Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Walton on typology


I'm going to comment on this article because it's germane to the current controversy over Christotelism:


BTW, it's striking that this article was published in the Master's Seminary Journal. Surely Walton's dismissive approach to prophetic or apocalyptic symbolism is wildly at variance with dispensation hermeneutics. It's also ironic that this was published in the Master's Seminary Journal a year after he published his commentary on Genesis.  

By “objectivity” we do not refer to absolute objectivity that allows the interpreter to repress or subordinate culture and perspective totally. We only refer to the procedures that assume that the author is a competent communicator and capable of being understood. In recent terminology we might refer to author orientation (objective) or reader orientation (subjective) with a text orientation able to go in either direction.

i) This involves a false dichotomy. It's true that reader-response theory is radically subjective–where the text means whatever any given reader imputes to the text. For the reader's duty is to ascertain what the author meant, not substitute his own meaning for the author's. It's not the reader's prerogative to create meaning, but discern meaning.

ii) That, however, doesn't mean we can eliminate audiencial understanding. Authors normally write to be understood. Communication involves predicting how your words will be taken. An author writes with a particular kind of reader in mind. He has expectations for the reader. Authors try to write in terms comprehensible to the reader. 

That's why hermeneutics concerns itself with the implied reader. What the author meant is intertwined with what he meant it to mean to the implied reader. In the nature of the case, communication is a two-way street. 

Typology is closest to allegory and perhaps should be treated first. Typology is the identification of a relationship of correspondence between New and Old Testament events or people, based on a conviction that there is a pattern being worked out in the plan of God. Since this correlation is not identifiable until both type and antitype exist, typology is always a function of hindsight. One thing is never identified as a type of something to come. Only after the latter has come can the correspondence be proclaimed. As a result, one will never find confirmation of the typological value of the type in its initial context. This creates a real problem for hermeneutics which maintains that achieving the results of typology depends on an analysis of the context.

i) To begin with, the past/future relation isn't confined to typology. You have the same past/future relation in reference to prophecy.

ii) In addition, it concerns a spatial as well as temporal relation. What is the text about? The world outside the text. A nonfiction text as real-world referents. The text refers to things outside the text. 

Walton is treating Scripture as if it's a fictional, self-referential narrative. For that matter, even historical fiction has some real-world referents. It's only certain types of fantasy or science fiction (e.g. Perelandra) that have no objective, referential dimension. And even Perelandra is somewhat allegorical. 

Identifying the objective referent is something the reader must do whenever interpreting a nonfiction text. You don't stay inside the text. You ask yourself what it corresponds to. 

The Bible was never intended to be a self-contained text, uncontaminated by readers or referents. The reader has a duty to correlate textual descriptions with extratextual realities. 

How should the interpreter come to a conclusion that one thing is a type of another? Since typology involves the identification of a relationship, the interpreter must detect some similarity between the proposed type or antitype.

Once again, that process applies to any nonfiction text. 

The first observation we must make is a very significant one. The NT typologists did not get their typological correspondence from their exegetical analysis of the context of the OT. Hermeneutics is incapable of extracting a typological meaning from the OT context because hermeneutics operates objectively while the typological identification can only be made subjectively. 

That takes for granted his arbitrary disjunction. 

A second observation that needs to be made is that the NT authors never claim to have engaged in a hermeneutical process, nor do they claim that they can support their findings from the text; instead, they claim inspiration.

To the contrary, they often give supporting arguments. That's why they engage in prooftexting. And sometimes they explain how their prooftext supports their claim. 

Prophetic literature, especially of the apocalyptic variety, is replete with symbols. Here the problem is somewhat different from that which we just addressed. We do not have to deal with NT authors interpreting the meaning of symbols that occur in OT apocalyptic. Nevertheless, many interpreters of prophetic literature assume that it is their task and indeed, their mandate, to identify what each symbol in the text stands for. Again we must notice immediately that hermeneutics is of little use in this endeavor. If the text identifies what a symbol stands for (e.g., horns = kings) then no interpretation along those lines is called for. If the text does not identify what a symbol stands for, then hermeneutics provides no basis for arriving at a conclusion unless it can be demonstrated that the symbolic reference was transparent or self-evident in the culture or literature.

Does he apply his strictures to the interpretation of poetry, viz., Dante, Shakespeare, T. S. Elliot? 

The speculation that often characterizes interpretation of symbols has no place within the historical-grammatical method. Rather than assuming that interpretation requires us to identify the meaning of symbols we need to be content to focus our attention on the message of the text, itself identifiable by means of hermeneutical principles and guidelines. Some would find it unthinkable that God would include these symbols in His revelation if He did not wish us to interpret them. An alternative is to understand that the revelation God intended to convey is in the message of the prophecy rather than one found in the symbols. If the text does not reveal the meaning of the symbols, I would assume that the message can be understood without unearthing what the symbols stand for.

This disregards symbolic communication. Symbolism is, itself, communicative. Telling by showing. He drives a wedge between symbolism and the message, as if symbolism is not in itself a mode of messaging or signaling. 

One does not have to be an experienced exegete to notice that Hosea 11:1 in its context appears to have little connection to the use Matthew puts it to when he identifies Jesus as fulfilling it. 

It's an analogy. You have to wonder how he developed such a cramped understanding of communication theory. 

As I have written elsewhere,14 I believe that it is essential for us to see clearly the distinction between the message and the fulfillment. The message of the prophet was understood by the prophet and his audience and is accessible through the objective principles of historical-grammatical hermeneutics. Fulfillment is not the message, but is the working out of God’s plan in history. There are no hermeneutical principles within the grammatical-historical model that enable one to identify a fulfillment by reading and analyzing the prophecy. Like types, symbols and role models, fulfillment is often a matter of making a subjective association. As a result, we need not be concerned with adjusting our concept of Hosea’s message so that it can accommodate Matthew’s idea of fulfillment. Biblical authority is not jeopardized when the message and fulfillment are not the same. They are different issues and are arrived at through different means. One can gladly accept Jesus as the fulfillment of Hosea 11:1 without seeing any more in the message of Hosea than Hosea and his audience saw. Hosea is proclaiming a message, not revealing a fulfillment. Matthew is not interpreting the message, he is identifying fulfillment. 

God, the human author, or the prophet, intended the audience to make that association. The association isn't extraneous to prophecy or typology. Rather, that's the aim of prophecy and typology. That's intrinsic rather than extrinsic to the function of prophecy and typology. 

Hosea,however,could not anticipate how, when, or in what ways his words would find fulfillment in the outworking of God’s plan. His message did not include any information about fulfillment. That was to be unveiled in later revelation.

True, but that doesn't prove his point. 

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