Interpreting Scripture

I. The idea of canon

A. "Canon" is a Greek word meaning measuring-stick, ruler. At some point Christiansdeveloped the idea that certain Scriptures were canonical in the sense of authoritative texts against which to measure faith and theological propositions.

B. The rabbis, including Jesus and Paul, clearly regard the Law and the Prophets as well as the Psalms as canonical in this sense. (The development of a canon of the Jewish Scriptures is a closely parallel phenomenon to the development of a canon of the Christian Scriptures, and the two processes apparently happened in close connection.)

C. It's usual to understand the Gnostic crisis of the second century as increasing the urgency of identifying certain Scriptures as canonical. This view, with its implication that canonicity was an important theological category by the second century, seems justifiable.

D. What were criteria for canonicity?

II. The definition of a Christian canon

Introductions to the New Testament usually include detailed information about the formation of the canon, based on quotations by early Church authors. The following is a partial summary.

A. Justin, about A.D. 150, Apol. 67.3, 66.3, accords normative status to the Gospels; doesn't quote Paul; doesn't accept Revelation (28.1).

B. Athenagoras, about A.D. 180, quotes the OT and Gospels, and refers to Paul with the fomrula "according to the apostle".

C. The Scillitan martyrs of North Africa, arrested about A.D. 188, were found with "books and epistles of Paul, a just man."

D. Irenaeus, about A.D. 190, in adv. haer. 3.11.11, recognizes the authority of the four gospels and thirteen Pauline epistles, accepts Acts, Rev., I Peter, and I and II John, is undecided about Hebrews, III John, II Peter, James, Jude.

E. The "Muratorian fragment", discovered by an Italian librarian named Muratori in 1740, usually dated to the end of the second century, in Latin but apparently translated from the Greek, mutilated at the beginning and the end, lists many of our NT books as a kind of canon. (Here's an essay on this in an upcoming Eerdman's Dictionary of the Bible.

F. By 200 most of our NT books seem to have been recognized as normative. Some were controversial (e.g., Hebrews, Revelation). Some non-NT books (e.g. Shepherd of Hermas, Apocalypse of Peter, forged Pauline letters) were additionally accepted by some.

F. Eusebius discusses the NT canon in detail, about A.D. 303.

G. Athanasius, in his 39th Festal Letter, 367, is the first to establish a fixed, circumscribed canon of the OT and NT, defining preciselyour 27 books of the NT, in the present order, as canonical (kanonizomena); others are rejected (apokrypha); some may be read for instruction but not appealed to as theologically authoritative (anaginoskomena).

III. How the New Testament interprets the Scriptures of the Old Testament

A. Fulfilment of prophecy. The meaning of prophecies of the messiah and the messianic age is their fulfilment in Christ.

B. Allegory (Gal. 4:24; I Cor. 9:9-10)An allegory is an extended metaphor.

C. Typology (Rom 5:14; I Pet. 3:21; I Cor. 10:6, 11). An Old Testament "type" is a figure foreshadowing a Christian reality (Adam is a type of Christ; Noah's flood is a type of baptism). The New Testament reference is called an "antitype".

IV. Interpretation of Scripture in the early Church

A. Two generally accepted principles

B. The classical schools of interpretation

See the chart on this website comparing Alexandrian and Antiochene approaches. They will also be important in understanding the Christological debates, March 6.

C. In North Africa, Tyconius the Donatist (fl. 370-390) produced a number of rules for Scriptural interpretation. These were quoted with approval and used by Augustine in On Christian Doctrine. A few of these principles follow:

D. John Cassian (ca. 365-433), an abbot at Marseilles, brought together Antiochene and Alexandrian approaches in a system for the fourfold interpretation of Scripture which dominated the Middle Ages in the West. (Thomas Aquinas defines it as normative.)

  1. The literal is the clear historical reference of the text.
  2. The allegorical is the figurative sense, pointing to Christian doctrine.
  3. The tropological is the moral sense, pointing to Christian duty.
  4. The anagogical is the eschatological sense, pointing to the Christian hope in the four last things (heaven, hell, death, and judgment).

Thus "Jerusalem", wherever it appears, will mean literally the geographical city of the Jews, allegorically the Church, tropologically the soul, and anagogically our heavenly home, the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation.