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Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture, The

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2006 by Heskett, Randall

The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture. By Brevard S. Childs. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004. 332 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

For Christians, a great exegetical struggle concerns interpreting the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, especially when Judaism posits diverse meanings and older modern criticisms offer interpretations which differ from those of traditional Judaism and Christianity. In The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture, Brevard Childs treats this very problem, which is particularly acute with regard to Isaiah. Since the New Testament provides more than 400 citations, paraphrases, and allusions to Isaiah, it is essential for Christian interpretation. Childs traces the different ways in which Christian exegetes have understood Isaiah "as the Church's scripture, that is as a vehicle for communicating the Christian gospel."

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Beginning with the Septuagint, which served as "pre-Christian commentary to the Old Testament" and as the Scriptures for the early church, Childs traces the history of Septuagint criticism and the New Testament writers' use of Isaiah, while treating the hermeneutical problems involved. In this eighteen-chapter book, thirteen chapters are devoted to individual commentators from Justin to Calvin. In chapter 16, Childs treats the works of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholars (Grotius, Calov, Cocceius, Vitringa, Lowth, and Calmet). In chapter 17, he treats a variety of nineteenth- and twentieth-century biblical critics. In chapter 18, he treats such "postmodern" scholars as Rendtorff and Brueggemann. He concludes with a summary of the characteristic features of the Christian exegetical tradition, noting that serious Christian theologians have neither fused nor separated the testaments.

Childs shows that, almost from the beginning, the church has understood the parameters of Christian interpretation to be delimited by a rule of faith. Before a New Testament existed, Justin Martyr assumed that both Jewish Scripture and apostolic witness were authoritative as revelation. Irenaeus, however, believed that a New Testament should be joined with Jewish Scripture as a revelatory text, which must be understood as Christian Scripture through the "rule of faith." While making no mention of this "rule" iu John Chrysostom's commentary, Childs praises his Antiocheue style of interpretation that only cautiously employs allegory and treats the human elements of Scripture wedded with divine grace (p. 106). Chrysostom remains "a model for every successive generation in rendering scriptures faithfully with inspired imagination" (p. 108). Although he notes Jerome's "enormous concern to establish historical background and how this relates to Christian orientation in its literal sense and subsequently to its spiritual meaning (p. 93), Childs criticizes Jerome for having "too narrow a view of biblical history" and for failing to resolve "the problem of the relation of two levels" (p. 101 ).

Childs shows how Luther's dialectic of letter, spirit, law, and gospel provides a hermeneutical framework that allows both testaments to stand on their own as vital witnesses to Christian truth by holding the physical and spiritual senses together. He then claims that Calvin's humanistic training assured that he would give proper scholarly attention to what would later become the concerns of historical-critical methods. However, since Calvin believed that the biblical testimony reflected Cod's intent operating through the Spirit, the spiritual sense derived from the plain or literal sense as an organic whole but not allegorically as in previous tradition.

In his treatment of "postmodern interpretation," Childs makes some pointed criticisms of Walter Brueggemann, whose work he regards as an attempt to "control the 'unruly' quality" of much of Scripture (p. 315). In particular, their disagreement concerns the role of the rule of faith. For Childs, "Walter Brueggemann's post-modern interpretation of the Old Testament offers a serious break with the entire- Christian exegetical tradition" (pp. 294-295). Although this section sets limits for postmodern interpretation, one difficulty is Childs' failure to distinguish between postmodernism and postmodern biblical interpretation as a way of responding to the incompleteness of both the premodern and modern projects.

Although I applaud Childs's work, I would like to see a second volume on Jewish interpretation and possibly a comparison between Jewish and Christian interpretation. I also wish Childs had treated those efforts of scholars who seek to anchor figural readings within the literal sense, such as Matthias Flacius Illyricus or S. H. Driver. Childs also has not compared how the "figurative and proper" usage of terms functions within the literal sense. Moreover, Childs's treatment of modern interpretation has not included the work of such scholars as Duhin, Dillmann, Cheyne, Marti, Gray, Procksch, Westermann, and Wildberger. Finally, I am sin-prised that he has not cited the postmodern efforts of his protégé Gerald Sheppard, whose work has provided strong warrants for Christian interpretation by radically using historical-critical methods while also addressing the limits of the modern era and older modern criticisms. Moreover, he has not paid attention to Sheppard's warning against calling the biblical writers "authors" (pp. 9-10), a term which inherits the baggage of the modern era. Most surprising, Childs did not review Sheppard's similar discussion of how the book of Isaiah is not a "text" but a testimony to Torali (Isa. 1:10 and 8:16-20), thus following the tradition of the later editing of Torali which describes Scripture as a human "testimony" to a divine revelation that has been named as Torah (Deut. 29:29; 31:19, 21, 26) and provides a precedent for John 5 and 21 as well.

Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture, The

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2006 by Heskett, Randall

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