Read the series.
The doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is probably the most abused of all the doctrines of Biblical Christianity. As the Word of God, the only Word from outside the human realm, it ought to be cherished, adhered to and followed.
But even within the borders of so-called “Christendom” the Bible is hardly allowed a position of absolute authority. Seldom is it permitted the power of veto, particularly when, in our narcissistic society, its truths and precepts go against our preferences.
We can see this in the insistences of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy that Scripture cannot stand alone; that it must be supported by the interpretations and musings of councils and spiritual thinkers of the remote past. Or the subtler challenges which take the shape of subjective experience that somehow gain the authority to put in the shade those inspired passages that would call us to repent of our consumerist approach to the Church.
And then there is the approach which looks at an OT covenant, or examines a prophetic promise, and simply decides that it cannot mean what it says. No, due to what is supposedly said later on in the Holy Scriptures, that is, in the NT, the oaths that God took are recast into types, transformed into adumbrations, and muted by being forced through the filter of genre, emerging dutifully to fit the notions of those who claim to be in subjection to them.
The claim that the NT must be used to interpret, or more accurately reinterpret the OT, gets its persuasive power from the truth that God had more to say than what He said in the Hebrew Scriptures. The advent of Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, the birth of the Church: these were undoubtedly further revelations. But the coming of Christ was predicted in the OT (e.g., Gen. 3:15; Deut. 18:15-19; Psa. 22; Mic. 5:2; Isa. 7:14, 9:6; 53:1-12; 61:1-2a; Zech. 9:9), and not by means of shadowy quatrains and esoteric understandings. The Prophets gave us a realistic picture and Jesus pointed His detractors to it (Jn. 5:39-40).
But the picture was not to the liking of many believers, who, in the absence of Israel from their land, and in the presence of the NT Church, made their theologies robustly stand against the literal fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel and Jerusalem. Everything had to fit the reality of the Church. The Church was God’s people. That was it! Jeremiah 31:1-14, 31-37; 32:36-44, and 33:14-26? Easy. These promises of the Almighty were subordinated to Matthew 21:43; John 10:16; Romans 2:28-29, 9:8; Galatians 6:16 and 1 Peter 2:9-10, suitably interpreted, and turned into foreshadowings of the true Israel, the Church. Ezekiel’s Temple? Not the literal one in chapter 10, but that enormous unbelievable one in Ezekiel 40-48. Well, those heavily detailed chapters can be collapsed into the symbolic representation of the Church, of course. Hey, nevermind using the NT to reinterpret the OT, you could use the NT to reinterpret itself! Jesus’ promise to the disciples about them judging Israel in the regeneration? That’s the Church. The careful enumeration of the Twelves Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7:4-8? They are the same as the innumerable multitude from every nation revealed “after these things” in Revelation 7:9-10—Voila!, the Church.
Employing the dictum that the OT must be interpreted by the NT sure results in a great deal of transmutation of the seemingly lucid statements of the OT into obscure types and shadows awaiting the early Church’s ability to get ahold of a full NT in order to decipher them. And that is really the big problem with the whole idea. Not only is this pious sounding claim a distraction from their question-begging method of reading their theological assumptions into the OT. Not only was it an impossible task for the early Christians to accomplish with their piecemeal extracts of the NT Books available to them, but when their preferred interpretations of the NT are used to interpret the OT, the OT loses its character as inspired understandable revelation. It becomes the NT’s doormat, unable to tell us anything without the NT interrupting and rudely declaring “When the OT says that, it really means this.” And we who think that God expresses Himself just as plainly in the OT as He does in the NT are looked upon as dolts who have to be told over and over “The NT must interpret the OT!”
We have to take a deep cleansing breath. And then we need to assert and keep asserting that the OT is just as clear and authoritative as the NT and the two work together much better if the voices of spiritualizing, typologizing and genre-izing are muted. Then something wonderful happens. The voices of the two Testaments speak in harmony; neither one dictating to the other. Both being allowed to say what they say. Then the several strands of God’s amazing Creation Project reveal themselves as the OT and the NT reinforce each other.
All of Scripture is sufficient. But only when men listen to it, learn from it, and leave it alone to say what it plainly says, regardless of our tastes or presuppositions.
Discussion
NewClashes of concepts vs clashes of communication
Based on the back and forth on this here and elsewhere, I think it’s too difficult to debate an abstraction/generalization like whether we need NT to interpret OT. It seems that the core of the problem is some particular ways people use the NT to interpret the OT. As is illustrated here and earlier in the series.
Though the glib “isn’t it obvious that we should use the NT to interpret the OT?” as a defense for these ‘particular ways’ is annoying, to be sure.
About sufficiency, I think we should face something on that: for all of us, absolute authority of Scripture is an ideal, not a 100% reality. That doesn’t mean degrees of failure are all the same, but we all fail—even when we’re trying. And we are not always trying. Because we still sin, are still less than fully sanctified, and also are weak and foolish. I am not inclined to accuse people who arrive at different conclusions of not really honoring the authority of Scripture. Well, not usually. There are egregious cases of course, even among evangelicals.
I struggle with the logic of the main question (the need of NT to interpret OT) for a few reasons: For one, as others have noted, as generalizations go, we today need all of Scripture to understand all of Scripture. So there is no part that we can reliably get right without all of it. It’s all contextual. And we’re far removed from the moment of revelation and that setting.
And we, in fact, do have all of it and should use all of it, right?
But I do share a lot of Paul’s gripes about how OT promises are seemingly casually put through a blender in many cases to churchize them. It just seems doubtful to me that general rules about what must or must not be used to interpret what are really the issue. I’m open to being convinced, but I’m not there yet.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.