Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged by Barry E. Horner

Author:Barry E. Horner [Horner, Barry E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Eschatology, General, Religion, Middle East, Biblical Commentary, Christian Theology, History
ISBN: 9780805446272
Google: w3dXiCv07csC
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2007-07-15T21:06:50+00:00

A Misguided Christocentric Hermeneutic

In the foregoing it should be noted that the anti-Judaic or supercessionist hermeneutic of Wright, Chapman, Sizer, Motyer, and Robertson is declared to be founded on a supremely Christocentric reinterpretation of the OT, even as Ladd propounded. In this view, a Judeo-centric eschatology is not sufficiently Christocentric since it is impeded by a more literal understanding of OT Judaism whereby its shadows are allowed to obscure the reality of Christ. In response it simply needs to be pointed out that the risen, glorified Christ never declared that His Jewishness would ever be abandoned, though a supercessionist hermeneutic would tend to require this. On the Emmaus road the two Jewish disciples were enthralled when “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He [Jesus] explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27). Here was no imposition of Himself on Scripture, no reinterpretation of Scripture, but rather Jesus' fulfillment of Scripture at every hand which the disciples embraced, not as radically new, but rather as wonderfully fulfilling in terms of the promises of the OT.

We need to consider with closer scrutiny the extent to which Jesus Christ ought to be dominant in the interpretation of biblical eschatology as an overriding hermeneutical principle. Some would emphatically suggest that the more we “see only Jesus,” even in the OT, the more we are keeping to the heart of the Bible. So this Christocentricity in interpreting the OT, even as accentuated by Reformed hermeneutics, has to be right. But I must carefully assert, in upholding a Trinitarian perspective with regard to the headship of the Father, that it is possible for such an understanding of Christocentricity to be misguided.27 This is not an insignificant point since it is common today, especially within Reformed Christianity as Thomas Smail pointed out in The Forgotten Father, for an incorrect prominence to be given to Jesus Christ (as though impossible to challenge) that results in biblical distortion.28 For this reason, I believe Chapman, Sizer, Motyer, Robertson, and others take a legitimate Christological interpretive principle and give it a disproportionate primacy and driving emphasis. Bernard Ramm provided a more balanced approach when he recommended four principles for the interpretation of the prophetic segments of Scripture. The third was, “The interpreter should take the literal meaning of a prophetic passage as his limiting or controlling guide,” and the fourth, “The centrality of Jesus Christ must be kept in mind in all prophetic interpretation.”29

Steve Motyer provides an example of this radical christocentricity. His perspective represents a variation of the more common type of supercessionism in which Jesus Christ replaces national Israel rather than the church. But the end result is identical, that is, the nullification of Jewish nationality and territory:

The view for which I am arguing in this paper does not see the church as the “replacement” for Israel, but sees Jesus in this role. ...In the opening chapters of his Gospel, Matthew deliberately tells the story of Jesus' birth, baptism, temptations and entry into ministry in such a way that Jesus' history replays the Exodus history of Israel.

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