more than he was able to bear. The temporary provisions are to be eliminated from the eternal principles and the divine ideals. (3) The Scriptures are an organic whole, the Gospel of the Messiah is the fulfilment of the Old Testament, the Messiah and His kingdom the key to the whole. These were fruitful principles and ought to have guided the Church in all time and preserved it from manifold errors. The apostles and their disciples in the New Testament use the methods of the Lord Jesus rather than those of the men of their time. The New Testament writers differ among themselves in the tendencies of their thought. St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude, St. Matthew, and St. Mark incline to use the Haggada method; St. Stephen, St. Paul, and St. Luke to the more learned Halacha method; St. John and the Epistle to the Hebrews to the Sodh or allegorical method; but in them all, the methods of the Lord Jesus prevail over the other methods and ennoble them. 1. The Haggada is used by St. Peter when he cites Scripture 1 with reference to the case of Judas. The propriety is in the parallelism of the cases of the doom of the traitor and persecutor. The Gospel of Matthew makes similar uses of Holy Scripture and applies it to the situation of Jesus. There is here a parallelism of circumstances, in which the ancient prophecies illustrate the descent of Jesus into Egypt and the lamentation at Bethlehem, by the descent of Israel into Egypt and the wars that desolated Judea. There is no prediction in these prophecies, or interpretation of them by the evangelist as prediction; but the association of the passages with Jesus has its propriety in that He is conceived to be the Messiah, in whom the fortunes. of Israel are involved. "Here is incorrectness of form with truth of thought."4 The Epistle of St. James 5 uses by preference what has been called the moral Haggada. To maintain his proposition that faith without works is dead, he cites the examples of Abraham and Rahab. So he refers to the patience of Job and the fervent 1 Cf. Acts 120; Ps. 6925, 1098. 2 Mt. 313-18. 8 Hos. 111; Jer. 3115. 4 Tholuck, Alt. Test. in N. T., 6te Aufl., Gotha, 1868, p. 44. prayers of Elijah.1 St. Paul also uses the Haggada in his citatior of Ps. 194, to illustrate the going forth of the gospel to the ends of the earth,2 and of Deut. 3011 seq., to illustrate the truth that the word of the gospel was nigh in the preaching of the apostles, in the faith of the heart, and in the confession of the mouth. The Epistle to the Hebrews uses it especially in calling the roll of the heroes of faith. There are also a few examples in the New Testament of the use of legends and fables 5 for purposes of illustration, which do not commit the authors to their historical truthfulness. 2. The Halacha method is used by St. Paul arguing from the less to the greater; 6 from analogy; from general to particular; from the combination of passages to prove the corruption of sin.9 The Halacha method is also used by St. James to prove his point that whoso transgresseth one of the laws is guilty of all,10 by citing the general law,11 and the special commands. 12 3. The allegorical method is used by St. Paul, where Hagar and Sara are taken to represent the Pharisee and the Christian,18 and where he uses the water from the rock as an allegory of Christ.14 Here the apostle sees a principle clothed in the history. He uses it to illustrate and enforce an analogous case where the principle applies. As Tholuck says, "The apostle is like one who has seen a finished picture and then afterwards sees in the sketch of it more than we do who have only the sketch." 15 Is it not rather with the sunlight of prophetic insight he sees into the essential features of the ancient histories, whereas to us they are in the obscurities of candlelight? He tells us more about them than we can see even with his guidance. It is in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the allegorical method has its greatest display in the New Testament. St. Paul uses it occasionally, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews constantly. As Tholuck says, "The literary character of Paul is Talmudic 1 Jas. 511. 17. 4 Heb. 11. 2 Rom. 1018. 8 Rom. 106-10 8 Rom. 48 seq. from Gen. 156, Ps. 321-2; 1 Cor. 1421 req. from Is. 2811-12. 10 Jas. 28-13. 15 In l.c., p. 37. and dialectic, the Epistle to the Hebrews is Hellenistic and rhetorical."1 Thus the Sabbath of the Old Testament is used to allegorize the Sabbath rest2 at the end of the world. The person and office of Melchizedek are used to allegorize the Messianic high-priest, and there is an allegory in the etymology of the names Salem and Melchizedek. Here, according to Riehm, the author "leaves out of consideration the historical meaning of Old Testament passages, and only sees the higher prophetic meaning which belongs to them on account of their ideal contents."4 8 6 The Apocalypse uses the allegorical method of symbolism in the number of the beast, 666,5 the sun-clad woman, the river Euphrates, the city of Babylon, the place Harmageddon, the prophetic numbers of Daniel 10 and the recombination of ancient prophecies,11 and the descriptions of Paradise. 12 There are many who in our times seek to explain away the allegorical interpretation, as used in the New Testament, as unbecoming to Jesus and His apostles. These forget that it was just this allegorical method, with all its abuses, that has been chiefly employed in the Synagogue and in the Church for ages by the ablest and most pious of her interpreters. Thus Bishop Lightfoot reproves such persons: 13 "We need not fear to allow that Saint Paul's mode of teaching here is colored by his early education in the rabbinical schools. It were as unreasonable to stake the apostle's inspiration on the turn of a metaphor or the character of an illustration or the form of an argument, as on purity of diction. No one now thinks of maintaining that the language of the inspired writers reaches the classical standard of correctness and elegance, though at one time it was held almost a heresy to deny this. A treasure contained in earthen vessels,' 'strength made perfect in weakness,' 'rudeness in speech, yet not in knowledge,' such is the far nobler conception of inspired teaching, which we may gather from the apostle's own language. And this language we should do well to bear in mind. But, on the other hand, it were sheer dogmatism to set up the 6 Rev. 121 seq.. 10 Rev. 126, 135. 12 Gen. 28 seq.. 8 Rev. 175, 182. 3 Heb. 7. 9 Rev. 1616. 7 Rev. 1612. 11 Rev. 21, 22; Ezek. 33-38; Dan. 79 seq., 12; Is. 258, 6517 seg.. 18 Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, Andover, 1870, p. 370. intellectual standard of our own age or country as an infallible rule. The power of allegory has been differently felt in different ages, as it is differently felt at any one time by diverse nations. Analogy, allegory, metaphor - by what boundaries are these separated, the one from the other? What is true or false, correct or incorrect, as an analogy, or an allegory? What argumentative force must be assigned to either? We should at least be prepared with an answer to these questions, before we venture to sit in judgment on any individual case." 4. The apostles were taught by Jesus to consider the old covenant as a whole; to see it as a shadow, type, and preparatory dispensation with reference to the new covenant; to regard the substance and disregard the form. Hence under the further guidance of the Holy Spirit they eliminated the temporal, local, and circumstantial forms of the old covenant, and gained the universal, eternal, and essential substance; and this they applied to the circumstances of the new covenant, of which they were called to be the expounders. They interpreted in accordance with the mind of the reigning Christ as Jesus had interpreted in accordance with the mind of His Father. In Thus St. Peter on the day of Pentecost1 grasps the situation and sees in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit the inauguration of the new dispensation described by the prophet Joel.2 his epistle he applies the Sinaitic covenant to the new covenant relations. This was from the sense of the unity of both covenants in Christ, and the fulfilment of the earlier in the later. So St. Paul goes back of the law of Sinai to the Abrahamic covenant and finds that all believers are the true children of Abraham. 5 He represents the ancient institutions as "a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ's."6 And so the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews finds the entire system of Levitical priesthood, purification, and offerings fulfilled in Christ and His ministry, so that the form is thrown off now that the "very image" of these things has been made manifest. The author of the Apocalypse gathers up the substance of unfulfilled prophecy and attaches it to the second advent of Jesus Christ. 1 Acts 216 seq., 2 Joel 31 seq. (228 seq.). 81 Pet. 29 seq., 4 Ex. 19. 7 Heb. 101 seq.. This organic living method of interpretation of Jesus and His apostles is the true Christian method. The errors in the history of exegesis have sprung up to the right and the left of it. IV. INTERPRETATION OF THE FATHERS AND SCHOOLMEN In the ancient Church the methods of exegesis1 of the Palestinian and Hellenistic Jews, as well as those of Jesus and His apostles, were reproduced. The strife of the various elements that entered into the apostolic Church is clearly to be seen in the New Testament itself.2 The Palestinian methods were represented in the Ebionites and the Jewish-Christian tendency that passed over into the Church. Thus Papias, in his naïve way, appeals to the elders, Aristion, the Presbyter John, and others, rather than to the New Testament, to establish his premillenarianism.3 The Clementine pseudepigraph represents the apostle Peter in conflict with Simon Magus, as the embodiment of Church authority over against Gnosticism. St. Peter, speaking of the prophetic writings, is made to say: "Which things were indeed plainly spoken, but are not plainly written; so much so that when they are read they cannot be understood without an expounder, on account of the sin which has grown up with men." 4 Tertullian also says: "Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. . . . The natural order of things would require that this point should. be first proposed, which is now the only one which we must discuss: With whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong? From what, and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule, by which men become Christians?' For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and 1 For the history of exegesis in the Christian Church, see Rosenmüller, Historia interpretationis librorum sacrorum in Ecclesia Christiana, 5 Tom., Hildburghusæ, 1795-1814, but especially Klausen, Hermeneutik des Neuen Testaments, Leipzig, 1841, and Samuel Davidson, Sacred Hermeneutics, Edin., 1843; M. S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics, 2d ed., 1885. 2 Acts 15; 1 Cor. 3; Gal. 2; 1 Tim. 1; Jas. 2; Rev. 2. 3 Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., III. 39. 4 Recognitions, I. Chap. XXI. |