Book Review: Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament

Wright, Christopher, J.H. Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, Downer’s Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1992, 256pp.

British Old Testament Scholar Christopher Wright seeks to influence all Christians in this book written in a popular, yet still scholarly style. Wright’s goal is to help the Old Testament not only become a living book for contemporary Christians, but more specifically to provide a remedy for the problem of Jesus being cut off from the historical, social and religious context of his life. A foundational premise of the book is that we cannot truly know Jesus without knowing his story. “The more you understand the Old Testament,” he writes, “the closer you will come to the heart of Jesus.”[1] Wright believes that a better knowledge of the story of Israel is key to helping Christians come closer to the heart of Jesus, since Jesus brings that story to completion. Thus a deeper study of the Old Testament is essential for believers be able to know Jesus better. Furthermore, Wright is concerned that the picture many Christians have of Jesus today is one where “He is cut off from the historical Jewish context of his own day, and from his deep roots in the Hebrew scriptures.”[2] As he develops this theme of Jesus and the Old Testament, Wright explains Jesus relationship to the story, promise, identity, mission and values of the Old Testament. Near the end of the book, he states, “Our whole purpose has been to see how much Jesus was shaped in his identity, mission and teaching by his Hebrew scriptures.”[3]

Wright effectively introduces the reader to the broader Old Testament story behind Jesus through an initial discussion of the oft-overlooked genealogy of Matthew 1. By highlighting this familiar text that is confusing and perhaps seems irrelevant to most modern readers, he peaks their curiosity and then launches into a faithful overview of the Biblical storyline and the historical context it is played out within. Here the reader can observe Wright’s method of interpreting the New Testament and the life of Jesus as that which fulfills the Old Testament story. Wright starts with the person of Jesus, who in Matthew (the gospel written for Jewish Christians, in Wright’s estimation) is a real Jew, a real man (here he notes the four foreign women included in Jesus’ genealogy), and the Son of David.

“So much of significance, then is contained within Matthew’s opening seventeen verses. In its own way, though more indirectly, it is rather like the prologue of John’s Gospel, pointing out the dimensions of the significance of Jesus before introducing him in the flesh.”[4]

As readers see more clearly the story-in-progress that Jesus enters into, they also see that he is the completion of that story that is left unfinished by the Old Testament.

Loosely following the tradition of Walter Eichrodt of selecting a center by which to structure an Old Testament theology, Wright then enters into an overview of covenant theology spoken of primarily in terms of “promise-fulfillment” and then later developing a good, basic analysis of each “covenant” according to its scope, substance and the response of the people whom God made the covenant with. Wright sees Genesis 12:1-3 as a hinge-point in the Biblical storyline: Genesis 1-11 poses the question of how God’s purposes for mankind might prevail, while the rest of the Bible answers that question. Wright understands the Exodus to be the primary model of what redemption means in the Bible.[5] Wright sees “Salvation-History” as the primary point of continuity between the Old and New Testaments.[6] Therefore he concludes that

“another dimension of the Old Testament promise is the way it leads to a recurring pattern of promise-fulfillment, fresh promise-fulfillment, repeating and amplifying itself through history. Like some science fiction, time-travelling (sic) rocket, the promise is launched, returning to earth at some later point in history in a partial fulfillment, only to be relaunched with a fresh load of fuel and cargo for yet another historical destination and so on.”[7]

Wright sees God’s covenant with Abraham partially fulfilled by the time of the Exodus. He sees the Israelite covenant at Sinai partially fulfilled in the conquest of Canaan. He sees the Davidic covenant as not failing through the exile through the prophetic vision of the new Covenant. Here his promise-fulfillment paradigm seems to fall a little short. One can see how his distinction between prediction and promises helps him to come to his theological conclusions. While he does see an overall unity in the covenants of the Old Testament, as he discusses promise-fulfillment of each of the covenants, Wright stays true to the ideals of Biblical Theology when he acknowledges, “The tension between the universal goal and the particular means is found throughout the Bible and cannot be reduced to either pole alone.”[8] Once again beginning with texts from the New Testament and then moving to the old, he avoids discussion of a covenant of creation since “the text itself never speaks of a covenant, and it is not described that way anywhere else in the Old or New Testament.”[9] Wright faithfully portrays that God has kept the promises he had made and that “the old testament declared the promise which Jesus fulfilled.”[10]

In discussing Jesus and his Old Testament identity, Wright makes a strong case that “it was the Old Testament which helped Jesus to understand Jesus.”[11] (Emphasis his) On pages 110-116, a significant detour is taken to discuss the hermeneutical principle of typology, summarized in the following quote. “Typology is a way of helping us understand Jesus in the light of the Old Testament. It is not the exclusive way to understand the full meaning of the Old Testament itself.”[12] Wright asserts that typology:

1) is not a theological or technical term, meaning a range of examples, models and patterns of correspondence.

2) is a normal and common way of knowing and understanding things,

3) is already a feature of the Old Testament itself (Jer. 7:12-15, Hos. 2:16ff, Gen. 15:6)

4) is a matter of analogy,

5) is a matter of history, and

6) is not just prefiguring or foreshadowing.

In the sixth and final description of typology, Wright distinguishes his understanding of typology from those which view a type as “any event, institution, or person in the Old Testament which had been ordained by God for the primary purpose of foreshadowing Christ.”[13] By making this distinction, Wright enables his readers to avoid the errors of 1) failing to find meaning in the Old Testament events, institutions and people themselves, and 2) engaging in far-fetched efforts to interpret every detail of an Old Testament ‘type’ as in some way foreshadowing some other obscure detail about Jesus. Wright offers this summary of a properly handled typological interpretation.

“Typology…is a way of understanding Christ and the various events and experiences surrounding him in the New Testament by analogy or correspondence with the historical realities of the Old Testament seen as patterns or models. It is based on the consistency of God in salvation-history. It has the backing of Christ himself who, on the authority of his Father, saw himself in this way. But typology is not the way of interpreting the Old Testament for itself. This is because it is selective in the texts it uses from the Old Testament (i.e. those which particularly help us to understand Christ), whereas the New Testament itself tells us emphatically that the whole of the scriptures are written for our profit (2 Tim, 3:16f.) and partly because it is limited in the meaning it extracts from those selected texts (i.e. again, meanings which specifically relate to Christ.”[14]

By engaging in such a detailed discussion of typology, Wright may leave much of his popular audience behind, but nevertheless his method of interpretation appears to be sound.

By discussing both the expectations of the Jewish society of his day and Jesus’ “creative and original way of handling the Hebrew Scriptures”, Wright helps the reader understand what Jesus believed his mission to be. He effectively argues that Christ came first for the restoration of Israel, which is then immediately followed by the blessing of the nations through the preaching of the gospel. The “already but not yet” principle is also addressed here in a helpful way.

To make the case that Jesus’ values (ethics) flow from Old Testament revelation, Wright accurately reminds readers “to love your neighbor as yourself, is not a revolutionary new love ethic invented by Jesus. It was the fundamental ethical demand of Old Testament holiness which Jesus reaffirmed and sharpened in some cases.”[15] He also properly emphasizes that “Obedience flows from grace; it does not buy it. Obedience is the fruit and proof and sustenance of a relationship with the God you already know.”[16]

On page 76, Wright enters into a polemical argument against “those who look for future fulfillments of Old Testament promises in a manner as literal as the original terms themselves.” While his motor car/horse analogy is helpful, he does not sufficiently develop his arguments against those who insist on literal fulfillment of prophecies. In a day when Left Behind is the best-seller at the local Christian bookstore, Christians who have been exposed to more literal interpretations of prophecy will most likely require a closer look at the passages in question before they jettison the portrayal of the end times they’ve been entertained with.

Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament effectively communicates to its readers a more complete understanding of Jesus. Though not a book about “Christian living”, by giving readers a more accurate picture of the Lord and providing a covenantal framework for thinking about the entire Bible, they will be helped to know the Lord and His word better. And we can trust that the Spirit will use that to transform lives. The book would be a helpful supplementary text for a Sunday School class on “Jesus and Redemptive History”.

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[1]Wright, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, p. 108.

² Ibid, p. ix.

[3] Ibid, p.242

[4] Ibid, p.8.

[5] Ibid, p.10

[6] Ibid, p.33-34

[7] Ibid. p.72.

[8] Ibid. p.43.

[9] Ibid, p. 80.

[10] Ibid, p. 110.

[11] Ibid, p. 108.

[12] Ibid, p. 116.

[13] Ibid, p. 115.

[14] Ibid, p. 116.

[15] Ibid, p. 201.

[16] Ibid, p. 193.