The Prophets and Christ

Theological Modernists and the academy argue that Isaiah was written by two different authors. Chapters 1-39 were written by Isaiah ben-Amos - the Isaiah we all know. Chapters 40-66 were written by another prophet in the exile (the so-called Deutero-Isaiah) who often tries to mimic the style of Isaiah and yet due to the seeming predictive prophecy in those chapters, it could not be the same person - or so it is argued. The naming of Cyrus in chapters 44-45 comes into play as the idea that Isaiah ben-Amos in the 8th century BC could name a future king of the 6th century is deemed impossible. Therefore they argue the second portion of the book was composed by a prophet in the exile period who knew Cyrus by name. And yet because he pretended to place himself in the past and predict the name of the king, he would in fact be a liar. This is not an issue for modernist theologians. This is because these theologians and scholars are unbelievers who reject the notion of revelation. The Bible for them is a series of moral tales and traditions. God may speak through the words but there is nothing unique about the Scriptures. For them, God is just as likely to speak through the writings of another religion or through inspirational figures of our own day.

In John 12, Christ quotes from both Isaiah 6 and 53 - both of the posited sections, and attributes them to Isaiah ben Amos. The modernist scholar says Christ was wrong and merely reflected the erroneous views of his day. We know better now and shouldn't judge Jesus of Nazareth by the strictures of today's historiography, archaeology, and textual science. After all, for them Christ is not God incarnate but a respected (if much mythologized) teacher akin to Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.

Believers understand that Christ's words settles the issue once and for all. Isaiah is the author of the book of Isaiah. He was a prophet of God - his status ratified by 'the' Prophet.

There are growing numbers of Evangelicals who have tried to forge what must be described as a synthesis view. They accept the arguments of the academy and yet insist that because Christ and the apostles sanction or sanctify the narrative - we also may speak that way. They take errors and make Scripture out of them. Myths and perceived historical anachronisms can be appropriated in the form of a kind of sacred or sanctified tradition. It's a view very much in keeping with Rome but in the case of Catholicism the Church defines the tradition. For these 'moderns' the truth and 'true text' are reconstructed by academic experts who can tell us what texts are genuine and what they mean for us today. While Gresham Machen's 1923 work 'Christianity and Liberalism' is not without its problems, he was right in labelling this understanding as a counterfeit form of Christianity - in actuality another religion that has appropriated the Christian lexicon and yet has taken the doctrines and concepts and filled them with a completely different content.

Another instance of this can be illustrated by looking again at John 12. The Evangelicals in question can argue that the Isaiah passages were about Isaiah and specific to his context - which is true, but that's not the end of the story. John suggests that 'the word of Isaiah' (v.38) was 'fulfilled' in the ministry of Christ and the fact that many did not believe in Him. In other words, while the Isaiah passage had an immediate connection to the context of Isaiah's day, ultimately it was about Christ and the words and struggles of Isaiah the prophet overlap with and find their ultimate meaning in Christ the Prophet. It's not that they can be legitimately applied to Christ's context. Rather, they are about Christ's context expressed in the time and life experience of Isaiah, foreshadowed centuries earlier. This represents a fundamentally different understanding regarding the nature of Scripture questions of inspiration.

Scholars will acknowledge that the New Testament does this and rather than admit and accept the reality of a Holy Spirit-driven and layered mystery to the text, they will simply argue that New Testament writers 'appropriate' the narratives from the Old Testament. For unbelievers this is a process that might be akin to mythologizing - imposing stories, lessons, and narratives that aren't actually there or real but serve a purpose. It's historically false, but perhaps legitimate for religious leaders to make their moral and doctrinal points. The academy-friendly Evangelicals in question will basically accept this line of argument but suggest that God's hand steered this process and thus it was appropriate for this to happen - or even a sanctified event.

This is also unacceptable and represents an impoverished understanding of the Spirit's work in Redemptive-History. Isaiah was a type of Christ. Christ fulfils the office of prophet as well as priest and king. This same phenomenon can be clearly seen in the Psalms and how the New Testament uses them. In John 15.25 a reference is made to Psalm 69. The Psalm when read alone is clearly about David and yet we also see that his words and sentiments blend and are overlapped with the voice of the True Prophet - Christ. John 15 simply affirms and re-emphasizes this fact. We see it again in John 19.24 and its use of Psalm 22. The Psalm is once again about David but primarily it's about Christ. Some would say it's 'also' about Christ or could be understood that way. No, it's primarily about Christ. He is 'the' Prophet. David is the foreshadowing type. Paul states this emphatically in 2 Corinthians 1.20 when he states that all the promises of God in Him are yes, and in Him Amen. The entire Old Testament is about Christ and points to him and to read the Scriptures without that lens is to read them unfaithfully. Many Evangelicals are reading the Old Testament not as Christians but as Hellenists and Jews. They are unfaithful and whether they mean to or not, they are undermining the faith. We see this also in the way Evangelicals turn to rabbinical experts on questions such as Passover or other Jewish practices. I also think of this when I see Dennis Prager promoted on Evangelical websites. In addition to being a hack and falsifier, he's not a Christian.

There's also a lesson here in reference to Fundamentalist and Dispensationalist readings of Scripture. The fulfilments are literal and true but not literalistic in the kind of narrow way these groups insist on. Nor can one data-mine the passages as one would hunt for a code. The language is poetic - both broad and nuanced. The voices are blurred and it is in fact a mistake to try and tease out or parse the voices in terms of verse divisions and half-verses as some are wont to do. We also see this in the hermeneutics of Postmillennialists and their tortured attempts to parse passages such as Matthew 24 or sections of Isaiah - relegating this statement to Israel and that to the Church, this to the immediate context and that to the millennium. That's not how it works. The Old Testament does not provide that kind of sharp divide and again, it's necessary to read these passages through the lens of New Testament doctrine.

These passages are important because a proper understanding will lead us to reject the idea that the prophets and Christianity were part of some evolutionary process of religion and to simply suggest that this evolutionary process was guided by a Divine hand (as we're seeing with more and more Evangelicals) in the end proves no better. The passages were not appropriated. They are about Christ, and the Holy Spirit guided the words and deeds of Isaiah just as He did the interpretative framework and doctrinal presentations of the apostles. The unity of the Scriptures is found in this very process of Spirit-wrought redemptive-history - not in a philosophically-driven process of systematic theology that subjugates the text under various coherent categories - or rather categories that are perceived as being necessary or the result of inference and deduction. Likewise, we must reject the academy's notions of how religion develops and the processes which come into play. They are simply wrong and further as Christians we reject the basic presupposition that Christianity is not unique but one option among many that developed in a certain direction on the basis of its context and sociological and political forces. Such an approach is little more than a flirtation with deism if not atheism.

We need to understand that there are many 'conservatives' running about that in fact possess a very low and impoverished view of Scripture. I'm sorry to say that the late Michael Heiser was one of these and unfortunately those that would critique his views connected to the Divine Council and the more supernaturalist read of Scripture are able to attack and discredit him on this basis. There are real problems with Heiser but that doesn't discount from the larger set of questions he wrestled with - even if his basis for doing so was in fact flawed. Unfortunately it just makes these debates that much more complicated.

And then when we have Fundamentalist-Dispensationalists and Preterist Postmillennialists also forcing these readings - the waters are certainly muddied. It's important to understand how the Scriptures work and to never diminish from the rich testimony contained therein. These hermeneutical questions also affect how doctrine is understood as well as the very nature of theology. As previously stated, does this lend itself to a systematic model or rather a redemptive-historical model that is more flexible and context driven? Some will of course insist these are not mutually exclusive. That may be true to a point, and yet the guiding assumptions of systematics (especially if understood as reflective of some kind of Divine-reflective epistemology) will always dominate. I argue it would be better to follow the patterns of Christ and the apostles and to read them and the Old Testament as per their example. This may frustrate Confessionalists and those given to Scholastic theology, but are we committed to traditions or to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture? And that is no false dilemma.