat up all the time, not being told about the grace of God and Christ and the promise of the help of the Holy Spirit to help me live the way I should. And it's maybe a pendulum swing to the other end, but I... Now you see why people also go to expository preaching, you see, as the way to attain that balance. I would be more inclined myself if I was going to try to counteract by saying, okay, Since we're kind of riding my own hobby horse as to what I believe or what kinds of expectations or moral matters that I think are relevant, then we're just going to stick very close to the very text itself and annotate verse by verse because then you can't get too off the beam as to the mix that's supposed to be there of doctrine and life and so forth. As I think you can tell, my approach is not to accept any overreaction as the way to handle these problems. Sure. But it's harder, but I think you need to responsibly analyze your audience, analyze the speech acts of the text, and then you've got to come up with a sermon that's appropriate. There's no mechanical way to determine that, and I think it's just artificial to say, be redemptive historical, be expository, be evangelistic. If this goes right in line, the old argument I've always heard is that if you preach through the Bible, then you're eventually going to cover all the problems or needs of the congregation. And that's always seemed wise to me, but I agree with your, you know, there are certain occasions, but I don't want to make a principle out of anything. But it seems to me that, I mean, you mentioned that if you're going to err in that direction, I think that's the way to do it, unless a certain occasion arises where you see a certain need. I mean, would you make a claim that's wrong, or would you say even that's too rigorous? No, as a generalization, I would say, my recommendation to men who are preparing for the ministry through our instruction, by generalization, the wisdom that I have for them would be, for the most part, preach through books of the Bible. You know, take units of books of the Bible. There's a place for treatises, systematic theology instruction from the pulpit as well. But if you do preach through a book of the Bible, you'll find yourself tethered that'll keep you from running, you know, like I always wanted to preach on contemporary events, you know, or how Bill Clinton's a rotten president or something. Well, that worries me. You know, people who may be right, you know, we need a prophetic word to the powers that be, but that isn't all that's in the Bible. And you'll better approximate the balance that is biblical if you just let the Bible dictate the text that you're going to be preaching. But having said that, let's not think that we have gotten, you know, a panacea because the fact of the matter is you're going to have to choose which book you're going to preach through and in what order, right? to say you're going to go, oh no, no, I'm not going to let any human thing, so I'm going to go from cover to cover. The problem is the order of the books of the Bible is not inspired. You know, and so since you can't go from cover to cover and save yourself, then you still are going to have to make some choices and you're right back to where old Dr. Barnston said you have to be. Evaluate your audience, the needs of the situation, so forth and so on. Okay, enough by way of general suggestions about preaching. We've just got so many good things to talk about tonight. I want to move on to Roman numeral 13. And this is the issue of census plenior. Census plenior. S-E-N-S-U-S then P-L-E-N-I-O-R. Terminology I'm sure you're all familiar with now. Meaning fuller sense. of the full sense. I want to talk about sense's plentier and redemptive historical typology versus allegory. Redemptive historical typology. If you look at your outline, you will notice that as we go into these special issues, I've taken as an organizing device ambiguous slogans. First, the analogy of faith, the analogy of scripture. Scripture interprets scripture. We looked at all the ways in which that critter could not be taken and so forth. We looked at principalization as a slogan and now we're looking at sense is plenty or fuller sense or redemptive historical typology. In your textbook, Nicholson defines allegorizing as a kind of interpretation which arbitrarily assigns meanings to the words of the Old Testament, which are foreign to the ideas conveyed by those words in the original Old Testament context. Thus, as he says, and I quote, making the narrative convey ideas different from those intended by the original author." You get this on pages 231 and 261 of Mickelson. Allegorizing is a kind of interpretation that arbitrarily assigns meanings to the Old Testament words which are foreign, foreign to the ideas conveyed by those words in the original Old Testament context. as an aside or a marginal remark, notice that Mickelson and others also use the term allegory for an extended metaphor that is one which has many points of comparison woven together. So allegorizing as a procedure of interpretation is to be distinguished in some authors from allegory where you have an extended metaphor with a number of points of comparison. Those who draw that distinction would grant there are many allegories in the Bible, extended metaphors. I am the vine, you are the branches, and Jesus draws various points of comparison on that allegory. But that's not the way in which we're using the word. Allegorization or allegorizing is a method of interpretation that arbitrarily assigns meanings which are foreign to the original context, different from those intended by the original author. Paul says, tell me you that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? I can't expound the whole book for you, but Paul is referring to those who desire to be, quote, under the law. They want to put themselves legalistically under obligation to keep especially the mosaic rituals and ceremonies in order to be right with God. He says to those, those who desire to be under the law, why don't you listen to the law itself? So now I'm going to use your law against you here, this law that you pride yourself in. Well, it's not just that Paul is going to go to the law per se to counter his opponents. I believe he's going to go to the law and he's going to treat it the way they treat it. So this attempt to steal the thunder of his opponents by saying the law itself tells you not to teach what you're teaching, I think is doubled, that self-refutory way of using it is doubled in that he wants to use an ad hominem argument against their method of interpretation. Now, I'm already leading into my view. It says, Ford has written that Abraham had two sons, one by the handmaid and one by the free woman. Obvious, the son by the handmaid is born after the flesh, but the son by the free woman is born through promise. And then skipping the next line, he says, these women are two covenants. One, Mount Sinai bearing children under bondage, which is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and answers to the Jerusalem that now is. Whoa! Is it your head spinning? Wait a minute now, wait a minute. First of all, what you have here, he says, are two women. The women stand for covenants. The covenants stand for mountains. The mountains, Sinai. stands for the Jerusalem that now is. From a woman to a covenant to a mountain to a present day city. And then you can go on to read the rest of it. Now if we didn't have the line that I had skipped, I dare say we'd look at this and say, how did Paul do that? How did he know that Hagar stands for a mountain, or a covenant, pardon me, and then the covenant stands for a mountain. Or that Sarah stands for one covenant, or a kind of covenant, and then a mountain. I don't think you'd be able to reconstruct his thinking at all. You go back there, try and try and try. You just can't get that out of the text. Here's the key, what I skipped. Paul says, for these things are an allegory. Paul explicitly indicates to the reader that he is resorting to an allegory. Literally in the Greek he says, which things are being allegorized? Which things are being allegorized? And he does this because I think he wants us to be aware and to be warned. that his interpretation is arbitrary in this way. It's not the way he usually interprets the Old Testament. He says, if you want to play allegory games, I'll give you an allegory. But he doesn't dare interpret the Old Testament in this irresponsible way without flagging the fact that that's the game he's playing. He goes, now, these things can be allegorized. You like allegories? I'll give you one. He wants us to be aware that his interpretation is arbitrary and useful only for the unintended homiletical example of a truth that he would establish and does establish on other grounds. He does not try to prove his point from Sarah and Hagar. He rather says, well, I can choose that as an example of what I'm trying to teach you. Which is to say, Paul was using an ad hominem device against the Judaizers who apparently tried to bolster their own views by reading Old Testament texts in some allegorical fashion. Not all evangelical commentaries or commentators will agree with Dr. Bonson in this approach, but I think that is rather evident, because in the first place, the interpretation just hops all over the map, one thing to another to another, which none of which you can get with any kind of exegetical control in the Old Testament. And then the fact that Paul says, I'm allegorizing. If he thought that was the proper way to handle the Old Testament, I don't think he would warn us. Now I'm doing something different. However, seriously intended allegorizing can be found outside the Bible. For instance, in Jewish Midrash commentaries, which tended to look into the tzad, the secret mystical meaning of a text, you find a threefold meaning of biblical text endorsed by the Alexandrian school, which made use of allegorization. By the way, the Alexandrian school was countered by the Antiochan school's insistence that any fuller sense of a prophetic word was inherently one with the historical sense, which would have been originally understood. The Antiochan school said, OK, there may be a fuller sense, but it's got to be part and parcel of the same original sense. It's got to be something that develops out of that original sense that is of the same type, not different from it. Allegorization was perpetuated in medieval exegesis and its alleged fourfold sense of scripture, which required searching for hidden meanings that existed simultaneously in the text. But it was thoroughly repudiated by the reformers. Look at the Westminster Confession, Chapter 1, Section 9, which insists that the sense of Scripture is one. Not four, not three, not multiple. It's one. Indeed, Luther insisted that the Holy Spirit's words, quote, can have no more than one simplest sense. And when Luther looked at the medieval allegories, he said they're not worth dirt. They're empty speculation. They're absurd, invented rags. I like this one. Quote, the scum of scripture, he called them. They said they degenerate into a monkey game. Yeah, but how do you feel about it, Luther? I'd say it's rather clear. I mean, not just from Luther, but from others too. The reformers despised allegorizing. They despise multiple meaning, hidden meaning that you have to bring out of the text. As Kaiser clearly sees, the problem with allegorizing is that it's not a reproducible method of studying the Bible. I want you to get that language in your notes. The problem with allegorizing is that it's not a reproducible method of studying the Bible, because external meanings are imported from outside the text under consideration. Because the text is not controlling this, but meanings outside the text are being imported, you can't reproduce this method for anybody. You can't teach it to anybody. To use the example that I've tried on you before, you take ten people and teach them allegorizing of the Bible and you can't get any prediction or uniformity as to what they'll do with the text that's a new one for all of them. I mean, you can have the Pope allegorize something, and then they'll all go to that text and know how to follow the Pope's lead. But try to teach them principles, and then just give them a brand new text without any guidance and say, OK, now all go to your separate rooms and come back in a half hour and tell us what the allegorical meaning is. You're not going to get uniformity and predictability out of that. It's not a reproducible method. Kaiser says this on page 205. A common illustration of illegitimate interpretation that people would call allegorizing is taking Rahab's scarlet cord in the Old Testament as foreshadowing the blood of Christ by which were delivered from destruction. Alright? Rahab would be destroyed had it not been for the scarlet cord that was hung out her window by which the Jews saw which house not to destroy on the wall. so forth. And people say, the blood of Jesus is red, the cord was scarlet, it saved her from destruction, the blood of Jesus saves us from destruction. Presto, there is the meaning of the text in its fuller sense. Now, sadly, we've got to use that as a touchstone for, you know, like, is your interpretation like this Rahab's scarlet cord? That is, you're supposed to see the absurdity in that, but in our day and age, I still have people who defend that and say, yeah, well, I think that probably is, you know, part of the deep meaning of what that text is in its biblical, you know, redemptive historical context. However, I'm going to assume that most even redemptive historical advocates are embarrassed by that kind of thing. What always concerned me in seminary, I had a homiletics professor who was well known in this country for redemptive historical preaching and was quite a public speaker. I mean, I don't want to take anything away from his abilities that way, and certainly his intentions are good. But as he would try to teach us to preach in a redemptive historical fashion, he would repudiate Rahab's scar with cord and then when you go on to give an example of how you're supposed to preach in a redemptive historical way I couldn't tell the difference. I mean, I'd say I don't know why I mean he preached the sermon in chapel once that had Moses uprooting a tree and putting it into the bitter waters of Mara and they turned sweet and the tree as you know could be understood as the cross of Christ. He was hung on a tree as Peter tells us And it's the cross of Christ that takes the bitterness out of our lives. Well, of course, the bottom line is true. The cross of Christ takes the bitterness out of our lives, so forth and so on. I don't think he had his finger on the right text, though, when he was trying to preach that. I just don't see how the tree thrown into the bitter waters of Mara teaches that. And in class, then he was asked about that. How is that different from the method of Rahab's scarlet cord? And I mean, maybe others are more brilliant than poor Dr. Bonson, and they caught it, but I couldn't see that he had an answer for that. He gave an answer, but I still said, ah, there's really no difference there. So we'll take Rahab's Charlotte Court as an example of what you're not supposed to do, because even somebody that I think is questionable in some of the methods of redemptive historical preaching himself would say, we don't want to do the Rahab's Charlotte Court. But I want to give you a couple of examples of allegorizing from Kaiser. This is from pages 198 and 199 of his textbook. And these are buttes. Wow. He says that Here's an example of a confused exegesis from 2 Kings 4 verses 1-7 which tells of the seminarian's widow who realized that she was now unable to meet her numerous debts, perhaps tuition bills that she couldn't pay. You will remember that probably Elisha instructed her first to gather all the empty vessels she could borrow from her neighbors Then she was to shut the door of her house and begin to fill them all from what was left in the jar of oil she owned. The text records that the oil did not stop. It did not stop until the last vessel was filled. And Kaiser says, I have to believe him, he's not making this up. Now, a message I once heard on this passage stressed the point that to the degree that we are in a condition of being empty of self, the Holy Spirit is accordingly enabled to fill us with himself. further since oil is always a symbol of the Holy Spirit, it should be noticed that the flow of the Holy Spirit was not stopped until the last empty vessel was filled." Sounds good to me. Because he adds at the end here that he heard some people say at the end that the story goes on. that she was to take the oil and sell it, and so obviously we're supposed to sell the oil and pay our bills. Such a subjective use of narrative must fall into the category of spiritualizing or allegorizing rather than exegeting a text. And then he goes into another one, this one's historical, anybody can check this one, from Origins work on Exodus 1.22 to 2.10. And I'll read Kaiser. He says, with bold strokes, Origen proclaimed that Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, represented the devil, while the male and female children of the Hebrews represented the rational and animal faculties of mankind. Pharaoh wished to destroy all the males, that is, the seeds of rationality and spiritual science through which the soul tends to, and tends to seek heavenly things. However, he wished to preserve all the females alive, that is, all those animal propensities of man through which he becomes carnal and devilish. Thus, wherever men live in luxury, banqueting, pleasures, and sensual gratifications, one can be assured that there the king of Egypt has slain all the males and preserved all the females alive. I mean, don't you just want to scream? This is horrible. And he says, the silliness can be carried one step further. Pharaoh's daughter might represent the church, which was gathered from among the Gentiles. Although she had an impious and iniquitous father, the psalmist said of her, hearken, O daughter, and consider inclined thine ear. Forget also thine own people and thy father's house. So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty. Psalm 45. So there you have it. The church renounces the iniquity of its father being gathered from the Gentiles. This is what Pharaoh's daughter did, so she is a type of the church. Her coming to the waters to bathe was tantamount to coming to the baptismal font that she might be washed from the sins which she had contracted in her father's house. Whoa! Yeah, right. And thus ended the lesson. That's enough for Benediction to go home. I read it in the Living Christian Life, actually. Put the Aristotle title in there, too. Yeah. So he says, Kaiser's point is that the point of our message must be derived directly from the text being examined. Now, when you look at examples of that nature, I don't think you have any trouble saying, I don't want to allegorize. In fact, I think if I had to convince people that's not good interpretation of the Bible, we'd be here a lot longer and I'm not sure how much progress I can make. I'm just going to assume that you can see in those illustrations the plural misuse of the Bible. Of course, what I'm going to be asking in a little while is, how is that different from what McCartney endorses as redemptive historical typology? I can give you some answers. I don't want to say that he's as silly, but in terms of reproducible method, We have to ask ourselves some serious questions. There are people who reject Rahab's scarlet cord and turn right around and do other things that, at least to this interpreter, look quite like Rahab's scarlet cord interpretation. Anyway, over against allegorizing and multiple-meaning approaches to hermeneutics, Kaiser insists on grammatical, historical interpretation. which aims to ascertain the specific usage of words employed by the writer on the assumption that words and sentences can have only one signification and one and the same connection. Now he says signification, but I think he means in the sense, sense, as one sense rather than signification.