Scripture, Israel & Figural Reading
How can Christians read Israel’s Scriptures christologically without erasing their historical sense or Jewish particularity?
Christian Scripture is a historically mediated canon whose christological reception must remain accountable to its literal sense, Israel’s continuing witness, and the dangers of supersessionism.
This chapter treats Scripture as historical texts received as one canon. It trains a reading practice in which philological discipline and theological interpretation correct one another rather than competing for ownership of the text.
- 01
Relate literal, canonical, and figural senses
- 02
Distinguish figural reading from arbitrary allegory
- 03
Construct a warranted theological reading of a biblical text
- 01
Text, event, canon
The literal sense includes what words do within their historical discourse and the canonical form in which the church receives them.
- 02
The rule of faith
The rule of faith functions as a grammar of the whole, not a shortcut around difficult particulars.
- 03
Figure and fulfillment
Figural reading perceives real historical correspondences ordered by divine providence and disclosed retrospectively.
- 04
A fourfold accountability
Theological exegesis answers to history, literary form, canonical relations, and contemporary consequence.