I'm going to comment on this post:
Additionally, it is a reason why one ought to be cautious about embracing the notion that the NT reinterprets the OT.
Since I haven't embraced that notion; since, as a matter of fact, I've been arguing the opposite, the cautionary is a red herring. For some reason, Henebury keeps trying to shoehorn my argument into a different argument than the one I'm actually using. Perhaps he keeps reverting to the default argument because he has more experience dealing with the default argument, whereas he doesn't have ready-made rebuttals for my actual argument.
Better places to go would be Jer. 30:1-10; 31:1-14, 21-16; 32:37-41; 33:14-26. These show again that there is no typology and “territorial referents” are constant.
i) I’m citing passages that present a new Eden or new Exodus motif. For Henebury to cite other passages that may not contain that motif hardly negates my appeal. The absence of a given motif in one passage doesn't cancel out the presence of a given motif in another passage.
ii) If, on the other hand, he thinks a passage like Jer 31:1-14 also contains a new Eden motif, then that's more supporting material for my position, not his.
Steve’s “typology” of recapitulation is not there.
Where is "there"? Not there in the passages I cited or the passages he cited?
He has brought it with him.
No, that's right there in the text.
Yes, but motifs don’t equal types.
i) I never said a motif qua motif is a type. It depends on the kind of motif. I specified the kind of motif I have in mind: a new Eden or new Exodus motif.
For reasons I've give, that's a type/token relationship.
ii) However, even at the generic level, a motif is a recurring pattern, which dovetails with typology.
In the verses he cited Israel was said to be “like Eden.” (Isa. 51:3). All that was being done was that a comparison was being made. The same is true of Jer. 16. The comparison with the Exodus is one of a greater (future) migration to the promised-land.
That’s a strange criticism. In the nature of the case, a type/token or type/antitype relation is a comparative relation, involving analogy rather than identity. Tokens exemplify the type; they are not identical with the type.
Likewise, one token is not identical with another token. Rather, tokens are similar to each other inasmuch as they instantiate the same type. Repetition with variation.
Likewise, in a type/antitype relation, the type is both like and unlike the antitype, or vice versa.
In both cases, we're dealing with a relation between two or more things. In the nature of the case, you can't have a relation if it's one and the same thing–salva veritate.
I'll have more to say momentarily.
If we start seeing a “New Exodus” motif as a typological signal to deny the return of Israel to its land in fulfillment of its covenants, we are not doing it because Jeremiah instructs us to do so. No, it is because the motif is a necessary hermeneutical vehicle to arrive at the desired theology.
Which misses the point. In the new Exodus motif, the Jews return to Eretz-Israel. However, they don't return to Israel from Egypt. Rather, they return to Israel from Babylon. So there's a shift in the territorial referents.
Likewise, in the new Eden motif, the Jews return to the Eretz-Israel, except that Israel typifies Eden. That’s what makes it a homecoming. So land has already acquired an emblematic significance, where Bible writers can substitute one territorial referent for another.
So says Steve. But in the passages he quoted Eden stands for Eden in comparative illustration of the renewed land of Israel. There isn’t any need to see types and shadows.
I haven't used the term "shadow."
If I say that the smell of the American Northwest is like the smell of northern England, I don’t have anything like a type in mind. Neither do I require others to create a typological grid in which to fit my words. If an OT prophet recalls Eden or the Exodus to illustrate another work of God in the eschaton, we are not to jump to the conclusion that he is speaking typologically.
Except that, as I pointed out, it runs much deeper than similes or incidental imagery. Rather, we're dealing with one of the master plot lines of Scripture: banishment and restoration.
The original Exodus and the new Exodus are both variations on a common theme. The fundamental constant is the underlying exemplar, and not the differing ways in which that's exemplified.
The trouble with this way of speaking is that it ends up converting eschatological Israel into non-Israel, denying them the promised-land; the Jerusalem temple morphs into the church; Zadokites into Christians; the throne of David is another name for the throne of God, etc., all because types must be produced for certain theological views to be sustained. It is question-begging.
i) I'm hardly begging the question when I argue for my position.
ii) If anything, Henebury is begging the question. It only "denies them the promised-land" if he assumes the very issue in dispute.
iii) I wouldn't say the temple morphs into the church. Rather, both church and temple prefigure God's presence with his people in the world to come (Rev 21:3). God dwelling with his people is the type, of which the temple (Exod 29:44-45) and the church (2 Cor 6:16) are tokens.
If the basic plotline wasn’t similar there could not be a comparison made.
Which misses the point (see above).
This is precisely why one ought never let a type in until one knows what any passage is saying, and so whether any type has warrant. There is no such warrant in Steve’s passages from the Prophets. Types are tethered to theologies, and are therefore apt to promote Eisegesis. If one is not careful, every stubborn covenant promise will be made to bend because it has been burdened with the label “type”, ready to perform in the way described above.
i) Henebury hasn't presented a counterargument in this paragraph. Rather, he's treated the reader to a dismissive and tendentious characterization of my argument.
ii) What also comes through in his response to me is that his own position is driven by what he deems to be the unacceptable consequences of the opposing position. He begins with the (allegedly) unacceptable consequences, then works back from that starting point to devise a hermeneutical system which will avoid the unacceptable consequences. So the whole exercise is aprioristic.
Steve will strongly disagree with me, but what I see is a “theological function” borne by the motif, being read into the OT. The “theological function” is wrought from the particular interpretation of NT passages.
He's tilting at windmills. He keeps attacking an argument I never use. Does this reflect an inability to adapt to an argument he's not used to?
Since Israel does not yet bear a comparison to Eden we must look for a future fulfillment.
i) But in context, the "future fulfillment" wasn't a golden-age millennium at the end of the church age, but the postexilic period (c. 5C BC).
ii) Of course, it's quite possible to view the new Eden motif as having future counterpart (future to us), but that would commit Henebury to a typological view of land.
And it can so easily become a wax nose.
It's just a fact that theological motifs in Scripture are subject to development.
Thanks for posting this discussion, it is very informative.
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