| This
paper was given at "The Ritter Lecture for 1987" at the
Evangelical School of Theology in Myerstown, Pennsylvania. It is
reproduced, with permission, in our book, The Case for Jesus the
Messiah, which Dr. Kaiser co-authored.)
The Promise of Isaiah 7:14 and the Single-Meaning
Hermeneutic [Interpretation]
"Probably no single passage of
the Old Testament has been so variously interpreted or has given
rise to so much controversy as the prophecy contained in these
verses (surrounding Isaiah 7:14).’’1
Almost every interpreter of this text
echoes a similar conclusion; in fact, so divergent are the views and
so intractable are the component parts of the historical events that
make up the background for this text that Brevard S. Childs opined,
"It seems unlikely that a satisfactory historical solution will
be forthcoming without fresh extra-biblical evidence."2
I. The Hermeneutical Issues
But the most severe problem of all
revolves around the chronological data pertaining to the birth,
reign and the northern Israel and Assyrian synchronisms of the
Judean King Hezekiah. H. H. Rowley, that nestor of Old Testament
bibliography, exclaimed: "This is one of the most tangled
problems of the chronology of the monarchy, and an extraordinary
variety of dates for the reign of Hezekiah will be found amongst
scholars."3
As if all of this were not enough to exacerbate
matters, total pandemonium is introduced when the issue of the dual
nature of biblical revelation is introduced, i.e. Scripture is at
once a divine and human product. For many, this dual authorship of
the text of Scripture would seem to imply that a given passage could
have more than one meaning or alternatively, a meaning known only to
God and distinct from that known by the author of the text.
According to this evangelically popular way of handling predictive
passages in the Old Testament, the human author could have a meaning
which was restricted to the events proximate to his own day while
God, the divine author of the text, could transcend those values
with meanings which went far beyond or even dramatically differed
from that of the human authors.
Isaiah 7:14 becomes a crux interpretum in
this exceedingly important, but difficult, debate. Briefly stated,
the issue is this: what meaning did Isaiah and God intend for Ahaz
when they gave the declaration of Isaiah 7:14 and how does that
meaning relate, if at all, to the meaning Matthew derived from that
same text, presumably God’s fuller meaning, when he pointed it
towards the Messiah in Matthew 1:23?
The hermeneutical case of Protestant orthodoxy, as
I understood it is this:
God’s meaning and
revelatory-intention in any passage of Scripture may be accurately
and confidently ascertained only by studying the verbal meanings of
the divinely delegated and inspired human writers…. That single,
original verbal meaning of the human author may be ascertained by
heeding the usual literary conventions of history, culture, grammar,
syntax, and accumulated theological context.4
No definition of interpretation could
be more fundamental than this: To interpret we must in every case
reproduce the sense the Scriptural writer intended for his own
words. The first step in the interpretive process is to link
only those ideas with the author’s language that he connected with
them.5
Very few evangelicals object to these
definitions: divine meanings can be expressed in human words. But
that agreement quickly dissolves when this question is asked:
"Could God see or intend a sense in a particular text (which
is) separate and different from that conceived or intended by
his human instrument?"6 The key words here are
"separate" and "different," for this certainly
would introduce double or multiple meanings.
No one denies that texts may
legitimately have consequent extensions into later times, cultures
and settings. Normally we refer to these extensions of the single
meaning of the text as applications, or implications of the general
principle (or the universal term) that comes from the author’s
single meaning. The point where our differences arise comes when we
ask if the extension of that meaning, which we obtain from
exercising the normal rules of grammar, must be applied by a
continuous extension and from an application of something which is
in the same sense, or may the implications announced also be different
and separate from the grammatico-historical meanings?7
When this "consequent
sense" is a different and an additional meaning,
allegedly intended only by God, but expressed in words of the author
without the author’s awareness of their meaning, then we do have
an instance of sensus plenior. Raymond Brown8 modified his
earlier definition of sensus plenior by affirming:
Let us apply the term sensus
plenior to that meaning of his text which by normal rules of
exegesis would not have been within his awareness or intention but
which by other criteria we can determine as having been intended
by God…. We insist that a vague consciousness of this richer
meaning may or may not have been present, and that such vague
consciousness has no integral place in the definition of the sensus
plenior either as necessary or as inadmissible.
Surely Brown places this meaning on a different
level and uses separate criteria from those exercised in "the
normal rules of exegesis." What could these separate criteria
be? They turn out to be threefold: 1) the development of God’s
further revelation, 2) the New Testament use of the Old Testament
tests, and for Catholic exegesis 3) the tradition and magisterium
of the Church and the church fathers’ use of Scripture. The
only caveat introduced in the application of these three criteria is
this: the fuller sense must not distort or contradict the obvious
literal sense of the text; there must be a general resemblance
between the fuller and the obvious literal sense which can be
checked by comparing this fuller sense with the general direction of
Scripture as spelled out in its literal sense.
Now we have very little debate with those who like
Professor Donald A. Hagner would go just this far:
To be aware of sensus plenior is to
realize that there is the possibility of more significance to
an Old Testament passage than was consciously apparent to the
original author…."9
But when Hagner continues:
"…and more than can be gained by strict grammatic or
historical exegesis," we must demur. The mistake here becomes
clearly stated when Vern Poythress argues on the analogy of the same
words being used by two different speakers in separate speeches. He
correctly concluded that the same words said by two human authors
may yield two separate interpretations.10 But he appears to stumble
when he applies this analogy to Scripture and presses his argument
into the mystery of the tri-unity of the Godhead. What the Son says,
the Father also says by speaking through him as does the Holy
Spirit, explains Poythress. He then applies this truth to the
divine/human paradigm of Scripture:
In Christ’s being, there is no
pure mathematical identity of divine persons or identity of two
natures, but harmony. [This we agree with.] The result is that
there is no pure mathematical identity in the interpretative
product. That is, we cannot in a pure way analyze simply what the
words mean as (for instance) proceeding from the human nature of
Christ, and then say that precisely that, no more, no less, is the
exhaustive interpretation of his words.11
What must we believe, then, about the success of
divine revelation in Scripture? Are we not reduced on this view to
adopting either: a) a mechanical view of inspiration in which the
author is unwittingly used by God to say and record things which
surpass any legitimate views of human instrumentality, or b) a new
view of biblical authority which consistently attributes divine
authorization for what can be garnered from the whole of
Scripture, while the parts may only represent the viewpoint
of the human author or, at least, a subspecies of divine
authority’?
Such a differentiation between the
levels of authority has already appeared in the evangelical essay by
Raju D. Kunjummen. Using the ideal of "intrinsic genre"
found in E. D. Hirsch,12 ("that sense of the whole by means of
which an interpreter can correctly understand any part of its
determinacy"), Kunjummen also appears to argue for more on the
basis of this concept than he should. Indeed, we ourselves have also
affirmed, "No meaning of a text is complete until the
interpreter has heard the total single intention of the
author."13
But we cannot agree with Kunjummen, who is even
bolder than Poythress. Said he:
The idea of confluence in authorial
intention is not a biblical one, though it may be a Thomistic one.
Coppens has stated that some object of sensus plenior because
it is contrary to the Thomistic notion of the inspiration whereby
Scripture and all its meanings are the result of the joint operation
of God and His instrument….’ This it seems that some
evangelicals [apparently this writer] begin with a construct of
scholastic philosophy and then attempt to accommodate the phenomena
of biblical revelation to it.14
This search for normativeness and
authority which in some way is at least partially free and
autonomous from the human author who stood in the council of God and
originally received that revelation from God is illustrated in the
Jesuit Scholar Norbert Lohfink. As we have recorded elsewhere,15
Lohfink rested his case for biblical authority on what the bible as
a whole taught. (Previously he had restricted it to what the
final redactor of the text taught.16 Thus for him, in addition to
the original sense of the biblical statement there was something
above, behind, and beyond what the individual contexts of the bible
had to say.
But what could the whole or unity of Scripture
teach which could not be found in its parts and individual authors?
Lohfink, trapped by his own logic, fled to a "fuller
sense" intended by God; yes, a sensus plenior. However,
Bruce Vawter brilliantly slammed the door shut on sensus
plenior:
If this fuller or deeper meaning was
reserved by God to Himself and did not enter the writer’s purview
at all, do we not postulate a Biblical word effected outside the
control of the human author’s will and judgment… and therefore
not produced through a truly human instrumentality?... does
not the acceptance of a sensus plenior deprive this alleged
scriptural sense of one of its essential elements, (and) to that
extent… it cannot be called scriptural at all?17
Kunjummen opposes Vawter’s
contention that "whatever has been produced apart from the will
and judgment… of the human author… has not been brought about
precisely through human instrumentality."18 Instead Kunjummen
found that "Scriptural evidence seems to militate against an
emphasis which inseparably links human will and judgment to
prophetic instrumentality or the human authorship of
Scripture."19 II Peter 1:21, in his view, spoke against the
active function of the writer’s will in the production of the
Scripture. Kunjummen focussed on the prophet’s pheromenoi, "being
borne along" by the Holy Spirit, and therefore he stressed the
passivity of the writer’s involvement.
This makes Peter’s point somewhat lopsided. He
had said in II Peter 1:19-21:
We have also a more sure word of
prophecy; whereunto you do well that you take heed, as to a light
shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star
arise in hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture
is [a matter] of one’s own loosing [my translation of epiluseos].
For prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but Holy
men of God spoke as they were moved [borne along] by the Holy
Spirit.
Peter’s point is not that the
prophets were passive or that their "more sure word of
prophecy" was a case of their speaking better than they knew.
As we have already argued elsewhere: Had Peter’s logic been,
"Give heed to the light shining in a dark place because no
prophet understood or could even explain what he had said [i.e.
making epiluseos mean "explanation" or
"interpretation" since that meaning does occur in Mark
4:34] but he wrote as he was carried along by the Holy Spirit, then
that "light" would have been darkness. How could any,
including the prophet, then, have given heed to such an enigmatic
word?… Had that communicating ability (of the prophets) not been
the case, we would have been forced to ask for a second
miracle—the inspiration of the interpreter.20
The substantive epilusis in its classical
usage means a "freeing, loosing" and only secondarily did
it come to mean "to explain, unfold, interpret," as in
Mark 4:34. Even if this secondary meaning were intended by Peter
here, would not even the advocates who claim that the prophets were
passive or that they at times "wrote better than they
knew" hesitate to say this about all prophetic writings?
However, that appears to be the scope of this Petrine word, for the
Church is called upon to give heed to this "more sure word of
prophecy" as a "light shining in a dark place." The
"light" offered to the modern readers of the prophecies
that came in "old time" was possible because God had
spoken by these "holy men of God."
What Peter denies is that the product
of Scripture may be attributed solely "to the will of
man." The initiative, the source, and content of what was
revealed to the prophets belonged distinctively to God. But to then
argue with Kunjummen that "Human instrumentality in delivering
the word of God is frequently depicted in such a way that it does
not demand the full participation of the speaker’s will and
judgement"21 clearly exceeds the biblical data.
In fact, that nexus of the divine
source and the human instrument is so close that Paul describes it
in I Corinthians 2:6-16 as a sharing of "the deep things of
God,"’ which "things were freely given to (the apostles
and prophets) by God." These "deep things of God"
were so intimately united with the human authors that there was a veritable
living assimilation of the truth ‘taught’ by the Holy Spirit
(v. 13). Since Paul chose to use the word "taught" (didaktos),
all mechanical or totally passive ideas of revelation are
certainly excluded. Moreover, by "combining spiritual things
with spiritual," the apostle teaches us that his
Spirit-revealed truths were also clothed in Spirit-taught language,
thereby combining what was spiritual in substance with what was
spiritual in verbal form.22
We conclude, therefore, that it is
improper to erect a dual meaning or a multi-tiered level of
"readings" to a prophetic text like Isaiah 7:14. We are,
however, willing to grant that in addition to what is "in"
a text, many texts will sustain "relations" 23 to earlier
and, yes, even to later texts. However, recognition of the fact that
the subject to which a text contributes is almost always
larger than any particular contribution to that subject is not
tantamount to saying that "things partially equal to the
same thing are equal to each other." This would be to turn
exegesis into the systematic theology: a confusion all too
frequently evident in many evangelical methodologies.
(Documentation will be found at the end of Part
2.) |
