Reading the Bible according to God's Intent

The Summer 2023 edition of the Concordia Journal is excellent. It is available on-line here: Concordia Journal Summer 2023. The introductory essay by Dr. David Maxwell and the follow up by Dr. Joel Elowsky are especially helpful but gentle, and implicit rather than explicit ,criticisms of modern exegesis in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod which we would do well to heed.

Guarded by various caveats, it boils down to this: for the most part modern exegesis is concerned with the intent of the human authors, whereas a patristic reading sees Scripture as a whole by a single Divine author. Modern exegesis is more interested in history, intended audience, and human author intent than it is with a a narrative unity in the entirety of Scripture that unfolds in what is usually classified among us as allegory or typology by finding patterns in Holy Scripture and an unabashed sense that all of Holy Scripture, in painstaking detail, reveals Christ as the heart of the Father for the salvation of the world. That is my summary,. Please don’t blame Maxwell or Elowsky, but do read them.

Both Maxwell and Elowsky limit themselves to original sources, but for other commentaries on this phenomena I suggest reading Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery and Paul Scott Wilson’s God Sense: Reading the Bible for Preaching. Both of those are easily found via interlibrary loan or on Amazon. Neither is Lutheran but both deal with this shallow reading of Scripture that has afflicted us as an unwanted inheritance from the benightment and higher criticism. Both want to redeem allegory to encourage a deeper and more theological reading of Scripture in ways that seem to me to be at least suggested by Maxwell and Elowsky and evident everywhere in patristic exegesis.