Reading Hays Backwards

I would like to take this opportunity to provide a review to Richard Hays' book Reading Backwards which is published through Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014.  It isn't a huge tome through which one has to slog, but it does contain a very interesting reading of the Bible.  My complete review was about 28 pages long, so an abbreviation is appropriate.  I would certainly encourage you to read Hays' book.  I would be happy to talk more about it at length.

As I read Richard Hays’ book Reading Backwards, I found myself to be puzzled by his terminology and proposed method.  His basic argument is that Jesus is prefigured in the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament is to be “figurally” read as the manger; the law and the prophets as the cloths in which he was wrapped.[1]  The language he is using is Luther,[2] but Hays point is this:  “Only if we frame the question this way, only if we embrace figural interpretation, can we make sense of the Gospel of John’s assertion that the scriptures bear witness to Jesus Christ.”[3]

It is here that I will offer a definition of the term “figural”: Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events or persons in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second involves or fulfils the first.[4]

It is this figural reading that Hays argues the scriptures can be made clear and also through which a unified reading of the scriptures is possible.  Hays will ultimately argue that figural reading is the only interpretive hermeneutic through which these conclusions can be found. 

To define figural, I would offer what Chris Woznicki, on his blog “Think Out Loud” writes: “Figural reading means that we move beyond merely saying that the Old Testament predicts the stuff in the New Testament, we say that the stuff in the Old Testament prefigures or foreshadows stuff in the New Testament.  All of this happens within history, thereby ensuring that the things in the past retain their value and significance as historical events, all the while maintaining that they contain a second level of significance, namely the meaning given to those events by later, occurring events.”[5]

This is not reading as an allegory, which is to say A stands for B as the Apostle Paul does with Hagar in Galatians 4:21-25.  Nor is this merely claiming that the Old Testament predicts the events of the New Testament or, in particular, Jesus.  Perhaps the best example of figural reading is found in the Christian reading of Isaiah 7:14b, “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”  Within the context of the overall passage, this cannot be understood as a prediction of Jesus.  Wrenched out of context, 7:14b seems to fit with the Christian tradition surrounding the birth of Jesus.  However, in context, it has little to do with Jesus at all.

Yet as Hays would articulate, a figural reading allows the passage to not have to be about Jesus in its historical setting and yet still have a secondary, larger meaning that does speak specifically of Jesus.  This would be, according to Hays, a legitimate reading of Isaiah figurally.

For Hays this seems, early on in his work, to be the only way to read scriptures.  This “retrospective recognition”[6] is the only way the two interpretations of Isaiah can work forwards and backwards creating a hermeneutical strategy that “sets forth the unity of the canon as a single cumulative and complex pattern of meaning.”[7]

It would seem evident that figural reading can only take place retroactively.  One cannot read Isaiah, for example, figurally, until one has that which is believed to be the opposite spiritual pole from which the back and forth flow can originate.  It is revisioning[8] and, as such, somewhat suspect.  It is also something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It is as if to say, ‘If you read it figurally, these truths or revelations will become obvious.  If you don’t read it this way, you won’t find these truths.’  It is from this point of view that early Christian apologist Justin Martyr wrote in his work Dialogue with Trypho: “Your Scriptures [The Hebrew Sciptures] are rather not yours, but ours, for we are left persuaded by them, while you read them without comprehending the spirit that is in them.”[9]

Hays seems to advocate this position and couches it in the terms of being “taught” by the Old Testament to read the New Testament and the New Testament “teaching” us to read the Old.  This becomes a complicated issue – one that doesn’t just involve semantics, but a question of interpretation.  Hays, speaking of the actions of Jesus with the money changers in Mark, writes, “Jesus’ action in the Temple acquires its full significance only when we are taught by the OT to understand it in relation to the prophetic words of Isaiah and Jeremiah.”[10]

Is the Old Testament teaching this or is it a contextual reading of the Old Testament that helps us to interpret the Gospel record of Jesus’ actions?  Clearly the Gospel of John’s account relies on different Old Testament readings.  Thus, the question arises: does what the Old Testament “teaches” us about Jesus in Mark only apply to Mark?  Is it contextual?  Or does what Mark relates match with what John relates, both apparently interpreting the Old Testament in some fashion?

A figural reading is not the same as a contextual understanding of the individual Gospel writers.  One doesn’t need a figural reading to garner how Mark utilizes the Old Testament scriptures.  The Old Testament hasn’t “taught” us to read Mark so much as understanding Mark’s citations have allowed us to understand Mark’s portrayal of Jesus in the context of a link to and usage of particular prophetic passages.

Figural reading also pushes interpretation of Jesus’ parables into a new arena.  In what appears to be an effort to safeguard the parables of Jesus from perceived minimization in the Gospel of Thomas, Hays argues that the parables need to be read figurally as well as the Old Testament passages.

Quoting the parable of the vineyard from Mark 12, Hays argues that this parable needs to be read in conjunction with Isaiah 5:7.  The conclusion Hays offers is this: “The parable thereby places the story of Jesus within the unfolding story of Israel and presents his death as the climax of a pattern of unfaithfulness and judgment familiar to any reader of Israel’s prophetic literature.”[11]

One difficulty with this interpretation is that Mark concludes this passage by explaining that this parable was told “against them,” which means the chief priests and elders (see Mark 11:27-28).  While this does echo Isaiah’s description of Israel as the vineyard, the point seems to be condemnation of the keepers of the vineyard (Israel) who, in a bid to keep power, have forgotten their place given to them by God.

Secondly, to read this as a parable that Jesus is offering as an understanding of himself can, again as a hallmark of figural reading, only make sense in retrospect and not within its own context.  If the only true understanding of the parable is figural, it implies that the true meaning was lost on the original hearers.  If the point was to condemn the priests and elders (and not the people in general), then the meaning, according to Mark, was clearly received.  But to include Jesus as a character in his own parables seems to be a deliberate mis-reading or a reading that threatens to take the words of Jesus away from the Christian tradition and give them only to those who have the proper means of understanding.  As Justin Martyr might have said, the parables (perhaps even the New Testament) no longer belong to the Christians, but to us, those who comprehend the spirit in which they were written.  This approach seems remarkably gnostic.

Gnosticism in general claimed a secret or esoteric knowledge the majority of people do not have or attain.  For them, salvation was found in knowledge – though some gnostics believed that salvation would be obtained by those who had faith without having had the secret knowledge, though this was something of a lesser degree of salvation. While not arguing that it is a gnostic passage, 1^st Corinthians 2:7 is a great example of this kind of thinking: “We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages of for our glorification.”  Paul’s point seems akin to Hays push for figural reading.  What exists in the Old Testament is simply a prefiguring of Jesus, but the awareness, the knowledge, the gnosis of that fact can only be found in the revelation offered only through the eyes of faith.  Therefore, the Old Testament is perhaps exactly the kind of thing Paul says is decreed before the ages of man for our glorification: only understood with the proper key – Jesus the Christ.

Ironically, the use of “gnostic” precludes this from being the orthodox view.  However, figural reading seems to walk a fine hermeneutical line.  As Bishop Serapion wrote concerning the Gospel of Peter, “while most of it accorded with the authentic teaching of the Savior, some passages were spurious additions.”[12] For Serapion, the Gospel of Peter was close, but not quite orthodox due to “spurious additions.”  Yet his view indicates that it must have been a very fine line, as he had earlier not felt that the Gospel of Peter was heretical. 

Wouldn’t it seem that figural reading would bring a “new” reading to the text of the Old Testament or even to Jesus’ parables bringing a knowledge to the text (or from the text) that cannot be found without a particular interpretive lens?  How is this orthodox and not gnostic (and thereby heretical)?  Is it orthodox because this approach can be utilized to assimilate the Old Testament into Christian beliefs? 

It would appear figural reading could set (or renew) a dangerous precedent of biblical interpretation that runs from orthodox to gnostic so that the “correct” reading of a text can be detected by any particular and accepted lens – so long as it comes out where one wants it.  Whatever tradition begins the process, it would also create the de facto interpretive outcome.

The figural interpretation Hays offers makes this claim:  “The OT teaches us that all our prayers and action should be ordered towards Isaiah’s vision of a restored and healed new creation; that is to say, the salvation proclaimed in the Gospels is neither merely individual nor otherworldly.”[13]

Is this truly the point to which all the Old Testament points?  Does Psalm 137, which concludes by saying, “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes their heads against the rocks!” point to a restored and healed creation?  Certainly Isaiah speaks of the restored and healed creation, but to claim that this is the goal (or the only goal) towards which the Old Testament points is to dangerously minimize or oversimplify the texts and traditions found within the Old Testament.

Quoting R.W.L. Moberly, Hays writes, “As Jesus cannot be understood apart from the Jewish scripture, Jewish scripture cannot be understood apart from Jesus; what is needed is an interpretation which relates the two – and it is this that Jesus provides.”[14]

While this seems to be a tautology, it also implies two things.  First, the statement is that an interpretation is needed for this to be true implies that the statement is not true otherwise.  Without a figural reading the Old and New Testaments cannot lend themselves to a linked tradition. 

Second, this point of view is one of obvious Christian bias.  Lee McDonald writes that the “Christian use of the OT was highly selective and designed especially to clarify or confirm Christian beliefs.”[15]While McDonald is speaking of the ancient Christian use of the Old Testament, it is also what Moberly and Hays seem to be advocating. 

Hays conclusion to this chapter is that the Gospels “teach” us to read the Old Testament for figuration.  “The literal historical sense of the OT is not denied or negated; rather it becomes the vehicle for latent figural meanings unsuspected by the original author and readers.  It points forward typologically to the gospel story.”[16]

Is this a valid claim?
Perhaps it is valid if one recognizes that the Old Testament, as opposed to the Hebrew Scriptures, are already a Christian creation, reorganized to deliberately and, perhaps, figurally point to Jesus and the New Testament.  Yet this already implies a stacking of the deck to be able to read in the Old Testament that which was already believed to be present.  Hays goes on to write that, in the interpretive lens of the death and resurrection of Jesus, “Israel’s Scriptures [are] to be comprehensively construed as a witness to the Gospel.”[17]

           

Doesn’t this already negate the historical witness of the Old Testament?  “According to these Gospel texts,” writes Hays, “those who fail to read the OT this way have not yet fully understood it, for understanding is rendered possible only after the encounter with the risen Jesus.”[18]  One would assume that Jews would disagree.[19]

            

The tone of Hays work begins as a general apologetic that echoes with both an evangelical zeal that Justin Martyr claimed on behalf of the Jewish scriptures as well as something of a gnostic point of view that the true knowledge of the scriptures is only partially revealed in a reading of the text.  The truth of the Old Testament is only found in the lens of a Christian belief.  As Peter Enns wrote, for example, “Even though both Hosea and Matthew are inspired, Matthew has the final word on how Hosea is to be understood, which can only be seen by looking at the grander scope of God’s overall redemptive plan.”[20]

            

While Hays has not addressed inspiration at this point, it is interesting to note how Enns uses this argument as something of a deflection of his critique.  It is as if he argues that Hosea was inspired, but it wasn’t completely understood or fulfilled until Matthew explained it.  Does that mean that the Old Testament texts not quoted by New Testament authors are complete?  Do they not hold figural meanings?

This question remains unexplored.

Hays is also in keeping with John Calvin’s reading of the Old Testament which was expressed when Calvin wrote that the scriptures were a unified whole for whom “the meaning of all of it is salvation in Jesus Christ.”[21]  The difference is Hays’ insistence on figural reading.  Hays seems to be writing in the same vein as Hans Frei, who argued that the concern of figural reading is evidentiary of divine providence, not merely a question of human interpretation.[22]  This goes to answer Hays’ earlier question of the unified whole and Gospel-shaped hermeneutic.

Is it possible?  Yes, Hays would answer.  Granting the reinterpretation and reappropriation of Jewish scriptures, this reading is possible.  His conclusion is this:  “The more deeply we probe the Jewish and OT roots of the Gospel narratives, the more clearly we see that each of the four Evangelists, in their diverse portrayals, identify Jesus as the embodiment of the God of Israel.”[23]

Here we see one small point Hays touches on but rarely returns to: Jesus as the “embodiment” of the God of Israel is not quite saying Jesus is the God of Israel.  It seems to be an implied point of Hays’ work, but not a point he makes nearly as often or with the same clarity as he does of Jesus embodying the God of Israel.  Jesus is the “locus of God’s presence.”[24] Therefore one of Hays closing points seems to be both anticlimactic and even removed from the larger argument.  “The one Lord confessed in Israel’s Shema is the same God actively at work in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

This conclusion, ancient as it is, needs no figural reading.  Nor does it point to an affirmation that Jesus is God incarnate.  Hays does make that claim a few sentences later: “There is only one reason why Christological interpretation of the OT is not a matter of stealing or twisting Israel’s sacred texts:[25]the God to whom the Gospels bear witness, the God incarnate in Jesus, is the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”[26]

Hays work is a thoughtful, passionate argument for a return to a figural reading of the Old Testament as well as reading the New Testament through that same hermeneutic.  His work is a recasting of ideas that date back to some of the earliest Christian approaches to scripture combined with the later interpretive lenses of persons such as Auerbach, Frei, and Brown.

His argument is clearly and unapologetically a biased interpretive hermeneutic that favors a Christian reappropriatioin of the Old Testament to provide clarity and context for the Christian understanding of God’s self-disclosure in the person of Jesus.  Without addressing the issue directly, save one aside,[27] Hays favors the reclamation of the Septuagint as the Christian Old Testament which may be his way of claiming the Old Testament for Christians as Justin Martyr did without necessarily claiming the Hebrew version of Israel’s scriptures thereby only coopting a later Jewish tradition than the wholesale appropriation of Judaism for the expressed purpose of fulfilling the scriptures through the person of Jesus.

Again, this is not a new argument as Hays himself articulates.  He is proposing a return to this style of reading by claiming its superiority in bringing clarity and unity to the whole of the biblical narrative.  He succeeds in his argument but only at the expense of sacrificing other (of not all) modes of scriptural interpretation.

Having said that, there will be points in Hays’ book that Christians of almost every stripe will find illuminating.  While his larger conclusions may not always hold merit, many of his points and observations along the way are quite insightful.  It is, however, not a book that is the end-all argument for figural reading, though it succeeds in making its case for consideration.

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[1]  Given the final scope and point of Hays writings, one has to wonder what it means to consider the wrappings that were left behind in the resurrection.

[2]  Luther’s Preface to the Old Testament in Luther’s Works

[3]  Hays p. 2

[4]  Hays p. 2 citing Eric Auerbach

[5]  Woznicki “On Figural Interpretation” November 12, 2014

[6]  Hays p. 3

[7]  Ibid – Hays here cites Hans Frei, whom I will mention later.

[8]  Hays writes this: “We must give close consideration to the revisionary figural ways that the four Gospel writers actually read Israel’s Scripture.” p. 4

[9]  Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 29.2

[10]  Hays p. 9.  Hays will utilize the abbreviation OT for the Old Testament throughout his work.

[11]  Hays p. 11

[12]  As found in Eusebius The History of the Church 6.12.3-6

[13]  Hays p. 13

[14]  Ibid p. 14

[15]  McDonald p. 119

[16]  Hays p. 15

[17]  Hays p. 16

[18]  Ibid

[19]  See Levine, in particular chapter 6

[20]  Enns in Berding, Lunde, and Gundry p. 201

[21]  See Stewart, Angus “John Calvin’s Integrated Covenant Theology 1” in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, 2007.

[22]  See Lamb p. 67-95

[23]  Hays p. 107

[24]  Hays p. 98

[25]  Although Hays has already used the words “reappropriating” and “reimagining” to describe the work of the Gospels in reference to the Old Testament.

[26]  Hays p. 109

[27]  See p. 107