An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Greetings, I’m Fred Zaspel and welcome to another Author Interview with Books At a Glance. I was very interested to see this new book from Gregory Beale and Benjamin Gladd – The Story Retold: A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament – and we’re very pleased to talk with both authors about their important new work.
Greg and Ben, welcome, and congratulations on a great new book!
Beale:
Well, thank you.
Gladd:
Thanks so much, Fred.
Zaspel:
This isn’t the first time you guys have collaborated or conspired on a work. Give us a minute and tell us the background here, of the two of you.
Beale:
I’ll let Ben answer that one.
Gladd:
Okay. I did my PhD thesis under Prof. Beale at Wheaton on the use of Daniel and mystery in 1 Corinthians, that he supervised. And we eventually went on to write a more robust biblical theology of mystery for IVP Academics several years ago. So this will now be our second one that we’ve done with IVP.
Zaspel:
The other one was on New Testament mystery, wasn’t it?
Gladd:
Yes, Hidden but Not Revealed was the title. The core of that book was actually in a book that I wrote in 1998, called John’s Use of the Old Testament in Revelation and I had a long section there on the use of mystery in the book of Revelation, and then how that compared to the use of mystery elsewhere in the New Testament. It was a very long section, so we basically expanded all of that and made that into a book.
Zaspel:
Okay, first, what is this book? Is it NT Introduction? Survey? Overview Commentary? A text in Biblical Theology? What?
Beale:
Well, I’ll make a few comments and then let Ben add to it. Most New Testament introductions focus on author, dating, occasion of the book, that is, why it was written, and then the outline of the book. Ours is a New Testament introduction, but we abbreviate all of that much more. All of that ends up coming at the front of our book, maybe the first two or at most three pages, and then the rest of our coverage of each book, that we cover consecutively throughout the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, etc., we look at the major Old Testament influence in that book. We do consecutively go through the book, but as we go consecutively, we look at the major Old Testament influences in those segments.
Gladd:
The genesis of this book, not to make a pun, but the genesis of this book was about a decade ago, maybe a little bit thereafter. I was looking at a recent book that was a New Testament introduction and it was examining the New Testament in light of Jewish and Greco-Roman background. The idea, then, was, “hey, wouldn’t it be neat if somebody wrote a New Testament introduction at a college level that examined the New Testament in light of the Old? Imagine that!” So that’s where this started. What we did, was just go through the entire New Testament and examined every major passage in light of the Old Testament. We do get into some authorship and dating and provenance and that sort of thing, but it’s just a couple of pages. So many books do that now that we just didn’t really feel the need to rehash all that.
Zaspel:
It’s kind of a new niche you’ve filled, isn’t it?
Beale:
It is. It really is not strictly a New Testament introduction and it is not strictly a biblical theology. It is a hybrid. It is both. A person can use it for their New Testament introduction class, or they could use it for their biblical theology class on the New Testament. But it is a bit of a hybrid in that respect. And it’s not just for college level, it’s for early seminary; and it’s definitely for seriously interested Christian readers.
Gladd:
I think it’s perfect if a pastor is preaching on Galatians 3 or James 2, or whatever, and he wonders how does the Old Testament broadly fit into this chapter? That’s what this book does.
Beale:
By the way, it would be good to use this book together with the book that Don Carson and I edited called Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old.
Zaspel:
I was just thinking that.
Beale:
They are a little similar, but they definitely would supplement one another.
Zaspel:
Maybe you can give us some brief samplings: What is the Bible Story in summary? Let’s get that big background first. In 30 seconds or less.
Gladd:
I could do it in three sentences: Adam was supposed to be faithful – didn’t do it. Israel was supposed to be faithful – didn’t do it. The last Adam, the true Israel, was faithful and therefore the church is now faithful in accomplishing God’s goal for creation, for redemption. And now we enjoy what he has secured in us. Maybe that’s four sentences, but it’s along those lines. We see how in Genesis when the three cycle themselves, the pattern is repeated throughout the Old Testament and then on into the New.
Zaspel:
Ben, you are fading out, and we can’t hear you…. Okay, there you are. We missed a good part of what you just had to say. I’m sure it was brilliant, but we missed it.
Gladd:
Oh no, well, maybe Greg should repeat that.
Beale:
Well, I think we got Ben’s three sentences, didn’t we?
Zaspel:
Yes.
Beale:
And that was very good. You know, you could abbreviate that with the classic statement: Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Though we would add with redemption, Redemption/New Creation. All of this with a view to pointing toward Christ, because when Adam fails to be a king, a priest, and a prophet, then that leaves open, then, someone who has to fill that and you get a lot of kings and priests and prophets in the Old Testament who are commissioned and they all fail. Finally, Christ comes as the true king, priest, and prophet in order to redeem his people through introducing a new creational kingdom. So that would be my way of summarizing it.
Let me add, you’ve got to underscore that all of this is for the goal of God’s glory.
Zaspel:
Explain the “contextual nature of the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament.” What is that all about, and why is it important? And maybe you can give us an example or two.
Beale:
Yes, Ben, if you don’t mind, I’ll just launch off on that and then you can give your two cents, three cents, or a dollar.
In scholarship, there’s been a debate within evangelicalism, and outside, as to whether the New Testament writers, when they quote or allude to the Old Testament, do they do it in a way that is in line and consistent with the original meaning of the Old Testament? Now, some scholars both outside and within evangelicalism say “no, they didn’t.” Now, with regard to evangelicals, one then asks, “well, how can you hold to the inspiration of Scriptures?” And the answer, there, by those evangelicals is, “well, they preach the right doctrine from the wrong text, but the doctrine was inspired,” so that’s how they would do that. We believe, and I will just say upfront, at around the early part of the 2000’s at Westminster theological seminary, we had this very debate among our faculty. So that’s what I mean, it’s a debate within evangelicalism. Now, in our book, we believe and we think we can demonstrate that both in this book and more in depth, of course, would be the commentary on the New Testament use of the Old by Don Carson and me, that the New Testament writers do indeed to significant degrees develop and understand the Old Testament passages that they refer to in line with the meaning of the Old Testament. That is why the New Testament is indeed the fulfillment of what the Old Testament predicts. If students, and if pastors, especially take pastors; if they preach in their preaching in the New Testament that Paul, for example, in the book of Romans is referring to the Old Testament and he’s giving them an idea which is not what the Old Testament authors had in mind, can you imagine the lack of confidence eventually over a period of time that that would instill in congregations? The unity of the Bible would be destroyed. I’m beginning to preach, so I better stop.
Zaspel:
Well, it seems to me, that the New Testament writers understood the Old Testament a little bit better than they are given credit for.
Beale:
I think so.
Gladd:
The only thing I would add was, they’re very, very close to the Old Testament. I mean this has got to have a bearing on how we understand when we are reading the Old Testament apostles that number one, they are very near to the Old Testament. That is they were really into it, they had lived and breathed the Old Testament; whether they heard it at the synagogue, whether they grew up with it in their homes. Even though they were not professionally trained scholars and scribes, but their families nurture the Old Testament. They probably attended a good portion of the festivals. They were steeped in it. And secondly, they really believed that what the Old Testament said was going to happen at the very end of history, was happening right then and there in their midst. It was living for them. And so, the point is that they are going to take very good care of how they are interpreting the Old Testament. I think, at the very least, we need to give them the benefit of the doubt in how they are reading it. It really is amazing. You know, we always think that we know better than the previous generation. That’s just a problem with scholars, but we really use that even with the New Testament writers, that we just assume that we can read the Old Testament better than they can. And yet, really, how long have we been studying these texts? 10 years? You know, if you have your PhD 10 years or 15 years, and then all of a sudden you can be the ultimate arbiter between what’s right and what’s wrong here when it comes to interpretation. So, we need to take care about these issues and there really is a big deal.
Beale:
Paul says in Romans 15, that whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. And 1 Corinthians 10 says the same thing.
Fred, you did want us to give an example of what we are talking about in Scripture. Do you want me to do that, or do you want to move on?
Zaspel:
Please do.
Beale:
Okay. Let’s take, for example, the use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15, where Joseph and Mary have taken Jesus as an infant. Herod wants to kill Jesus, and he goes about killing all the infants in the area. But before that happens an angel tells Joseph to take your family into Egypt. And so, they went into Egypt and then when Herod died, they came back out of Egypt. And so, as Matthew is narrating that, he says this is to fulfill what was written through the prophet, “out of Egypt, I have called my son.” So, the going in and the coming out of Egypt fulfills that prophecy. But the problem is when you go back to Hosea 11:1, it is not a prophecy. It is a historical recollection on the first Exodus. And so some scholars, like Dewey Beagle (I have his book in my library, right here) said Matthew would have made a C on his Interpretation 101 test, because Matthew is saying that’s a prophecy. No, it’s historical, it’s an historical narrative, so that looks like a mistake. And furthermore, it says that it’s Jesus who is an individual who really is fulfilling that, “out of Egypt I have called my son,” whereas in Hosea 11:1, the “son” is many people, it is the nation of Israel. So, again, it looks like Matthew has misunderstood. Well, the long and the short is that when you look at Hosea itself, in the middle portion of Hosea 11, (it’s verse one from where the quotation comes) about verse five says that Israel will return to Egypt and in fact, at the end of the chapter it says God will bring them out of Egypt. Those are prophecies at that point, so it’s very clear in the context of Hosea 11 that the first verse, Israel’s historical coming out of Egypt, is really an event that is similar to them returning and then coming out of Egypt, especially. So that it’s probably, Hosea 11:1 and its context is a pointer already to the end of the chapter, which is the climax of that chapter, that they will return, that God will bring them back out of Egypt. And, in fact, when you look at the context of all of Hosea, repeatedly Hosea will talk about the first Exodus and then repeatedly he will talk about a final end-time Exodus. And when you put those two things together, if you said, “Hosea, you’re talking about a first Exodus and an end time Exodus; are they related?” And, of course, he would say they are. Are they similar? Of course, they are similar. Then you could ask him, “do they point to each other?” I think it is highly probable, and I don’t want to put words in Hosea’s mouth, but highly probable that he would say, “yes, they point to one another.”
Zaspel:
Matthew seemed to think so.
Beale:
Yes, Matthew seemed to think so. But how can you apply, go from a nation to an individual? Well, it’s very clear, for example, in Matthew 16, when Peter asked the question, “who are you?” And then you get the statement, “you are the son of the living God.” And the reference there, the only place where son and living God occurs in the Old Testament is Hosea 1, at the end, where it talks of an end-time leader delivering Israel. And so then in chapter 3 of Hosea it talks about this end-time Messiah. So I think what Matthew has done is that he has seen that the leader of Israel represents the nation. And so how appropriate is it that he could see that in chapter 11:1, where it talks about the people coming out of Egypt in the first Exodus, that you could apply that to the son as this happens eschatologically. Because the son represents the people. If you studied Hosea throughout Hosea, I’m probably giving you an answer that is too long to hear but I’ll just give you this last point. If you look throughout Hosea, Hosea will take references from Genesis about the patriarchs and he will apply them to the nation. And even with Adam, for example, in Hosea 6 it says, “like Adam, Israel has transgressed the covenant.” So there’s a good example of going from the individual to the many. He does that all throughout Hosea, going from the individual to the many, that is, to the nation. Matthew is aware of that one and many hermeneutic, and he’s just reversing it and saying you can go from the many, back to the one. It’s the same kind of hermeneutic, so I don’t think Matthew is misusing Hosea.
Zaspel:
No, he’s looking back at Hosea in big picture and he sees the larger context and structure and he has that in place now with the coming of Jesus and he sees it all and says, here’s what Hosea was about.
Beale:
And that’s a good example, when you come across other problematic Old in the New texts. You know, when you really dig into the Old Testament you find that it makes a lot of sense.
Zaspel:
Okay, back to the big picture then, what is the role that the Gospels play in the big Bible story? I was going to ask what’s the distinct contribution of each, maybe that’s too much to get into, but at least what’s the role that the Gospels play in the story?
Beale:
Well, Ben’s been working on the Gospels in another project and I’m sure that’s partly overlapping with this, and so, Ben, what do you think?
Gladd:
It’s a lot. You’ve got the entire Old Testament converging on faithful Adam, on Yahweh incarnate, on true Israel, so it’s a lot. There’s a lot going on. It really is difficult to answer that in a thumbnail sketch. I guess I’ll just say that the person of Christ sheds light on the Old Testament, and the Old Testament sheds light on the person of Christ. And we see God, Israel’s God, more clearly and it makes a lot of sense. Now there are still some difficulties there, but it really does make a lot of sense. It really is the bedrock for understanding the rest of the New Testament. Even though, yes, of course, most of Paul was written before the Gospels, but of course he must have heard some of Jesus. He experienced him on the Damascus Road so there is a great deal that Paul himself would have learned. But still it really is the foundation for the remainder of the New Testament. And even, just with regard to the Old in the New, a lot of what we find in the Gospels, just how they are tracing the Old Testament, applying it, is very similar to what the other New Testament writers do, not only when they apply it to Christ, but when they apply it to the church. That’s probably maybe one of the most helpful ways of putting it, is that, for example, all four Gospels will bring Isaiah 40 and apply it to the person of Christ, the new creation, let’s call him the new Exodus. But then we get other New Testament authors that are applying Isaiah 40 to the church, 1 Peter 1, there. So, they really pick up and expand what the Gospels do, it’s just that now they are working it out in the covenant community, that’s really an extension of it.
When you look at the Old Testament, (I’ll just try to put a finishing touch on that) Adam fails as a king, priest, and prophet so then you get Israel coming out of Egypt in an Exodus. They eventually fail, their kings fail. So, in the New Testament what you get in these Gospels… You can take Matthew, but it’s true of the others, that what you get is Jesus as the true last Adamic king and priest and prophet. And he is introducing, hence, a new creation. You get him also as the one who is introducing a new Exodus. And, finally, Israel, which was never fully restored, he is fully restoring Israel. So, I think that’s how you would plug that in. He is introducing a new creational kingdom and he is a priest mediating between God and man, climaxed at the cross. Which Paul says was the mercy seat where Jesus’ blood was poured out, which is the middle of the temple. He is the mediatorial priest. So, that’s a way to summarize it.
Zaspel:
I was going to relate it, as Ben was talking, to his earlier three sentences that he gave. Adam was supposed to be faithful and failed; Israel was supposed to be faithful and failed, and now we have the new Adam and the true Israel and he succeeds, and so on.
Beale:
Amen.
Fred, you need to ask the questions and then answer them. (Laughing) That was a great answer, Fred.
Zaspel:
I’ve got to credit Ben for it.
Gladd:
The church is a corporate prophet, priest, and king, right? So, it’s just got to unfold now through the church as we identify through prophet, priest, and king.
Beale:
Because we are in union with Christ.
Zaspel:
Just briefly, back to the big picture, what is the role of Acts? We’ve already hinted at that?
Gladd:
Yes, we’ve sort of already brought that out. The only thing I would maybe add is that suffering is really underscored in Acts, and how it’s tied to the propagation of the Gospel in Genesis 1:28. The Gospel is exploding and growing, and yet it’s so tied to suffering in Acts.
Beale:
And I think, too, I think at the very beginning, there, the question that’s asked by the disciples in verse six is that at this time you’re restoring the kingdom to Israel. And many people think the answer that Jesus gives when he says “it’s not for you to know the times or seasons,” but then he goes on and says “the Holy Spirit will come on you and you will be witnesses,” actually what he’s saying there, he gives three allusions to the Old Testament. Where it says the Spirit will come upon you, that’s from Exodus 32:15, which is a prophecy of Israel’s restoration when the Spirit will come on them. So, actually, he is inaugurating what the disciples have asked. In other words, is at this time you’re restoring the kingdom to Israel, they had a consummative eschatology. They didn’t understand already and not yet. So Jesus says it’s not for you to know the consummation. But the inauguration of the kingdom is beginning; the restoration of Israel is beginning. And this is why throughout the book of Acts you get the summary of Christianity with the phrase the way. It’s often called the way. And in our Bibles, it even capitalizes that. Why is that? Because it’s from Isaiah 40 and verse three, “make ready the way of the Lord.” It’s quoted at the first of Matthew and Luke. Remember, Acts is part two of Luke, and so Luke is explaining how what Jesus introduced is continuing in the church. The church is the beginning of the restoration of the people of God and becoming not only the restored people of God but in the kingdom of God.
Gladd:
One little piece here, Fred. It’s very significant to me that in Acts 1, the disciples are still struggling with the nature of the kingdom. Even though Jesus says at the very beginning (Acts 1:3) Jesus is still teaching them about the kingdom and they are still in some sense struggling with it, but then after Pentecost, they don’t struggle with it anymore. They get it. What they do struggle with is how Gentiles come in. But they don’t struggle with the nature of the kingdom, and that is when the Spirit is fully poured out upon them, they get it, because, I think, the Spirit illuminates them and they finally grasp the significance of the already and not yet kingdom.
Beale:
And, Fred, I will just make one other comment that you need. That what happens when the Spirit descends in tongues of fire, that phrase tongues of fire comes out of Isaiah 30, and, as is especially understood by later early Jewish commentators, it represents the fiery presence of God in his heavenly temple. So when the Spirit is descending, what’s happening is he is incorporating the people of God into his temple so that his people come to faith throughout the spread of the Gospel in Acts, people are becoming incorporated into that invisible temple of the Holy Spirit, as Paul calls it in1 Corinthians 3, and as the church expands, the temple expands. This is the end-time temple, so it’s an amazing thing.
Zaspel:
I wanted to ask about the book of Revelation in the big picture also, but I’ll content myself with this: What are some of the most outstanding themes that the NT writers pick up from the OT?
Beale:
Well, I think we will be repeating ourselves, but it’s a good way to summarize. I think that the major themes again, and again, in the Gospels and Paul and Revelation is the restoration of Israel, for example. Again, and again you have the prophecies of the restoration of Israel from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, some of the minor prophets. And you know, a lot of people who believe that the restoration of Israel will occur only in the millennium, you know, these prophecies in the Old Testament are something that well, okay, they’re not really meant for us. But if you look at them in the Gospels and in Paul and Revelation, they are applied to the church and they begin fulfillment in Jesus’ ministry and in the church as you see it in Paul’s writings, so that this great restoration is beginning now. Why is it beginning now? Because Jesus is true Israel; he underwent the epitome of exile and separation from his father, a greater exile that Israel ever went through. And when he rose from the dead he was restored to the Father, not because of his sin, but because of the sin of the people that he died for. So that, when we come into union with him, we are seen as having suffered the epitome of exile in hell and being restored from it into the presence of God.
So that’s one of the major, major themes. The other is, of course, the kingdom of God. Another is that Jesus is the priest, the mediatorial priest and the great prophet. Another huge one is the temple, that Jesus is the true temple. When we come into union with him, we become part of that temple. And that temple expands invisibly as others come to faith and become a part of that temple. Ben, what do you think?
Gladd:
Amen! Verily, verily!
Zaspel:
Give us a brief overview of your book and how you go about constructing your project.
Gladd:
That’s a good question. Greg outlined that briefly at the beginning and I just had a couple of pieces.
The first chapter is the story of the entire Bible, the second chapter was Greg’s idea and we have a whole chapter there, and this is very unusual for a New Testament introduction to do this. We have a whole chapter on the use of the Old in the New. We cover a great deal of territory there. We try to make it very accessible, but we cover a great deal of territory. We go through the major ways in which the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament. They don’t always do it the same way. That’s important, so we cover that. The third chapter is the Gospels – we introduce the Gospels because it’s fairly complicated, so we try to make it somewhat accessible there. And then we march through every book of the New Testament and we do some introductory pieces, authorship, dating, purpose, those sorts of things. But then we at least do one, if not two… I do these little biblical theology themes that are dominant themes contained within each book. For example, in the book of Matthew we cover two. One of them is on the kingdom, the nature of the kingdom, so we’ve got a discussion of what is the kingdom? How is it operating in the New Testament? How is it operating in Matthew? Because Matthew talks a lot about it. And secondly, we have one on the divine warrior, how Jesus is the divine warrior in Matthew 8, in the stilling of the storm. We talk about the Old Testament conception of the divine warrior, then in the New Testament how Jesus identifies with Yahweh as a divine warrior in stilling the storm, subduing enemies. And then we go through each chapter. In fact, I pulled a recent New Testament introduction off the shelf that just came out, and I looked at their chapter on Matthew. Their entire chapter is roughly 35 pages and out of those 35 pages, 25 or more are just introductory material and they only leave a few pages for the content itself. Ours is the exact opposite. We spend a lot of time developing the content. At the end of the day, to church laymen, pastors, yes, authorship is important, but at the end of the day you’re going to preach the text. You’ve got to connect it to the story of the Bible. So that’s really what we’re trying to do, but in a very accessible way.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Drs. Gregory Beale and Benjamin Gladd about their new book, The Story Retold: A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament. It’s a wonderful guide to understanding the New Testament Scriptures in whole-Bible perspective – a book that needed to be written, and we’re glad to have it.
Greg and Ben, thanks so much for talking to us today.
Beale:
Fred, can I make one final comment?
Zaspel:
Sure.
Beale:
The idea for the book came from Ben, and I’m just very thankful that he included me in it. And, by the way, we have over 300 pictures in the book that are very helpful.
Zaspel:
So, anybody can handle it.
Beale:
There you go.