To what degree does Jesus' discourse in John 2(:21) where he makes himself "the temple," and Peter's identification of the new covenant church 1 Peter 4 as "the temple" matter in interpreting such passages from the Hebrew Scriptures?
What about 1 Cor 3:16-17 and 6:19 and 2 Cor 6:16 and Eph 2:21 where the new covenant church is the temple or a temple either corporately or individually?
Quote:
Originally posted by Wannabee
... this would be taken to mean a literal temple, unless there was another passage that clarified it to mean otherwise.
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This is the "literal where possible," which, it seems to me is code for "national Israel" or "physical temple" where possible.
Do not the NT passages above show that not only that that "temple" can refer to the new covenant church but what the apostolic church thought was the "literal" meaning of the temple in the Hebrew Scripture?
The apostles did "literal" exegesis but in dispensationalism, don't we have an alternative exegesis proposed that isn't, if the apostles define it, a literal reading but an allegorical or doctrinal reading of "temple"?
In other words, despite the repeated NT use of "temple" in a very specific way, when it comes to assigning theological meaning to the temple, dispensationalism persists in reading the temple alternately because they know what temple
must mean.
Why isn't this a rationalist
a priori?
For example,
Quote:
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But the clear and simple meaning of the passage would be a literal temple.
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Whose "clear" and whose "simple," Dispensationalism's or the Apostles'?
For the Apostles' it was "clear" and "simple," that the temple ultimately referred to Christ (because all the promises are yes and amen in Christ) and secondarily to us who are united to Christ by faith.
For the apostles, it was clearly and simply the case that Hagar stands for one city and Sarah stands for another. For the Apostles it was clear and simple "that rock was Christ."
When I criticized dispensational hermeneutics earlier as such I had in mind passages such as that in the early pages of Pentecost's
Things to Come where he says that the Pharisees had the right hermeneutic, they just reached the wrong conclusions.
Doesn't the NT usage of the temple (and I haven't mentioned Hebrews, where we've come to a "mountain" that cannot be touched!) teach us not only specific conclusions, but also a hermeneutic that is incompatible with the dispensational "literal where possible" (as defined above) method?
Earlier I was asked if CT understands that there are dispensations in the progressive of revelation.
Well, it depends on what is meant. We've always taught that there is one salvation, one covenant of grace, with different administrations.
On this dispensationalists should certainly read Mike Horton's recent book on covenant theology. It is quite representative of the tradition.
We've always taught that God's covenant with national Israel was temporary and ilustrative (or proto-typical) of heaven, in certain respects, and of Christ in other respects. The typology is both horizontal/historical and vertical/eschatological. Moses was to make the tabernacle according to the heavenly pattern shown him on the mountain, but Moses himself was a type of Christ, so his life points us forward to the true deliverer who did cross over, indeed ahead of us (see Hebrews!) into the promised land.
rsc