The Bible is a Closed System of Revelation
Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἣν ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ ὁ Θεός, δεῖξαι τοῖς δούλοις αὐτοῦ ἃ δεῖ γενέσθαι ἑν τάχει,
— ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΨΙΣ 1:1 [i]
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass;
—Revelation 1:1 [ii]
We have all heard, I’m sure, of the term “Systematic Theology”. Basically, this is a way to organize the study of a Religion by categorizing it into major theological topics, examining each of those topics independently to draw out doctrines, and then integrating the individual doctrines together into a seamless, systematized overarching theology. The underlying proposition being that any theology which is not systematic is an illegitimate theology.
The general doctrinal categories you will find in most non-Catholic Christian Systematic Theologies are [1]:
· Bibliology - the study of the Bible.
· Theology Proper - the study of the doctrine of God.
· Christology - the study of Jesus.
· Pneumatology - the study of the Holy Spirit.
· Anthropology - the study of humanity.
· Soteriology - the study of Salvation.
· Ecclesiology - the study of the Church.
· Eschatology - the study of last things or end times.
· Angelology - the study of the angelic beings.
Note that the names of these subjects are all Greek cognates. If you know the meaning of the Greek word behind the cognate, you’ll know what subject it covers (I.e. σωτηρία, the word behind Soteriology, means “salvation”).
While some lists have additional subjects added, such as Demonology, and Arnold Fruchtenbaum of Ariel Ministries wrote a book about the need for Christian Academia to include Israelology (the study of Israel), the point is made, one could easily arrive at a complete and comprehensive theology just by seamlessly integrating the basic doctrines devised from the categories above.
However, that being said, there is another category that is explored even before all of these and, in some way, it is the most important of them all. It is called “Prolegomena”—from the Greek words προ, meaning “before”, and λεγω, meaning “to say”—so, “a word before”, or “a foreword”. Prolegomena is the study of the methods and presuppositions used in arriving at the doctrines of each of the other categories and the eventual integration of the whole system. This course is, in effect, a 10-week long Prolegomena.
The importance of these methods and presuppositions cannot be overstated. They are the foundational truths which legitimize the very enquiry itself, the rationale behind the belief that one can reach conclusions about the nature of God and how He wishes to reveal Himself to us.
Take that presupposition as an example; that God reveals Himself—His existence, His nature, His will—to us. See how essential it is to the entire idea of Christian theology? Without it, the Bible doesn’t exist as anything but a collection of essays written around a similar premise and studying it is nothing more than an exercise in literary criticism. If God doesn’t reveal Himself to us, we can’t even know for sure that He exists at all!
But of course, He does; He has; and His incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, is His greatest revelation of Himself to us of all time. The Bible is the second greatest revelation of God to us of all time.
So, in order to study God, we need these types of presuppositions—these acknowledged-beforehand facts. And, naturally, in order to study the Bible, we also need to agree to certain facts beforehand. Here are three essential ones:
1. The Bible is the inspired Word of God
2. The Bible is the inerrant Word of God
3. The Bible is the only written Word of God
If any of those three statements are untrue, then, as the Apostle Paul would say, our faith is vain, because the Bible could no longer be relied upon as the sole authority of the Christian—you couldn’t believe it was the Truth.
Apocalypse
Now, because those three facts are true, we are able to make a particular claim about the Bible; which is the topic of today’s class. It is also the third General Principal of this course: The Bible is a Closed System of Revelation.
Now, for those of you who have attended any of my recent Bible Studies, that general principle will no doubt sound familiar; it is an important idea and one I am keen for everyone to understand. Before I explain it, however, I’d like to say a couple of things about the concept of revelation as it relates to the Bible in general and the NT in particular.
God revealed as much of Himself as He wanted us to know in the OT, but, for reasons only He knows, it was covered over by what the Bible calls “the letter of the law”. If you think of the distinction between the letter of the Law and the spirit of the Law, you will see what I mean. Because the Jews were natural, rather than spiritual, they understood the spiritual things of God in natural terms, and interpreted the Law in natural terms, but the things of God were always spiritual—as the Lord says, speaking of the Jews ideas on adultery, “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
Now, one of the primary purposes of Messiah was to reveal the true spiritual nature of the Law—the Word of God. And in the same way, one of the primary purposes of the NT is to reveal the spiritual nature of the OT.
Augustine is said to be the first to declare the famous phrase Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet; Vetus in Novo patet (The New Testament in the Old is concealed; the Old in the New is revealed). I believe this is absolutely correct. After all, it is a fact that many OT messianic references either made no sense or were completely missed until Jesus came; references such as “the sign of Jonah” (see Matthew 12:40).
When the Jewish sages read about Jonah’s being swallowed by the whale and then spat out three days later they never even imagined that this was a foreshadowing of the Messiah’s death and resurrection. In fact, it was only after that hidden detail was revealed in the NT that the book of Jonah began to be treated as prophetic Scripture. There is always something extra-special to learn when a NT writer references a passage or verse of the OT.
In chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke we have two wonderful examples of revelation. Jesus meets two disciples on their way to Emmaus and engages them in conversation. At first, they don’t know who He is, because, as Luke puts it, “their eyes were holden that they should not know him” (verse 16)—notice it was their “inner eyes” that were being held shut, not their physical vision; or, in other words, their understanding was being obstructed in some way. Notice, too, that this obstructing was being done purposely and purposefully.
The two men tell this seemingly ignorant stranger about the recent events in Jerusalem concerning Jesus and then, as we read from verses 25-27, right after they express some doubt as to Jesus’ resurrection:
…he said unto them, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
This was the first instance of revelation in this passage. The second comes in verse 30-31, the moment Jesus gives the two disciples bread (!), “their eyes were opened, and they knew him”. The Greek word translated “opened” here is διανοίγω, an intensive compound (where the preposition is used to intensify the verb) of δια, meaning “the channel through which”, and ἀνοίγω meaning “to open”—so, διανοίγω means “to open through” or “to open thoroughly”.
Now, there are two things of importance to note here regarding the Scriptures and understanding:
1. The OT prophets, from the five books of Moses until Malachi, contain everything required for people to recognize the Messiah.
2. The Lord is in complete control of men’s minds; meaning He determines who recognizes Him and understands the Scriptures and when.
The Apostle Paul speaks to this in 1 Corinthians 2:7-9.
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him”.
The word translated "hidden" here is ἀποκρυπτω, a compound of ἀπό, meaning “away from”, and κρύπτω, meaning “to cover”—ergo, “to cover away”. It is the exact opposite of the word ἀποκαλυπτω, “to take the cover away”; from which comes the noun form ἀποκαλυψις, an apocalypse or revelation.
Paul then says in Verse 10:
But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
So, this reveling of the mysteries, or secrets, of God, some of which were written in the Old Testament, are now being revealed to us—believers—by God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, in order for those who “love Him”—believers—to know what He has prepared for them.
In the next verses, Paul tells us that the mind and spirit are the same and that the Lord reveals things to us within our minds—our spirits—through His giving us His spirit:
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
The word “mind” is the Greek word νοῦς, the faculty of perception and understanding. The bodily organ that represented the mind to the ancients was the heart, not the brain—as in the common phrase “to understand with the heart” (Matthew 13:15 et al). Paul goes on to tell us of the limitations of the minds of the ungodly:
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
The word “natural” here is ψυχικός—the root being ψυχή, meaning “soul” or “life”, as distinct from the word πνεῦμα, meaning “spirit” (an interesting distinction!), therefore a more accurate translation of ψυχικός would be “soulish”, rather than “natural”. Paul finishes the point by showing that the Spirit of God in us is the Mind of Christ:
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
So, the real nature (or the true nature; there’s no word in Koine Greek for “real”, it’s the same word for “true”: ἀληθής) of God is spiritual and He has hidden as much of it as we need to know in the natural words of the Bible. The only way we can understand the Bible correctly is through the help of the Holy Spirit within our minds—help only believers receive, because only they have “the mind of Christ”. In the same way that the hidden spirit in the natural text is revealed by the Holy Spirit, the hidden meanings of the OT are revealed by the text of the NT. The NT is, in effect, the key to the OT.
Cross-Referencing
All of which brings us back to our General Principal: The Bible is a Closed System of Revelation.
Basically, this means that the Bible is a completely self-contained, systematic whole. It is self-defining. Everything one needs to understand it is in it. The meanings behind the secrets, symbols and figurative expressions are all revealed somewhere inside. As long as we can access the languages and know something of the customs and cultures in which the books of the Bible were written, there is no need to go to any other source to decipher it. So, despite their being written in different languages, there is this miraculous continuity between the Old and New Testaments. This allows the one to verify and confirm the other.
The practical application of this general principal is a method of exegesis I call cross-referencing. This is where you take a verse or passage in the NT and cross-reference it with a similar passage of the OT in order to reveal some hidden meaning or, as with the example of Jonah above, confirm a stated truth.
For example, because a particular verse in Revelation can be cross-referenced to a verse in Corinthians that cites a passage in Genesis; it can be shown that Leviathan is Satan. In Revelation 12:9 we read:
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.
Here we see that the Greek δρακων [drakon], dragon, is equivalent to ὀφις [ophis], the serpent, and that both are references to Satan. The same word for serpent is used in 2 Corinthians 11:3:
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty...
Now, this reference to the serpent in the Garden of Eden proves that the Hebrew word for serpent, נחשׁ [nakhawsh], found in Genesis 3:1 is equal to the Greek word for serpent, ὀφις [ophis]:
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.
Okay. Now let’s look at Isaiah 27:1:
In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Here we see that the serpent and the dragon, תּנּין [tanniyn], are equal in the OT, too, and that they are other names for Leviathan. Therefore, the Dragon is the Serpent is Leviathan is Satan!
Amplifying the OT
Cross-referencing works very well when the OT references in the NT are generalized like Paul’s remarks about the Garden of Eden, but what do we do when the NT doesn’t just refer to an OT passage or verse, it also changes the words?
Above, we mentioned 1 Corinthians 2:9, where Paul is quoting the Book of Isaiah.
But as it is written, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him”.
This is a reference to Isaiah 64:4, which reads:
For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
Notice that “wait” has become “love”. Another example is Matthew 12:18, where we read:
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, “Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles”.
Matthew is citing Isaiah 42:1 where it says of Messiah:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
Notice there are two changes made here: “uphold” and “elect” have become “chosen” and “beloved”.
What can we make of this? Could the NT be wrong?
Well, there are several schools of thought on these types of passages. Some say that the NT speaker is quoting a different text—either the Septuagint or an as yet to be discovered Hebrew reading. Some say that the original NT passage was originally written or spoken in Hebrew or Aramaic and has been mistranslated into Greek. Still others say that the NT speaker was simply paraphrase from a faulty memory.
All of those explanations are, to me, wholly unsatisfactory; all of them undermine the veracity of Scripture and the unchanging nature of God and His divine preservation of His Word. Any explanation that implies or states that an error has taken place, nullifies the first two of our three Biblical presuppositions above. Any explanation that implies or states that there is/was some other manuscript out there nullifies our third Biblical presupposition.
The only logical explanation is the one supported by everything we have said above: That the NT is providing its primary service: revealing the underlying spiritual meaning of the natural OT passage. These changes are not mistakes, but amplifications of the original.
And in no way must we think that these amplifications are in any way repudiations. No, in the same way that being angry with one’s brother—a fellow believer—without a cause is the spiritual meaning of murder, or that looking on a woman to lust after her is spiritual adultery (Matthew 5:21-28), the revealed NT definitions fulfil (“fill fully”) the natural meaning in order for the believer to see what is meant by a righteousness which exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 5:20). Paul tells us the Law is perfect as it stands, so clearly nothing needed to be added—just revealed.
So, we now see that by going to the Greek NT we can understand more fully, see more clearly, the meaning and intentions behind the words of the Hebrew OT. By such methods as cross-referencing NT and OT verses, we can get that much closer to the uncovered wisdom of God.
[1] list taken from Theopedia (http://www.theopedia.com/Systematic_theology)
[i] All Greek citations from THE NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK ACCORDING TO THE TEXT FOLLOWED IN THE AUTHORISED VERSION TOGETHER WITH THE VARIATIONS ADOPTED IN THE REVISED VERSION, edited by F.H.A. Scrivener; CAMBRIDGE: At the University Press 1949.
[ii] Whilst all English Bible verses are taken from the King James Version, modern punctuation and quotation markings will often be used where appropriate without reference (I.e. Capitalization after question marks; double inverted commas on opening quotes, then single inverted commas for internal quotations.).
