Robert Jenson on the Reading the OT

I was back in the states for two weeks on vacation and the only talk I listened to during that two weeks was this one. My brother was listening to it and I sat along. Enjoyed it. It was my first time listening to Robert Jenson, but it will not be my last.

Food for Thought: Douglass Green, Christotelic Aproach and NT use of OT

Earlier this month Westminster theological seminary released Douglass Green an OT professor who had served there for 22 years previously because of his "christotelic" approach of reading the OT, specifically exemplified in this paper that interprets Ps 23. as a messianic psalm (but not as you might normally imagine messianic). 

I like that Westminster admits this is not a heretical view but graciously says it is one that will just not fit within their boundaries, I also like that they put up Green's hermeneutical views as well as other staff's who contrast/challenge his. I do not like that they chose to dismiss an employee after 22 years for this.

Read through Green's paper on ps.23 (link above)....would you ask someone to leave your school, pastoral staff or institution after writing that??


Here is a good explanation of "christotelic interpretation" and why some react to the extreme usage of christotelic interpreting of the OT written by William B. Evans a former classmate of Douglass Green at WTS

What are the characteristics of christotelic interpretation?

First, there is a rejection of grammatical-historical interpretation as the only legitimate hermeneutical approach to Scripture. Yes, they say, it is important to understand the biblical text in its original linguistic and historical context, but we can’t stop there. Grammatical-historical interpretation is a creature of modernity, and earlier Christian interpreters were not tied to it—the NT writers sometimes interpret OT texts in ways that likely would not have occurred to Isaiah or Hosea. Also, grammatical-historical interpretation asks what the text would have meant to the original human author, but the Bible is also divinely inspired and our interpretation must take this divine origin and perspective into account as well.

History of Interpreting the Bible

While I was in Bangladesh for the past two weeks I watched this video by Walt Russell from Biola University on the "the history of interpretation". It is a good basic run through of the history of hermeneutics and how it affects us as readers of the Bible today.


You can go the youtube page for the teaching and find the whole course that it is a part of on there as well.

Weekly Talk- Hays on the Gospels teaching us how to read the OT

This is a great talk by Richard Hays, dean of duke divinity, on how the gospels teach us to read the OT. This is one of the last talks at the end of a conference, so if you like it there are more on youtube.

My favorite thing about this talk is how he clearly summarizes the unique and distinct aspects of each gospel. It is worth listening just to hear his summary and thoughts about each gospel.

Hermeneutics of the Open Ear

I read a good blog yesterday from a link on the gospel coalitions website (http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/09/a-hermeneutics-of-the-open-ear)

I really enjoyed the below quoted lines and I feel like they capture what I want my students in our Bible School to come away with:

"We shouldn’t idealize premodern interpretation of Scripture. We’ve learned a lot about ancient languages, history, and culture over the past few centuries, and that new information has immeasurably deepened our understanding of the Bible. Yet, as more and more theologians have discovered, patristic and medieval commentators knew things that we have forgotten, much to our detriment. 

They knew that biblical hermeneutics was a hermeneutics of the open ear. They trained themselves to be attuned to every inflection of God’s voice, to ponder the slightest twist of phrase, to hear every reverberation and overtone of Scripture’s music. A single verse of the Psalms could lead Augustine through the prophets to the gospels and epistles, with a side tour of the Song of Songs along the way."