Jun 13, 2007 01:02
Well, I survived my one week of class unscathed, though a little brain tired. I added up the time spent in lectures this past week and it was 24 hours. That's a lot of friggin' time absorbing what is usually spread out over about fifteen weeks of class, though only six hours shy of average time spent in class for a semester since it was a two-hour credit. Then again six more hours would've meant two more passage exegeses that spanned one end of the Bible to the other. This guy was so stinking intense. It was quite a confusing class at times. Basically he went through nearly the entire Bible and gave us a method of interpretation so that we can understand what the heck the New Testament authors were talking about when they quoted the Old Testament.
One aspect of the method is called "Typology." It is when a historical event recorded in the OT is interpreted by the NT author as a prophecy relating either to Christ or the Church or both simultaneously. One of the results of this is that a person comes to see that the nation of Israel was a type of Christ. They continually failed to accomplish God's purpose so Christ came and was True Israel, He was a recapitulation of everything that Israel did and He did it right. As a result of that all believers are also true Israel for we are "in Christ" and He is "in us." Paul speaks about this as the mystery that was hidden when he says that the mystery is that the Gentiles will be saved. We are saved as a result of us being considered Israel because Jesus was the true Israel, the Son of God. This is a neat concept and helps to explain quite a bit of the Old Testament prophecies that are intended for Israel, yet find their fulfillment in Christ and the Church. One of those is the giving of the Holy Spirit. In Joel 2:28-32, he speaks of "all flesh" being given the Spirit, yet Dr. Beale showed that the context of "all flesh" actually means all the people of Israel (this was through looking at the chapter as a whole and seeing the 28-32 was a restatement of verse 27 which is the climax of verse 1-27). In light of that one has to ask, "How then is it possible for the Gentiles to receive the Holy Spirit??" Why through Christ making them Israel alongside the believing Jews.
So basically, this blew my mind, especially considering Dr. Beale throughly interpreted multiple passages that pretty much over-loaded my brain. Thankfully I didn't dream about exegesis even though that was all my brain heard about all week!!